© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Once the Queen Mother, or the Iyoba, of the Edo People from the Court of Benin in modern day Nigeria, gave birth to the King, or Oba’s, first son, she did not have any more children. She devoted the remainder … Continue reading
Grant Wood, Daughters of Revolution, 1932, oil on Masonite, 20” x 39.9”, Cincinati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Photo by Wmpearl, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Grant Wood clearly did not like the ladies he painted in his Daughters of Revolution, a satirical portrait of representatives of the Daughters the American Revolution (DAR) service organization for women who are descended from someone associated with the American … Continue reading
Anonymous Artist, Elizabeth Clarke Freake and Baby Mary, c. 1674, oil on canvas, 42.5” x 36.8”, The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Mrs. John Freake, of the Boston Freakes, was a real show-off. Colonial Americans were suspicious of art, judging it too aristocratic, but they did commission portraits because they were an excellent way to demonstrate wealth, especially if you were Elizabeth … Continue reading
Joan Miró, Personages with Star, 1933, oil on canvas, 78” x 97”, Art Institute of Chicago, Photo by Xevi V via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial -Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.
Surrealist artists wanted to incorporate chance into their artwork because they thought it would be a powerful means of self-revelation and catharsis. They believed they could set free certain aspects of their subconscious this way. Spanish artist Joan Miró, a … Continue reading
Plate with Kufic Border, Samarkand, Uzbekistan, 9th-10th cen., 14.75
Calligraphy is prevalent in Islamic Art because the Muslim religion is revealed though sacred scriptures, the Quran, which is believed to be the word of God brought to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Kufic script, named for Kufa, a city … Continue reading
John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1883-1884, oil on canvas, 82.1” x 43.3”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Madame X is the painting that ultimately ruined John Singer Sargent’s reputation in the Parisian art society. It is a portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American-born expatriate who was well known for her style and beauty. Sargent emphasized … Continue reading
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas, 33 ⅛” x 60”, Art Institute of Chicago, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The American artist Edward Hopper had the uncanny ability to make his brightly lit spaces rather cool. It suited the desolate mood of his realist images of the urban environment in the 20th century. The fluorescent lighting in this painting … Continue reading
Interior of San Vitale, 526-547 CE, Ravenna, Italy, Photo by sjmcdonoughvia Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 ShareAlike License. 2
San Vitale is one of the first examples of Byzantine art and architecture in Western civilization. In the 6th century, under the reign of Justinian, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) became the political and religious center of the Christian Byzantine Empire and … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
It looks like this refined watercolor of a clump of turf was done on the spot – the artist, German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer, sitting outside in a meadow; however, Dürer painted it in his studio probably after arranging the … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
You can still visit McSorley’s Bar (15 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003) and it looks very similar to the way it did just over 100 years ago when John Sloan, a founding member of The Eight (also known … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Not too long ago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that investigators seized more than 2,200 works of art, mostly photographs, valued at $18 million from a warehouse in Newark, NJ that were intended to be shipped to Spain via Amsterdam. … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
The impact of The Armory Show, the modern art exhibition that opened at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City on February 13, 1913 and toured the country 100 years ago this spring, cannot be overstated. It was a … Continue reading