A 1960s innovation prioritizing idea over execution. At its extreme, a conceptual art work may consist only of a brief written description or set of instructions for fabrication. However, in practi…

To criticize a work of art is to make a judgment of its overall merit or demerit and to support that judgment by reference to features it possesses. This activity is of great antiquity; we find Ari…

Painter, sculptor, printmaker, photographer, and theater artist. His declared intention to “act” in the “gap” between art and life, as he put it in 1959, succinctly characterized his contribution t…

When, in 1919, Pierre Auguste Renoir died in the south of France, the critic Elie Faure wrote, “It is as if the sun had gone out of the sky”. No other painter saw life so happily or caught more enc…

In many ways, Claude Monet is the Impressionist. Throughout his long life – his career being longer than any other painter associated with the group – he devoted himself to a few limited principles…

Paul Gauguin was a successful broker in Paris – until the day when he took up painting as a hobby. Then at the age of 35 began a transformation that changed a steady, respected member of society in…

This short Vincent van Gogh biography reveals how he shot himself in 1890, at the age of thirty-seven, and ended one of the shortest, most dramatic and brilliant careers of Impressionist art. In th…