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David Perell published a free online trivia game on 2026-08-02 that shows a…

2026-08-02 · 01:32 UTC ·@david_perell ·1 min read

Brief

David Perell created a free trivia game (canon.perell.com) that shows paintings and asks players to guess the artist and year. Announced 2026-08-02, the game aims to teach how artistic styles reflect historical energy—e.g., Impressionism in the 1880s vs. Cubism in the 1910s—and links answers to timelines, Wikipedia pages, and interpretive guides.

Why it matters

David Perell published a free online trivia game on 2026-08-02 that shows a painting and asks players to guess the year and artist; it’s playable solo or with friends at canon.perell.com.

Key details

  • Perell designed the game to teach the link between an era’s spirit and its paintings, claiming it gives a visceral sense of differences such as Impressionism in the 1880s versus Cubism in the 1910s and ties stylistic shifts to societal 'tectonic plates' before World War I.
  • Each answer page contains many 'rabbit holes': Wikipedia links for the painting, the year, the artist, people who inspired the artist, popular works of the time, plus an artist timeline and a guide to looking at the painting.
Source evidence

I made a game to teach myself art history.

And now I’m sharing it here, for free. It’s a trivia game that shows a painting, then asks you to guess when it was made and who painted it.

You can play with friends or by yourself.

I designed it to highlight the relationship between the spirit of an era and its paintings. Playing the game, for example, will give you a visceral sense for how different the energy was in Europe when Impressionism was popular in the 1880s vs. when Cubism was coming into fashion in the 1910s. The shift in style is a reflection of how the tectonic plates in society were shifting in the years before World War I.

Similar themes show up throughout human history. That’s why the answer page is filled with so many rabbit holes, such as Wikipedia pages about:

  • The painting itself
  • The year it was painted
  • The artist
  • The people who inspired the artist
  • Popular works of art created at the time

And also a timeline of the artist’s life and a guide to looking at the painting.

Here’s the site: canon.perell.com