PicassosSelfies: Art History & Language School in Lincoln, NE.

What’s the story behind the elegant Parisian boulevards?
Was Caravaggio as much about dirty feet as he was about chiaroscuro?
Before Warhol’s Campbell’s soup series, many other artists created commercial art. Namely, wine labels that were designed by Picasso, Braque, Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, Anish Kapoor, etc.
The colors used in paintings weren’t due to the artistic choice alone: some pigments such as ultramarine were extremely expensive. That’s why it was often used on the robes of the Virgin Mary showing the level of devotion and expense of the patron who commissioned the work.
But is this Art? What do you think about this work by Maurizio Cattelan entitled Comedian? And the subsequent performance of it being eaten called Hungry Artist?
Why would Salvador Dali go to sleep with a heavy key in his hand? He wanted to gain inspiration for his paintings from his dreams, and the sound of a key falling from his hand into a plate beneath would wake him up & allow him to record his dreams & start working.

Did you know that one of the names Art Deco had was “Cubism Tamed”? It had many sources of inspiration, including Fauvism, Futurism, the visual language of Constructivism and Suprematism.
This masterpiece by Vermeer is not a portrait. She’s a character known as a “Tronie” – an imaginary figure used in Flemish Baroque to convey an emotion or allegory; in this case a girl in exotic dress.
Chinese ink is an invention that could be dated back to 2500 BC. It was composed of black soot and a stinky binding agent including fish bones turned into glue. To cover this odor, perfume was added into the mix.

We see so much that we forget to observe. Tech is here to stay, and I myself have 2000 selfies (many of them with art) among the 40K pictures on my phone. And this is why I wanted to open Picassosselfies for the other art curious among us: so that art moves from the backdrop into the spotlight.