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2 weeks ago | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
As much as you may enjoy a night in with a book, you might not look so eagerly forward to it if that book comprised 314 folios of 1,971 papal letters and other documents relating to ecclesiastical law, all from the thirteenth century. Indeed, even many specialists in the field would hesitate to take on the challenge of such a manuscript in full.
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1 month ago | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece of grotesquerie, The Garden of Earthly Delights, contains a young God, Adam and Eve, oversized fruits and musical instruments, owls, tortured sinners, something called a “tree man” whose body contains an entire tavern, a defecating avian devil eating a human being, and “frolicking, oblivious figures engaged in all sorts of carnal pleasures,” as art historian Beth Harris puts it in the new Smarthistory video above.
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1 month ago | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Before his fateful entry into politics, Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Even to the most neutral imaginable observer, the known examples of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 paintings and other works of art he produced in his early adulthood would hardly evidence astonishing genius. They do show a certain technical competence, especially where buildings are concerned.
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1 month ago | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scrutiny ever since. If the public’s appetite to know more about it has diminished over time, that certainly isn’t reflected in the view count of the analysis from YouTube channel Rabbit Hole above, which as of this writing has crossed the 2.5 million mark. So has this video on Las Meninas from Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter.
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2 months ago | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Brian Eno was thinking about the purpose of art a decade ago, as evidenced by his 2015 John Peel Lecture (previously featured here on Open Culture). But he was also thinking about it three decades ago, as evidenced by A Year with Swollen Appendices, his diary of the year 1995 published by Faber & Faber.
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Jan 17, 2025 | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Image by Sasha Kargaltsev via Wikimedia CommonsAs every cinephile has by now heard, and lamented, we’ve just lost a great American filmmaker. From Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s features will surely continue to bewilder and inspire generation after generation of aspiring young auteurs.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Bob Ross the man died nearly thirty years ago, but Bob Ross the archetypal TV painter has never been more widely known. “With his distinctive hair, gentle voice, and signature expressions such as ‘happy little trees,’ he’s an enduring icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020.
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Dec 26, 2024 | 
shorturl.at | Joseph Kellard |In ART
A Norfolk Western 1218 locomotive emerges from a hazy, sage-green landscape painted on a three-story brick building in downtown Roanoke. The mural, titled “Nature Train,” features two tall trees shedding leaves, along with a squirrel and vines clinging to what was the world’s most powerful historic steam locomotive built by the railroad, now the Norfolk Southern, based in this city of southwest Virginia.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have learned about biology and technology. But certain specimens roaming around in the world can blur that line — and in the curious case of the Strandbeesten, they really are roaming around. First assembled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strandbeest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-powered kinetic sculpture designed to “walk” around the seaside in an organic-looking fashion.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
openculture.com | Colin Marshall |In ART
As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes mainly, of course, to A Christmas Carol, and even more so to its many adaptations, most of which draw inspiration from not just its text but also its illustrations. That 1843 novella was just the first of five books he wrote with the holiday as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain.
