The Venus of Willendorf: It Doesn’t Get Any Older Than This

Venus of Willendorf, c. 28,000 - 25,000 BCE, limestone, 4⅓” high, Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Photo by Matthias Kabel via Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License.

The Venus of Willendorf is seriously old; someone carved her from limestone around 28,000 BCE.  That’s 30,000 years ago!  Needless to say, it’s very difficult to know why this Paleolithic artifact exists.  Because we know so little about the circumstances … Continue reading →

Just a Second: Etching

Rembrandt van Rijn, Adam and Eve, 1638, etching, 6.4" x 4.6", Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Etching (noun) A technique of printmaking in which an artist scratches a waxy resin from the surface of a metal plate and the plate is then dipped in acids to “carve” the exposed metal to create the image on the … Continue reading →

Constantin Brancusi and the Ultimate Motif

Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928, bronze, 54” x 8½” x 6½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by rocor -Flickr

Artists sometimes repeat motifs in their work over the course of their career. Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor working in the early twentieth century, reworked a bird motif many times from the 1920s through the 1940s in an effort to arrive … Continue reading →

Make the Time: Cindy Sherman at MoMA

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979, Photo by violarenate, Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution license.

From February 26 through June 11, 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City will host a retrospective exhibition of Cindy Sherman’s highly influential photographs.  For over thirty years, Sherman has photographed herself in various guises and disguises, … Continue reading →

The Bayeux Tapestry: Roll It!

Crowds Gaze in Awe at a Comet, detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, wool embroidery on linen, 20” high, Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, Bayeux, France, Image on website of Ulrich Harsh, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bayeux Tapestry – which is not actually a tapestry, but an embroidered cloth – is not the first continuous narrative in Western art history.  The Romans created them about 1000 years earlier (see, for example, the sculptural decoration on … Continue reading →

Just a Second: Patina

Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, 1879-1887, bronze, 27½” high, Musée Rodin, Paris, Photo by Gertjan R., Creative Commons Attribution license via Wikimedia Commons.

Patina (noun) A colored film on the surface of a metal sculpture. Sometimes the patina appears over time as a result of the oxidation process and other times artists create the color with a wash of chemicals. Rodin developed his … Continue reading →

Venus to Bring Home to Mother

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485, tempera on panel, 5'9

Believe it or not, there are different kinds of Venuses.  Figures from ancient mythology often have different aspects or characteristics that artists emphasize in art.  The Roman goddess Venus, who is also known as Aphrodite in Greek Mythology, represents different … Continue reading →

Just a Second: Environmental Art

Christo and Jeanne-Calude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1995, Berlin, Photo by jotefa - Flickr

Environmental Art (noun) Art in the natural or man-made environment that draws attention to forces and processes in nature or human relationships with their physical surroundings. When Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin with over one million square … Continue reading →

Kehinde Wiley’s New Baroque

Kehinde Wiley, Le Roi a la chasse, 2006, oil on canvas, 8’ x 6’, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Photo by زرشک, Creative Commons Attribution License via Wikimedia Commons.

During the Baroque era, artists painted religious and political heroes in a style that was intended to impress upon the viewer the supremacy of the subjects and the divine blessings bestowed upon them.  This Old Master style is perfectly suited … Continue reading →

Who is Qi Baishi?

Qi Baishi, Cicada, c. 1950

The Chinese artist, Qi Baishi (1864-1957), created the most expensive painting sold in the world last year. His Eagle Standing on a Pine Tree with Four-character Couplet in Seal Script, which he painted in 1946, sold for $65 million.  The … Continue reading →

The Wonky Parthenon

Kallikrates and Iktinos, The Parthenon, 447-438 BCE, marble, Acropolis, Athens, photo by Florestan via Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation license.

Okay, it’s grossly incorrect to call the Parthenon “wonky,” but the truth is that the horizontals and verticals in the structure are not straight. Actually, the architects did that on purpose. The Parthenon, which stands atop the highest point of the … Continue reading →

Just a Second: Camera Obscura

Jan Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1660, oil on canvas, 18" x 16", Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Camera Obscura (noun) A device made of a box with a lens that artists used for centuries to project a perfect, yet upside-down repilca of the subject before it. One can tell that Jan Vermeer used a camera obscura because … Continue reading →