Do you see Graffiti or Street Art? Explore the "pioneering era" of graffiti that took place during the years 1969 through 1974, as well as its enduring appeal today.

Piercings are one of the most common forms of body modification. The process involves puncturing or cutting body tissue to insert ornamental pieces. This art and cultural practice dates back at least 5000 years. Discover different...

This week we meet with Jesse Sugarmann, whose artwork considers how the automotive industry shapes the way we live and construct our identities. His assignment asks you to think about the way car consumerism, and the aesthetic choices...

Should art be beautiful? Revisit ancient philosophers' thoughts on beauty and consider why we might be skeptical of beauty today.

"Surrealism" has become shorthand for the bizarre, the irrational, the hallucinatory. But what IS it? Or what WAS it? Today we delve into the history of Surrealism, as it formed in post-World War I Europe and as it has infiltrated our...

In this video I break down Arthur Danto's belief that Art ended in the 1960's when he saw Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes. He approaches the theory of art through classical philosophy and uses frameworks established by Plato and Hegel, among...

Round 2 of The Art Assignment Book Club features John Dewey's Art As Experience, which certainly was an experience to read - congratulations to you if you did it! If you didn't, we understand. We read it for you, and we'll discuss some...

A video entitled "Defining Art" which discusses the difficulty of defining art.

We meet with Brooklyn-based artist Diana Shpungin. Diana's work and her assignment for you are both based on empathy -- it's a feeling we usually have for other people, but Diana wants you to direct your empathy towards objects instead.

Kung fu, tai chi, Wing Chun - China's martial arts have many faces. Used as a mean of attack, self-defense or merely to train for the perfect balance between body and mind, many of the techniques have established themselves as active...

Born in New Zealand, artist Alexis Hunter moved to London in the 1970s. A painter and photographer who used feminist theory in her work, Hunter was politically active and deeply involved in the emerging British feminist scene. Hunter...

We typically experience classic works of art in a museum, stripped of their original contexts, but that serene setting can belie a tumultuous history. Take Michelangelo's statue of David: devised as a religious symbol, adopted as a...

What would Latin America look like if colonization hadn't interrupted its ancient civilizations? Imagining a future where ancestral knowledge intertwines with modern aesthetics, designer Catalina Lotero shows how "pre-Columbian futurism"...

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., is an associate research scientist for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, received her Ph.D. from the University of...

It’s often been said that music is a universal language. So why was “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X initially removed from the country Billboard charts? Hallease and Evelyn use this hit record to talk about the business of music and how it...

Thomas Jefferson influenced the architecture of the nation from the start, and he had a reason for everything he did.

Yukio Lippit, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University Professor Lippit focuses on the influence of ink painting on the Japanese Rinpa aesthetic in a lecture from the Sunday at the Met series. The exhibition...

The hippie aesthetic owes a lot to Art Nouveau. Become a Video Lab member!='http://bit.ly/video-lab' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>member! When you picture hippies, you probably picture bell bottoms, long hair, and LSD. You might...

For centuries of western history, the beauty of art was conceived as a response to, and a reflection of, the cosmic artistry of a good God, who patterned all things well. Aesthetic order was therefore a manifestation of cosmic order, and...

Medieval history is full of stories about miracles and cures. Professor Page discusses the importance of Chant to people seeking miracles'http://www.gresham.ac.uk/music-imagination-and-experience-in-the-medieval-world' target='_blank'...

In the villages of Guizhou, China, there’s a rich tradition of embroidery. For the Miao, it’s not just an art form. It’s a means of communication. There is no written language in Miao culture, so intricate, brilliantly hued embroidery...