From medieval psalters to the oils of Gustave Courbet, the Louvre has organized one of the most comprehensive surveys of a cultural motif that is both beguiling and timely.

The fool becomes an artist. Through this newfound vocation –memorably captured in Gustave Courbet’s Man Mad With Fear – the fool regains the power of the powerless: the power of perceptiveness.

The Dallas Museum of Art has a painting by Gustave Courbet, one of the most influential French artists from the 19th century. Courbet led the realism movement, abandoning the romantic painters and ...