Investigations

Andrew Wyeth: The Secret Behind Christina's World

This is one of the best known American paintings in the world. The woman in it really existed, and her story completely changes what you are looking at.

Jul 30 • Cool Stories About Art

Degas: The Antisemite Who Died Alone

Edgar Degas, the famous Impressionist, had family and friends. His antisemitism cost him everything.

Jul 26 • Cool Stories About Art

The War Between Leonardo and Michelangelo

In 1503, the two greatest artists alive despised each other. So the city gave them the same wall and told them to outdo one another.

Jul 19 • Cool Stories About Art

Georges Seurat: The Secret Behind Young Woman Powdering Herself

The most secretive painter in Paris hid a woman, a child, and his own face in one canvas.

Jul 14 • Cool Stories About Art

How Japan Reshaped Western Art

In 1853, four warships force Japan open. Thirty years later, Monet, Manet and Van Gogh no longer paint the way they used to.

Jul 9 • Cool Stories About Art

Edward Hopper: The Secret Behind Soir Bleu

Hopper hid this painting for fifty years. The reason is sitting right in the middle.

Jul 5 • Cool Stories About Art

Why Paul Gauguin Was a Piece of Shit

The art world made him a legend. It left out who he really was, and everyone he destroyed to become it.

Jun 25 • Cool Stories About Art

Claude Monet: The Secret Behind The Magpie

Monet's The Magpie looks like a simple snow scene. But one detail in it quietly breaks the rules, and almost no one ever spots it.

Jun 21 • Cool Stories About Art

David Hockney: The Secret Behind Portrait of an Artist

Everyone has seen this calm blue California pool. Almost no one knows the very human story hidden behind it.

Jun 14 • Cool Stories About Art

Van Gogh and Millet: The Connection

Before the sunflowers and starry nights, Van Gogh looked to Jean-François Millet as his guiding light. More than a painter, Millet was, for him, a moral…

Jun 7 • Cool Stories About Art

Manet and Morisot: The Secret Affair

Édouard Manet painted Berthe Morisot eleven times, then never again. Why? The love story two families worked to erase.

May 31 • Cool Stories About Art

Was Monet really the first Impressionist?

The question sounds simple. The answer is a detective story spanning three centuries, from the Venice of the Doges to the London fog. Follow the trail.

May 24 • Cool Stories About Art

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