Was da Vinci an artistic genius? Sure, but he was also born in the right place at the right time -- pre-Renaissance, Western artists got little individual credit for their work. And in many non-Western cultures, traditional forms have...

In 1982 at the age of just 22 years old, Jean-Michel Basquiat would produce this painting. A powerful and dazzling image that mixes text, colour, symbolism and mark-making in a raw and uncensored explosion.



In a single...

This assignment comes to you from Chicago based artist Geof Oppenheimer. Geof's work reflects personal experience and the social and political atmosphere they were created in, and he wants you to make an object that does the same. John...

Women were excluded from almost all cultural and social resources in the centuries from 1400 to 1900 when so much of the world's great art was created. And visual art was almost entirely a male industry before modern times. Having...

"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art sometimes makes us indifferent to its power" - Forbes Magazine, 9 July 2020

"What a brilliant series this is" - Stephen Fry on Twitter 12 December 2020



"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art...

"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art sometimes makes us indifferent to its power" - Forbes Magazine, 9 July 2020

This week we kick off The Art Assignment Book Club with Dave Hickey's "Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy." We discuss everything from John geeking out in a library to Michael Jackson's chimpanzee - Bubbles. Oh, and we discuss the...

Sound waves vibrate more than just our eardrums, they can also make visual art!

An explanation of Ekphrasis: the art of describing a visual experience in words. This is done through a look at Sophie Calle's art works "Last Seen" and "What do you see?"

This video is an art historical analysis of Lorna Simpson's photograph "Waterbearer", but it's also about why and how we engage with art.

Can art save lives? Not exactly, but our most prized professionals (doctors, nurses, police officers) can learn real world skills through art analysis. Studying art like Rene Magritte's Time Transfixed can enhance communication and...

How can animation convey complex, intangible concepts? A visual metaphor, or an idea represented through imagery, can take an idea as massive as Big Data and tie it to the familiar depiction of a growing tree. TED-Ed animators explain...

There is a question that has been tossed around by philosophers and art critics for decades: how much should an artist's intention affect your interpretation of the work? Do the artist’s plans and motivations affect its meaning? Or is...

After Rome was destroyed, people were wary of attachment to physical beauty. As Christianity gained traction, Romans instead began to focus on the metaphysical beauty of virtue, and art began to follow suit. James Earle discusses how...

In standard notation, rhythm is indicated on a musical bar line. But there are other ways to visualize rhythm that can be more intuitive. John Varney describes the 'wheel method' of tracing rhythm and uses it to take us on a musical...

What does a cultural Big Bang look like? For Amit Sood, director of Google's Cultural Institute and Art Project, it's an online platform where anyone can explore the world's greatest collections of art and artifacts in vivid, lifelike...

What is Pop Art and how can we better understand it? This episode is inspired by the Art Gallery of Ontario's current (2016) exhibition - SuperReal: Pop Art from the AGO Collection. If you'd like to help support ARTiculations - feel free...

Ellen Winner is Professor and Chair of Psychology at Boston College, and Senior Research Associate at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. She directs the Arts and Mind Lab, which focuses on cognition in the arts in...

Order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes this + new assignments!) Alec Soth is a photographer who works on large-scale projects that play with the boundaries...

In which we explore a few of Minnesota's many fantastic art offerings. Let's take a trip through the Twin Cities! Featuring the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Soo Visual Art Center, Soap Factory, Law...

The Art Assignment continues its journey through New Orleans with Brandan "BMike" Odums, the mastermind behind "ExhibitBE", a collaborative street art exhibition that transformed an unoccupied apartment building and gave it new life. Now...

This tutorial will show you a mixed media technique that can be used in a variety of ways! First, I create a watercolor underpainting. Next, I draw a floral motif over the most interesting areas of the watercolor underpainting using...

From cave paintings to public murals, humans have told stories with art for thousands of years. In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we discover that visual storytelling is elementally human — and so is competing over whose story...