Two big slabs -- the remains of a pair of skinned and gutted animals -- hang cheerily outside a local storefront on a sunny day. For folks who have never trained in butchery or worked as meatpackers, this sight will evoke at least some curiosity and perhaps downright disgust. The scene is particularl

Dense, Grotesque, Layered, Modern sculpture, Visceral

Probably the most lyrical and emotional of the German Expressionists, Kathe Kollwitz explored the austere themes of suffering and death in her poignant prints and compelling sculptures. Born to parents with strong Socialist beliefs, Kollwitz later married a doctor but settled in one of the poorest

Dark, Death, Dense, Dramatic, Feminist, German expressionism, Gritty, Self-reflection

The spiritual, the sublime, infinity itself: all seem to hover beneath the translucent surfaces of Mark Rothko's blurred and veil-like rectangles. The brilliantly colored blocks of his best-known works, distillations of all that this Lithuanian-born immigrant had learned during his first 15 years of

Abstract expressionism, Abstract painting, Dense, Depressive, Monochromatic, Post-painterly abstraction, Saturated, Silence

In 1960, Lawrence Weiner used explosions to make a series of craters in Mill Valley, California. A few years later he realized he was spending more time talking about paintings than painting them, so, in keeping with the conceptual aesthetics that strive for direct and non-objective transmission of i

Dense, Event, Open-ended