Hey guys, I found it really interesting the fact that Van Gogh's "Patch of Grass" hid a peasant's portrait from his Nuenen era and how he was so bankrupt that he had to paint over it bc he couldn't afford a new canvas, that's why no one knew abt this for more than 100 years.
If you are interested, I made a video abt it in Spainsh with eng subtitles: https://youtu.be/pyW_mJtPx4Y Thanks and I hope your feedback!!
Just saw The Odyssey and couldn't stop thinking about the siren scene.
In Nolan's version, the sirens confront Odysseus with his guilt and his longing for family. It's powerful. But it's not Homer.
In the Odyssey, the sirens don't offer emotion — they offer knowledge. They call Odysseus by name and promise to tell him everything. Everything that happened at Troy. Everything that will ever happen in the world. The one thing a curious mind can never resist.
And here's the part most people don't know: Homer never described what the sirens looked like. Not once. The ancient Greeks, centuries after Homer, were the ones who first gave them a shape. And the shape they chose wasn't a beautiful woman.
It was a bird.
In 1891, John William Waterhouse went to the British Museum, studied a 2,000-year-old Greek vase showing the sirens as bird-women with claws, and painted exactly that — shocking the Victorian public who expected soft temptation and got predators instead.
Made a video essay about the painting and its connection to the myth. In Spanish with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/zawncsKJxx0
Not sure if this is appropriate here, but I thought this community might find this story interesting.
August Natterer was a German electrician diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1907 after a psychotic episode where he saw 10,000 images in 30 minutes. He spent the next 26 years in psychiatric institutions drawing everything he had seen — trying to make sense of his own mind.
His drawings were later recognized as some of the most significant works of outsider art in history, influencing Dalí, Max Ernst and the Surrealist movement.
Made a video essay about him in Spanish with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/dxyHLwjI0fs
The video also discusses where the line is between romanticizing mental illness and recognizing its expressive value — would love to hear thoughts from people with lived experience.