High Culture
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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[…]
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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.
Scientists make cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using lasers
This is a great improvement over the typical brew time of 12 to 18 hours.
What does hell look like? Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch shows us
Is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch a condemnation of sin or a celebration of hedonism? Art historians still aren’t sure.
Sexbots and flying cars: Real life is already like “Futurama”
The fictitious 31st-century world portrayed by the series is actually quite a bit like our own in the 21st century.
Devil’s advocate used to be an actual job within the Catholic Church
The role of the Devil’s advocate was to argue against the beatification of mystics. Contrary to popular belief, they did not wear Prada.
“Peaky Blinders” was really about learning how to live with PTSD
The Netflix show about a Birmingham crime family and their personal demons concluded earlier this month.
Alan Watts’ 7 best books on philosophy and life
The English writer left behind a mind-expanding collection of books.
What Greek epics taught me about the special relationship between fathers and sons
What Odysseus needed from his father was something more important: the comfort of being a son.
Kurt Vonnegut on the 8 “shapes” of stories
The American author said he attempted to bring scientific thinking to literary criticism, but received "very little gratitude for this."
Utopias: Does living in a perfect society mean you must give up your freedom?
The answer to this question depends on how you define "freedom."
Who were the greatest female classical composers in music history?
For centuries, men prevented women from writing music. These classical composers broke with social norms and made their mark on history.
From Poe to Mao: piecing together the evolution of detective stories
Detective fiction reveals how a particular society or time period looks at crime and criminal justice.