Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Account Goes Public, Revealing 600 New Photos & Many Strange Self-Portraits

in Art, Photography | August 4th, 2017

The career of Jen­ny Holz­er, the artist who became famous in the 1970s and 80s through her pub­lic instal­la­tions of phras­es like “ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE” and “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT,” has made her into an ide­al Tweet­er. By the same token, the career of Cindy Sher­man, the artist who became famous in the 1970s and 80s through her inven­tive not-exact­ly-self-por­traits — pic­tures of her­self elab­o­rate­ly remade as a vari­ety of oth­er peo­ple, includ­ing oth­er famous peo­ple, in a vari­ety of time peri­ods — has made her into an ide­al Insta­gram­mer.

But though Sher­man had been using Insta­gram for quite some time, most of the pub­lic had no idea she had any pres­ence there at all until just this week. “The account, which mys­te­ri­ous­ly switched from pri­vate to pub­lic in recent months, is a mix of per­son­al pho­tos along­side Sherman’s ever-famous manip­u­lat­ed images of her­self,” reports Art­net’s Car­o­line Elbaor.

“What we see here is some­what of a depar­ture from the artist’s tra­di­tion­al mod­el: the frame is tighter and clos­er to her face, in what is clear use of a phone’s front-fac­ing cam­era. Plus, the sub­ject mat­ter is decid­ed­ly inti­mate in com­par­i­son to her usu­al work — the lat­est posts doc­u­ment a stay in the hos­pi­tal. She may even be hav­ing fun with fil­ters.”

She appar­ent­ly start­ed hav­ing fun with them a few months ago, from one May post whose pho­to she describes as “Self­ie! No fil­ter, haha­ha” — but in which she does seem to have made use of cer­tain effects to give the image a few of the suite of uncan­ny qual­i­ties in which she spe­cial­izes. Though not a mem­ber of the gen­er­a­tions the world most close­ly asso­ciates with avid self­ie-tak­ing, Sher­man brings a unique­ly rich expe­ri­ence with the form, or forms like it. Her “method of turn­ing the lens onto her­self is uncan­ni­ly appro­pri­ate to our times,” writes Elbaor,” in which the stage-man­aged self­ie has become so ubiq­ui­tous that it’s now fod­der for exhi­bi­tions and often cit­ed as an art form in itself.”

Sher­man’s Insta­gram self-por­trai­ture, in con­trast to the often (but not always) glam­orous pro­duc­tions that hung on the walls of her shows before, has entered fas­ci­nat­ing new realms of strange­ness and even grotes­querie. Using the image-mod­i­fi­ca­tion tools so many of us might pre­vi­ous­ly assumed were used only by teenage girls des­per­ate to erase their imag­ined flaws, Sher­man twists and bends her own fea­tures into what look like liv­ing car­toon char­ac­ters. “A bit scary,” one com­menter wrote of Sher­man’s recent hos­pi­tal-bed self­ie (tak­en while recov­er­ing from a fall from a horse), “but I can’t look away.” Many of the artist’s thou­sands and thou­sands of new and cap­ti­vat­ed Insta­gram fol­low­ers are sure­ly react­ing the same way. Check out Sher­man’s Insta­gram feed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Say What You Real­ly Mean with Down­load­able Cindy Sher­man Emoti­cons

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks: Download & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

in Art, History, Technology | August 2nd, 2017

Last week we fea­tured the British Muse­um’s archive of down­load­able 3D mod­els of over 200 rich­ly his­tor­i­cal objects in their col­lec­tion, per­haps most notably the Roset­ta Stone. But back in 2015, before that mighty cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion put online in 3D the most impor­tant lin­guis­tic arti­fact of them all, a project called Scan the World cre­at­ed a mod­el of it dur­ing an unof­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ty “scanathon,” and it remains freely avail­able to all who would, for exam­ple, like to 3D print a Roset­ta Stone of their very own.

Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to run off your own copy of a world-famous sculp­ture like ancient Egypt­ian court sculp­tor Thut­mose’s bust of Nefer­ti­ti or Auguste Rod­in’s The Thinker, both of whose 3D mod­els you can find on Scan the World’s archive at My Mini Fac­to­ry.

There the orga­ni­za­tion, “com­prised of a vast com­mu­ni­ty of 3D scan­ning and 3D print­ing enthu­si­asts,” has amassed a col­lec­tion of 7,834 3D mod­els and count­ing, all toward their mis­sion ” to archive the world’s sculp­tures, stat­ues, art­works and any oth­er objects of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance using 3D scan­ning tech­nolo­gies to pro­duce con­tent suit­able for 3D print­ing.”

Scan the World has­n’t lim­it­ed its man­date to just arti­facts and art­works kept in muse­ums: among its mod­els you’ll also find large scale pieces of pub­lic sculp­ture like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty and even beloved build­ings like Big Ben. This con­jures up the tan­ta­liz­ing vision of each of us one day becom­ing empow­ered to 3D-print our very own Lon­don, com­plete with not just a British Muse­um but all the objects, each of which tells part of human­i­ty’s sto­ry, inside it.

As much of a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel as it may rep­re­sent, print­ing out a Venus de Milo or a David or a Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa or a Moai head at home can’t, of course, com­pare to mak­ing the trip to see the gen­uine arti­cle, espe­cial­ly with the kind of 3D print­ers now avail­able to con­sumers. But as recent tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry has shown us, the most amaz­ing devel­op­ments tend to come out of the decen­tral­ized efforts of count­less enthu­si­asts — just the kind of com­mu­ni­ty pow­er­ing Scan the World. The great achieve­ments of the future have to start some­where, and they might as well start by pay­ing trib­ute to the great­est achieve­ments of the past.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Métal hurlant: The Hugely Influential French Comic Magazine That Put Moebius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi Forever

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Sci Fi | August 1st, 2017

Would you believe that one par­tic­u­lar pub­li­ca­tion inspired a range of vision­ary cre­ators includ­ing Rid­ley Scott, George Lucas, Luc Besson, William Gib­son, and Hayao Miyaza­ki? More­over, would you believe that it was French, from the 1970s, and a com­ic book? Not that that term “com­ic book” does jus­tice to Métal hurlant, which dur­ing its ini­tial run from 1974 to 1987 not only rede­fined the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um and great­ly widened the imag­i­na­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry­telling, but brought to promi­nence a num­ber of whol­ly uncon­ven­tion­al and high­ly influ­en­tial artists, chief among them Jean Giraud, best known as Moe­bius.

Métal hurlant, accord­ing to Tom Lennon in his his­to­ry of the mag­a­zine, launched “as the flag­ship title of Les Humanoïdes Asso­ciés, a French pub­lish­ing ven­ture set up by Euro com­ic vet­er­ans Moe­bius, Druil­let and Jean-Pierre Dion­net, togeth­er with their finance direc­tor Bernard Farkas. Influ­enced by both the Amer­i­can under­ground comix scene of the 1960s and the polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al upheavals of that decade, their goal was bold and grandiose: they were going to kick ass, take names, and make peo­ple take comics seri­ous­ly.”

This demand­ed “artis­tic inno­va­tion at every lev­el,” from high-qual­i­ty, large-for­mat paper stock to risk-tak­ing sto­ry­telling “shot through with a rich vein of humour and deliv­ered with a nar­ra­tive sophis­ti­ca­tion pre­vi­ous­ly unseen in the medi­um.”

Giraud took to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the new pub­li­ca­tion with a spe­cial avid­ness. Under the pen name “Gir,” writes Lennon, he “was best known as the co-cre­ator of the pop­u­lar West­ern series, Blue­ber­ry. By the mid-1970s, Giraud was feel­ing increas­ing­ly con­strained by the con­ven­tions of the west­ern genre, so decid­ed to revive a long-dor­mant pseu­do­nym to embark on more exper­i­men­tal work. As ‘Moe­bius’, Giraud not only worked in a dif­fer­ent genre to ‘Gir’ – a deeply per­son­al, high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic form of sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy – but his art looked like it was drawn by a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent per­son,” and “unlike any­thing that had been seen in comics — or, for that mat­ter, in any oth­er medi­um.”

Métal hurlant saw the debuts of two of Moe­bius’ best-known char­ac­ters: the pith-hel­met­ed and mus­ta­chioed pro­tec­tor of minia­ture uni­vers­es Major Gru­bert and the silent, ptero­dactyl-rid­ing explor­er Arzach, who bears a cer­tain resem­blance to the pro­tag­o­nist of Miyaza­k­i’s 1984 film Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind. Read through the back issues of the mag­a­zine — or its 40-years-run­ning Amer­i­can ver­sion, Heavy Met­al — and you’ll also glimpse, in the work of Moe­bius and oth­ers, ele­ments that would lat­er find their way into the worlds of Neu­ro­mancer, Mad Max, Alien, Blade Run­ner, Star Wars, and much more besides.

“A while ago, SF was filled with mon­strous rock­et ships and plan­ets,” said Moe­bius in 1980. “It was a naive and mate­ri­al­is­tic vision, which con­fused exter­nal space with inter­nal space, which saw the future as an extrap­o­la­tion of the present. It was a vic­tim of an illu­sion of a tech­no­log­i­cal sort, of a pro­gres­sion with­out stop­ping towards a con­sum­ma­tion of ener­gy.” He and Métal hurlant did more than their part to trans­form and enrich that vision, but plen­ty of old per­cep­tions still remain for their count­less artis­tic descen­dants to warp beyond recog­ni­tion.

via Tom Lennon/Dazed Dig­i­tal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Miyazaki Meets Warhol in Campbell’s Soup Cans Reimagined by Designer Hyo Taek Kim

in Animation, Art, Design, Film, Life | July 28th, 2017

M’m! M’m! Good! M’m! M’m! Good!,

That’s what Warhol Campbell’s Soup Cans recon­ceived as Miyaza­ki films are,

M’m! M’m! Good! 

Brazil­ian-Kore­an design­er Hyo Taek Kim has found a con­tin­u­ing font of inspi­ra­tion in his child­hood love of Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed films.

He has decon­struct­ed them into a series of Pan­tone of col­or palettes and cap­tured sev­er­al favorite moments through the lens of VHS tape glitch­es.

Miyazaki–Special Soup Series, his lat­est explorato­ry jour­ney into the enchant­ed world of the revered mas­ter ani­ma­tor and director–finds him reduc­ing each film to a cou­ple of essen­tial fla­vors.

One can imag­ine Mom call­ing the kids in from an after­noon of sled­ding for a warm, Cream of Toma­to-ish bowl of Totoro.

Spir­it­ed Away and Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle are slight­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed fla­vors, that may involve leafy greens.

Princess Mononoke and Por­co Rosso are Grandpa’s favorites–real stick to your ribs fare.

The sub­tle iconog­ra­phy brings added dimen­sion to the stark prod­uct design Warhol dupli­cat­ed to such acclaim.

As Kim told the Cre­ators Project:

Sim­ple design that works is always so much hard­er to cre­ate than you might expect. It’s just very fun to mar­ry two ideas, artists and/or con­cepts into one big image. Andy Warhol changed the world of phys­i­cal arts. Hayao Miyaza­ki changed the world of ani­mat­ed arts.

This is not Kim’s first go at Campbell’s. His ear­li­er Super­soup Series reduced super­heroes to con­som­mé and cream ofs. Don’t for­get the oys­ter crack­ers.

Posters and t‑shirts of Hyo Taek Kim’s Miyaza­ki Spe­cial Soup and Souper­soup Series can be pur­chased here.

View more of Kim’s soup cans online at the Cre­ators Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

A New Theme Park Based on Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neigh­bor Totoro Set to Open in 2020

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Illustrated by Salvador Dalí in 1969, Finally Gets Reissued

in Art, Books | July 27th, 2017

On can­vas and paper, Sal­vador Dalí cre­at­ed appar­ent­ly non­sen­si­cal real­i­ties that nev­er­the­less oper­at­ed accord­ing to log­ic all their own; in writ­ing, Lewis Car­roll, author of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, did the very same. It thus only makes sense, despite their dif­fer­ences in nation­al­i­ty and sen­si­bil­i­ty as well as their bare­ly over­lap­ping life spans, that their artis­tic worlds — one with its grotesque­ly mis­shapen objects, obscure sym­bols, and haunt­ing­ly emp­ty vis­tas, the oth­er full of word­play, whim­sy, and math­e­mat­ics — would one day col­lide. It hap­pened in 1969, when an edi­tor at Ran­dom House com­mis­sioned the mas­ter sur­re­al­ist to cre­ate illus­tra­tions for an exclu­sive edi­tion of Car­rol­l’s time­less sto­ry for the house­’s book-of-the-month club.

“Dalí cre­at­ed twelve heli­ogravures — a fron­tispiece, which he signed in every copy from the edi­tion, and one illus­tra­tion for each chap­ter of the book,” writes Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va. “For more than half a cen­tu­ry, this unusu­al yet organ­ic cross-pol­li­na­tion of genius remained an almost myth­ic arti­fact, reserved for col­lec­tors and schol­ars,” until Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press saw fit to reprint it for Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land’s 150th anniver­sary (much as Taschen recent­ly reis­sued Dalí’s bizarre cook­book Les Din­ers de Gala).  Sweet­en­ing the deal still fur­ther, they’ve includ­ed essays by math­e­mati­cian and Dalí col­lab­o­ra­tor Thomas Ban­choff as well as Lewis Car­roll Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Mark Burstein.

“Although the out­ra­geous­ness of Rev­erend Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son, who came up with the pen name Lewis Car­roll in 1856, was limned with­in a con­ven­tion­al fairy tale,” writes Burstein, “the sur­re­al­ists delib­er­ate­ly sought out­rage and provo­ca­tion in their art and lives and ques­tioned the nature of real­i­ty. For both Car­roll and the sur­re­al­ists, what some call mad­ness could be per­ceived by oth­ers as wis­dom.” He describes sur­re­al­is­m’s ini­tial objec­tive as mak­ing “acces­si­ble to art the realms of the uncon­scious, the irra­tional, and the imag­i­nary, and its influ­ence soon went far beyond the visu­al arts and lit­er­a­ture, embrac­ing music, film, the­ater, phi­los­o­phy, and pop­u­lar cul­ture. As have the Alice books.” And with so many realms of the uncon­scious, the irra­tional, and the imag­i­nary left to explore, this inter­sec­tion of Car­roll and Dalí’s dif­fer­ent yet com­pat­i­ble meth­ods of explo­ration should hold more appeal than ever.

You can find copies of the Prince­ton reis­sue of Dalí’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Behold Lewis Carroll’s Orig­i­nal Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script for Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (1864)

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When Soviet Artists Turned Textiles (Scarves, Tablecloths & Curtains) into Beautiful Propaganda in the 1920s & 1930s

in Art, History | July 26th, 2017

Amer­i­cans swim in pro­pa­gan­da all the time, even those of us who think the word refers to some exot­ic form of for­eign author­i­tar­i­an­ism rather than our own good ol’ home-cooked vari­ety. But the sad fact—admittedly very far down the list of rather trag­ic facts—is that U.S. pro­pa­gan­da is par­tic­u­lar­ly crude, obnox­ious, and unap­peal­ing. Con­trast, for exam­ple, the sym­bol of the pantsuit, or the casu­al racism, misog­y­ny, and homi­ci­dal fan­tasies on truck­er hats, t‑shirts, and beach tow­els with the alarm­ing pageantry of Maoist Chi­na, Stal­in­ist Rus­sia, or name-your-showy-total­i­tar­i­an-regime.

In the ear­ly days of the Sovi­et Union, state pro­pa­gan­da received a spe­cial boost from a cadre of eager and will­ing avant-garde artists, includ­ing poet, actor, direc­tor, etc. Vladimir Mayakovsky, who wrote Sovi­et children’s books, and a num­ber of Russ­ian Futur­ists who seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote the new order with total­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble poet­ry and art.

In no way reg­i­ment­ed or stan­dard­ized, as were lat­er Social­ist Real­ists, ear­ly Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­dists used pol­i­tics as anoth­er mate­r­i­al in their work, rather than its pri­ma­ry rai­son d’être.

These pio­neers were joined by exper­i­men­tal com­posers, film­mak­ers, and even tex­tile design­ers, who had a brief moment under the shin­ing Sovi­et star between 1927 and 1933, when, as one pub­li­ca­tion from a wealthy col­lec­tor notes, “a fas­ci­nat­ing exper­i­ment in tex­tile mak­ing took place in the Sovi­et Union. As the new nation emerged and the Com­mu­nist par­ty strug­gled to trans­form an agrar­i­an coun­try into an indus­tri­al­ized state, a group of young design­ers began to cre­ate the­mat­ic tex­tile designs.”

Their designs—adorning table­cloths, sheets, cur­tains, and scarves and oth­er items of every­day, off-the-rack wear—showcase bold, strik­ing pat­terns, many, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “the­mat­ic of clas­si­cal Russ­ian art: you see lush col­or, dense scapes and even the odd Ori­en­tal­ist trope.” They are also filled with “delight­ful­ly pro­pa­gan­dist imagery,” notes Mari­na Galpe­ri­na at Fla­vor­wire, “of revving trac­tors, smoke-pump­ing fac­tor pipes, and babush­ka-clad women tak­ing a sick­le to wheat… woven in between opu­lent flo­rals and pret­ty, con­struc­tivist squig­gles.”

Fac­to­ry gears, war machines, ath­letes, and scenes of indus­try were pop­u­lar, as were the expect­ed state sym­bols and iconography—as in the Lenin linen at the top, framed at the top by Marx and Engels; Trot­sky at the bot­tom left has been purged from the tex­tile record. See many more exam­ples of ear­ly Sovi­et tex­tiles at io9, Flash­bak, and Messy Nessy.

via Eng­lish Rus­sia and @Ted­Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Need to Know About Mod­ern Russ­ian Art in 25 Min­utes: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Futur­ism, Social­ist Real­ism & More

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Sovi­et Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artis­tic, Ide­o­log­i­cal Col­lec­tion (1917–1953)

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

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

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Notebooks Now Online: Browse 570 Digitized Pages

in Art, History, Science | July 25th, 2017

Quick, what do you know about Leonar­do da Vin­ci? He paint­ed the Mona Lisa! He wrote his notes back­wards! He designed super­cool bridges and fly­ing machines! He was a genius about, um… a lot of oth­er… things… and, um, stuff…

Okay, I’m sure you know a bit more than that, but unless you’re a Renais­sance schol­ar, you’re cer­tain to find your­self amazed and sur­prised at how much you didn’t know about the quin­tes­sen­tial Renais­sance man when you encounter a com­pi­la­tion of his note­books—Codex Arun­del—which has been dig­i­tized by the British Library and made avail­able to the pub­lic.

The note­book, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, rep­re­sents “the liv­ing record of a uni­ver­sal mind.” And yet, though a “technophile” him­self, “when it came to pub­li­ca­tion, Leonar­do was a lud­dite…. He made no effort to get his notes pub­lished.”

For hun­dreds of years, the huge, secre­tive col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts remained most­ly unseen by all but the most rar­i­fied of col­lec­tors. After Leonar­do’s death in France, writes the British Library, his stu­dent Francesco Melzi “brought many of his man­u­scripts and draw­ings back to Italy. Melzi’s heirs, who had no idea of the impor­tance of the man­u­scripts, grad­u­al­ly dis­posed of them.” Nonethe­less, over 5,000 pages of notes “still exist in Leonardo’s ‘mir­ror writ­ing’, from right to left.” In the note­books, da Vin­ci drew “visions of the aero­plane, the heli­copter, the para­chute, the sub­ma­rine and the car. It was more than 300 years before many of his ideas were improved upon.”

The dig­i­tized note­books debuted in 2007 as a joint project of the British Library and Microsoft called “Turn­ing the Pages 2.0,” an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that allows view­ers to “turn” the pages of the note­books with ani­ma­tions. Onscreen gloss­es explain the con­tent of the cryp­tic notes sur­round­ing the many tech­ni­cal draw­ings, dia­grams, and schemat­ics (see a selec­tion of the note­books in this ani­mat­ed for­mat here). For an over­whelm­ing amount of Leonar­do, you can look through 570 dig­i­tized pages of Codex Arun­del here. For a slight­ly more digestible, and read­able, amount of Leonar­do, see the British Library’s brief series on his life and work, includ­ing expla­na­tions of his div­ing appa­ra­tus, para­chute, and glid­er.

And for much more on the man—including evi­dence of his sar­to­r­i­al “pref­er­ence for pink tights” and his shop­ping lists—see Jonathan Jones’ Guardian piece, which links to oth­er note­book col­lec­tions and resources. The artist and self-taught poly­math made an impres­sive effort to keep his ideas from pry­ing eyes. Now, thanks to dig­i­tized col­lec­tions like those at the British Library, “any­one can study the mind of Leonar­do.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

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

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The British Museum Creates 3D Models of the Rosetta Stone & 200+ Other Historic Artifacts: Download or View in Virtual Reality

in Art, Museums, Technology | July 25th, 2017

Back in 2015, The British Muse­um gave the world online access to the Roset­ta Stone, along with 4,700 oth­er arti­facts in the great Lon­don muse­um. But that access was only in 2D.

Now they’ve upped the ante and pub­lished a 3D mod­el of the Roset­ta Stone and 200+ oth­er essen­tial items in the muse­um’s col­lec­tions. “This scan was part of our larg­er attempt to cap­ture as many of our icon­ic pieces from the col­lec­tion — and indeed the unseen in store objects — and make them avail­able for peo­ple to view in 3D or in more tac­tile forms,” Daniel Pett, a British Muse­um advis­er told Dig­i­tal Trends.

Oth­er 3D mod­els you might want to check out include the gran­ite head of Amen­emhat III, a por­trait bust of Sir Robert Bruce Cot­ton, and a stat­ue of Roy, High Priest of Amun.

Note: If you put your mouse on the objects and swiv­el on your track­pad, you can see dif­fer­ent sides of the arti­facts. Cre­at­ed with a com­pa­ny called Sketch­fab, the 3D mod­els are all avail­able to down­load. You can also see them in vir­tu­al real­i­ty. (Look for the lit­tle “View in VR” icon at the bot­tom of each image.)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

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