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Picasso's Blue Room: The Hidden Portrait Beneath the Paint
Picasso's Blue Room: The Hidden Portrait Beneath the Paint
In the early summer of 1901, a nineteen-year-old Pablo Picasso stood inside a cramped studio at 130 Boulevard de Clichy in Paris and mixed heavy dabs of Prussian and cobalt... Read more...
Who Stole the Mona Lisa? The True Story of the 1911 Heist
Who Stole the Mona Lisa? The True Story of the 1911 Heist
On the morning of Monday, August 21, 1911, the Louvre was nearly empty. Monday was the museum's weekly closing day, so the guards were relaxed and the galleries were quiet.... Read more...
Did Gainsborough Really Paint The Blue Boy to Spite His Rival?
Did Gainsborough Really Paint The Blue Boy to Spite His Rival?
Short answer: no. The most repeated story about Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, that he built an entire portrait out of blue satin just to embarrass his rival Sir Joshua... Read more...
The Lost Cimabue Masterpiece That Hung Above a French Kitchen Hotplate
The Lost Cimabue Masterpiece That Hung Above a French Kitchen Hotplate
We like to imagine art history happens inside climate-controlled vaults under the watch of museum guards. But old paintings spend their lives in surprisingly ordinary places. Take a small poplar... Read more...
The Animal Inside the Frame: Bringing Organic Surrealism Home
The Animal Inside the Frame: Bringing Organic Surrealism Home
Picture a chimpanzee named Congo holding a brush. Between 1956 and 1959, he balanced colors and forms with an intuitive sense of composition that ended up hanging in Picasso's own... Read more...
Beyond Beige: Why Dense, Map-Like Abstraction is Taking Over
Beyond Beige: Why Dense, Map-Like Abstraction is Taking Over
Walk into the soaring Haas, Jr. Atrium at SFMOMA, and you are immediately confronted by two massive, opposing forces. Julie Mehretu’s diptych, HOWL, eon (I, II), flanks the main staircase... Read more...
The Factory as a Family: Andy Warhol's Obsessive Polaroid Archive
The Factory as a Family: Andy Warhol's Obsessive Polaroid Archive
In the mid-1960s, Andy Warhol purchased his first Polaroid camera. It wasn't a casual purchase. That clunky piece of plastic would quickly become an extension of his own hand, a... Read more...
Art Basel Tributes to David Hockney: California Color for Your Walls
Art Basel Tributes to David Hockney: California Color for Your Walls
Walk through the aisles of Art Basel this week, and you will see a unified, vivid tribute playing out across the world's most prestigious gallery stands. Following the passing of... Read more...
Tate Modern Opens 'Frida: The Making of an Icon' (And Why She Belongs on Your Wall)
Tate Modern Opens 'Frida: The Making of an Icon' (And Why She Belongs on Your Wall)
The art world has a habit of flattening its most complex figures into merchandise, and few have suffered that fate quite like Frida Kahlo. But London's Tate Modern is aiming... Read more...
Pablo Picasso Wall Art: A Guide to Styling Modern Masterpieces
Pablo Picasso Wall Art: A Guide to Styling Modern Masterpieces
Pablo Picasso created over 50,000 artworks during his 80-year career. He didn't just paint one way; he constantly reinvented his style, moving from somber blue portraits to fragmented geometry and... Read more...