Culture

Out of the fog

It’s a ‘failed painting’ that obscures the profound power of German Romanticism. Why do we love the ‘Wanderer’ so much?

Gianluca Didino

The ecstatic swoon

As Stendhal knew, the reason for art is to make you feel. Do not try to grasp the artwork: allow it to grasp you instead

Robert D Zaretsky

When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer

9 minutes

California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker

10 minutes

Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling

14 minutes

Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer

17 minutes

A ceramicist puts her own bawdy spin on the folk language of pottery

14 minutes

Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement

15 minutes

Threads of resistance

Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest

Gemma McKenzie

Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece

31 minutes

A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size

5 minutes

The sprawling mural that depicts an unflinching people’s history of Los Angeles

7 minutes

When luxury is good

The waste and exploitation of fast fashion shouldn’t blind us to the joys of making beautiful clothing with care

Roger Tredre

In his poem ‘London’, William Blake crafted a bleak vision of the city he loved

9 minutes

A prisoner in Guantánamo finds some escape in building intricate model ships

6 minutes

Watch as Japan’s surplus trees are transformed into forest-tinted crayons

4 minutes

Tracing circles with her suitcase, Yuge mourns seasons of separation from family

5 minutes

Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist

15 minutes