Art History - The Art Newspaper

Art history

A short guide to the hidden meanings in great paintings

An A to C extract from the glossary of Painted Mysteries, which deciphers common motifs and symbols in famous works

Comment | Art is more than its original context

The place where we observe a work of art—and the feelings we have—play a crucial role in our experience

Comment | Time for a rethink: women artists were never meant to merely be canon fodder

Exhibitions pairing Munch with Paula Modersohn-Becker and Maria Lassnig provide opportunities to subvert the established order

How do we stem the decline in students studying art history in the UK?

We need to reframe the subject as one worth knowing about, rather than focusing on its use

The dark side of collecting: book reveals ugly history of art’s great coveters

The civilised lustre of the great collectors could camouflage a lust that had more to do with greed than beauty

French novel explores Van Gogh and Goya—through the eyes of a young girl

The book provides a fresh perspective on famous works, cruising through the last few centuries of Western art

Courtauld launches art history teaching fund amid £82m redevelopment

The announcement follows a new report which revealed a sharp decrease in the numbers of schools teaching art history

Comment | Want to truly read a painting? Forget the present, and focus on the past

To read a painting is to understand the context in which it was made, not the context in which we see it, writes Bendor Grosvenor

Florida art-history professor suspended over social media posts about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk

Karen Leader was placed on administrative leave from her tenured position at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton

The philosopher’s tone: Gilles Deleuze's lively painting lectures are published in English

The French thinker held seminars on painting and philosophy at the short-lived Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes

Stanford University acquires Filipina American artist Pacita Abad’s archive

“This is how art history gets written, from these primary-source materials,” says Stanford’s art and architecture librarian

Could 17th-century Italy provide a useful model for today’s challenging art market?

An exhibition in New York spotlights an intriguing episode in trade history , in which an influx of foreign artists to Rome prompted everyone from barbers to lawyers in the city to develop side hustles as art dealers

Iceland plans national gallery overhaul

The culture minister is calling for a new, world-class space for the national collection, currently housed in three locations in Reykjavik

After 20 years without a permanent home, Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art will open this month

The museum is preparing to open a major new building in the heart of the Polish capital

Connoisseurship has gone out of fashion—to diversify the canon, it's time for a revival

With the Royal Academy the only UK institution now teaching connoisseurship, too many students of art history are missing out on learning an important skill

Sonia Boyce, Maria Balshaw and Grayson Perry join campaign to advance the study of art history

The Art History Now project sees over 90 big names share new reflections on what art history means to them

The National Gallery, London: an artists’ collection for two centuries

The gallery's curators reveal the role played by living artists and women in building the institution’s all-embracing character over the past 200 years

New date proposed for when Florence's Baptistery of St John was built

The recent research also suggests that the famous Italian landmark was part of a broader building programme

'One of my great heroes': A new book on Francis Bacon sheds light on his admiration for Van Gogh

Bacon believed the Dutch artist deformed reality “to make it more real”

Christie’s will get a record price for a Van Gogh Paris painting, with a garden scene estimated at up to $35m

Fluttering butterflies enliven the greenery, but also remind us of the transience of life

Beyond borders: new London show reveals Robert Rauschenberg’s global ambitions

ROCI project was seen in ten countries in the 1980s including the Soviet Union and Cuba

The Nazi collaborator who sheltered nearly 300 Van Gogh works during the war: Sam van Deventer’s story is now told

A new biography reveals that the director of the Kröller-Müller Museum had earlier acquired eight Van Goghs for his personal collection—and he may have sold the finest one to Hitler’s deputy, Hermann Göring

The fate of a Van Gogh flower painting destined for Japan’s 'Sheer Pleasure' pavilion

Kojiro Matsukata’s still life was destroyed in a London fire and his “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” was seized during the Second World War

‘That truly is nature’: the inspiring story behind four spring scenes Van Gogh painted just weeks after mutilating his ear

The optimistic April paintings were produced at an extremely challenging time for the artist

Did Van Gogh’s brother Theo have syphilis?

It is almost certain, and this could well be a reason behind Vincent’s suicide

Van Gogh’s potatoes: few artists would choose this subject for a still life

Vincent borrowed a casserole from his brother’s kitchen for the painting, which has just been acquired by Rotterdam’s art museum

Dramatic turn: how the theatre was integral to Rembrandt’s art

A new exhibition in Amsterdam explores how the Old Master's paintings and drawings were inspired and informed by the art of acting

Ten reasons why we love Van Gogh

It’s not only the art, but also his extraordinary life story

Revealed: How Tate briefly considered acquiring a Van Gogh self-portrait—which was later exposed as a fake

The gallery couldn’t afford the price, of just under £20,000

Cities are the heroes in an 'easy-going and unpreachy' publication that takes us on whirlwind tour of art history

Fifteen art capitals are captured at their brilliant apogee in Caroline Campbell's book