With their elaborate mourning rituals and overt memorialisation of death, the Victorians embraced the concept of a better life in heaven. Death was not a tragedy, but to die and not be properly mourned was a deep fear. Funerals and events attached to the burying, immortalising, and remembering of the dead took on enormous importance. […]
No one bats an eyelid if you mention bums, boobs, or any other ‘b’ words describing ‘sexualized’ parts of the anatomy today. It was different in Victorian times, which is why the word bustle was invented. Victorians were as obsessed with their bodies as we are now. Women wore bustles with corsets to fill out the rump […]
Visuology Magazine – The Food of Life Issue – is out now. We’ve given the magazine a makeover for Issue 4, with a redesign by our new Art Director, Harriet Bedder. This issue also sees contributions from new Trend Features Editor, Sally Angharad, and Assistant Features Editor, Bronte Naylor-Jones. The restyled magazine is divided into four sections: collecting, making, giving and […]
If governments can print their own money, why can’t I? The nature of money is changing. Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer digitized cryptocurrency is not the only virtual currency – but, to date, it has stolen a march on the others. Now it is set to become the darling of the art world when, this October, London’s […]
When there are two full moons in a month, the second full moon is known as a blue moon. There will be a rare blue moon on 31st July, 2015, following on from the full moon of 2nd July. A popular myth is that pregnant women are more likely to give birth during a full moon. […]
The hedgehog population of the UK has fallen dramatically, from around 34 million in the 1950s to around 1 million today. The hedgehog is now an endangered species and could even be extinct by 2020. This is a shame because hedgehogs help gardeners by eating leaf-munching slugs and insects. But hedgehogs may have a saviour […]
What is the strange cult of love that chains us to the railings of social conformity? Why do we follow the crowd regardless of the destruction we may be causing? Sentimental tokens of mutual love are universal, but not all are harmless. According to Wikipedia, a love lock is a padlock which is attached to a […]
Visuology visits the Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life themed 2015 Milan Expo and discovers what visitors should know in advance: The Negatives 1. Queuing to get into the pavilions If you can walk quickly through an area that offers clear explanation, where what’s on display is easy to understand and interpret then you are on to a […]
“We don’t have codpieces now, but we have pretty tight jeans,” says Tim Knox, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. There is now a noticeable interest in romantic male accessories and man-bags – a trend we pointed to in Tudor-themed Visuology Issue 1. These are the sorts of items mentioned by Matthäus Schwarz in a Renaissance […]
The oldest art ever discovered is now available for public viewing. But the cave paintings to be seen in the Ardèche region of France are in fact recent reproductions of the originals. The Chauvet cave, named after Jean-Marie Chauvet, one of the three people who found the treasure trove of Paleolithic paintings, is open rarely, to just a […]