An International Legacy of Art & Artists

From modern masters to contemporary icons, we license exceptional creativity.

License Modern Masters

Beginning in the mid 19th century, many artists started to shift their artistic focus away from a concern for an accurate or naturalistic depiction of their subjects and began to emphasize the visual sensation that these subjects induced within them. Although we may take this for granted today, the idea of creating art born from feeling rather than fidelity was entirely radical. This group of the “Avant-Garde” advanced the practices and ideas of art by continually challenging what constituted acceptable artistic form. In short, Modernism and its pioneering members forever changed the landscape of art, and every subsequent movement owes its artistic freedoms and liberties to the invention of Modern Art.

HENRI MATISSE
JOAN MIRÓ
PABLO PICASSO
FRIDA KAHLO
JACOB LAWRENCE
MARC CHAGALL
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

License Outsider Art

In 1969, the famed French painter Jean Dubuffet coined the term ‘Art Brut,’ or ‘raw art.’ Within the next decade, the movement would become known as “Outsider Art.” Outsider Artists typically have no formal training, and many express their turning to the vocation as an answer to a higher calling spurred by some revelatory moment akin to a religious experience. Driven by an unflinching creative intensity as well as a talent for rousing humanity’s deepest desires and fears, Outsider Art often concerns itself with themes of light and darkness, war, introversion and isolation. Outsider Artists are frequently noted for their creation of exceptionally imaginative and personal characters who reappear in their oeuvre.

License Contemporary Art

Contemporary art is the art of today. Contemporary art is often centered around complex issues that shape our diverse, global, and rapidly changing world. ARS represents scores of contemporary and emerging artists, many of whom are enthusiastic about being active collaborators, using their reach to promote products, and even creating novel works or one-of-a-kind collector’s pieces for collaborating brands.

SHANTELL MARTIN
HUNT SLONEM
DUKE RILEY
AMOAKO BOAFO
BO BARTLETT
RYAN MCGINNESS
ELIZABETH COLOMBA
ANISH KAPOOR
MICKALENE THOMAS

License Surrealist Art

Surrealism emerged as an Avant-Garde movement in the aftermath of WWI. The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Much influenced by Freudian, dream-like juxtapositions of disparate elements, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in everyday life. The Surrealists’ impulse to tap into the unconscious mind, and their interests in myths and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements. The style remains extremely influential today.

License Abstract Expressionism

The term “Abstract Expressionism” was applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world. Although influenced by Surrealism, it went beyond that movement in eschewing representation and extolling the abstract. Stylistically, the movement has been defined as the actual, or perceived, spontaneity of creation, and the preoccupation with the expression of the ‘unconscious.’

License Color Field Art

Color Field Painting is an off-shoot of Abstract Expressionism that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s out of the attempts of several artists to devise a modern, mythic art. Seeking an artistic expression that would allow them to connect with primordial emotions and express a yearning for transcendence and the infinite, Color Field painters abandoned all suggestion of figuration. Indeed, Color Field is primarily defined by its exploitation of the expressive power of color, deployed in large fields that seek to ‘envelop’ its viewers. Color is freed from any objective context and becomes the subject itself.

License Pop Art

Pop Art emerged in the United States and the United Kingdom during the mid to late 1950s. Following the popularity of Abstract Expressionism, Pop reintroduced identifiable imagery. Interested in the booming growth and the effects of mass culture, as well as the popularity of media stars and the comic book industry, Pop Artists aimed to blur the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source has remained one of the most influential characteristics of Pop Art to date.

License Conceptual Art

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Conceptual artists produced works that aimed at rejecting the standard ideas of art. Their output often took shape in the form of performances, happenings, and installations. Although the definition of ‘Conceptual Art’ continues to shift, it is most clearly understood as a movement that prizes the ideas or ‘concepts’ involved in the work over traditional aesthetic, technical, or material concerns. Today, much of conceptual art is self-conscious or self-referential, with many conceptual artists using text and language to create art that is about art itself.

Movements