Stories By Kelly Hill
Art Nouveau
Gerda Wegener: Art Deco Feminist
August 28, 2020Today Gerda Wegener is best known for her lesbian and feminist art. She was also married to a trans woman, the landscape artist Lili Elbe. Their marriage was later dramatized in David Habershoff’s 2000 book The...
19th Century
5 Artists Who Likely Suffered From Syphilis
July 31, 2020Also known as the French disease or great pox, syphilis was a common sexually transmitted disease in Europe in the 1800s. In fact, 10-15% of Europeans in the 19th century were likely infected with the bacterial...
19th Century
5 Things You Need to Know About Australian Impressionism
June 11, 2020Australian Impressionism might not be as well known as its French counterpart, but this late 19th century art movement was important to the country. In fact, some consider these artists to be part of the first...
20th century
Anita Berber: Femme Fatale of the Weimar Republic
May 14, 2020Born on 10 June, 1899 in Dresden Germany, Anita Berber shocked and entertained the cabaret and bourgeois crowd of the Weimar Republic right up to her untimely death at the age of 29. Film star, nude...
19th Century
Painting of the Week: Vincent van Gogh, Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)
May 10, 2020In the mid 19th century, Japanese ports were suddenly opened up to international trade, and Europeans went crazy for Japanese culture and art, especially woodblock prints. A new word in French, Japonisme, was even created to describe this...
19th Century
The Scandalous Nudes of Gustave Courbet
May 1, 2020In the 19th century, French painter and rebel Gustave Courbet generated outrage with his scandalous nudes. What exactly was so scandalous about his paintings? Courbet had the audacity to paint (gasp) real women in the nude. Courbet and...
20th century
Keeping up with the Boys: Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler
April 29, 2020It’s often the men of Abstract Expressionism who are best known: Jackson Pollock and his famous “drip” technique; Willem de Kooning’s abstract women; Mark Rothko’s colorful rectangles. Yet it’s Frankenthaler who, after seeing what Pollock was...
