In the late 1970s, Herbert Zapp, an executive board member of Deutsche Bank, then headquartered in Düsseldorf, West Germany, fell in with the maverick artist and teacher Josef Beuys. Beuys was in the midst of creating his seminal installation “Das Kapital: 1970-1977” for the 1980 Venice Biennale, articulating his belief that art, as an expression of human creativity, is the true capital.
Interviews & Essays
There's no doubt that the statues by Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini were markedly sensual, which might seem paradoxical in the era of the Counter-Reformation and for an artist whose main patrons were part of the ecclesiastical aristocracy.
“Fridamania” is reaching new heights as museums, opera houses, and cinemas across continents celebrate the enduring legacy of Frida Kahlo in 2026. This collective reckoning with her highly curated self-image and body of work comes at a time when many are searching for personal meaning and unity in an age of simultaneous hyper-connectedness and geopolitical division.
When American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s (1834-1903) portrait of his mother, Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1881, few could have predicted that it would become one of the most recognized images in the history of American painting.
A good art magazine should do more than show beautiful things. It should help readers understand why those things matter.
Western art history doesn’t move in a straight line toward improvement. It advances through breaks—moments when artists reject inherited assumptions and redefine what art is for. The visible changes are stylistic, but the deeper shifts are conceptual: how artists understand representation, what counts as truth, and the role the artist is meant to play. This account begins with the Renaissance because it sets the terms of the conversation.
Although museums have long housed clothing in “costume institutes” removed from their painting and sculpture galleries, a series of exhibitions and events is collapsing the distance between fashion and art this spring.
The art world is full of wonderful things to discover, but it can also be hard to keep up. New exhibitions open, artists gain attention, auctions make headlines, museums announce major shows, and important stories can easily get lost in the noise. Art & Object’s weekly newsletter helps make sense of it all.
Attention to detail, subtle shifts of perspective, angles of surface, and objects overlapping or jutted up against one another; Giorgio Morandi’s sheer inventiveness with ordinary objects is distinctive.
The allegorical manifestation of "the four continents" is a visual staple of Western art from the colonial period and the 18th century in particular. Used to uphold the idea of European superiority and justify colonialism itself, the iconography associated with each continent is deeply rooted in racism.
