Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (1886) remains a landmark painting. It established the Parisian artist as one of the figures who would push Impressionism towards its logical conclusion. And push he did, in the direction of abstraction and a radically scientific
Leonardo da Vinci was one of the world's most celebrated generalists, equally fluent in science and art, and a supreme innovator in both. Leonardo's scholarship and his contributions to painting, science, and engineering have raised him to such heights of glory among the cultural heroes of Western ci
The members of the De Stijl movement were pious, self-effacing artists bent on creating pure and accessible art. Although the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian did not himself organize the groups with which he is associated -- De Stijl, Cercle et Carr' (Circle and Square), and Abstraction-Cr'ation -- his p
Standing there among all the Sensation hubbub, somehow overshadowed by issues of elephant dung, were 21 child-sized mannequins wearing identical running shoes and standing in a circle. Some had penises where their noses should be, some had anuses in lieu of mouths, and vaginas melded the ring of bodi