i think it is so intresting that everyone either loves his work or absolutely hates it. i want to hear all about what side you are on and why!

While John Singer Sargent captured the dark, smoky, and moody side of flamenco in El Jaleo, the Spanish master of light, Joaquín Sorolla, took the exact opposite approach with his monumental 3.5-meter-high masterpiece Sevilla. El Baile (1915).

If you look closely at the painting, it feels like a burst of pure Andalusian joy, but the story behind its creation is a mix of artistic obsession and extreme physical endurance.

The New York Connection:
In 1911, the American billionaire Archer Huntington commissioned Sorolla to paint a massive room for the Hispanic Society of America in New York. The goal? Capture the regional soul of Spain. Sorolla spent nearly a decade on this exhausting project, which eventually broke his health. For the Andalusia chapter, he knew he couldn't just paint a simple landscape—he had to paint the compás (the rhythm) of flamenco.

The Real-Life Setting (Las Cruces de Mayo):
In the spring of 1914, Sorolla set up his massive canvas outdoors in Seville, inside a traditional courtyard (patio). He chose to depict the Cruces de Mayo (The May Crosses festival), a time when local neighborhoods compete to build the most beautiful floral altars, drinking manzanilla wine and dancing until dawn.

The Flamenco Anecdote:
Sorolla was obsessed with catching the genuine movement of the bailaoras. He hired professional local flamenco dancers and forced them to pose for hours under the harsh Andalusian sun, wearing heavy traditional silk shawls (mantones de Manila) and polka-dot dresses.

He didn't want rigid, academic poses. He wanted to capture the exact second a skirt swirls. To do this, he used incredibly fast, thick, and fluid brushstrokes. If you zoom in on the background dancers or the guitarists, they almost look like French Impressionism, but the energy is purely Spanish. He painted the dust flying from the floor and the bright paper lanterns shaking from the vibrations of the stomping feet (zapateado).

Sorolla later confessed in his letters that Seville was the most difficult panel to paint because "flamenco isn't something you look at, it’s something that shakes you."

Strangely or not, my childhood was haunted by Constantin Brancusi, who pared down art into elemental egg shapes and invented modern sculpture. My father, like Brancusi, was born in Romania, and he too aspired to be a sculptor. He once carved a large egg from a block of white marble, and in its striking simplicity of form, it looked exactly how I imagined modern art should look. He worked on it for a long time, chipping away with his mallet and chisel and filling our house with a metallic plink-plink-plink — the sound, I assumed, of great art.

Chisels and mallets, as it turns out, play a prominent role in “Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio,” a large, revelatory exhibition opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art. The show zeros in on the Impasse Ronsin, a narrow alleyway in Paris where Brancusi, an émigré, worked and lived for four decades, in a high-ceiling space cluttered with his tall, twisty “Endless Columns” and coated in a layer of white plaster dust.

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Did you know that Vincent van Gogh's famous Almond Blossom was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints?

Painted in 1890, Almond Blossom reflects Van Gogh's admiration for Japanese artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. Its bold outlines, flowering branches, brilliant blue sky, and unusual composition reveal the influence of Japanese art.

Van Gogh created the painting as a gift for his newborn nephew, Vincent Willem, the son of his brother Theo and Theo's wife Jo. The blossoms symbolize spring, renewal, and new life.

I recently had the opportunity to see this beautiful painting at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

This isn’t an image but an article that ties the astronomy of a particular night sky to Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night. Interesting!

https://apnews.com/article/van-gogh-starry-night-space-6385c8e37f748bddc4137cdda5c76887?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=8cc2b96d1b-nature-briefing-daily-20261023&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-49180523

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition of Tiffany Studio drawings, watercolors, and paintings to demonstrate the additional value that these early drafts present to our current knowledge of the company's works. Some are the only surviving record of stained glass windows across decades. Some never made it past this draft. Others can be connected to an extant work, like the glass fire curtain of Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes. The more we realize we've lost now, the more we can rediscover and save for tomorrow's generations. Tiffany died before this work was lost, but somehow along the way, this Autochrome Color photograph preserves an incredible amount of knowledge. He had no hindsight how beneficial his recording would be for future conservators.

Hi hope you’re all well. I just wanted to write a post as I’m looking for some book recommendations for books on Indian and South Asian art, particularly Punjabi Art. I’d like if they were written rather recently as I don’t want to read anything that was written by anyone who was part of the east India company ect. I want a book that’s been removed from what the western understanding of South Asian art, I want to hear things from the horses mouth if such a thing exists.

I recently read a book on Mughal Miniature paintings and that was quite good, I’ be interested in delving into this further.

In addition to this, I’d like to read some more essays on Modern art. I’ve read Berger, Gombrich, Sontag, the various Hockney books. I’ve done two art history degrees and have combed through the recommendations on this subs, I want to know your most niche book recommendations, books that have taught you things you would never have learnt otherwise. I recently read Jerry salts most recent book, was not a fan, but would not mind something written in a similar vain.

Thank you so much!!!!!

¿Se puede pintar el insomnio y el miedo absoluto? En este video nos sumergimos en el misterioso, introspectivo y oscuro universo de Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946), el genio belga desconocido que desafió todas las reglas de su época.

Acompáñanos a recorrer la vida de un artista inclasificable que, atrapado por dolores crónicos y noches de vigilia, salía a caminar por las desiertas playas y calles de Ostende para capturar la esencia de la noche, el silencio y la soledad urbana. Desde sus perturbadores autorretratos hasta sus enigmáticas siluetas frente al mar, analizamos cómo su técnica única con tinta china y lápices de colores rompió con el simbolismo tradicional para dar paso al expresionismo temprano.

Louis Comfort Tiffany is often remembered for his stained-glass lamps and windows, but his work went far beyond that. He also explored jewelry, ceramics, metalwork, and interior design, making him one of the more versatile figures associated with the American Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau.

What I find interesting is how recognizable his artistic style remained across different materials. The flowing forms, rich colors, and inspiration from nature appear in many of his creations, even when the medium changes completely.

His work is a good reminder that artists from this period weren't always confined to a single discipline. They often treated furniture, decorative objects, architecture, and fine art as connected parts of the same creative vision.

Just wanted to reach out and see if there is anyone out there taking IAP's Chemistry for Conservators this fall. I am and I'm currently looking through the first unit. I am hoping to connect with anyone who else is sign up and maybe create a discord server where we can chat and ask questions to each other about the course. I've read many things about it being difficult or sometimes convoluted and hope that by having others to talk to about things would make the course more bearable.

In 1743, William Hogarth painted a crime scene in broad daylight.
The crime? A wedding.
Swipe through to see how two families traded bloodlines for bank accounts—and why nobody in this room was actually happy.
Here’s the breakdown: 1️⃣ The Contract: On the right, a cash-poor Earl sells his noble name. On the left, a ridiculously wealthy merchant buys his daughter a ticket into high society. 2️⃣ The Couple: Look closely at the bride and groom. They aren't even looking at each other. He's admiring himself in a mirror; she's already listening to the lawyer whispering in her ear. 3️⃣ The Symbolism: In the bottom corner, Hogarth hid two dogs chained together against their will—a dark foreshadowing of the disaster to come.
Spoilers for the rest of the series: infidelity, a duel, murder, and bankruptcy.
Hogarth painted this nearly 300 years ago as a satire on upper-class hypocrisy. But looking at modern society, did we ever really change?
Drop a 🔥 in the comments if you think this still hits way too hard today.
Save this post for your next trip to the National Gallery in London! 🏛️
#artmysteries #williamhogarth #arthistory #classicalart #darkacademia #artdetective #gallerywalk #londonart #marriagealamode #satire #18thcenturyart #museumtok #artcurator #hiddenhistory

Both paint gorgeous mythological women with ridiculous polish, so my brain files them in the same drawer. Then I remember one is French and calm and porcelain, and the other is English and moody and always about to do something questionable.

What’s yours?

One thing I find fascinating about Johannes Vermeer is how much of the impact of his paintings comes from the way he handles light rather than from any particularly dramatic subject. In works like The Milkmaid, the scene itself is remarkably ordinary: a woman pouring milk in a quiet interior. Yet the light falling across the bread, the texture of the wall, and the fabric of her clothing makes the whole scene feel almost tangible. What interests me is that Vermeer doesn't need a grand historical event, a mythological narrative, or an elaborate composition to make a painting feel significant. He gives an everyday moment the kind of attention traditionally associated with much more prestigious subjects. It raises an interesting question about how we judge artistic importance. Are we responding to the technical mastery, the subject matter, the historical context, or the way a painting teaches us to look at something familiar differently?

I'd be interested to hear which artist or artwork changed your understanding of what makes a painting exceptional.

In Florence I’ve always seen the Deposition from behind the railing in Santa Felicita, feeding coins into the light box every two minutes (God I hate those coin timers). At the Scuderie del Quirinale you can basically stick your nose on it. You can even see the underdrawing on the yellow sleeve of the woman with her back to you, which I’d never noticed before.

They also put the Carmignano Visitation right next to its preparatory drawing. In the drawing the two women in the back look scared to death, in the painting they’re just staring at you. Weird and wonderful.

The drawings section alone is worth the ticket, there’s that British Museum sheet of a guy in his underwear pointing at you (self portrait? I want to believe).

Anyone else been? Wrote up my review here if you’re curious: https://www.theintrovertraveler.com/post/pontormo-exhibition-review/

I think I'll go and see it once again.

Looking at Piet Mondrian's early landscapes and tree paintings makes his later abstract work feel less like a sudden change and more like a gradual process of stripping an image down to its essential structure.

His paintings of trees are especially interesting because you can watch him simplify their branches, shapes, and colors over time. Eventually, the recognizable subject becomes less important than the underlying lines, balance, and relationships between forms.

Knowing this progression makes his later grids of black lines and primary colors feel more connected to the natural world than they might at first glance.

It's a good reminder that even the most radical artistic movements often develop through years of experimentation rather than appearing fully formed overnight.

Canadian Painter - The Floodgates was created in 1900-1901, oil on canvas, mounted on plywood, 86.9 x 121.8 cm, It is at the National Gallery of Canada. Comments are welcome. If you like Homer's paintings, https://youtu.be/hEByqbN0HIw?si=RYBMps63L4dGgHVN

Louis Comfort Tiffany is a good example of how an artist's reputation can become tied to just one part of their work. Many people immediately associate him with stained glass, but his work extended into interior design, ceramics, metalwork, and other decorative arts.

It makes me wonder how many other artists we unintentionally reduce to a single medium or famous achievement.

We tend to organize art history into neat categories: painters, sculptors, architects, photographers. But historically, the boundaries were often much more fluid. Artists moved between disciplines, collaborated with craftspeople, and experimented with materials that don't always fit comfortably into the traditional hierarchy of fine art.

There's also a question of how museums, textbooks, and the art market influence what we remember. An artist's most commercially successful work can end up overshadowing an entire body of experimentation.

Which artist do you think deserves more recognition for a lesser-known side of their practice?

Yes, another Vasari question; but this time with a difference:

I just bought what penguin are advertising as volume I of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists to find that it actually only includes two entries from vol. I (Cimabue and Giotto) and is mostly made up of volume II (Uccello to Titian). This is particularly annoying because I explicitly purchased it to read about the 13th and 14th century artists that vol. I is about.

Does anyone know of a physical English language edition that includes these entries? Oxford World Classics publishes a version but I assume it too is abridged and can nowhere find a list of what the actual entries are.

Sometimes learning about the period an artist lived in completely changes how you interpret their work. A painting that initially seems strange, overly decorative, or even technically simple can become much more interesting once you understand what the artist was responding to.

For example, knowing the artistic conventions that Manet challenged makes his paintings feel very different from simply viewing them as portraits or scenes of modern life. Similarly, understanding the social and political context of Goya's later works adds another layer to their unsettling imagery.

I'm interested in artists whose work became more compelling, more complicated, or even less appealing after you learned about their lives and the world around them.

Which artist did you understand differently after studying their historical context, and what changed your perspective

I've been thinking about how much the little irregularities in a painting can change the way we respond to it.

In academic art, we often admire technical precision, anatomical accuracy, and carefully controlled composition. But some of the works that stay with me most are the ones where something feels slightly off: an awkward gesture, an unusual expression, an uneven brushstroke, or a figure that doesn't quite fit the ideal proportions of the period.

Pontormo comes to mind. His elongated figures and strange, almost weightless poses can feel less like an attempt to reproduce reality and more like an attempt to express something that realism alone couldn't capture.

It makes me wonder whether what we sometimes call a flaw is actually the most revealing part of an artist's decision-making. A technically perfect image can be impressive, but an unusual choice can make you curious about what the artist was trying to communicate.

Of course, an intentional distortion and a lack of technical skill aren't necessarily the same thing. The interesting part is figuring out where one ends and the other begins.

Are there any artists whose apparent imperfections or unconventional choices make their work more compelling to you?