“Botero is best known for painting exaggeratedly voluptuous figures and portraits that can be read as either comical or critical. Working in Paris since the late 1950s but regularly visiting his hometown of Medellín, Colombia, Botero is one of the most widely known artists from Latin America. His portrait La familia presidencial (The Presidential Family) combines all the trademarks of his best works and serves as a critique of civil society and state authority. It depicts the president of Colombia—the male figure in the back of the group to the left—his family, and those with whom he shares state power. The president, his wife, his daughter, and a grandmother can be seen on the left, while a general and a bishop appear on the right. Botero's depiction might be understood as a veiled critique but leaves his ultimate motives ambiguous.”⁣

 Fernando Botero⁣ The Presidential Family⁣ 1967⁣ “Botero is

The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (from the series One Hundred Ghost Stories)⁣

“Katsushika Hokusai’s wood block print of a gigantic wave frothing before Mount Fuji, which he made in his seventies, is so beloved and influential that the scholar Christine Guth has devoted a whole book to it. Less attention has been paid to the beguiling illustrations he crafted, also while in his seventies, for the series Hyaku Monogatari [One Hundred Ghost Stories] (ca. 1830). We aren’t sure why the project never reached its probable goal of a century of pictures but the five that were completed are a dark delight. In the prints Hokusai directs his attention away from the Japanese landscapes he was most famous for depicting, inwards towards a realm of vengeful ghosts and demonic cannibals.

The series is fruit of the tradition Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai [A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales], where Japanese friends would meet to share fantastically frightening tales from folklore and their own experience. Having lit a hundred candles, they would give their blood-curdling accounts, one by one, blowing out a candle after each, plunging themselves deeper into darkness. Upon the last candle going out, a spirit was said to appear.

Based on a real event, the cuckold and murder victim Kohada Koheiji returns from the dead to torment his cheating wife and lover. Here he grins over the top of the mosquito netting that surrounds the bed of his killers.”⁣

 Katsushika Hokusai⁣ The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (from the

“Joseph Pickett never ventured far from New Hope, Pennsylvania, a town on the banks of the Delaware River. Working for the local carnival, he traveled through his native Bucks County, yet for most of his life he was a fixture in New Hope, working there as a craftsman and storekeeper. When he came to painting in his later years, his ambition was to depict the history and landscape of the region he knew so well. Curator Holger Cahill encountered Pickett’s work in New Hope, and it was included in such MoMA exhibitions as American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900 (1932) and Masters of Popular Painting (1938). Pickett’s aesthetic was a natural fit for the Whitney’s founding collection in 1931, since the museum’s first director, Juliana Force, also had roots in Bucks County and a special interest in folk art.⁣

Without formal training, Pickett improvised his materials and technique. He achieved textural effects approximating the objects he depicted by mixing house paint with sand, shell, and other gritty substances. Working slowly, he would spend years on each canvas (only four finished compositions are extant) and build up his surfaces in thick applications of paint. Despite the sculptural outer layer, which sometimes measured nearly a half-inch thick, the world represented by Pickett appears flat for its lack of shading. In works like MoMA’s Manchester Valley (1914–1918?), Pickett recognized the importance of the area as a transportation hub between Philadelphia and New York City, using a steam locomotive to divide two wooded landscapes with different spatial systems.⁣”

 Joseph Pickett⁣ Manchester Valley⁣ 1914-18?⁣ “Joseph

“Van Gogh is remarkable for how meticulously his life was recorded. “We know an amazing amount about him,” Bomford said. “He was writing letters almost every day, so we know what he was thinking almost every day of his life. We can trace his thought process, his passions, his agonies, his difficulties from day to day, which is astonishing. We can do that for hardly any other artist who has ever existed.”⁣

Van Gogh’s writing dovetailed with his work, as the catalogue for the exhibition extensively notes. Of the color yellow, a recurring and almost spiritual presence in his work, the artist wrote: “Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow—pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!””⁣

 Vincent Van Gogh Wheatfield with a Reaper⁣⁣ 1889⁣ “Van Gogh

The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar (Men Greeting Entry into Lagos)⁣

“Growing up in Los Angeles, California to humble roots, artist Kehinde Wiley witnessed the devastating devaluing of the African-American male in culture and society. Personally having experienced abandonment at a young age by his Nigerian father, Wiley began to notice a crisis of identity and a lack of heroes amongst those in the African-American male community. At the age of twenty, the artist traveled to Africa to meet his father and discover his own heritage, a move that helped to shape his future style.⁣

Influenced by a talent that developed early in life, Wiley went on to study art at Yale University and the San Francisco Art Institute. He now lives in New York. By routinely referencing art history through his work and utilizing a (almost neoclassical) photorealist style of portraiture, Wiley evokes a sense of historical heroism and regality in his subjects who are typically black men. Through his portrayal of urban African-American men in historically powerful poses, Wiley brings to the foreground issues of identity, individual worth, culture, class, and racism.⁣

A beautiful example of the artist’s innovative style can be found in Three Wise Men Greeting Entry into Lagos (Oil on Canvas, 2008). Referencing the Lagos Three Elders statue, Wiley heroically portrays three young men (in traditional African cloth) in a pose of greeting.  The three young men look down on viewers with self-assuredness and confidence. Wiley’s skills, as well as his content are clear.”⁣

 Kehinde Wiley ⁣ The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar (Men

“In the summer of 1966, while still working on his Brushstrokes, Lichtenstein designed a poster for New York City's Lincoln Center, taking as his subject the architecture and design of the 1920s–30s. This initiated a series that parodied the style of Art Deco, which Lichtenstein ironically described as "Cubism for the Home." Like the Landscapes paintings that preceded them, the artist's Modern works are among the relatively rare pieces in his oeuvre without an anchoring reference to a specific artist or object. They are inventions based on one of his favored notions: impure style. Here he humorously stylized an already-stylized style.⁣

While attempting to summon the style of the period, Lichtenstein's foremost aims were, as always, form and composition. The Modern series strikes an extraordinary balance between verticals and diagonals, curves and straight edges, dynamic and static forms. In Modern Painting with Bolt (1967), the lightning strike both divides and unifies, becoming an Art Deco equivalent of a comic-book explosion. Works like Modern Painting Triptych (1967) explore a modular format of panels in various arrangements with the same image repeated sequentially on all panels, begging the semantic issue of whether the works represent one painting or multiple paintings.”⁣

 Roy Lichtenstein⁣ Modern Painting with Bolt⁣ 1967⁣ “In the

Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London⁣

“Monet’s London paintings are not so much views of the city through a veil of atmosphere as views of the veil itself, an “envelope” that is infinitely sensitive to changes of weather and light. To convey this, Monet painted the same subject repeatedly under different light and weather conditions. This work was one of 37 exhibited from Monet’s Views of the Thames series in 1904 at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris, a critical success for Monet. The series had three subjects: Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. It defies the typical impressionist practice of painting outside directly from the subject. His last London trip to paint the Thames was in 1901. Monet completed numerous canvases over the course of three years in his Giverny studio in France, rather than in London.”⁣

 Claude Monet⁣ Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London⁣

“The Creation of Adam (Italian: Creazione di Adamo) is a fresco painting by Italian artist Michelangelo, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, painted c. 1508–1512. It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis.⁣

The image of the near-touching hands of God and Adam has become iconic of humanity. The painting has been reproduced in countless imitations and parodies. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam is one of the most replicated religious paintings of all time.⁣

Many hypotheses have been formulated regarding the identity and meaning of the twelve figures around God. According to an interpretation that was first proposed by the English art critic Walter Pater (1839–1894) and is now widely accepted, the person protected by God's left arm represents Eve, due to the figure's feminine appearance and gaze towards Adam, and the eleven other figures symbolically represent the souls of Adam and Eve's unborn progeny, the entire human race. This interpretation has been challenged, mainly on the grounds that the Catholic Church regards the teaching of the pre-existence of souls as heretical. Consequently, the figure behind God has also been suggested to be the Virgin Mary, Sophia (the personification of wisdom mentioned in the Book of Wisdom), the personified human soul, or "an angel of masculine build".”⁣

 Michelangelo⁣ The Creation of Adam⁣ c.1512⁣ “The Creation

“Sharecropper reveals Elizabeth Catlett’s lifelong concern for the oppressed and the dignity of women. The print focuses on a female farm worker whose face, made rough and leathery by years of toil, is nonetheless determined and commanding.⁣

After the Civil War, many former slaves became sharecroppers, or farmers who worked on rented land and received an agreed share of the crop as payment. This economic system trapped many of these African Americans, as well as white workers, in a cycle of poverty. Set in the 1950s, Catlett’s Sharecropper refers to the injustices that this unfair system exerted on the poor. ⁣

Emphasizing the triumph of the worker over her harsh conditions, Catlett represented this poor, anonymous figure with the strength, dignity, and heroism generally reserved for individuals of power.”⁣

 Elizabeth Catlett ⁣ Sharecropper ⁣ 1952⁣ “Sharecropper

“Funerary reliefs in the shape of a circular tondo, depicting a man and a woman or, as in this case, the whole family, are known principally from Thrace, northern Greece, and the Danube provinces. Some are inscribed, but this example leaves the man, his wife, and his two sons unnamed.”⁣

 Marble funerary relief⁣ 2nd–3rd century A.D.⁣ Roman⁣

“Margaret Winifred Tarrant (19 August 1888 – 29 July 1959) was an English illustrator, and children's author, specializing in depictions of fairy-like children and religious subjects. She began her career at the age of 20, and painted and published into the early 1950s. She was known for her children's books, postcards, calendars, and print reproductions.⁣

In the 1920s, Tarrant helped to popularize fairies in a long-running series of titles on the theme such as The Forest Fairies, The Pond Fairies, and The Twilight Fairies. She was long associated with the Medici Society and many of her postcards, calendars, and children's books were published by the organization. Following the death of both her parents in 1934, the Society sent her on a trip to Palestine to research material. During World War II, she donated posters to the war effort, and rode an old bike to conserve petrol.”⁣

 Margaret Tarrant⁣ Twilight Procession ⁣ 1920s⁣ “Margaret

“This panel is from an important five-part portable altarpiece that was possibly commissioned by the governing body of the city of Siena. Together with Giotto, Simone was the most famous artist of his day. His refined technique and descriptive powers, evident in the expression of Saint Andrew and the manner in which he holds his book, were unequalled in Europe and earned the praise and friendship of the poet Petrarch (1304–1374). The rectangular frame is original.”⁣

 Simone Martini⁣ Saint Andrew⁣ 1326⁣ “This panel is from an

Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) ⁣

“The identity of this arrogant young man is unknown, but he must have belonged to Bronzino’s close circle of literary friends in Florence and probably holds a book of poetry. The artist was himself a poet, delighting as much in the beauty of language as he did in the witty and fanciful details of his paintings. Here, viewers would have appreciated the carved grotesque heads on the table and chair, and the almost hidden, masklike face suggested in the folds of the youth’s breeches as comments on masks and disguises. They contrast with the youth’s own handsome looks.”⁣

 Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) ⁣ Portrait of a

“Born in New York in 1916, Eyvind Earle began his prolific career at the age of ten when his father, Ferdinand Earle, gave him a challenging choice: read 50 pages of a book or paint a picture every day. Earle choose both. From the time of his first one-man showing in France when he was 14, Earle’s fame had grown steadily. At the age of 21, Earle bicycled across country from Hollywood to New York, paying his way by painting 42 watercolors. In 1937, he opened at the Charles Morgan Galleries, his first of many one-man shows in New York. Two years later at his third consecutive showing at the gallery, the response to his work was so positive that the exhibition sold out and the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his paintings for their permanent collection. His earliest work was strictly realistic, but after having studied the work of a variety of masters such as Van Gogh, Cézanne, Rockwell, Kent and Georgia O’Keefe, Earle by the age of 21, came into his own unique style. His oeuvre is characterized by a simplicity, directness and surety of handling.⁣

In 1951 Earle joined Walt Disney studios as an assistant background painter. Earle intrigued Disney in 1953 when he created the look of “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” an animated short that won an Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival Award. Disney kept the artist busy for the rest of decade, painting the settings for such stories as “Peter Pan”, “For Whom the Bulls Toil”, “Working for Peanuts”, “Pigs is Pigs”, “Paul Bunyan” and “Lady and the Tramp”. Earle was responsible for the styling, background and colors for the highly acclaimed movie “Sleeping Beauty” and gave the movie its magical, medieval look. He also painted the dioramas for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.”⁣

 Eyvind Earle⁣ Green Hillside⁣ 1970⁣ “Born in New York in

“Theo wrote to his brother Vincent on January 31, 1890 to announce the birth of his son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. As a means of celebration, Vincent began work on a painting for Theo and his wife. He was very close to his brother and he sought to symbolize new life in the flowers of the almond tree for the birth of baby Vincent.⁣

Vincent wrote to his mother of the birth of Theo and Jo's baby,⁣

"How glad I was when the news came... I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."⁣

The composition is unlike any other of van Gogh's paintings. The branches of the almond tree seem to float against the blue sky and fill the picture plane. The close-up of the branches brings to mind Delacroix's proposition that "even a part of a thing is kind of a complete entity in itself." Dark lines outline the branches. This is a feature that Van Gogh had admired in Japanese floral studies that, for example, may depict a portion of a stalk of bamboo in an empty space. The bright color is reflective of the paintings made in Arles and the transformational work van Gogh had on the still life genre.”⁣

 Vincent Van Gogh⁣ Almond Blossom⁣ 1890⁣ “Theo wrote to his

“The success of the Montgomery bus boycott catapulted King into the national spotlight. In February 1957, Time featured his portrait on its cover and published an in-depth profile describing the twenty-eight-year-old pastor as "one of the nation’s remarkable leaders." The article declared that "King reached beyond lawbooks and writs, beyond violence and threats, to win his people—and challenge all people––with a spiritual force that aspired even to ending prejudice in man’s mind." When asked about the inspiration for his actions, King replied, "The spirit of passive resistance came to me from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. The techniques of execution came from Gandhi." Just a month before the Time article appeared, sixty black ministers from across the South had gathered at King’s invitation in Atlanta to cofound what became known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)—an organization dedicated to utilizing nonviolent direct action to challenge and defeat racism.”⁣⁣

 Boris Chaliapin⁣⁣ Martin Luther King Jr.⁣⁣ 1957⁣⁣

⁣”Munch's The Scream is an icon of modern art, the Mona Lisa for our time. As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Munch defined how we see our own age - wracked with anxiety and uncertainty.⁣

Essentially The Scream is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based on Munch's actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his two companions, seen in the background, had left him. Fitting the fact that the sound must have been heard at a time when his mind was in an abnormal state, Munch renders it in a style which if pushed to extremes can destroy human integrity. As previously noted, the flowing curves of art nouveau represent a subjective linear fusion imposed upon nature, whereby the multiplicity of particulars is unified into a totality of organic suggestion with feminine overtones. But man is part of nature, and absorption into such a totality liquidates the individual. Beginning at this time Munch included art nouveau elements in many pictures but usually only in a limited or modified way. Here, however, in depicting his own morbid experience, he has let go, and allowed the foreground figure to become distorted by the subjectivized flow of nature; the scream could be interpreted as expressing the agony of the obliteration of human personality by this unifying force. Significantly, although it was Munch himself who underwent the experience depicted, the protagonist bears no resemblance to him or anyone else. The creature in the foreground has been depersonalized and crushed into sexlessness or, if anything, stamped with a trace of the femininity of the world that has come close to assimilating it.”⁣⁣

 Edvard Munch⁣⁣ The Scream⁣⁣ 1893⁣⁣ ⁣”Munch's The Scream is

⁣Portrait of Madame Matisse (Green Stripe)⁣

“The Green Stripe (La Raie Verte), also known as Portrait of Madame Matisse. The Green Line, is a portrait by Henri Matisse of his wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre. It is an oil painting on canvas, completed in 1913. It is named for the green band that divides the face in half, by which Matisse sought to produce a sense of light, shadow, and volume without using traditional shading. Matisse's colorism was shocking at the time. When the painting was exhibited in Paris in 1906 such works were being derisively labeled as the creations of Les Fauves (the wild beasts), along with similar works of André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.⁣⁣

Both admirers and critics of Matisse have characterized The Green Stripe as a disturbing image: a friend of the painting's owners Michael and Sarah Stein called it "a demented caricature of a portrait", and in 1910 the critic Gelett Burgess wrote that The Green Stripe was Matisse's "punishment" of Amélie that compelled the viewer "to see in her a strange and terrible aspect." The art historian John Klein has suggested that difficulties in the Matisses' marriage may have contributed to the portrait's impersonal and mask-like character.⁣⁣

The painting is in Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark.”⁣⁣

 Henri Matisse⁣⁣ ⁣Portrait of Madame Matisse (Green Stripe)⁣

“By the early 1960s, Rothko was widely regarded as one of America’s leading painters. Speaking of the style he had honed over the past two decades, he remarked: “This kind of design may look simple, but it usually takes me many hours to get the proportions and colors just right. Everything has to lock together.” This untitled painting on paper—with its incendiary orange ground supporting a lighter, yellow-orange rectangle and a fiery red rectangle—attests to his sophisticated understanding of color and composition. The bright, warm palette stands as evidence that he continued to swing back-and-forth from cool to warm tones. Many have misinterpreted Rothko’s dark paintings as stemming from his worsening depression, and his brilliantly colored paintings as joyous expressions. In fact, some of the last compositions the artist painted featured bright, warm colors.”⁣

 Mark Rothko⁣ Untitled⁣ 1968⁣ “By the early 1960s, Rothko

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X⁣

“The work shows a distorted version of the Portrait of Innocent X painted by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez in 1650. The work is one of the first in a series of around 50 variants of the Velázquez painting which Bacon executed throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. The paintings are widely regarded as highly successful modern re-interpretations of a classic of the western canon of visual art.⁣

Of the old masters, Bacon favored Titian, Rembrandt, Velázquez and Francisco Goya's late works. He kept an extensive inventory of images for source material, but preferred not to confront the major works in person; he viewed Portrait of Innocent X only once. Having deliberately avoided it for years, he only saw it in person much later in his life.⁣

The canvas is one of Bacon's masterpieces, completed when he was at the height of his creative powers. It has been the subject of detailed analysis by several major scholars. David Sylvester described it as, along with Head VI, "the finest pope Bacon produced".⁣

Bacon was unquestionably one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century, and his figurative style of painting is stark and bleak. He was also known for casually destroying pieces he wasn't happy with, but now his remaining masterpieces sell for millions.⁣

Throughout his artistic life, he kept returning to the portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez to make variations and interpretations of his own, twisting Valzquez's original portrait of a pensive-looking pope into something much more horrific, with his pope shrieking amidst harsh vertical brushed lines.”⁣

 Francis Bacon⁣ Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope

“Wooden Room is part of a series of monumental paintings Kiefer made while studying under the artist Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. Rendered in oil paint and charcoal on burlap, the deeply recessed space—Kiefer's attic studio in a converted schoolhouse—seems as if it could be entered by the viewer, despite its slightly upturned floor. Devoid of objects, the room itself is the subject of the painting, animated by Kiefer's lifelike rendering of wood grain. The artist, who was born at the fall of the Third Reich, examines Germany's troubled and often suppressed recent history in his works.”⁣

 Anselm Kiefer⁣ Wooden Room⁣ 1972⁣ “Wooden Room is part of a

“From afar this ambiguous painting appears to depict a bizarre, cartoon-like head. Closer up, an even more grotesque form emerges, from which arms and hands sprout and an embedded eyeball stares out. The creature’s flesh seems to be made from lashings of thick, viscous oil paint, but the surface of Brown’s (b.1966) painting is entirely flat; each apparent agglomeration of paint and gestural brushstroke has been laboriously created with small brushes and layer upon layer of thinned paint. Brown plunders imagery from art history and popular culture to make his own twisted versions of other artist’s paintings. Here the artist continues to borrow from the art of the past but without any obvious references pieces together numerous fragments from unidentified artworks to form a monstrous, mutant head of his own imagining. Recognizing that most art is primarily encountered through reproduction, Brown’s preferred source materials are art books, posters and postcards, which are scanned into his computer and then digitally collaged together. For this painting limbs, body parts, poses and gestures from across art history were distorted in various ways and combined to form a complex image that hovers between abstraction and figuration.”⁣

 Glenn Brown The Hinterland⁣⁣ 2006⁣ “From afar this

c. 1900 “Redon described his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

“My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.””

 Odilon Redon The Black Sun c. 1900 “Redon described his

“In this painting Klimt shows us an extremly fragmentary view of the Schlosspark of Kammer on Lake Attersee. This is the most abstract painting Klimt ever accomplished. Only the tree trunks in the lower part of the painting give us the hint that the green mosaic above are the tree crowns.”⁣

“Pointillism clearly influenced this painting, even though, unlike Seurat, Klimt never expressed an interest in utilizing optics in his work. Nine-tenths of The Park is a solid mass of foliage, thus if not for the tree trunks and strips of grass at the bottom, this composition would be wholly abstract. The painting's naturalistic elements are offset by Klimt's decorative mosaic of blue, green and yellow dots, which are rendered representational only with the aid of the work's lower section. This is a visually demanding work, and possibly one of Klimt's finest plein air paintings (although many of his landscapes were finished in the studio, all were begun in the open air). He painted these throughout his career, but to this day they are celebrated far less than his portraits.”⁣

 Gustav Klimt⁣ The Park⁣ 1910 or earlier⁣ “In this painting

“The Fallen Angel is part of the Musée Fabre collection. It is a classic portrayal of a man by an academic artist Alexandre Cabanel. With the crafted way he depicts the musculature of the figure, the angel has both arms raised and his fingers of his two hands interlocked hiding most of his face.  Cabanel’s inspiration for this work was John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost and the fallen angels, Moloch, Belial, Mulciber, Mammon and Beelzebub. In the work we see the “fallen” angel – fallen from grace and banished by God. ⁣

Despite this shielding of his facial expression, it does not hide from us his feelings as we can judge his mood by what we see in his eyes. There is a look of vengeance and anger in his eyes.  He knows someone will pay for his ejection from the side of God. He retains his pride but thinks about retribution. The subject shocked the exhibition jurists as no students had ever submitted from Rome a painting which featured the Devil. This was a history painting submission and certain rules had to be followed and the jurists and academics who examined the work criticized it for bordering on a style of Romanticism.”⁣

 Alexandre Cabanel⁣ The Fallen Angel⁣ 1847⁣ “The Fallen

“Polyphemus, the mythical one-eyed monster from Homer's Odyssey, peers out from behind a rocky hilltop while the captive nymph Galatea sleeps in her grotto, surrounded by flowers. ⁣

Redon often depicted scenes from classical mythology in his later pastels and paintings, and he must have been familiar with Ovid's version of the Polyphemus story. In his painting, as in the poem, the Cyclops falls in love with the sea nymph. However, he would also have been aware of Gustave Moreau's acclaimed works that depicted the story tragically in the 1880s. ⁣

Redon seems to contrast the elements to which the two figures belong, with the Cyclops rising out of the hard, rocky earth, and the nymph cradled within the sea grotto and its abundant, feminine flora. With his large, soft expressive eye that evokes the "dreaming head" of Symbolism, Polyphemus is not the man-eating monster of Homer's Odyssey, but rather a gentle, even whimsical, creature. Unlike Moreau, Redon does not treat the subject tragically or depict thwarted desire. Galatea's body curled to the side, her face sleeping partially hidden by her overreaching arm, suggests privacy, a turning to the inner world of dreams. And, rather than contemplating the nude nymph as she sleeps, Polyphemus tilts his head and looks toward the viewer with an almost inquisitive gaze. The result is to make the viewer, whose gaze is initially drawn to the nymph's form, aware of being watched by a giant who gently guards this inner vision. ⁣

Stylistically, the painting can be seen as a synthesis of Redon's work up to this point in his career, as it combines his early interest in oil painting with the color palette of his pastel period, along with an image of a "monster" that could have been taken from one of his noirs.”⁣

 Odilon Redon⁣ The Cyclops ⁣ 1914⁣ “Polyphemus, the mythical

“According to Ernst, the title of this painting is a quotation from Réne Descartes, a seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist known for his rationalistic approach to metaphysics. The world pictured here, however, seems rife with irrational, inexplicable, and cataclysmic incident. Strange beings and beasties produced by Ernst’s manipulation of paint, at times with a screenprinting squeegee, populate an eerie, pulsating landscape filled with self-perpetuating energy. Ernst developed the technique of using squeegees to create quasiautomatic compositions in the early 1950s, when he was in exile in the United States.”⁣

 Max Ernst⁣ The World Is a Story⁣ (Mundus est Fabula)⁣ Paris

“Kubin's psychological and mythic obsessions were a perfect fit for the Munich art scene of the early 1900s, and by 1902 he was exhibiting in major galleries. In this time he experienced one of those productive bursts that characterize some mentally unstable artists, channeling his neuroses into weirdly wonderful and strangely terrible drawings. These are the works of his I like best, all in black and white or sepia, all horrifying, mad, or both.”⁣

 Alfred Kubin⁣ Black Mass⁣ 1905⁣ “Kubin's psychological and

⁣Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue

“Mondrian began working around the very beginning of the 20th century, and his work appears to have been influenced by the Impressionism, and the bold use of colour employed by fauvist painters like Henri Matisse and Gauguin. Prior to the First World War, Mondrian's work was still fairly representational, but it already showed hints of the abstraction for which he would become best known. But it was the outbreak of war which seemed to change Mondrian's work forever. And Composition C (No. III) is a good example of how he responded to the political and social consequences of the war through his work.⁣

Mondrian's arrival in London in 1938 confirmed the capital as a centre for the avant-garde. In 1936 he had shown this and other works in Abstract & Concrete, London's first international exhibition of abstract art.⁣

Mondrian's non-figurative paintings - planes of primary colour with black and white - convey what he described as a 'dynamic equilibrium', which he hoped would work on the individual spirit and have wider social implications.”⁣

 Piet Mondrian⁣ ⁣Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and

“Although Rousseau completed more than twenty-five jungle paintings in his career, he never traveled outside France. He instead drew on images of the exotic as it was presented to the urban dweller through popular literature, colonial expositions, and the Paris Zoo. The lush jungle, wild animals, and mysterious horn player featured in this work were inspired by Rousseau's visits to the city's natural history museum and Jardin des plantes (a combined zoo and botanical garden). Of his visits the artist said, "When I am in these hothouses and see the strange plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am entering a dream."”⁣

 Henri Rousseau⁣ The Dream⁣ 1910⁣ “Although Rousseau

A detail of a wall painting in the tomb of Horemheb⁣⁣⁣

“A detail of a wall painting in the tomb of Horemheb, The goddess Hathor/Isis faces the pharaoh. The god Harsiese is on the right.⁣

Horemheb now passes into the presence of Hathor, wearing her horns and solar disk on top of the blue and black striped wig. Again the 4-fold worship, and a promise of "an eternity of Joy".⁣

In combination, the scenes in both the Well Chamber and the Antechamber, Horemheb stands in the presence of the gods 21 times (23 if the missing images of the north end of the Well Chamber are counted). Counting only the now visible gods, Horus (Harsiesis) 8 times, Hathor 7, Osiris 5, Isis and Anubis 4, Ma'at 2, Ptah and Nefertem only once. It is also interesting to note the interchangeability of the headdresses of Hathor and Isis. Horus always appears as Harsiesis ("Son of Isis"). In the Well Chamber, Horemheb appears with the titles "Lord of the Two Lands" and Lord of the Diadems", those of the living king; whilst in the Antechamber he is "Osiris-king, Son of Ra".”⁣

Egypt. Ancient Egyptian. 18th dynasty c 1330 1305BC. Valley of the Kings, tomb 57.⁣

 A detail of a wall painting in the tomb of Horemheb⁣⁣⁣

“Early in his career, Cézanne focused on violent, dark subjects, but in the 1870s he turned to landscape and still life, a shift that allowed the radical innovation of his formal experiments to come to the fore. In Milk Can and Apples, he divides the canvas horizontally: the cool blues of the cloth, pitcher, and wallpaper contrast with the yellows, oranges, and reds of the fruit on the table. The foreshortened baguette parallels the sharp diagonal formed by the crumpled linen, and the decorative flowers and fruit on the wallpaper complement the placement of objects on the table. With this careful composition, Cézanne suggests that the painting is both a mirror of nature and something which stands apart; as he put it, "It is understood that the artist places himself in front of nature; he copies it while interpreting it."” ⁣

Fernando Botero⁣ The Presidential Family⁣ 1967⁣ “Botero is

Katsushika Hokusai⁣ The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (from the

Joseph Pickett⁣ Manchester Valley⁣ 1914-18?⁣ “Joseph

Vincent Van Gogh Wheatfield with a Reaper⁣⁣ 1889⁣ “Van Gogh

Kehinde Wiley ⁣ The World Stage: Africa, Lagos-Dakar (Men

Roy Lichtenstein⁣ Modern Painting with Bolt⁣ 1967⁣ “In the

Claude Monet⁣ Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London⁣

Michelangelo⁣ The Creation of Adam⁣ c.1512⁣ “The Creation

Elizabeth Catlett ⁣ Sharecropper ⁣ 1952⁣ “Sharecropper

Marble funerary relief⁣ 2nd–3rd century A.D.⁣ Roman⁣

Margaret Tarrant⁣ Twilight Procession ⁣ 1920s⁣ “Margaret

Simone Martini⁣ Saint Andrew⁣ 1326⁣ “This panel is from an

Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) ⁣ Portrait of a

Eyvind Earle⁣ Green Hillside⁣ 1970⁣ “Born in New York in

Vincent Van Gogh⁣ Almond Blossom⁣ 1890⁣ “Theo wrote to his

Boris Chaliapin⁣⁣ Martin Luther King Jr.⁣⁣ 1957⁣⁣

Edvard Munch⁣⁣ The Scream⁣⁣ 1893⁣⁣ ⁣”Munch's The Scream is

Henri Matisse⁣⁣ ⁣Portrait of Madame Matisse (Green Stripe)⁣

Mark Rothko⁣ Untitled⁣ 1968⁣ “By the early 1960s, Rothko

Francis Bacon⁣ Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope

Anselm Kiefer⁣ Wooden Room⁣ 1972⁣ “Wooden Room is part of a

Glenn Brown The Hinterland⁣⁣ 2006⁣ “From afar this

Odilon Redon The Black Sun c. 1900 “Redon described his

Gustav Klimt⁣ The Park⁣ 1910 or earlier⁣ “In this painting

Alexandre Cabanel⁣ The Fallen Angel⁣ 1847⁣ “The Fallen

Odilon Redon⁣ The Cyclops ⁣ 1914⁣ “Polyphemus, the mythical

Max Ernst⁣ The World Is a Story⁣ (Mundus est Fabula)⁣ Paris

Alfred Kubin⁣ Black Mass⁣ 1905⁣ “Kubin's psychological and

Piet Mondrian⁣ ⁣Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and

Henri Rousseau⁣ The Dream⁣ 1910⁣ “Although Rousseau

A detail of a wall painting in the tomb of Horemheb⁣⁣⁣

Paul Cézanne⁣ Milk Can and Apples⁣ 1879-80 ⁣ “Early in his