Meet Gerda Taro, the First Female Photojournalist to Die on the Front Lines

in History, Photography | June 11th, 2019

Ger­da Taro by Anony­mous, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We may know a few names of his­toric women pho­tog­ra­phers, like Julia Mar­garet Cameron, Dorothea Lange, or Diane Arbus, but the sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence of women in pho­tog­ra­phy from its very begin­nings doesn’t get much atten­tion in the usu­al nar­ra­tive, despite the fact that “by 1900,” as pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dawn Oost­er­hoff writes, cen­sus records in Britain and the U.S. showed that “there were more than 7000 pro­fes­sion­al women pho­tog­ra­phers,” a num­ber that only grew as decades passed.

As pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment became small­er, lighter, and more portable, pho­tog­ra­phers moved out into more chal­leng­ing and dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. Among them were women who “fought tra­di­tion and were among the pio­neer pho­to­jour­nal­ists,” work­ing along­side men on the front lines of war zones around the world.

War pho­tog­ra­phers like Lee Miller—former Vogue mod­el, Man Ray muse, and Sur­re­al­ist artist—showed a side of war most peo­ple didn’t see, one in which women war­riors, med­ical per­son­nel, sup­port staff, and work­ers, played sig­nif­i­cant roles and bore wit­ness to mass suf­fer­ing and acts of hero­ism.

Image via Flickr Cre­ative Com­mons

 

Before Miller cap­tured the dev­as­ta­tion at the Euro­pean front, the hor­rors of Dachau, and Hitler’s bath­tub, anoth­er female war pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Ger­da Taro, doc­u­ment­ed the front lines of the Span­ish Civ­il War. “One of the world’s first and great­est war pho­tog­ra­phers,” writes Giles Trent at The Guardian, Taro “died while pho­tograph­ing a chaot­ic retreat after the Bat­tle of Brunete, short­ly after Franco’s troops had one a major vic­to­ry,” just days away from her 27th birth­day. She was the first female pho­to­jour­nal­ist to be killed in action on the front­line and a major star in France at the time of her death.

Woman Train­ing for a Repub­li­can Mili­tia, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“On 1 August 1937,” notes a Mag­num Pho­tos bio, “thou­sands of peo­ple lined the streets of Paris to mourn the death” of Taro. The “26-year-old Jew­ish émi­gré from Leipzig… was eulo­gized as a coura­geous reporter who had sac­ri­ficed her life to bear wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing of civil­ians and troops…. The media pro­claimed her a left-wing hero­ine, a mar­tyr of the anti-fas­cist cause and a role mod­el for young women every­where.” Taro had fled to France in in 1933, after being arrest­ed by the Nazis for dis­trib­ut­ing anti-fas­cist leaflets in Ger­many. She was deter­mined to con­tin­ue the fight in her new coun­try.

Repub­li­can Sol­diers at the Navac­er­ra­da Pass, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Taro met anoth­er Jew­ish émi­gré, well-known Hun­gar­i­an pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Capa, just get­ting his start at the time. The two became part­ners and lovers, arriv­ing in Barcelona in 1936, “two-and-a-half weeks after the out­break of the war.” Like Miller, Taro was drawn to women on the bat­tle­field. In one of her first assign­ments, she doc­u­ment­ed mili­ti­a­women of the Uni­fied Social­ist Par­ty of Cat­alo­nia train­ing on a beach. “Moti­vat­ed by a desire to raise aware­ness of the plight of Span­ish civil­ians and the sol­diers fight­ing for lib­er­ty,” her clear sym­pa­thies give her work depth and imme­di­a­cy.

Repub­li­can Dina­miteros, in the Cara­banchel Neigh­bor­hood of Madrid, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Taro’s pho­tographs “were wide­ly repro­duced in the French left­ist press,” points out the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy. She “incor­po­rat­ed the dynam­ic cam­era angles of New Vision pho­tog­ra­phy as well as a phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al close­ness to her sub­ject.” After she was crushed by a tank in 1937, many of her pho­tographs were incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed to Capa, and she sank into obscu­ri­ty. She has achieved renewed recog­ni­tion in recent years, espe­cial­ly after a trove of 4,500 neg­a­tives con­tain­ing work by her and Capa was dis­cov­ered in Mex­i­co City.

Although she had been warned away from the front, Taro “got into this con­vic­tion that she had to bear wit­ness,” says biog­ra­ph­er Jane Rogoys­ka, “The troops loved her and she kept push­ing.” She paid with her life, died a hero, and was for­got­ten until recent­ly. Her lega­cy is cel­e­brat­ed in Rogoyska’s book, a nov­el about her and Capa by Susana Fortes, an Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion, film projects in the works, and a Google Doo­dle last August on her birth­day. Learn more about Taro’s life and see many more of her cap­ti­vat­ing images, at Mag­num Pho­tos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

1,600 Rare Col­or Pho­tographs Depict Life in the U.S Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion & World War II

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Oliver Sacks Promotes the Healing Power of Gardens: They’re “More Powerful Than Any Medication”

in Creativity, Health, Nature, Neuroscience | June 11th, 2019

Ear­ly Euro­pean explor­ers left the con­ti­nent with visions of gar­dens in their heads: The Gar­den of Eden, the Gar­den of the Hes­perides, and oth­er myth­ic realms of abun­dance, ease, and end­less repose. Those same explor­ers left sick­ness, war, and death only to find sick­ness, war, and death—much of it export­ed by them­selves. The gar­den became de-mythol­o­gized. Nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy and mod­ern meth­ods of agri­cul­ture brought gar­dens fur­ther down to earth in the cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion.

Yet the gar­den remained a spe­cial fig­ure in phi­los­o­phy, art, and lit­er­a­ture, a potent sym­bol of an ordered life and ordered mind. Voltaire’s Can­dide, the riotous satire filled with gar­dens both fan­tas­ti­cal and prac­ti­cal, famous­ly ends with the dic­tate, “we must cul­ti­vate our gar­den.” The ten­den­cy to read this line as strict­ly metaphor­i­cal does a dis­ser­vice to the intel­lec­tu­al cul­ture cre­at­ed by Voltaire and oth­er writ­ers of the peri­od—Alexan­der Pope most promi­nent among them—for whom gar­den­ing was a the­o­ry born of prac­tice.

Exiled from France in 1765, Voltaire retreat­ed to a vil­la in Gene­va called Les Délices, “The Delights.” There, writes Adam Gop­nik at The New York­er, he “quick­ly turned his exile into a desir­able con­di­tion…. When he wrote that it was our duty to cul­ti­vate our gar­den, he real­ly knew what it meant to cul­ti­vate a gar­den.” Enlight­en­ment poets and philoso­phers did not dwell on the sci­en­tif­ic rea­sons why gar­dens might have such salu­tary effects on the psy­che. And nei­ther does neu­rol­o­gist Oliv­er Sacks, who also wrote of gar­dens as health-bestow­ing havens from the chaos and noise of the world, and more specif­i­cal­ly, from the city and bru­tal com­mer­cial demands it rep­re­sents.

For Sacks that city was not Paris or Lon­don but, prin­ci­pal­ly, New York, where he lived, prac­ticed, and wrote for fifty years. Nonethe­less, in his essay “The Heal­ing Pow­er of Gar­dens,” he invokes the Euro­pean his­to­ry of gar­dens, from the medieval hor­tus to grand Enlight­en­ment botan­i­cal gar­dens like Kew, filled with exot­ic plants from “the Amer­i­c­as and the Ori­ent.” Sacks writes of his stu­dent days, where he “dis­cov­ered with delight a very dif­fer­ent garden—the Oxford Botan­ic Gar­den, one of the first walled gar­dens estab­lished in Europe,” found­ed in 1621.

“It pleased me to think,” he recalls, refer­ring to key Enlight­en­ment sci­en­tists, “that Boyle, Hooke, Willis and oth­er Oxford fig­ures might have walked and med­i­tat­ed there in the 17th cen­tu­ry.” In that time, cul­ti­vat­ed gar­dens were often the pri­vate pre­serves of land­ed gen­try. Now, places like the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den, whose virtues Sacks extolls in the video above, are open to every­one. And it is a good thing, too. Because gar­dens can serve an essen­tial pub­lic health func­tion, whether we’re stressed and gen­er­al­ly fatigued or suf­fer­ing from a men­tal dis­or­der or neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion:

I can­not say exact­ly how nature exerts its calm­ing and orga­niz­ing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restora­tive and heal­ing pow­ers of nature and gar­dens, even for those who are deeply dis­abled neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly. In many cas­es, gar­dens and nature are more pow­er­ful than any med­ica­tion.

“In forty years of med­ical prac­tice,” the physi­cian writes, “I have found only two types of non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ‘ther­a­py’ to be vital­ly impor­tant for patients with chron­ic neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases: music and gar­dens.” A gar­den also represents—for Sacks and for artists like Vir­ginia Woolf—“a tri­umph of resis­tance against the mer­ci­less race of mod­ern life,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, a pace “so com­pul­sive­ly focused on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at the cost of cre­ativ­i­ty, of lucid­i­ty, of san­i­ty.”

Voltaire’s pre­scrip­tion to tend our gar­dens has made Can­dide into a watch­word for car­ing for and appre­ci­at­ing our sur­round­ings. (It’s also now the name of a gar­den­ing app). Sacks’ rec­om­men­da­tions should inspire us equal­ly, whether we’re in search of cre­ative inspi­ra­tion or men­tal respite. “As a writer,” he says, “I find gar­dens essen­tial to the cre­ative process; as a physi­cian, I take my patients to gar­dens when­ev­er pos­si­ble. The effect, he writes, is to be “refreshed in body and spir­it,” absorbed in the “deep time” of nature, as he writes else­where, and find­ing in it “a pro­found sense of being at home, a sort of com­pan­ion­ship with the earth,” and a rem­e­dy for the alien­ation of both men­tal ill­ness and the grind­ing pace of our usu­al form of life.

via New York Times/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oliv­er Sacks’ Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing List of 46 Books: From Plants and Neu­ro­science, to Poet­ry and the Prose of Nabokov

A First Look at The Ani­mat­ed Mind of Oliv­er Sacks, a Fea­ture-Length Jour­ney Into the Mind of the Famed Neu­rol­o­gist

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch The Meaning of Life: One of the Best Animated Short Films Ever Made Traces the Evolution of Life, the Universe & Beyond

in Animation | June 11th, 2019

They say cre­ativ­i­ty is born of lim­i­ta­tions. If that’s true, then is any ani­ma­tor work­ing today more cre­ative than Don Hertzfeldt? “The stars of his movies are all near-fea­ture­less stick­men with dots for eyes and a sin­gle line for a mouth,” writes The Guardian’s David Jenk­ins in an appre­ci­a­tion of Hertzfeldt, whose “method of mak­ing grand exis­ten­tial state­ments with almost reck­less­ly mod­est means” — ani­mat­ing every­thing him­self, and doing it all with tra­di­tion­al hand-draw­ing-and-film-cam­era meth­ods that at no point involve com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery — “has made his cin­e­mat­ic oeu­vre one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and enjoy­able of all con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can direc­tors.”

As an exam­ple Jenk­ins holds up 2005’s The Mean­ing of Life, which “tack­led noth­ing less than the nature of organ­ic life in the known uni­verse, address­ing the painstak­ing devel­op­ment of the human form through a series of (often high­ly amus­ing) Dar­win­ian trans­mu­ta­tions.”

You can glimpse its four-year-long ani­ma­tion process, which appears to have been almost as painstak­ing, in time-lapse mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary Watch­ing Grass Grow. At Short of the Week, Rob Mun­day writes that, though The Mean­ing of Life takes on “a sub­ject already famil­iar to the for­mat (evo­lu­tion has also been por­trayed in short film by ani­ma­tors Michael Mills, Claude Clouti­er and I’m sure many more),” it also sees Hertzfeldt adding “his own dis­tinct take to pro­ceed­ings with his unmis­tak­able style and injec­tions of dark humor.”

That spe­cial brand of humor has long been famil­iar to the many view­ers who have stum­bled across Hertzfeldt’s ear­li­er Reject­ed, a short com­posed of even short­er shorts orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned — and, yes, reject­ed — by the Fam­i­ly Learn­ing Chan­nel. As one of the first ani­ma­tions to “go viral” in the Youtube era, Reject­ed not only made Hertzfeldt’s name but paved the way for projects at once more ambi­tious, more sur­re­al, more com­ic, and more seri­ous: take the 65-minute It’s Such a Beau­ti­ful Day, which fol­lows one of his sig­na­ture stick­men into pro­longed neu­ro­log­i­cal decline. The Mean­ing of Life might seem pos­i­tive by com­par­i­son, but its cos­mic sweep belies Hertzfeldt’s under­ly­ing cri­tique of all that evo­lu­tion has pro­duced. As Jenk­ins para­phras­es it,  “Were we real­ly worth all that effort?”

The Mean­ing of Life–which Time Out New York named the film one of the “thir­ty best ani­mat­ed short films ever made”–has been added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern 

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Alan Watts Dis­pens­es Wit & Wis­dom on the Mean­ing of Life in Three Ani­mat­ed Videos

Why Man Cre­ates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Look at Cre­ativ­i­ty (1968)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch 3,000 Films Free Online from the National Film Board of Canada, Including Portraits of Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood & Jack Kerouac

in Film | June 10th, 2019

What, exact­ly, is Cana­da? The ques­tion some­times occurs to Amer­i­cans, liv­ing as they do right next door. But it might sur­prise those Amer­i­cans to learn that Cana­di­ans them­selves ask the very same ques­tion, liv­ing as they do in a coun­try that could be defined by any num­ber of its ele­ments — its vast­ness, its mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, The Kids in the Hall — but nev­er seems defined by any one of them in par­tic­u­lar. Many indi­vid­u­als and groups through­out Cana­di­an his­to­ry have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project of explain­ing Cana­da, and indeed defin­ing it. Few have done as much as the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da and the film­mak­ers it has sup­port­ed, thanks to whom “three thou­sand films, from doc­u­men­taries to nar­ra­tive fea­tures to exper­i­men­tal shorts, are avail­able to stream free of charge, even for Amer­i­cans.”

Those words come from The Out­line’s Chris R. Mor­gan, who writes that, “for the ‘Canuckophile’ (not my coinage but a term I hap­pi­ly own), the NFB’s Screen­ing Room is one of the supreme plea­sures of the inter­net. Since 1939, the NFB has facil­i­tat­ed the telling of Canada’s sto­ry in its people’s own words and images.”

Mor­gan points up to such NFB-sup­port­ed pro­duc­tions as 1965’s Ladies and Gen­tle­men … Mr. Leonard Cohen, which “fol­lows the tit­u­lar 30-year-old poet giv­ing wit­ty read­ings, par­ty­ing, and liv­ing around Mon­tre­al,” and the 2014 Shame­less Pro­pa­gan­da, described at the Screen­ing Room as an exam­i­na­tion of “Canada’s nation­al art form.” That art form devel­oped in the years after the NFB’s found­ing in 1939, a time when its found­ing com­mis­sion­er John Gri­er­son called doc­u­men­taries a “ham­mer to shape soci­ety.”

Not that most of what you’ll find to watch in the NFB’s screen­ing room comes down like a ham­mer — nor does it feel espe­cial­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic, as we’ve come to under­stand that term in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Take, for instance, the doc­u­men­tary por­traits of Cana­di­an writ­ers like Mar­garet Atwood and Jack Ker­ouac.

The lat­ter lead a life described by film­mak­er Her­ménégilde Chi­as­son as “a Fran­co-Amer­i­can odyssey,” which will remind even the most Cana­da-unaware Amer­i­cans of one thing that clear­ly sets Cana­da apart: its bilin­gual­ism. That, too, pro­vides mate­r­i­al for a few NFB pro­duc­tions, includ­ing 1965’s Instant French, a short about “the adven­tures of a group of busi­ness­men who are forced into tak­ing French lessons to stay com­pet­i­tive in their field.”

“At first put out by this news,” con­tin­ues the descrip­tion at the Screen­ing Room, “one by one they begin to real­ize that gain­ing flu­en­cy in anoth­er lan­guage has its ben­e­fits.” Hokey though it may sound — “def­i­nite­ly a prod­uct of its time,” as the NFB now says — a film like Instant French offers a glimpse into not just Canada’s past but the vision for soci­ety that has shaped Canada’s present and will con­tin­ue to shape its future. You can browse the NFB’s large and grow­ing online archive by sub­ject (with cat­e­gories includ­ing lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage, music, and his­to­ry) as well as through playlists like “Expo 67: 50 Years Lat­er,” “Extra­or­di­nary Ordi­nary Peo­ple,” — and, of course, “Hock­ey Movies,” which  reminds us that, elu­sive though Cana­di­an cul­ture as a whole may some­times feel, cer­tain impor­tant parts of it aren’t that hard to grasp.

via The Out­line

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Lis­ten to Glenn Gould’s Shock­ing­ly Exper­i­men­tal Radio Doc­u­men­tary, The Idea of North (1967)

Glenn Gould Gives Us a Tour of Toron­to, His Beloved Home­town (1979)

William Shat­ner Sings O Cana­da (and Hap­py Cana­da Day)

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decided to Give Up Painting & Manage the Velvet Underground Instead (1966)

in Art, Music | June 10th, 2019

In Good Omens—the six-episode adap­ta­tion of Ter­ry Pratch­ett and Neil Gaiman’s satir­i­cal fan­ta­sy about the Bib­li­cal end of the world—a run­ning joke relies on the viewer’s off­hand knowl­edge of the Vel­vet Underground’s sig­nif­i­cance. A refined, rare book­shop-own­ing angel calls the band “bebop” and has no idea who they are or what they sound like, a for­giv­able sin in the 70s, but seri­ous­ly out of touch decades lat­er in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The schem­ing super­nat­ur­al agent should prob­a­bly know that the Lou Reed (and briefly Nico)-fronted, Andy Warhol-man­aged late-1960s-70s exper­i­men­tal New York art rock band had an out­sized influ­ence on human affairs. Bridg­ing a divide no one even knew exist­ed between beat poet­ry, avant-garde jazz, psy­che­del­ic garage rock, doo-wop, and Euro­pean folk music, the band is anec­do­tal­ly cred­it­ed with launch­ing thou­sands of others—having as much impact, per­haps, on mod­ern rock as Char­lie Park­er had on mod­ern jazz.

Warhol could not have known any of this when he decid­ed to spon­sor and pro­mote the Vel­vet Under­ground in 1966. He only man­aged the band for a year, in what seemed like both a stunt and a per­for­mance art project, part of his trav­el­ing mul­ti­me­dia show Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable, which he calls “the biggest dis­cotheque in the world” in the 1966 inter­view above. Warhol act­ed, and the band react­ed, shap­ing them­selves around his provo­ca­tions. He pro­ject­ed high-con­trast films at them onstage, they put on sun­glass­es. He pushed dead­pan Ger­man mod­el and singer Nico on them, they wrote and record­ed what some con­sid­er the great­est debut album in his­to­ry.

Warhol couldn’t have known how any of it would pan out, but in hind­sight his patron­age can seem like a pre­scient, almost meta­phys­i­cal, act of cul­tur­al subversion—and the work of a guile­less savant com­pelled by vague intu­itions and whims. He pre­ferred to give off the lat­ter impres­sion, then let crit­ics infer the for­mer. Warhol explains that he has aban­doned paint­ing and start­ed man­ag­ing the band because “I hate objects, and I hate to go to muse­ums and see pic­tures of the world, because they look so impor­tant and they don’t real­ly mean any­thing.”

Few peo­ple doubt the man­age­ment of his pub­lic per­sona was at least par­tial­ly cal­cu­lat­ed. But so much of it clear­ly wasn’t—as evi­denced by his own exhaus­tive record­ing of every detail of his life. Despite the amount of cal­cu­la­tion ascribed to him, a qual­i­ty the inter­view­er awk­ward­ly tries to ask him about, he seems to have been stu­pe­fied about his own moti­va­tions much of the time, beyond the fact that he strong­ly liked and dis­liked cer­tain sim­ple things—Elvis, Campbell’s Soup, obscure blonde femme fatales. At oth­er times, Warhol issued apho­risms as cryp­tic and pro­found as an ancient sage or post-war crit­i­cal the­o­rist.

Was the Vel­vet Under­ground more like Warhol’s uncom­pli­cat­ed love of cheese­burg­ers and Bat­man or more like his sophis­ti­cat­ed decon­struc­tion of film, media, and fash­ion, or are these not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive ways of look­ing at his work? The ques­tion may not real­ly con­cern music his­to­ri­ans, for whom Warhol’s ear­ly influ­ence was for­ma­tive, but maybe musi­cal­ly mar­gin­al. But if we think of him as a motive force behind the band’s look and ear­ly sound—a kind of con­scious cre­ative reagent—we might be curi­ous about what he meant by it, if any­thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Jeff Tweedy Explains How to Learn to Love Music You Hate: Watch a Video Animated by R. Sikoryak

in Animation, Creativity, Life, Music | June 10th, 2019

Punk rock peer pres­sure forced Jeff Tweedy, founder of Wilco, to shun Neil Young and oth­er  “hippie“musical greats.

Ah, youth…

Were Tweedy, now a sea­soned 51-year-old, to deliv­er a com­mence­ment speech, he’d do well to coun­sel younger musi­cians to reject such knee jerk rejec­tion, as he does in the above ani­mat­ed inter­view for Top­ic mag­a­zine.

Not because he’s now one of those grey beards him­self, but rather because he’s come to view influ­ence and taste as liv­ing organ­isms, capa­ble of inter­act­ing in sur­pris­ing ways.

That’s not to say the young­sters are oblig­ed to declare an affin­i­ty for what they hear when ven­tur­ing into the past, just as Tweedy does­n’t fake a fond­ness for much of the new music he checks out on the reg­u­lar.

Think of this prac­tice as some­thing sim­i­lar to one mil­lions of child­ish picky eaters have endured. Eat your veg­eta­bles. Just a taste. You can’t say you don’t like them until you’ve active­ly tast­ed them. Who knows? You may find one you like. Or per­haps it’ll prove more of a slow burn, becom­ing an unfore­seen ingre­di­ent of your matu­ri­ty.

In oth­er words, bet­ter to sam­ple wide­ly from the unend­ing musi­cal buf­fet avail­able on the Inter­net than con­ceive of your­self as a whol­ly orig­i­nal rock god, sprung ful­ly formed from the head of Zeus, capiche?

The nar­ra­tion sug­gests that Tweedy’s got some prob­lems with online cul­ture, but he gives props to the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion for its soft­en­ing effect on the iron­clad cul­tur­al divide of his 70s and 80s youth.

Was it real­ly all just a mar­ket­ing scheme?

Unlike­ly, giv­en the Viet­nam War, but there’s no deny­ing that edu­cat­ing our­selves in our pas­sion includes approach­ing its his­to­ry with an at-least-par­tial­ly open mind.

If you want to snap it shut after you’ve had some time to con­sid­er, that’s your call, though Tweedy sug­gests he’s nev­er com­fort­able writ­ing some­thing off for­ev­er.

If noth­ing else, the stuff he dis­likes teach­es him more about the stuff he loves—including, pre­sum­ably, some of his own impres­sive cat­a­log.

Kudos to direc­tor Kei­th Stack and Augen­blick Stu­dios, ani­ma­tor of so many Top­ic inter­views, for match­ing Tweedy with car­toon­ist R. Siko­ryak, an artist who clear­ly shares Tweedy’s cre­ative phi­los­o­phy as evidenced by such works as Terms and Con­di­tions and Mas­ter­piece Comics. Here is anoth­er who clear­ly knows how to make a meal from mix­ing old and new, tra­di­tion­al and exper­i­men­tal, high and low. One of the bonus joys of this ani­mat­ed life les­son is catch­ing all of Siko­ryak’s musi­cal East­er eggs—includ­ing a cameo by Nip­per, the face of His Mas­ter’s Voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Cobain Lists His 50 Favorite Albums: Fea­tures LPs by David Bowie, Pub­lic Ene­my & More

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

‘Beast­ie Boys on Being Stu­pid’: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­view From 1985

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist ofthe East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City June 17 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How David Bowie Delivered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Ziggy Stardust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

in Music | June 7th, 2019

When David Bowie left us on Jan­u­ary 10, 2016, we imme­di­ate­ly start­ed see­ing the just-released Black­star, which turned out to be his final album, as a farewell. But then, if we looked back across his entire career — a span of more than half a cen­tu­ry — we saw that he had been deliv­er­ing farewells the whole time. Through­out much of that career, Bowie’s observers have reflex­ive­ly com­pared him to a chameleon, so often and so dra­mat­i­cal­ly did he seem to revise his per­for­ma­tive iden­ti­ty to suit the zeit­geist (if not to shape the zeit­geist). But peri­od­ic cre­ative rebirth entails peri­od­ic cre­ative death, and as the Poly­phon­ic video essay above shows us, no rock star could die as cre­ative­ly as Bowie.

The video con­cen­trates on two of Bowie’s most famous farewells, in par­tic­u­lar: his last, on Black­star and the musi­cal Lazarus, and his first, deliv­ered onstage 43 years ear­li­er in his last per­for­mance in the char­ac­ter of Zig­gy Star­dust. “Not only is it the last show of the tour,” he announced to 3,500 scream­ing fans at Lon­don’s Ham­mer­smith Odeon, “but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.”

There fol­lowed a clos­ing per­for­mance of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Sui­cide,” a song described by the video’s nar­ra­tor as “Zig­gy Star­dust’s final moments, washed up and exhaust­ed from life as a rock star.” Though only 26 years old at the time, Bowie had already released six stu­dio albums and expe­ri­enced more than enough to reflect elo­quent­ly in song on “a life well lived.”

But then, if the phe­nom­e­non of David Bowie teach­es us any­thing, it teach­es us how a life can be com­posed of var­i­ous dis­crete life­times. Bowie under­stood that, as did the oth­er artists whose work he ref­er­enced in his farewells: names cit­ed in this video’s analy­sis include Jacques Brel, Charles Bukows­ki, and the Span­ish poet Manuel Macha­do. And as any fan knows, Bowie was also adept at ref­er­enc­ing his own work, a ten­den­cy he kept up until the end as in, for exam­ple, the reap­pear­ance of his mid-70s char­ac­ter (and sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Poly­phon­ic study) the Thin White Duke in the “Lazarus” music video. In that work he also left plen­ty of mate­r­i­al to not just inspire sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of cre­ators, but to send them back to the realms of cul­ture that inspired him. We may have heard David Bowie’s final farewell, but in our own life­times we sure­ly won’t hear the end of his influ­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Very Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust (1973)

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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What Did Old English Sound Like? Hear Reconstructions of Beowulf, The Bible, and Casual Conversations

in English Language | June 7th, 2019

What is the Eng­lish lan­guage? Is it Anglo-Sax­on? It is tempt­ing to think so, in part because the def­i­n­i­tion sim­pli­fies a lin­guis­tic his­to­ry that defies lin­ear sum­ma­ry. Over the course of 1000 years, the lan­guage came togeth­er from exten­sive con­tact with Anglo-Nor­man, a dialect of French; then became heav­i­ly Latinized and full of Greek roots and end­ings; then absorbed words from Ara­bic, Span­ish, and dozens of oth­er lan­guages, and with them, arguably, absorbed con­cepts and pic­tures of the world that can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from the lan­guage itself.

Shake­speare and oth­er writ­ers filled in the gaps (and still do), invent­ing words where they were lack­ing. Why do we then refer to the long-dead Anglo-Sax­on lan­guage as “Old Eng­lish,” if it is only a dis­tant ances­tor, and one, you’ll note, no Eng­lish speak­er today under­stands? There are many tech­ni­cal rea­sons for this, but to put it in plain terms: if Eng­lish were a body, Anglo-Sax­on might be the bones and lig­a­ments: not only for the hard­ness of its con­so­nants and its blunt, unadorned poet­ry, but because it con­tains the most com­mon words in the lan­guage, the struc­tur­al bits that hold togeth­er all those pan-lin­guis­tic bor­row­ings.

Observe the piece of verse known as Cædmon’s Hymn, below. Amidst the tan­gle of unfa­mil­iar phonemes and extinct let­ters like the “þ,” you can­not miss such bedrock words as “and,” “his,” “or,” “He,” and “to.” In oth­er texts, you’ll find rec­og­niz­able equiv­a­lents of “father,” “moth­er,” “hus­band,” “wife,” “good,” “god,” and many oth­er com­mon house­hold words.

Nu scu­lon her­ian     heo­fon­rices Weard,
Metodes mihte     and his mod­geþanc,
weorc Wul­dor­fæder,     swa he wun­dra
gehwæs
ece Dry­ht­en,     or onstealde.
He ærest scop     eorþan bear­num
heo­fon to hrofe     halig Sci­ep­pend.
þa mid­dan­geard     man­cynnes Weard
ece Dry­ht­en,     æfter teode
firum foldan     Frea ælmi­htig.

Despite shar­ing many words with mod­ern Eng­lish, how­ev­er, Anglo Sax­on is anoth­er lan­guage, from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent world long dis­ap­peared. No one liv­ing, of course, knows exact­ly what it sound­ed like, so schol­ars make their best edu­cat­ed guess­es using inter­nal evi­dence in the scant lit­er­a­ture, sec­ondary sources in oth­er lan­guages from the time, and sim­i­lar­i­ties to oth­er, liv­ing lan­guages. Now that you’ve seen what Old Eng­lish looks like, hear how it sounds to mod­ern ears.

In the video at the top, stu­dent of the lan­guage Stephen Rop­er reen­acts a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with an Anglo-Sax­on speak­er, one who can under­stand but can­not speak con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish. The oth­er exam­ples here come from lit­er­ary con­texts. Fur­ther up, Justin A. Jack­son, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Hills­dale Col­lege, reads the open­ing lines of Beowulf, and just above, hear an unnamed nar­ra­tor read the epic poem’s full Pro­logue.

Just below—backed by a dra­mat­ic, dron­ing score and recit­ed over footage of misty Eng­lish moors—a read­ing of “The Lord’s Prayer” in 11th cen­tu­ry Old Eng­lish. In this text, you’ll pick out quite a few more famil­iar words, though the fact that most read­ers know the mod­ern Eng­lish equiv­a­lent prob­a­bly doesn’t hurt. But if you feel con­fi­dent after lis­ten­ing to these spec­u­la­tive recon­struc­tions of the lan­guage, enough to take a crack at read­ing it aloud your­self, head over this Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow col­lec­tion of Old Eng­lish read­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Beowulf Read In the Orig­i­nal Old Eng­lish: How Many Words Do You Rec­og­nize?

These Four Man­u­scripts Con­tain All of the Lit­er­a­ture Writ­ten in Old English–and Beyond That, There’s Noth­ing More

Hear Beowulf and Gawain and the Green Knight Read in Their Orig­i­nal Old and Mid­dle Eng­lish by an MIT Medieval­ist

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A New Photo Book Documents the Wonderful Homemade Cat Ladders of Switzerland

in Architecture, Design, Travel | June 7th, 2019

There are days when Cal­gon is not escape enough…

Days when one longs to be a cat, specif­i­cal­ly a free-rang­ing feline of Bern, Switzer­land, as fea­tured in graph­ic design­er Brigitte Schus­ter’s forth­com­ing book, Swiss Cat Lad­ders…

Some Amer­i­can cats come and go freely through—dare we say—doggie doors, those small aper­tures cut into exist­ing points of entry, most com­mon­ly the one lead­ing from kitchen to Great Out­doors.

The cit­i­zens of Bern have aimed much high­er, cus­tomiz­ing their homes in align­ment with both the feline com­mit­ment to inde­pen­dence and their fear­less­ness where heights are con­cerned.

As Schus­ter doc­u­ments, there’s no one solu­tion designed to take cats from upper res­i­den­tial win­dows and patios to the des­ti­na­tions of their choos­ing.

Some build­ings boast sleek ramps that blend seam­less­ly into the exist­ing exte­ri­or design.

In oth­ers, sure­foot­ed pussies must nav­i­gate ram­shackle wood­en affairs, some of which seem bet­ter suit­ed to the hen house.

One cat lad­der con­nects to a near­by tree.

Anoth­er start­ed life as a drain spout.

Humans who pre­fer to out­source their cat lad­ders may elect to pur­chase a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed spi­ral stair­case online.

Pre-order Swiss Cat Lad­ders for 45 € using the order form at the bot­tom of this page. The text, which is in both Ger­man and Eng­lish, includes dia­grams to inspire those who would cater to their own cat’s desire for high fly­ing inde­pen­dence.

All pho­tographs © Brigitte Schus­ter

Via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. And con­grat­u­la­tions to her home­schooled senior, Milo Kotis, who grad­u­ates today! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Longest of the Grateful Dead’s Epic Long Jams: “Dark Star” (1972), “The Other One” (1972) and “Playing in The Band” (1974)

in Music | June 7th, 2019

As a ded­i­cat­ed fan of the long jam—I always felt like I should try to dig the Grate­ful Dead. I did­n’t not dig the Grate­ful Dead. But I suf­fered from under­ex­po­sure to their music, if not to their rep­u­ta­tion as end­less noodlers. By the time I gave the Dead a chance my head was full of ideas of what a long jam should be, from the likes of Kraftwerk, Coltrane, Neil Young, Vel­vet Under­ground, Son­ic Youth, Pink Floyd, Sun Ra…

Here­in lies a dif­fer­ence. Some jams are struc­tured, con­trolled, almost orches­tral, build­ing into move­ments or dron­ing on into a haze of noise and son­ic wash. Then there’s the Dead, the world’s finest pur­vey­ors of mean­der­ing end­less noodling. I don’t mean that to sound deroga­to­ry. One could say the same thing about many jazz ensembles—like Sun Ra’s Arkestra or Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew period—without tak­ing away from the bril­liant abstrac­tion, the keen con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­play, the dynam­ic range and moments of antic­i­pa­tion, the phe­nom­e­nal solos.…

Maybe there’s a lot more going on than noodling, after all, even if the “end­less” part can seem accu­rate when it comes to the Dead, a point on which I’ve seen Dead­heads agree. Of what might be the band’s longest jam—a near­ly 47-minute live ren­di­tion of “Play­ing in The Band” from 1974 (top)—one Red­dit fan, MrCom­plete­ly, writes, “Playin’ is sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer than it is good.” Form your own opin­ion. Your atten­tion span might make up your mind for you.

A far more com­mon top­ic  in forums like Reddit’s r/gratefuldead are con­ver­sa­tions about not only which live song ranks as the longest jam, but how bliss­ful and mag­i­cal said jam was and whether the Dead­head saw the jam or for­ev­er regrets miss­ing the jam. One Dead fan, Pyrate­fish, cites “The Oth­er One” from 9–17-72 as “a beast” to beat them all. “Forty minute ride in to the far reach­es of the uni­verse that cul­mi­nates in a bat­tle for your very soul.” Top that.

Maybe we can, with anoth­er can­di­date for longest jam, a per­for­mance of “Dark Star” in Rot­ter­dam in 1972. Men­tion of this jam brought up oth­er con­tenders, most of them ver­sions of “Dark Star” or “Dark Star” med­leys. One fan, lastLeaf­Fall­en, even sug­gests a “jazzy, exper­i­men­tal, and mind-bend­ing” ver­sion of the song from 1990, but they don’t get any tak­ers on that one, even though “Bran­ford Marsalis sits in on sax mak­ing this jam espe­cial­ly spe­cial!”

The Grate­ful Dead were gen­uine jaz­zheads and meshed well with musi­cians like Marsalis and Miles Davis. But they didn’t play jazz them­selves so much as they used loose jazz fig­ures and ideas to make exper­i­men­tal rock. When done well, it is done excep­tion­al­ly well, as in the inevitably-over­stuffed, 48-minute-long Rot­ter­dam “Dark Star” fur­ther up. We can hear strains of future post-rock bands like Tor­toise and even late Radio­head, hints of music that hadn’t arrived yet on the plan­et. And oth­er long pas­sages that sound like some­thing only the Grate­ful Dead could play.

Just as their ear­ly fusion of coun­try, rock, and blues had pro­duced some­thing unlike any of them, their fusion of jazz and rock could syn­the­size new forms. Or it could fall apart, or both sev­er­al times over in the same song or at the same time. Hear the full 1974 con­cert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Seat­tle at the site Live for Live Music. The epic, 47-minute “Play­ing in The Band” is track 17. Sug­gest oth­er can­di­dates for longest Grate­ful Dead jam in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Bryan Cranston Narrates the Landing on Omaha Beach on the 75th Anniversary of the D‑Day Invasion

in Uncategorized | June 6th, 2019

75 years ago today, the Allies launched the D‑Day inva­sion in Nor­mandy, which marked a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in World War II–the begin­ning of the free­ing of Europe from Nazi con­trol. Above, actor Bryan Cranston com­mem­o­rates the anniver­sary by read­ing a let­ter that Pfc. Dominick “Dom” Bart sent to his wife. A 32-year-old infantry­man, Bart took part in the har­row­ing first wave of the mas­sive amphibi­ous assault. Below, we also hear Cranston read­ing the words of Pfc. Jim “Pee Wee” Mar­tin, describ­ing “his first taste of bat­tle as a para­troop­er in the D‑Day inva­sion.” As Cranston reads, you can watch “nev­er-before-seen restored high-res­o­lu­tion 4K footage from Oma­ha Beach.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Audio: Bryan Cranston, Break­ing Bad Star, Reads First Chap­ter of The Things They Car­ried

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Your­self by Trav­el­ing and Get­ting Lost

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