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The Cultural Tutor

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Apr 24

This is Barcelona at night, one of the world's most unique cities. But why does it look like that?

Well, until 1855 it was overcrowded, dirty, and diseased — then something special happened.

Here is how you build a beautiful city...

The year is 1855. Barcelona's population has nearly reached 200,000, all crammed within the two kilometres squared of the city's Medieval walls.

Overcrowding, rampant disease, crime, poor sanitation - the city had become a filthy and dangerous place.

Since 1714 any construction within half a mile of the walls (the range of the cannon fire) had been forbidden.

Two hundred years later this had become a colossal hindrance; life expectancy had dropped to the mid-30s for the middle class and the mid-20s for workers.

Read 24 tweets

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

Apr 21

Are stained glass windows the most underrated form of art?

(This is the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built nearly 800 years ago)

Although the history of stained glass goes back further, the oldest surviving stained glass windows are these ones in Augsburg Cathedral, Germany.

They were made in the 11th century and depict some of the Biblical prophets.

What is stained glass?

There are many different complex and ingenious methods of producing and using it, each of which result in different textures, tones, balances of colour, and detail.

But the fundamentals remain clear: it is coloured glass, seen in the light.

Read 23 tweets

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

Apr 20

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is the most famous Symbolist painting in the world.

What was Symbolism?

An art movement about our struggle to deal with scientific progress and social change...

Symbolism was an incredibly broad artistic movement which appeared in Europe in the second half of the 19th century.

It included not only art but poetry, literature, theatre, and music - and it took on different forms right across the continent.

Symbolism was "officially" born in France and Belgium, primarily among poets like Baudelaire and Mallarmé.

It was a literary form which both broke from tradition and repudiated modernity: allegorical, esoteric, filled with beauty and death, focussed on mood more than narrative.

Read 24 tweets

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

Apr 19

Why Architecture Is Important

(and what it says about us)

A short thread...

Architectural styles can be misleading, because architecture is about much more than a building's appearance.

Architecture tell us about the society that produced it - what they believed in, what was important to them, what was necessary - and, by extension, about our own.

Just think of Soviet architecture, from Constructivism in the 1920s to Futurism in the 70s and 80s.

These buildings were a highly conscious rejection of old architectural styles, a physical embodiment of the revolution, of a new social and economic order.

Read 24 tweets

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

Apr 18

Why the Statue of Liberty's real name is (probably) Marianne:

Libertas was the Ancient Roman goddess of freedom.

She was usually depicted with a rod and a soft hat, called a pileus. Slaves were touched with the rod and presented with a pileus to wear upon being freed; these were symbols of liberty in Rome.

Libertas was revived in Europe many centuries later. She became a national symbol in the Netherlands, known simply as the Dutch Maiden, and was usually portrayed alongside a lion.

The hat and rod remained, although the Maiden sometimes took on a more military appearance.

Read 18 tweets

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

Apr 17

How did people wake up before alarm clocks?!

In the 19th century there were professional "knocker uppers" who hit your window with a stick until you got out of bed.

And before that? Well, humans had an entirely different understanding of time...

The first question is how people even kept track of time at all; that's one of humanity's oldest problems.

First and foremost, it was through natural observation. The movement of the sun by day and of the moon and stars by night.

Astronomy is the oldest science.

It makes sense, then, that the first devices for measuring time were sundials - they were invented thousands of years ago.

After them came more complex creations, such as water clocks and hour glasses, or even something as simple as a candle marked with hour lines.

Read 21 tweets

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