I was asked this question far too many times.

The problem is that the answer to it very much depends on personality and on interests of those who ask that question.

Those who study art or aesthetics will quickly point to Nietzsche’s first work ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, whilst those…

A Russian historian Naum Kleiman, in one of his essays wrote that ‘all great artists in history always came in pairs — Da Vinci came with Michelangelo; Byron came with Shelley; Shostakovich came with Prokofiev.’

Kleiman’s statement can also be applied to books. There are books that also come in…

My art teacher Aleksei Alexandrovich taught, read and wrote about art for twenty-five years, and in all this time he understood nothing about art. …

In one of his short aphorisms, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said:

‘Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.’

For the most of his life the Spanish painter Francisco Goya hit the targets no one else could hit. He…

When The Young Pope’s production team asked permission from the Vatican to film in Sistine Chapel they received a strong refusal.

The Vatican did not tell the reason for…

‘Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it. It made so tremendous an impression on me that when I came out of the studio I started running like a madman and did not stop till I reached my own room.’ …

‘The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.’ ~ Dorothea Lange, American photojournalist

Brazillian photographer Alécio de Andrade spent 39 years photographing visitors in the Louvre. …

... You shall leave everything you love most:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. …