Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had little exposure to visual art as a child. I do remember, though, the day that my lack of knowledge of Claude Monet moved from a bedroom wall to the greater world. We had visited a Monet exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and my father and I had laughed at his paintings. #2 I grew up thinking that Monet was a dull painter, and that he was just decorating items that would make great gifts for my mother. But I was wrong: the Impressionists were actually subversive badasses who transformed visual art forever. #3 The nineteenth century was a tumultuous time in visual culture, and art was no exception. The first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism, which was all swoony and obsessed with portraying the extremes of human emotion and natural grandeur. The second half of the century was dominated by Realism, which depicted the real world. #4 The Academy in Moscow was the center of Academic art, which was based on the intense study of Classical Greco-Roman sculpture and inspired by the idealization of the human form. Artists were encouraged to think grandly in their subject matter.