Since we have an art show this Friday at 8pm I thought I would write about the coffee - art relationship. The coffee - art relationship stems from and is part of the larger coffee - intellectual innovation relationship. When coffee was introduced to Europe from the Turks and displaced a lot of beer from European consumption. Coffee and coffeehouses then played a large role in the scientific revolution and Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries (perhaps due to drinking coffee or perhaps because Europeans weren't drinking as much beer with breakfast). The French and American Revolutions were also well-incubated by coffeehouses. A coffeehouse gives people a place to congregate, meet new people, and converse without getting tipsy, which , coupled with a rich history of intellectual innovation creates a place that fosters community and intellectual discourse. I'll end this article with a quote by the great French historian Jules Michelet who romanticizes the coffee-induced revolution better than I. "Paris became one vast cafe. Conversation in France was at its zenith . . . . For this sparkling outburst there is no doubt that honor should be ascribed in part to the auspicious revolution of the times, to the great event which created new customs, and even modified human temperament - the advent of coffee. Its effect was immeasurable . . . . The elegant coffee shop, where conversation flowed, a salon rather than a shop. changed and ennobled its customs . . . . Coffee, the beverage of sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which unlike spirituous liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of truth"