Art Collage Rebecca Tillett Art Collage Rebecca Tillett

Tulsa Tipsy

Tulsa Tipsy was created from seven historical images, bringing together vintage pinup art, postcard typography, a very old photograph of Tulsa, and some rather unruly tornadoes.

Read More
Rebecca Tillett Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: When Photography Tried to Capture the Dead

In the 1870s, photography was still a relatively new technology and, to many people, it seemed almost magical. A camera could preserve a person's face forever, capture a moment no human eye could hold onto, and produce a physical image from light alone.

So naturally, someone eventually asked the next logical question:

Could it photograph a ghost?

Read More
Rebecca Tillett Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: The Art of the Automaton

Long before anyone was arguing about whether artificial intelligence could make art, people were building machines that could write poems, draw pictures, play musical instruments, and imitate the movements of living creatures.

And some of them were pretty damn creepy.

Read More
Restorations Rebecca Tillett Restorations Rebecca Tillett

Judith Beheading Holofernes

Judith Beheading Holofernes is one of his most unnerving confrontations. Drawn from the Old Testament story of Judith, a widow who saves her people by seducing and then decapitating the Assyrian general Holofernes, the painting captures the exact moment violence becomes irreversible.

Read More
Restorations Rebecca Tillett Restorations Rebecca Tillett

Leonardo's Anatomical Studies

Few artists have pursued knowledge as relentlessly as Leonardo da Vinci. Between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, he performed dozens of human dissections in an effort to understand the body not simply as an artist, but as an engineer.There are no victors here. No flags. No triumphant generals on horseback. No polished speeches about liberty, peacekeeping, or noble sacrifice.

Only bones.

Read More
From the Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett From the Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: The Original Uncanny Valley

Today, Benda is remembered as one of America's most accomplished illustrators. He created covers for The Saturday Evening Post, illustrated books and magazines, designed theater costumes, and taught at the Art Students League of New York. But among collectors, he is perhaps best known for the masks that bore his name.

Read More
Restorations Rebecca Tillett Restorations Rebecca Tillett

The Flower Woman in Bloom

Flowers have long carried layers of meaning in Western art, representing everything from love and purity to mortality and the passage of time. Pénot places these traditional symbols alongside his idealized female figure, creating an image that feels suspended between portrait and allegory.

Read More
Art Collage, Photo Collage Rebecca Tillett Art Collage, Photo Collage Rebecca Tillett

Lorelei, the Nixie

Perched upon a rocky cliff above Germany's Rhine River, Lorelei is said to have sung with such beauty that passing sailors became entranced and steered their boats to destruction. Whether viewed as a siren, a spirit, or a tragic woman transformed by heartbreak, her legend remains one of Europe's most enduring tales of beauty and doom.

Read More
Art Collage Rebecca Tillett Art Collage Rebecca Tillett

Ataraxia

The quote on the subject’s chest, “Nothing can be created out of nothing” comes from the Roman philosopher Lucretius in his work De Rerum Natura (around 50 BCE).

At its core, it means: Nothing just appears out of nowhere—everything comes from something that already exists.

Lucretius was building on earlier ideas from Epicurus and early atomic theory. He believed the universe is made of tiny, eternal particles (atoms), and everything we see is just those particles rearranging, not being magically created or destroyed.

Read More
Rebecca Tillett Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: Memento Mori: A Skeleton in a Niche

Long before skulls became shorthand for rebellion, fashion, or Halloween décor, they served a much simpler purpose: a warning. A reminder. A confrontation.

This month’s From the Vaults of the Unhinged feature is Memento Mori: A Skeleton in a Niche, a late 15th-century engraving by Master IAM of Zwolle, a Netherlandish printmaker active around 1470–1495. Now held in the collection of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the engraving is modest in size—just over 6 inches tall—but its message is anything but subtle.

Read More
Restorations Rebecca Tillett Restorations Rebecca Tillett

The Last Dance

The Dance of Death originates in medieval plays and folk rituals performed on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December), and in funeral sermons. In the most popular version, Death (in the form of a skeleton) dances in succession with people representing particular social ranks (Pope, emperor, king, lawyer, peasant, etc.) and takes away each in turn, demonstrating that nobody, however exalted in this life, can escape death.

Read More
Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: The Experimental Anti-Flash Visor That Looks Like Sci-Fi but was Dead Serious

Every era leaves behind artifacts that feel almost too strange to be real: objects that look like props from dystopian fiction but were, in fact, earnest attempts to solve very real fears.

This experimental anti-flash visor is one of those objects.In 1882, Odilon Redon released a lithograph that still feels eerily modern: The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts Toward Infinity.

At first glance, it is deceptively simple. A single eye floats upward over a darkened sea, tethered to a small basket that resembles a skull or severed head. There is no horizon, no destination, no explanation. Only ascent.

Read More
Rebecca Tillett Rebecca Tillett

To the Origin of All Becoming

Before language, before belief, there was a body becoming, a sacred heart, the first house built without hands, the hungry grasping of knowledge of good and evil. And time that shrieks by like a train horn while you pray for more.

Read More
Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett Vaults of the Unhinged Rebecca Tillett

From the Vaults of the Unhinged: The Eye That Escaped the Body

In 1882, Odilon Redon released a lithograph that still feels eerily modern: The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts Toward Infinity.

At first glance, it is deceptively simple. A single eye floats upward over a darkened sea, tethered to a small basket that resembles a skull or severed head. There is no horizon, no destination, no explanation. Only ascent.

Read More