@culturaltutor
The Danger of Minimalist Design
(& the death of detail)
A short thread...
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All threads by @culturaltutor@culturaltutorThis isn't an attack on capital M Minimalism, which is a conscious design movement.
Like the Minimalist music of the composer Philip Glass, which is frankly beautiful.
Read more@culturaltutorAncient people knew the earth was round.
And about 2,240 years ago a man called Eratosthenes calculated its circumference within 1% of the correct figure... with a stick.
1.4Kreplies21.3KRetweets247.3KLikes29.8MViews @culturaltutorThe polymath Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) was born in Cyrene, in modern-day Libya, and after studying in Athens went to Alexandria, in Egypt, a flourishing city and a centre of scholarship.
There, under King Ptolemy's patronage, Eratosthenes ran the famous Library of Alexandria.
Read more@culturaltutorIndia is home to some of the most beautiful and diverse architecture in the world. Here's just a few of the best:
Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (1799)
1.1Kreplies19.4KRetweets229.8KLikes23.1MViews @culturaltutorWhy Beauty Matters
(and how it has been destroyed by "usability")
A short thread...
1.2Kreplies30.4KRetweets155.4KLikesViews @culturaltutorI want to make clear that this thread isn't about returning to the past.
This is strictly about the future.
But we shouldn't simply accept things because "that's the way there are."
The past teaches us that we can do better.
Read more@culturaltutorGirl with a Pearl Earring, painted by Vermeer in 1665, might just be the most famous and beloved portrait in the world.
But who is the girl?
Well, that's the thing. There was no girl, because this isn't a portrait...
924replies13.6KRetweets108KLikesViews @culturaltutorJohannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is one of the greatest painters who ever lived, though in his lifetime he wasn't known beyond his hometown.
He was born in Delft during the Dutch Golden Age, a period of extraordinary cultural, political, and economic flourishing in the Netherlands.
Read more@culturaltutorThe small city of Lugo in northern Spain has a special secret.
It is the only place in the world to have a complete set of intact Roman walls. They were built 2,000 years ago and surround the entire old town.
But how did they survive? That's where it gets interesting...
711replies12.4KRetweets100.4KLikesViews @culturaltutorThe city of Lugo was originally founded as Lucus Augusti in 13 BC.
It was a vital outpost and so in the 3rd century AD the Romans built a huge defensive fortification around the city, over 2,000 metres long and up to 15 metres tall, with over 80 towers.
Read more@culturaltutorWhen people talk about "Gothic architecture" we tend to think of cathedrals and churches.
But the Middle Ages were also full of beautiful town halls, universities, hospitals, and bridges.
So here is a journey through the world of secular Gothic architecture...
334replies11KRetweets100.2KLikesViews @culturaltutorThe word "Gothic" wasn't how people during the Middle Ages referred to their buildings.
It was Renaissance scholars who, with their interest in the architecture of Antiquity, called the Medieval style "Gothic" as a pejorative reference to the Goths who had sacked Rome:
Read more@culturaltutorOne year is exactly 365.2422 days long.
More than two thousand years ago a Greek astronomer called Hipparchus calculated the length of a year to within 0.005 of that figure.
And he didn't even have a telescope...
460replies8.1KRetweets98KLikes11.8MViews @culturaltutorHipparchus was born in Bithynia, a region in the north-west of modern day Turkey, in 190 BC.
We know almost nothing about his life, except that he probably died in Rhodes and may have travelled to Alexandria.
What survives of his work comes down to us from other writers.
Read more@culturaltutorA short history of the world in 13 maps & infographics:
- Everybody alive today compared to everybody who has ever lived
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- How Earth probably looked in the Hadeon Age, just after its formation 4.5 billion years ago
Read more@culturaltutorWhy are the same words spelled differently in American and British English?
1.6Kreplies12.7KRetweets87KLikesViews @culturaltutorBritish and American English have plenty of differences.
Many of them are circumstantial. The words "trainers" and "sneakers", for example, simply developed separately in each country after their invention.
But those famous spelling differences were no such accident of history.
Read more@culturaltutorA guide to the Nine Circles of Hell according to Dante's Inferno.
From the sins that will land you a place in each circle (including astrology and political corruption) to how you'll be punished and who else is already there...
551replies13.7KRetweets82.8KLikes8.3MViews @culturaltutorIt begins in a dark forest at midnight on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, in the year 1300.
Dante is pursued by three beasts - a lion, a leopard, and a wolf - before the ghost of the ancient Roman poet Virgil saves him.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy don't we make interesting drain pipes any more?
1.5Kreplies7.3KRetweets82.6KLikes10MViews @culturaltutorThese slightly wild drain pipes are almost all from the 19th century, and they weren't created by individual artists but mass-produced with cast iron.
Read more@culturaltutorThe letters "ough" can be pronounced at least 8 different ways in English.
How did that happen?!
977replies9.5KRetweets74.5KLikes10.3MViews @culturaltutorEnglish has notoriously strange spelling.
The letters "ea" are pronounced differently in the words bread, break, earth, heart, meat, tear, and... tear.
Horse and worse don't rhyme, but base and bass do, while the word "ghoti" could, technically, be pronounced fish:
Read more@culturaltutorHow to recognise 15 common cloud formations:
326replies8.8KRetweets72.2KLikes7.7MViews @culturaltutor
- Stratus Nebulosus
Low-lying clouds which are flat, hazy, and formless. They may produce light drizzle or snow.
Basically fog which is above ground level.
Read more@culturaltutor16 of the creepiest paintings ever made:
- Saturn Devouring His Son by Peter Paul Rubens (1636)
715replies8.5KRetweets67.9KLikes8.1MViews @culturaltutorExactly 1,602 years ago today the city of Venice was founded.
So here's a thread of some of the most beautiful places in one of the world's most beautiful cities:
497replies7KRetweets63.5KLikes8.9MViews @culturaltutorWhere better to begin than with St. Mark's Basilica, named after and dedicated to the patron saint of the city?
It was built in the 11th century, though many modifications have been made, and features a glorious mixture of Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Baroque architecture.
Read more@culturaltutorNeuschwanstein Castle in Germany is one of the world's most famous and beautiful castles.
But it isn't a real castle: it has central heating, hot water, flushing toilets, telephones, and elevators.
Because Neuschwanstein is actually the world's biggest work of fan fiction...
482replies6KRetweets62.1KLikes9.9MViews Read more@culturaltutorThis two thousand year old statue is called Laocoön and His Sons.
And it's one of the most divisive works of art in history...
444replies5.9KRetweets56.9KLikes8.8MViews @culturaltutorIt depicts a scene from the life of Laocoön, a legendary priest who foresaw that the Trojan horse was a trap.
The gods sent giant serpents to devour him and his sons as punishment for warning his fellow citizens about the deception of the Greeks.
Read more@culturaltutorPelé made Brazil's kit the most famous of any sports team in the world.
But why is it yellow, green, and blue?
It's a story that involves crushing defeat, the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon's sister-in-law, and dragons...
395replies8.6KRetweets54.5KLikes7.4MViews @culturaltutorThe first game ever played by the Brazilian national team was in 1914, against the unlikely opponent of England's Exeter City.
It ended in a 2-0 victory for Brazil.
For the match the Brazilians wore all white, which continued to be their kit colour for the next few decades.
Read more@culturaltutorThis is a sewage pumping station from 1865.
Why did the Victorians build things like that? Were they just confused? Or did they have the right idea?
795replies5.1KRetweets52.5KLikes7.6MViews @culturaltutorThe Victorians built everything: churches and train stations, theatres and public baths, banks and bridges, courts and town halls, museums and castles.
But there was no single Victorian style - they mixed together what had come before and transformed it into something new.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy did M.C. Escher draw this impossible world in 1953?
512replies5.2KRetweets50.6KLikesViews @culturaltutorMaurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was born in the Netherlands and, at first, wanted to be an architect.
That's what he studied before transferring to the decorative arts. Soon enough he moved to Rome, leaving in 1935 and returning via Switzerland and Belgium to his homeland.
Read more@culturaltutorThe Birth of Venus, painted by Sandro Botticelli in 1485, is one of the world's most famous and beloved paintings.
But it was completely forgotten for nearly four hundred years because nobody thought it was any good.
So... what changed?
349replies5.8KRetweets50.4KLikes6.9MViews @culturaltutorAlessandro Filipepi was born in Florence in 1445, just as the Italian Renaissance was bursting into life.
From a young age he showed natural artistic talent and was apprenticed to a goldsmith called Botticelli.
That's where Sandro got the surname he is known by.
Read more@culturaltutorA short thread of photographic firsts...
The first ever underwater photo, taken in 1899 by Louis Boutan:
162replies4.6KRetweets49.8KLikes7.4MViews @culturaltutorWell, it was the first underwater photograph of a person, or one where it's possible to really see anything.
The very first was taken in 1856 by William Thompson:
Read more@culturaltutorVictor Hugo is most famous for writing beloved novels like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
But he was also one of the greatest painters of the 19th century.
And Hugo's art, kept secret until after his death, is unlike anything you've seen before...
282replies7.1KRetweets49.7KLikes6.9MViews @culturaltutorWhen Victor Hugo died in 1885 more than two million people attended his funeral, part of which involved a procession beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
And his legacy has not dimished - Hugo is still regarded as one of the greatest writers in history.
Read more@culturaltutorOn this day 2,067 years ago Julius Caesar was assassinated in broad daylight in the middle of Rome.
But it wasn't a mob or a popular uprising - Caesar was killed by a group of disgruntled senators.
Here's how it happened, moment by moment, on that fateful day in 44 BC...
465replies8.2KRetweets48.4KLikes8.1MViews @culturaltutorThe year is 44 BC. Julius Caesar has just been declared "Dictator for Life" and is the most powerful man in the Roman Republic.
In 48 BC he had defeated Pompey the Great, another Roman general, and by 45 BC he had put down all other resistance - the civil wars were over.
Read more@culturaltutorTo put 2023 into perspective, here's a brief timeline of the entire future in 23 key moments:
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- 6,091 years from now The Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule buried in Atlanta, Georgia, is scheduled to be opened.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy have so many football team badges been simplified into corporate logos?
1Kreplies4.8KRetweets46.1KLikesViews Read more@culturaltutorWhy do people wear these pointless bits of fabric called ties?
594replies6.7KRetweets45.9KLikes9.5MViews @culturaltutorThe year is 1635. War has been raging in Europe for nearly twenty years.
It had been largely confined to Germany, as different territories of the Holy Roman Empire fought one another.
But then France joined, supported by Sweden, and a continental war broke out.
Read more@culturaltutorBaroque architecture is famous for its detail, grandeur, and extravagance.
But why does it look like that?
Well, back in the 17th century, it was supposed to stop you from reading too many books...
272replies5.1KRetweets45.5KLikes6.3MViews @culturaltutorIn the early 16th century the Catholic Church was under attack.
A German priest called Martin Luther had published his 95 Theses - a systematic criticism of everything he believed was wrong with the Catholic Church.
That was in 1517, and it started a revolution.
Read more@culturaltutorIs cinema the greatest modern art form?
Artists aren't less talented than they were in the past, it's just that they're making films instead of paintings...
318replies4.7KRetweets44KLikes4.9MViews @culturaltutorModern art might charitably be described as controversial - for a huge number of reasons.
But much modern art was never supposed to be "liked"; it has always been about provoking, challenging, and questioning.
Perhaps why it can so often seem like a bad joke.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy did artists in the past paint the same thing over and over again?
1Kreplies4.7KRetweets43.3KLikes9.4MViews @culturaltutorThe Madonna and Child - Mary holding the infant Jesus - was one of the most commonly depicted scenes in Western art for centuries.
From the gold-laden portrayals of the International Gothic style:
Read more@culturaltutor500 years ago there was a painter called Pieter Bruegel who changed the course of art history.
And his paintings are unlike anything you've seen before...
288replies5.1KRetweets42.9KLikes5.7MViews @culturaltutorPieter Bruegel was born in the southern Netherlands in about 1525, possibly in a town called Bruegel (where his name might come from) or in Breda, and soon moved to Antwerp.
We know nothing of his family origins, though some have speculated that he was from a peasant background.
Read more@culturaltutorThe Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is not in a frame.
It's painted on the wall of a dining room for monks in Milan.
And right above it Leonardo painted the coat of arms of the man who paid him to do it...
307replies4.7KRetweets42.5KLikes6.7MViews @culturaltutorThe Last Supper is one of the world's most instantly recognisable images, legendary on its own merits and perhaps even more famous for how often it's been parodied or referenced in popular culture, from The Simpsons to The Da Vinci Code.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy are the Ancient Greeks so important? Why do people talk about them so much?
Well, it has something to do with Socrates, who was put on trial by his fellow citizens and sentenced to death.
The crime? Asking too many questions...
370replies6.7KRetweets41KLikes6.8MViews @culturaltutorIt's important to ask why the Ancient Greeks are regarded so highly.
Is there actually a good reason for it?
We can talk about their maths or their architecture, their poetry or their politics, but in the end what matters most is their philosophy.
Read more@culturaltutorWhere did your daily cappuccino come from?
Well, it involves the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, a group of Italian monks, and a Polish spy.
But the story begins 700 years ago with a city in Yemen called Mocha...
358replies7.1KRetweets40.8KLikes6.8MViews @culturaltutorWhere does coffee come from? The clue is in its name.
Coffee is an Anglicisation of the Dutch word koffie, which comes from the Italian caffè. That came from the Turkish kahve, which itself originates in the Arabic word qahwa.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy Architecture Is Important
(and what it says about us)
A short thread...
237replies6KRetweets39KLikes4.4MViews @culturaltutorArchitectural styles can be misleading, because architecture is about much more than a building's appearance.
Architecture tell us about the society that produced it - what they believed in, what was important to them, what was necessary - and, by extension, about our own.
Read more@culturaltutorToday is the spring equinox, but what actually is an equinox?
It's one of only two times in the year when day and night are (almost) exactly equal all over the world...
159replies4.8KRetweets36.1KLikes5.2MViews @culturaltutorThe Earth's axis is tilted.
That means, as it orbits the sun, the amount of sunlight received by each part of the world varies throughout the year.
This is where seasons come from. Winter is when that part of the world is tilted furthest from the sun; Summer when it's closest.
Read more@culturaltutorThis line is so memorable for a reason.
It's a perfect use of "antimetabole" - the repetition of a phrase with its word order reversed.
Here are 8 more memorable rhetorical devices:
300replies5.1KRetweets35.3KLikes7MViews @culturaltutor
- Polyptoton
The repeated use of words with the same root, like destroy, destroyer, and destroyed.
Read more@culturaltutorWhat is all this stuff? Not everything from that 1980s desk is obsolete, nor everything in this image.
People still use some of them, whether out of nostalgia or personal preference. But, increasingly, nobody knows what a floppy disk or pager is, never mind how to use them.
Read more@culturaltutorWhere do the names of the days of the week come from?
256replies4.3KRetweets33KLikes4.2MViews @culturaltutorA year is how long it takes for the earth to orbit the sun, or for the sun to return to the same position in the sky.
And a month is how long it takes for the moon to complete one phase.
But what about the week?
Read more@culturaltutorFlowers in art, a thread:
Vase with Irises by Vincent van Gogh (1890)
118replies4.4KRetweets32.6KLikes3.5MViews @culturaltutorYou've seen this painting a thousand times before.
It's American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood in 1930, one of the world's most famous works of art.
But it has a hidden meaning, and there's even a clue. These two people might actually be the King and Queen of the Underworld...
344replies4.3KRetweets32.4KLikes5.6MViews @culturaltutorThese stony-faced people are world-famous, but who are they? And where are they?
Well, the little brooch worn by the woman seems to depict Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld in Ancient Greek mythology.
Read more@culturaltutorHow did people wake up before alarm clocks?!
In the 19th century there were professional "knocker uppers" who hit your window with a stick until you got out of bed.
And before that? Well, humans had an entirely different understanding of time...
429replies3.6KRetweets30.7KLikes6.3MViews @culturaltutorThe first question is how people even kept track of time at all; that's one of humanity's oldest problems.
First and foremost, it was through natural observation. The movement of the sun by day and of the moon and stars by night.
Astronomy is the oldest science.
Read more@culturaltutorOne of the best ways to understand art is by looking at different paintings of the same thing over time:
213replies3.9KRetweets29.1KLikes4MViews @culturaltutorThe oldest known depiction of the Crucifixion of Jesus seems to be some Roman graffiti from about the year 200 AD.
It's called the Alexamenos Graffito and it's a mockery of Christianity - Jesus has the head of a donkey and the words say: "Alexamenos worships his God."
Read more@culturaltutorOne day in the year 1892, when Edvard Munch was going for a walk near Oslo, the sky turned blood red.
He went home and created one of the most famous works of art in history.
But what is The Scream screaming about?
280replies3.7KRetweets28.7KLikes4.4MViews @culturaltutorIn the early 1990s a stonemason secretly carved a Xenomorph from the Alien films onto a 700 year old church in Scotland during restoration work.
But it's not out of place. Because Medieval gargoyles were even stranger (and funnier) than this...
197replies3KRetweets28KLikes4.1MViews @culturaltutorA similar example is the famous Darth Vader mask on the Washington National Cathedral, added in the 1980s after a competition was held for children to design sculptures for the then-unfinished northwest tower.
Are the Xenomorph and Darth Vader appropriate for places of worship?
Read more@culturaltutorThe Arc de Triomphe in Paris is one of the world's most recognisable landmarks. But... what actually is it?
Here's one clue: it has a statue of Napoleon as a Roman emperor being crowned by the goddess of victory.
And it was Napoleon who had the Arc de Triomphe built...
147replies2.9KRetweets27.5KLikes5.2MViews @culturaltutorThe Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile is its full name - the Triumphal Arch of the Star.
That comes from its location, formerly called the Place de l'Étoile and now the Place Charles de Gaulle, at the junction and heart of twelve different avenues.
Read more@culturaltutorHow photography changed art:
(will AI do the same to writing?)
243replies4KRetweets27.4KLikes4.4MViews @culturaltutorPhotography was invented in the 1820s after decades of experimentation and gradual progress; by the 1840s it was already changing the world - and improving rapidly.
Just compare the first ever photograph, from 1826, with one taken only twelve years later.
Read more@culturaltutorThis is the grand Neo-Gothic staircase at St Pancras Station in London.
In 1967 it was ten days away from being demolished...
173replies2.7KRetweets26.8KLikes3.4MViews @culturaltutorThe 19th century was the Age of Rail, and new stations were being built all the time to accommodate the ever-growing passenger numbers.
In 1852 King's Cross Station, of Harry Potter fame, was opened.
Read more@culturaltutorThis is the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia.
It was completed in 2004...
151replies2.2KRetweets25.9KLikes2.7MViews @culturaltutorRastko Nemanjić, born in 1174, was the son of the Grand Prince of Serbia. But he turned his back on royal life and became a monk, taking the name Sava.
He later became the first Archbishop of Serbia and a key figure in the country's religious and political history.
Read more@culturaltutorA brief thread of some helpful architectural words:
159replies2.8KRetweets24KLikes3.1MViews @culturaltutorHave you ever wondered why the world is full of glass skyscrapers?
It's because of this model for a skyscraper in Berlin that was never built.
It may look ordinary, but that's the point. This model is more than 100 years old...
196replies2.7KRetweets23.6KLikes4.1MViews @culturaltutorThese are some photographs from the 1930s. Plenty of skyscrapers, but notice that none of them are covered with glass and none of them are purely box-shaped.
They have windows, of course, but the majority of their exteriors are made with stone or brick.
Read more@culturaltutorSome places that don't look real but are:
The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), Guizhou, China
197replies2.1KRetweets22.6KLikes4.2MViews @culturaltutorThis painting is called the Battle of Alexander at Issus, created by Albrecht Altdorfer nearly 500 years ago.
It's the 16th century equivalent of epic cinema - an entire film played out in a single, vast scene...
84replies2.6KRetweets22.2KLikesViews @culturaltutorThis extraordinary painting was commissioned by Duke William IV of Bavaria for his palace in Munich.
It depicts the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia in 333 B.C., which resulted in a Macedonian victory & paved the way for Alexander's conquests.
Read more@culturaltutorCinema in the 1920s was wild.
It's when the film industry as we know it today was born: the studios, the stars, the genres, and the tropes.
And even animation - this is from The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animated feature film, from 1926.
85replies2.9KRetweets20.3KLikes2.1MViews @culturaltutorMotion pictures had been around since the late 1880s, first as short reels and then, by the 1910s, as longer feature films.
With every year they grew in popularity, but any new technology usually takes a couple of decades to really get going.
And, in the 1920s, it took off.
Read more@culturaltutorExactly 170 years ago today Vincent van Gogh was born.
But he didn't just paint sunflowers and starry skies. Van Gogh made over 2,000 works of art in less than ten years - one every 36 hours.
So here are some of his less famous masterpieces:
129replies3.7KRetweets19.8KLikes1.8MViews @culturaltutorThese are from his first years as an artist in the early 1880s, when he focussed on working people & peasants:
Read more@culturaltutorThread of dogs in art:
Pug in an Armchair by Alfred de Dreux (1857)
149replies2.5KRetweets19.8KLikes2.4MViews @culturaltutorThis is The Last Judgment, painted by Michelangelo nearly 500 years ago.
And it's one of the most controversial (and heavily censored) paintings of all time.
Some say it's a masterpiece, some say it's a mess, and some have even tried to destroy it...
149replies2.6KRetweets19.1KLikes3.1MViews @culturaltutorMichelangelo, born in 1475 in the Republic of Florence, quickly came to be regarded as an artistic genius. After all, he was only 24 when he sculpted the Pieta...
But he was also a painter, poet, and architect; there was nothing this tempestuous young man couldn't do.
Read more@culturaltutorThis engraving is called Knight, Death and the Devil.
It was made over 500 years ago by Albrecht Dürer, one of the most wildly talented and original artists of all time.
But it isn't actually a picture of a knight...
97replies1.9KRetweets17.1KLikes2.9MViews @culturaltutorAlbrecht Dürer (1471-1528), born in Nuremberg, was the most popular artist in Europe during his lifetime.
Why? Because he produced illustrations which spread further than any painting - which can only exist at one time in one place - ever could.
Read more@culturaltutorOver 75% of world flags include the colour red.
Why is red so popular?
The story begins with a 700,000 year old tomb in China, before modern humans even existed...
198replies2KRetweets17KLikes3.4MViews @culturaltutorThe colour red goes back a long way, quite literally.
These hand paintings in the Cave of Maltravieso in Spain are about 65,000 years old. That's before modern humans were present in the region.
These were made by Neanderthals.
Read more@culturaltutorWho's that guy on the £20 note?
A painter called Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Does he deserve to be there? Well, he's probably the greatest English artist of all time...
161replies1.8KRetweets16KLikes2.7MViews @culturaltutorJoseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775, the son of a barber.
He made paintings from an early age, and his father sold them in his shop. This prodigously talented boy was destined for greatness, and at just 14 he joined the Royal Academy of Arts...
Read more@culturaltutorIn 1865 an American artist called Frederic Edwin Church painted the Northern Lights.
The thing is, he'd never actually seen them. But he was such a good artist that he didn't even need to...
51replies1.3KRetweets15.1KLikes1.8MViews @culturaltutorFrederic Edwin Church was born in 1826 in Connecticut. He was from a wealthy family and that gave him the time and resources to pursue his greatest passion: painting.
And at the age of 18 he was introduced to an English-born painter called Thomas Cole...
Read more@culturaltutorHow the design of the White House is directly based on prehistoric wooden huts:
153replies1.4KRetweets14.7KLikes2.6MViews @culturaltutorThe White House was built between 1792 and 1800 in Neoclassical style. Its architect was the Irish-American James Hoban, who had won a competition to design the new presidential residence.
He'd already been noticed by Washington for designing the Charleston County Courthouse.
Read more@culturaltutorWhat is art? Is graphic design art?
Well, if we go all the way back to the fall of the Roman Empire, among the first art to reappear in Western Europe was illumination: the illustration of the Gospels and other religious texts.
These are, unquestionably, glorious works of art.
Read more@culturaltutorIn the year 1330 an officer at the Japanese imperial palace retired to become a Buddhist monk.
His name was Yoshida Kenkō, and here are 18 pearls of wisdom from his famous Tsurezuregusa, the Essays in Idleness.
In a distracting world, here's a different way to think...
95replies2.5KRetweets14.7KLikesViews @culturaltutorBrief thread of some beautiful paintings of the sunrise:
Sunrise at Futamigaura by Utagawa Kunisada (1832)
66replies1.4KRetweets14.3KLikes1.8MViews @culturaltutorThe words we use to describe political systems originate in Ancient Greece.
Democracy comes from the Greek for people (demos) and for rule (kratos), thus meaning "rule of the people".
In which case, what was Ancient Greek democracy like?
Read more@culturaltutorThis isn't a photo of a real highway. It's a model created twenty years before America's first Interstate was built.
Who made it? Norman Bel Geddes, the most important designer you've never heard of.
He also predicted malls, revolving restaurants, and self-driving cars...
111replies1.6KRetweets13.8KLikes2.3MViews @culturaltutorNorman Melancton Geddes, known as Big Norm, was born in 1893 in Michigan. He married Helen Belle Schneider in 1916 and changed his name to Norman Bel Geddes.
He started out as a theatre set designer, first in LA and then for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Read more@culturaltutorThread of cats in art - the good, the bad, and the bizarre:
Rocket Cat by Franz Helm of Cologne (1530)
184replies1.9KRetweets13.8KLikes2.2MViews @culturaltutorThe woman shown on this 4,300 year old alabaster disk was called Enheduanna.
She is the first known writer in all of human history.
And her work is still shaping literature in the 21st century...
64replies2.2KRetweets12.4KLikes2MViews @culturaltutorIn around 2,300 BC the king of Akkad, a city in Mesopotamia, led a rapid and wildly successful conquest of the surrounding cities and regions.
His name was Sargon, and his kingdom has been tentatively called the world's first empire.
Read more@culturaltutorThere's a few ways of looking at this.
The first is that London is simply doing what it has always done - changing with the times.
Few cities are as architecturally diverse. On any given street there's Gothic, Neo-Gothic, Georgian, Neoclassical, Art Deco, Brutalist...
Read more@culturaltutorThe United States of America has had 27 different flags.
And this one, with a British Union Jack in the top left corner, was the very first...
110replies1.1KRetweets10.6KLikes2.3MViews @culturaltutorLater called the Grand Union Flag or the Continental Colours, it was first hoisted on 3rd December 1775 on the warship Alfred and then in Charlestown on 1st January 1776 on the orders of George Washington.
But it was, technically, an unofficial flag.
Read more@culturaltutorWhen you CC somebody into an email... what are you actually doing?
It stands for Carbon Copy, an old physical process for copying typed documents. People even used to write CC and BCC on letters.
And when the email was invented they simply kept the same terms:
108replies1.3KRetweets10KLikes1.9MViews @culturaltutorCarbon paper was invented in 1801 by Pellegrino Turri. It's very simple: a sheet of paper coated with ink and bound in wax.
If you place a sheet of carbon paper between two sheets of blank paper and write on the top one, the writing gets imprinted onto the bottom sheet.
Read more@culturaltutorIf Christopher Columbus was the first European to reach America, why is it named after a guy called Amerigo Vespucci instead?
And why isn't it called... Ameriga?
199replies767Retweets8.3KLikes1.6MViews @culturaltutorAs with many of the other continents, it isn't completely clear how the Americas got their name.
The most widely accepted theory is that America was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who travelled there twice in the late 1490s and early 1500s.
Read more@culturaltutorThe popularity and worship of sports stars is nothing new - in the 21st century it's footballers and in Ancient Greece it was Olympic athletes.
But why are their statues so different?
Well, the Greek ones aren't actually statues of real people...
71replies741Retweets7.9KLikes1.7MViews @culturaltutorIt's easy to imagine that the immense popularity of sport is an entirely modern phenomenon - it isn't.
Sport was just as important in Ancient Greece. For evidence we need look no further than the stadiums they built.
Then, like now, sport played an important role in society.
Read more@culturaltutorWhy the Statue of Liberty's real name is (probably) Marianne:
58replies720Retweets6.9KLikes1.6MViews @culturaltutorLibertas was the Ancient Roman goddess of freedom.
She was usually depicted with a rod and a soft hat, called a pileus. Slaves were touched with the rod and presented with a pileus to wear upon being freed; these were symbols of liberty in Rome.
Read more@culturaltutorWhen the first set of football rules was agreed on in an English pub in 1863 it was a very different sport to the one played around the world today.
It was entirely amateur and there were still no referees - players wore whatever clothes they could get their hands on.
Read more@culturaltutorThe Kiss by Gustav Klimt is the most famous Symbolist painting in the world.
What was Symbolism?
An art movement about our struggle to deal with scientific progress and social change...
39replies860Retweets6.4KLikes728.7KViews @culturaltutorSymbolism was an incredibly broad artistic movement which appeared in Europe in the second half of the 19th century.
It included not only art but poetry, literature, theatre, and music - and it took on different forms right across the continent.
Read more@culturaltutorThere are over 130 million unique books in the world.
You can read any of them, but you can't read all of them. So choose wisely.
Here are 23 you might want to consider (and why):
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- Why I Write by George Orwell (1946)
Orwell was the greatest essayist of the 20th century. He writes with a clarity which has stood the test of time.
This short volume, Politics & the English Language particularly, which will teach you more about writing than anything else.
Read more@culturaltutor
- This is the current year in various calendars:
Assyrian - 6771
Hebrew - 5782
Chinese - 4720
Julian - 2775
Buddhist - 2563
Gregorian - 2022
Hindu - 1943
Islamic - 1443
Iranian - 1440
French Revolutionary - 230
Read more@culturaltutorThe Battle of Alexander at Issus, by Albrecht Altdorfer
(1529, oil on canvas, 158 x 120 cm)
9replies203Retweets1.5KLikesViews @culturaltutorThis glorious painting was commissioned by Duke William IV of Bavaria for his palace in Munich.
It depicts the legendary Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia, which resulted in a Macedonian victory.
Read more@culturaltutorFor most of history we didn't have the technology to photograph the stars.
But our ancestors across the world studied the night sky for millennia and wrote down what they saw.
So let's explore the beautiful history of celestial maps:
8replies206Retweets1.2KLikesViews @culturaltutorCelestial maps are older than human civilisation itself.
The Lascaux Cave Paintings in France, from 15,000 B.C., might be the oldest we have found.
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@culturaltutor
This isn't an attack on capital M Minimalism, which is a conscious design movement.
Like the Minimalist music of the composer Philip Glass, which is frankly beautiful.
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Ancient people knew the earth was round.
And about 2,240 years ago a man called Eratosthenes calculated its circumference within 1% of the correct figure... with a stick.
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The polymath Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) was born in Cyrene, in modern-day Libya, and after studying in Athens went to Alexandria, in Egypt, a flourishing city and a centre of scholarship.
There, under King Ptolemy's patronage, Eratosthenes ran the famous Library of Alexandria.
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India is home to some of the most beautiful and diverse architecture in the world. Here's just a few of the best:
Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (1799)
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Why Beauty Matters
(and how it has been destroyed by "usability")
A short thread...
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I want to make clear that this thread isn't about returning to the past.
This is strictly about the future.
But we shouldn't simply accept things because "that's the way there are."
The past teaches us that we can do better.
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Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted by Vermeer in 1665, might just be the most famous and beloved portrait in the world.
But who is the girl?
Well, that's the thing. There was no girl, because this isn't a portrait...
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Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is one of the greatest painters who ever lived, though in his lifetime he wasn't known beyond his hometown.
He was born in Delft during the Dutch Golden Age, a period of extraordinary cultural, political, and economic flourishing in the Netherlands.
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The small city of Lugo in northern Spain has a special secret.
It is the only place in the world to have a complete set of intact Roman walls. They were built 2,000 years ago and surround the entire old town.
But how did they survive? That's where it gets interesting...
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The city of Lugo was originally founded as Lucus Augusti in 13 BC.
It was a vital outpost and so in the 3rd century AD the Romans built a huge defensive fortification around the city, over 2,000 metres long and up to 15 metres tall, with over 80 towers.
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When people talk about "Gothic architecture" we tend to think of cathedrals and churches.
But the Middle Ages were also full of beautiful town halls, universities, hospitals, and bridges.
So here is a journey through the world of secular Gothic architecture...
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The word "Gothic" wasn't how people during the Middle Ages referred to their buildings.
It was Renaissance scholars who, with their interest in the architecture of Antiquity, called the Medieval style "Gothic" as a pejorative reference to the Goths who had sacked Rome:
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One year is exactly 365.2422 days long.
More than two thousand years ago a Greek astronomer called Hipparchus calculated the length of a year to within 0.005 of that figure.
And he didn't even have a telescope...
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Hipparchus was born in Bithynia, a region in the north-west of modern day Turkey, in 190 BC.
We know almost nothing about his life, except that he probably died in Rhodes and may have travelled to Alexandria.
What survives of his work comes down to us from other writers.
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A short history of the world in 13 maps & infographics:
- Everybody alive today compared to everybody who has ever lived
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- How Earth probably looked in the Hadeon Age, just after its formation 4.5 billion years ago
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Why are the same words spelled differently in American and British English?
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British and American English have plenty of differences.
Many of them are circumstantial. The words "trainers" and "sneakers", for example, simply developed separately in each country after their invention.
But those famous spelling differences were no such accident of history.
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A guide to the Nine Circles of Hell according to Dante's Inferno.
From the sins that will land you a place in each circle (including astrology and political corruption) to how you'll be punished and who else is already there...
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It begins in a dark forest at midnight on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, in the year 1300.
Dante is pursued by three beasts - a lion, a leopard, and a wolf - before the ghost of the ancient Roman poet Virgil saves him.
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Why don't we make interesting drain pipes any more?
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These slightly wild drain pipes are almost all from the 19th century, and they weren't created by individual artists but mass-produced with cast iron.
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The letters "ough" can be pronounced at least 8 different ways in English.
How did that happen?!
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English has notoriously strange spelling.
The letters "ea" are pronounced differently in the words bread, break, earth, heart, meat, tear, and... tear.
Horse and worse don't rhyme, but base and bass do, while the word "ghoti" could, technically, be pronounced fish:
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How to recognise 15 common cloud formations:
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- Stratus Nebulosus
Low-lying clouds which are flat, hazy, and formless. They may produce light drizzle or snow.
Basically fog which is above ground level.
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16 of the creepiest paintings ever made:
- Saturn Devouring His Son by Peter Paul Rubens (1636)
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Exactly 1,602 years ago today the city of Venice was founded.
So here's a thread of some of the most beautiful places in one of the world's most beautiful cities:
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Where better to begin than with St. Mark's Basilica, named after and dedicated to the patron saint of the city?
It was built in the 11th century, though many modifications have been made, and features a glorious mixture of Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Baroque architecture.
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Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany is one of the world's most famous and beautiful castles.
But it isn't a real castle: it has central heating, hot water, flushing toilets, telephones, and elevators.
Because Neuschwanstein is actually the world's biggest work of fan fiction...
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This two thousand year old statue is called Laocoön and His Sons.
And it's one of the most divisive works of art in history...
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It depicts a scene from the life of Laocoön, a legendary priest who foresaw that the Trojan horse was a trap.
The gods sent giant serpents to devour him and his sons as punishment for warning his fellow citizens about the deception of the Greeks.
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Pelé made Brazil's kit the most famous of any sports team in the world.
But why is it yellow, green, and blue?
It's a story that involves crushing defeat, the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon's sister-in-law, and dragons...
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The first game ever played by the Brazilian national team was in 1914, against the unlikely opponent of England's Exeter City.
It ended in a 2-0 victory for Brazil.
For the match the Brazilians wore all white, which continued to be their kit colour for the next few decades.
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This is a sewage pumping station from 1865.
Why did the Victorians build things like that? Were they just confused? Or did they have the right idea?
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The Victorians built everything: churches and train stations, theatres and public baths, banks and bridges, courts and town halls, museums and castles.
But there was no single Victorian style - they mixed together what had come before and transformed it into something new.
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Why did M.C. Escher draw this impossible world in 1953?
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Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was born in the Netherlands and, at first, wanted to be an architect.
That's what he studied before transferring to the decorative arts. Soon enough he moved to Rome, leaving in 1935 and returning via Switzerland and Belgium to his homeland.
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The Birth of Venus, painted by Sandro Botticelli in 1485, is one of the world's most famous and beloved paintings.
But it was completely forgotten for nearly four hundred years because nobody thought it was any good.
So... what changed?
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Alessandro Filipepi was born in Florence in 1445, just as the Italian Renaissance was bursting into life.
From a young age he showed natural artistic talent and was apprenticed to a goldsmith called Botticelli.
That's where Sandro got the surname he is known by.
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A short thread of photographic firsts...
The first ever underwater photo, taken in 1899 by Louis Boutan:
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Well, it was the first underwater photograph of a person, or one where it's possible to really see anything.
The very first was taken in 1856 by William Thompson:
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Victor Hugo is most famous for writing beloved novels like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
But he was also one of the greatest painters of the 19th century.
And Hugo's art, kept secret until after his death, is unlike anything you've seen before...
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When Victor Hugo died in 1885 more than two million people attended his funeral, part of which involved a procession beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
And his legacy has not dimished - Hugo is still regarded as one of the greatest writers in history.
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On this day 2,067 years ago Julius Caesar was assassinated in broad daylight in the middle of Rome.
But it wasn't a mob or a popular uprising - Caesar was killed by a group of disgruntled senators.
Here's how it happened, moment by moment, on that fateful day in 44 BC...
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The year is 44 BC. Julius Caesar has just been declared "Dictator for Life" and is the most powerful man in the Roman Republic.
In 48 BC he had defeated Pompey the Great, another Roman general, and by 45 BC he had put down all other resistance - the civil wars were over.
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To put 2023 into perspective, here's a brief timeline of the entire future in 23 key moments:
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- 6,091 years from now The Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule buried in Atlanta, Georgia, is scheduled to be opened.
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Why have so many football team badges been simplified into corporate logos?
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Why do people wear these pointless bits of fabric called ties?
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The year is 1635. War has been raging in Europe for nearly twenty years.
It had been largely confined to Germany, as different territories of the Holy Roman Empire fought one another.
But then France joined, supported by Sweden, and a continental war broke out.
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Baroque architecture is famous for its detail, grandeur, and extravagance.
But why does it look like that?
Well, back in the 17th century, it was supposed to stop you from reading too many books...
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In the early 16th century the Catholic Church was under attack.
A German priest called Martin Luther had published his 95 Theses - a systematic criticism of everything he believed was wrong with the Catholic Church.
That was in 1517, and it started a revolution.
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Is cinema the greatest modern art form?
Artists aren't less talented than they were in the past, it's just that they're making films instead of paintings...
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Modern art might charitably be described as controversial - for a huge number of reasons.
But much modern art was never supposed to be "liked"; it has always been about provoking, challenging, and questioning.
Perhaps why it can so often seem like a bad joke.
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Why did artists in the past paint the same thing over and over again?
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The Madonna and Child - Mary holding the infant Jesus - was one of the most commonly depicted scenes in Western art for centuries.
From the gold-laden portrayals of the International Gothic style:
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500 years ago there was a painter called Pieter Bruegel who changed the course of art history.
And his paintings are unlike anything you've seen before...
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Pieter Bruegel was born in the southern Netherlands in about 1525, possibly in a town called Bruegel (where his name might come from) or in Breda, and soon moved to Antwerp.
We know nothing of his family origins, though some have speculated that he was from a peasant background.
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The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci is not in a frame.
It's painted on the wall of a dining room for monks in Milan.
And right above it Leonardo painted the coat of arms of the man who paid him to do it...
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The Last Supper is one of the world's most instantly recognisable images, legendary on its own merits and perhaps even more famous for how often it's been parodied or referenced in popular culture, from The Simpsons to The Da Vinci Code.
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Why are the Ancient Greeks so important? Why do people talk about them so much?
Well, it has something to do with Socrates, who was put on trial by his fellow citizens and sentenced to death.
The crime? Asking too many questions...
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It's important to ask why the Ancient Greeks are regarded so highly.
Is there actually a good reason for it?
We can talk about their maths or their architecture, their poetry or their politics, but in the end what matters most is their philosophy.
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Where did your daily cappuccino come from?
Well, it involves the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, a group of Italian monks, and a Polish spy.
But the story begins 700 years ago with a city in Yemen called Mocha...
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Where does coffee come from? The clue is in its name.
Coffee is an Anglicisation of the Dutch word koffie, which comes from the Italian caffè. That came from the Turkish kahve, which itself originates in the Arabic word qahwa.
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Why Architecture Is Important
(and what it says about us)
A short thread...
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Architectural styles can be misleading, because architecture is about much more than a building's appearance.
Architecture tell us about the society that produced it - what they believed in, what was important to them, what was necessary - and, by extension, about our own.
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Today is the spring equinox, but what actually is an equinox?
It's one of only two times in the year when day and night are (almost) exactly equal all over the world...
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The Earth's axis is tilted.
That means, as it orbits the sun, the amount of sunlight received by each part of the world varies throughout the year.
This is where seasons come from. Winter is when that part of the world is tilted furthest from the sun; Summer when it's closest.
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This line is so memorable for a reason.
It's a perfect use of "antimetabole" - the repetition of a phrase with its word order reversed.
Here are 8 more memorable rhetorical devices:
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- Polyptoton
The repeated use of words with the same root, like destroy, destroyer, and destroyed.
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What is all this stuff? Not everything from that 1980s desk is obsolete, nor everything in this image.
People still use some of them, whether out of nostalgia or personal preference. But, increasingly, nobody knows what a floppy disk or pager is, never mind how to use them.
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Where do the names of the days of the week come from?
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A year is how long it takes for the earth to orbit the sun, or for the sun to return to the same position in the sky.
And a month is how long it takes for the moon to complete one phase.
But what about the week?
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Flowers in art, a thread:
Vase with Irises by Vincent van Gogh (1890)
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You've seen this painting a thousand times before.
It's American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood in 1930, one of the world's most famous works of art.
But it has a hidden meaning, and there's even a clue. These two people might actually be the King and Queen of the Underworld...
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These stony-faced people are world-famous, but who are they? And where are they?
Well, the little brooch worn by the woman seems to depict Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld in Ancient Greek mythology.
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How did people wake up before alarm clocks?!
In the 19th century there were professional "knocker uppers" who hit your window with a stick until you got out of bed.
And before that? Well, humans had an entirely different understanding of time...
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The first question is how people even kept track of time at all; that's one of humanity's oldest problems.
First and foremost, it was through natural observation. The movement of the sun by day and of the moon and stars by night.
Astronomy is the oldest science.
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One of the best ways to understand art is by looking at different paintings of the same thing over time:
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The oldest known depiction of the Crucifixion of Jesus seems to be some Roman graffiti from about the year 200 AD.
It's called the Alexamenos Graffito and it's a mockery of Christianity - Jesus has the head of a donkey and the words say: "Alexamenos worships his God."
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One day in the year 1892, when Edvard Munch was going for a walk near Oslo, the sky turned blood red.
He went home and created one of the most famous works of art in history.
But what is The Scream screaming about?
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In the early 1990s a stonemason secretly carved a Xenomorph from the Alien films onto a 700 year old church in Scotland during restoration work.
But it's not out of place. Because Medieval gargoyles were even stranger (and funnier) than this...
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A similar example is the famous Darth Vader mask on the Washington National Cathedral, added in the 1980s after a competition was held for children to design sculptures for the then-unfinished northwest tower.
Are the Xenomorph and Darth Vader appropriate for places of worship?
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The Arc de Triomphe in Paris is one of the world's most recognisable landmarks. But... what actually is it?
Here's one clue: it has a statue of Napoleon as a Roman emperor being crowned by the goddess of victory.
And it was Napoleon who had the Arc de Triomphe built...
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The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile is its full name - the Triumphal Arch of the Star.
That comes from its location, formerly called the Place de l'Étoile and now the Place Charles de Gaulle, at the junction and heart of twelve different avenues.
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How photography changed art:
(will AI do the same to writing?)
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Photography was invented in the 1820s after decades of experimentation and gradual progress; by the 1840s it was already changing the world - and improving rapidly.
Just compare the first ever photograph, from 1826, with one taken only twelve years later.
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This is the grand Neo-Gothic staircase at St Pancras Station in London.
In 1967 it was ten days away from being demolished...
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The 19th century was the Age of Rail, and new stations were being built all the time to accommodate the ever-growing passenger numbers.
In 1852 King's Cross Station, of Harry Potter fame, was opened.
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This is the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia.
It was completed in 2004...
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Rastko Nemanjić, born in 1174, was the son of the Grand Prince of Serbia. But he turned his back on royal life and became a monk, taking the name Sava.
He later became the first Archbishop of Serbia and a key figure in the country's religious and political history.
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A brief thread of some helpful architectural words:
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Have you ever wondered why the world is full of glass skyscrapers?
It's because of this model for a skyscraper in Berlin that was never built.
It may look ordinary, but that's the point. This model is more than 100 years old...
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These are some photographs from the 1930s. Plenty of skyscrapers, but notice that none of them are covered with glass and none of them are purely box-shaped.
They have windows, of course, but the majority of their exteriors are made with stone or brick.
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Some places that don't look real but are:
The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), Guizhou, China
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This painting is called the Battle of Alexander at Issus, created by Albrecht Altdorfer nearly 500 years ago.
It's the 16th century equivalent of epic cinema - an entire film played out in a single, vast scene...
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This extraordinary painting was commissioned by Duke William IV of Bavaria for his palace in Munich.
It depicts the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia in 333 B.C., which resulted in a Macedonian victory & paved the way for Alexander's conquests.
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Cinema in the 1920s was wild.
It's when the film industry as we know it today was born: the studios, the stars, the genres, and the tropes.
And even animation - this is from The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving animated feature film, from 1926.
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Motion pictures had been around since the late 1880s, first as short reels and then, by the 1910s, as longer feature films.
With every year they grew in popularity, but any new technology usually takes a couple of decades to really get going.
And, in the 1920s, it took off.
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Exactly 170 years ago today Vincent van Gogh was born.
But he didn't just paint sunflowers and starry skies. Van Gogh made over 2,000 works of art in less than ten years - one every 36 hours.
So here are some of his less famous masterpieces:
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These are from his first years as an artist in the early 1880s, when he focussed on working people & peasants:
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Thread of dogs in art:
Pug in an Armchair by Alfred de Dreux (1857)
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This is The Last Judgment, painted by Michelangelo nearly 500 years ago.
And it's one of the most controversial (and heavily censored) paintings of all time.
Some say it's a masterpiece, some say it's a mess, and some have even tried to destroy it...
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Michelangelo, born in 1475 in the Republic of Florence, quickly came to be regarded as an artistic genius. After all, he was only 24 when he sculpted the Pieta...
But he was also a painter, poet, and architect; there was nothing this tempestuous young man couldn't do.
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This engraving is called Knight, Death and the Devil.
It was made over 500 years ago by Albrecht Dürer, one of the most wildly talented and original artists of all time.
But it isn't actually a picture of a knight...
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Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), born in Nuremberg, was the most popular artist in Europe during his lifetime.
Why? Because he produced illustrations which spread further than any painting - which can only exist at one time in one place - ever could.
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Over 75% of world flags include the colour red.
Why is red so popular?
The story begins with a 700,000 year old tomb in China, before modern humans even existed...
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The colour red goes back a long way, quite literally.
These hand paintings in the Cave of Maltravieso in Spain are about 65,000 years old. That's before modern humans were present in the region.
These were made by Neanderthals.
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Who's that guy on the £20 note?
A painter called Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Does he deserve to be there? Well, he's probably the greatest English artist of all time...
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Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775, the son of a barber.
He made paintings from an early age, and his father sold them in his shop. This prodigously talented boy was destined for greatness, and at just 14 he joined the Royal Academy of Arts...
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In 1865 an American artist called Frederic Edwin Church painted the Northern Lights.
The thing is, he'd never actually seen them. But he was such a good artist that he didn't even need to...
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Frederic Edwin Church was born in 1826 in Connecticut. He was from a wealthy family and that gave him the time and resources to pursue his greatest passion: painting.
And at the age of 18 he was introduced to an English-born painter called Thomas Cole...
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How the design of the White House is directly based on prehistoric wooden huts:
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The White House was built between 1792 and 1800 in Neoclassical style. Its architect was the Irish-American James Hoban, who had won a competition to design the new presidential residence.
He'd already been noticed by Washington for designing the Charleston County Courthouse.
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What is art? Is graphic design art?
Well, if we go all the way back to the fall of the Roman Empire, among the first art to reappear in Western Europe was illumination: the illustration of the Gospels and other religious texts.
These are, unquestionably, glorious works of art.
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In the year 1330 an officer at the Japanese imperial palace retired to become a Buddhist monk.
His name was Yoshida Kenkō, and here are 18 pearls of wisdom from his famous Tsurezuregusa, the Essays in Idleness.
In a distracting world, here's a different way to think...
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Brief thread of some beautiful paintings of the sunrise:
Sunrise at Futamigaura by Utagawa Kunisada (1832)
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The words we use to describe political systems originate in Ancient Greece.
Democracy comes from the Greek for people (demos) and for rule (kratos), thus meaning "rule of the people".
In which case, what was Ancient Greek democracy like?
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This isn't a photo of a real highway. It's a model created twenty years before America's first Interstate was built.
Who made it? Norman Bel Geddes, the most important designer you've never heard of.
He also predicted malls, revolving restaurants, and self-driving cars...
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Norman Melancton Geddes, known as Big Norm, was born in 1893 in Michigan. He married Helen Belle Schneider in 1916 and changed his name to Norman Bel Geddes.
He started out as a theatre set designer, first in LA and then for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
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Thread of cats in art - the good, the bad, and the bizarre:
Rocket Cat by Franz Helm of Cologne (1530)
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The woman shown on this 4,300 year old alabaster disk was called Enheduanna.
She is the first known writer in all of human history.
And her work is still shaping literature in the 21st century...
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In around 2,300 BC the king of Akkad, a city in Mesopotamia, led a rapid and wildly successful conquest of the surrounding cities and regions.
His name was Sargon, and his kingdom has been tentatively called the world's first empire.
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There's a few ways of looking at this.
The first is that London is simply doing what it has always done - changing with the times.
Few cities are as architecturally diverse. On any given street there's Gothic, Neo-Gothic, Georgian, Neoclassical, Art Deco, Brutalist...
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The United States of America has had 27 different flags.
And this one, with a British Union Jack in the top left corner, was the very first...
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Later called the Grand Union Flag or the Continental Colours, it was first hoisted on 3rd December 1775 on the warship Alfred and then in Charlestown on 1st January 1776 on the orders of George Washington.
But it was, technically, an unofficial flag.
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When you CC somebody into an email... what are you actually doing?
It stands for Carbon Copy, an old physical process for copying typed documents. People even used to write CC and BCC on letters.
And when the email was invented they simply kept the same terms:
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Carbon paper was invented in 1801 by Pellegrino Turri. It's very simple: a sheet of paper coated with ink and bound in wax.
If you place a sheet of carbon paper between two sheets of blank paper and write on the top one, the writing gets imprinted onto the bottom sheet.
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If Christopher Columbus was the first European to reach America, why is it named after a guy called Amerigo Vespucci instead?
And why isn't it called... Ameriga?
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As with many of the other continents, it isn't completely clear how the Americas got their name.
The most widely accepted theory is that America was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who travelled there twice in the late 1490s and early 1500s.
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The popularity and worship of sports stars is nothing new - in the 21st century it's footballers and in Ancient Greece it was Olympic athletes.
But why are their statues so different?
Well, the Greek ones aren't actually statues of real people...
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It's easy to imagine that the immense popularity of sport is an entirely modern phenomenon - it isn't.
Sport was just as important in Ancient Greece. For evidence we need look no further than the stadiums they built.
Then, like now, sport played an important role in society.
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Why the Statue of Liberty's real name is (probably) Marianne:
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Libertas was the Ancient Roman goddess of freedom.
She was usually depicted with a rod and a soft hat, called a pileus. Slaves were touched with the rod and presented with a pileus to wear upon being freed; these were symbols of liberty in Rome.
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When the first set of football rules was agreed on in an English pub in 1863 it was a very different sport to the one played around the world today.
It was entirely amateur and there were still no referees - players wore whatever clothes they could get their hands on.
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The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is the most famous Symbolist painting in the world.
What was Symbolism?
An art movement about our struggle to deal with scientific progress and social change...
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Symbolism was an incredibly broad artistic movement which appeared in Europe in the second half of the 19th century.
It included not only art but poetry, literature, theatre, and music - and it took on different forms right across the continent.
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There are over 130 million unique books in the world.
You can read any of them, but you can't read all of them. So choose wisely.
Here are 23 you might want to consider (and why):
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- Why I Write by George Orwell (1946)
Orwell was the greatest essayist of the 20th century. He writes with a clarity which has stood the test of time.
This short volume, Politics & the English Language particularly, which will teach you more about writing than anything else.
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- This is the current year in various calendars:
Assyrian - 6771 Hebrew - 5782 Chinese - 4720 Julian - 2775 Buddhist - 2563 Gregorian - 2022 Hindu - 1943 Islamic - 1443 Iranian - 1440 French Revolutionary - 230
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The Battle of Alexander at Issus, by Albrecht Altdorfer (1529, oil on canvas, 158 x 120 cm)
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This glorious painting was commissioned by Duke William IV of Bavaria for his palace in Munich.
It depicts the legendary Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia, which resulted in a Macedonian victory.
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For most of history we didn't have the technology to photograph the stars.
But our ancestors across the world studied the night sky for millennia and wrote down what they saw.
So let's explore the beautiful history of celestial maps:
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Celestial maps are older than human civilisation itself.
The Lascaux Cave Paintings in France, from 15,000 B.C., might be the oldest we have found.
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