If you walk into a room and find everything you held dear in childhood degraded, chances are it's a Paul McCarthy installation. McCarthy is known for shocking, sexually charged pieces that feature benign cartoon and pop-culture characters -- Olive Oyl and Santa Claus, among others -- in a bacchanalia

Angry, Biomorphic, Erotic, Modern sculpture, Perverse, Phallic, Primal, Visceral

When Pearl Primus was studying anthropology in graduate school, she had no idea that her part-time job with the National Youth Administration would lead to a spectacular career in dance. Her understudy role with the NYA dance group converted her from a co-ed to a chorine overnight. Immensely talented

Political, Primal, Tribal

Another talented chip off the German Expressionist block, F. W. Murnau had a penchant for horror. With "Nosferatu" (1922) he brought the first of countless Count Dracula stories to cinematic light. Murnau made his Dracula as hideous, doomed, and gloomy as later incarnations are suave, elegant, and ta

Classic hollywood, Dark, Death, Elegant, Erotic, German expressionist film, Grotesque, Primal

Like an avenging angel invading the capital of high culture, Pablo Picasso came to Paris to confront the establishment and write himself across the face of modernity. He viewed art as a way of recreating himself, and invented -- only to later shed -- any number of artistic styles. The young Picas

Cubism, Distorted, Figurative painting, Geometric, Kinetic, Mythic, Perverse, Political, Polychromatic, Primal