Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter Edouard Manet (1832–1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Manet’s work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the city’s parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content. The Paris...
Picasso called Dali "an outboard motor that’s always running." Dali thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dali was one of the century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary...