A wealthy Moscow textile merchant, Morozov started buying art in a modest way in 1900 until, on a trip to Paris, he developed a taste for the avant-garde. Meticulous and highly discerning, he acquired works by the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and Cezann...

Kurt Schwitters was a major protagonist in the histories of modern art and literature, whose response to the contradictions of modern life rivals that of Marcel Duchamp in its importance for artists working today. His celebrated Merz pictures – colla...

In 1561-62 the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay (died 1575), imperial secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, created Mira calligraphiae monumenta (Model Book of Calligraphy) as a demonstration of his own preeminence among scribes. Some thi...

Once interred with mummified remains, nearly a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt survive today in museums around the world, bringing viewers face-to-face with people who lived two thousand years ago. Until recently, few of these paintings...

In 1903, the Art Institute of Chicago became the first American museum to buy a painting by Claude Monet (1840–1926), beginning a tradition of collecting that has inextricably connected this midwestern city to the French Impressionist master. Tracing...

The artist has been a privileged figure in the modern age, embodying ideals of personal and political freedom and self-fulfillment. Does it matter who gets to be an artist? And do our deeply held beliefs stand up to scrutiny? "Making the Modern Artis...

In a small village in West Africa, a young girl explains the special way she was born. Her mother had difficulty getting pregnant, so she seeks help in the form of a doll which she treats like a human baby, carrying it on her back and covering it wit...

Following the worldwide success of his Poemotion trilogy, Takahiro Kurashima presents a title that is in no way inferior to the previous ones in terms of surprise and viewing pleasure. On the contrary: here, the motifs are combined to form a visual n...

Michael Kenna is an English photographer, now based in Seattle, USA, best known for his black-and-white landscapes. More than 60 books and monographs have been published on his photographic work, including "Forms of Japan", "Rouge", and "Holga" (all...

During the nineteenth century, Americans celebrated their towns and cities through printed landscapes. In Maine, lithographs were commissioned from such leading artists as Fitz Henry Lane and talented, lesser known local artists, such as Esteria Butl...