Almost 500 Etchings by Rembrandt Now Free Online, Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum

Sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Dutch painter Rem­brandt van Rijn may have more name recog­ni­tion than near­ly any oth­er Euro­pean artist, his pop­u­lar­i­ty due in large part to what art his­to­ri­an Ali­son McQueen iden­ti­fies in her book of the same name as “the rise of the cult of Rem­brandt.” Pop­u­lar Rem­brandt ven­er­a­tion brought us in the 20th cen­tu­ry such cor­po­rate appro­pri­a­tions of the painter’s lega­cy as Rem­brandt tooth­paste and mon­ey mar­ket firm Rem­brandt Funds (par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic, “giv­en the noto­ri­ety of Rembrandt’s bank­rupt­cy in 1656”). “In con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar cul­ture,” writes McQueen, “Rembrandt’s name has such res­o­nance that the head­line of an arti­cle in the New York Times Mag­a­zine in 1995 referred to the trendy bar­ber Franky Avi­la as ‘the Rem­brandt of Bar­bers.’”

By invok­ing Rembrandt’s name, the author knew his read­ers would under­stand that this con­nec­tion implies that Avila’s skill with a razor equals that of Rembrandt’s with his paint­brush or etch­ing nee­dle… even if a read­er has nev­er actu­al­ly seen any work by Rem­brandt.

Indeed, though any per­son on the street will like­ly know the artist’s name, most would be hard-pressed to name any of his paint­ings, except per­haps his well-known self-por­traits, which have adorned t‑shirts, posters, and iPhone cas­es. I might not have known much more about Rem­brandt than those self-por­traits either had I not lived in Wash­ing­ton, DC, where I had free access to many of his paint­ings at the Nation­al Gallery of Art.  The Dutch mas­ter was aston­ish­ing­ly pro­lif­ic, paint­ing, draw­ing, and etch­ing hun­dreds of por­traits of him­self and his patrons, as well as hun­dreds of still lifes, land­scapes, scenes from mythol­o­gy, and many, many Bib­li­cal sub­jects.

Rembrandt Mother

Nowa­days, you can see Rembrandt’s paint­ings for free online, whether from the Nation­al Gallery of Art’s col­lec­tion, that of the Nation­al Gallery in Lon­don, or of the Dutch Rijksmu­se­um. And for anoth­er side of his genius, you can now go to the site of New York’s Mor­gan Library and Muse­um, who have dig­i­tized “almost 500 images from the Morgan’s excep­tion­al col­lec­tion of Rem­brandt etch­ings,” cel­e­brat­ing his “unsur­passed skill and inven­tive­ness as a mas­ter sto­ry­teller.” There are, of course, plen­ty of self-por­traits, like the 1630 “Self Por­trait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed” at the top of the post, and there are por­traits of oth­ers, like that of the artist’s moth­er, above, from 1633. There are reli­gious scenes like the 1655 “Abraham’s Sac­ri­fice” below, and land­scapes like “The Three Trees,” fur­ther down, from 1643.

RvR-Abraham

Rembrandt Three Trees

These are the four main cat­e­gories that the Mor­gan uses to orga­nize this impres­sive col­lec­tion, but you’ll also find there more hum­ble, domes­tic sub­jects, like the 1640 “Sleep­ing Pup­py,” below. Writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “The Mor­gan holds in its col­lec­tion most of the rough­ly 300 known etch­ings by Rem­brandt, includ­ing rare, mul­ti­ple ver­sions (hence the dis­crep­an­cy in num­ber of etch­ings ver­sus num­ber of images.)” Like his high­ly accom­plished paint­ings, Rembrandt’s etch­ings “are famous for their dra­mat­ic inten­si­ty, pen­e­trat­ing psy­chol­o­gy, and touch­ing human­i­ty,” as well as, of course, for the extra­or­di­nary skill with which the artist made these works of art. Thanks to the “cult of Rem­brandt,” we all know the artist’s name and rep­u­ta­tion; now, thanks to dig­i­tal col­lec­tions from Nation­al Gal­leries, the Rijksmu­se­um, and now the Mor­gan, we can become experts in his work as well. Enter the Mor­gan col­lec­tion of sketch­es here.

RvR-puppy

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

The Largest & Most Detailed Pho­to­graph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

Two Tiny Rem­brandt Paint­ings Have Been Redis­cov­ered & Put On Dis­play in Ams­ter­dam

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Advertisement: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More


Accord­ing to many his­to­ri­ans, the Eng­lish Enlight­en­ment may nev­er have hap­pened were it not for cof­fee­hous­es, the pub­lic sphere where poets, crit­ics, philoso­phers, legal minds, and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al gad­flies reg­u­lar­ly met to chat­ter about the press­ing con­cerns of the day. And yet, writes schol­ar Bon­nie Cal­houn, “it was not for the taste of cof­fee that peo­ple flocked to these estab­lish­ments.”

Indeed, one irate pam­phle­teer defined cof­fee, which was at this time with­out cream or sug­ar and usu­al­ly watered down, as “pud­dle-water, and so ugly in colour and taste [sic].”

No syrupy, high-dol­lar Mac­chi­atos or smooth, creamy lattes kept them com­ing back. Rather than the bev­er­age, “it was the nature of the insti­tu­tion that caused its pop­u­lar­i­ty to sky­rock­et dur­ing the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies.”

How, then, were pro­pri­etors to achieve eco­nom­ic growth? Like the own­er of the first Eng­lish cof­fee-shop did in 1652, Lon­don mer­chant Samuel Price deployed the time-hon­ored tac­tics of the moun­te­bank, using adver­tis­ing to make all sorts of claims for coffee’s many “virtues” in order to con­vince con­sumers to drink the stuff at home. In the 1690 broad­side above, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, Price made a “litany of claims for coffee’s health ben­e­fits,” some of which “we’d rec­og­nize today and oth­ers that seem far-fetched.” In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry are asser­tions that “cof­fee-drink­ing pop­u­la­tions didn’t get com­mon dis­eases” like kid­ney stones or “Scur­vey, Gout, Drop­sie.” Cof­fee could also, Price claimed, improve hear­ing and “swoon­ing” and was “exper­i­men­tal­ly good to pre­vent Mis­car­riage.”

Among these spu­ri­ous med­ical ben­e­fits is list­ed a gen­uine effect of coffee—its relief of “lethar­gy.” Price’s oth­er beverages—“Chocolette, and Thee or Tea”—receive much less empha­sis since they didn’t require a hard sell. No one needs to be con­vinced of the ben­e­fits of cof­fee these days—indeed many of us can’t func­tion with­out it. But as we sit in cor­po­rate chain cafes, glued to smart­phones and lap­top screens and most­ly ignor­ing each oth­er, our cof­fee­hous­es have become some­what pale imi­ta­tions of those vibrant Enlight­en­ment-era estab­lish­ments where, writes Cal­houn, “men [though rarely women] were encour­aged to engage in both ver­bal and writ­ten dis­course with regard for wit over rank.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made 

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The Psychedelic Animated Video for Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (1979)

Ah, yes, “Auto­bahn.” From the moment the door slams and the igni­tion starts, prog rock­ers and pre-new wavers know a jour­ney is afoot. Though the mem­bers of Kraftwerk made three albums before this, the mem­bers still look­ing like well mean­ing book­ish hip­pies, 1974’s “Auto­bahn” is con­sid­ered Year Zero for the denizens of the elec­tric cafe, the four Ger­man robots who made human music with machines.

Cre­at­ed in 1979, but bop­ping around again in pop cul­ture orbit is this cel-drawn ani­ma­tion by Roger Main­wood, cre­at­ed to pro­mote “Auto­bahn” after most of the cul­ture had caught up. By that last year of the ’70s Omni mag­a­zine was a year old, music was sift­ing through the shock­waves left by Bowie’s Low and Heroes, ana­log was flirt­ing with dig­i­tal, and the world was ready to dri­ve on that long, elec­tric high­way.

Mainwood’s pro­tag­o­nist is part alien, part human, and he begins look­ing around in awe in his hip gog­gles, then set­ting off for a run straight out of a Muy­bridge loop, only to wind up float­ing, fly­ing, sail­ing and swim­ming through a land­scape indebt­ed to Peter Max, Push­Pin Stu­dios, under­ground comix, and 1930 mod­ernism.

Main­wood had just grad­u­at­ed from London’s Roy­al Col­lege of Art Film and Tele­vi­sion School, and was com­mis­sioned by John Halas, the Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who became known as the Father of British Ani­ma­tion, for Kraftwerk’s record label. The label want­ed to put out one of the first music Laserdiscs. (Halas, by the way, direct­ed a very UPA-influ­enced short called “Auto­ma­nia” in 1963). Accord­ing to Main­wood, he still doesn’t know if the band liked the short or even if they watched it.

Main­wood avoid­ed any direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dri­ving or auto­mo­biles, much to his cred­it, which may be why the film holds its fas­ci­na­tion. The ani­ma­tor con­tin­ued in his field, wind­ing up a pro­duc­er of sev­er­al clas­sics of British ani­ma­tion, includ­ing The Snow­man and the chill­ing When the Wind Blows. As for the mean­ing of “Auto­bahn,” we’ll let Main­wood have the last word:

Think­ing back to my thought process­es at that time, I remem­ber want­i­ng to specif­i­cal­ly not have con­ven­tion­al cars in the film. I want­ed a sense of a repet­i­tive jour­ney, and alien­ation, which I took to be what the music was about…hence the soli­tary futur­is­tic fig­ure, pro­tect­ed by large gog­gles, mov­ing through and try­ing to con­nect with the jour­ney he is tak­ing. The auto­mo­bile “mon­sters” are delib­er­ate­ly threat­en­ing (I have nev­er been a big fan of cars or motor­ways!) and when our “hero” tries to make human con­tact (with dif­fer­ent coloured clones of him­self) he can nev­er do it. In the end he realis­es he is mak­ing the repet­i­tive and cir­cu­lar jour­ney alone but strides for­ward pur­pose­ful­ly at the end as he did in the begin­ning. All of which sounds rather pretentious…but I was a young thing in those days!

You can read more of an inter­view with Main­wood here.

Find more ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

When Kraftwerk Issued Their Own Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor Syn­the­siz­er — to Play Their Song “Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor” (1981)

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man 1st Graders in Cute Card­board Robot Cos­tumes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

John Waters Takes You on a Comical Tour of His Apartment (1986)

We inter­rupt our reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled pro­gram­ming to bring you this: John Water giv­ing a tour of his 1980s apart­ment. High­lights of the tour include: his col­lec­tion of por­traits of mur­der­ess­es (prefer­ably mur­der­ess­es who have since found reli­gion), an elec­tric chair, a witch­es’ broom, fake pieces of meat found in var­i­ous rooms … well, you get the pic­ture. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Mod­els in a Whim­si­cal Ani­mat­ed Video

Artist Makes Astonishing Armor for Cats & Mice

As a child, Jeff De Boer, the son of a sheet met­al fab­ri­ca­tor, was fas­ci­nat­ed by the Euro­pean plate armor col­lec­tion in Calgary’s Glen­bow Muse­um:

There was some­thing mag­i­cal or mys­ti­cal about that emp­ty form, that con­tained some­thing. So what would it con­tain? A hero? Do we all con­tain that in our­selves?

After grad­u­at­ing from high school wear­ing a par­tial suit of armor he con­struct­ed for the occa­sion, De Boer com­plet­ed sev­en full suits, while major­ing in jew­el­ry design at the Alber­ta Col­lege of Art and Design.

A sculp­ture class assign­ment pro­vid­ed him with an excuse to make a suit of armor for a cat. The artist had found his niche.

Using steel, sil­ver, brass, bronze, nick­el, cop­per, leather, fiber, wood, and his del­i­cate jew­el­ry mak­ing tools, DeBoer became the cats’ armor­er, spend­ing any­where from 50 to 200 hours pro­duc­ing each increas­ing­ly intri­cate suit of feline armor.  A noble pur­suit, but one that inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed an “imbal­ance in the uni­verse”:

The only way to fix it was to do the same for the mouse.

“The suit of armor is a trans­for­ma­tion vehi­cle. It’s some­thing that only the hero would wear,” De Boer notes.

Fans of David Petersen’s Mouse Guard series will need no con­vinc­ing, though no real mouse has had the mis­for­tune to find its way inside one of his aston­ish­ing, cus­tom-made cre­ations.

Not even a taxi­dermy spec­i­men, he revealed on the Mak­ing, Our Way pod­cast:

It’s not an alto­geth­er bad idea. The only rea­son I don’t do it is that hol­low suit of armor like you might see in a muse­um, your imag­i­na­tion will make it do a mil­lion things more than if you stick a mouse in it will ever do. I have put armor on cats. I can tell you, it’s noth­ing like what you think it’s going to be. It’s not a very good expe­ri­ence for the cat. It does not ful­fill any fan­tasies about a cat wear­ing a suit of armor.


Though cats were his entry point, De Boer’s sym­pa­thies seem aligned with the under­dog — er, mice. Equip­ping hum­ble, hypo­thet­i­cal crea­tures with exquis­ite­ly wrought, his­tor­i­cal pro­tec­tive gear is a way of push­ing back against being per­ceived dif­fer­ent­ly than one wish­es to be.

Accept­ing an Hon­orary MFA from his alma mater ear­li­er this year, he described an armored mouse as a metaphor for his “ongo­ing cat and mouse rela­tion­ship with the world of fine art…a mis­chie­vous, rebel­lious being who dares to com­pete on his own terms in a world ruled by the cool cats.”

Each tiny piece is pre­ced­ed by painstak­ing research and many ref­er­ence draw­ings, and may incor­po­rate spe­cial mate­ri­als like the Japan­ese silk haori-himo cord lac­ing the shoul­der plates to the body armor of a Samu­rai mouse fam­i­ly.

Addi­tion­al cre­ations have ref­er­enced Mon­go­lian, glad­i­a­tor, cru­sad­er, and Sara­cen styles — this last per­fect for a Per­sian cat.

“I mean, “Why not?” he asks in his TED‑x Talk,Village Idiots & Inno­va­tion, below.

His lat­est work com­bines ele­ments of Maratha and Hus­sar armor in a ver­i­ta­ble puz­zle of minus­cule pieces.

See more of Jeff De Boer’s cat and mouse armor on his Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Swe­den, Fea­tur­ing Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dol­ly Pars­ley & More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Carl Sagan Explains Evolution in an 8‑Minute Animation

Bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion: nev­er has a phe­nom­e­non so impor­tant so lent itself to such clear, under­stand­able, ele­gant expla­na­tions. But just as evo­lu­tion itself pro­duces a seem­ing­ly infi­nite vari­ety of life forms, so the human under­stand­ing of evo­lu­tion has pro­duced count­less edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing kinds of illus­tra­tions by which to explain it. In the video above, astronomer-astro­physi­cist-cos­mol­o­gist Carl Sagan, no stranger to demys­ti­fy­ing the once seem­ing­ly unfath­omable phe­nom­e­na of our uni­verse, shows how evo­lu­tion actu­al­ly works with eight min­utes of crisp ani­ma­tion that take us from mol­e­cules in the pri­mor­dial soup, to bac­te­ria, to plants and polyps, to lam­preys, to tur­tles, to dinosaurs and birds, to wom­bats, to baboons and apes, to us. Then he goes back and does the whole four bil­lion-year evo­lu­tion­ary jour­ney again in forty sec­onds.

This con­cise les­son con­cerns itself not just with how we human beings came about, but how every­thing else came about as well. That wide-angle view of real­i­ty won a great deal of acclaim for Sagan’s Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the 1980 tele­vi­sion series on which the seg­ment orig­i­nal­ly appeared. Though most of its orig­i­nal broad­casts on life, the uni­verse, and every­thing still hold up as well as this clip on evo­lu­tion, a 21st-cen­tu­ry suc­ces­sor has late­ly appeared in the form of Cos­mos: A Space­time Odyssey, host­ed by astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, doubt­less the most suit­ed heir to Sagan’s tra­di­tion of enthu­si­asm and rig­or in pub­lic sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For a more extend­ed treat­ment of evo­lu­tion, see also our post from ear­li­er this week on deGrasse Tyson’s episode on the sub­ject, in which he spends an entire hour on his equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of what, up to and includ­ing you, he, and I, nat­ur­al selec­tion has so far come up with.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in Six Min­utes

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

550 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion in an Illus­trat­ed Flip­book

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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DIY Air Purifiers for Teachers: Free Designs & Step-by-Step Instructions Online

If you’re a teacher return­ing to the class­room, you may want some extra COVID pro­tec­tion. Thank­ful­ly, some researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers have cre­at­ed “a design for an in-room air puri­fi­er which can remove a sig­nif­i­cant amount of COVID-19 virus from the air.”

“The design involves mak­ing a ‘box’ out of four 20” MERV-13 fil­ters (the ‘sides’ of the box), a 20″ box fan (the ‘top’ of the box), and a card­board (the ‘bot­tom’ of the box’). Air flows in through the fil­ter sides, remov­ing par­tic­u­lates of the sizes that can trans­port COVID-19 par­ti­cles, and then flows out through the fan at the top.” These devices can be built from parts avail­able at Home Depot, Wal­mart and oth­er big box stores, and assem­bled in about 30–60 min­utes. Total cost runs $70-$200. Find designs and a step-by-step instruc­tions here. And read more about the puri­fi­er at NPR.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

DEVO Is Now Sell­ing COVID-19 Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment: Ener­gy Dome Face Shields

Bill Nye Shows How Face Masks Actu­al­ly Pro­tect You–and Why You Should Wear Them

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

Foo Fighters Perform “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Brian Johnson: When Live Music Returns

At Sat­ur­day’s ben­e­fit con­cert, “Vax Live: The Con­cert to Reunite the World,” the Foo Fight­ers took the stage and per­formed “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Bri­an John­son. It’s a tan­ta­liz­ing taste of the world to come, if we all do our part…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy

Rick Ast­ley Sings an Unex­pect­ed­ly Enchant­i­ng Cov­er of the Foo Fight­ers’ “Ever­long”

 

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