Ever wondered why your ceiling is shaped like the arches in a gothic cathedral? Or why your offi ce building looks so different from its neighboring counterparts? The ABC of Style invites you to...
It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Réard borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing...
Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning ‘prophet’. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis, the most...
Hieronymus Bosch was painting frightening, yet vaguely likable monsters long before computer games were ever invented, often including a touch of humour. His works are assertive statements about the...
Pieter Brueghel was the first important member of a family of artists who were active for four generations. Firstly a drawer before becoming a painter later, he painted religious themes, such as...
After staying in Milan for his apprenticeship, Michelangelo da Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1592. There he started to paint with both realism and psychological analysis of the sitters. Caravaggio...
Dealing not only with architecture, sculpture, and painting, but also with bronze and ceramics, this text offers a complete panorama of Chinese arts and civilisation. In his text, the author Bushell...
Ornans, Courbet’s birthplace, is near the beautiful valley of the Doubs River, and it was here as a boy, and later as a man, that he absorbed the love of landscape. He was by nature a revolutionary,...
Painter, designer, creator of bizarre objects, author and film maker, Dalí became the most famous of the Surrealists. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso and Breton all had a great influence on his career. Dalí's...
From the Middle Ages to contemporary times, decorative art can be defi ned by the artistic materials, designs and objects used in both architecture and interior design. Similar to many art forms...
What happened to the insolence of the 18th-century libertines or to the carefree excesses of the Belle Époque and its legalized brothels? They have merely been inhibited and buried by the nowadays...
Secluded within cloister walls, a painter and a monk, and brother of the order of the Dominicans, Angelico devoted his life to religious paintings. Little is known of his early life except that he...
In his works, Hopper poetically expressed the solitude of man confronted with the American way of life as it developed in the 1920s. Inspired by the movies and particularly by the various camera...
This book is not a panegyric of homosexuality. It is a scientific study led by Professor James Smalls who teaches art history in the prestigious University of Maryland, Baltimore. Abandoning all...
At a time when the dominant mode of painting, Abstract Expressionism, emphasised expressive drama through bold brushwork and largely abstract compositions, Johns’ paintings of the American flag,...
Although considered a minor genre for a long time, the art of landscape has risen above its forebears – religious and historic painting – to become a genre of its own. Giorgione in Italy, the...
Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and...
Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and...
What is the social merit or purpose of all those bras and panties on perfectly sculpted bodies that we see spread across billboards and magazines? Many women indulge in lingerie to please men. Yet,...
Pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the Russian Avant-garde, Malevitch experimented with various modernist styles. In reaction to the influence of Cubism and...
