Creativity for the Mentally Ill: A Book That Changed History
Sometimes you can hear such a statement that in order to create a masterpiece, you must be either a genius or a madman. Tarragon - the hero of the play…

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"Love Letter" by Jan Vermeer
At the first glance at Jan Vermeer's famous painting “Love Letter”, the name seems far-fetched, because the letter itself is hardly noticeable. But the lute in the hands of a…

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Secrets of self-portraits of famous artists: Reflection in the mirror, portrait-bacon and other oddities
Self-portrait in most cases is an instrument of narcissism, an attempt to leave your image in eternity. But if a genius takes up the matter, his image on canvas can…

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absence of harmonization of sounds

Why does music influence our emotions so much

In an article from the series “Ask, Answer,” designed to quench reader’s curiosity, BBC Future journalist explores the impact of music on people’s emotional state.

“Why does music have a direct effect on our emotions? What is the evolutionary meaning of this phenomenon?”, Asks Philip Lörish, who sent us his question by e-mail.

Each person experienced the emotional power of music, which sometimes literally takes us for the soul.

We can get into a state of euphoria from driving music in some rock club, and while listening to a romantic ballad, we can experience the deep longing of unrequited love … Continue reading

Musical hoax: Who actually wrote “Adagio” Albinoni

Adagio Albinoni is a truly enchanting piece of music. The melody as if touches the hidden strings of the human soul, is remembered for a long time and then, it seems, sounds inside. At first, no one doubted that the author of “Adagio in G Minor for String Orchestras and Organ” was precisely Tomaso Albinoni. However, musicologists today almost with absolute certainty declare: in fact, a completely different person created the ingenious music.

In 1671, in Venice, in a rather wealthy family of a merchant and patrician Antonio, a boy named Tomaso was born. It is unlikely that the parents then assumed that their son would become a famous composer, and a few centuries after his death he would become famous throughout the world. Continue reading

“Love Letter” by Jan Vermeer

At the first glance at Jan Vermeer’s famous painting “Love Letter”, the name seems far-fetched, because the letter itself is hardly noticeable. But the lute in the hands of a woman plays a much more significant symbolic role. What does the letter contain? And what does the lute matter in the picture?

Genre painting
The paintings, which allow the observer to look at the everyday life of the depicted people, were especially popular in the XVII and XVIII centuries. They are called genre paintings, and Dutch genre art occupies an undeniable place at this stage in the history of art. A particularly popular topic was symbolism. Pictures depicting love letters can be attributed to a separate category of genre painting. Artists such as Jan Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu and Samuel van Hoogstrate have contributed to the world of art with canvases of this plot. Continue reading

Solid Charm: Elizabeth Boehm Vintage Postcards
Postcards of Elizabeth Boehm were incredibly popular at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. They could be seen in the collections of the imperial family, in the Tretyakov Gallery and…

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"The Invisible Artist", which creates paintings on people, like on canvases
Since today many acts of civil protest in China remain strictly prohibited, a well-known Chinese artist-photographer, master of the original creative camouflage of people, Liu Bolin invented a unique technique…

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10 contemporary blind artists who surprised the world with their art
It will not be a revelation to anyone that painting is an exclusively visual form of art, therefore the phrase “blind artist” itself sounds like nonsense. But in fact, there…

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