From the Byzantine times in the 9th century, Venice was a strategic trading center straddling Europe and the East. Venetian merchants traded wool and silk textiles for spices, grains and other commodities from Asia, making the city — and the Venetian Republic of which ...

There seems to be an exhibition of Impressionist art somewhere in Tokyo every year, such is its popularity in Japan. This summer,the National Art Center, Tokyo is presenting “Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art,” showing works from the celebrated Washington ...

“American Innocence, Welcome To The Realms of the Unreal” at the Laforet Museum brings together 64 paintings and some personal objects of the “outsider artist” Henry Darger, who was born in Chicago in 1892. Just before his 4th birthday, his mother died giving birth ...

In its passage from the art world into everyday speech, the word “surreal” has ended up as mere shorthand for the bizarre and the unusual. But it originally referred to something deeper. Coined by the French poet Guilaume Apollinaire from the words “sur” (“beyond”) ...

Art from Asia has enjoyed increased global interest in the past few decades, which has brought major changes to the way in which the art scene now views this hitherto neglected region. In a special symposium, “How is the World Engaging with Contemporary Asian ...

The Yoshiwara pleasure district of Edo (old Tokyo) has often been immortalized in word and image for the exquisite carnal pleasures it offered. It was also considered the center of Edo Period (1603-1867) cultural life. If anyone could be said to have put Yoshiwara ...

Gallery Target Closes Nov. 19 Since its origin in 1970s New York, when youths started “bombing” buildings and subway trains with stylized graffiti of their names and other messages, street art has morphed to encompass various media and subject matter. It has also become ...

Visitors to Florence in Italy have long been awed by the works in two of the city’s finest museums: the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace. But, perhaps preoccupied by prime examples of Raphael, Botticelli and other Renaissance artists, many visitors let their stay ...

Female artists play a significant role in Japan’s art world today, but a century ago, only a few women made a mark in the then male-dominated field. Shoen Uemura stands out as one of the most successful, a status she earned through the relentless ...

What follows you around nearly everywhere but you never notice? It may sound like a joke from a Christmas cracker but the answer is, of course, your shadow. Not only shadows of the human figure, but also shadows of trees, buildings and everyday objects ...

Art Nouveau’s birth at the end of the 1900s not only affected the art world but also radically transformed the public’s visual awareness, helping to propel product design, graphic design, typography and manufacturing into the 20th century. The Setagaya Art Museum’s “Art Nouveau et ...