The Dutch master has intrigued art-lovers for four centuries. His strength in depicting the human experience compels audiences even after four hundred years.
Preminda Jacob, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
A new piece of performance art features a lookalike Ivanka Trump vacuuming crumbs. Not only is it a cutting commentary on labor and gender, but it also highlights the complicity of the viewer.
Bees can pick up unique characteristics in paintings by zipping quickly back and forth in front of them to detect abrupt changes in the brightness of an image.
Preminda Jacob, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
When artists destroy their works, it’s usually to express their disdain for critics, dealers and curators. But does this get lost in the attention, hype and money that follows?
If we’re going to grasp what makes Eakins’ art so tragically powerful, we should be honest about the man who made them – and the impulses that drove him.
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
The violence sparked by the removal of Confederate statues in the US shows the ideas that collect around historical monuments. Sometimes it’s better to remove them; yet they can be an important way of remembering trauma.
Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different. But a trip through history – from an Islamic palace to Pollock’s paintings – proves the parallels between the two can be uncanny.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne