Art historical analysis with Goya's Third of May, 1808

Art historical analysis with Goya’s <em>Third of May, 1808</em>

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

This painting captures a particular moment in the artist’s studio—and a particular day in European history.

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The Age of Enlightenment, an introduction

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire illuminated the world, just as Wright’s paintings shed light on new machinery.

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Rococo art, an introduction

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Flush with power and wealth, French aristocrats pursued all pleasures. Then came the Enlightenment—and Revolution.

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Neoclassicism, an introduction

By Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic

Rejecting the Rococo, artists valued moderation and favored a clear drawing style more in line with the times.

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A beginner's guide to Romanticism

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

19th-century stylistic developments As is fairly common with stylistic rubrics, the word "Romanticism" was not developed to describe the visual arts but was first used in relation to new literary and musical schools in the beginning of the 19th century. Art came under...

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Romanticism in France

By Dr. Claire Black McCoy

In the decades following the French Revolution, this new movement began to flourish in France.

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Orientalism

By Dr. Nancy Demerdash

East of who? Europe’s political ideology created the notion of the Orient in order to subjugate and control it.

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Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge

By Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby

Photography emerged as a marvel of the modern world, but its early years were marked by technological obstacles.

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The Daguerreotype

By George Eastman Museum

These are sharply defined, highly reflective, one-of-a-kind photographs on silver-coated copper plates.

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Realism, an introduction

By Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic

Wake up and smell modernity! Realist painters leave the past behind to highlight the concerns of a changing world.

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Introduction to lithography

By The Museum of Modern Art

It's a good thing water and oil don't mix.

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Impressionism, an introduction

By Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic

Rebelling against tradition, the Impressionists exhibited their own “unfinished” works to a skeptical audience.

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Japonisme

By Dr. Charles Cramer, Dr. Kim Grant

The distinctive qualities of Japanese art offered striking new approaches to modern artists developing alternatives to the Western tradition of naturalistic representation.

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Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part I

By Dr. Charles Cramer, Dr. Kim Grant

The Neo-Impressionist desire to conform art-making to universal laws of perception, color, and expression echoes throughout Modernism.

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Art Nouveau, an introduction

By Dr. Charles Cramer, Dr. Kim Grant

Art Nouveau artists and designers created a completely new style of decoration.

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Fauvism, an introduction

By Dr. Virginia B. Spivey

The joyful, vivid, sensual paintings of the “wild beasts” had a dark side.

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Expressionism, an introduction

By Shawn Roggenkamp

Not a term chosen by the artists, it describes art that emphasized the emotional impact over descriptive accuracy.

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Inventing Cubism

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Braque hated Picasso’s Demoiselles when he saw it. But he couldn’t get it out of his head… or off of his canvas.

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Cubism and multiple perspectives

By Dr. Charles Cramer, Dr. Kim Grant

This use of multiple perspectives was a hallmark of the Cubist style, but Braque and Picasso never explained why they employed this technique.

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291—Little Galleries of the Photo Secession

By Dr. Stephanie Chadwick

If you walked into this art gallery you would likely have been quite surprised.

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Introduction to Dada

By Dr. Stephanie Chadwick

The avant-garde reached new heights by looking to “low” culture; after all, the whole thing started with a urinal!

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Surrealism, an introduction

By Josh R. Rose

Identifying as agents of change, the Surrealists were interested in Freudian psychology and social revolution.

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Introduction to De Stijl

By Dr. Charles Cramer, Dr. Kim Grant

The elements of De Stijl are the artist’s equivalent of the physicist’s building blocks: protons, neutrons, and electrons. With a bucket of each of these you could make anything in the universe.

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