Arthur Brand located the stolen Picasso painting after a four-year search

Acrylics on canvas - 30*40 cm - Ghent (Belgium), 2019

HOW DID J.R.R. Tolkien create The Lord of the Rings? The simple answer is that he wrote it. He sat down in a chair in 1937 and spent more than a dozen years working on what remains a masterwork of fantasy literature and a genius stroke of immersive worldbuilding. The more complicated answer is that in addition to writing the story, he drew it. The many maps and sketches he made while drafting The Lord of the Rings informed his storytelling, allowing him to test narrative ideas and illustrate scenes he needed to capture in words. For Tolkien, the art of writing and the art of drawing were inextricably intertwined.

While in Pakistan The Renegade Economist investigates the intriguing world of truck painting in Karachi.

In a 2012 exhibition about the birth of abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curators highlighted the way that the artists may have influenced one another. Titled “Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925,” the show illustrated over 80 artists’ radical departures from the traditions of representational art, and opened with a large diagram depicting their network to show who knew each other (an interactive version of which is online), with the most connected, like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, toward the center.

Artist Alex Biagi refuses to let a disease that nearly robbed him of the use of his limbs prevent him from giving back to his community. Biagi, 38, earned Reddit’s adoration February 16 after he shared a photo of him painting a fox for an event benefiting the animal shelter Life Is Better Rescue in Denver, Colorado. What struck a chord with redditors on r/pics was the sight of Biagi painting with a brush in his mouth.

A photorealistic reimagining of Skulltula is absolutely terrifying in Nate Hallinan's art of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's iconic enemy.

Can you imagine seeing a Van Gogh painting sitting right off the freeway on your morning commute or aerial ride? One field in Egan, Minnesota got exactly this when the 64-year-old artist, Stan Herd, transformed it into Van Gogh’s 1889 “Olive Trees.” Herd has been doing similar types of artworks or ‘earthworks’ since 1981. His most recent project took six months and spans 1.2 acres. Plenty of mowing, digging, and planting was involved. All of which were sponsored by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It can even be seen from the Minneapolis airport.

You’re glad Lucy is having fun, but now that she’s kind of successful, maybe all that’s left for you are the scraps. By Kathy Lynch.

A lead mineral called plumbonacrite was used to create a thick, paste-like paint.

The figures are visible under UV light; other paintings may also have hidden drawings

The title of richest person on Earth seems to ping-pong between tech titans every few years. But for all their wealth, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates won’t come close to being the richest human of all time—that would mean besting people like Augustus Caesar who personally owned all of Egypt for a period or Song Dynasty Emperor Shenzong, whose domain at one point accounted for 25 to 30 percent of global GDP. But the wealthiest of them all is believed to be Mansa Musa, the ruler of the Mali Empire.

Online community speculates government pressure is behind the move

"But if we get rid of all the paedophiles, we won’t have any estate agents/plumbers/accountants left!” wailed literally no one ever. And yet, this plaint is regularly repeated when it comes to artists accused of abusive behaviour, even now, after everything. Because, really, how can we possibly expect people to make decent music without committing some casual sexual abuse? Last week, the New York Times published allegations of psychological and sexual abuse against navel-gazing indie bore Ryan Adams, all of which he denies. Several women, including his ex-wife, Mandy Moore, claimed Adams’ behaviour put them off the music industry.

On Friday a flock of giant breasts are floating down Amsterdam's canals for International Women's Day. This action is

See the funniest examples of medieval art where people are getting stabbed but just don’t give a damn.

Sister Wendy Beckett, the cloistered nun who ventured out of seclusion to become a celebrity art critic and historian, died Wednesday at England’s Carmelite Monastery.

A 2019 New Year's Eve letter for TCI about drawing and videogames, by artist Jeffrey Alan Scudder.

The skilled climber and thief Vjeran Tomic, whom the French press referred to as Spider-Man, has described robbery as an act of imagination.

For his sci-fi illustrations, artist Eric Geusz takes inspiration from all around him

The famous moving gaze of the "Mona Lisa" has been challenged by researchers.

Graphic design studio Super Terrain’s edition of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic Fahrenheit-451 took the internet by storm, thanks to a video showing how its all-black pages become readable text when exposed to an open flame. (This will, and quite possibly should, also work with a hair dryer or something else not completely on fire.) And now, for only $451 — get it? — you can preorder one to keep on a specially-heated shelf in your home! If you have $451 to drop on an artist’s book, we figure you could have custom heated shelves.

Something in the new Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris was not what it seemed.

This new app enables you to appreciate the works from the museums of the City of Paris in detail.

The mark is “the most convincing candidate for an authentic Leonardo fingerprint” among the Queen’s 550 works by the great artist

The Uffizi Galleries in Florence say an X-ray examination of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi has revealed hidden artwork by the Baroque master.

Every artist explores dimensions of space and place, orienting themselves and their works in the world, and orienting their audiences. Then there are artists like Vincent van Gogh, who make space and place a primary subject.

Long before Aladdin Sane or Ziggy Stardust, a skinny 16-year-old with ambitions to be a saxophonist agreed to do lead vocals on a demo track, in a small studio in south London. Now the only known recording of the resulting session, with David Bowie singing I Never Dreamed with his first band, The Konrads, has resurfaced in an old bread basket, and is expected to fetch £10,000 at auction.

The Chinese dissident artist tells NPR his studio is in the process of being demolished. The workspace is located in Beijing's Songzhuang District, on the outskirts of the city.

A catchy tune and one of Stephen Gammell’s illustrations from Alvin Schwartz’s trilogy, ‘Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark.’   If you look at the unassuming photo used by publisher Simon and Schuster of illustrator Stephen Gammell, you will, in no way, perceive the smiling, white-bearded and spectacled man was responsible for creating images which have terrorized the minds of children since 1981. But he is, and I hope this helps reinforce the golden rule one should never judge a book (or a person) by their cover.

The colour survives in the work of 17th Century Spanish colonial painters, a symbol of the wealth that ultimately doomed the Mayans, writes Devon Van Houten Maldonado.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London recently published scans of two of the Leonardo da Vinci notebooks so website visitors can digitally zoom and flip through the drawings and musings of the Italian Renaissance painter, architect, inventor, and sculptor. Jumbled together in the delicate journals are thoughts on both science and art—detailed charts and speculations contained on the same pages as observational sketches of hats or horse hooves.

Australia's last remaining piano-maker has just created an instrument the likes of which the world has never seen. Most grand pianos have 88 keys but Wayne Stuart's family-run business in Tumut, southern New South Wales, has built the first known piano with an impressive 108 keys. This means it boasts a nine octave range, unheard of on the piano until now.

For those who believe in the distinction between high art and low, video games have long been near the bottom of the pile. Fortunately, that has not stopped some of the world’s great art museums from putting on exhibitions. The Museum of Modern Art, in New York, began acquiring games in 2012 and a year later invited visitors to play some of them in a show called “Applied Design”. The most recent video-games exhibition, “Videogames Design/Play/Disrupt”, takes place at an even grander instituion – the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.