Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

As Christ­mas­time approach­es, few nov­el­ists come to mind as read­i­ly as Charles Dick­ens. This owes main­ly, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, and even more so to its many adap­ta­tions, most of which draw inspi­ra­tion from not just its text but also its illus­tra­tions. That 1843 novel­la was just the first of five books he wrote with the hol­i­day as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Crick­et on the Hearth, The Bat­tle of Life, and The Haunt­ed Man and the Ghost’s Bar­gain. Each “includ­ed draw­ings he worked on with illus­tra­tors,” writes BBC News’ Tim Stokes, though “none of them dis­plays quite the icon­ic mer­ri­ment of his ini­tial Christ­mas cre­ation.”

“Any­one look­ing at the illus­tra­tions to the Christ­mas books after A Christ­mas Car­ol and expect­ing sim­i­lar images to Mr Fezzi­wig’s Ball is going to be dis­ap­point­ed,” Stokes quotes inde­pen­dent schol­ar Dr. Michael John Good­man as say­ing.

Pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned less with Christ­mas as a hol­i­day and more “with the spir­it of Christ­mas and its ideals of self­less­ness and for­give­ness, as well as being a voice for the poor and the needy,” Dick­ens “had to cre­ate some very dark sce­nar­ios to give this mes­sage pow­er and res­o­nance, and these can be seen in the illus­tra­tions.”

Good­man’s name may sound famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his online Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, whose dig­i­tized art col­lec­tion has been grow­ing ever since. It now con­tains over 2,100 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing not just A Christ­mas Car­ol and all its suc­ces­sors, but all of Dick­ens’ books from his ear­ly col­lec­tion of obser­va­tion­al pieces Sketch­es by Boz to his final, incom­plete nov­el The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. And those are just the orig­i­nals: every true Dick­ens enthu­si­ast soon­er or lat­er gets into the dif­fer­ences between the waves of edi­tions that have been pub­lished over the bet­ter part of two cen­turies.

The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery has entire sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the posthu­mous “House­hold Edi­tion,” which have even more art than the orig­i­nals; the lat­er “Library Edi­tion,” from 1910, fea­tur­ing the work of esteemed and pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Har­ry Fur­niss; and even the 1912 “Pears Edi­tion” of the Christ­mas books, put out by the epony­mous soap com­pa­ny in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of Dick­ens’ birth. But none of them quite matched the lav­ish­ness of that first Christ­mas Car­ol, on which Dick­ens had decid­ed to go all out: as Good­man writes, “it would have eight illus­tra­tions, four of which would be in col­or, and it would have gilt edges and col­ored end­pa­pers.” Alas, this extrav­a­gance “left Dick­ens with very lit­tle prof­it” — and with an unusu­al­ly prag­mat­ic but nev­er­the­less unfor­get­table Christ­mas les­son about keep­ing costs down. Enter the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The BBC Creates Step-by-Step Instructions for Knitting the Iconic Dr. Who Scarf: A Document from the Early 1980s

Knitting-Pattern-4th-Doctor

When Jon Per­twee rein­car­nat­ed into Tom Bak­er in 1974, the Fourth Doc­tor of the pop­u­lar sci-fi show Doc­tor Who ditched the fop­pish look of vel­vet jack­ets and frilly shirts, and went for the “Roman­tic adven­tur­er” style, with flop­py felt hat, long over­coats and, most icon­i­cal­ly, his mul­ti­col­ored scarf.

Fan leg­end has it that cos­tume design­er James Ache­son picked up a load of mul­ti-col­or wool and asked knit­ter Bego­nia Pope to cre­ate a scarf, and Pope, per­haps mis­hear­ing, used *all* the wool, result­ing in a scarf that ran 12 feet long. The mis­take was per­fect, and sud­den­ly many UK grand­moth­ers were being asked by their grand­chil­dren to recre­ate their hero’s look.

The above memo isn’t dat­ed, but comes from some­time in the ear­ly ‘80s when the BBC sent detailed instruc­tions to a fan’s moth­er on mak­ing the scarf. (Click here, then click again, to view the doc­u­ment in a larg­er for­mat.) The col­ors include camel, rust, bronze, mus­tard, grey, green and pur­ple and should be knit­ted with size four nee­dles (that’s #9 US size). The requests must have come reg­u­lar­ly, because a sim­i­lar memo is reprint­ed from many years lat­er to anoth­er fan’s fam­i­ly.

The orig­i­nal scarf only last­ed a few episodes, then was altered, replaced, and sub­tly changed as the show went on. There were stunt scarves for stand-ins.

Come Sea­son 18, cos­tume design­er June Hud­son rethought the entire cos­tume and stream­lined the col­ors to three: rust, wine, and pur­ple, to match the Doctor’s more swash­buck­ling look. It also became the longest scarf of the series, some 20 feet.

The fol­low­ing year, the Doc­tor rein­car­nat­ed again into a crick­et-jumper and striped trouser-wear­ing young blonde man. The Scarf Years were over.

For a very in-depth look at the scarves, includ­ing Pan­tone col­or ref­er­ences and wool brands, there is noth­ing bet­ter than DoctorWhoScarf.com. So, get knit­ting, Who-vians!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Scientists Discover that Ancient Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails from 2,300 Year-Old Mug

If ZZ Top have a favorite ancient Egypt­ian deity, that deity is sure­ly Bes, whom the New York Times’ Alexan­der Nazaryan quotes cura­tor and schol­ar Branko van Oppen de Ruiter as call­ing “a beer drinker and a hell-rais­er.” In a paper pub­lished last month in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, Van Oppen and fif­teen col­lab­o­ra­tors call the row­dy but appar­ent­ly benev­o­lent Bes “one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and wild­ly pop­u­lar fig­ures of ancient Egypt­ian reli­gion,” and he’s come to mod­ern pub­lic atten­tion thanks to the sub­ject of that paper: a 2,000-year-old cup mold­ed in the shape of his head that has test­ed pos­i­tive for traces of psy­che­del­ic sub­stances — as well as alco­hol and bod­i­ly flu­ids.

Their analy­sis of the mug, a 3D mod­el of which you can exam­ine above, “yield­ed evi­dence of two plants known to have hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties: Syr­i­an rue and the blue water lily,” writes Nazaryan, and it also bore traces of “a fer­ment­ed alco­holic liq­uid derived from fruit,” then sweet­ened with pine nuts, hon­ey, and licorice.

Those were the sorts of ingre­di­ents ancient Egyp­tians had at hand to make the med­i­cine go down — if med­i­cine it was. Nazaryan quotes dig­i­tal archae­ol­o­gist Davide Tanasi, whose lab per­formed the research, cit­ing the traces of sub­stances like blood and breast milk as under­scor­ing that “this is a mag­i­cal potion,” rather than one intend­ed as pure­ly cura­tive.

Bes, as Van Oppen and his col­lab­o­ra­tors write, “emerged from the mag­i­cal realm of the world of demons as a guardian fig­ure,” and by the Roman Impe­r­i­al age “spo­rad­i­cal­ly acquired divine wor­ship.” He “pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion from dan­ger, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly avert­ing harm” — and also “had a cer­tain regen­er­a­tive impor­tance con­tribut­ing to the ful­fill­ment and hap­pi­ness of fam­i­ly life in all facets of repro­duc­tion, from viril­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty, via fer­til­i­ty and fecun­di­ty, to child­birth and growth.” Hence the spec­u­la­tion that women hop­ing to become preg­nant would drink the potion from his head in order to take a psy­che­del­ic jour­ney that would set them on the path to moth­er­hood. That’s hard­ly the most effi­cient means to the end, as we’d see it today, but giv­en the birthrates of increas­ing­ly many soci­eties across the world, we mod­erns may find our­selves in need of Bes’ assis­tance yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875)

Manet's Raven

Edgar Allan Poe achieved almost instant fame dur­ing his life­time after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Raven (1845), but he nev­er felt that he received the recog­ni­tion he deserved. In some respects, he was right. He was, after all, paid only nine dol­lars for the poem, and he strug­gled before and after its pub­li­ca­tion to make a liv­ing from his writ­ing.

Raven_Manet_B2

Poe was one of the first Amer­i­can writ­ers to do so with­out inde­pen­dent means. His work large­ly met with mixed reviews and he was fired from job after job, part­ly because of his drink­ing. After his death, how­ev­er, Poe’s influ­ence dom­i­nat­ed emerg­ing mod­ernist move­ments like that of the deca­dent poet­ry of Charles Baude­laire (who called Poe his “twin soul”) and his sym­bol­ist dis­ci­ple Stéphane Mal­lar­mé.

Raven_Manet_C2

Mal­lar­mé would write of Poe, “His cen­tu­ry appalled at nev­er hav­ing heard / That in this voice tri­umphant death had sung its hymn.” To bring that hymn of death, the raven’s cry of “Nev­er­more,” to French read­ers, he made a trans­la­tion of The Raven, Le Cor­beau, in 1875 at age 33.

Raven_Manet_D2

Poe also had a tremen­dous influ­ence on the visu­al arts in France. Illus­trat­ing the text was none oth­er than Édouard Manet, the painter cred­it­ed with the gen­e­sis of impres­sion­ism. The result­ing engrav­ings, ren­dered in dark, heavy smudges, give us the poem’s unnamed, bereaved speak­er as the young Mal­lar­mé, unmis­tak­able with his push­b­room mus­tache.

Sad­ly, the New York Pub­lic Library tells us, “the pub­li­ca­tion was not a com­mer­cial suc­cess.” (See Manet’s design for a poster and the book cov­er at the top of the post.)

Raven_Manet_E2

The book also illus­trates the rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship between Poe and French art and lit­er­a­ture. Chris Semt­ner, cura­tor of a Rich­mond, Vir­ginia exhib­it on this mutu­al influ­ence, remarks that Poe “read Voltaire among oth­er French authors”—such as Alexan­dre Dumas—“in col­lege” and found them high­ly influ­en­tial. Like­wise, Poe left his mark not only on Baude­laire, Mal­lar­mé, and Manet, but also Paul Gau­guin, Odilon Redon, and Hen­ri Matisse.

You can read Le Cor­beau here in a dual lan­guage edi­tion, with all the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions. View and down­load high-res scans of the engrav­ings here. And just above, lis­ten to The Raven read aloud in Mallarmé’s French, cour­tesy of the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Har­ry Clarke’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions for Edgar Allan Poe’s Sto­ries (1923)

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

 

Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More

Even the least reli­gious among us speak, at least on occa­sion, of the cir­cles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be think­ing of where the con­cept orig­i­nat­ed: Dan­te’s Div­ina Com­me­dia, or Divine Com­e­dy. We each imag­ine the cir­cles in our own way — usu­al­ly fill­ing them with sin­ners and pun­ish­ments inspired by our own dis­tastes — but some of Dan­te’s ear­li­er read­ers did so with a seri­ous­ness and pre­ci­sion that may now seem extreme. “The first cos­mo­g­ra­ph­er of Dante’s uni­verse was the Flo­ren­tine poly­math Anto­nio Manet­ti,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Hunter Dukes, who “con­clud­ed that hell was 3246 miles wide and 408 miles deep.” A young Galileo sug­gest­ed that “the Inferno’s vault­ed ceil­ing was sup­port­ed by the same phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples as Brunelleschi’s dome.”

In 1855, the aris­to­crat sculp­tor-politi­cian-Dante schol­ar Michelan­ge­lo Cae­tani pub­lished his own pre­cise artis­tic ren­der­ings of not just the Infer­no, but also the Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso, in La mate­ria del­la Div­ina com­me­dia di Dante Alighieri dichiara­ta in VI tav­ole, or The Divine Com­e­dy of Dante Alighieri Described in Six Plates.

“The first plate offers an overview of Dante’s cos­mog­ra­phy, lead­ing from the low­est cir­cle of the Infer­no up through the nine heav­en­ly spheres to Empyre­an, the high­est lev­el of Par­adise and the dwelling place of God,” writes Dukes. “The Infer­no is visu­al­ized with a cut­away style,” its cir­cles “like geo­log­i­cal lay­ers”; ter­raced like a wed­ding cake, “Pur­ga­to­ry is ren­dered at eye lev­el, from the per­spec­tive of some lucky soul sail­ing by this island-moun­tain.”

In Par­adise, “the Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­ry are now small blips on the page, worlds left behind, encir­cled by Mer­cury, Venus, Sat­urn, and the oth­er heav­en­ly spheres.” At the very top is “the can­di­da rosa, an amphithe­ater struc­ture reserved for the souls of heav­en” where “Dante leaves behind Beat­rice, his true love and guide, to come face-to-face with God and the Trin­i­ty.” You can exam­ine these and oth­er illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review or Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, which adds that they come from “a sec­ond ver­sion of this work pro­duced by Cae­tani using the then-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy of chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy” in 1872, “pro­duced in a some­what small­er for­mat by the monks at Monte Cassi­no” — a crew who could sure­ly be trust­ed to believe in the job.

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

Rarely Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: A Free Course from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes

I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, mag­ic mush­rooms or the chem­i­cal called psilo­cy­bin that’s derived from mag­ic mushrooms—to peo­ple dying of can­cer, peo­ple with ter­mi­nal diag­noses, to help them deal with their — what’s called exis­ten­tial dis­tress. And this seemed like such a crazy idea that I began look­ing into it. Why should a drug from a mush­room help peo­ple deal with their mor­tal­i­ty?

–Michael Pol­lan in an inter­view with Ter­ry Gross, “‘Reluc­tant Psy­cho­naut’ Michael Pol­lan Embraces ‘New Sci­ence’ Of Psy­che­delics”

Around the same time Albert Hof­mann syn­the­sized LSD in the ear­ly 1940s, a pio­neer­ing eth­nob­otanist, writer, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Richard Evan Schultes set out “on a mis­sion to study how indige­nous peo­ples” in the Ama­zon rain­for­est “used plants for med­i­c­i­nal, rit­u­al and prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es,” as an exten­sive his­to­ry of Schultes’ trav­els notes. “He went on to spend over a decade immersed in near-con­tin­u­ous field­work, col­lect­ing more than 24,000 species of plants includ­ing some 300 species new to sci­ence.”

Described by Jonathan Kan­dell as “swash­buck­ling” in a 2001 New York Times obit­u­ary, Schultes was “the last of the great plant explor­ers in the Vic­to­ri­an tra­di­tion.” Or so his stu­dent Wade Davis called him in his 1995 best­seller The Ser­pent and the Rain­bow. He was also “a pio­neer­ing con­ser­va­tion­ist,” writes Kan­dell, “who raised alarms in the 1960’s—long before envi­ron­men­tal­ism became a world­wide con­cern.” Schultes defied the stereo­type of the colo­nial adven­tur­er, once say­ing, “I do not believe in hos­tile Indi­ans. All that is required to bring out their gen­tle­man­li­ness is rec­i­p­ro­cal gen­tle­man­li­ness.”

Schultes returned to teach at Har­vard, where he remind­ed his stu­dents “that more than 90 tribes had become extinct in Brazil alone over the first three-quar­ters of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” While his research would have sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on fig­ures like Aldous Hux­ley, William Bur­roughs, and Car­los Cas­tane­da, “writ­ers who con­sid­ered hal­lu­cino­gens as the gate­ways to self-dis­cov­ery,” Schultes was dis­mis­sive of the coun­ter­cul­ture and “dis­dained these self-appoint­ed prophets of an inner real­i­ty.”

Rather than pro­mot­ing recre­ation­al use, Schultes became known as “the father of a new branch of sci­ence called ‘eth­nob­otany,’ the field that explores the rela­tion­ship between indige­nous peo­ple and their use of plants,” writes Luis Sequeira in a bio­graph­i­cal note. One of Schultes’ pub­li­ca­tions, the Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants, has sad­ly fall­en out of print, but you can find it online, in full, at the Vaults of Erowid. Pricey out-of-print copies can still be pur­chased.

Described on Ama­zon as “a non­tech­ni­cal exam­i­na­tion of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal effects and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of hal­lu­cino­genic plants used in ancient and mod­ern soci­eties,” the book cov­ers pey­ote, ayahuas­ca, cannabis, var­i­ous psy­choac­tive mush­rooms and oth­er fun­gi, and much more. In his intro­duc­tion, Schultes is care­ful to sep­a­rate his research from its appro­pri­a­tion, dis­miss­ing the term “psy­che­del­ic” as ety­mo­log­i­cal­ly incor­rect and “bio­log­i­cal­ly unsound.” Fur­ther­more, he writes, it “has acquired pop­u­lar mean­ings beyond the drugs or their effects.”

Schultes’ inter­ests are sci­en­tif­icand anthro­po­log­i­cal. “In the his­to­ry of mankind,” he writes, “hal­lu­cino­gens have prob­a­bly been the most impor­tant of all the nar­cotics. Their fan­tas­tic effects made them sacred to prim­i­tive man and may even have been respon­si­ble for sug­gest­ing to him the idea of deity.” He does not exag­ger­ate. Schultes’ research into the reli­gious and med­i­c­i­nal uses of nat­ur­al hal­lu­cino­gens led him to dub them “plants of the gods” in a book he wrote with Albert Hof­mann, dis­cov­er­er of LSD.

Nei­ther sci­en­tist sought to start a psy­che­del­ic rev­o­lu­tion, but it hap­pened nonethe­less. Now, anoth­er rev­o­lu­tion is under­wayone that is final­ly revis­it­ing the sci­ence of eth­nob­otany and tak­ing seri­ous­ly the heal­ing pow­ers of hal­lu­cino­genic plants. It is hard­ly a new sci­ence among schol­ars in the West, but the renewed legit­i­ma­cy of research into hal­lu­cino­gens has giv­en Schultes’ research new author­i­ty. Learn from him in his Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Romans Stashed Hal­lu­cino­genic Seeds in a Vial Made From an Ani­mal Bone

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

A Bicy­cle Trip: Watch an Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the His­to­ry of LSD

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

Discover Hannah Arendt’s Syllabus for Her 1974 Course on “Thinking”

If you’ve read one work of Han­nah Arendt’s, it’s prob­a­bly Eich­mann in Jerusalem, her account of the tri­al of the epony­mous Nazi offi­cial — and the source of her much-quot­ed phrase “the banal­i­ty of evil.” That book came out in 1963, at which time Arendt still had a dozen pro­duc­tive years left. In fact, at the time of her sud­den death in 1975, she had in her type­writer the first page of what would have been the third vol­ume of her final work, The Life of the Mind. In its two com­plet­ed vol­umes, she inves­ti­gates the nature of thought and action, a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the rela­tion­ship between think­ing and moral­i­ty hav­ing been fired up with­in her at the Eich­mann tri­al.

“The Life of the Mind” also appears atop the syl­labus, recent­ly post­ed by Arendt biog­ra­ph­er Saman­tha Rose Hill, for “206: Think­ing,” a class Arendt taught in 1974 at the New School for Social Research. Encom­pass­ing a range of philoso­phers from Aris­to­tle, Cicero, and Pla­to to Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein, and Hei­deg­ger (a fig­ure with whom she could claim a more inti­mate famil­iar­i­ty than most), it seems to have offered a rea­son­ably thor­ough sur­vey of the fig­ures we think of when we think of think­ing itself.

Arendt had appar­ent­ly adapt­ed some of the con­tent from the 1973–1974 Gif­ford Lec­tures she had deliv­ered in Aberdeen, which them­selves con­densed mate­r­i­al from her cours­es on “Basic Moral Propo­si­tions,” “Think­ing,” “The His­to­ry of the Will,” and “Kan­t’s Cri­tique of Judg­ment.”

Arendt’s teach­ing at the New School, in “Think­ing” and oth­er cours­es like “Phi­los­o­phy of the Mind,” sheds a bit of light on what would have gone into the unwrit­ten third vol­ume of The Life of the Mind, or at least into the arc of the tril­o­gy as a whole. Vol­umes one and two, drafts of which she put into cir­cu­la­tion among her grad­u­ate stu­dents, were called Think­ing and Will­ing; the third was to have been Judg­ing, by far the thorni­est men­tal activ­i­ty of the set. It would be worth hear­ing from for­mer New School stu­dents of the mid-sev­en­ties who retain any class­room mem­o­ries of what she had to say on the sub­ject. As for the rest of us, we can at least still do all the read­ing for “Think­ing,” then judge for our­selves. You can find the syl­labus on the Library of Con­gress web­site.

via Saman­tha Rose Hill

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Thought of Han­nah Arendt: Pre­sent­ed by the BBC Radio’s In Our Time

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

Take Han­nah Arendt’s Final Exam for Her 1961 Course “On Rev­o­lu­tion”

A Look Inside Han­nah Arendt’s Per­son­al Library: Down­load Mar­gin­a­lia from 90 Books (Hei­deg­ger, Kant, Marx & More)

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Total­i­tar­i­an Regimes Arise–and How We Can Pre­vent Them

Watch Han­nah Arendt’s Final Inter­view (1973)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

Let’s rewind the video­tape and revis­it a clas­sic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hus­tling the Hus­tler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Lau­ra Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a sin­gle shot. The orig­i­nal plan was to splice in footage of a pro­fes­sion­al pool play­er mak­ing the shot, but Moore sur­prised every­one, includ­ing her­self, by nail­ing it on the first try. Watch­ing Moore and Van Dyke recov­er from their aston­ish­ment and impro­vise through the scene is priceless—a per­fect way to start your Mon­day.

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via Zaibat­su and Slash Film

Relat­ed Con­tent

Joan Jett and the Black­hearts Per­form a Rol­lick­ing Cov­er of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song (1996)

Jack Ker­ouac Plays Pool, 1967

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art to Flow

The sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfor­tu­nate aspects: not just his pre­ma­ture death, but also the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of his work and per­sona in the years lead­ing up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eight­ies in part because he could be tak­en as an unfil­tered voice of the street, craft­ing his out­sider-artis­tic visions on pure, untu­tored impulse. But despite gen­uine­ly hav­ing come from a poor, trou­bled back­ground — and lived accord­ing to what seems to have been a strong anti-aca­d­e­m­ic incli­na­tion — Basquiat’s pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment was much more seri­ous and delib­er­ate than many of his buy­ers could have imag­ined.

“At the begin­ning of his career, Basquiat went out and bought two books,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Make Art Not Con­tent video above, “two books that would inform all of his work.” One was Hen­ry Drey­fuss’ Sym­bol Source­book: An Author­i­ta­tive Guide to Inter­na­tion­al Graph­ic Sym­bols, which “would end up pro­vid­ing source mate­r­i­al for almost all of the 1,500 draw­ings and 600 paint­ings that he left behind.”

The oth­er was Robert Far­ris Thomp­son’s Flash of the Spir­it: Afro-Amer­i­can Art & Phi­los­o­phy, which gave him a “guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy” to get him past the inevitable artis­tic road­blocks: he could always return to “the under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black art in the estab­lished art world,” and “when you have a mes­sage, art comes out of you eas­i­ly.”

But Basquiat also had the advan­tage of being able to work very quick­ly indeed, which is what brought him to the atten­tion of Andy Warhol: “When one of the most pro­lif­ic artists of all time is jeal­ous of your speed, you know you’re doing some­thing right.” Think­ing too much inter­rupts your flow, but if you cre­ate as fast as you can, thoughts won’t have a chance to intrude. And remem­ber, “most of the flow that you will have while mak­ing art will come from all the things you are doing when you are not mak­ing art.” Sad­ly, Basquiat died before the age of the inter­net — but if he had­n’t, you can bet he’d be spend­ing his down­time absorb­ing some­thing more inter­est­ing than social media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Chaot­ic Bril­liance of Jean-Michel Basquiat: From Home­less Graf­fi­ti Artist to Inter­na­tion­al­ly Renowned Painter

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973–2023)

Hip-hop was once a sub­cul­ture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unques­tion­ably dom­i­nant forms of pop­u­lar music — not just in Amer­i­ca, and not just among young peo­ple. There are, of course, still a fair few hip-hop hold­outs, but even they’ve come to know a thing or two about it through cul­tur­al osmo­sis alone. They’re aware, for exam­ple — whether or not they approve of it — that rap­pers usu­al­ly per­form over music con­struct­ed through sam­pling: that is, stitched togeth­er out of pieces of oth­er songs. If you’re not sure how it works, you can see the process clear­ly visu­al­ized in the video above from sam­ple provider Track­lib.

Offer­ing a break­down of sam­pling as it’s hap­pened through “fifty years of hip-hop,” the video begins even before the genre real­ly took shape, in 1973. It was then that DJ Kool Herc devel­oped what he called “the ‘Mer­ry-Go-Round’ Tech­nique,” an ear­ly exam­ple of which involved using dual turnta­bles to switch back and forth between the instru­men­tal breaks of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Tur­nit a Loose” and the Incred­i­ble Bon­go Band’s “Bon­go Rock.” The orig­i­nal idea was to give dancers more time to do their thing, but when the MCs picked up their micro­phones and start­ed get­ting cre­ative, a new music took shape almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Main­stream Amer­i­ca got its first taste of hip-hop in 1979, with the release of “Rap­per’s Delight” by the Sug­arhill Gang. In its repeat­ing rhythm part, many would have rec­og­nized Chic’s “Good Times,” which actu­al­ly was­n’t a sam­ple but an inter­po­la­tion, i.e. a re-record­ing. This drew a law­suit — hard­ly the last of its kind in hip-hop — but it also set thou­sands of DJs-to-be dig­ging through their record col­lec­tions in search of usable breaks. Dis­co proved a fount of inspi­ra­tion for ear­ly hip-hop, but so did jazz and even elec­tron­ic music, as demon­strat­ed by Afri­ka Bam­baataa and the Soul Son­ic Force’s “Plan­et Rock,” which sam­pled Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express.”

As sam­pling goes, noth­ing is artis­ti­cal­ly off-lim­its; in some sense, the less imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able, the bet­ter. With the evo­lu­tion of audio edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, hip-hop artists have long gone even fur­ther in mak­ing these bor­rowed clips their own by slow­ing them down; speed­ing them up; chop­ping them into pieces and rear­rang­ing them; and lay­er­ing them one atop anoth­er. This some­times caus­es prob­lems, as when the dif­fi­cul­ty of licens­ing De La Soul’s many and var­ied source mate­ri­als kept their cat­a­log out of offi­cial avail­abil­i­ty. Along with A Tribe Called Quest, also fea­tured in this video, De La Soul are, of course, known as hip-hop groups beloved by music nerds. But if you seri­ous­ly break down any major work of hip-hop, you’ll find that all its artists are music nerds at heart.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

How Sam­pling Trans­formed Music and Cre­at­ed New Tapes­tries of Sound: An Inter­ac­tive Demon­stra­tion by Producer/DJ Mark Ron­son

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

The Sur­pris­ing­ly Long His­to­ry of Auto-Tune, the Vocal-Pro­cess­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Music Crit­ics Love to Hate

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Bou­tique – and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

Hear De La Soul’s High­ly Acclaimed & Influ­en­tial Hip-Hop Albums Stream­ing Free for the First Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Get $160 Off a Year of Coursera Plus & Gain Unlimited Access to Courses in Data Analytics, Generative AI, Cybersecurity and Other Fields

A heads-up on a Black Fri­day spe­cial: Between today and Decem­ber 2, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing a 40% dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (now avail­able for $239.40) gives you access to 7,000+ cours­es for one all-inclu­sive sub­scrip­tion price. This includes Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cates from lead­ing com­pa­nies. Take, for exam­ple, the Data Ana­lyst Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate from Meta, the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate from Google, or the AI Devel­op­er Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate from IBM.

The $239.40 annu­al fee—which trans­lates to 65 cents per day—could be a good invest­ment for any­one inter­est­ed in learn­ing new sub­jects and skills, or earn­ing cer­tifi­cates that can be added to your resume. Just as Net­flix’s stream­ing ser­vice gives you access to unlim­it­ed movies, Cours­era Plus gives you access to unlim­it­ed cours­es and cer­tifi­cates. It’s basi­cal­ly an all-you-can-eat deal. Explore the offer (before Decem­ber 2, 2024) here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.


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