The Evolution of Art: Artworks That Advanced Our Understanding of the Medium, Part I

Today, art can be almost anything. But there was a time in the not-so-distant past when abstraction was inconceivable, and it was believed that art could only represent something that already existed in the real world. There was a time when an object couldn’t be considered art unless it showed evidence of the artist’s touch. And until […]

What Was Suprematism? A Brief History of the Russian Idealists Who Created Abstraction as We Know It

At an exhibition entitled “0.10” (“Zero Ten”) in St Petersburg in 1915, Black Square (completed in 1913), the first Suprematist work by Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935), hung in the corner of the room, the traditional setting for an icon in an Orthodox Russian home. The artwork was a square canvas painted black. Malevich claimed in 1927 […]

A Bridge from Moscow to Paris: 130 Works of Modern Art

This fall, “Icons of Modern Art” at the Louis Vuitton Foundation may be the show that takes Paris by storm. No fewer than 130 paintings by Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin and Derain, among many others, from the collection of the renowned Russian cultural figure Sergei Shchukin will hang on the walls of this museum by […]

Shocked By Assemble’s Turner Prize Win? Here Are 9 Other Artist/Architects You Should Know

The awarding of this year’s Turner Prize to the London-based architecture collective Assemble caused a stir in Britain earlier this week—and not the usual tabloid tempest-in-a-teapot. Rather, the complaints came from the cognoscenti; some critics argued that, although the group was doing important work by renovating derelict rowhouses and setting up local enterprises in a depressed area of Liverpool, […]