art history blog
Natalia Goncharova’s “Archangel Michael” at LACMA
As LACMA continues the final phases of its multi-years-long renovation, I can still envision Natalia Goncharova's Archangel Michael (1910) where it long hung in...
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of Theresia, Countess Kinsky
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun's gift for capturing aristocratic elegance while imbuing her subjects with warmth and psychological presence finds exquisite expression in her Portrait...
Abundance Suspended: Rachel Ruysch’s “Nosegay on a Marble Plinth”
on loan to the Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth
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podcast coming soon...new
primary sources
1769: Sir Joshua Reynolds...
Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January...
1770: Winckelmann on the...
Winckelmann engages with the history and sublime suffering displayed in the epic Laocoön, an excerpt from his 1770
1846: John Ruskin on...
"It is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the fate. There is no sublimity in the agony of terror. "
1855: Gustave Courbet’s Realist...
Courbet's "Realist Manifesto" accompanied his controversial, bold, and ultimately...
1861: Realist Manifesto – An...
A group of artists approached Courbet to head up...
art talks: art history 101
Video: Rosalba Carriera
Rosalba Carriera was renowned for pioneering the use of pastels in portraiture that helped to define the Rococo style.
Painted Biographies: Introducing Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a towering yet paradoxical figure in 19th-century French painting...
Painted Biographies: Angelika Kauffmann
Angelika Kauffmann, one of the most celebrated women artists of the 18th century, rose to prominence as both a history painter and a portraitist...
about the author
Molly Enholm Velazco is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist, writer, and educator whose work explores themes of nature, vibrant color, and a fascination with the intersection of beauty and the sublime. She teaches Modern, Contemporary, and Global art history and theory at CSU Northridge, Moorpark College, and Laguna College of Art + Design, where she inspires students to connect art of the past with the conversations that continue to shape our present.