At the heart of Mapplethorpe's photography there is a paradoxical tension between outrageous content and intensely controlled presentation. Mapplethorpe's images are often sufficiently obscene to be considered pornography (even by the artist himself), while his overall aesthetic is chaste, classical,

Classical, Homoerotic, In-your-face, Political, Portrait, Queer art, Repetition, Sexy, Slick

According to photographer Cindy Sherman, "The male half of society has structured the whole language of how women see and think about themselves." In "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), Sherman featured herself in various guises that resemble stock characters from Hollywood melodramas, providing a Po

Cartoonish, Composed, Conceptual photography, Death, Deconstructive, Feminine, Grotesque, In-your-face, Layered, Mythic, Political, Women's literature

Tarkovsky's poetic films, interwoven with loose narrative threads and strikingly sublime images, demand a lot from the viewer, but return much more. In his signature piece "Andrei Rublev" (1969), a three-hour exposition on the fifteenth-century painter, Tarkovsky takes the viewer through series of sc

Depressive, Implosive, Moodscape, Pathos, Political

A visionary, revitalizing force in the New German Cinema of the 1970s, Werner Herzog articulated the dreams of the human spirit. In contrast to his contemporaries, who focused on frenzied, high-tech effects and chaotic jump cuts, Herzog used a lyrical film language to depict quiet spaces of epic unfo

Dystopic, Epic, Excessive, New german cinema, Pioneering, Political, Rebel, Tribal