The Radical, Unclassifiable Art of William Blake

in Art, Books, Poetry | July 17th, 2026

William Blake is a house­hold name, or not far from it, but things get more com­pli­cat­ed when it comes to pro­fes­sion­al descrip­tion. He was a poet, a painter, and a print­mak­er, at least inso­far as he wrote poet­ry, paint­ed paint­ings, and made prints. But we can’t hope to attain even a basic under­stand­ing of his lega­cy if we regard him as one man who hap­pened to have the ener­gy to do three dif­fer­ent things. In fact, the osten­si­bly sep­a­rate artis­tic pur­suits in which he engaged were but three aspects of a uni­fied act of cre­ation, result­ing in the likes of Songs of Inno­cence and of Expe­ri­ence and his illu­mi­nat­ed “prophet­ic books”: unclas­si­fi­able works by “the patron saint of unclas­si­fi­able artists.”

So Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, labels him in his new video above. Blake made books, “which he designed, wrote, etched, col­ored, and print­ed him­self, using a tech­nique that he invent­ed.” They “mix and syn­the­size cat­e­gories, and as a result, the art­work of the late sev­en­teen- and ear­ly eigh­teen-hun­dreds did­n’t real­ly know what to make of them.”

It did­n’t help that the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts, found­ed when Blake was in ado­les­cence, had laid down its own strict aes­thet­ic, gener­ic, and for­mal stan­dards. Offi­cial­ly an engraver and accord­ed the low­ly sta­tus there­of, Blake devot­ed his labors to real­iz­ing his elab­o­rate­ly idio­syn­crat­ic visions using images and words togeth­er in ways that no artist had done before.

This choice “to work as mak­er of words, mak­er of images, and cross­breed­er of both, amount­ed to a deci­sion to live in incom­men­su­rable neigh­bor­hoods of mean­ing,” writes The Cam­bridge Com­pan­ion to William Blake author Mor­ris Eaves as quot­ed by Puschak. Blake swam against the cur­rent “of mod­ern human under­stand­ing, whose bedrock is the prin­ci­ple of spe­cial­iza­tion.” Today, near­ly two cen­turies after his death, that prin­ci­ple still obtains, and in some ways more rigid­ly than ever. But his work remains, from the Songs and the prophet­ic books to his illus­tra­tions of clas­sics like the Divine Com­e­dy, Par­adise Lost, and even the Bib­li­cal Book of Job, which he read as “the sto­ry of a man who believes, mis­tak­en­ly, that sal­va­tion requires a slav­ish obe­di­ence to words writ­ten in a book.” With his rules, divi­sions, and cat­e­gories, man has cut real­i­ty apart; through his art, Blake sought to make it whole again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rad­i­cal Artis­tic & Philo­soph­i­cal World of William Blake: A Short Intro­duc­tion

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

The Oth­er­world­ly Art of William Blake: An Intro­duc­tion to the Vision­ary Poet and Painter

William Blake: The Remark­able Print­ing Process of the Eng­lish Poet, Artist & Vision­ary

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake’s 102 Illus­tra­tions of the Divine Com­e­dy Col­lect­ed in a Beau­ti­ful Book from Taschen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Walk Through Homer’s Odyssey: A Guide to the Epic Before Seeing Christopher Nolan’s Film

in History, Literature | July 17th, 2026

You’re gear­ing up to see Christo­pher Nolan’s Odyssey, but you haven’t read the Home­r­ic work. Or you read it so long ago that it feels like you’ve nev­er read it at all. No wor­ries. Above, Tom Hol­land and Dominic Sand­brook, the hosts of The Rest Is His­to­ry pod­cast, take you through the major plot lines of the Odyssey, unpack­ing the lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal mean­ing of the epic’s dif­fer­ent tales. It’s a good primer—just what you need to get ready for one of the big­ger cin­e­ma releas­es this year. Enjoy!

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 

Watch the First Spec­tac­u­lar Film Adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey (1911)

Archae­ol­o­gists Think They’ve Dis­cov­ered the Old­est Greek Copy of Homer’s Odyssey: 13 Vers­es on a Clay Tablet

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Hear Hours of Lectures by Michel Foucault: Recorded in English & French Between 1961 and 1983

in Philosophy | July 16th, 2026

Tucked in the after­ward of the sec­ond, 1982 edi­tion of Hubert Drey­fus and Paul Rabinow’s Michel Fou­cault: Beyond Struc­tural­ism and Hermeneu­tics, we find an impor­tant, but lit­tle-known essay by Fou­cault him­self titled “The Sub­ject and Pow­er.” Here, the French the­o­rist offers what he con­strues as a sum­ma­ry of his life’s work: span­ning 1961’s Mad­ness and Civ­i­liza­tion up to his three-vol­ume, unfin­ished His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, still in progress at the time of his death in 1984. He begins by telling us that he has not been, pri­mar­i­ly, con­cerned with pow­er, despite the word’s appear­ance in his essay’s title, its argu­ments, and in near­ly every­thing else he has writ­ten. Instead, he has sought to dis­cov­er the “modes of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion which trans­form human beings into sub­jects.”

This dis­tinc­tion may seem abstruse, a need­less­ly wordy mat­ter of seman­tics. It is not so for Fou­cault. In this key crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence lies the orig­i­nal­i­ty of his project, in all its var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment. “Pow­er,” as an abstrac­tion, an objec­tive rela­tion of dom­i­nance, is sta­t­ic and con­cep­tu­al, the image of a tyrant on a coin, of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan seat­ed on his throne.

Sub­jec­tion, sub­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion, objec­tiviz­ing, indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing, on the oth­er hand—critical terms in Foucault’s vocabulary—are active process­es, dis­ci­plines, and prac­tices, rela­tion­ships between indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that deter­mine the char­ac­ter of both. These rela­tion­ships can be locat­ed in his­to­ry, as Fou­cault does in exam­ple after exam­ple, and they can also be crit­i­cal­ly stud­ied in the present, and thus, per­haps, resist­ed and changed in what he terms “anar­chis­tic strug­gles.”

Fou­cault calls for a “new econ­o­my of pow­er rela­tions,” and a crit­i­cal the­o­ry that takes “forms of resis­tance against dif­fer­ent forms of pow­er as a start­ing point.” For exam­ple, in approach­ing the carcer­al state, we must exam­ine the process­es that divide “the crim­i­nals and the ‘good boys,’” process­es that func­tion inde­pen­dent­ly of rea­son. How is it that a sys­tem can cre­ate class­es of peo­ple who belong in cages and peo­ple who don’t, when the stan­dard ratio­nal justification—the pro­tec­tion of soci­ety from violence—fails spec­tac­u­lar­ly to apply in mil­lions of cas­es? From such excess­es, Fou­cault writes, come two “‘dis­eases of power’—fascism and Stal­in­ism.” Despite the “inner mad­ness” of these “patho­log­i­cal forms” of state pow­er, “they used to a large extent the ideas and the devices of our polit­i­cal ratio­nal­i­ty.”

Peo­ple come to accept that mass incar­cer­a­tion, or inva­sive med­ical tech­nolo­gies, or eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion, or mass sur­veil­lance and over-polic­ing, is nec­es­sary and ratio­nal. They do so through the agency of what Fou­cault calls “pas­toral pow­er,” the sec­u­lar­iza­tion of reli­gious author­i­ty as inte­gral to the West­ern state.

This form of pow­er can­not be exer­cised with­out know­ing the inside of people’s minds, with­out explor­ing their souls, with­out mak­ing them reveal their inner­most secrets. It implies a knowl­edge of the con­science and an abil­i­ty to direct it.

In the last years of Foucault’s life, he shift­ed his focus from insti­tu­tion­al dis­cours­es and mechanisms—psychiatric, carcer­al, medical—to dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tices of self-con­trol and the gov­ern­ing of oth­ers by “pas­toral” means. Rather than ignor­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, the mod­ern state, he writes, devel­oped “as a very sophis­ti­cat­ed struc­ture, in which indi­vid­u­als can be inte­grat­ed, under one con­di­tion: that this indi­vid­u­al­i­ty would be shaped in a new form and sub­mit­ted to a set of very spe­cif­ic pat­terns.” While writ­ing his mon­u­men­tal His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, he gave a series of lec­tures at Berke­ley that explore the mod­ern polic­ing of the self.

In his lec­tures on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” (1980), Fou­cault looks at forms of inter­ro­ga­tion and var­i­ous “truth ther­a­pies” that func­tion as sub­tle forms of coer­cion. Fou­cault returned to Berke­ley in 1983 and deliv­ered the lec­ture “Dis­course and Truth,” which explores the con­cept of par­rhe­sia, the Greek term mean­ing “free speech,” or as he calls it, “truth-telling as an activ­i­ty.” Through analy­sis of the tragedies of Euripi­des and con­tem­po­rary demo­c­ra­t­ic crises, he reveals the prac­tice of speak­ing truth to pow­er as a kind of tight­ly con­trolled per­for­mance. Final­ly, in his lec­ture series “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Fou­cault dis­cuss­es ancient and mod­ern prac­tices of “self care” or “the care of the self” as tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­duce cer­tain kinds of tight­ly bound­ed sub­jec­tiv­i­ties.

• Four Lec­tures on Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty (1980)
• Six Lec­tures on Dis­course and Truth (1983)
• Three Lec­tures on “The Cul­ture of the Self” (1983)

You can hear parts of these lec­tures or vis­it our posts with full audio above. Also, over at Ubuweb, down­load the lec­tures as mp3s, and hear sev­er­al ear­li­er talks from Fou­cault in French, dat­ing all the way back to 1961.

When he began his final series of talks in 1980, the philoso­pher was asked in an inter­view with the Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian about the moti­va­tions for his crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tions of pow­er and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. His reply speaks to both his prac­ti­cal con­cern for resis­tance and his almost utopi­an belief in the lim­it­less poten­tial for human free­dom. “No aspect of real­i­ty should be allowed to become a defin­i­tive and inhu­man law for us,” Fou­cault says.

We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just pow­er in the nar­row sense of the word, refer­ring to the pow­er of a gov­ern­ment or of one social group over anoth­er: these are only a few par­tic­u­lar instances of pow­er.

Pow­er is any­thing that tends to ren­der immo­bile and untouch­able those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good.

Read Foucault’s state­ment of intent, his essay “The Sub­ject and Pow­er,” and learn more about his life and work in the 1993 doc­u­men­tary below.

Fou­cault’s lec­ture series will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Michel Fou­cault and Alain Badiou Dis­cuss “Phi­los­o­phy and Psy­chol­o­gy” on French TV (1965)

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

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

Explore 1,300+ Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century, Now Restored and Available Online

in Books, Nature | July 15th, 2026

Today, if you want to know about any of the flo­ra or fau­na that sur­round us, you have only to look it up online. After you get your fill of knowl­edge, you can decide whether or not you want to ven­ture out into the world and see your object of inter­est in its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment (or a con­trolled sim­u­la­tion there­of). In the Vic­to­ri­an era, things worked a bit dif­fer­ent­ly. Ide­al­ly, you’d have grown up in a house­hold, or at least had access to an insti­tu­tion, with the com­plete set of The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library, a series of more than 40 vol­umes on every­thing from the birds and the bees to the quadrupeds and the mar­su­pi­alia. Print­ed in a rel­a­tive­ly small for­mat and priced at six shillings each, they brought the intel­lec­tu­al fruits of the nat­u­ral­ist’s enter­prise clos­er to the reach of the every­man than ever before.

While these books offered a good deal of infor­ma­tive text, includ­ing mem­oirs from var­i­ous famous nat­u­ral­ists of the time, their imme­di­ate attrac­tion had more to do with their glo­ri­ous illus­tra­tions, in which col­ored exam­ples of each species popped right out of its black-and-white habi­tat. These more than 1,300 col­or plates, some of the finest that could be seen in any pub­li­ca­tion of sim­i­lar scale in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, pre­sent­ed an attrac­tive project to the design­er Nicholas Rougeux, whose work we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Hav­ing already restored and cre­at­ed dig­i­tal ver­sions of Euclid­’s Ele­ments, Pierre-Joseph Red­outé’s Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, Eliz­a­beth Twin­ing’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, and Daniel Berke­ley Updike’s Print­ing Types, among oth­er books, he’s now put online a com­plete repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library — with, as usu­al, a blog post about the painstak­ing restora­tion and dig­i­tal re-cre­ation process.

This time, Rougeux has includ­ed a sec­tion about his use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which actu­al­ly did its part to bring The Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library to his atten­tion in the first place. Not only did AI tools then help him unearth need­ed sources and fill in visu­al gaps, they also came in handy when he was brain­storm­ing cov­er con­cepts for a print­ed ver­sion. Though Rougeux’s restora­tion is pri­mar­i­ly a web site, free to all to explore, you can also buy your own hand­some, large-for­mat phys­i­cal copy of Plates of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library for $295.11 USD.

Eas­i­er on the wal­let is the series of posters he’s made with the same illus­tra­tions, each of which presents one of these cat­e­gories of crea­tures great or small at a glance. The orig­i­nal Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library inspired gen­er­a­tions to ded­i­cate them­selves to under­stand­ing the nat­ur­al world; these new ver­sions, whether in print, online, or on the wall, will no doubt encour­age the enthu­si­asm of more than a few bud­ding nat­u­ral­ists in the gen­er­a­tions to come. Vis­it the repro­duc­tion of the Nat­u­ral­ist’s Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

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

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

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

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of the Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed, 200-Year-Old British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

11,700 Free Photos from John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture: Download, Use & Re-Mix

in Architecture, Comedy, History, Travel | July 15th, 2026

Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I M Pei, who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one.

Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts. If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists.

Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades’ worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.

Despite Johnson’s patron­age, and his own stints as an Archi­tec­tur­al Record edi­tor and Archi­tec­tur­al League of New York pro­gram direc­tor, he seemed to wel­come the ruf­fled min­i­mal­ist feath­ers his enthu­si­asm for mini golf cours­es, theme motels, and eye-catch­ing road­side attrac­tions occa­sioned.

On the oth­er hand, he resent­ed when his pas­sions were labelled as “kitsch,” a point that came across in a 1987 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Globe and Mail:

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have thought that what’s impor­tant are the large, unique archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments. They think Toronto’s City Hall is impor­tant, but not those won­der­ful gnome’s‑castle gas sta­tions in Toron­to, a Detroit influ­ence that crept across the bor­der and pol­lut­ed your won­der­ful­ly con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment.

As Mar­golies fore­saw, the type of com­mer­cial ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture he’d loved since boyhood–the type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me”–has become very near­ly extinct.

And that is a max­i­mal shame.

Your chil­dren may not be able to vis­it an orange juice stand shaped like an orange or the Lean­ing Tow­er of Piz­za, but thanks to the Library of Con­gress, these locales can be pit­stops on any vir­tu­al fam­i­ly vaca­tion you might under­take.

In July 2017, the library select­ed the John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive as its “free to use and reuse” col­lec­tion. So linger as long as you’d like and do with these 11,700+ images as you will–make post­cards, t‑shirts, sou­venir place­mats.

(Or eschew your com­put­er entirely—go on a real road trip, and con­tin­ue Mar­golies’ work!)

What­ev­er you decide to do with them, the archive’s home­page has tips for how to best search the 11,710 col­or slides con­tained there­in. Library staffers have sup­ple­ment­ed Mar­golies’ notes on each image with sub­ject and geo­graph­i­cal head­ings.

Begin your jour­ney through the Library of Con­gress’ John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive here.

We’d love to see your vaca­tion snaps upon your return.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

How Anti-Chinese Immigration Laws Unexpectedly Led to a Chinese Restaurant Boom in America

in Food & Drink, History | July 14th, 2026

This past spring, the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly oper­at­ed fam­i­ly-owned Chi­nese restau­rant in the Unit­ed States served its last plate of chop suey. Pekin Noo­dle Par­lor had been an insti­tu­tion in Butte, Mon­tana’s Chi­na­town since 1911, long out­last­ing the town’s gold-rush boom, but accord­ing to its final, fifth-gen­er­a­tion own­er, it could­n’t sur­vive chang­ing atti­tudes toward din­ing out in the twen­ty-twen­ties. Whether or not COVID-influ­enced habits or deliv­ery-app addic­tion are to blame, the Pekin’s clo­sure con­sti­tut­ed an occa­sion to reflect on the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can Chi­nese food, and its rapid evo­lu­tion into a dis­tinct cui­sine unto itself.

Take chop suey, which was adver­tised on the Pekin’s neon sign in let­ter­ing larg­er than the name of the restau­rant itself. Often cit­ed as an ear­ly “Chi­nese” dish actu­al­ly invent­ed by Chi­nese immi­grants in the Unit­ed States, it may have a cer­tain basis in the tsap seui eat­en in Guang­dong province from which many of them had come.

But even there, it amount­ed to a tech­nique for throw­ing togeth­er a hodge­podge of left­overs in a palat­able man­ner; only with its Amer­i­can­iza­tion did it acquire a dis­tinct set of fla­vors and tex­tures. A sim­i­lar process seems to have pro­duced Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en, broc­coli beef, lo mein, and all the oth­er dish­es that the movies have con­vinced the world Amer­i­cans eat direct­ly from wire-han­dled paper box­es.

What­ev­er Hol­ly­wood’s ten­den­cy to exag­ger­ate, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of domes­tic Chi­nese food is real. Accord­ing to the Busi­ness Insid­er video just above, Chi­nese restau­rants out­num­ber even McDon­ald’s fran­chis­es in the U.S. How they reached that point owes more than a lit­tle to immi­gra­tion, as any­one would expect, but also, less obvi­ous­ly, to restric­tions on immi­gra­tion. “Anti-Chi­nese sen­ti­ment was ram­pant in Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry — and had been since the lat­ter half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, when as many as 300,000 Chi­nese min­ers, farm­ers, rail­road and fac­to­ry work­ers came to the U.S.,” writes NPR’s Maria Godoy. The neg­a­tive reac­tion to that influx under­lay the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882; the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1917, with its “Asi­at­ic Barred Zone”; and the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1924, which intro­duced a nation­al-ori­gin quo­ta sys­tem.

Despite the osten­si­bly severe restric­tion on Chi­nese immi­gra­tion per se, the law allowed that “some Chi­nese busi­ness own­ers in the U.S. could get spe­cial mer­chant visas that allowed them to trav­el to Chi­na, and bring back employ­ees. Only a few types of busi­ness­es qual­i­fied for this sta­tus. In 1915, a fed­er­al court added restau­rants to that list. Voila! A restau­rant boom was born.” Ditch­ing their tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es like laun­dries, Chi­nese in the U.S. would “pool their mon­ey to start lux­u­ry ‘chop suey palaces,’ then each investor would take turns run­ning the joint for a year or 18 months” in order to earn mer­chant sta­tus. What sus­tained it all was the increas­ing­ly insa­tiable Amer­i­can demand for the food these immi­grants had per­fect­ed, from chop suey to kung pao chick­en to moo goo gai pan and beyond. The sto­ry neat­ly arrives at an Amer­i­can-style moral: where there’s a will, there’s a way — or rather, yǒu zhì zhě, shì jìng chéng.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 63 Cuisines of Chi­na Explained in 40 Min­utes: A Com­plete Primer

A Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Sur­pris­ing Rea­son Why Chi­na­towns World­wide Share the Same Aes­thet­ic, and How It All Start­ed with the 1906 San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake

Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Visu­al­izes 200 Years of Immi­gra­tion to the U.S. (1820-Present)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Russian Artists Imagined in 1914 What Moscow Would Look Like in 2259

in History, Sci Fi | July 14th, 2026

In the days of pop­u­lar retro­fu­tur­ism—say, the first half of the twen­ti­eth century—people tend­ed to imag­ine the world of tomor­row look­ing very much like the world of today, only with a lot more fly­ing cars, mono­rails, and video­phones. This is true whether those doing the imag­in­ing were titans of indus­try, mar­ket­ing mavens, ide­al­is­tic Sovi­ets, or sub­jects of the Tsar, though we might think that peo­ple liv­ing under an ancient monar­chi­cal sys­tem might not expect much change. In some ways we might be right, but as we can see in the 1914 post­cards here—printed as Rus­sia entered World War I—the coun­try did antic­i­pate a mod­ern, tech­no­log­i­cal future, though one that still close­ly resem­bled its present.

Per­haps few but the most far-sight­ed of Rus­sians pre­dict­ed what the ail­ing empire would endure in the years to come—the dis­as­ter of the Great War, and the waves of Rev­o­lu­tion and Civ­il War. Cer­tain­ly, who­ev­er paint­ed these images fore­saw no such cat­a­stroph­ic upheaval.

Although pur­port­ing to show us a view of Moscow in the 23rd cen­tu­ry, they show the city very hap­pi­ly “still under monar­chi­cal rule,” writes A Jour­ney Through Russ­ian Cul­ture, going about its dai­ly life just as it did over three hun­dred years ear­li­er, “with the addi­tion of every­thing from sub­ways to air­borne pub­lic trans­porta­tion, things prob­a­bly seen as stan­dard meth­ods of trans­port for the future.”

Of course, there would be hot-rod­ded sleds on St. Peters­burg High­way with head­lights, fan­cy wind­shields, and what look like Christ­mas elves perched in them. Lubyan­s­ka Square, fur­ther up, would still host mil­i­tary parades of men on horse­back, as chil­dren whiz by on motor­bikes and sub­way trains rum­ble under­neath. The Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion, above, might seem entire­ly unchanged, until one looks up, and sees ele­vat­ed trams stream­ing out of the ter­mi­nal like spider’s silk. Red Square, how­ev­er, just below, would appar­ent­ly host drag races, while peo­ple in trams and giant diri­gi­bles look on from above.

The images have a children’s book qual­i­ty about them and the fes­tive air of hol­i­day cards. They were appar­ent­ly redis­cov­ered only recent­ly when a choco­late com­pa­ny called Eyinem reprint­ed them on their pack­ag­ing. Like so much retro­fu­tur­ism, these seem—in their bustling, yet safe, cheer­ful orderliness—tailor-made for nos­tal­gic trips through Petro­vsky Park, rather than imag­i­na­tive leaps into the great unknown. For that, we must turn to Russ­ian Futur­ism, which, both before and after World War I and the Rev­o­lu­tion, imag­ined, helped bring about, but did­n’t quite sur­vive the mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion of the next two decades.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

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

Tatlin’s Tower, One of the Most Ambitious Buildings That Was Never Built

in Architecture, Art, History | July 13th, 2026

It’s no small project to found a new soci­ety, espe­cial­ly when you’re doing it on the scale of a place like Rus­sia. Apart from the con­sid­er­able prac­ti­cal chal­lenges it entails, there’s also the need for sym­bols bold enough to rep­re­sent the under­ly­ing ide­al. The avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin took it upon him­self to cre­ate just such a sym­bol in the years after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. The result is offi­cial­ly known as the Mon­u­ment to the Third Inter­na­tion­al, named for the orga­ni­za­tion tasked with the pro­mo­tion of world com­mu­nism (often abbre­vi­at­ed to Com­intern). But it’s more com­mon­ly referred to as Tatlin’s Tow­er, per­haps in trib­ute to the artist’s par­tic­u­lar vision — one too ambi­tious for its real-life con­struc­tion even to begin.

“As part of a large-scale pro­gram to replace old czarist mon­u­ments with mon­u­ments to the rev­o­lu­tion, the huge struc­ture was both a sym­bol­ic sculp­ture and func­tion­al archi­tec­ture,” write Smarthis­to­ry’s Charles Cramer and Kim Grant. “Designed to strad­dle the Neva riv­er in St. Peters­burg, the 1300 foot (400 meter) iron and glass Mon­u­ment would sur­pass Paris’s Eif­fel Tow­er in both scale and com­plex­i­ty.”

Indeed, it would stand taller than the yet-to-be-con­struct­ed Empire State Build­ing, at least if you don’t count its anten­na. Con­sist­ing of “a con­tract­ing dou­ble helix that spi­rals upward, sup­port­ed by a huge diag­o­nal gird­er,” Tatlin’s Tow­er would con­tain four sub-struc­tures, each rotat­ing at a dif­fer­ent speed.

Yes, rotat­ing, and “com­plet­ing a full rev­o­lu­tion in accor­dance with the impor­tance of the insti­tu­tions con­duct­ing their busi­ness on the inside,” as Tim Brinkof writes at Big Think. “The cube that con­tains the leg­is­la­ture would have com­plet­ed a full rota­tion once per year. The pyra­mid above, hous­ing the offices of par­ty exec­u­tives, would have need­ed a month. The infor­ma­tion cen­ter, locat­ed at the very peak, would have rotat­ed once a day, offer­ing a 360-degree view of Pet­ro­grad,” as St. Peters­burg was known in 1920. (It would be re-named Leningrad in 1924 before going back to St. Peters­burg in 1991, after the end of the Sovi­et era.) You can learn more about how it all worked from the Archi­tec­ture Enthu­si­ast video at the top of the post, and the one from Side­pro­jects just above.

“Tatlin’s Tow­er was designed dur­ing a time when Com­mu­nist rule was still nascent and par­ty lead­ers sought to estab­lish a new and dis­tinct­ly social­ist iden­ti­ty through art,” writes Brinkof. Ide­al­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the rul­ing class hav­ing been aggres­sive­ly scrapped along with the rul­ing class itself, the Bol­she­viks wel­comed any style that could shore up their rev­o­lu­tion­ary cause, total abstrac­tion includ­ed. Alas, though many par­ty offi­cials approved of Tatlin’s design, they com­mand­ed noth­ing like the resources to build it: “Rus­sia would go bank­rupt if it tried to acquire the insane amounts of steel and iron need­ed for the tow­er’s skele­tal frame­work.” Per­haps Leon Trot­sky, one of the pro­jec­t’s dis­senters, was right when he called it “imprac­ti­cal and roman­tic” — and per­haps those are the very qual­i­ties that keep Tatlin’s Tow­er an object of fas­ci­na­tion more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

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

What Makes Kaz­imir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) Not Just Art, But Impor­tant Art

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

An Intro­duc­tion to Bru­tal­ism: the Icon­ic Post­war Archi­tec­tur­al Style That Com­bined Utopi­anism and Con­crete

The Futur­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Designs Cre­at­ed by Éti­enne-Louis Boul­lée in the 18th Cen­tu­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Cinemas Taught Early Movie-Goers the Rules & Etiquette for Watching Films (1912): No Whistling, Standing or Wearing Big Hats

in Film | July 13th, 2026

I admit, I some­times pay a pre­mi­um at a cer­tain din­ner the­ater chain with a lob­by-slash-bar designed to look like clas­sic indie video stores of yore. It’s not only the padded reclin­ers and half-decent grub that keeps me com­ing back. Nope, it’s the rules. Print­ed on the menu are a list of dis­rup­tive behav­iors that will get you uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly tossed out—no refunds and no back­sies.

I’ve nev­er seen it hap­pen. Giv­en what peo­ple put down for tick­ets, din­ner, drinks, and/or a babysit­ter, it’s unlike­ly many risk blow­ing the evening. But know­ing that the the­ater takes silence seri­ous­ly brings seri­ous movie­go­ers peace of mind. What is a movie, after all, with­out the all-impor­tant dia­logue, music, and sound cues?

Well, it’s silent film. And even then, when movies were sound-tracked with live accom­pa­ni­ment and dia­logue appeared on title cards, peo­ple wor­ried very much about dis­trac­tions. It just so hap­pens that talk­ing and tex­ting (obvi­ous­ly) were the least of ear­ly audience’s con­cerns.

For one thing, the cin­e­ma was a place where class­es, races, sex­es, and ages “mixed much more freely than had been Vic­to­ri­an cus­tom,” notes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate. There were the usu­al con­cerns about cor­rup­tion of the “del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties” of ladies.

“But female cin­e­ma-goers were just as like­ly to be seen as a prob­lem,” writes Onion, “giv­en their sup­posed propen­si­ty for wear­ing big hats and chat­ting.” The melt­ing pot demo­graph­ic of the nick­elodeon could be exhil­a­rat­ing, and audi­ence mem­bers found they some­times lost their inhi­bi­tions. “Some­how you enter into the spir­it of the thing,” observed author W.W. Win­ters in 1910. “Don’t you slip away from your­self, lose your ret­i­cence, reserve, pride, and a few oth­er things?”

These days we’re accus­tomed to cram­ming in elbow-to-elbow next to any­one and every­one, and we most­ly heed the onscreen cajol­ing to put our phones away and keep qui­et, even when we aren’t in spe­cial­ty bou­tique chains or local art­house the­aters. Then again, if cer­tain behav­iors weren’t an issue, there wouldn’t be ads pro­hibit­ing them.

Enor­mous hats and applause (and applause with things oth­er than hands) may be relics of cinema’s infan­cy. But swap out those admo­ni­tions for oth­ers of the smart­phone vari­ety and these lantern slides instruct­ing view­ers in 1912 about prop­er movie the­ater eti­quette don’t look so dif­fer­ent from today… sort of.

We might want for inter­mis­sions to return, espe­cial­ly after the two-hour mark, and wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of keep­ing us in our seats for post-cred­it scenes, big block­buster movies just said “Good Night”? See more of these delight­ful pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments from 1912 nick­elodeons at Back Sto­ry Radio.

via Slate

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Enjoy the Great­est Silent Films Ever Made in Our Col­lec­tion of 101 Free Silent Films Online

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

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

The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest

in Art, History | July 10th, 2026

Every time the World Cup comes around, or at least since Eng­land first and last won it 60 years ago, there’s talk of whether it’ll be brought “back home.” The idea being, of course, that foot­ball (or soc­cer, as it’s called in a cou­ple of the coun­tries host­ing this year’s match­es) was made in Eng­land. How­ev­er the show­down with Nor­way goes this Sun­day, and indeed how the rest of the World Cup plays out dur­ing the week there­after, some­thing much old­er — and of much less debat­able ori­gins — will be returned to Blighty: the Bayeux Tapes­try, which has been kept in the epony­mous Nor­mandy town since at least the four­teen-sev­en­ties, and most like­ly cen­turies ear­li­er than that.

This siz­able and intri­cate piece of embroi­dered fab­ric depicts the events lead­ing up to the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066, the deci­sive event of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land. Leg­i­ble today as a kind of “medieval com­ic strip,” as the nar­ra­tor of this new ani­mat­ed video from the British Muse­um puts it, the Bayeux Tapes­try also reveals “medieval life in amaz­ing detail,” while at the same time “hint­ing at secrets in its bor­ders.”

For all the schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar atten­tion paid to it, the work has yet to yield the answers to any­where near all of its mys­ter­ies, nor to lose its fas­ci­na­tion through famil­iar­i­ty. It bears, after all, quite a lot of imagery to get famil­iar with in the first place.

It’s one thing to behold the Bayeux Tapes­try through images, how­ev­er high-res­o­lu­tion, and quite anoth­er to behold the real thing. The Eng­lish have been able to get fair­ly close to the lat­ter expe­ri­ence since the Vic­to­ri­an era with the aid of the full-size repli­ca, made in 1885, now dis­played at the Read­ing Muse­um in Berk­shire and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But this Sep­tem­ber, the orig­i­nal Bayeux Tapes­try will begin its res­i­dence at the British Muse­um, coin­cid­ing with the ren­o­va­tion of the Bayeux Muse­um. (France, for its part, gets a loan of trea­sures from the ship buried at Sut­ton Hoo and the Lewis chess­men.) If you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a look before it’s returned the fol­low­ing year, don’t turn it down; as the World Cup shows us, you can nev­er be sure when the next home­com­ing will hap­pen.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Behold a Cre­ative Ani­ma­tion of the Bayeux Tapes­try

The Sto­ry Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapes­try Explained from Start to Fin­ish

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.