Obelisk

The Annual Girandola at the Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome

In the late 1700s, the city of Rome threw a massive fireworks festival called the Girandola each year on Easter Monday. The Girandola festival gave its name to a special type of firework, a flying wheel that uses rockets to propel the device into the air while also spinning it. read more

The Etruscans, 400BCE

Chimera of Arezzo

This is an undeniably modern interpretation. The chimera, like most beasts of antiquity, was the bad guy. Child of the giant serpent Typhon and the half woman half snake Echidna (you know her from the Starbucks logo) the Chimera was an abominable thing, unnatural combination of lion and goat, with the head of a snake for a tail. Her brothers and sisters live in legend. read more

Toyen

What's in a name?

Names are assigned to us before we are aware of their meaning, and we grow into them as much as they come to reflect us. In Japan artists often changed names after milestones in their lives, but in the west, once you've been given a name, you're usually stuck with it—a rigidity that makes claiming a new name even more powerful magic. read more

Sascha Schneider, 1904

Hypnosis

To Sascha Schneider the male body was perfection, and the world its antagonist. Schneider worked in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the development of Freikörperkultur, free body culture, also called the Health and Hygiene movement. Freikörperkultur aimed to counteract the restraint and stress of industrialization with a restorative mix of open air nudity, exercise, and healthy diet. read more

Born on June 12

Egon Schiele

Genius dead at 28

The Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele had two urgent interests: himself and his sexual fantasies. Out of such limited preoccupations and by means of a preternatural gift for drawing and graphic design, he created artworks that still burn with narcissistic yearning, erotic desire, bohemian dissent and existential anxiety. read more