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Category: Art

By The Generalist Posted on March 29, 2022March 28, 2022

Horned Moses

Michelangelo’s statue of Moses has horns, thanks to a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate Bible.

Categories: Art, Early modern history, Europe, Medieval history, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on March 25, 2022March 25, 2022

Scavenger cistern

The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is an underground underwater forest of 336 huge marble columns. It was built in the 6th century CE, but parts are much older – because they were scavenged from other buildings, sometimes with original sculptures intact.

Categories: Architecture, Art, Europe, Medieval history
By The Generalist Posted on January 10, 2022January 9, 2022

The Picasso Ransom

In 1986 the Australian Cultural Terrorists stole a Picasso from a Melbourne art gallery; they threatened to destroy the painting if the government did not create an art prize called the Picasso Ransom. The culprits were never found.

Categories: 20th century history, Art, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on December 21, 2021December 20, 2021

Redacted art book

From 1966 until 2016, English artist Tom Phillips created a new story out of the Victorian novel A Human Document; he did not add any words, but selectively drew or painted over each of its pages to surface something entirely new.

Categories: 20th century history, 21st century history, Art, Europe, Literature
By The Generalist Posted on November 2, 2021November 2, 2021

The knights’ painting

The famed Baroque artist Caravaggio painted his masterwork while on the run from Rome, as an accused murderer and a Knight of Malta. When the knights expelled him from the order, they did so beneath that same painting.

Categories: Art, Early modern history, Europe
By The Generalist Posted on October 13, 2021October 11, 2021

Statue graveyards

When politicians’ historical crimes catch up with them, what happens to their statues?

Categories: 20th century history, Art, East Asia, Europe, North & Central Asia, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 27, 2021September 26, 2021

Siberian monstrators

When is a protest not a protest? In Russia, when it’s a performance art parody of a protest. But that still didn’t stop the Russian government from overreacting.

Categories: 21st century history, Art, Europe, North & Central Asia, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 23, 2021September 22, 2021

Da Vinci’s fractal trees

Leonardo da Vinci observed that tree branches together are always as thick as the trunk beneath them. This is true, and there are some good ideas why.

Categories: Art, Europe, Mathematics & statistics, Physics & chemistry, Plants
By The Generalist Posted on August 23, 2021August 22, 2021

Fart battle

The He-Gassen scroll of Edo period Japan depicts an epic battle… of farts.

Categories: 19th century history, Art, East Asia, Military
By The Generalist Posted on August 10, 2021August 9, 2021

The pictures of Pictures at an Exhibition

Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition based on a journey through his late friend’s art exhibit – but what happened to the pictures?

Categories: 19th century history, Art, Europe, Music, North & Central Asia
By The Generalist Posted on August 2, 2021September 9, 2021

Burning a million pounds

In 1994 the art duo K Foundation burned a million pounds in cash. They did it on purpose.

Categories: 20th century history, Art, Europe, Film & television, Music
By The Generalist Posted on May 12, 2021May 11, 2021

Invisible art

The French artist Yves Klein sold empty space – an invisible “zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility.” Buyers paid in gold, half of which Klein would throw into the Seine River.

Categories: 20th century history, Art, Economics & business, Europe
By The Generalist Posted on March 11, 2021April 28, 2021

Sea life in glass

19th century glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka provided natural history museums around the world with lifelike glass replicas of marine life.

Categories: 19th century history, Animals, Art, Arts, Education & philosophy, Europe, History, Places, Sciences
By The Generalist Posted on March 8, 2021March 7, 2021

The tempest enigma

Around 1508 the Italian Renaissance artist Giorgione painted The Tempest. No-one knows what it means.

Categories: Art, Arts, Europe, Places
By The Generalist Posted on January 29, 2021January 27, 2021

Akan goldweights

From the 15th to the 19th century CE, the Akan used sets of ornate statues as a measurement system for weighing gold dust, but also encoding and reinforcing cultural knowledge at the same time.

Categories: Africa, Art, Arts, Early modern history, Economics & business, History, Places, Sciences, Weights & measures
By The Generalist Posted on January 12, 2021April 28, 2021

The Library Cave

On June 25, 1900, tens of thousands of important historical manuscripts were found in a secret room within the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Dunhuang, China, where they had been hidden for nearly a millennium.

Categories: Ancient history, Art, Arts, East Asia, History, Literature, Medieval history, Places, Religion & belief

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