WTF Art History

Erotica

All You Must Know About Japanese Erotic Art, Shunga

Ukiyo-e art, pictures of the “floating world,” are famous among those interested in art history. Everyone knows Hokusai’s Great Wave. Ukiyo-e...

Zuzanna Stańska 5 November 2025

Artist Stories

Powerful or Problematic? Robert Mapplethorpe’s Photographs

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe shocked the world with his images of bondage, gay sex, female bodybuilders and naked black men. Technically brilliant or politically problematic, what do you think?

Candy Bedworth, Guest Author 4 November 2025

mushroom art Dine & Wine

Fantastic Fungi: The Tastiest Mushroom Art

Autumn is a real mushroom season, so let’s have a look at some tasty, quirky and trippy fungi paintings that will inspire you to go mushroom...

Magda Michalska 3 November 2025

Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, ca 1485-90, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch

Death and the Miser is a masterpiece of morbid curiosity. It reflects on the tension between the pursuit of wealth and the inevitability of death,...

James W Singer 2 November 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Death of Barbara Radziwiłł by Józef Simmler

The National Museum in Warsaw is one of the largest museums in Poland and boasts an extensive art collection. Among its body of works is The Death of...

James W Singer 2 November 2025

Quiz

QUIZ: Magnificent Muses! Can You Guess the Artists and People Who Inspired Them?

Candy Bedworth 1 November 2025

Bizarre

Art Only Exists Because Death Exists: Skulls in Art

Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated every year across Mexico. A far cry from the Western commercial horror-fest of Halloween, it is a glorious...

Candy Bedworth 31 October 2025

Bizarre

Dark Side of Art History in 13 Creepy Paintings

Forget watching horror movies on Netflix—here we have something that will make your jaw drop! Welcome to the eerie realm of creepy paintings, where...

Zuzanna Stańska 31 October 2025

WTF Art History

The Evolution of Halloween Aesthetics

When you picture Halloween, a flood of familiar images rushes in: glowing jack-o’-lanterns, fluttering bats, skeletons, and black cats. But the...

Errika Gerakiti 31 October 2025

Bizarre

Creepy Art History: 10 Bugs and Critters Hiding in Paintings

Creepy-crawlies: bugs, lizards, and insects. You either love them or hate them. But one place you may have thought they wouldn’t appear is in fine...

Kristin Urban 31 October 2025

Halloween Monsters. Monsters of Universal, detail. Bloody Disgusting. WTF Art History

Halloween Monsters: What Our Fears Reveal About Society

Halloween monsters have long served as mirrors of human fear and imagination. From vampires and witches to zombies and digital phantoms, they reveal...

Errika Gerakiti 30 October 2025

Special

All Souls & Halloween: Death in Art

The feast day of All Souls and the festival of Halloween are celebrated close to each other in the Western calendar, but despite being closely...

Sarah Mills 29 October 2025