Dealer Matt Moravec Will Open Chelsea-Area Gallery →

The building that will be home to Off Vendome on West 23rd Street.

For the past two years, Matt Moravec, who ran the closely watched West Street Gallery in Manhattan with curator Alex Gartenfeld from 2010 to 2012, has been in Düsseldorf, Germany, studying with the artist Christopher Williams at the city’s Kunstakademie and running a space there called Off Vendome, showing artists like Ian Cheng, Win McCarthy, Margaret Lee, and Emily Sundblad.

Now he is back in New York, and will open a gallery, also called Off Vendome, in February in a two-floor space at 254 West 23rd Street, right above the East of Eighth restaurant and just down the street from the Chelsea Hotel. It’s a solid two avenues away from most Chelsea galleries.

“This area is a sort of no man’s land, which I love, but it’s still walkable from the West Chelsea gallery area,” Moravec said over drinks at the El Quijote, the Spanish restaurant on the ground floor of the Chelsea, earlier this week. His space also happens to be right next to the C/E stop at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue.

Moravec has the top two floors of the building, which dates to the mid-19th century and sports lofty ceilings, a full kitchen, and access to the roof—though the lack of a fence on one side means that it will probably be off limits during opening receptions. When I stopped by it was mid-renovation, with walls to be painted and layout decisions to be made.

He has a little more than a month to get the gallery ready. The first exhibition there will open on February 26, a two-person affair from Lena Henke and Max Brand. (That’s the day after the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial, which includes Henke, opens to the public.) After that will be the solo New York debut of Win McCarthy, who figured winningly in SculptureCenter’s recent show “Puddle, pothole, portal.”

An installation view of “Ian Cheng: ENTROPY WRANGLER” at Off Vendome in Düsseldorf in 2013.

“I love Dusseldorf—the school is amazing, the town is great and I have a really good friend group there, but I knew I’d have to return to New York in some capacity at some point,” Moravec said. Nevertheless, he’s keeping the Off Vendome space in Düsseldorf. A show by the New York artist Sam Anderson is currently on view there, and on February 6 he will open a show by another New Yorker, Kyle Thurman. The next day, Moravec said, “Ian Cheng, who was my first show in Düsseldorf, will be part of the next show at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, which is super exciting.” (That show is rounded out by Wu Tsang and Jordan Wolfson.)

For now, he’s holding off on announcing artists that he plans to represent in New York. “That will happen slowly, as I build my program,” he said.

Tax Court Ruling Is Seen as a Victory for Artists →

Susan Crile, a painter and printmaker who teaches at Hunter College, was accused by the I.R.S. of underpaying her taxes. Constance Kheel

If you say you are an artist, but you make little money from selling your art, can your work be considered a profession in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service?

In a ruling handed down late last week by the United States Tax Court and seen by many as an important victory for artists, the answer is yes. The case involved the New York painter and printmaker Susan Crile, whose politically charged work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum and several other major institutions. In 2010, the I.R.S. accused Ms. Crile of underpaying her taxes, basing the case on the contention that her work as an artist over several decades was, for tax-deduction purposes, not a profession but something she did as part of her job as a professor of studio art at Hunter College.

The heart of the case touches on a situation familiar to many thousands of artists — from visual artists to musicians and actors — who earn a living as teachers or studio assistants or stagehands while pursuing creative careers that they hope will flourish and someday be able to pay the bills.

During a trial before the tax court last year, Ms. Crile, whose work has focused on subjects like the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, described a dogged career of more than 40 years that has been more successful critically than financially. From 1971 through 2013, court papers said, she earned $667,902 from the sale of 356 works of art — or an average income of a little less than $16,000 per year — and, like many artists, she wrote off expenses from her work, like supplies, travel and meals, on her taxes. Only three years of her art career have been profitable, court records showed, and her reliable income came from teaching at Hunter, where she began part time in 1983 and became a tenured professor in 1994.

The I.R.S., which accused Ms. Crile of underpaying her taxes by more than $81,000 from 2004 to 2009, argued that based on several factors, such as her lack of a written business plan, her work as an artist was “an activity not engaged in for profit” and that she could not claim tax deductions in excess of the income she made from her art. Further, in a claim that alarmed many in the art world, the I.R.S. contended that Ms. Crile’s legal position that she was both an artist and a teacher was “artificial” and that she made art primarily to keep her job as a teacher. (Hunter College requires its studio-art teachers to exhibit their work but does not require them to sell.) The agency argued that for tax purposes, Ms. Crile’s profession should be that of a teacher, and that her art-related expenses should have been filed not as business expenses but as unreimbursed employee expenses.

But Judge Albert G. Lauber of the tax court ruled Thursday that Ms. Crile had “met her burden of proving that in carrying on her activity as an artist, she had an actual and honest objective of making a profit” and therefore under tax law should be considered a professional artist.

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, who testified on Ms. Crile’s behalf, said Monday that the ability to deduct art-related expenses — in art careers that might generate little money — was “one of the last remaining areas where the federal government cuts artists any slack to allow them to do what they do,” and that its protection was crucial.

Micaela McMurrough, a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore who represented Ms. Crile, said one of the key points argued in the case was that “art is not a business like other businesses.” “And I think that’s what this decision reflects, to a large extent,” she said.

Michael J. De Matos, a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, referred questions about the decision to the agency’s press office, which did not immediately return calls for comment.

Ms. Crile said she was relieved by the decision, for herself but also for many other creative professionals it might affect. “I think this was an attempt to get rid of a whole category of people from being able to take tax deductions,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of political work that is not so easy, and it’s not easy to show or to sell. But I’m an artist. And if I’m not considered one, then I don’t know who could be.”

How to Varnish an Oil Painting (Video) →

http://www.drawmixpaint.com

Kehinde Wiley to Receive the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts →

Kehinde Wiley. KWAKU ALSTON/COURTESY ROBERTS & TILTON

New York-based portraitist Kehinde Wiley will be awarded the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts. Known for his flashy paintings that depict black men and women in the style of Old Master portraiture, Wiley is being honored for using his art to promote cultural diplomacy. He will receive his medal from Secretary of State John Kerry on January 21. Past medal honorees include Cai Guo-Qiang, Jeff Koons, Shahzia Sikander, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems. First awarded in 2012, the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts is given to artists for their commitment to Art in Embassies, a diplomatic program that encourages U.S. artists to go abroad and work with other artists. For AIE’s latest project, set to happen in 2017, Jenny Holzer will make a collaborative sculpture at the U.S. Embassy in London. The announcement precedes another landmark in the artist’s career—”Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” the painter’s first museum survey, which will open at the Brooklyn Museum in February. Roberts & Tilton, one of the galleries that represents Wiley, confirmed the news.

New Artist: Gaylon Dingler & Leah Fitts

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Davis & Co.

Davis & Co Fine Art Gallery would like to issue a warm welcome to two of our new Artist's Gaylon Dingler & Leah Fitts. You can now view their work on our website. Welcome to the gallery!

DandCgallery.com

Meet Your Latest Art Auction Start-Up: FAB →

Goodman. COURTESY LINKEDIN

In the Financial Times today, Georgina Adam reports that there’s a new “game-changer in the field of auctioneering” headed our way.

Fine Art Bourse, or FAB, is an online auction house founded by Australian Tim Goodman, formerly a major player in the Australian auction business, and has raised $2 million for the venture. It launches next month.

From the FT:

His company is based in “humble” (his words) premises in London’s Finsbury Park, and similarly low-cost offices will be opened in New York, Hong Kong and Beijing over the next 18 months. Consultant specialists around the world — there are already 21, a number Goodman says will grow to 60 by this summer — will source, value and catalogue the works, with just a small team of executives running the company. And there will be no weighty catalogues thudding on to doormats: “It is ridiculous, they cost a fortune and are terrible for the environment.”

These economies will enable FAB to offer pared-down fees of just 5 per cent to buyers and sellers, plus 1 per cent for insurance and a flat charge of $330 for photography, cataloguing and so on ($1,000 for items worth more than $100,000). The auctions will be run out of Hong Kong (“No sales tax, no resale royalty, no copyright fees”); buyers can browse offerings online and then have a 30-second window to bid. The firm offers a five-year money-back guarantee in case of problems.

Sounds feasible, but then what doesn’t these days? Goodman joins Paddle 8, Artnet, Auctionata, eBay, and Sotheby’s in trying to reinvent the online auction game (and I think I’m probably forgetting a few).

The Met May Do a Jean Pigozzi Collection Show at the Breuer Building →

EZRA STOLLER/ESTO/WIKIMEDIA

In this month’s Vanity Fair, Bob Colacello tackles the competition for influence between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and there’s a lot of fun gossip there (like the idea that Glenn Lowry is among the candidates to run Sotheby’s)!

One of the more interesting ones from the section that discusses the Met’s plans for the Breuer building, which was vacated by the Whitney Museum last year and will begin hosting Met programming in March of 2016:

“One possible future show at the Breuer: Jean Pigozzi’s Contemporary African Art Collection juxtaposed with the Met’s extensive historical African holdings.”

This information seems to come from Pigozzi himself, the wealthy investor and art patron, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue! The article says he’s close with Sheena Wagstaff, the Met’s chairman of the department of modern and contemporary art, whom he knows from the Tate Modern, where she was formerly chief curator.

There’s only a summary of the story online at the moment, but the issue seems to be out so snag a copy if you want to read more.

In What Hollywood Films Does Art Play a Starring Role? →

Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), his best friend, and girlfriend visit the Art Institute of Chicago.
Still from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Going to the cinema can be as profound and pleasurable as going to see an art exhibition. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll happen on a film that prominently features a work of art. We've collected our favorite Hollywood movies that are not about artists or art, but have art embedded into their story lines. Our list spans from blockbuster hits to cult classics, so, as with any great museum, there should be something here for everyone to enjoy.

1. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
John Hughes's 1980s classic film stars Matthew Broderick. The coming-of-age movie follows high school senior Ferris Bueller, who decides to skip school to hang out with his girlfriend and best friend. The film features the friends visiting several Chicago landmarks, including a trip to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Most Memorable Scene: Broderick singing "Twist and Shout" on a parade float.

2. Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Wes Anderson's idiosyncratic cinematic style and creative bravado have made his films instant cult classics. His latest, The Grand Budapest, stars Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H., a much-loved and loyal hotel concierge who is framed for the murder of a wealthy woman (played by Tilda Swinton). She bequeaths a valuable painting, titled Boy with Apple, to Gustave H., which in turn enrages her family, who seek to bring him to justice.

Spoiler Alert: The secret to his innocence lies in an envelope concealed in the painting.

3. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Starring Jude Law, Matt Damon, and Gwyneth Paltrow, this psychological thriller has all the plot characteristics of an entertaining movie: sex, intrigue, identity-theft, murder, wealth, and glamour—need we say more? There's also an art angle. Spoiler alert: Philip Seymour Hoffman's character gets offed by Damon with a heavy marble bust. Although the film doesn't feature any famous artworks per se, films in which artworks are used as deadly weapons are woefully rare.

Fun Fact: The book series the movie is based on has a sequel in which the title character is involved in an art forgery scheme.

4. Titanic (1997)
Not only does Leonardo Di Caprio famously sketch Kate Winslet in the nude, but Winslet's character, Rose, and her wealthy fiancé (played by Billy Zane, who is now a successful artist), have an extensive art collection which they bring aboard the RMS Titanic's maiden voyage, including works by Picasso and Degas.

Fun Fact: Titanic was the highest grossing film of all time until 2009, when James Cameron (its director) released Avatar.

5. Midnight in Paris (2011)
Woody Allen's time travel comedy stars Owen Wilson as Gil Pender, a successful but unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter who travels to Paris with his fiancé and her conservative family. One night Gil gets drunk and lost in the streets of Paris, where he is picked up by a vintage car that allows him to travel back in time to meet artists including Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas.

Fun Fact: One of the posters for Midnight in Paris shows Gil wandering along the Seine under the starlit and windswept sky from Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.

6. RocknRolla (2008)
Guy Ritchie's gangster film has a star-studded cast with Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Idris Elba, Mark Strong, Thandie Newton, and Tom Hardy. A seemingly done deal involving a British mob boss and a billionaire Russian businessman starts to unravel as a corrupt accountant, the mob boss's son, some small-time crooks, and the Russian billionaire's favorite painting (one the audience never gets to see) get thrown into the mix.

Best Scene: When exchanging confidential information about a robbery, Thandie Newton and Gerard Butler have a dance off.

7. Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuarón's Oscar-nominated sci-fi drama starring Clive Owen, Michael Caine, and Julianne Moore is set in a dystopian future where women have become infertile. Major artworks such as Picasso's Guernica, Michelangelo's David, and Banksy's British Cops Kissing all make cameos in a scene when Owen's character visits his cousin in the city's art conservancy and archive, "Ark of the Arts" which is the real life Tate Modern.

Fun Fact: Cuarón, will be honored at MoMA at its annual film benefit gala next month.

8. The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Everyone loves a good art heist film, especially if it stars heartthrob Pierce Brosnan and leading lady, Rene Russo. A remake of the original, which stars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, the 1999 film revolves around the theft of Claude Monet's San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. (The painting actually belongs to Wales's National Museum Cardiff.)

Bonus: The film also very cleverly weaves a master forger and René Magritte's famous painting The Son of Man into its plot.

9. Great Expectations (1998)
Ethan Hawke, Robert de Niro, and Gwyneth Paltrow star in the film modernization, also directed by Alfonso Cuarón, of Charles Dickens's beloved tale of an orphan boy, his unrequited love, and his rise to fortune. Hawke's character, Finnegan Bell, becomes a wildly successful artist in New York City, thanks to the help of an ex-convict he helped as a child (de Niro).

Fun Fact: The art that was supposedly painted by Hawke's character in the film is actually work by Italian contemporary artist Francesco Clemente.

10. Robocop (2014)
This big-budget remake of the 1987 film about a powerful cyborg cop haunted by his memories is not very good. But it makes our list because the villain, played Michael Keaton, does have some great art in his office. The first scene set in his futuristic headquarters shows a triptych by Francis Bacon hanging on the wall. In later scenes the Bacon has been replaced by Jon Rafman's digitally sculpted busts from his "New Age Demanded" series.

Fun Fact: Bacon's triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud was sold for $142,405,000 at Christie's in 2013, setting a new record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Picasso's Granddaughter Is Selling $290 Million Worth of His Art →

Marina Picasso. Photo: courtesy AFP.

A new cache of Pablo Picasso works from the personal collection of his granddaughter, Marina Picasso, said to be worth $290 million, are about to hit the market, reports the New York Post's Page Six.

Among the seven pieces allegedly for sale is a 1923 portrait of Marina's grandmother, Picasso's first wife, Olga Khokhlova. Titled Portrait de femme (Olga), it is thought to be worth $60 million. Dating from 1905 through 1965, the works being offered are also thought to include Maternité (1921), valued at about $54 million, and Femme a la Mandoline (Mademoiselle Leonie assie) 1911, worth roughly $60 million.

The artist's granddaughter was perhaps testing the waters for a potential sale when she presented a suite of his drawings and ceramics at a non-selling exhibition at Sotheby's Paris last spring. The auction house will not be involved this time around, however, as Marina has opted to sell the works directly, personally meeting in Geneva with interested parties.

Marina Picasso at her grandfather's Cannes villa, La Californie. Photo: courtesy AFP.

Also for sale is “La Californie," the Cannes villa Marina inherited from her grandfather, who lived there with his second wife, Jacqueline Roque. In recent years, the villa has become a museum and gallery dedicated to Picasso. In 2013, Marina presented "Picasso: Nudity Set Free," mostly made up of pieces from her personal collection, at the home.

Though Marina has certainly benefited from her grandfather's career as an adult, she has readily condemned the artist, who she alleges neglected her family when she was a child living on the brink of poverty. In 2001, she published Picasso: My Grandfather, which claimed that the painter “drove everyone who got near him to despair and engulfed them," and that her inheritance was “given without love." Marina's brother committed suicide, allegedly after Roque barred him from attending Picasso's funeral.

According to a friend of Marina's who spoke to Page Six, the upcoming sale “is about letting go of the past."

Introduction to Japanese Calligraphy →

Gyokusen-jo Via Google

The art of writing, or calligraphy, as it is commonly known, is an ancient art form that originated in East Asia. Today, many of us are familiar with the calligraphy of Japan; therefore, this article intends on outlining the provenance of that particular artistic sect in addition to describing its idiosyncrasies. 

Japanese calligraphy owes much of its existence to the Chinese. In the twenty-eight century BC, Chinese officials began to use pictographs as a means of record-keeping. Prior to this, the said characters were for religious purposes. As the need for a standardized method of archiving became apparent, Li Si, the prime minister during the Qin Dynasty, created a set of rules for calligraphic writing. The rules are as follows: 
 

• The script must be based on squares of uniform size and shape.
• All characters must be able to be written from eight strokes.
• Horizontal strokes are written first.
• The script is to be written from left to right and top to bottom.

This system worked out fairly well, as the method for writing was largely based upon the ideal of scraping a sharp object against another, softer object in order to leave a mark. However, many of Li Si's guidelines were ignored when paper, brush, and ink came into widespread use. While the block form and eight strokes method were retained, the writer was now able to express himself through the use of curves and graceful form. It was around this time that the Chinese brought paper, and the art of calligraphy, with them to Japan. 

As time progressed, Japan refined the Chinese style into something that was uniquely their own. Few works from the early times of the art are still in existence; many were destroyed during the Tang Dynasty's rule during the seventh century. However, some copies have survived; these include works by Wang Xizhi, a Chinese man who is referred to as the 'Sage of Calligraphy' because his bold style has had such a great influence on modern calligraphic technique. 

Like many other arts, Japanese Calligraphy had its own so-called Golden Age; this is when a particular art form flourishes, and many advances are made in its methodology. From 794 to 1185, Japanese calligraphers vigorously worked to shed off the Chinese techniques, but Wang Xizhi's remained the authoritative figure during the time. That is not to say that no progress was made, however, because the now traditional Japanese style of calligraphic writing emerged under the reign of one Emperor Saga. An 'assistant' of his said the following: “China is a large country and Japan is relatively small, so I suggest writing in a different way.” Before this time, Japanese calligraphers wrote in Chinese for the most part, which was not very convenient. Soon, this new style of writing was used for official record-keeping and became the primary writing style taught at calligraphy schools. 

As the Golden Age came to a close, the Japanese government was largely taken over by a military regime. Despite this, the arts continued to flourish. New, much less rigid styles of writing developed, and calligraphy became appreciated as an art form by the masses. Two-hundred and fifty years of peace followed; this time is known as the Edo period. A policy developed in which the country isolated itself from outside influences; this allowed the previously conceived forms of calligraphy to mature into their own. During the middle of this time, the Japanese government relaxed the rules regarding isolation, and various forms of Japanese calligraphy were exported around the world, thus introducing the art to Western cultures. 

Today, calligraphy is still a thriving art form. The basics of the art are taught in elementary schools, and students may continue with it if they choose upon reaching high school. Also, some universities offer programs in calligraphy so that the handicraft can continue on to future generations. All in all, calligraphy is a unique East Asian art with a relatively simple history. The art has and will continue to fascinate people from around the globe, and offers a rich view into the culture of traditional Japan.

Art forever changed by World War I →

A scene from “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930. (Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures)

Along with millions of idealistic young men who were cut to pieces by machine guns and obliterated by artillery shells, there was another major casualty of World War I: traditional ideas about Western art.

The Great War of 1914-18 tilted culture on its axis, particularly in Europe and the United States. Nearly 100 years later, that legacy is being wrestled with in film, visual art, music, television shows like the gauzily nostalgic PBS soaper "Downton Abbey" and plays including the Tony Award-winning"War Horse," concluding its run at the Ahmanson Theatre.

"It created an epoch in art," said Leo Braudy, a USC professor of English and author of "From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity." "The question is, what was on one side and what was on the other?"

The simple answer as to what lay on the near side of World War I is Modernism, that slippery but indispensable term denoting a wide range of new sensibilities and aesthetic responses to the industrial age. Modernism took shape decades before World War I, but its clamorous arrival was vastly accelerated by the greatest collective trauma in history to that point.

From the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and John Dos Passos to the savagely critical paintings and etchings of George Grosz and Otto Dix, World War I reshaped the notion of what art is, just as it forever altered the perception of what war is. Although World War II racked up more catastrophic losses in blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of the modern age, not only politically but also culturally.

"Of all the wars, that is the one that seems to explain us best," said Michael Morpurgo, the English author of the novel "War Horse," about a Devonshire farm boy's death-defying bond with his noble steed Joey, on which the National Theatre of GreatBritain'sproduction is based.

Particularly in his country, he said, World War I resonates louder than the even greater cataclysm that followed it 20 years later. "The First World War for British people is very much a part of who we are," Morpurgo said during a visit to Los Angeles. "It's so deep in us; the poetry, the stories, the loss, the suffering is there in every village churchyard."

During and after World War I, flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles. In visual art, Surrealists and Expressionists devised wobbly, chopped-up perspectives and nightmarish visions of fractured human bodies and splintered societies slouching toward moral chaos.

"The whole landscape of the Western Front became surrealistic before the term surrealism was invented by the soldier-poet Guillaume Apollinaire," Modris Eksteins wrote in "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age."

Throughout Western art, the grim realities of industrial warfare led to a backlash against the propaganda and grandiose nationalism that had sparked the conflagration. Cynicism toward the ruling classes and disgust with war planners and profiteers led to demands for art forms that were honest and direct, less embroidered with rhetoric and euphemism.

"Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates," Ernest Hemingway wrote in "A Farewell to Arms," his 1929 novel based on his experiences in the Italian campaign.

Other artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922).

In "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell argued that the rise of irony as a dominant mode of modern understanding "originates largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War."

Irony and dissonant humor permeated the music of classical composers such as Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, a pacifist who parodied marching-band pomposity in his Piano Concert in D. In his 1989 film "War Requiem," based on Britten's non-liturgical Mass, British director Derek Jarman suggested a parallel between the indifferent slaughter of World War I and the neglect of AIDS-infected young men in the 1980s.

Bargue Plate I, 23 - Man's arm, bent Timelapse Video →

Did You Know? →

Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666.

Our modern understanding of light and color begins with Isaac Newton (1642-1726) and a series of experiments that he publishes in 1672. He is the first to understand the rainbow he refracts white light with a prism, resolving it into its component colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

This circular diagram became the model for many color systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. Claude Boutet’s painter’s circle of 1708 was probably the first to be based on Newton’s circle.

Introduction to Cityscape →

Within the context of art, a cityscape is a work that showcases aspects of cities. It is often known as the urban equivalent of a landscape. Cityscapes are reflected by such mediums as paintings, etchings, drawings, or even photographs. Cityscapes are differentiated by town or village scenes that are less urban in nature. Cityscapes reflect various aspects of cities including (but not limited to) buildings, urban parks, city skylines, and city streets. 

The city in art has a long history. Some early works date to ancient Rome, for example.  The Baths of Trajan, for instance, depict a bird's-eye view of the city. Cityscapes were also created during the Middle Ages; however, these works often served as backgrounds for views of portraits. By the seventeenth century, cityscapes became a celebrated genre of art, particularly in the Netherlands. A famed work from this era is the View of Delft painted by Johannes Vermeer between 1660 and 1661. Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem were also featured during this period. 

During the eighteenth century, cityscapes became popular in many other European nations, especially in the Italian city of Venice. Some of the most celebrated cityscapes date to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, groups like the Impressionists experimented with new techniques to showcase views of the city. The common thread between the various artistic genres in cityscape works is the representation of the city's physical aspects. 

The cityscape as a popular genre declined considerably during the nineteenth century as more abstract and works of modernity took center stage. Even so, some modern artists continued to reflect the city in their works. A few celebrated painters like Edward Hopper continued to incorporate cityscape elements into their works. Some contemporary artists focus on the city as the subject matter of their art today. For instance, Stephen Wiltshire is known for his panoramic city views. The artist Yvonne Jacquette is celebrated for her aerial cityscapes. 

The cityscape genre has been favored by many historic painters during their era such as Alfred Sisley, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Giovanni Canaletto, and John Atkinson Grimshaw. While there is a plethora of world-renowned cityscape works collected by museums today, some particularly celebrated works include City by the Sea (c.1335 A.D.) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti; Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877) by Gustave Caillbotte; and Moscow (1911) by Mikhail Belyaevsky. Although cityscape paintings have declined in popularity during the past century, photographic cityscapes have become a popular genre of the art form.