Installation: used sump oil, steel; "The oil uncannily mirrors the ceiling of the gallery, leaving the spectator, figuratively speaking, in mid-air. Although currently installed in the Saatchi Gallery, the work was originally located in Matt's...
"As an African-American who is able to pass as 'white', Piper has written eloquently of the social and institutional prejudices that surface when she divulges her racially mixed identity. In a text entitled 'Flying' of 1987 she wrote: 'I am...
"Artaud's late drawings have been a comparatively recent discovery. His poetry and writings on the theatre were better known previously. In the latter respect, his notions of catharsis had a decisive impact on the Body Art of the 1970s. After...
Sculpture; Figurines; Human body; Heads (Anatomy); Animals; Lions
"One of the earliest sculptures discovered to date is an extraordinary ivory statuette, which may be as old as 30,000 BCE, from a cave at Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany. Carved out of mammoth ivory and nearly a foot tall - a truly huge image...
"Soon after the creation of Composition VII, in late November, Kandinsky painted Dreamy Improvisation [Träumerische Improvisation] on 3 December 1913 followed by Light Picture [Helles Bild] and Black Lines [Schwarze Striche] in mid-December....
Sculpture; Bas-reliefs; Men; Military personnel; Soldiers; Military officers; People associated with military activities; Guards; Bodyguards; People associated with health & safety; Clothing & dress; Military uniforms; Uniforms; Belts...
"This piece depicts three soldiers in high relief in the foreground and two others, accompanied by a standard bearer, in bas-relief behind. The plaque's original upright is preserved in the lower right; the upright on the left is modern. As...
"Ad Reinhardt's satirical cartoons, which contrasted sharply with his practice as a painter, dated back to the 1930s and 1940s. His strong Communist sympathies during that period had informed a series of cartoons for left-wing journals. By the...
"Hesse produced a series of versions of this sculpture during 1967-8. They set up an interesting dialogue with [Donald] Judd's frequent exposure of the interiors of his 'boxes'. They also respond obliquely to an iconographic tradition of...
Sculpture; Stelae; Portraits; Group portraits; Men; Kings; Rulers; Women; Queens; People associated with politics & government; Couples; Spouses; Fathers; Mothers; Families; Family; Children; Girls; Clothing & dress; Headgear; Headdresses;...
From Tell el-Armana, Egypt. "A sunken relief stele, perhaps from a private shrine, provides a rare look at this royal family. The style is familiar from the colossus of Akhenaton [from the temple of Aton, Karnak, Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, ca....
"Sometime around 530 BCE a young man named Kroisos died a hero's death in battle, and his grave at Anavysos, not far from Athens, was marked by a kouros statue. The inscribed base invites visitors to 'stay and mourn at the tomb of dead...
Performance art; Performances; Painting; Body painting; Locomotion; Human locomotion; Artists; Men; Dandies; Women; Nudes; Audiences; Spectators; Orchestras; Music ensembles; Musicians; Sitting; Musical instruments; Clothing & dress; Suits...
"This performance exemplifies Klein's participation in the masculinist tradition of the dandy. The self-contained male, renouncing biological productivity (symbolized by the 'fecundity' of the paint-covered women launching themselves at...
Sculpture; Portraits; Men; Rulers; People associated with politics & government; Upper class; Clothing & dress; Headdresses; Headgear; Snakes; Reptiles; Cobras; Power (Social sciences); Symbols; Gods; People associated with religion; Myths;...
Portrait bust. "Several statues portraying Antinous as Osiris share the same features. They represent the young Bithynian, who drowned in the Nile in 130 A.D., wearing a nemes, an Egyptian headdress made of starched cloth, decorated in front...
"Every so often as the excavation continued, one of the workmen would shout: 'Another marble here!' In the end, we found ourselves - entranced and speechless - before a group of sculptures lying side by side: from west to east ([in this...
Sculpture; Metalwork; Myths; Legends; Supernatural beings; Fictitious characters; Goddesses; People associated with religion; Women; Clothing & dress; Hairstyles; Gestures
One of the Piraeus bronze statues; "The statue of the large Artemis reflects a different conception of the goddess, that of a serious young woman, in which her role as huntress is indicated only by the position of the fingers holding the bow...
"This painting deliberately combines a host of allusions to Spanish culture such as the stark black/white contrasts of Goya, Velasquez, and Picasso, the Spanish poet Lorca's lament to a dead bullfighter, 'Llanto por Ignacio Jánchez mejías',...
"The atom bomb was good news for Dali's commercial art." (Caption); "The New York Times reviewer of the Sentimental Colloquy had said correctly that Dali's 'Surrealist' paintings were now executed according to a mere formula. That...
Sculpture; Mixed media; Puns (Visual works); Sex; Couples; Relations between the sexes; Human body; Body parts; Anatomy; Genitals; Pails; Containers; Fruit; Melons; Food; Citrus fruit; Oranges; Cucumbers; Vegetables
"Lucas grew up in a working-class environment in East London and uses its idioms in her work. To some extent she has also borrowed from the American art that she saw in the late 1980s in London's Saatchi Gallery. Her 'grungy' abject imagery...
Sculpture; Portraits; Men; Emperors; Rulers; People associated with politics & government; Priests; Clergy; People associated with religion; Clothing & dress; Hairstyles
"This portrait of Emperor Augustus (27 B.C. - 14 A.D.) is a fragment of a full-length statue that was recarved into a bust and then set on an architectural element taken from another source. The chin, nose, and arch of the right eyebrow are...
Sculpture; Equestrian statues; Metalwork; Portraits; Men; Emperors; Rulers; People associated with politics & government; Clothing & dress; Hairstyles; Gestures
Bronze equestrian statue of the emperor. "The great Roman emperor is depicted on horseback, but the horse and the entire lower part of the body are missing. The statue is a bronze of a very high quality that was probably made in one of the...
Sculpture; Portraits; Heads (Anatomy); Men; Emperors; Rulers; People associated with politics & government; Hairstyles
Portrait head. "This portrait has fundamental importance in the study of Augustan iconography. Both it and a very similar portrait in the Forbes collection are considered excellent examples of the Louvre type of Augustan portrait. [...] This...
