With New Year’s Eve festivities approaching, you might be wanting to go a little farther than noise makers and confetti. In that case, we’ve got some arty party ideas. Don’t panic! Whether it’s a little get together at your place or something fancy somewhere huge, you can always just shamelessly replicate one of Dalí’s storied shin-dings or take creative influence from a particularly jubilant Aubrey Beardsley rendering. Here’s a little brainstorm of famous artist parties to get you started.

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A patron of the arts as well as a visionary bookseller, George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare & Company, the legendary English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris, died this week at age 98. Writers flocked to his shop to browse, mingle, and even spend the night. To honor Whitman’s legacy, we decided to take a look at Shakespeare & Company, as well as several other storied haunts of artists, writers, poets and other intellectuals, from cafés to bookstores to hotels. Click through to check out our list, and let us know which currently happening spot you think will become the next artist hangout of legend in the comments. Read More »

What happens when an artist drops his brush or a photographer lowers his camera to pose for a portrait by a colleague? We investigated and found a snap of a young Nan Goldin, pre-fame and sans blouse, Francis Bacon’s face deconstructed by the strokes of Lucian Freud, and Picasso romping around in a big blond wig for Brassaï. Often starkly casual peeks, these portraits are brimming with a friendly intimacy and professional camaraderie. Take a look at some of our favorite cultural figures as models in the slide show. Read More »

When established artists decided to lend their talent to the music world, the creations that result from the collision of egos and imaginations are often mind blowing. From Pablo Picasso’s costumes for an avant garde ballet by Erik Satie to Andy Warhol’s management of the Velvet Underground, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite artist and musician collaborations. How did Salvador Dalí and Alice Cooper meet? How did the world survive? Read on to find out and drop us a comment if you think we missed any biggies. Read More »

When we saw these amazing shots of Pablo Picasso’s light drawings, collected from LIFE, over at How to Be a Retronaut, we were — pardon our pun — dazzled. Creating these types of light paintings isn’t anything new, of course, and we’ve seen work much more technically impressive in recent years, but who better to work in such a representative, expressive form than the master of shape and color himself? His creations, though not precise by any means, are fiercely evocative, appearing as if bulbous sprites or glowing ghosts conjured easily from Picasso’s magical hands, and we see more than a flicker of the brilliant painter in the shining forms. Click through to see ten brilliant photographs of Picasso painting with light, and let us know which one you like best in the comments. All photos by Gjon Mili. Read More »

Visual effects artist Lena Gieseke (who was previous married to Tim Burton) created a 3-D video of Picasso’s Guernica — the 1937 anti-war painting that symbolized the bombing of the titular northern Spanish town. It was displayed as a mural at the World’s Fair in Paris, and then made a brief tour around the globe — acting as a reminder about the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War (and war in general, really). The monochromatic work takes on a new life in Gieseke’s three-minute exploration through the landmark piece. Is it strange to see the cubist work of art — which aimed in part to flatten space — made dimensional? Read More »

Whether you’re an artist or an aficionado of the arts, there’s no question that peering into the sketchbooks of lauded virtuosos is a valuable experience. They serve variously as illustrated diaries or catalogs of casual drawings, paintings, and musings — lending a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner thoughts of beloved artists. From a reprint of Frida Kahlo’s diary full of vibrant drawings and writings to the silkscreened lips of Andy Warhol’s portrait subjects to Tim Burton’s sketches, our roundup of adored artists’ sketchbooks is sure to give you some insight into the creative process. Read More »

After running features on the childhood photos of both famous writers and rock stars over the past few weeks, it might seem like we’re a bit youth-obsessed at Flavorwire lately. But we promise that that’s not the case. We just think that there’s something fascinating about images of cultural icons snapped long before they’d become household names. It humanizes them a bit. And so, today we turn our focus on the art world — specifically, some of the most influential talents of the past 100 years. Click through to peep photos of everyone from a dashing young Andy Warhol (pictured here) to a breathtakingly adorable baby Yoko Ono.

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Today at Flavorpill, we met the cat with two faces. We read the true confessions of a Teenage Manic Pixie Dreamgirl who blames her almost ruined sex life on Zooey Deschanel. We were happy to find out that we’re not the only ones who are completely obsessed with Inspector Spacetime. We visually compared hammer pants with hipsters and discovered that they have more in common than you might think. We wished that Caddyshack‘s Carl Spackler was really getting his own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor. We tried to imagine a time before camera phones. We took a photo tour of the many, beautiful homes of Pablo Picasso. We checked out the latest Banksy-inspired work from New York-based street artist, Hanksy. We listened to a new song from Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij. We were impressed by Amy Poehler’s ability to morph into different characters. We learned how some of our favorite sketch groups came up with their names. And finally, we were surprised to see that “How Do You Talk To An Angel” topped Billboard’s list of the highest-charting TV show theme songs since 1980. Did anyone you know even watch The Heights?

For his latest visual trick, Switzerland-born, New York- and Zurich-based artist Olaf Breuning has transformed a group of nude gals and fellas into crude and alluring representations of seminal 20th-century artists using body paint, DIY props, and humor. The Art Freaks include all-stars like Andy Warhol slathered with chrome-colored paint and adorned with bananas and Takashi Murakami’s character Kiki, wearing nothing but pink and a cardboard psychedelic anime headdress. A few paint jobs mimic the style of these artists — we imagine that Ms. Jackson Pollock was splattered in much the same way the painter himself had splattered his canvases. Others channel and simplify complex internal themes, like the grand Maman spider sculpture series as a paint-doodle on the bare chest of Louise Bourgeois. Presented as a series of “larger than life-size” photographs at NYC’s Metro Pictures Gallery starting September 23, the images “conflate the tropes of so-called high and low artistic techniques as they discuss notions of kitsch, cliché, and reproduction.” Also, they’re just damn fun! Enjoy.

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