Joséphin Péladan’s mystical art exhibitions, in Paris, set the stage for everything from Kandinsky’s abstractions to Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” By Alex Ross.

"The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it." This quote was in an 3-part essay Helen Keller originally wrote when she was only 23 entitled "Optimism." The full passage reads, "Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life."

Boarder on Rail was done in prep for a cover for the magazine "Monopod". I really liked how it turned out as a sketch, and later scanned my sketchbook to create the vector. It was done hard-pencil; no sketching (I'm still trying to train myself to do that) completely from memory. I especially love the fact that his shirt meshes completely with the background, leaving his right arm floating in space. This later appeared in vector on my business cards. For those of you who might wonder, yes, I can skateboard; though not very well. I'm still learning how to. I've wanted to learn for years; but at home all the roads are dirt, so that kinda limit

Kaleidoscopes had kids walking into walls.

Coinciding with the LGBTQ Pride celebrations in Madrid, the Museo del Prado is staging a show of artworks focusing on same-sex relationships.

At a time when pop music and mass culture are analyzed with feverish determination, Sam McKinniss’s work offers an alternative.

In 1692 A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water.

The British-Ghanaian artist creates compelling character studies of people who don’t exist, reflecting her twin talents as a writer and a painter. By Zadie Smith.

A trove of more than 10,000 colorful glass beads suggests that an ancient city in Nigeria was one of the first places in West Africa to master the complex art of glassmaking, scientists say.

Pop-ups, harlequinades, and Meggendorfers, oh my!

These incredible sand sculptures are the work of Japanese artist Toshihiko Hosaka. He has been honing his skills for over 20 years and was recently rewarded with 1st prize at the recent Fulong International Sand Sculpture Art Festival in Taiwan earlier this month.

The mandala is a spiritual symbol that represents the universe. Literally translating to “center and its surroundings,” mandalas always contain a center point and a circle, surrounded by some sort of symmetrical design. They’re created from sand, on paper or cloth, or built as three-dimensional models, always meticulously visualized and assembled to yield a deeper meaning.

Oskar Fischinger fantasia tribute widget

Matisse, unsurprisingly, had strong feelings about the objects of his daily life. They delighted, inspired, or confounded him, in their humble ordinariness and in all that they evoked. These mundane items, the organizing principle for the exhilarating show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, served as sparks for Matisse’s art. By Claire Messud.

The acclaimed and controversial French author discusses his new show of photographs. By Christian Lorentzen.

Pencil, then vector, then canvas. I drew a sketch of the engine of my 1981 Yamaha XS400 motorcycle while I was stopped on the side of the road. Years later, Gallery 788 in Baltimore held a Motorcycle Art show, and so I brought out the sketch, drew it in vector, and added the quote.

Crossing beams on a daily basis ...

Visually mesmerizing, intellectually engaging, and nearly decommodified, screensavers reveled in a stillness and rapture that’s gone missing in technology. By Zack Hatfield.

On May 23, the Trump administration requested that Congress close the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, the premier government organizations for funding arts, scholarship, and culture in the United States. The NEH and the NEA, despite commanding a tiny fraction of the federal government’s budget, have long been on the GOP’s kill list, since conservatives consider them to be a complete waste of taxpayer money.

There are an increasing number of murals to be found in the Bucharest public spaces. 

From early works in Oak Park to iconic houses (read: Fallingwater) and geometric masterpieces like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, here’s the ultimate cheat sheet of Frank Lloyd Wright designs.

The world's two most important shows include the curators' partners, raising questions about the close ties between artists and curators.

3.5 Days of being disturbed by the same questions, got sand pizza's and sand ice creams served, built a bridge in between sketching, had to explain the workings of a rainbow and one brave young man dared to guess my age right (and ran away, laughing hysterically). Yeah, more of these, please. :-)

Shaun Greenhalgh has turned his hand to everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Lowry. He’s been to prison, but has never revealed the whole picture. Until now. By Simon Parkin.

Inventor Anirudh Sharma is capturing carbon from car exhausts to turn it into ink.

Since the start of this month, about 40,000 images of works are available on the relaunched NGS website.

For decades the contributing artists behind Grateful Dead rock along have slipped by undetected to paint their masterpiece on Belle Isle.

Set to be demolished in June to make way for an apartment building,THE HAUS in Berlin is a formerly abandoned 5-story building filled with site-specific works by 165 street artists. THE HAUS was once a bank on avenue Kurfürstendamm, but fell into disuse over the years. The artists activated their network of creative contacts to temporarily turn it into a street art free-for-all that’s so popular with visitors, there’s often a two-hour wait outside.

W...T...F??!?

In this all too brief video woodworker Paul Sellers gives us a close-up view as he creates a number of ultra satisfying 'Fibonacci' spiral shavings. Between the soothing music, camerawork, and the mathematical perfection of each spiral as it rises from the wood, I could watch something like this all

Technology is helping us see what lies beneath the surface of works of art. Once upon a time an artist’s signature – down there, in the corner of the painting – was just about all the verification anyone needed to be sure an artwork was genuine. If you had the provenance as well – the documented history of the work’s sales and owners – no more proof was needed.

On 4/20, a group of devoted Denverites opened The Church of Cannabis, a sacred space for smoking the state's 100% legal weed. Spanish muralist Okuda San Miguel (1980) and Kenny Scharf (1958) brought their signature panache to Denver's new weed church.