Quick Strokes 🎨

One-minute stories for your coffee break

1. Far from the urban cacophony

American artist Georgia O’Keeffe saw herself as a loner who escaped the social demands of New York City by spending more and more time in New Mexico. “I never felt at home on the East Coast the way I do out here,” she told art critic Henry McBride.

In the Southwest, she found her muse in the rugged and desolate Chinle Badlands, a 230-million-year-old formation of clay, sandstone, and siltstone famous for its vivid bands of red, purple, and blue.

“The red hill doesn’t touch everyone’s heart the way it touches mine—and I suppose there’s no reason why it should,” said O’Keeffe, who considered this America’s most stunning landscape.

In her eyes, the sun-bleached bones in the wilderness felt strangely more alive than the wild animals roaming the area: “The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive in this desert.”

On the left is an oil painting of a cow's bleached white skull. The artist playfully added two white flowers to the skull. The background looks vaguely like a modern interpretation of a landscape, done in ivory and black.
On the right is an oil painting of a dead cottonwood tree with wispy gray branches. In the background is mountain painted in various shades of red. A few green bushes dot the landscape. — (L) Georgia O’Keeffe, “Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses” (1931)
(R) Georgia O’Keeffe, “Dead Tree with Pink Hill” (1945)

2. Bringing Vermeer’s art to life

This engaging, one-minute film by Wytse Koetse adds motion to some of Johannes Vermeer’s most admired paintings of Dutch middle-class life during the 17th century.

The Amsterdam-based filmmaker used AI to create this short video and the results—this will not come as a surprise—are far from perfect. For example, why does a milkmaid pour milk directly onto a wooden table? Does AI think we do that?

If the technique were refined, would videos like this one be useful in a museum setting? I think they could be. Koetse’s film encourages me to view a painting as a window on the world. It prompts me to linger over all the small yet telling details.

Click here and see what you think…

3. Oops, mistakes happen

Centuries ago, long before people could digitally edit text by dragging an electronic mouse, how did writers add a sentence unwittingly left out of a finished page layout?

Medieval historian Mateusz Fafinski shares this charming “quick fix” discovered in a handmade 14th-century devotional book.

“In the margin, the illuminator drew a man holding a rope. The hooded figure appears to be pulling a line of text up the page and into the area he’s pointing to,” says Fafinski.

The text being added is a line from Psalm 128: “Your children will be like olive plants round about thy table. And your children’s children will be your crown.”

In the margin of a European devotional book that was hand written and hand drawn at the turn of the 14th century, the artist playfully adds a hooded man holding a rope tied to a line of text. He appears ready to pull the text up the page and into the position he is pointing to. — Detail from Walters Museum Manuscript W.102, Book of Hours

4. “Women will get it”

In 1972 artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro debuted Womanhouse, the first major public art exhibition devoted to female empowerment.

Schapiro contributed Dollhouse, a mixed-media object whose overall shape resembles an ancient temple. The kitchen, nursery, and boudoir all embody the cultural expectations for women born in the 1950s.

But then, tucked away on the third floor, an artist’s studio features a male model posing next to a tray of bananas. It’s a feminist spin on the usual gender roles found in academic life drawing classes.

A few critics consider Dollhouse an insignificant work. Schapiro disagrees, saying the process of making it helped her learn how to create art from a female perspective. “Women will get it,” she said.

A 3D wooden dollhouse with six rooms. On the upper floor, the room on the right is an artist's studio. — Miriam Schapiro, “Dollhouse” (1972)

5. From meh to magnificent

Years ago at MoMA, art critic Henry McBride was scrutinizing a giant mask adorned with a mouse trap, hair brushes, and other odd miscellany when a buttoned-down couple approached and stood by his side. The man stared in disbelief at the mask. Then he turned to his wife and said, “Never throw anything away.”

McBride’s anecdote comes to mind whenever I see work by El Anatsui. Originally from Ghana, the artist now lives in Nigeria, where he recycles bits of discarded metal, usually from liquor bottles. First he hammers the metal. Then he artfully wires the flattened pieces together.

Anatsui’s art installations evoke the lustrous appearance of Kente cloth, a fabric worn by Ghanaian royalty. The artist reimagines symbols of wealth to prompt discussions about consumer culture.

His installations never lie flat. They take on a different shape each time they are displayed, mirroring life’s ever-changing nature. Currently, you can explore the 11-foot-wide installation Untitled 2009 at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

An immense and flexible metal wall hanging by El Anatsui (2009). The piece is composed of thousands of flattened and folded colorful liquor bottle labels woven together with thin copper wire. The overall surface is textured and irregular, with peaks and valleys that catch the light, creating a monumental "metal cloth" that blurs the line between sculpture and textiles. — El Anatsui, “Untitled” (2009) and detail

6. If these chairs could talk

To escape the hectic pace of Paris in 1888, Vincent van Gogh moved south to Arles, where he set up a collaborative workspace. Paul Gauguin was the first artist to join him.

In anticipation of his friend’s arrival, Van Gogh painted two symbolic portraits to brighten up their bare rooms: one featuring his simple wooden chair and another of Gauguin’s more ornate armchair. Sadly (some would say predictably), the relationship between the two men soured. Within weeks, Gauguin returned to Paris.

A century later, Nigerian artist John Madu reimagines Gauguin’s chair with a symbolic self-portrait of his own featuring a red plastic chair, flip flops, and a Coke bottle. On the chair lies an open book of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which Van Gogh admired and studied in detail.

“I want to pay homage to this master I love,” says Madu. “Reinterpreting his visuals in a West African context allows me to create a bridge between local narratives and a global audience.” To see the complete series by John Madu at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, click here.

On the left is Van Gogh's painting of his own simple wooden chair. On the chair lies a pipe and a pouch of tobacco.
On the right is John Madu's playful painting of a red plastic chair. On the chair lies a book of Japanese uyiko-e woodblock prints. On the grass lies a pair of flip flops and a Coke bottle. — (L) Vincent Van Gogh, “Van Gogh’s Chair” (1888)
(R) John Madu, “If Gauguin’s Chair was a Monobloc” (2025)

7. Quiet companions

French artist Édouard Vuillard portrays age with a singular tenderness. This portrait is one of his finest studies of someone who is no longer young. The sitter is art critic Théodore Duret, an early champion of Impressionism and one of the founders, along with Émile Zola, of the radical weekly La Tribune.

During the Paris Commune, Duret narrowly escaped execution.

Vuillard depicts the writer surrounded by the books and papers of a long career. Reflected in the mirror behind him is Whistler’s portrait of Duret as a dapper young man, dressed for a night at the theater. The mirror image marks the passage of time: Duret at 74 is no longer the firebrand whose political views nearly cost him his life.

Now, as grave as a Venetian doge, he holds a cat on his lap. Place your thumb over the cat to discover how much of the painting’s soul depends on Lulu…

An older man sits at an L-shaped desk buried under papers and books. The walls of his office are covered in paintings he has reviewed professionally and a portrait of him as a dapper young man. A black-and-white cat sits on his lap. — Édouard Vuillard, “Theodore Duret in His Study” (1912)

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