That's Interesting
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Is This $88 Portrait the Work of a 17th-Century Flemish Master?
20th February, 2022Is a portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, ruler of 17th-century Antwerp – found inside a small London antique shop more than half a century ago – the work of the Flemish master Anthony van Dyck?
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A History of Punk from 1976-78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading
17th June, 2021From Matthew Worley, professor of modern history at the University of Reading, comes the free online course Anarchy in the UK: A History of Punk from 1976-78. Worley is also the author of the book, No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture.
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Download Great Works of Art from 40+ Museums Worldwide: Explore Artvee, the New Art Search Engine
17th June, 2021Artvee, a new search engine for downloadable high-resolution, public domain artworks has made collections accessible from the Smithsonian’s impressive online collections as well as collections of more than 40 other international institutions, from the New York Public Library and the Art Institute of Chicago to the Rijksmuseum and Paris Musées, many of which had little or no online presence back in the early 1990s.
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How Leonardo da Vinci Made His Magnificent Drawings Using Only a Metal Stylus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk
23rd April, 2021The modern artist has what can seem like an unlimited range of materials from which to choose, a variety completely unknown to great Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci. Few, if any, can say, however, that they have anything like the raw talent, ingenuity, and discipline that drove Leonardo to draw incessantly, constantly honing his techniques and exploiting every use of the tools and techniques available to him.
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Experience Footage of Roaring 1920s Berlin, Restored & Colorized with Artificial Intelligence
15th April, 2021Offered the chance to travel back in time to any city in any period, surely more than a few would choose Berlin in the 1920s. Ideally it would be Berlin in the mid-1920s: after much of the social and economic damage of the Great War had been repaired, but before the Great Depression reached Germany at the end of the decade, doing its part to enable the rise of Hitler. The closest experience to stepping in that time machine yet developed is a series of clips from Walther Ruttmann’s 1927 documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, but smoothed out, scaled up, and colorized with the aid of applications powered by artificial intelligence.
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The Mathematics Behind Origami, the Ancient Japanese Art of Paper Folding
25th March, 2021The two characters at the core of origami (折り紙), one of the best-known Japanese words around the world, mean “folding” and “paper.” Given the variety and elaborateness of the constructions produced by origami masters over the past few centuries, the simplicity of the practice’s basic nature bears repeating. Those masters must develop no slight degree of manual dexterity, it goes without saying, but also a formidable mathematical understanding of their medium.
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The heavens underground: the Soviet Union’s opulent metro stations, from Belarus to Uzbekistan
04th March, 2021Decorated with chandeliers, mosaics, and Lenin busts, the Soviet Union produced the most photographed transport system in the world. In this excerpt from Fuel’s latest book, Soviet Metro Stations, writer Owen Hatherley and photographer Christopher Herwig celebrate the metro’s expansive architectural legacy, travelling as far as Tashkent and Baku.
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