A century ago, French writer and poet André Breton penned his “Manifesto of Surrealism,” which launched an art movement known for creating bizarre hybrids of words and images. These juxtapositions, often generated…
Tag: Art
What the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil reveals about nudity and shame
Fifty years ago, scientists discovered a nearly complete fossilized skull and hundreds of pieces of bone of a 3.2-million-year-old female specimen of the genus Australopithecus afarensis, often described as “the mother of…
The folly of making art with text-to-image generative AI
Making art using artificial intelligence isn’t new. It’s as old as AI itself. What’s new is that a wave of tools now let most people generate images by entering a text prompt….
In the face of death, destruction and displacement, beauty plays a vital role in Gaza
A small group of children in Gaza sit on a lavender and white blanket around a small tray of beverages, singing “Happy Birthday” to a young girl. Like kids her age around…
Music painted on the wall of a Venetian orphanage will be heard again nearly 250 years later
Imagine Lady Gaga or Elton John teaching at an orphanage or homeless shelter, offering daily music lessons. That’s what took place at Venice’s four Ospedali Grandi, which were charitable institutions that took…
How ‘La Catrina’ became the iconic symbol of Day of the Dead
On April 13, 1944, thousands of people clashed with police on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago. The melee was unrelated to U.S. participation in World War II, labor unrest…
In a Roman villa at the center of a nasty inheritance dispute, a Caravaggio masterpiece is hidden from the public
I teach Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, so when I was visiting Rome in January 2023, how could I not try to see a notorious villa that was up for sale and…
Heritage algorithms combine the rigors of science with the infinite possibilities of art and design
The model of democracy in the 1920s is sometimes called “the melting pot” – the dissolution of different cultures into an American soup. An update for the 2020s might be “open source,”…
Anxiety can often be a drag on creativity, upending the trope of the tortured artist
In the U.S., anxiety disorders affect about one-third of the population. So it’s no surprise that a good number of artists and writers also suffer from anxiety and depression. But whereas some…
This course explores the long, interrelated history of two ways of seeing the world
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. Title of course: Art & Science from Aristotle to Instagram What prompted the idea for the course?…