The French mail carrier who spent 33 years building Le Palais idéal or the "Ideal Palace"

Richard Dadd, Art, Madness and Murder

His horrific experiences in the trenches inspired a series of 50 drypoint and aquatint etchings published as 'Der Krieg' in 1924.

The life and legacy of Rudolphe Bresdin visionary etcher and lithographer and bohemian.

George King "Primary Terrestrial Mental Channel No. 1"

Foot age from The Making of Fanny and Alexander

Jean Vigo's films Zéro de conduite (1933) and L'Atalante (1934)

A celebration of the magic and wonder of early cinema.

Egon Schiele's (1890 – 1918) death bed sketch of his wife Edith, who was six months pregnant at the time. He himself was dying even as...

Photographer Weegee describes his haunting meeting with an 81 year old Alfred Stieglitz. From his book Naked City.

Etchings made by Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) dubbed by some as his "Dirty Little Secrets"

An interview with Ingmar Bergman where he discusses "Non-existence" and God's perfection in comparison to human imperfection.

Jean Genet asks a BBC film crew why they don't rebel.

The art of decay. Albert Pinkham Ryder's paintings decay over time due to his use of unstable materials.

Throughout his life William Blake claimed to have seen visions of people from the remote past, as well as deceased friends.

‘What I Believe’ is a prose poem originally published in French in Science Fiction #1 in January 1984.

The life and imagination of Bruno Schulz including drawings, a film of the mural discovery and a newly discovered short story by Schulz

The films of pioneering filmmaker Lotte Reiniger

Francisco Goya's Black Paintings

Akira Kurosawa describes being shown the aftermath of the Kantō earthquake by his brother Heigo Kurosawa.

Clemente Susini's (1754–1814) vividly accurate but macabre wax models, both beautiful and disturbing.

Rare footage of Albert Camus talking about the theatre with an extract of The Possessed written and directed by Albert Camus

"Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas..."

“He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears..."

Jan 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) is said to have witnessed a cab driver viciously whipping a horse.

"I created a series of advertisements which I placed in various publications..Of course I was advertising my own conceptual ideas,

Interview with Sergei Parajanov here he discusses how making Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) led to his imprisonment

Four Text Collages (Project for a New Novel), by J. G. Ballard. Experimental text collages by Ballard intended as a condensed novel.

The lifework of James Hampton a janitor who secretly built a large assemblage of religious art.

Georgia O'Keeffe's fascination with Synesthesia led her to create these paintings.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830 – 1904) pioneering work on locomotion included many male and female nudes of himself and others

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983) was a self-taught artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who created thousands of paintings...

Titanic survivor Frank Prentice worked in the pursers office on the Titanic, he was 18.

While recovering from drugs administered due to an impacted wisdom tooth, Philip K Dick began to have bizarre delusions.

Philip K. Dick interview (1977). Here he discusses how science fiction is viewed on a bottom rung of genres.

An influential series of prints started in 1745. 16 imaginary subterranean prisons with winding stairs strange architecture.

In the 1960s architect Ron Herron (1930 - 1994) designed collages of his concept of Walking Cities.

Wonderful trick film from Georges Méliès where he balances copies of himself on his head and hands.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) photography. Most famous for his studies in locomotion and it's influence on the invention of cinema

Motopia was a proposed 'City of the Future' designed by architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe.

Footage of the devastation caused by World War 1 filmed (1919) by Lucien Le Saint with French balloon pilot Jacques Trolley de Prévaux.

Portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz photographed O'Keeffe obsessively

Incredibly beautiful stained glass windows by Harry Clarke (1889 – 1931)

Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) physiologist, doctor, biomechanics engineer and inventor of chronophotography.

Infernal Dictionary (1818) by Jacques Collin de Plancy is a book of demonology it describes demons and organises them into hierarchies.

Wilson Alwyn Bentley frustrated with being unable to view snowflakes under his microscope devised his own methods.

In 1991 JG Ballard returned to Shanghai to his childhood home and to Lunghua Interment camp.

Nearly 1,000 atomic bomb tests were detonated in the Nevada Test Site in the Nevada Desert from 1951 until 1992.

Anne Brigman (1869 - 1950) depicted herself and other female nudes outdoors in the Sierra Nevada.

Pictures of atomic bomb explosions taken one ten-millionth of a second after detonation from about seven miles away.