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The Guitarist , Pablo Picasso, 1910 In The Guitarist , Picasso depicts a man with a guitar through multiple perspectives, fusing horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines to construct the composition. The image appears fragmented—like shards of glass scattered across the canvas—erasing clear boundaries between foreground and background. Traditional techniques such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro are deliberately absent, resulting in a two-dimensional appearance. Picasso

Seeking a Line of Poetry by a Spring Stream , Shen Zhou, National Museum of Asian Art, ca 1500. Shen Zhou’s Seeking a Line of Poetry by a Spring Stream  is a hanging scroll painted with ink on satin. The tall vertical format allows the artist to depict steep, rounded mountains that curve gently downward. To achieve the soft, textured slopes, Shen likely used the hemp-fiber stroke —a technique common in Ming landscape painting that produces the effect of wrinkles or subtle con

Cathedral , Lyonel Feininger, MoMA, 1919 The Bauhaus promoted fine art with functional design that has soul. Due to industrialization and the mass production of standardized products, critics could argue that the objects people consume have become soulless in the early 20th century. The Bauhaus tried to change that. In the Bauhaus Manifesto, Gropius proclaims, “young people who take a joy in artistic creation…will be able to achieve excellence.” Here, Gropius connects joy wit

Red is Beautiful , Robert Houle, Museum of the American Indian,1970 Robert Houle’s Red is Beautiful  is a bold, symmetrical abstraction dominated by shades of red. A horizontal line divides the composition, suggesting a mirrored landscape reflected across water. Varying tones—from deep crimson to soft pink—overlap as geometric forms, creating rhythm and harmony within the composition. The artist likely used acrylic paint, tape, and medium brushes to achieve clean, opaque laye