Japanese artwork often incorporates bold colors, clean lines, and natural subjects

Georgia O'Keeffe's subjects evolved based on the landscapes she lived in

Texas horizons, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico deserts are examples of the subjects O'Keeffe famously painted over the course of her life. While her style remained mostly consistent throughout her seven-decade career, her surroundings significantly changed the content of her artwork.

O’Keeffe’s first collection of charcoal drawings was influenced by Japanese artists

Prioritizing personal interpretations over literal ones, O’Keeffe’s abstract drawings challenged the classical approach to capturing nature in art. This initial set of drawings caught the attention of art dealer Alfred Stieglitz and forever changed the trajectory of her career.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Pop artist Yayoi Kusama is arguably the most famous living female artist

The Japanese pop artist is one of many figures whose work challenged ideas of traditional fine art. Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami, and Claes Oldenburg are among the other artists known for defining pop art.

Jackson Pollock and others developed 'action painting,' highlighting the creative process

A subcategory of performance art, action painting emerged in 1945 as a way to capture a moment-by-moment view of the creative process through painting. For these pieces, the physical act of painting is as important as the finished product. This short explainer video covers the philosophy behind action painting, as well as exploring the works of several well-known action painters, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko.

The 'Old Guitarist' challenged art's standards of beauty

For much of Western art history, the definition of “beauty” in art was dictated by academies rather than personal taste. Artists like Picasso challenged these standards with works considered “ugly” for discarding anatomical accuracy or linear perspective in favor of a feeling.

Gutai was performance art’s Japanese predecessor

Works by the post-WWII Japanese artist collective Gutai are widely considered a precursor to Western performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. The word “Gutai” means “concrete” in Japanese, referring to the concrete ways the artists’ bodies were used to create their works. Gutai members like Kazuo Shiraga, who painted with his feet to express the movement of his process, are thought to have influenced later artists like Jackson Pollock.

'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog' is an iconic romantic artwork

Caspar David Friedrich’s painting portrays man’s fascination with the natural world and emphasizes his smallness in the midst of its grandeur, epitomizing Edmund Burke's concept of "the sublime."

Indigenous art's influence on pop art often goes uncredited

Keith Haring’s iconic imagery, often known for its accessibility, was deeply inspired by the artwork of the Indigenous people of Australia. Their artwork influenced aspects of Haring's paintings, such as flat block colors and symmetrical compositions. While some critics find Haring to have appropriated their culture, others find his work to be pushing a message of unity and togetherness.

David Hockney's 'Splash' paintings depicted the Brit's adoration for California

Bradford-born David Hockney saw the lure of California as an escape from the dreariness of London and a symbol of social and sexual freedom. Sotheby’s reflects on Hockney’s series of three "Splash" paintings, capturing ephemeral moments and the magic of America as a cultural export in the 1960s.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

JMW Turner inspired the impressionists

JMW Turner was a prominent member of the Romantic movement, known for his expressive, colorful, and threatening paintings of coastal and marine scenes. Later in his career, he pushed his style to more intense colors and abstract forms, inspiring and preceding the abstract art movements, like Impressionism.

The Japanese folklore that inspired Pokémon

Characters from the popular video game series appear to reference the yōkai from Japanese folklore, which first became popular during the country's Edo period, when art and literature became mass-produced.

The history of iconic pigments used in seven famous paintings

While art paints can be bought by the bucket at any craft store today, pigments throughout history have been difficult to come by. Art historian Kelly Grovier traces the fascinating history of pigments that make up hidden layers in masterpieces from Picasso and Hokusai’s Prussian Blue to Vermeer’s shade of red.

Japan is home to the world's only geothermal steam dye workshop

The Hachimantai Geothermal Dyeing Workshop sees artisans and visitors use volcanic steam to fix dyes and add gradations to patterns, creating tie-dyed handkerchiefs and mini-scarves.

Jasper Johns’ works often captured familiar symbols and made them abstract

Some of pop art’s most famous works toy with the push and pull between recognizable and hidden. ARTnews dissects seven well-known pieces by Jasper Johns—including works of American flags and maps—to explore the relationship between obvious iconography and invited analysis common to the genre.

Japanese horror is often more psychological than its Western counterpart

One of the country’s most famous directors is Masaki Kobayashi, who won a Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival. Unlike his Western peers, Kobayashi’s films avoid jump scares or gratuitous gore, opting instead for slow-burning psychological explorations that are just as terrifying.

Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi creates masterpieces using Microsoft Excel

Upon retiring, he wanted to get into art, but found the materials to be expensive. Since 2000, he has created art pieces using the line tool and other features the software provides before printing and taping together various spreadsheets that make up a completed work.

Mary Cassatt's 'The Child's Bath' was a rare sight for 19th-century art

Drs. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker note that this portrait of an intimate moment between mother and daughter might have been out of place in 1893, but that its subject matter alludes to spiritual images from the Renaissance or Baroque periods.

The de stijl movement embraced bright colors and abstract images

The 20th-century movement sought to develop a universal language for the modern era by fusing form and function. Modern day viewers will recognize its bright colors and clean aesthetic, popular with retro-styled book and album covers.

Why patterns in art are so pleasing

Repeated visual cues like shapes or lines derive from the brain's innate compulsion to identify faces, places, bodies, and more. With repeated shapes, the brain seeks out resolution to the subtle variations between them. See examples in art and music.

Vincent Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' accurately depicts turbulent flow

Analysis of the swirling patterns in the painting found an alignment with the mathematics used to describe turbulence, despite Van Gogh's unfamiliarity with the science. The depiction may indicate he possessed an uncanny ability to capture nature's details.

The bestselling visual art mediums, visualized

Fine art is a particularly appealing alternative investment for many—but it's also a pretty broad term. This data visualization shows which fine art mediums sold the best in 2024. For instance, paintings accounted for about 59% of all fine art dealer sales that year, whereas sculptures accounted for roughly 15%. See the full picture here.

Experience Maya culture through art—both ancient and modern

This gallery showcases how Maya culture endures through both ancient monuments and modern artistic expressions, tracing visual traditions from pre-Columbian carvings and murals to contemporary works created by Maya artists.

The Canadian artist considered the 'Picasso of the North'

Norval Morrisseau's art is bold, with vivid colors and striking angles. His interviews were similar, with the artist often challenging the way questions were posed and his life was characterized, believing he was being unfairly pigeonholed as an Indigenous artist. This overview of Morisseau's work and life is a helpful primer on the artist, the perfect place to start before jumping into the deep end.

Frank Lloyd Wright's landscape design relied on abstractions

Wright was interested in finding abstract patterns in nature and attempted to match those patterns through the landscaping on his properties. He also often introduced foreign plants into his gardens, a choice that some experts say was a commentary on American identity and aesthetics.

Virginia Woolf admired 'The Tale of Genji'

Widely considered one of the defining voices of modernist literature, Virginia Woolf was known for her experiments with stream-of-consciousness narration, nonlinear storytelling, and psychologically complex characters. In a 1925 essay about Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji,” largely considered the world’s first novel, Woolf explains how Shikibu’s style captures the intricacies of living in ways only the novel can.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.