arts

The Odyssey describes Odysseus's ten-year journey home after the Trojan War.

Hans Christian Andersen, a Danish author, wrote The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and The Emperor's New Clothes.

William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917, established by the will of Joseph Pulitzer.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating to ancient Mesopotamia, is among the oldest surviving works of literature.

Vinyl record sales have seen a significant resurgence since the 2000s, with sales exceeding CD sales in some markets by 2022.

Bob Marley brought Jamaican reggae to a global audience and remains a cultural icon decades after his 1981 death.

Art Deco was an influential decorative arts style of the 1920s and 1930s emphasizing geometric forms and modern materials.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and the 1812 Overture among many other works.

The Renaissance Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco was painted by Michelangelo, while The Last Judgment behind the altar was added by him later between 1536 and 1541.

Wassily Kandinsky is widely credited with painting the first purely abstract work around 1910 to 1913.

The Louvre Museum in Paris is the world's most visited art museum.

Edvard Munch's painting The Scream was created in multiple versions starting in 1893.

Jackson Pollock was an American abstract expressionist known for his drip painting technique.

Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the Pop art movement of the 1960s.

Auguste Rodin's The Thinker, originally cast in 1880, is among the most recognized sculptures in the world.

Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting and is well known for his Water Lilies series.

The 19th-century Romantic movement in arts and literature emphasized emotion, imagination, and individualism.

The Grimm Brothers collected and published German folk tales starting in 1812 in Children's and Household Tales.

Toni Morrison's Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.

The Iliad recounts events of the Trojan War, traditionally attributed to Homer in the 8th century BCE.

The recorded music industry has been transformed by streaming services like Spotify, launched in 2008.

Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused a famous riot at its 1913 premiere in Paris.

Frederic Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who lived from 1810 to 1849.

Henri Matisse co-founded Fauvism with Andre Derain in the early 20th century.

Bauhaus was a German art school operating from 1919 to 1933, hugely influential on modern architecture and design.

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal signed and dated 1917 'R. Mutt 1917,' is among the most influential works of 20th-century art.

Mary Cassatt was an American Impressionist painter who lived much of her life in France and was the only American officially associated with the Impressionists.

Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist known particularly for his paintings and sculptures of dancers.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a leading French Impressionist painter known for vibrant scenes of leisure and intimacy.

Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist known for politically charged stenciled graffiti.

Georgia O'Keeffe was an American modernist artist known for her paintings of enlarged flowers and New Mexico landscapes.

Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist known for striking and bizarre images, such as The Persistence of Memory.

Vincent van Gogh produced over 2,100 artworks, including approximately 860 oil paintings, in just over a decade.

Shakespeare's collected plays comprise approximately 39 works traditionally divided into comedies, histories, and tragedies.

Hamlet, written by Shakespeare around 1600, is one of the most-quoted works in the English language.

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512.

Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque in the early 20th century.

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, including the Ninth, which contains the Ode to Joy choral finale.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer of the Baroque period who lived from 1685 to 1750.

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, published in serial form from 1865 to 1869, is a landmark of 19th-century Russian literature.

James Joyce's Ulysses was first published in book form in 1922.

The Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960 and disbanded in 1970.

Michael Jackson's Thriller, released in 1982, is one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Christopher Wren designed the rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral in London after the Great Fire of 1666.

Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath of the Italian Renaissance, lived from 1452 to 1519.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her self-portraits and works inspired by Mexican folk culture.

The painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a master of the Dutch Golden Age, living from 1606 to 1669.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed more than 600 works, including symphonies, concertos, operas, and chamber music.

William Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet who lived from 1564 to 1616.

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615 and is widely considered the first modern novel.

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, generally dated between 1503 and 1519, now in the Louvre.

Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889 while at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in France.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific composer of the Classical era who lived from 1756 to 1791.

Jane Austen's six major novels include Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816).

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment was first published in 1866.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published in 1967.

Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia and recovered in 1913.

Vinyl LP records, introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, played at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute.

Auto-Tune, introduced by Antares Audio Technologies in 1997, is a software tool for pitch correction in audio recordings.

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was released in 1975 and is considered one of the most iconic rock songs ever recorded.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are foundational epic poems of ancient Greek literature.

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy was completed in 1320 and is a landmark of Italian and world literature.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th century, is a foundational work of English literature.

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1884.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published in 1949.

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955.

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published in the United Kingdom in 1997.

Toni Morrison won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ernest Hemingway won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Symphonies generally consist of multiple movements, often four, and are typically performed by an orchestra.

Opera combines vocal and instrumental music with drama and originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century.

Jazz originated in the African American communities of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The blues, an African American musical form developed in the late 19th century, profoundly influenced jazz, rock, and other genres.

Hip-hop emerged in the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s and has become one of the most influential global music genres.

The Rolling Stones, formed in London in 1962, are one of the most enduring rock bands in history.

Aretha Franklin, known as the Queen of Soul, won 18 Grammy Awards across her career.