Beautiful Subways --worldwide--from palatial to postmodern, folksy to brutalist (pee smells not included--and don't miss Tehran's)
posted to MetaFilter by amberglow at 2:19 PM on August 25, 2006 (48 comments)

"In this rare documentary, Satyajit Ray talks about his films. Part 1, 2, 3. Satyajit Ray... is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and letters, Ray studied at Presidency College and at the Visva-Bharati University. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves during a visit to London. He directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali, won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Document at Cannes film festival"
posted to MetaFilter by vronsky at 7:04 PM on June 4, 2008 (7 comments)

Things That Look Like Other Things. Also known as pareidolia, it's the phenomenon in which our brains perceive familiar things (especially faces and human forms) in random places. See also The Pareidolia Museum and the Flickr pareidolia pool. [Previous pareidolia-related threads here]
posted to MetaFilter by amyms at 10:56 PM on March 28, 2008 (40 comments)

He was born in 1980, during a risqué Groundlings show. After cameo roles (NSFW/language) in two Cheech & Chong movies, he earned his own HBO special. Four years later, Pee Wee Herman made his first feature film. Love him or hate him, his tv show won 22 Emmys... it seemed he was the luckiest boy in the world. Until one fateful day. Since then he's kept busy, and has regularly started and then nixed rumors of the bow tie's return. Recently he's changed his mind though, and in June a middle-aged Pee Wee made a surprise appearance after 15 years. Now he's promising two upcoming Pee Wee films... but will Johnny Depp take over his giant underpants?
posted to MetaFilter by miss lynnster at 1:39 AM on December 17, 2007 (105 comments)

These cats, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, say SO WHAT that this is a single link U-tube post. Get some Sunday Evening Jazz on, my brothas and sistas.
posted to MetaFilter by snsranch at 5:57 PM on December 16, 2007 (44 comments)

Ugly Mickey. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by Armitage Shanks at 7:23 PM on October 29, 2007 (21 comments)

A selection of eyeglasses for $8. (That's including your lens prescription.) Or if that's not to your liking, there's $39.
posted to MetaFilter by Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson at 8:24 PM on September 19, 2007 (81 comments)

Julia Margaret Cameron did not begin her photography career until she was 48. She lived on the Isle of Wight in two adjacent cottages linked with a gothic tower that she called Dimbola Lodge. Many of her captivating photographs are of The Freshwater Circle, a group of artists and intellectuals centered around Alfred Tennyson, whose poems Idylls of the King, she illustrated with her photographs. Cameron's portraits of contemporaries -- Charles Darwin, George Frederic Watts, Edward Eyre, Thomas Carlyle, Julia Jackson (mother of Viginia Woolf) -- became significant because they were sometimes the only existing photographs of her subjects.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:11 PM on August 9, 2007 (16 comments)

Historical anatomy models were a marriage of art and science. From about the 13th to the 19th centuries, exquisite wax models were the state of the art. Florence's La Specola anatomical wax museum houses the works of master artists, such as Ercole Lelli, Anna Morandi, and Clemente Susini. The later years of wax models tended towards the grotesque: moulage and depictions of pathological conditions and physical anomalies. Due to the labor required and delicacy of wax models, papier-mâché became the favored production method in the 19th century, partly due to the ability to dissect the models. Over time, models became more stylized to protect the delicate sensibilities of the public. Today, models are again shocking the public with extreme realism.
posted to MetaFilter by madamjujujive at 11:56 PM on August 30, 2006 (18 comments)

Peter Callesen - Lately I have been working almost only with white paper in different objects, paper cut, installations and performances.
posted to MetaFilter by bob sarabia at 5:30 PM on August 4, 2006 (12 comments)

The Feather Book, digitized by and on display at McGill University: A seventeenth-century book containing illustrations of birds and men -- composed of real feathers, beaks, and claws. More information about the book and its contents and history can be read here.
posted to MetaFilter by Gator at 2:27 PM on July 20, 2006 (14 comments)

Index of Medieval Medical Images Searchable collection of medieval illustrations (to the year 1500); the thumbnails can be viewed at varying magnifications. There are many more interesting online repositories devoted to the history of medical illustration--both medieval and early modern--including Historical Anatomies on the Web, Anatomia, Seeing is Believing, and Medieval Manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine.
posted to MetaFilter by thomas j wise at 1:39 PM on July 23, 2006 (12 comments)

Missouri Botanical Gardens Rare Books: The Illustrated Garden
This collection contains seventy seven 18th and 19th century botanical books and these are just a small sample of the 3000+ beautiful illustrations contained within. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by peacay at 9:41 AM on August 23, 2005 (18 comments)

A nice collection of 19th century French and English medical caricatures, including some drawn by George Cruikshank.
posted to MetaFilter by iconomy at 9:35 AM on December 29, 2005 (8 comments)

The Obakemono Project - a Gaijin's guide to the fantastic folk monsters of Japan. (via oink)
posted to MetaFilter by madamjujujive at 9:28 AM on February 3, 2006 (27 comments)

Himmapan.com features illustrations and photos of artistic depictions of the creatures of the legendary Himmapan (or Himapan/Himaphan) Forest of the Himalayas. Fantastic chimeras of Asian mythology.
posted to MetaFilter by Gator at 4:28 PM on February 16, 2006 (7 comments)

Flora Brasiliensis [flash needed] was published between 1840 and 1906. It contains taxonomic treatments of 22,767 species of Brazilian flora. The beauty of the illustrations and the level of detail you can magnify to is magnificent (sorry, direct linking to example images is not possible but trust me, go and have a look).
posted to MetaFilter by tellurian at 10:47 PM on May 3, 2006 (9 comments)

Printmaker. Painter. Adventurer. Advertiser. One of the most popular graphic artists of the 20th century, he created the Random House logo for his pals Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer and illustrated their first book. His illustrations for another, Moby Dick, are widely credited with resurrecting that novel for modern audiences. His own first book was favorably compared to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and for a time his bookplates were everywhere, but he "virtually vanished from the museum and gallery circuits by the late 1940s" due to his outspoken support for Stalinism. When the State Department refused to grant him a passport because of his political views, he took his case to the Supreme Court and won, establishing that the right to travel cannot be denied to American citizens. Happy birthday, Rockwell Kent.
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 8:56 PM on June 21, 2006 (16 comments)

Seeing is believing : Illustrations were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas and it was often the case that new developments in the sciences were accompanied by corresponding developments in illustrative techniques.
posted to MetaFilter by dhruva at 6:55 PM on July 13, 2006 (5 comments)

The U.S. Naval Observatory Library features high-res scans of images from antique books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Wallpapers, ahoy!
posted to MetaFilter by Gator at 6:40 PM on July 13, 2006 (18 comments)

The one that got away? GIVE a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a world-famous English artist a fish, however, and he'll pickle it in formaldehyde, flog it to a South Korean art gallery for $5.7 million, and trouser the difference.. A controversial shark hunter learns of Damien Hirst adding value to "a freebie".
posted to MetaFilter by bunglin jones at 3:26 AM on July 8, 2006 (54 comments)

Stevie Wonder performs his classic hit "Superstition" on Sesame Street in 1973, and turns it into an extended funk workout. He sticks around to perform his own killer theme for the show. [via YouTube]
posted to MetaFilter by New Frontier at 8:18 PM on June 24, 2006 (103 comments)