"The construction technique and decorations of the villa suggest that it must have been built around the middle of the first century B.C. Only about thirty years earlier the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla had conquered Pompeii and...
"The construction technique and decorations of the villa suggest that it must have been built around the middle of the first century B.C. Only about thirty years earlier the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla had conquered Pompeii and...
Sculpture; Sarcophagi; Coffins; Death & burial; Containers; Monuments & memorials; Memorial works; Inscriptions; Human life cycle; Childhood & youth; Domestic life; Child rearing; Breast feeding; Feeding; Lifting & carrying; Riding;...
"[…] this child's sarcophagus has been reassembled from many fragments. The front panel is, however, in fairly good condition, with a few missing pieces reconstructed from Carrara marble. […] This sarcophagus is among the earliest of the...
"This fragment of a wall painting was among the very first ancient artworks discovered in Herculaneum after the volcanic eruption on August 23 in 79 A.D. […] This panel was executed using a technique similar to fresco painting. The design...
"This statue combines two antique fragments: Bacchus's torso and Silenus's torso and head, along with sixteenth-century additions including Bacchus's head, arms, and legs, and Silenus's arms and legs. The restoration is probably the work of...
"Bojewyan is a small village near St. Just in Cornwall, England. At the time of the painting local farmsteads were falling empty because they were uneconomic. Lanyon saw this as a serious threat to the region. His painting contains hints of a...
"In an article published in Figueres in May 1921, Subias Galter (1897-1984) praised the gouache posters that Dali had done for the recent Santa Creu festivities. Several critics had pointed out that they and other works in the same vein owed...
"The painting belonged to Edward James. The 'paranoiac-critical town' is composed of elements principally from Cadaqués and Palamós." (Caption); "The reference was to Outskirts of the Paranoiac-Critical Town, one of Dali's finest...
"Cornell's boxes of the 1940s and 1950s consisted of achingly melancholy juxtapositions of incongruously scaled objects implying temporal and spatial poetic leaps. A Victorian child's soap bubble set would be placed against a lunar map or a...
Performance art; Performances; Women; Artists; Painting; Brooms & brushes; Blood; Bodily functions; Anatomy; Genitals; Human body
"Retrospectively this performance reads as a proto-feminist riposte to Yves Klein's usurpation of the female 'trace' of five years earlier [Anthropometries of the Blue Age, performance, 9 March 1960]." (Caption, p.105); "[…] Fluxus...
"Here the god is shown standing, naked, a coat thrown over his left shoulder. His left arm is raised and perhaps at one time leaned on a long scepter. The thunderbolt in his right hand and the eagle at his feet are other attributes of this...
Film stills; Motion pictures; Processes & techniques; Time; Falling; Metals; Hands; Fingers; Body parts; Locomotion; Human locomotion
"This 3-minute 30-second film, like others produced by Serra in the same year, related to a famous 'verb list' which he compiled in 1967-8. The verb involved in this instance is 'to grasp' but the list also included 'to roll, to crease, to...
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...
Paintings; Oil paintings; Civil wars; War; Politics & government; Political issues; Dictators; Nazis; Fascism; Civilization; Bombings; Military tactics; War destruction & pillage; Death; Dismemberment; Body parts; Mental states; Despair;...
"In this monumental work of 1937, Guernica, Picasso combined Analytic and Synthetic Cubist forms with several traditional motifs, juxtaposing them in a new Surrealist way. The combination serves the political message of the painting - namely,...
"Because precision in dating is impossible for the Paleolithic era, art historians usually can be no more specific than assigning a range of several thousand years to each artifact. But probably later in date than the Venus of Willendorf is...
Architecture; Architectural elements; Towers; Walls; City walls; Forts & fortifications
"As the town's wealth grew and powerful neighbors established themselves, the need for protection resulted in the first known permanent stone fortifications. By approximately 7500 BCE, the town, estimated to have had a population of more than...
From Hierakonpolis, Egypt. "In Predynastic times, Egypt was divided geographically and politically into Upper Egypt (the southern, upstream part of the Nile Valley), a narrow tract of grassland that encouraged hunting, and Lower (northern)...
"The heavy walls of Tiryns and other Mycenaean palaces contrast sharply with the open Cretan palaces and clearly reveal their defensive character. Those of Tiryns average about 20 feet in thickness, and in one section they house a long gallery...
"Just inside the Lion Gate, [Heinrich] Schliemann uncovered what archaeologists now designate as Grave Circle A. It predates the Lion Gate and the walls of Mycenae by some three centuries. Grave Circle A encloses six deep shafts that had...
Architecture; Buildings; Religious facilities; Temples; Theaters; Open-air theaters; Social & civic facilities; Cultural facilities; Treasuries; Monuments; Sculpture; Architectural sculpture; Architectural decorations & ornaments;...
"Reconstruction of the sanctuary of Apollo giving a general picture of the sanctuary buildings and dedications. It is quite faithful from an architectural point of view but contains several imaginary features, particularly with regard to the...
