High Culture
featured
How AI learned to paint like Rembrandt
The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.” Here’s how they did it.
Tim Brinkhof
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch-born, New York-based journalist reporting on art, history, and literature. He studied early Netherlandish painting and Slavic literature at New York University, worked as an editorial[…]
All Stories
Painting thought to be merely a Rembrandt copy belongs to the master himself
A conservator from the Rijksmuseum explains how to confirm whether a painting is a genuine Rembrandt.
What shaped Kurt Vonnegut’s warped conception of time (and death)?
"All moments past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist."
Why have late-night talk show ratings collapsed?
Late-night shows, developed during the "golden age" of TV, are no longer as relevant in the age of streaming services and Donald Trump.
Japan’s “waste not, want not” philosophy, from meditation to Marie Kondo
"Oosouji" or "big cleaning" is much more than a chance to tidy up.
7 of the scariest monsters from Lovecraftian horror books
Who doesn't love a little existential fear every once in a while?
The 5,000-year history of writer’s block
“Block. It puts some writers down for months. It puts some writers down for life.”
How Bob Dylan used the ancient practice of “imitatio” to write songs
Because Dylan “samples and digests” songs from the past, he has been accused of plagiarism. But imitatio isn't the same.
13 books everyone should read—as voted by you
Add these great titles to your wish list or secure copies for yourself.
The extraordinary journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s most mysterious portrait
Like his "Mona Lisa," Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" depicts a woman in a way that flouted the conventions of its time.
Fairies weren’t always cute – they used to drink human blood and kidnap children
Forget about Tinkerbell.
From Victorian demons to the Beijing night bus: why we tell each other urban legends
Urban legends help personify the anxieties that arise from living in a modern city.
How witchcraft became a multi-billion dollar industry
You can buy over 400,000 products tagged “witch” on Etsy, from candles to spell bottles to pentagram necklaces.
French writer Annie Ernaux wins the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature
Many were expecting extremism survivor and free speech advocate Salman Rushdie to take home the Nobel Prize in Literature, but Annie Ernaux beat him to it.
7 great but notoriously hard-to-finish books
These hard-to-finish books are still worth the effort.
Was the mysterious, $450-million “Salvator Mundi” really painted by Leonardo da Vinci?
"Salvator Mundi" sold for a record-breaking $450 million in 2017, but is it really as valuable as people were led to believe?
What is modern art about — and why won’t it go away already?
Modernism has lasted longer than any art movement since the Renaissance.
50 years ago, an artist convincingly exhibited a fake Iron Age civilization
The artifacts were often made from found objects – an Ivory dish-soap bottle transformed into an earthenware figure.
The secret history of 7 common words
How drugs, demons, and the search for immortality gave us words we use everyday.
How Elmyr de Hory, the most successful art forger in history, made $50 million
Successful forgers are remembered as great conmen, not artists. This is strange, considering their forgeries fooled even the most seasoned critics.
These high school “classics” have been taught for generations – could they be on their way out?
Books that were rarely taught in 1963, when baby boomers were students, became classics when those same boomers were teachers and parents.
If Hans Niemann cheated Magnus Carlsen at chess, this is how we would know
Elon Musk suggested remote-controlled, vibrating anal beads. Thankfully, there are more mundane explanations.
The birth of pop: How catchy, disposable songs came to dominate the music industry
The Industrial Revolution changed music forever, thanks to a combination of technological advances and clever entrepreneurs.
Artemis: Why NASA’s latest Moon mission is named after an ancient lunar goddess
Following the advent of human space flight, NASA began naming missions after children of Zeus.
The power of regret fuels our love of the Multiverse
Each of us carries our own version of the Multiverse in our heads.
I used generative AI to create pictures of painting robots, but I’m not the artist — humanity is
Who should be compensated?
Terrifying dragons have long been a part of many religions, and there is a reason for their appeal
Fire-breathing dragons may represent chaos and the human impulse to conquer that threat.
7 lost idioms of the English language — and what they teach us about who we were
Bring not a bagpipe to a man in trouble.
The most shocking documentaries ever made and why you should see them
Though difficult to watch, films like "Shoah" and "Life of Crime" cover topics that should not be ignored.
Some of the world’s most famous paintings were made with paint from ground mummies
Rare and costly paints have shaped art history in unforeseen ways. Mummy brown caused one artist to bury his paint.