1. Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888. The name describes the technique of cloisonné, where wires (cloisons or “compartments”) are soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass, and then fired. Many of the same painters also described their works as Synthetism a closely related movement. The Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin is often cited as a quintessential cloisonnist work. Gauguin reduced the image to areas of single colors separated by heavy black outlines. In such works he paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of color — two of the most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. (Wikipedia)

2. Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Canada. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. “Les Automatistes” were so called because they were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism. Members included Marcel Barbeau, Roger Fauteux, Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, and others. The group gained recognition and were exhibited in Paris and New York. Though it began as a visual arts group, it also spread to other forms of expression, such as drama, poetry and dance. (Wikipedia)

3. On December 8, 1980, famed American photographer Annie Leibovitz was sent to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono and created the now famous Lennon nude curled around a fully clothed Ono.  Several hours after the photo shoot, Lennon was shot and killed. The photograph ran on the cover of Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue in January, 1981 and in 2005 was named best magazine cover from the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

4. Papier Collé (pasted paper) is a specific form of collage that is closer to drawing than painting. The Cubist painter Georges Braque first used it when he drew on imitation wood-grain paper that had been pasted onto white paper. Both Braque and Pablo Picasso made a number of papiers collés in the last three months of 1912 and in early 1913, with Picasso substituting the wood-grain paper favoured by Braque with pages from the newspaper Le Journal in an attempt to introduce the reality of everyday life into the pictures.  (Tate)

5. Revolutionary Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was infamous for his unruly life.  He was known for brawling and was arrested and imprisoned numerous times. In May of 1606, Caravaggio killed (possibly by accident) a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni.  Wanted for murder, he fled Rome for Naples. In 1610, believing he would be pardoned for his crime, he began his journey back to Rome but never made it. Carvaggio’s death is the subject of much debate. No body was found and there were several accounts of his death including a religious assassination and malaria.