Optical Hats
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Description: The skull is one of the most universally recognized symbols in existence. From the Jolly Roger to tombstones and hazard labels, it’s an easy way to represent the concepts of danger and death. Medieval Europe had an entire genre for cranial imagery: memento mori (Latin for “remember that you die”). These artworks — The DanseMacabre skeletons, the vanitas still lifes — were meant to remind the viewers of their mortality. Centuries passed, trends came and went, but the memento mori stayed alive. In the late 19th century, Charles Allan Gilbert created a landmark visual pun titled All is Vanity. Look at the illustration, and you see a skull. Blink, and it transforms into a young woman admiring herself in a vanity.
