Judith Leyster signed her paintings with a unique symbol: her initials interwoven with a lodestar. This visual translation of her last name means "guiding light" in Dutch. But for 200 years after her death Leyster's light was blacked out in the art world. Until the late 1870s her work was attributed

Baroque art, Bright, Elegant, Joyful, Lush, Playful

Giotto di Bondone, whom art historians designate the first painter of the Italian Renaissance, was apparently discovered while sketching sheep. A well-known Florentine artist looked over the boy's shoulder and was impressed by what he saw -- so impressed that he persuaded Giotto's father to let the l

Bright, Classical, Huge, Joyful, Monumental, Religious, Renaissance art

Peter Blake creates collages that are undoubtedly odd but never jarring or disruptive. His taste for cut-and-paste techniques does not, like most dada art, culminate in black humor; Blake is nothing if not light. He opposes nothing and negates nothing but instead basks in the icons of popular culture

Collage, Eclectic, Funny, Joyful, Pop art, Quirky

"To me, the television is sex, the bed is sex, the sky is sex, you're sex, I'm sex, everything is sex." Annie Sprinkle flies bare-breasted and smiling in the face of art-world pretension. Her work, a marriage of performance, pornography, spirituality, and science, is the undiluted product of 25 y

Bad girl art, Ebullient, Feminist theater, In-your-face, Joyful, Opulent, Repetitive, Sexy, Technology