“Moreau has rendered Salome as an enchantress, the archetypal femme fatale who seduces Herod into performing her will. Moreau was very careful to avoid endowing the figure of Herod with any magisterial dignity but rather shows him as an old man,...
Paintings; Discussion; Debates; Politics & government; Political issues; Political parties; Men; Artists; Clothing & dress; Suits (Clothing); Coats; Cigarettes; Details
"According to the artist this painting depicted an 'ideological discussion'. As such it evokes the stormy realist-abstraction debates, and allied political differences, among artists in Italy after the Second World War. Stylistically, the work...
"According to the artist this painting depicted an 'ideological discussion'. As such it evokes the stormy realist-abstraction debates, and allied political differences, among artists in Italy after the Second World War. Stylistically, the work...
"Although resident in America, Morley was the first winner of the Turner Prize in 1984. Funded by the 'Patrons of New Art' affiliated to London's Tate Gallery, this prize was subsequently awarded annually for 'outstanding contributions' to...
Paintings; Acrylic paintings; Mixed media; Graffiti; Poetry; Inscriptions; Music; Jazz; Portraits; Group portraits; Men; Musicians; Jazz musicians; Composers; Celebrities; People associated with entertainment & sports; Clothing & dress;...
"Although savvy enough to take [Robert] Rauschenberg and [Jasper] Johns as models, as well as to avoid the subways, Basquiat teamed up with a fellow dropout, Al Diaz, and headed for SoHo, where the art world soon knew the pair through their...
"Between 1970 and 1987 Zofia Kulik carried out performances in her native Poland with fellow artist Przenyslaw Kwick. Her more recent photographic works contain a 'time-based' aspect in that, rather than constituting montages made up from...
"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...
"Broodthaer's Musée d'Arte Moderne assumed various forms. The 'Department of Eagles', which contained the exhibits pictured here, had further permutations in other venues. In a Düsseldorf showing of 1970 the museum's 'nineteenth-century'...
"Duchamp's most outrageous Ready-Made was a urinal that he submitted as a sculpture to a New York exhibition mounted by the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. He turned it upside down, signed it 'R. Mutt' and called it a Fountain. The...
"Durham's symbolic recoding of the imagery of modern America in the terms of its native Indians is interesting in relation to Joseph Beuys's use of Indian iconography for purposes of symbolic retribution. As a modernist, Beuys assumed his work...
"During the 1960s Rauschenberg, like many other artists, increasingly used silkscreen transfers to create a kaleidoscope of images deriving from the daily press and motion pictures even more than from the example of the Dadaists (plate...
Sculpture; Mixed media; Women; Women's rights; Feminism; Feminists; Sexism; Stereotyping; Discrimination; Sex; Genitals; Body parts; Human body; Biology; History; Arts & crafts; Dinner parties; Celebrations; Parties; Guests; Dining tables;...
"Each of the ceramic plates adorning the table in this installation was individualized. In this photograph, the Georgia O'Keeffe plate on the right owed something of its original design to her Black Iris paintings of the mid-1920s. The plate...
"Having originally been taught by a pupil of Rodin and by the Paris-based sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, Richier produced work in a classical vein before the Second World War. After the war her work changed markedly. Her figures appeared...
Paintings; Acrylic paintings; Abstract paintings; Abstract works
"In Louis's enormous 'veils' of the 1950s the physical operations of pouring paint or tilting a canvas so that the paint floods down it are powerfully implied." (Caption, p.28); "[Clement] Greenberg's conception of 'Modernism' as...
"Johns used letters or numbers as a means of reintroducing the signifiers of a collective sign system into a Modernist 'field' previously answerable to subjective judgments of taste. The textures in his drawings in particular are subtly...
Paintings; Abstract works; Abstract paintings; Portrait paintings; Portraits; Heads (Anatomy); Faces; Men; Politicians; Government officials; People associated with politics & government; Activists; Revolutionaries; Beards
"Look closely at the image […]. It appears to be an icon of postwar experimental art - an early 1950s abstraction by the American painter Jackson Pollock. However, read the caption and it is revealed to be a pastiche by Art & Language, a...
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...
"One of the ironies of the anti-market strategies of certain Land Artists was that to view their works other than via photographs spectators had to travel large distances. This could be costly, especially when specialized transport was...
Paintings; Body parts; Genitals; Urination; Obscenity; Censorship; Corruption; Political issues; Politics & government
"The exposed genitalia in Baselitz's uncompromising paintings and graphics of this period are essentially attempts to bring into the open, to make public, the effects of official 'cover-ups' and repressed emotions in post-Holocaust West...
Sculpture; Mixed media; Symbols; Childhood & youth; Social aspects; Social values; Capitalism; Families; Gifts; Stuffed animals (Toys); Toys; Animals; Dolls
"The title of this work powerfully conveys the emotional blackmail tied up with certain instances of toy-making or giving. Alongside imagery relating to childhood, Kelley often explores adolescent subcultures, fads, and obsessions. His work...
