Books
The Smoky Visual History of Censers
From Mesoamerican rituals to royal Asian courts, Holy Smoke explores incense vessels and their rich network of makers, biotic substances, and knowledge.
Art History
Books
This Art Book Is About You!
Much has been written about artists, curators, and art historians. Oskar Bätschmann’s The Art Public: A Short History is dedicated to the spectators on the other side.
Art
Caravaggio Made Darkness Visible
In his violent, carnal visions, sparks of divinity may glow even from within the blackest confines of our fallen reality.
Books
How Big Cats Once Symbolized France’s Colonialist Ambitions
Myth and Menagerie urges us to view lions as sentient beings and not as timeless, passive objects of representation for 19th-century French artists.
Books
The Contrived Rivalry Between Two Pioneering French Women Artists
Whenever French 18th-century artist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard is mentioned, it’s almost always as a counterpoint to her better-known “rival,” Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.
Art
Hettie Anderson Was Anything but a Passive Muse
Her face has gazed over midtown Manhattan traffic for over a century, but it wasn’t until 2023 that Hettie Anderson received official public recognition in words.
Art
Matthias Grünewald’s Gruesome Good Friday
The 16th-century “Isenheim Altarpiece” confronts us with the reality of suffering, violence, and death in a century where violence is both omnipresent and obscured.
Art
How Giuseppe Arcimboldo Made the Familiar Bizarre
The artist’s perplexing paintings should be viewed not as mere visual puzzles, but instantiations of an occult philosophy.
Art
The Modern Resurrection of the Antichrist
Since antiquity, periods of political uncertainty have generated spurious proclamations of the Antichrist, from Nero to Taylor Swift.
Art
Albrecht Dürer, a Humanist Messiah
He believed, and demonstrated, that individuals could ascend to divine realms of knowledge.
Art
A Shameful US History Told Through Ledger Drawings
In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.
Art
15 Art History-Inspired Valentine’s Day Cards
From polycules and break-ups to situationships and forbidden love, Hyperallergic has you covered this February 14.