Fauvism is the style of les Fauves, French for "the wild beasts". The leaders of the movement, Henri Matisse and André Derain, emphasized vivid expressionism and unnatural use of color over representational or realistic values.

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night while undergoing treatment at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France. Forbidden by the hospital staff to paint his bedroom, he painted the view from his bedroom window no fewer than twenty-one times at different times of day and under various weather conditions, including sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. "Through the iron-barred window," he wrote to his brother in 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory."

Peaches symbolizing immortality (or the wish for a long and healthy life) are a common symbol in Chinese art. The Taoist god of longevity, Shoulao, is often depicted holding a peach, and Xiwangmu, the queen of immortals, is said to grow peaches in her garden.

In 2002, Chris Henshilwood discovered a piece of ochre decorated with a delicate geometric pattern in Blombos Cave on the southern Cape coast. He dated the piece conservatively at 77,000 years old; in fact, it could be as much as 100,000 years old.

Seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art, Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life. Even the labeling on the outside of a shipping box containing food items for retail has been used as subject matter in pop art, as demonstrated by Andy Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box.

Rococo developed in the early 18th century in Paris, France as a reaction against the grandeur, symmetry, and strict regulations of the Baroque. It was ornate and used light colors, asymmetrical designs, curves, and often had playful themes, but the style has endured harsh rhetoric from some critics who characterize it as superficial and of poor taste.

In 1908, Edwin Austin Abbey began an ambitious program of murals and other artworks for the newly completed Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. These included allegorical medallion murals for the dome of the Rotunda, four large lunette murals beneath the dome, and multiple works for the House and Senate Chambers. He was working on the Reading of the Declaration of Independence mural in early 1911, when he was diagnosed with cancer. Abbey died in August 1911, leaving two rooms of the commission unfinished.

The marble slab that eventually became Michelangelo's sculpture of David originally belonged to an artist named Agostino di Duccio, who planned to turn it into a statue of Hercules. 10 years after di Duccio abandoned his sculpture, another artist attempted to work with it, but found the marble too difficult. Finally, in 1501, Michelangelo began his famous sculpture.

Technically, there are five separate versions of Edvard Munch's most famous work, The Scream -- four paintings and a lithograph stone from which as many as 45 prints were made before the stone was destroyed by the printer who wanted it for a new motif.

When it was first exhibited in 1916, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon), Picasso's abstract depiction of five Barcelona prostitutes, was deemed immoral by the public. A reviewer in Le Cri de Paris wrote: "The Cubists are not waiting for the war to end to recommence hostilities against good sense. They are exhibiting at the Galerie Poiret naked women whose scattered parts are represented in all four corners of the canvas: here an eye, there an ear, over there a hand, a foot on top, a mouth below. M. Picasso, their leader, is possibly the least disheveled of the lot. He has painted, or rather daubed, five women who are, if the truth be told, all hacked up." Today, this proto-Cubist work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and Modern art.