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Culture

Essays and videos on the arts, literature, travel, rituals and celebrations
Everything is a remix: AI and image generation | Aeon
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video

Future of technology

Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us

23 minutes

Milk, pity and power | Aeon
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essay

Art

Milk, pity and power

Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?

Margie Orford

The Parthenon Marbles | Aeon
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video

Global history

The strange journey of the Parthenon Marbles to the British Museum

10 minutes

A brief history of vampires | Aeon
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video

Stories and literature

The key to a vampire’s immortality? Meeting the anxieties of the moment

15 minutes

Great art cities explained: New York | Aeon
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video

Art

The female Abstract Expressionists of New York shook the world of art

15 minutes

The immediate present | Aeon
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video

Art

At 95, an artist paints swiftly to capture the fugitive light

6 minutes

Great art explained: Edward Hopper and cinema | Aeon
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video

Art

Edward Hopper came of age with cinema. As an artist, he left a lasting mark on it

12 minutes

Emory Douglas: the art of the Black Panthers | Aeon
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video

Art

The revolutionary artist who propelled the Black Panther movement with imagery

8 minutes

Great art explained: Rothko’s Seagram Murals | Aeon
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Art

Can art in a swanky restaurant ever be transcendent? On Rothko’s Seagram Murals

15 minutes

Recoding art | Aeon
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video

Art

What does an AI make of what it sees in a contemporary art museum?

15 minutes

A brief guide to Egyptian Surrealism | Aeon
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video

Art

‘Long Live Degenerate Art’ – how a Surrealist group in Cairo defied repression in 1938

4 minutes

Not even for a moment do things stand still | Aeon
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video

Art

A massive art installation attempts to put the COVID-19 deaths in perspective

15 minutes

EXCLUSIVEAnémic cinéma | Aeon
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video

Art

Dizzying discs and obscene wordplay – revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 film debut

7 minutes

Seeing life | Aeon
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essay

Biology

Seeing life

Driven by insatiable curiosity, early histologists revealed the hidden structures of cells in works of sensual artistry

Benjamin Ehrlich

The smile: a history | Aeon
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essay

History

The smile: a history

How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting in the 1780s

Colin Jones

Her body is a problem | Aeon
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essay

Art

Her body is a problem

When 1970s women artists put the female body under the female gaze, why did the critics see only obscene monsters?

Lauren Elkin

The man who drew his own money | Aeon
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video

Art

Is paying with hand-drawn banknotes artistry or forgery? The knotty case of J S G Boggs

10 minutes

Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights | Aeon
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video

Art

Grotesque imagery meets religious conservatism in Hieronymus Bosch’s art

51 minutes

Gloria’s call | Aeon
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Art

A mindbending trip that summons the forgotten women of surrealism

17 minutes

Rain pot | Aeon
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Making

Ceramic designs spin to life in a tactile meditation on the art of pottery

9 minutes

Who decides what art means? | Aeon
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Beauty and aesthetics

Does the artist’s intention matter, or is it indeed all in the eye of the beholder?

4 minutes

Museum, 1972 | Aeon
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Art

From archaeology digs to display cabinets: how museums bring exhibits to life

37 minutes

The painter who revolutionised landscapes | Aeon
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Beauty and aesthetics

Why Caspar David Friedrich pits nature’s grandeur against the humble human

7 minutes

The Battle of San Romano | Aeon
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video

Art

An artistic collaboration across centuries brings a 1432 battle scene to arresting life

2 minutes