"Another stylistic shift in Picasso's work that was influenced by Cubism has been called Surrealism. This term literally means 'above real' and denotes a truer reality than that of the visible world. In the Girl before a Mirror of 1932,...
“The Erechtheum seen from the west, as it might have appeared at the beginning of the fourth century BC. A sacrificial procession with a lamb for the sacrifice is approaching the sanctuary of Athena Polias.” (p.77); "[...] in 420 BC the...
Bronze and wool; “[Riboud’s] sculptures are studies in opposites—soft vs. hard, black vs. white. Her use of contrasting materials, bronze and silk cording or bronze and wood, is an extension of this exploration.” (caption, p.80)
"Polke's work frequently juxtaposes images wrenched from different periods of history. At the bottom left he makes use of a collage by the early twentieth-century Surrealist Max Ernst, whilst the central image derives from a satirical etching...
"In the year before Pollock's premature death, Krasner made powerful collages, possibly drawing on the huge semi-abstract 'paper-cuts' that the veteran French Modernist Henri Matisse was producing around this time. In one of these collages she...
"In her consistent use of grids Agnes Martin participated in a tradition in twentieth-century art stretching from the Cubists and Mondrian to her Minimalist contemporaries. The grid was a non-hierarchical and non-referential structure. It...
Series of five woolen hoods; "The motifs on Trockel's knitted balaclavas emblematized various issues. The 'bunnies', for instance, teasingly evoked the kind of imagery displayed in [Sigmar] Polke's Playboy Bunnies, whilst the swastikas nudged...
Five white canvases with pupae, steel shelves with potted flowers, bowls of sugar-water solution, table, radiators, humidifiers, and live butterflies; "There was a lyrical quality to Hirst's use of butterflies' lifecycles, both in the 1991...
"There was a lyrical quality to Hirst's use of butterflies' lifecycles, both in the 1991 installation In and Out of Love, and the related 1994-5 series of paintings, of which I Love You forms part." (Caption, p.231); "By contrast to...
First version; "Dali's atomic variation on the Assumption, with Gala as tutelary goddess of Port Lligat." (Caption); Dali's first 'religious painting', designed to ingratiate himself with Church and State, was The Madonna of Port Lligat,...
"Here the artist aspires to a metamorphosis which hints partly at mythology, partly at science fiction. However, with mock pathos, Barney's floppy ears and dual kiss-curls inadequately match up to the four horns of the ram which the video's...
"In de Kooning's black canvases the elimination of color was conditioned as much by financial constraints as by the need to simplify pictorial problems in the spirit of Analytic Cubism. The deliberately artless use of shiny enamel housepaints...
"In a darkened room, Dine, acting the part of 'car' in a silver-sprayed cap and raincoat, swerved to avoid 'hits' from the raking 'headlights' attached to fellow performers. The lights went on and off amid clatterings and amplified collision...
"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...
Paintings; Acrylic paintings; Political issues; Politics & government; Corruption; Men; Mercenaries (Soldiers); Soldiers; Military personnel; People associated with military activities; Military life; Conversation; Smiling; Standing; Clothing...
"Set against huge fields of red oxide on mural-sized, unstretched canvases, Golub's figures' frozen poses fleetingly echo those on Greek pottery, but they travesty classical faith in the body." (Caption, p.205); "Another rediscovered...
Paintings; Oil paintings; Portrait paintings; Allegorical paintings; Allegories; Symbols; Irony; Allusions; Politics & government; Economic & political systems; Economics; Political elections; Political campaigns; Rooms & spaces;...
"In this painting Haacke's use of allegorical detail has an ironic air of academic exactitude. For instance, the marble sculpture of Pandora, pointedly placed on the Victorian table next to Margaret Thatcher, is based on one produced in 1890...
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...
Photographs; Photographic prints; Instant camera photographs; Dye diffusion transfer prints; Plaques; Mixed media; Social aspects; Social values; Ethnic stereotypes; Stereotyping; Discrimination; Women; Backs (Anatomy); Standing; Clothing &...
"The viewer of Lorna Simpson's works is compelled to shuttle between texts and images in order to construct meanings. The use of text-image conjunctions was a major component of 1980s photographic process. In Britain Victor Burgin's teaching...
Prints; Screen prints; Allusions; Death; Disasters; Tragedies; Accidents; Automobiles; Vehicles; Dead persons; Wounds & injuries; Voyeurism; Social aspects; Social classes
"The use of serial repetition here, as in other early Warhol works, relates interestingly to Minimalist uses of repetition. The reciprocally ironic relation between Warhol and the Minimalists came to a head in 1964. Warhol exhibited a series...
Photograph first published in the New York evening newspaper PM Daily, 7 September, 1944; "The freelance newspaper photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as 'Weegee', was notorious in New York in the 1930s for being the first to arrive at...
