art history blog:
Fragonard’s Swing: It’s all those Little Things!
You have to wonder if the artist Gabriel-François Doyen (1726–1806), who had just made his name at the 1767 Salon, had any idea he...
Vigée LeBrun’s Countess Kinsky: A Portrait of Endurance
Idealized visions of young women seated in or strolling through the gardens were a standard motif of aristocratic portraiture. It is easy to see...
How to Paint a Revolution (Without Losing Your Head)
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard painted the king's aunts. Then she painted Robespierre. Somehow, she also kept her head. Literally.
Podcast coming soon...new
on view:
Aaron Morse, “Lights out in the Territories,” at Philip Martin Gallery
In a 2002 interview, the inimitable Kirk Varnedoe — looking back at his tenure as Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA —...
Vigée LeBrun’s Countess Kinsky: A Portrait of Endurance
Idealized visions of young women seated in or strolling through the gardens were a standard motif of aristocratic portraiture. It is easy to see...
Goncharova’s Archangel: Between Icon and Revolution
A jewel of the LACMA's collection, Goncharova's modernist vision of the Byzantine tradition
from the archive: reviews
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PRIMARY sources
1913: Rayonist and Futurists...
In 1913, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov published their Rayonist and Futurist Manifesto, a defiant declaration of artistic independence ..
1846: John Ruskin on...
"It is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the fate. There is no sublimity in the agony of terror. "
1874: Louis Leroy’s “The...
Louis Leroy's 1874 review of the first Impressionist exhibition is the most famous — and most consequential — slam in art criticism history...
1909: Futurist Manifesto
The three-column, front-page publication of Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism in Le Figaro on February 20, 1909 was a masterful media coup ...
about the author
Molly Enholm Velazco is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist, writer, and educator whose work explores themes of nature, vibrant color, and a fascination with the intersection of beauty and the sublime. She teaches Modern, Contemporary, and Global art history and theory at CSU Northridge, Moorpark College, and Laguna College of Art + Design, where she inspires students to connect art of the past with the conversations that continue to shape our present.