Great artists are products of their own time: they do not spring forth fully equipped from the head of Jove, but are formed by the circumstances acting upon them since birth. These circumstances include the ambiance created by the other, lesser artists of their own time, who have all done their part in creating the pressure that forces up an exceptional talent. Unjustly, but unavoidably, the very closeness of a great artist to his colleagues and contemporaries leads to their eclipse.

The element of heroic maleness had always been present in the concept of the artist as one who rides the winged horse above the clouds beyond the sight of less…

By 1627 Judith Leyster was famous enough to be mentioned in Ampzing's description of the city of Haarlem; by 1661 she had been so far forgotten that De Bie doe…

Great art, for those who insist upon this rather philistine concept (as if un-great art were unworthy of even their most casual and ill-informed attention), ma…

Both of us loved blue, Franz Marc horses, I riders. Hence the name Der Blaue Reiter.(The Blue Rider)

'Look at Van Gogh. He couldn`t sell a painting to save his life while he was alive. The poor guy had to give them away. Same with Basquiat. They used to call h…

Each form of the sacrosanct was regarded by members of the culture which gave rise to it as a revelation of the Truth; at Byzantium it was not a mere hypothesi…