See The Iliad Performed as a One-Woman Show in a Montreal Bar by McGill University Classics Professor Lynn Kozak

in Literature, Poetry, Theatre | April 30th, 2018

Homer’s Ili­ad staged as a one-woman show? IN A BAR! It’s an out­rage. A des­e­cra­tion of a found­ing work of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion™. A sure sign of cul­tur­al decline.

But wait…. What if McGill Uni­ver­si­ty clas­sics pro­fes­sor Lynn Kozak’s per­for­mance returns the epic Greek poem to its ori­gins, as a dra­mat­ic oral pre­sen­ta­tion for small audi­ences who were, quite pos­si­bly, ine­bri­at­ed, or at least a lit­tle tip­sy? Kozak’s Pre­vi­ous­ly on… The Ili­ad, described as “Hap­py Hour Homer,” presents its inti­mate audi­ence with “a new, par­tial­ly impro­vised Eng­lish trans­la­tion of a bit of The Ili­ad, all the way through the epic.”

The per­for­mances take place every Mon­day at 6 at Montreal’s Bar des Pins. Like the sto­ry itself, Kozak begins in medias res—in the mid­dle, that is, of a chat­ter­ing crowd of stu­dents, who qui­et down right away and give the sto­ry their full atten­tion.

Ancient Greek poet­ry was per­formed, not stud­ied in schol­ar­ly edi­tions in aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments. It was sung, with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, and prob­a­bly adapt­ed, impro­vised, and embell­ished by ancient bards to suit their audi­ences. Grant­ed, Kozak doesn’t sing (though some per­for­mances involve music); she recites in a man­ner both casu­al and dra­mat­i­cal­ly grip­ping. She reminds us that the sto­ries we find in the text are dis­tant kin to the bloody seri­al­ized TV soap operas that occu­py so much of our day-to-day con­ver­sa­tion, at home, on social media, and at hap­py hour.

The lib­er­ties Kozak takes recre­ate the poem in the present as a liv­ing work. This is clas­sics edu­ca­tion at its most engag­ing and acces­si­ble. Like any poet­ic per­former, Kozak knows her audi­ence. The Ili­ad  is a lot like Game of Thrones, “because of the num­ber of char­ac­ters that you have to keep up with,” Kozak tells the CBC’s As It Hap­pens, “and also because of the fact that there’s not always clean-cut kind of vil­lains or who you’re sup­posed to be root­ing for in any major scene—especially in bat­tle scenes.”

The per­for­mance of the “anger of Achilles” (top, with beer pong) con­veys the moral com­plex­i­ty of the Greek hero. “He must be bru­tal and ready to risk bru­tal­i­ty,” as UNC pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy CDC Reeve writes. “At the same time, he must be gen­tle to his friends and allies, and able to join with them in group activ­i­ties both mil­i­tary and peace­ful.” Is Achilles a tool of the gods or a man dri­ven to extremes by rage? Homer sug­gests both, but the action is set in motion by divine agency. “Apol­lo was pissed at King Agamem­non,” Kozak para­phras­es, then sum­ma­rizes the nature of the insult and checks in with the young lis­ten­ers: “every­one still with me?”

The sto­ry of The Ili­ad, many schol­ars believe, exist­ed as an oral per­for­mance for per­haps 1,000 years before it was com­mit­ted to writ­ing by the scribe or scribes iden­ti­fied as Homer. But the poem “isn’t real­ly a the­atre piece,” says Kozak, despite its musi­cal nature. “It’s real­ly a sto­ry. It’s real­ly a one-per­son show. And for me it’s just impor­tant to be in a place that’s casu­al and where I’m with the audi­ence.” It’s doubt­ful that the poem was per­formed in its entire­ly in one sit­ting, though the notion of “seri­al­iza­tion” as we know it from 19th cen­tu­ry nov­els and mod­ern-day tele­vi­sion shows was not part of the cul­ture of antiq­ui­ty.

“We’re not real­ly sure how The Ili­ad was bro­ken up orig­i­nal­ly,” Kozak admits. Adapt­ing the poem to con­tem­po­rary audi­ence sen­si­bil­i­ties has meant “think­ing about where or if episodes exist in the epic,” in the way of Game of Thrones. Each per­for­mance is styled dif­fer­ent­ly, with Kozak hold­ing court as var­i­ous char­ac­ters. “Some­times there are cliffhang­ers. Some­times they have res­o­lu­tions. It’s been an inter­est­ing mix so far.” That “so far” extends on YouTube from Week 1 (Book 1, lines 1–487) to Week 14 (Book 11, line 461 to Book 12, line 205). Check back each week for new “episodes” to come online, and watch Weeks One through Four above and the oth­er ten at the Pre­vi­ous­ly on… The Ili­ad YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

One of the Best Pre­served Ancient Man­u­scripts of The Ili­ad Is Now Dig­i­tized: See the “Bankes Homer” Man­u­script in High Res­o­lu­tion (Cir­ca 150 C.E.)

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

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Discover the Retirement Home for Elderly Musicians Created by Giuseppe Verdi: Created in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

in Life, Music | April 30th, 2018

Among my works, the one I like best is the Home that I have had built in Milan for accom­mo­dat­ing old singers not favored by for­tune, or who, when they were young did not pos­sess the virtue of sav­ing. Poor and dear com­pan­ions of my life! 

—Giuseppe Ver­di

Is there a rem­e­dy for the iso­la­tion of old age?

What about the jol­ly fra­ter­ni­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness of an art col­lege dorm, as envi­sioned by opera com­pos­er Giuseppe Ver­di?

Short­ly before his death, the com­pos­er donat­ed all roy­al­ties from his operas to the con­struc­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of a lux­u­ri­ous retreat for retired musi­cians, designed by his librettist’s broth­er, archi­tect Camil­lo Boito.

Com­plet­ed in 1899, Casa Ver­di still serves elder­ly musi­cians today–up to 60 at a time. Res­i­dents of Casa Ver­di include alum­nae of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera and the Roy­al Opera House. Guests have worked along­side such nota­bles as Chet Bak­er and Maria Callas.

Com­pe­ti­tion for res­i­den­tial slots is stiff. To qual­i­fy, one must have been a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian or music teacher. Those select­ed enjoy room, board, and med­ical treat­ment in addi­tion to, writes The New York Times, “access to con­certs, music rooms, 15 pianos, a large organ, harps, drum sets and the com­pa­ny of their peers.” Musi­cal pro­gram­ming is as con­stant as the fine view of Verdi’s grave.

Din­ing tables are named in hon­or of Verdi’s works. Those inclined to wor­ship do so in a chapel named for San­ta Cecil­ia, the patron saint of musi­cians.

Prac­tice rooms are alive with the sound of music and crit­i­cism. As Casa Verdi’s music ther­a­pist told the Finan­cial Times, “They are very com­pet­i­tive: they are all pri­ma don­nas.”

When mem­o­ry fails, res­i­dents can tune in to such doc­u­men­taries as actor Dustin Hoff­man’s Tosca’s Kiss, below

Get a peek inside Verdi’s retire­ment home for artists, com­pli­ments of Urban Sketch­ers here.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Nadia Boulanger, “The Most Influ­en­tial Teacher Since Socrates,” Who Men­tored Philip Glass, Leonard Bern­stein, Aaron Cop­land, Quin­cy Jones & Oth­er Leg­ends

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Hear the High­est Note Sung in the 137-Year His­to­ry of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera

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

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Hear the Famously Controversial Concert Where Leonard Bernstein Introduces Glenn Gould & His Idiosyncratic Performance of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto (1962)

in Music | April 30th, 2018

Some­thing high­ly unusu­al hap­pened dur­ing the New York Phil­har­mon­ic’s con­cert of April 6, 1962. After the inter­mis­sion, just before start­ing the sec­ond half with the First Piano Con­cer­to of Johannes Brahms fea­tur­ing Glenn Gould, con­duc­tor Leonard Bern­stein stepped onto the podi­um and said a few words to pre­pare the audi­ence for what would come next:

You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unortho­dox per­for­mance of the Brahms D Minor Con­cer­to, a per­for­mance dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent from any I’ve ever heard, or even dreamt of for that mat­ter, in its remark­ably broad tem­pi and its fre­quent depar­tures from Brahms’ dynam­ic indi­ca­tions. I can­not say I am in total agree­ment with Mr. Gould’s con­cep­tion and this rais­es the inter­est­ing ques­tion: “What am I doing con­duct­ing it?” I’m con­duct­ing it because Mr. Gould is so valid and seri­ous an artist that I must take seri­ous­ly any­thing he con­ceives in good faith and his con­cep­tion is inter­est­ing enough so that I feel you should hear it, too.

You can hear Bern­stein’s remarks in full in the con­cert record­ing just above. “Why do I not make a minor scan­dal,” he asks rhetor­i­cal­ly, “get a sub­sti­tute soloist, or let an assis­tant con­duct?” Because he was “glad to have the chance for a new look at this much-played work,” because “there are moments in Mr. Gould’s per­for­mance that emerge with aston­ish­ing fresh­ness and con­vic­tion,” and because “we can all learn some­thing from this extra­or­di­nary artist, who is a think­ing per­former.”

Just as Bern­stein did­n’t agree with the famous­ly (and some­times infa­mous­ly) indi­vid­u­al­is­tic Gould’s much-slowed-down inter­pre­ta­tion of Brahms (though the decades of Brahms schol­ar­ship since have giv­en it more sup­port), many crit­ics did­n’t agree with Bern­stein’s deci­sion to intro­duce it that way. “I think that even though the con­duc­tor made this big dis­claimer, he should not be allowed to wig­gle off the hook that easy,” wrote the New York Times’ Harold C. Schon­berg, who approved of nei­ther the pre­sen­ta­tive choic­es of the con­duc­tor nor the artis­tic choic­es of the pianist. “I mean, who engaged the Gould boy in the first place? Who is the musi­cal direc­tor? Some­body has to be respon­si­ble.”

“At the time I felt that say­ing some­thing like this before a per­for­mance was not the right thing to do,” says famed con­duc­tor Sei­ji Oza­wa in Absolute­ly on Music, his book of con­ver­sa­tions with nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi. He hap­pened to be there at Carnegie Hall on April 6, 1962, in his capac­i­ty as Bern­stein’s assis­tant con­duc­tor: “When Lenny said in his speech that he could have let an assis­tant con­duct it — that’s me!” Lis­ten­ing to the record­ing again, Oza­wa describes Gould (who would retire from live per­for­mance two years there­after) as hav­ing “an absolute­ly sol­id grasp of the flow of the music,” and adds that “Lenny’s got it absolute­ly right, too. He’s putting his heart and soul into it.” Oza­wa still dis­ap­proves of Bern­stein’s intro­duc­to­ry remarks, but acknowl­edges the spe­cial qual­i­ty of the man who intro­duced him to Amer­i­ca: “From Lenny, peo­ple were will­ing to accept it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Spheres Dance to the Music of Bach, Per­formed by Glenn Gould: An Ani­ma­tion from 1969

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

Watch Leonard Bern­stein Con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Using Only His Eye­brows

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambient Music, Erik Satie’s Furniture Music (Circa 1917)

in Music | April 27th, 2018

Who invent­ed ambi­ent music? Many fans of the genre might say Bri­an Eno, though Bri­an Eno him­self makes no such claim. Still, the records he labeled with the word “ambi­ent” in the 1970s and 80s did much to pop­u­lar­ize not just the term, but a cer­tain con­cep­tion of the form itself. “For me, the cen­tral idea was about music as a place you go to,” he said in an inter­view about his recent ambi­ent album Reflec­tion. “Not a nar­ra­tive, not a sequence that has some sort of tele­o­log­i­cal direc­tion to it — verse, cho­rus, this, that, and the oth­er. It’s real­ly based on abstract expres­sion­ism: Instead of the pic­ture being a struc­tured per­spec­tive, where your eye is expect­ed to go in cer­tain direc­tions, it’s a field, and you wan­der son­i­cal­ly over the field.”

Did the 19th and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry French com­pos­er Erik Satie have the same idea? The Guardian’s Nick Shave calls Satie (whom you’ll at the very least know for Gymnopédie No.1) “the mav­er­ick who invent­ed ‘fur­ni­ture music,’ sounds that were designed to be heard but not lis­tened to.”

F.D. Leone of Musi­ca Kalei­dosko­pea describes Satie’s musique d’ameublement as “music which had no set form and sec­tions could be re-arranged as a per­former or con­duc­tor wished, much like fur­ni­ture in a room, and to act as part of the ambiance or fur­nish­ings.” And Satie start­ed on it in back in 1917, com­pos­ing for the deliv­ery sys­tem of not records, and cer­tain­ly not (as Eno has used in recent years) gen­er­a­tive smart­phone apps, but live per­for­mance.

Though Satie would con­tin­ue writ­ing fur­ni­ture music until just a cou­ple of years before his death in 1925, much of it was nev­er per­formed dur­ing his life­time. Its revival came a few decades lat­er, thanks to the arrival into the music world of a young com­pos­er intent on tak­ing his art to places it had sel­dom gone before: John Cage. “He’s indis­pens­able,” Cage once said of the still oft-derid­ed Satie. Shave also describes Eno’s 1978 album Ambi­ent 1: Music for Air­ports a direct answer to Satie’s call for “music that would be a part of the sur­round­ing nois­es.” You can hear all of Satie’s fur­ni­ture music (selec­tions of which appear embed­ded here) per­formed by the Ars Nova Ensem­ble at Ubuweb. “It seems to have swollen to accom­mo­date some quite unex­pect­ed bed­fel­lows,” Eno has writ­ten of the genre of ambi­ent music today. But would would Satie hear it all as just an expan­sion of fur­ni­ture music?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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A Big Choir Sings Patti Smith’s “Because the Night”

in Music | April 27th, 2018

Five years ago, Choir!Choir!Choir!, a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to, got a rare chance to per­form with Pat­ti Smith, join­ing her onstage to sing her 1978 hit “Because the Night.” Still inspired by that expe­ri­ence, the group recent­ly revis­it­ed the song dur­ing one of their week­ly ses­sions. “The feel­ing in the room was elec­tric, every­one was lean­ing in hard, and the end result is so pow­er­ful,” Choir!Choir!Choir! writes on their YouTube chan­nel. You can watch the end result above.

In case you missed it, you can also watch them per­form David Bowie’s “Heroes” with the great David Byrne. See the first item in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Hear a Com­plete Chrono­log­i­cal Discog­ra­phy of Pat­ti Smith’s Fierce­ly Poet­ic Rock and Roll: 13 Hours and 142 Tracks

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

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100 Years of Drag Queen Fashion in 4 Minutes: An Aesthetic Journey Moving from the 1920s Through Today

in Fashion, Film, Gender, History, Music | April 27th, 2018

Drag super­star RuPaul’s Drag Race pro­gram can be cred­it­ed with bring­ing his sub­cul­ture to a much wider audi­ence.

For ten sea­sons, view­ers out­side the major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas and select hol­i­day des­ti­na­tions where drag has flour­ished have tuned in to root for their favorite com­peti­tors.

As a result, main­stream Amer­i­ca has devel­oped a much more nuanced appre­ci­a­tion for the labor and artistry behind suc­cess­ful drag per­for­mance and per­son­ae.

Van­i­ty Fair’s “100 Years of Drag Queen Fash­ion,” above, is not so much an evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry of the form as a salute to some of its pio­neers, prac­ti­tion­ers, and patron saints.

Each decade opens with a Drag Race alum fac­ing the make­up mir­ror in a rel­a­tive­ly naked state.  Shangela Laquifa Wadley, Raja, and Detox all appear sans fard. Kim Chi’s heav­i­ly made up eyes are eye­lash-free.

The 70’s spin on the late, great Divine is more rem­i­nis­cent of cis-gen­der dis­co queen Don­na Sum­mer than the out­ra­geous plus-sized muse direc­tor John Waters referred to as “the most beau­ti­ful woman in the world, almost.”

As por­trayed in the video below, there’s a strong echo of 1930’s Pan­sy Per­former Jean Malin in RuPaul’s glam­orous pre­sen­ta­tion.

In real­i­ty, the resem­blance is not quite so strong. Although Malin got dolled up in Mae West drag in 1933’s Ari­zona to Broad­way, above, left to his own devices his stage pres­ence was that of an open­ly effem­i­nate gay man, or “pan­sy.” As Pro­fes­sor George Chauncey, direc­tor of Colum­bia University’s Research Ini­tia­tive on the Glob­al His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ties observes in his book, Gay New York:

 His very pres­ence on the club floor elicit­ed the cat­calls of many men in the club, but he respond­ed to their abuse by rip­ping them to shreds with the drag queen’s best weapon: his wit. ‘He had a lisp, and an atti­tude, but he also had a sharp tongue,’ accord­ing to one colum­nist. ‘The wise cracks and inquiries of the men who hoot­ed at his act found ready answer.’ And if hos­tile spec­ta­tors tried to use brute force to take him on after he had defeat­ed them with his wit, he was pre­pared to hum­ble them on those terms as well. ‘He was a huge youth,’ one paper report­ed, ‘weigh­ing 200, and a six foot­er. Not a few pro­fes­sion­al pugilists sighed because Jean seemed to pre­fer din­ner rings to box­ing rings.’ Although Mal­in’s act remained tame enough to safe­guard its wide appeal, it nonethe­less embod­ied the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between pan­sies and ‘nor­mal’ men. His behav­ior was con­sis­tent with their demean­ing stereo­type of how a pan­sy should behave, but he demand­ed their respect; he fas­ci­nat­ed and enter­tained them, but he also threat­ened and infu­ri­at­ed them.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Oth­er leg­endary fig­ures hon­ored by Van­i­ty Fair include Fran­cis Renault (1893–1955), Lav­ern Cum­mings (1925–1991), and Dan­ny LaRue (1927–2009).

Also some gen­der bend­ing lad by the name David Bowie, though if Van­i­ty Fair’s skin­ny Divine caus­es a slight sense of unease, the hideous vinyl rain­coat sport­ed by its snarling, whip-wield­ing Bowie fac­sim­i­le may send fans scut­tling for torch­es and pitch­forks.

As to the future, Joan Jet­son col­lars and pink wed­ding cake wigs appear to be part of drag’s fash­ion fore­cast.

Cis-male skele­tal struc­tures may not always lend them­selves to peri­od-appro­pri­ate female sil­hou­ettes, but the tow­er­ing heels on dis­play are faith­ful to the art of the drag queen, above all else.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Presents a Free Online Class on Fash­ion: Enroll in Fash­ion as Design Today

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers (1919): The First Gay Rights Movie Ever … Lat­er Destroyed by the Nazis

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

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The Diderot Effect: Enlightenment Philosopher Denis Diderot Explains the Psychology of Consumerism & Our Wasteful Spending

in Economics, Philosophy, Psychology | April 26th, 2018

In point­ing out the clear and present dan­gers posed by out-of-con­trol con­sumerism, there is no need for Marx­ism 101 terms like “com­mod­i­ty fetishism.” Sim­ply state in plain terms that we revere cheap­ly-mass-pro­duced goods, made for the sake of end­less growth and con­sump­tion, for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son oth­er than per­pet­u­al nov­el­ty and the cre­ation of wealth for a few. Every­one nods in agree­ment, then gets back to scrolling through their social media feeds and inbox­es, con­vinc­ing them­selves, as I con­vince myself, that tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing in dig­i­tal networks—what Jaron Lanier calls “mass behav­ior-mod­i­fi­ca­tion regimes”—could not pos­si­bly have any effect on me!

While 18th-cen­tu­ry French philosophe Denis Diderot in no way pre­dict­ed (as Lanier large­ly did) the mass behav­ior-mod­i­fi­ca­tion schemes of the inter­net, he under­stood some­thing crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant about human behav­ior and the nascent com­mod­i­ty cul­ture tak­ing shape around him, a cul­ture of anx­ious dis­qui­et and games of one-upman­ship, played, if not with oth­ers, then with one­self. Renowned, among oth­er things, for co-found­ing the Ency­clopédie (the first Wikipedia!), Diderot has also acquired a rep­u­ta­tion for the insights in his essay “Regrets on Part­ing with My Old Dress­ing Gown,” which inspired the con­cept of the “Diderot Effect.”

This prin­ci­ple states that mod­ern con­sump­tion requires us to “iden­ti­fy our­selves using our pos­ses­sions,” as Esther Inglis-Arkell writes at io9. Thus, when per­suad­ed by naked lust or the entice­ments of adver­tis­ing to pur­chase some­thing new and shiny, we imme­di­ate­ly notice how out of place it looks amongst our old things. “Once we own one thing that stands out, that doesn’t fit our cur­rent sense of uni­ty, we go on a ram­page try­ing to recon­struct our­selves” by upgrad­ing things that worked per­fect­ly well, in order to main­tain a coher­ent sense of who we are in rela­tion to the first new pur­chase.

The phe­nom­e­non, “part psy­cho­log­i­cal, and part delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tion,” dri­ves heed­less shop­ping and cre­ates need­less waste. Diderot describes the effect in terms con­sis­tent with the tastes and prej­u­dices of an edu­cat­ed gen­tle­man of his time. He does so with per­spi­ca­cious self-aware­ness. The essay is worth a read for the rich hyper­bole of its rhetoric. Begin­ning with a com­par­i­son between his old bathrobe, which “mold­ed all the folds of my body” and his new one (“stiff, and starchy, makes me look stodgy”), Diderot builds to a near-apoc­a­lyp­tic sce­nario illus­trat­ing the “rav­ages of lux­u­ry.”

The pur­chase of a new dress­ing gown spoiled his sense of him­self as “the writer, the man who works.” The new robe strikes a jar­ring, dis­so­cia­tive note. “I now have the air of a rich good for noth­ing. No one knows who I am…. All now is dis­cor­dant,” he writes, “No more coor­di­na­tion, no more uni­ty, no more beau­ty.” Rather than get rid of the new pur­chase, he feels com­pelled to become the kind of per­son who wears such a thing, by means of fur­ther pur­chas­es which he could only new­ly afford, after receiv­ing an endow­ment from Cather­ine the Great. Before this wind­fall, points out James Clear, he had “lived near­ly his entire life in pover­ty.”

Clear gives sev­er­al exam­ples of the Diderot effect that take it out of the realm of 18th cen­tu­ry aes­thet­ics and into our mod­ern big-box/A­ma­zon real­i­ty. “We are rarely look­ing to down­grade, to sim­pli­fy,” he writes, “Our nat­ur­al incli­na­tion is always to accu­mu­late.” To counter the ten­den­cy, he rec­om­mends cor­rec­tive behav­iors such as mak­ing sure new pur­chas­es fit in with our cur­rent pos­ses­sions; set­ting self-imposed lim­its on spend­ing; and reduc­ing expo­sure to “habit trig­gers.” This may require admit­ting that we are sus­cep­ti­ble to the ads that clut­ter both our phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, and that lim­it­ing time spent on ad-dri­ven plat­forms may be an act not only of self-care, but of social and envi­ron­men­tal care as well. Algo­rithms now per­form Diderot effects for us con­stant­ly.

Is the Diderot effect uni­ver­sal­ly bad? Inglis-Arkell argues that “it’s not pure evil… there’s a dif­fer­ence between an Enlight­en­ment screed and real life.” So-called green consumerism—“replacing exist­ing waste­ful goods with more durable, clean­er, more respon­si­bly-made goods”—might be a healthy use of Diderot-like avarice. Besides, she says, “there’s noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng to com­mu­ni­cate one’s sense of self through aes­thet­ic choic­es” or crav­ing a uni­fied look for our phys­i­cal spaces. Maybe, maybe not, but we can take respon­si­bil­i­ty for how we direct our desires. In any case, Diderot’s essay is hard­ly a “screed,” but a light-heart­ed, yet can­did self exam­i­na­tion. He is not yet so far gone, he writes: “I have not been cor­rupt­ed…. But who knows what will hap­pen with time?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

Every­day Eco­nom­ics: A New Course by Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Where Stu­dents Cre­ate the Syl­labus

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

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Doc Martens Boots Adorned with Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”

in Art | April 26th, 2018

As in cui­sine, where peas­ant food can become trendy and expen­sive overnight, so it is in fash­ion: how else to explain the way a hum­ble work­ing-class boot went from the fac­to­ry floor to styl­is­tic state­ment.

The orig­i­nal 1960’s Dr. Martens boot, the one with the cush­ioned sole, fan­cy tread, and yel­low stitch­ing, was designed to be afford­able. That’s why the punks loved it, that’s why the ska/Two Tone guys and gals loved it, and that’s why rich rock­ers like Pete Town­shend showed his sol­i­dar­i­ty by wear­ing them along with his boil­er suit.

But that was then, and this is…the Tate Gallery of London’s spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned series of arty Docs. The “1460” boot above shows details from Hierony­mus Bosch’s “Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” (the hell­ish third pan­el), which you have to admit is pret­ty cool. For the lover not the fight­er among us, you can also go for the more debauched sec­ond pan­el from “Gar­den” print­ed on a “1461” style shoe.

If Bosch isn’t your style, the Tate Gallery also com­mis­sioned ones fea­tur­ing Gian­ni­co­la Di Pao­lo, William Hog­a­rth, and Bia­gio Di Anto­nio. Trou­ble is, all of these have already sold out, though you can still get ver­sions sport­ing art by William Blake and JMW Turn­er. I guess you might want to book­mark Dr. Martens Artist Series’ page. We’re here to expand your cul­tur­al knowl­edge on Open Cul­ture, not to pro­vide dai­ly deals!

So, yes, these lim­it­ed edi­tion boots are just slight­ly more than the orig­i­nal “smooth” style and not exact­ly cheap. But, on the oth­er hand, this new phase of the com­pa­ny is a cel­e­bra­tion of skirt­ing com­plete obso­les­cence. While mar­keters love to say these brands “nev­er go out of style,” they in fact did. Accord­ing to their own web­site, Dr. Martens had such declin­ing sales at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um that all but one fac­to­ry closed. It was by com­mis­sion­ing artists to rebrand the boot in sim­i­lar ways as the Tate Gallery that the com­pa­ny was able to turn things around and, best of all, keep man­u­fac­tur­ing the boots in Britain.

Whether you should wear your high cul­ture so low to the ground is for you to fig­ure out once you get your hands on a pair. Again, there are still ver­sions by William Blake and JMW Turn­er in steady sup­ply.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf
Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing, “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights,” Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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