Signifier

How the Campbell’s soup tin became a Pop icon to rival Marilyn and Elvis…

Gian Lorenzo Bernini is among the greatest sculptors of the Baroque with a talent for storytelling in stone…

How Poul Henningsen practically invented ‘mood lighting’ and lit the way for artists to use light as their main medium

The art of Bridget Riley plays with perceptions and makes the viewer see things that aren’t really there…

Right from the start, art was used to tell our stories — could the earliest examples of narrative image-making be our first ‘comic-books’?

Alfred Kubin used art to delve into the human condition and found sparks to light the darkness, to bring meaning into the void

As early as the 1930s, sculptor Barbara Hepworth innovated the flow of space through form as a dialogue between volume and void.

Research artists Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen court controversy with concepts that blend medical science with radical art.

Lucio Fontana sought to free art from physical limitations and express the infinite… with nothing

Albrecht Dürer’s ‘Melancholia’ is one of those important images that sets a precedent, melding art with science, psychology and philosophy.

In the mid-1970s, artist Nancy Holt gave us a set of ‘Sun Tunnels’ to help find and navigate humanity’s place in the universe…

Clementina, Lady Hawarden, was among the first female photographers and forged her own genre to light the way for fashion and fine art.

Artist Wim Delvoye built an eating machine that celebrates biological processes whilst questioning our worth in the world…

The famous painter of colourful animals hoped to find the essence of all things beyond the wonderful illusion of our world.

Trees have always featured prominently in art but since the 1960s a handful of post-modern artist have presented trees as sculpture…

Painting flowers was nothing new, but no one painted them quite like Georgia O’Keeffe…

The late 19th-Century French painter, Claude Monet strove to portray the world as authentically as possible and left a lasting impression.

Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch, painter of ‘The Scream’, was a self-proclaimed madman… but was he really saner than most?

Considering the final painting of Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo — a still life of succulent fruit, forever fresh…

Rereading the deceptively simple yet fascinatingly ‘ekphrastic’ Word Art of Louis Camnitzer

A timeless Valentine’s from Gustav Klimt, a moment made eternal…

With his ‘graphic novel’ frescoes, Giotto brought art out of the Dark Ages and gave the world its first glimpse of the coming Renaissance.