The Neuroscience of Op Art

Artists, like neuroscientists, are masters of visual systems. Through experimentation and observation, artists have developed innovative methods for fooling the eye, enabling flat canvases to appear three-dimensional, for instance. Neuroscience—and more recently the subfield of neuroaesthetics—can help to explain the biology behind these visual tricks, many of which were first discovered by artists. “I often[…]

8 Female Surrealists Who Are Not Frida Kahlo—from Meret Oppenheim to Dorothea Tanning

Mexican artist and cultural icon Frida Kahlo is arguably the world’s most famous female Surrealist, but women across the globe have long employed art to plumb the depths of dreams and the unconscious. As art historian Whitney Chadwick notes in LACMA’s catalogue In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United[…]

11 of the World’s Most Unusual Artist Residencies

There’s nothing “usual” about an artist residency. Each year, droves of artists undergo these rite-of-passage programs, taking weeks or months (sometimes even years) to transplant their artmaking practices to remote studios or isolated cabins, to a neighborhood art space or a major museum, to a desert bungalow or a lakeside campus reminiscent of a summer[…]