One of David Hockney’s first works made after he moved to Los Angeles in 1964, Beverly Hills Housewife is a classic example of his early paintings and part of his renowned California Dreaming series of intimate domestic scenes and portraits from this period of his life. In this article Singulart takes a closer look at the painting in the context…
Art History
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One of Frida Kahlo’s most famous works, The Two Fridas encompasses many threads that run throughout her entire oeuvre, from Mexican identity to the female experience and her own personal history. In her signature style, mixing fantasy and symbolism with realist detail, The Two Fridas is an enigmatic composition with enduring significance today. In this article Singulart deciphers the symbols…
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The Renaissance masterpiece The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is arguably the most famous painting in the world. With her iconic smile catching viewers’ attention, she has lived in the castles of French kings, from Francis I and Louis XIV to Napoleon and today she remains a huge part of France’s cultural heritage despite her Italian provenance. In this…
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A Cotton Office in New Orleans is a seminal piece by impressionist artist Edgar Degas. On a trip to New Orleans in 1872, Degas was inspired to produce the piece after visiting the cotton office of his brother. The artwork, which mixes portraiture and genre art, is one of the most important portrayals of 18th century capitalism, and was the…
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Hailed as the first modern painting, Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass was as scandalous as it was revolutionary. Portraying an ordinary scene of everyday life on a scale previously reserved for great historical or mythological compositions, Manet rejected the conventions of classical painting to forge a path toward Modernism. In this article, Singulart dissects the scandal behind Manet’s masterpiece…
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The term Americana refers, quite simply, to cultural artifacts related to the history of the United States. However, as American historian Hampton Sides wrote in Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier, “the United States is such a glorious mess of contradiction, such a crazy quilt of competing themes, such a fecund mishmash of people and ideas, that defining us is…
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Although the term ‘art history’ hardly evokes the image of masked bandits breaking into a museum, art theft has always played an important role in the art world. Art is stolen for many reasons. Sometimes for wealth, sometimes for power, sometimes for love and nostalgia. Whatever the reason, when a piece of art is stolen, the act of theft often…
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In Mexico’s National Sound Library, researchers may have discovered the world’s first voice recording of celebrated artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). If the recording is indeed authentic, it will be a major historical discovery. “We have been waiting for this for a long time,” said Pável Granados, Director of the Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico last Wednesday. And so, of course, has…
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Scream until your voice cracks. Dance until the point of exhaustion. Be present until you can’t stand it anymore. These are the principles of performance artist Marina Abramović: to seek out strange, new experiences and engage them with every sense. Her art is radical, ruthless, and uncomfortable. Again and again she casts herself into extreme situations – scratching herself with…
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On Thursday, June 13th, the art world lost a pillar of expressionist pop art. Since the mid-70s, Joy Pensato was re-imagining cartoon characters in her pop-y, acerbic, energetic, and sometimes sinister paintings. Her work combined influences from the likes of Kooning, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston. While she described her paintings as operating within the field of expressionism, it would…
