Vermeer's intensely quiet and enigmatic paintings invite the viewer into a private world, often prompting more questions than answers. Who is being portrayed? Are his subjects real or imagined? And...
Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) was a clerk in the Paris customs service who dreamed of becoming a famous artist. At the age 49, he decided to give it a try. At first, Rousseau’s bright, bol...
Religion, Renaissance, and Reformation—these three ideologies shaped the world of 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), a pivotal figure of the Northern Rena...
When traditional craft met blossoming ModernismPoets and intellectuals brushed shoulders in bustling coffeehouses, young avant-gardists heralded a new era in social and sexual liberalism, wal...
William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the greatest creative figures of the 19th century. As a visionary designer, as well as a manufacturer, writer, artist, and socialist activist, he pioneer...
Incredible illustrations of tropical palm treesOn December 15, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the ...
The End Was NighAwesome apocalyptic visions of the 16th centuryThe Book of Miracles first surfaced only a few years ago and is one of the most spectacular discoveries in the field...
Architectural remnants of the USSRElected the architectural book of the year by the International Artbook and Film Festival in Perpignan, France, Frédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic...
The world’s greatest magicians from the Middle Ages to the 1950sMagic has enchanted humankind for millennia, evoking terror, laughter, shock, and amazement. Once persecuted as heretics ...
Although it only lasted three turbulent years, the afterburn of the Blaue Reiter (1911–1914) movement exerted a tremendous influence on the development of modern European art. Named after a K...
The Case Study House program (1945–1966) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Lo...
Abstract pioneerHarmonies in red, yellow, and blueA key figure in the international avant-garde, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was at once an extraordinary painter and leading a...
One of the leading lights of the Impressionist movement, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) remains a towering figure in art history with enduring public appeal. Sun-kissed, charming, and sens...
Secret SocietyThe Victorian rebelsFounded in 1848 as a secret society, the Pre-Raphaelites rejected classical ideals and the dominant artistic genre painting of their era for what...
Fast and FuriousThe action men of modernismWith motion and machines as its most treasured tropes, Futurism was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Gi...
A photo tribute to our four-pawed friendsIn celebration of the world’s favorite animal, we bring you over 400 photographs of or about dogs. With pictures from the 19th century to today,...
When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in ...
With a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miró (1893–1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ...
The power of plants throughout historyCelebrating the magick of the natural realm, Volume IV of The Library of Esoterica, delves into the symbolism, ceremony, and our ritual relationships wit...
Sebastião Salgado on the traces of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforestSebastião Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of thi...