300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

in Art, Nature, Photography, Science | January 6th, 2026

Are we tru­ly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an era of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to describe what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, the author of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has found at least one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” But Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Until very recent­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. But astound­ing­ly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 per­cent of Earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our live­stock, and our pets take up the remain­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… almost half of the Earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs does not bode well for the mil­lions of remain­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We learn from extinc­tions past that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­able cat­a­stro­phe. Life real­ly does go on, though it may take mil­lions of years to recov­er. But the cur­rent forms of life may dis­ap­pear before their time. If we want to under­stand what is at stake besides our own frag­ile fos­sil-fuel-based civ­i­liza­tions, we need to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly as well as intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Short of globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion in the Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we could hard­ly do bet­ter than immers­ing our­selves in the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, art, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open access dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for many years been mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to con­nect to nature through nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. On Flickr, you can find 319,000 care­ful­ly curat­ed images. The col­lec­tion itself is sub­di­vid­ed into dif­fer­ent pho­to albums drawn from his­tor­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions. For exam­ple, The Fresh­wa­ter Fish­es of the British Isles (1911), The Bird (1869), and The Insect Book (1901).

This image archive offers expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not only through sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but through the artis­tic record­ing of won­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion. Enter the archive here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Observed in England’s Coun­try­side

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Jewelry Designs: From Throbbing Heart Necklaces to Medusa Brooches

in Art, Fashion | December 26th, 2025

Upon hear­ing the name of Sal­vador Dalí, even a total lay­man in the art world is bound to get visions of melt­ing clocks. Sur­pris­ing­ly, for an artist who showed so much self-mar­ket­ing savvy, Dalí nev­er brought an actu­al time­piece in that dis­tinc­tive­ly, even canon­i­cal­ly sur­re­al shape to mar­ket. But that hard­ly stopped Carti­er from putting out the Crash, whose dis­tort­ed shape may have always brought The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry to mind, but whose name hints at the inspi­ra­tion of a watch smashed up in a car wreck. The Crash came out in swing­ing-six­ties Lon­don at its very height, by which time Dalí him­self had been design­ing real jew­el­ry for more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry.

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You can see a few of Dalí’s jew­els in the 1960 British Pathé clip at the top of the post. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, they occu­py a realm apart from, or at least orthog­o­nal to, that of con­ven­tion­al jew­el­ry. Some of them move: Liv­ing Flower, for instance, which “opens to reveal sta­men and petals paved with dia­monds. The mech­a­nism is embed­ded in mala­chite from the Con­go, which to Dalí rep­re­sents the unknown, latent forces, while the gold and dia­mond flow­ers, known beau­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty.”

Angel Cross, by con­trast, embod­ies “the hypox­i­o­log­i­cal con­cept of exis­tence — what­ev­er that means.”  Cer­tain­ly, Dalí nev­er claimed to play to the sen­si­bil­i­ty of the British, though some of them might go in for The Roy­al Heart, with its “pul­sat­ing rubies rep­re­sent­ing our queen, heart beat­ing con­stant­ly for her peo­ple, while the nugget gold sym­bol­izes the peo­ple shel­ter­ing and pro­tect­ing their ruler.”

The seg­men­t’s out­takes fea­ture more footage of these pieces, giv­ing us a longer look at works like The Eye of Time, embed­ded with a small clock signed by Dalí, and the “leaf-veined hands” he described as “reach­ing out to the future.” Oth­er of his vivid jew­el­ry designs include the Medusa brooch, com­plet­ed with a nest of ruby-eyed gold snakes, and a con­struc­tion that lit­er­al­izes — and, at the same time, sur­re­al­izes — the expres­sion “ruby lips and teeth like pearls.” Real­ized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the well-regard­ed jew­el­ers Car­los Ale­many, Eric Ert­man, and Hen­ryk Kas­ton, and often inspired by his wife and muse Gala, they may be over­shad­owed by Dalí’s paint­ings and draw­ings, but haute cou­ture does pay them occa­sion­al homage. What else — indeed, who else — could have inspired the throb­bing heart-shaped rhine­stone neck­lace seen on Schi­a­par­el­li’s mod­els last sum­mer at Paris Fash­ion Week?

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s Sur­re­al Cut­lery Set from 1957

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the First Depiction of Santa Claus (and Its Origins in Civil War Propaganda)

in Art, History | December 25th, 2025

It will no doubt come as a relief to many read­ers that San­ta Claus appears to have been a Union sup­port­er. We know this because he appears dis­trib­ut­ing gifts to sol­diers from that side of the Mason-Dixon in one of his ear­li­est depic­tions. That illus­tra­tion, “San­ta Claus in Camp” (above), first appeared in the Harper’s Week­ly Christ­mas issue of 1862, when the Amer­i­can Civ­il War was still tear­ing its way through the coun­try. Its artist, a Bavar­i­an immi­grant named Thomas Nast, is now remem­bered for hav­ing first drawn the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as a don­key and the Repub­li­can Par­ty as an ele­phant, but he also did more than any­one else to cre­ate the image of San­ta Claus rec­og­nized around the world today: more than Nor­man Rock­well, and more, even, than the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny.

San­ta Claus is an Angli­ciza­tion of Sin­terk­laas, a Dutch name for Saint Nicholas, who lived and died in what’s now Turkey in the third and fourth cen­turies, and who’s been remem­bered since for his kind­ness to chil­dren. Few of us would rec­og­nize him in his por­trait from 1294 that is includ­ed in the Pub­lic Domain Review’s pic­to­r­i­al his­to­ry of San­ta Claus, but with the pass­ing of the cen­turies, his images became mixed with those of oth­er fly­ing, win­ter-asso­ci­at­ed char­ac­ters from Ger­man­ic and Norse myth. In 1822, Clement Moore per­formed a defin­ing act of rhyming syn­the­sis with his poem “A Vis­it from St. Nicholas” (often called “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas”): in its vers­es we find the bun­dle of toys, the rosy cheeks, the white beard, the bel­ly shak­ing like a bowl full of jel­ly.

Nast clear­ly under­stood not just the appeal of Moore’s descrip­tion, but also the char­ac­ter’s pro­pa­gan­da val­ue. His very first ren­di­tions of San­ta Claus appear in the upper cor­ners of an 1862 Harper’s Week­ly illus­tra­tion of a pray­ing wife and her Yan­kee sol­dier hus­band. Near­ly two decades lat­er, Nast drew the car­toon “Mer­ry Old San­ta Claus” (imme­di­ate­ly above), whose cen­tral fig­ure remains imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able to us today, even as its moti­vat­ing polit­i­cal cause of high­er wages for the mil­i­tary has become obscure. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the icon­ic Father Christ­mas would be enlist­ed again to lend pub­lic sup­port to U.S. efforts in World War I and II, in the very decades when Rock­well was fur­ther refin­ing and cement­ing his image in pop­u­lar cul­ture. The once-unlike­ly result was an Amer­i­can San­ta Claus: “the sym­bol of our empire,” in the words of The New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik, “as much as Apol­lo was of the Hel­lenic one.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch San­ta Claus, the Ear­li­est Movie About San­ta in Exis­tence (1898)

Did San­ta Claus & His Rein­deers Begin with a Mush­room Trip?: Dis­cov­er the Psy­che­del­ic, Shaman­is­tic Side of Christ­mas

Hear “Twas The Night Before Christ­mas” Read by Stephen Fry & John Cleese

J. R. R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

Slavoj Žižek Answers the Ques­tion “Should We Teach Chil­dren to Believe in San­ta Claus?”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI

in Art, Artificial Intelligence, History | December 15th, 2025

If you want to know what it was like to live in sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read the diary of Samuel Pepys. While doing so, take note of his fre­quent ref­er­ences to the unclean­li­ness of the city’s streets: “very dirty and trou­ble­some to walk through,” “mighty dirty after the rain,” and dur­ing the large-scale rebuild­ing in the after­math of the Great Fire of 1666, “much built, yet very dirty and encum­bered.” If you want to know what it was like to live in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read Charles Dick­ens. How­ev­er much-lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties it presents to young read­ers, the open­ing of Bleak House remains high­ly evoca­tive, set­ting the scene with “as much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but new­ly retired from the face of the earth,” “dogs, undis­tin­guish­able in mire, and “hors­es, scarce­ly bet­ter; splashed to their very blink­ers.”

This “mud,” an unspeak­ably foul admix­ture of sub­stances, only began to recede per­ma­nent­ly from Lon­don’s streets in the eigh­teen-fifties, after the instal­la­tion of sew­er sys­tems. So nor­mal for so long, its pres­ence would hard­ly have been down­played by the city’s observers back then, whether they record­ed their obser­va­tions on the page or on the can­vas.

Even the painter’s ide­al­iz­ing impulse could only do so much, as evi­denced by some of the shots includ­ed in the new video tour of eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don from Majes­tic Stu­dios above. Turn­ing con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and engrav­ings into cin­e­mat­ic ani­ma­tions with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed video, it offers the next best thing to actu­al footage of the city as it would have been seen by the likes of Jonathan Swift, Samuel John­son, Thomas Gains­bor­ough, and Mary Woll­stonecraft.

Sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don was the cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial cen­ter of Geor­gian Eng­land, but also a city well on its way to becom­ing the cen­ter of the world. Some of its famous sights seen here in their eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry urban con­text include St. Paul’s Cathe­dral by Sir Christo­pher Wren, mas­ter­mind of the city’s post-Great Fire recon­struc­tion; the old Lon­don Bridge, still lined with hous­es and shops; St. James’s Square after its trans­for­ma­tion from a state once con­sid­ered “mud­dy, neglect­ed, and frankly, embar­rass­ing for such pres­ti­gious address­es”; and the Tow­er of Lon­don on the bank of the Riv­er Thames. As for the riv­er itself, it hard­ly goes ignored by the works of art that shape this video, or indeed un-glo­ri­fied by them. But if you know any­thing about its con­di­tion before the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, you’ll be relieved that AI can’t yet restore its smell.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

The Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don: 2,000 Years of Change Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Sights & Sounds of 18th-Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with 3D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Download 1300 Still Images from the Animated Films of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli

in Animation, Art, Film | December 11th, 2025

You may have seen every sin­gle one of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s ani­mat­ed films, going well beyond the Hayao Miyaza­ki-direct­ed My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice to the less wide­ly known but also charm­ing­ly craft­ed likes of Ocean Waves, My Neigh­bors the Yamadas, and The Cat Returns. Even so, the ques­tion remains: have you real­ly seen them all? Expe­ri­enc­ing them in the the­ater or on home video is only the first stage of the process. Ide­al­ly, each ele­ment of a Ghi­b­li movie should sub­se­quent­ly be appre­ci­at­ed in iso­la­tion and at length: by lis­ten­ing to the music, for exam­ple, hun­dreds of hours of which, avail­able to stream, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Still, no mat­ter how cap­ti­vat­ing Joe Hisaishi’s scores may sound on their own, Ghi­b­li’s work is ulti­mate­ly made to be seen. Giv­en that 24 frames of their movies go by each sec­ond, it can be dif­fi­cult to pick up all the details their ani­ma­tors include in each and every one of them.

Hence the val­ue of the free archive of stills that the stu­dio first made avail­able online a few years ago, and that has steadi­ly expand­ed ever since. Though only avail­able in Japan­ese, it does­n’t present a great chal­lenge even to fans with no knowl­edge of the lan­guage to click on the poster of their Ghi­b­li film of choice, then to browse the vari­ety of down­load­able images asso­ci­at­ed with it.

Many of these stills are drawn from high­ly mem­o­rable moments across the Ghi­b­li fil­mog­ra­phy: the chil­dren’s par­ty on the hero of Por­co Rosso’s beloved air­plane; the emer­gence of the kodama in Princess Mononoke; the defeat of the colos­sal Giant War­rior in Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind (which pre­dates the stu­dio’s foun­da­tion, but in any case now seems to count hon­orar­i­ly among its pro­duc­tions); the sen­tient flame cook­ing a skil­let of bacon and eggs in Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle. Some of them have even been turned into wall­pa­per for video calls, down­load­able from a page of their own. There we have anoth­er way to add a touch of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s dis­tinc­tive vision to our every­day lives — and anoth­er source of inspi­ra­tion to watch through the movies them­selves one more time.

Enter the archive of still images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

A Tour of Stu­dio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Cre­ates the Worlds of Spir­it­ed Away, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Oth­er Clas­sics

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Stream Hun­dreds of Hours of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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See What the Original Mona Lisa Likely Looked Like

in Art, History | December 9th, 2025

If you want to see the Mona Lisa in real life, your first thought may not be to head to the Pra­do. But accord­ing to a school of thought that has emerged in recent years, the Mona Lisa in Madrid has a greater claim to artis­tic faith­ful­ness than the one in Paris. That’s because researchers have dis­cov­ered com­pelling evi­dence sug­gest­ing that what was long con­sid­ered just anoth­er copy of the most famous paint­ing in the world was­n’t made after Leonar­do had com­plet­ed the orig­i­nal, but con­cur­rent­ly with the orig­i­nal, prob­a­bly by one of his stu­dents. Over half a mil­len­ni­um, in this view, the Prado’s Mona Lisa has retained the col­ors and details the Lou­vre’s has lost, result­ing in its preser­va­tion of Leonar­do’s inten­tions today.

Infrared pho­tog­ra­phy has even revealed, says the nar­ra­tor of the new Inspi­rag­gio video above, that both paint­ings “share the same changes in the orig­i­nal sketch. For years, it has been known that Leonar­do made small cor­rec­tions to the shape of the Mona Lisa’s hands, adjust­ments to the line of the eyes, and sub­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the curve of the face,” the very same cor­rec­tions that were found in the new­ly exam­ined copy.

Unlike oth­er copies, the Prado’s ver­sion uses “incred­i­bly expen­sive pig­ments” such as lapis lazuli—imported from Afghanistan—for the sky. This only became evi­dent dur­ing the 2012 restora­tion, when the back­ground, long hid­den under a thick lay­er of black, was final­ly uncov­ered.

There­after, the Pra­do Mona Lisa was exhib­it­ed along­side the Mona Lisa at the Lou­vre in a tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion. This gave the pub­lic the chance to see both how sim­i­lar they look, and how dif­fer­ent. Though unde­ni­ably La Gio­con­da, the copy does­n’t seem quite “right,” in large part because it has­n’t dete­ri­o­rat­ed in the man­ner or to the degree of the orig­i­nal. Leonar­do paint­ed it on a poplar wood pan­el that has giv­en way to count­less small cracks, and the lay­ers of yel­low var­nish added over the cen­turies have dark­ened to give the whole image a sepia tone. The result, of course, is the tex­ture and col­or­ing we’ve come to asso­ciate with the Mona Lisa by cease­less expo­sure to her in pop­u­lar cul­ture, even if we’ve nev­er seen any ver­sion hang­ing in any muse­um. If the Prado’s copy real­ly does reflect Leonar­do’s orig­i­nal artis­tic choic­es, we can put at least one hot­ly debat­ed mat­ter to rest: the lady real­ly did have eye­brows.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before the Mona Lisa?

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

A Chi­nese Painter Spe­cial­iz­ing in Copy­ing Van Gogh Paint­ings Trav­els to Ams­ter­dam & Sees Van Gogh’s Mas­ter­pieces for the First Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Did Tintin Creator Hergé Collaborate with the Nazis? A Historical Investigation

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, History | December 4th, 2025

The Adven­tures of Tintin may be a chil­dren’s com­ic series from mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Europe, but its appeal has long since tran­scend­ed the bound­aries of form, cul­ture, and gen­er­a­tion. In fact, many if not most seri­ous­ly ded­i­cat­ed fans of Tintin are in mid­dle age and beyond, and few of them can have avoid­ed ever con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion of his cre­ator’s activ­i­ties dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Georges Remi, known by the nom de plume Hergé, was born to a low­er-mid­dle-class fam­i­ly in a Brus­sels sub­urb in 1907: utter­ly mun­dane begin­nings, per­haps, but ones that would lead to what the apoc­ryphal ancient Chi­nese curse calls inter­est­ing times, even for a young man whose inter­ests did­n’t run far past scout­ing and draw­ing.

After serv­ing in the Bel­gian army, explains his­to­ry YouTu­ber Mark Fel­ton in his new video above, Remi was hired by the con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic paper Le Vingtième Siè­cle to draw comics for its chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment Le Petit Vingtième. It was there that he became Hergé and cre­at­ed the boy reporter Tintin, whom the paper’s edi­tor asked to be sent to a fic­tion­al­ized Sovi­et Union in order to expose the evils of the Bol­she­viks. Pop­u­lar­i­ty came imme­di­ate­ly, and built up to the degree that an actor was hired to put his hair into a quiff and “return” by train to an appre­cia­tive crowd in Brus­sels upon the sto­ry’s con­clu­sion. There fol­lowed the fur­ther adven­tures of Tintin in the Con­go (at the time, a Bel­gian colony) and Tintin in Amer­i­ca, both of which have since come in for a great deal of crit­i­cism for their reliance on stereo­types.

Though very much his own artist, Hergé at this stage let the pol­i­tics of Tintin sto­ries be dic­tat­ed by high­er-ups. Con­ceived in response to Japan’s inva­sion of Manchuria, The Blue Lotus, from 1934, did offer him an oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase the real­ism of his art, ren­der­ing the look and feel of Chi­na as accu­rate­ly as his research could make pos­si­ble; he con­tin­ued to incor­po­rate large amounts of detail from all over the world into The Bro­ken Ear, The Black Island, and King Ottokar’s Scep­tre. Though that last deals with fic­tion­al Euro­pean coun­tries, it also clear­ly sat­i­rizes the inva­sive ten­den­cies of Hitler’s Ger­many — which would come for Hergé’s home­land in 1940, shut­ting down Le Petit Vingtième, putting him out of a job, and even req­ui­si­tion­ing his home.

Even­tu­al­ly, Hergé land­ed on his feet and joined Le Soir, Bel­gium’s largest French-lan­guage news­pa­per. Though he could pub­lish Tintin there, the Nazis had turned it into their ide­o­log­i­cal mouth­piece, a fact that did­n’t reflect well on Hergé after the Allied vic­to­ry. He found him­self black­list­ed and cat­e­go­rized with the thou­sands of Bel­gian col­lab­o­ra­tors who could receive the death penal­ty or life in prison, but an inves­ti­ga­tion into his case found him to be “a blun­der­er rather than a trai­tor” — shades of P. G. Wode­house mak­ing broad­casts about the lighter side of intern­ment for the Gestapo. His good stand­ing as a cit­i­zen and artist was even­tu­al­ly restored, though even today, his wartime activ­i­ties are occa­sion­al­ly called into ques­tion. Still, he was able to con­tin­ue Tintin’s adven­tures until he died in 1983, engag­ing in only the kind of col­lab­o­ra­tion he could do with his staff at Stu­dios Hergé.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

How Andy Warhol and Tintin Cre­ator Hergé Mutu­al­ly Admired and Influ­enced One Anoth­er

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing for Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

How the Nazis Waged War on Mod­ern Art: Inside the “Degen­er­ate Art” Exhi­bi­tion of 1937

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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An Immersive, ASMR-Style Look at Japanese Woodblock Printing

in Art | December 1st, 2025

While not every Open Cul­ture read­er dreams of mov­ing to Japan and becom­ing a wood­block print­mak­er, it’s a safe bet that at least a few of you enter­tain just such a fan­ta­sy from time to time. David Bull, a British-Born Cana­di­an who got his first expo­sure to the art of ukiyo‑e in his late twen­ties, actu­al­ly did it. Though he’s been liv­ing in Japan and steadi­ly pur­su­ing his art there since 1986, only in recent years has he become known around the world. That’s thanks to his YouTube chan­nel, which we’ve fea­tured here sev­er­al times before. In the video above, one of his most pop­u­lar, he lets his view­ers expe­ri­ence print­mak­ing from his point of view, see­ing what he sees and even hear­ing what he hears.

Though Bull nor­mal­ly focus­es on the ear­ly stage carv­ing images into the blocks, here he spends about an hour on the final print­ing phase, going through a batch of eight sheets. As even a few min­utes’ view­ing reveals, this is a labor-inten­sive and thor­ough­ly ana­log process.

That impres­sion will be height­ened if you wear head­phones, since, as Bull explains, he shot the video while wear­ing in-ear micro­phones that record the sounds of the job just as he hears them. This par­tic­u­lar aspect of the pro­duc­tion required him to rise con­sid­er­ably ear­li­er than usu­al, in order to avoid the con­sid­er­able day­time noise on the streets of Tokyo right out­side his work­shop — and thus to more ful­ly sat­is­fy the large ASMR crowd.

The term ASMR, or “Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response,” refers to a set of pleas­ing sen­sa­tions trig­gered by cer­tain kinds of sound, often those pro­duced by soft-spo­ken indi­vid­u­als like Bull or the kind of repet­i­tive, method­i­cal tool work he does. Chances are, many if not most of the almost 950,000 views this video has racked up so far have come from ASMR enthu­si­asts less inter­est­ed in Japan­ese wood­block print­ing per se than in the gen­er­al aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to Japan­ese wood­block print­ing — at least at first. We all know how life can go: one day you’re check­ing out YouTube, just look­ing to relax, and the next you’re ensconced in Asakusa, hav­ing whol­ly devot­ed your­self to a three-and-a-half-mil­len­ni­um-year-old tra­di­tion­al art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

A Col­lec­tion of Hokusai’s Draw­ings Are Being Carved Onto Wood­blocks & Print­ed for the First Time Ever

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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