Henri Matisse Illustrates Baudelaire’s Censored Poetry Collection, Les Fleurs du Mal

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We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Hen­ri Matis­se’s illus­tra­tions for a 1935 edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. If the Odyssey-themed etch­ings he did for that book sur­prised you, have a look at his illus­tra­tions for Charles Baude­laire’s poet­ry col­lec­tion Les Fleurs du mal, first pub­lished in 1857. Accord­ing to Henri-Matisse.net, the book (avail­able in French and Eng­lish in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free eBooks) had “been illus­trat­ed over the years by a vari­ety of major artists, includ­ing Emile Bernard, Charles Despi­au, Jacob Epstein, Gus­tave Rodin, Georges Rouault, and Pierre-Yes Tré­mois. Each inter­pret­ed select­ed poems more or less faith­ful­ly. Matisse took a dif­fer­ent approach in the 1947 edi­tion pub­lished by La Bib­lio­thèque Française.” As you can see from the exam­ples pro­vid­ed here, he went an even more uncon­ven­tion­al route this time, accom­pa­ny­ing Baude­laire’s poems with noth­ing but por­trai­ture.

Matisse-Baudelaire2

The edi­tion’s 33 por­traits, includ­ing one of Matisse him­self and one of Baude­laire, cap­ture a vari­ety of sub­jects, most­ly women — also a source of inspi­ra­tion for the poet. How­ev­er, as the site that bears his name makes clear, “Matisse did not indulge in the bio­graph­i­cal fal­lac­i­es of the lit­er­ary crit­ics of his day who attempt­ed to under­stand Baude­laire by asso­ci­at­ing each poem with the woman who may have inspired it. Thus, his gallery of facial por­traits pro­vides an accom­pa­ni­ment rather than an imi­ta­tive ren­di­tion of select­ed poems.” Would that more illus­tra­tors of lit­er­a­ture fol­low his exam­ple and make a break from pure lit­er­al­ism, allow­ing the mean­ing of the rela­tion­ship between text and image to cohere in the read­er-view­er’s mind. You might say that Matisse pio­neered, in oth­er words, the most poet­ic pos­si­ble method of illus­trat­ing poet­ry.

Matisse-Baudelaire3

Since it is Banned Books Week, it’s per­haps worth not­ing that Baude­laire’s Les Fleurs du Mal was quick­ly cen­sored in France. Yale’s Mod­ernism Lab web­site notes that, two months after its pub­li­ca­tion in 1857, a French court “banned six of Baudelaire’s erot­ic poems, two of them on les­bian themes and the oth­er four het­ero­sex­u­al but mild­ly sado-masochis­tic. The ban was not offi­cial­ly lift­ed until 1949, by which time Baude­laire had achieved ‘clas­sic’ sta­tus as among the most impor­tant influ­ences on mod­ern lit­er­a­ture in France and through­out Europe.” A sec­ond expur­gat­ed (or as Baude­laire called it “muti­lat­ed”) edi­tion was pub­lished in 1861. Pre­sum­ably Matisse illus­trat­ed that edi­tion in 1947. If you want to buy one of the 300 copies with Matis­se’s illus­tra­tions, you will have to shell out about $7500.

matisse portrait

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas­so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

Vin­tage Film: Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Cartoonists Draw Their Famous Cartoon Characters While Blindfolded (1947)

Vintage-Cartoonists-draw-blindfolded

At some point in your life, no doubt, you’ve thought that you have done some­thing so many times that you could do it with your eyes closed — be it change a dia­per, make cof­fee, dri­ve to work or per­form a minor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure. Not that this would nec­es­sar­i­ly be a good idea (espe­cial­ly that last one) but there’s some­thing about rep­e­ti­tion, rou­tine and mus­cle mem­o­ry that makes a task so famil­iar that sight seems super­flu­ous.

dick tracy

In 1947, LIFE Mag­a­zine asked some of the most famous car­toon­ists around to draw their com­ic strip char­ac­ters blind­fold­ed. The results are fas­ci­nat­ing, look­ing a bit like the out­come of a clin­i­cal test on artists before and after tak­ing illic­it sub­stances. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment.)

dagwood

Chic Young’s blind­fold­ed ver­sion of Dag­wood Bum­stead is all dynam­ic lines and spi­rals, look­ing a bit like a doo­dle from an Ital­ian Futur­ist. Chester Gould’s blind attempt at Dick Tra­cy’s chis­eled pro­file looks not all that dif­fer­ent from the sight­ed ver­sion. And Mil­ton Can­iff’s Steve Canyon has all the ele­ments there — the flinty eyes, the wavy hair – but it’s all jum­bled togeth­er.

steve canyon

You can see more such draw­ings here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons are Made

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrowAnd check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Censorship Letter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your General Direction”

Python Letter

If any­one could make toi­let humor fun­ny past the age of 14, it was Mon­ty Python. Min­ing equal­ly the halls of acad­e­mia and the grade school yard, there was no reg­is­ter too high or too low for the mas­ter­ful British satirists. And when it came time for them to release their sec­ond film in 1975—Arthurian spoof Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail—the troop fought in vain to reach an audi­ence of all ages. Unlike today’s many rat­ings gra­da­tions, the British Board of Film Clas­si­fi­ca­tion (BBFC) then had a very sim­ple clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem: AA for 14 and over, and A for ages 5–14. Hop­ing to increase the film’s audi­ence, pro­duc­er Mark Forstater wrote the let­ter above to fel­low pro­duc­er Michael White a few days after a Twick­en­ham screen­ing attend­ed by BBFC mem­ber Tony Ker­pel, who sug­gest­ed a few cuts to bring the film an A rat­ing.

In the let­ter, Forstater lists Kerpel’s rec­om­men­da­tions:

Lose as many shits as pos­si­ble
Take Jesus Christ out, if pos­si­ble
Lose “I fart in your gen­er­al direc­tion”
Lose “the oral sex”
Lose “oh, fuck off”
Lose “We make cas­tanets out of your tes­ti­cles”

Two of these lines you no doubt rec­og­nize as uttered by the obnox­ious mock­ing French guard the Grail questers encounter on their jour­ney. Played by John Cleese, the French­man gets some of the best lines in the film, includ­ing the offend­ing “fart” and “tes­ti­cles” bits (at 2:15 and 6:05 in the clip above). Forstater must have had a keen sense of just how funny—therefore how necessary—these lines were. In his sug­ges­tions to White, he writes,

I would like to get back to the Cen­sor and agree to lose the shits, take the odd Jesus Christ out and lose Oh fuck off, but to retain ‘fart in your gen­er­al direc­tion’, ‘cas­tanets of your tes­ti­cles’ and ‘oral sex’ and ask him for an ‘A’ rat­ing on that basis.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Britain’s Python-lov­ing kids and for the film’s investors, the AA rat­ing stuck, at least until 2006, when it was re-rat­ed for ages 12 and below in a the­atri­cal re-release. This by con­trast to its U.S. sta­tus, where the movie first scored a PG rat­ing and was lat­er upgrad­ed to PG-13 (which didn’t exist in 1975) for its Blu-ray release. Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail has received a vari­ety of mature rat­ings in var­i­ous coun­tries and—we should men­tion, since it’s Banned Books Week—has been entire­ly banned in Malaysia.

Anoth­er com­e­dy team encoun­tered sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties with film rat­ings. The South Park duo—similarly adept at pitch­ing pot­ty jokes to grown-ups—ended up with an R for the fea­ture length Big­ger, Longer & Uncut, though cen­sors orig­i­nal­ly want­ed an NC-17. See the cuts the MPAA rec­om­mend­ed for that film in Matt Stone’s leg­endary response memo to the rat­ings board and read the full tran­script of the Python let­ter at Let­ters of Note.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Mon­ty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Reveal­ing the Drink­ing Habits of Great Euro­pean Thinkers

Clas­sic Mon­ty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilar­i­ous Bat­tle of Wits

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

Steven Soderbergh Creates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Staging”

raiders silent

Since offi­cial­ly retir­ing from film­mak­ing last year, Steven Soder­bergh has filled his time writ­ing Twit­ter novel­las, cre­at­ing mashups of Alfred Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant Psy­cho films, and post­ing a log of all the films, TV shows and books he immersed him­self in in 2009.

Now comes his lat­est side project: On his web site, extension765.com, Soder­bergh presents a short les­son in “stag­ing,” a term that refers in cin­e­ma “to how all the var­i­ous ele­ments of a giv­en scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coor­di­nat­ed.” He tells us: “I oper­ate under the the­o­ry a movie should work with the sound off, and under that the­o­ry, stag­ing becomes para­mount.”

To illus­trate his point, he takes the entire­ty of Steven Spiel­berg’s 1981 film, The Raiders of the Lost Ark; turns it into a silent, black & white film (watch it here); and then adds this com­men­tary:

So I want you to watch this movie and think only about stag­ing, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of move­ment are, what the cut­ting pat­terns are. See if you can repro­duce the thought process that result­ed in these choic­es by ask­ing your­self: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actu­al­ly is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and col­or from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visu­al stag­ing aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I’m not say­ing I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just say­ing this is what I do when I try to learn about stag­ing, and this film­mak­er for­got more about stag­ing by the time he made his first fea­ture than I know to this day (for exam­ple, no mat­ter how fast the cuts come, you always know exact­ly where you are—that’s high lev­el visu­al math shit).

Ok, that’s prob­a­bly enough film school for today…

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teach­ing List of 87 Essen­tial Films Every Aspir­ing Direc­tor Should See

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Longform’s New, Free App Lets You Read Great Journalism from Your Favorite Publishers

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If you have man­aged to keep your atten­tion span intact dur­ing this dis­tract­ing infor­ma­tion age, then you’re almost cer­tain­ly famil­iar with Longform.org, a web site that makes it easy to find some­thing great to read online, espe­cial­ly if you like read­ing infor­ma­tive, well-craft­ed works of non-fic­tion. Last week, Long­form enhanced its ser­vice with the release of a new, free app for iPhone and iPad. It’s the “only 100% free app that fil­ters out the inter­net junk and deliv­ers noth­ing but smart, in-depth reads.” And, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from 1,000 pub­lish­ers, the app lets read­ers “cre­ate their own cus­tom feeds of high qual­i­ty, fea­ture-length jour­nal­ism,” and then read it all on the go. It’s a mis­sion that cer­tain­ly aligns with ours, so we’re more than hap­py to give the new app a plug.

Sign up for our dai­ly email and, once a day, we’ll bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

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Read 14 Great Banned & Censored Novels Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

BannedBooksWeek-website-image

We well know of the most famous cas­es of banned books: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Hen­ry Miller’s Trop­ic of Can­cer, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. In fact, a full 46 of Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els” have been sup­pressed or chal­lenged in some way. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion main­tains a page that details the charges against each one. Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird saw a chal­lenge in the Ver­non Verona Sher­ill, New York school dis­trict in 1980 as a “filthy, trashy nov­el” and in 1996, Lin­dale, Texas banned it from the advanced place­ment Eng­lish read­ing list because it “con­flict­ed with the val­ues of the com­mu­ni­ty.” Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath has a lengthy rap sheet, includ­ing total ban­ning in Ire­land (1953), Mor­ris, Man­i­to­ba (1982), and all high school class­es in Kanawha, Iowa (1980). The list of cen­sored undis­put­ed classics—every one of which sure­ly has its own piece of giant store art in Barnes & Nobles nationwide—goes on.

In many ways this is typ­i­cal. “The banned books lists you’ll find in many libraries and book­stores,” writes John Mark Ockerbloom at Everybody’s Libraries, “doesn’t [sic] focus much on the polit­i­cal samiz­dat, secu­ri­ty exposés, or por­tray­als of Mohammed that are the objects of forcible sup­pres­sion today. Instead, they’re often full of clas­sics and pop­u­lar titles sold wide­ly in book­stores and online—or dom­i­nat­ed by books writ­ten for young read­ers, or assigned for school read­ing.” Are these lists—and the banned books cel­e­bra­tions that occa­sion them—just “shame­less pro­pa­gan­da” as con­ser­v­a­tive Thomas Sow­ell alleges? “Is it wrong to call these books banned?” asks Ockerbloom in his essay “Why Banned Books Week Mat­ters.” Of course he answers in the neg­a­tive; “not if you take read­ers seri­ous­ly. An unread book, after all, has as lit­tle impact as an unpub­lished book.” Books that don’t pass muster with admin­is­tra­tors, school boards, library asso­ci­a­tions, and leg­is­la­tors of all kinds, argues Ockerbloom, can be as inac­ces­si­ble to young read­ers as those that get destroyed or ful­ly sup­pressed in parts of the world with­out legal pro­vi­sions for free speech.

This sit­u­a­tion is in great part reme­di­at­ed by the free avail­abil­i­ty of texts on the inter­net, whether those cur­rent­ly under a ban or those that—even if they line the shelves in brick and mor­tar stores and Ama­zon warehouses—still meet with fre­quent chal­lenges from com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions eager to con­trol what their cit­i­zens read. Today, in hon­or of this year’s Banned Books Week, we bring you free online texts of 14 banned books that appear on the Mod­ern Library’s top 100 nov­els list. Next to each title, see some of the rea­sons these books were chal­lenged, banned, or, in many cas­es, burned.

This sta­ple of high school Eng­lish class­es every­where seems to most­ly get a pass. It did, how­ev­er, see a 1987 chal­lenge at the Bap­tist Col­lege in Charleston, SC for “lan­guage and sex­u­al ref­er­ences.”

Seized and burned by postal offi­cials in New York when it arrived state­side in 1922, Joyce’s mas­ter­work gen­er­al­ly goes unread these days because of its leg­endary dif­fi­cul­ty, but for ten years, until Judge John Woolsey’s deci­sion in its favor in 1932, the nov­el was only avail­able in the U.S. as a boot­leg. Ulysses was also burned—and banned—in Ire­land, Cana­da, and Eng­land.

Orwell’s total­i­tar­i­an night­mare often seems like one of the very few things lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives can agree on—no one wants to live in the future he imag­ines. Nonethe­less, the nov­el was chal­lenged in Jack­son Coun­ty, Flori­da in 1981 for its sup­pos­ed­ly “pro-com­mu­nist” mes­sage, in addi­tion to its “explic­it sex­u­al mat­ter.”

Again the tar­get of right-wing ire, Orwell’s work was chal­lenged in Wis­con­sin in 1963 by the John Birch Soci­ety, who object­ed to the words “mass­es will revolt.” A 1968 New Sur­vey found that the nov­el reg­u­lar­ly appeared on school lists of “prob­lem books.” The rea­son most often cit­ed: “Orwell was a com­mu­nist.”

  • Slaugh­ter­house Five, by Kurt Von­negut (Audio)

Vonnegut’s clas­sic has been chal­lenged by par­ents and school boards since 1973, when it was burned in Drake, North Dako­ta. Most recent­ly, it’s been removed from a sopho­more read­ing list at the Coven­try, RI high school in 2000; chal­lenged by an orga­ni­za­tion called LOVE (Liv­ing­stone Orga­ni­za­tion for Val­ues in Edu­ca­tion) in How­ell, MI in 2007; and chal­lenged, but retained, along with eight oth­er books, in Arling­ton Heights, IL in 2006. In that case, a school board mem­ber, “elect­ed amid promis­es to bring her Chris­t­ian beliefs into all board deci­sion-mak­ing, raised the con­tro­ver­sy based on excerpts from the books she’d found on the inter­net.” Hear Von­negut him­self read the nov­el here.

London’s most pop­u­lar nov­el hasn’t seen any offi­cial sup­pres­sion in the U.S., but it was banned in Italy and Yugoslavia in 1929. The book was burned in Nazi bon­fires in 1933; some­thing of a his­tor­i­cal irony giv­en London’s own racist pol­i­tics.

The Nazis also burned Sinclair’s nov­el because of the author’s social­ist views. In 1959, East Ger­many banned the book as “inim­i­cal to com­mu­nism.”

Lawrence court­ed con­tro­ver­sy every­where. Chat­ter­ly was banned by U.S. cus­toms in 1929 and has since been banned in Ire­land (1932), Poland (1932), Aus­tralia (1959), Japan (1959), India (1959), Cana­da (1960) and, most recent­ly, Chi­na in 1987 because it “will cor­rupt the minds of young peo­ple and is also against the Chi­nese tra­di­tion.”

This true crime clas­sic was banned, then rein­stat­ed, at Savan­nah, Georgia’s Wind­sor For­est High School in 2000 after a par­ent “com­plained about sex, vio­lence, and pro­fan­i­ty.”

Lawrence endured a great deal of per­se­cu­tion in his life­time for his work, which was wide­ly con­sid­ered porno­graph­ic. Thir­ty years after his death, in 1961, a group in Okla­homa City call­ing itself Moth­ers Unite for Decen­cy “hired a trail­er, dubbed it ‘smut­mo­bile,’ and dis­played books deemed objec­tion­able,” includ­ing Sons and Lovers.

  • Naked Lunch, by William S. Bur­roughs (Audio)

If any­one belongs on a list of obscene authors, it’s Bur­roughs, which is only one rea­son of the many rea­sons he deserves to be read. In 1965, the Boston Supe­ri­or Court banned Bur­roughs’ nov­el. The State Supreme Court reversed that deci­sion the fol­low­ing year. Lis­ten to Bur­roughs read the nov­el here.

Poor Lawrence could not catch a break. In one of many such acts against his work, the sen­si­tive writer’s fifth nov­el was declared obscene in 1922 by the rather unimag­i­na­tive­ly named New York Soci­ety for the Sup­pres­sion of Vice.

Amer­i­can literature’s fore­most mas­ter of melo­dra­ma, Dreiser’s nov­el was banned in Boston in 1927 and burned by the Nazi bon­fires because it “deals with low love affairs.”

You can learn much more about the many books that have been banned, sup­pressed, or cen­sored at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania’s “Banned Books Online” page, and learn more about the many events and resources avail­able for Banned Books Week at the Amer­i­can Library Association’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

North Car­oli­na Coun­ty Cel­e­brates Banned Book Week By Ban­ning Ralph Ellison’s Invis­i­ble Man … Then Revers­ing It

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

Readers Predict in 1936 Which Novelists Would Still Be Widely Read in the Year 2000

colophon

Few know as much about our incom­pe­tence at pre­dict­ing our own future as Matt Novak, author of the site Pale­o­fu­ture, “a blog that looks into the future that nev­er was.” Not long ago, I inter­viewed him on my pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture; ever since, I’ve invari­ably found out that all the smartest dis­sec­tions of just how lit­tle we under­stand about our future some­how involve him. And not just those — also the smartest dis­sec­tions of how lit­tle we’ve always under­stood about our future. Take, for exam­ple, the year 1936, when, in Novak’s words, “a quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine for book col­lec­tors called The Colophon polled its read­ers to pick the ten authors whose works would be con­sid­ered clas­sics in the year 2000.” They named the fol­low­ing:

At first glance, this list might not look so embar­rass­ing. Nobel lau­re­ate Sin­clair Lewis remains oft-ref­er­enced, if much more so for Bab­bitt (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online Now), his 1922 indict­ment of a busi­ness-blink­ered Amer­i­ca, than for It Can’t Hap­pen Here, his best­selling Hitler satire from the year before the poll. Most Amer­i­cans pass­ing through high school Eng­lish still bump into Willa Cather, Robert Frost (four of whose vol­umes you can find in our col­lec­tion Free eBooks), and per­haps Eugene O’Neill (like­wise) and Theodore Dreis­er (espe­cial­ly through Sis­ter Car­rieiPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online Now) as well.

Some of us may also remem­ber Stephen Vin­cent Benét’s epic Civ­il War poem John Brown’s Body from our school days, but it would take a well-read soul indeed to nod in agree­ment with such selec­tions as New Eng­land his­to­ri­an James Truslow Adams and now lit­tle-read (though once Sin­clair- and Dreis­er-acclaimed) fan­ta­sist James Branch Cabell. The well-remem­bered George San­tayana still looks like a judg­ment call to me, but what of absent famous names like F. Scott Fitzger­ald, William Faulkn­er, Ernest Hem­ing­way, or maybe James Joyce? The Colophon’s edi­tors includ­ed Hem­ing­way on their own list, but which writ­ers do you think stand as the Fitzger­alds and Faulkn­ers of today — or, more to the point, of the year 2078? Care to put your guess on record? Feel free to make your pre­dic­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below.

via @ElectricLit/Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

The 25 Best Non-Fic­tion Books Ever: Read­ers’ Picks

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Miles Davis, Grace Jones, Adam Ant & Devo in 1980s Ads for Honda Scooters

Begin­ning scoot­er rid­ers can find a ver­i­ta­ble biker’s break­fast of point­ers on the Inter­net. One could cob­ble them togeth­er to make a con­tem­po­rary own­ers man­u­al, cov­er­ing such cru­cial top­ics as brak­ing, throt­tling, steer­ing, and stay­ing upright. But some­times one craves some­thing a bit more elu­sive, a bit more spir­i­tu­al. Is there a youtube equiv­a­lent of Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance?

Not real­ly, but there are these ear­ly 80s ads for Hon­da scoot­ers, fea­tur­ing some of the era’s most icon­o­clas­tic acts.

They put Adam Ant’s dash­ing post-punk appeal to the test by con­fin­ing him in close quar­ters with Grace Jones. Grace, above, dom­i­nat­ed, with all the con­fi­dence and ease of a tiger caged up with a pea­cock.

The prize? Can’t speak for Adam, but Grace got to film anoth­er spot. Her co-stars this time were a grid of infants, whose moth­ers must’ve been relieved that the alien diva queen nev­er actu­al­ly inter­act­ed with them. Can you imag­ine if Hug­gies had shared Hon­da’s adven­tur­ous adver­tis­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties?

Jazz great musi­cian Miles Davis did­n’t have to do much to lend an air of cool to that scoot­er. Even the card­board box­es scat­tered in the back­ground of his garage ben­e­fit from his pres­ence. The Prince of Dark­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion was nev­er an 80’s-spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non, but he looks the part, kit­ted out like the Road War­rior

Synth-pop super­stars Devo urged begin­ning rid­ers to adopt their extreme­ly uncon­ven­tion­al brand of con­for­mi­ty, sug­gest­ing that the band’s uni­form of cov­er­alls and, uh, shoes was the per­fect thing to wear while rid­ing that Hon­da. Those who want­ed to hang on to some sem­blance of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty could do so via scoot­er col­or.

Iron­ic though it may have been, their will­ing­ness to be seen sport­ing, nay, pro­mot­ing hel­mets makes Devo’s ad my per­son­al favorite.

To see Lou Reed’s con­tri­bu­tion to Hon­da’s series of ads, see our pre­vi­ous post: Sell­ing Cool: Lou Reed’s Clas­sic Hon­da Scoot­er Com­mer­cial, 1984

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jäger­meis­ter (Cir­ca 1980)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.