Painted Past

Painted Past

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Great Thinkers Define Art: Arthur Schopenhauer
Learn how one of the most pessimistic philosophers ever saw the world and the role of art within it
Painting Dreams and Subconscious Desires Through Surrealism
Exploring the Art Movement That Turned Dreams, Symbols, and the Subconscious into Visual Language
Mannerism and the Art of Beautiful Distortion
Showing the way Mannerism moved beyond appearances to embrace the strange and the sublime
The Construction of an Imperial Image in Ancient Rome
How the Roman Empire used sculpture, architecture and imagery to construct the illusion of divine and absolute power
The Beautiful Contradiction at the Heart of Caravaggio's Work
Investigating the duality at the heart of Caravaggio’s art and the revelation of the sacred amidst darkness
When Baroque Art Transformed Beauty into a Tool
How the Catholic Church and European monarchs turned art into a force of power, emotion, and belief in the age of Baroque
Great Thinkers Define Art: Plato
An exploration of the metaphysical and political reasons why art was suspect in Plato's Republic

July 2025

How Cubism Shattered Reality and Rearranged the World
A look at how Cubism broke with tradition and reimagined what art could show and express
How Impressionism Broke Away From Tradition
The artistic movement that brought us out of studios and academic tradition and into the world of nature
Leonardo da Vinci's Search for Divine Order Through Art
How one Renaissance genius fused beauty, science, and spirit into a single way of seeing the world.
What Today’s Illustrators and Artists Can Learn from Joseph Christian Leyendecker
Learning timeless lessons in form, light, and storytelling from a master of illustration
Great Thinkers Define Art: Leo Tolstoy
Through an essay near the end of his career, Tolstoy reimagined art as a moral act, not a celebration of beauty
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