Flights of Fancy
In December 1942, a Jewish teacher brings art supplies to children held by Nazis. They created art that would give them a momentary escape, if only in their imaginations.
The Multitudes of the Displaced
For artist Ai Weiwei, the calamity of our time is the disaster of the multitudes of displaced. Those who are uprooted, through no fault of their own, and cast adrift on an infinite ocean of terror and despair.
Mondrian's New Visual Language
In the autumn of 1914, Mondrian had an epiphany that would bring true abstraction into the world.
Art from Fiery Immolation
Some of the strongest contemporary art has the magical power of transformation, turning the ephemeral and destructive into something more enduring.
What Is Art Good For?
Explore art in the age of revolution, war and profound scientific change and consider the question: Should art create a separate realm, a place of escape, or should it plunge into the chaos, transforming the way we see and live in the world?
Manet Twists the Conventions of Art
In what's considered his last great work, Edouard Manet created a masterpiece famed as a masterclass in visual subversion.
Capturing Unspoiled Landscape
Thomas Cole regarded the American landscape as being what he called the undefiled work of Gods.
Otto Dix's Definitive Artistic Statement
Otto Dix and his generation had borne witness to the horrors of World War I. They'd also been witness to the death of the nineteenth century faith in an inevitable, unstoppable progress.
George Catlin's Indian Portraits
Catlin was by no means indifferent to the suffering of the people whose faces appear in these paintings. But he didn't produce them in order to take part in some campaign to save the native Americans, instead he said they must perish.
The Cult of Progress
Examine the rise and fall of “progress” as an ideology, and see how the “civilizing” project that arose from Enlightenment ideas was fraught with contradictions that troubled European artists in different ways.
Venetians Embrace Color Over the Drawn Line
For Renaissance art theorists, drawing always came before color. But Venetians see art and the world quite differently.
Japan's 18th Century Commercial Art Revitalizes Color
Ukiyo-e began with only a few colors, but combined them in increasingly sophisticated ways to create vivid depictions of a rapidly growing urban life. Wildly popular in all its forms, it demonstrated that every day transitory objects could be considered art.
Goya's Harmony and Chaos
In his 60s, Goya abandoned his role as court artist to bare witness to the irrational forces unleashed by Napoleon's invasion of Spain.
Three Aspects of the Absolute
Out of the absolute of Hindu metaphysics comes the nearest visualisation you can get to of a trance.
Color and Light
Explore the story of light and color in art - both in the search for greater realism and spiritual ecstasy. Journey from Gothic cathedrals and Indian courtly painting to modern art.
Heavenly Paradises on Earth
In Islamic architecture, landscapes reflect a mastery over the natural world.
Landscape as Ideology
In Li Cheng's hands, landscape art became not a depiction of the natural world, but a kind of official ideology, promoting order.
Nature Becomes the Story
Albrecht Altdorfer sidesteps religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics by using nature.
Paradise on Earth
Explore one of humanity’s deepest artistic urges: the depiction of nature. But landscape painting is seldom a straightforward portrayal of observed nature; it's a projection of dreams, idylls, escapes and refuges—the elusive paradise on earth.
Artemisia's Most Subversive Work
Rebelling against any notion that women shouldn't speak until spoken to, Artemisia refuses to shut her portrait up.
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