11 Hypnotic, Close-Up Minutes Watching Tool’s Legendary Drummer Danny Carey in Action

in Music | October 15th, 2020

Like the great prog drum­mers of old—Bill Bru­ford, Neil Peart, Phil Collins—Tool’s Dan­ny Carey is an arti­san. They don’t make drum­ming like that any­more. He says so him­self (sort of) in an inter­view with Music Radar about his side project Leg­end of the Seag­ull­men with Mastadon’s Brent Hinds. Remem­ber­ing how Robert Fripp would stand on the edge of the stage, watch­ing Tool play when King Crim­son opened for the mod­ern prog-met­al giants, Carey remarks, “We weren’t sync­ing to some bull­shit like so many oth­er bands. We were actu­al­ly play­ing live. It’s a sad thing when almost every band you see isn’t doing that. It’s the clicks and back­ing tracks that are keep­ing time. I’ve nev­er played to a click on stage in my life.”

A “click track,” for those who don’t know, is exact­ly what it sounds like: a play­back of clicks (or any per­cus­sive sound) to the desired tem­po, pumped into a musician’s ear­piece to keep them play­ing in time. A use­ful tool of the record­ing stu­dio, many musi­cians, as Carey says, now use it on stage, along with vocal pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware and pre-record­ed back­ing tracks to make sure every­thing sounds exact­ly like it does on record.

All of this tech­nol­o­gy ruins the feel of live per­for­mance, Carey main­tains. He would know. He’s been play­ing live since the 80s and play­ing with Tool since the band formed thir­ty years ago. He also jams every oth­er month, he says, “with these weird dudes who played with Miles Davis or Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra.” So… yeah. The dude’s got some clas­sic chops.

But tech­nol­o­gy isn’t all bad in live music, far from it. Being a drum­mer used to mean that hard­ly any­one could see you on a big stage. You might be the most tal­ent­ed, best-look­ing mem­ber of the band, but you were hid­den away behind your kit with the singers and gui­tarists soak­ing up the glo­ry. Even when cer­tain celebri­ty rock drum­mers get their own stages (with their own mini-roller coast­ers), it can be impos­si­ble to see what they’re doing up close. No longer. Thanks to unob­tru­sive cam­eras that can stream video from any­where, no cor­ner of the stage need be obscured. We can watch a Tool show from over Carey’s shoul­der, as in the video of “Pneu­ma,” live in con­cert, at the top, pro­duced by drum equip­ment com­pa­ny Vic Firth to demon­strate Carey’s new sig­na­ture sticks.

It’s bet­ter to let Carey’s play­ing speak for itself, but for ref­er­ence, “Pneu­ma” comes from Tool’s very eager­ly-await­ed 2019 album Fear Inocu­lum, just one of many tracks “filled with twist after turn, con­ven­tion­al song struc­ture be damned,” Ilya Stemkovsky writes at Mod­ern Drum­mer, “with Carey at the cen­ter of the storm, pro­vid­ing the heav­i­est, most mas­sive bot­tom pos­si­ble. He even gets his own solo per­cus­sion track, ‘Choco­late Chip Trip,’ on which he incor­po­rates gongs and bells, among oth­er sounds.” Maybe this live view, and Tool’s well-deserved Gram­my Win for Best Met­al Per­for­mance this year for “7empest,” will inspire more drum­mers to drop the click and bring back what Carey calls the “ded­i­ca­tion to your vibe” from the days of arti­sanal drum­ming.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Wit­ness Rush Drum­mer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

See Why Gin­ger Bak­er (RIP) Was One of the Great­est Drum­mers in Rock & World Music

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

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The Scariest Film of All Time?: Revisiting the Hysteria in 1973 Around The Exorcist by William Friedkin (RIP)

in Film | October 15th, 2020

William Friedkin’s 1973 The Exor­cist might feel wrapped in the his­tor­i­cal glow of “ele­vat­ed hor­ror” now–serious film­mak­ing for dis­cern­ing fans and critics–but that was very much *not* the case back in the year of its birth. Back in the grimy, Water­gate years of the ear­ly ‘70s, The Exor­cist was as much a side-show freak­out as any­thing William Cas­tle pro­duced back in the day. It was an endurance test.

The above film from that time proves it, show­ing the long, around-the-block lines, the sold-out screen­ings, the repeat view­ers, and the record-break­ing open­ing week­end gross­es ($2 mil­lion in just 24 the­aters in Decem­ber, before open­ing wide across the nation in 1974.) This event had more in com­mon with your cur­rent com­ic book movie or Star Wars sequel, and all the while being an R‑rated film based on Catholic dog­ma and fea­tur­ing some of the most col­or­ful pro­fan­i­ty ever hurled at a man of the cloth (on screen at least).

Of course, it is the reac­tions of the view­ers that make this footage worth it. The cin­e­ma work­ers talk about how even the biggest guys can’t hack the film and exit white as a sheet. Two young women say this is their sec­ond attempt to watch the film all the way through. Anoth­er guy say he wasn’t scared by the film but “I dun­no, I just faint­ed.”

And we do in fact see some peo­ple faint in the lob­by, just going down like a sack of bricks, and an ush­er tells the cam­era he has two kinds of smelling salts to choose from. One woman in line even tells the cam­era crew, “I wan­na see if it’s gonna make me throw up.” In fact, at one point some the­aters start­ed hand­ing out “barf bags” for ner­vous view­ers (which prob­a­bly increased their chances of vom­it­ing). MAD Mag­a­zine even got in on the hype with an appro­pri­ate cov­er (“If the Dev­il Makes You Do It” reads the bag.)

All this was incred­i­bly good for busi­ness, and incred­i­bly good for the news media, who sent crews like this one down, along with a reporter to inter­view peo­ple bail­ing on the film halfway through. The demon­ic voice is what did it for peo­ple, pro­vid­ed by actress Mer­cedes McCam­bridge, who report­ed­ly downed raw eggs, smoked cig­a­rettes and drank whiskey to give her voice that raspy edge.

From this year’s van­tage point it all looks quaint and fun–all these dif­fer­ent peo­ple from var­i­ous walks of life hav­ing a shared expe­ri­ence in a the­ater, every­body whipped up into a delight­ful and ulti­mate­ly harm­less fren­zy.

Most of the doc­u­men­tary was shot at the Nation­al The­ater in West­wood, Los Ange­les. Only three years old at the time, the cin­e­ma was the last sin­gle-screen the­ater built in the Unit­ed States. It was torn down in 2008, replaced by some tony apart­ments and a street-lev­el sushi bar.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films

How Famous Paint­ings Inspired Cin­e­mat­ic Shots in the Films of Taran­ti­no, Gilliam, Hitch­cock & More: A Big Super­cut

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Denmark’s Utopian Garden City Built Entirely in Circles: See Astounding Aerial Views of Brøndby Haveby

in Architecture, Design | October 15th, 2020

For decades, urban plan­ners around the world have looked to the Dan­ish cap­i­tal of Copen­hagen, with its low-rise high den­si­ty and unpar­al­leled cul­ture of every­day cycling, as an exam­ple of how to design a city. But what of the Dan­ish track record in design­ing sub­urbs? Recent­ly, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er by the name of Hen­ry Do brought the world’s atten­tion to one such set­tle­ment, Brønd­by Have­by or Gar­den City, with a series of aer­i­al pho­tographs post­ed to Insta­gram. “Unre­al how my recent images from here went crazy viral,” Do writes in the cap­tion of a fol­low-up drone video — “unre­al” being just the word some have used to describe the place itself, com­posed as it is entire­ly out of cir­cles.

Built in 1964 to the design of “genius land­scape archi­tect Erik Mygind,” Brønd­by Have­by mim­ics “the tra­di­tion­al pat­terns of the 18th cen­tu­ry Dan­ish vil­lages, where peo­ple would use the mid­dle as a focal point for hang­ing out, min­gle and social inter­change between neigh­bors.”

This unusu­al form, more of which you can see in Do’s drone pho­tos at Lone­ly Plan­et, suits the long-estab­lished Dan­ish cab­in cul­ture, accord­ing to which every city-dwelling Dane with the means buys a small­er sec­ond home in the coun­try­side as a retreat. (Though the hous­es in Brønd­by Have­by are owned, the gar­dens are rent­ed, and local zon­ing laws pre­vent any­one from occu­py­ing their prop­er­ties for more than six months out of the year.)

Wher­ev­er it is, this cab­in must be made hyggelige, an adjec­tive often trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish as “cozy” and that, in recent years, has become a byword for the love of small-scale con­tent­ment that sets Den­mark apart. (Not every­body is sold on the con­cept: “With its relent­less dri­ve towards the mid­dle ground and its depen­dence on keep­ing things light and breezy,” writes British Den­mark expat Michael Booth, “hygge does get a bit bor­ing some­times.”) As Lenni Mad­sen, a Dan­ish Quo­ra user with a Brønd­by Have­by house in the fam­i­ly, puts it, “Imag­ine your aver­age small-time com­mu­ni­ty, where every­one knows every­one else, you see each oth­er across the hedge, per­haps shar­ing a beer or hav­ing cof­fee at each oth­ers’ hous­es.”

This seems a far cry from the alien­ation and deprav­i­ty of the stan­dard sub­ur­ban cul-de-sac, at least as por­trayed in Amer­i­can pop­u­lar myth. And it isn’t hard to see the appeal for aver­age urban­ites, espe­cial­ly those look­ing to spend their gen­er­ous vaca­tion time in as dif­fer­ent an envi­ron­ment as pos­si­ble with­out hav­ing to go far. (Home­own­ers must already have a pri­ma­ry res­i­dence with­in 20 kilo­me­ters, which includes the city of Copen­hagen.) The aston­ished reac­tions on social media would sug­gest that most of us have nev­er seen a place like this before. But for the Danes, it’s just anoth­er chap­ter in their civ­i­liza­tion­al pur­suit of all that is hyggelige.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Medieval City Plan Gen­er­a­tor: A Fun Way to Cre­ate Your Own Imag­i­nary Medieval Cities

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Incred­i­bly Detailed & Real­is­tic Maps of a City That Doesn’t Exist

IKEA Dig­i­tizes & Puts Online 70 Years of Its Cat­a­logs: Explore the Designs of the Swedish Fur­ni­ture Giant

In Search of Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Seclud­ed Hut in Nor­way: A Short Trav­el Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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“The Last of Us” Franchise: Can Video Games Be Cinema? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#64)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | October 15th, 2020

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Bri­an Hirt, and Eri­ca Spyres all played both The Last of Us, and more recent­ly immersed them­selves in the length­i­er The Last of Us 2, which has been gen­er­at­ing a lot of acclaim but also con­tro­ver­sy. Actu­al­ly, Eri­ca just watch­es her hus­band Drew Jack­son play these things, but he showed up to this dis­cus­sion too. Yes, these cre­ations of Neil Druck­mann with the Naughty Dog team are ground­break­ing, and riv­et­ing, but by design not nec­es­sar­i­ly “fun,” or there­by involv­ing much “play­ing.”

The fran­chise is osten­si­bly about a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse and an immune girl that might be its cure, but it’s real­ly a drawn-out dra­ma about loss, fam­i­ly, and the cycle of revenge… You know, in between run­ning around look­ing for scraps to craft weapon upgrades and skulk­ing around dri­ving shivs through the necks of numer­ous mon­sters and peo­ple.

We com­pare The Last of Us to oth­er zom­bie media like Walk­ing Dead, address the shift­ing points of view in the game (playable flash­backs!), rep­re­sen­ta­tion, fan and crit­i­cal reac­tion, the effec­tive­ness of the game’s mes­sage, and more.

This con­ver­sa­tion should work both for lis­ten­ers who’ve actu­al­ly played the games and those who are just curi­ous about what the fuss is about. There are some plot spoil­ers about the end of the first game and events near the begin­ning of the sec­ond game nec­es­sary to dis­cuss the nar­ra­tive.

Lis­ten to the offi­cial Last of Us pod­cast. For anoth­er play­er per­spec­tive, check out the Besties pod­cast.

Oth­er resources:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Werner Herzog Lists All the Languages He Knows–and Why He Only Speaks French If (Literally) a Gun’s Pointed at His Head

in Film, Language Lessons | October 14th, 2020

If you’ve explored the fil­mog­ra­phy of Wern­er Her­zog, you’ve heard him speak not just his sig­na­ture Teu­ton­i­cal­ly inflect­ed Eng­lish — often imi­tat­ed in recent years, though nev­er quite equaled — but Ger­man as well. What else does he speak? In the clip above, the Bavar­i­an-born direc­tor of Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitz­car­ral­do responds thus to the ques­tion of exact­ly how many lan­guages he has: “Not too many. I mean, Span­ish, Eng­lish, Ger­man… and then I spoke mod­ern Greek bet­ter than Eng­lish once. I made a film in mod­ern Greek, but that’s because in school I learned Latin and ancient Greek.”

The list does­n’t end there. “I do speak some Ital­ian. I do under­stand French, but I refuse to speak it. It’s the last thing I would ever do. You can only get some French out of me with a gun point­ed at my head” — which is exact­ly what hap­pened to him. “I was tak­en pris­on­er in Africa” by “drunk sol­diers on a truck,” all of them “fif­teen, six­teen years old, some of them eight, nine years old,” armed and tak­ing dead aim at him. “That was very unpleas­ant,” not least due to the lead sol­dier’s insis­tence that “on nous par­le français ici.” And so Her­zog final­ly “had to say a few things in French. I regret it. I should­n’t have done it.”

But speak­ing, in Her­zog’s world, isn’t as impor­tant as read­ing. “I read in Span­ish and I read in Latin and I read in ancient Greek and I read in, er, what­ev­er,” he told the Guardian in a more recent inter­view. “But it doesn’t mat­ter. It depends on the text. I mean, take, for instance, Hölder­lin, the great­est of the Ger­man poets. You can­not touch him in trans­la­tion. If you’re read­ing Hölder­lin, you must learn Ger­man first.” This along­side an appre­ci­a­tion of “trash movies, trash TV. Wrestle­Ma­nia. The Kar­dashi­ans. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by it. So I don’t say read Tol­stoy and noth­ing else. Read every­thing. See every­thing. The poet must not avert his eyes.”

It you want to become like Wern­er Her­zog — well, best of luck to you (though he has cre­at­ed a “rogue film school” and cur­rent­ly stars in a Mas­ter­class). But if you want to fol­low his lead in this specif­i­cal­ly lin­guis­tic respect, you can start from our col­lec­tion of free online lessons in 48 lan­guages. There you’ll find mate­r­i­al to start on every­thing from Span­ish to mod­ern as well as ancient Greek. Also includ­ed is French, Her­zog’s bête noire, as well as Latin, which in the Guardian inter­view he calls his third lan­guage. Ger­man, which also fig­ures into our col­lec­tion, turns out not to be Her­zog’s native lan­guage: “My moth­er tongue is Bavar­i­an. Which is not even Ger­man, it’s a dialect.” With his film­mak­ing activ­i­ties cur­tailed by world events, per­haps he’d con­sid­er pro­duc­ing a series of lessons?

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

To Make Great Films, You Must Read, Read, Read and Write, Write, Write, Say Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wern­er Her­zog

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

A Map Show­ing How Much Time It Takes to Learn For­eign Lan­guages: From Eas­i­est to Hard­est

What Are the Most Effec­tive Strate­gies for Learn­ing a For­eign Lan­guage?: Six TED Talks Pro­vide the Answers

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Marionette Freddie Mercury Performs on the Streets of Madrid

in Music | October 14th, 2020

When the pan­dem­ic ends and trav­el resumes, you’ll hope­ful­ly find pup­peteers Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana enter­tain­ing folks, both young and old, on the streets of Madrid. Above, watch them enter­tain passers­by with a mar­i­onette of Fred­die Mer­cury singing the Queen clas­sic, “I Want to Break Free.” Down below, you can see their mar­i­onette take on the Bea­t­les.

Here’s some quick back­sto­ry on their work:

Perip­lo Pup­pets are Diana Romero and Andrés Mat­u­rana: design­ers and mak­ers of pup­pets and sto­ries. We began in 2003 with TitiriBea­t­les at the Ram­blas of Barcelona and study­ing self-taught at Insti­tut del Teatre Library. We trav­eled with our pup­pets through the streets of Europe and Amer­i­ca gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ence, until in 2009 we decid­ed to live in Madrid and be a The­atre com­pa­ny. …We focus on audio­vi­su­al per­for­mance mix­ing video map­ping, string pup­pets, and latex pup­pets to make shows that involve the audi­ence.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Make an Adorable Cro­cheted Fred­die Mer­cury; Down­load a Free Cro­chet Pat­tern Online

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

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How to Win an Argument (at the U.S. Supreme Court, or Anywhere Else): A Primer by Litigator Neal Katyal

in Law, Life | October 14th, 2020

Do you like being right? Of course, every­one does. Are you suc­cess­ful at con­vinc­ing oth­ers? That’s a tougher one. We may polite­ly dis­agree, avoid, or scream bloody mur­der at each oth­er, but what­ev­er our con­flict style, no one is born, and few are raised, know­ing how to per­suade.

Per­sua­sion does not mean coer­cion, deceit, or manip­u­la­tion, the tac­tics of con artists, under­hand­ed sales­per­sons, or stereo­typ­i­cal­ly untrust­wor­thy lawyers….

Per­sua­sion is about shift­ing oth­ers’ point of view, respect­ful­ly and char­i­ta­bly, through the use of evi­dence and argu­ment, eth­i­cal appeals, mov­ing sto­ries, and “faith in the pow­er of your ideas,” as Neal Katyal explains in his TED pre­sen­ta­tion above, “How to Win an Argu­ment (at the U.S. Supreme Court, or any­where).”

Katyal’s job as a Supreme Court lit­i­ga­tor makes him an author­i­ty on this sub­ject. It may also dis­tract you with thoughts about the cur­rent Court pow­er strug­gle. Try to put those thoughts aside. In places where rea­son, evi­dence, and ethics have pur­chase, Katyal’s advice can pay div­i­dends in your quest to win oth­ers over.

In his first case before the Court a “hand­ful of years” after the 9/11 attacks, he rep­re­sent­ed Osama bin Laden’s dri­ver in a suit press­ing to rec­og­nize Gene­va Con­ven­tion rules in the war on ter­ror and to rule Guan­tanamo uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. His oppo­nent, the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al of the U.S., had argued 35 cas­es before the court; “I wasn’t even 35 years old,” Katyal says. He won the case, and he’ll tell you how.

His most impor­tant les­son? Win­ning argu­ments isn’t about being right. It isn’t about believ­ing real­ly, real­ly hard that you’re right. Per­sua­sion is not about con­fi­dence, Katyal insists. It’s about empa­thy. Oral argu­ments in the court­room (which judges could just as well read in tran­script form) show us as much, he says.

When his legal exper­tise was not help­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the big tri­al, Katyal felt des­per­ate and hired an act­ing coach, who trained him in such tech­niques as hold­ing hands while mak­ing his argu­ments. What? Yes, that’s exact­ly what Katyal said. But he did it, and it worked.

Hold­ing hands with the Jus­tices isn’t an option in court, but Katyal found oth­er ways to remind him­self to stay close to what mat­tered, wear­ing acces­sories his par­ents had giv­en him, for exam­ple, and writ­ing his children’s names on a legal pad: “That’s why I’m doing this, for them. To leave the coun­try bet­ter than I found it.”

Once he had estab­lished his pri­vate rea­sons for car­ing, he was ready to present his pub­lic rea­sons. As the old say­ing goes, “peo­ple don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” The facts absolute­ly mat­ter, yet the bur­den of show­ing how and why facts mat­ter falls to the per­suad­er, whose own pas­sion, integri­ty, com­mit­ment, etc. will go a long way toward mak­ing an audi­ence recep­tive.

This advice applies in any sit­u­a­tion, but if you’re won­der­ing how to move Katyal’s advice online.… well, maybe the ulti­mate les­son here is that we’re at our most per­sua­sive when we’re close enough—physically or virtually—to take some­body’s hand.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments: A Fun Primer on How to Strength­en, Not Weak­en, Your Argu­ments

Lit­er­ary The­o­rist Stan­ley Fish Offers a Free Course on Rhetoric, or the Pow­er of Argu­ments

How to Argue With Kind­ness and Care: 4 Rules from Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett

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

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A Creepy 19th Century Re-Creation of the Famous Ancient Roman Statue, Laocoön and His Sons

in Art, History | October 13th, 2020

Beware of Greeks bear­ing gifts. We’ve all heard that proverb, but few of us could name its source: the Tro­jan priest Lao­coön, a his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter in the Aeneid. “Do not trust the Horse, Tro­jans,” Vir­gil has him say. “What­ev­er it is, I fear the Greeks even bear­ing gifts.” He was right to do so, as we all know, though his death came not at the hands of the Greek army let into Troy by the sol­diers hid­den inside the Horse, but those of the gods. As Vir­gil has it, an enraged Lao­coön threw a spear at the Horse when his com­pa­tri­ots dis­re­gard­ed words of cau­tion, and in response the god­dess Min­er­va sent forth a cou­ple of sea ser­pents to do him in.

The Aeneid, of course, offers only one account of Lao­coön’s fate. Sopho­cles, for instance, had him spared and only his sons killed, and his osten­si­ble crime — being a priest yet mar­ry­ing — had noth­ing to do with the Tro­jan Horse. But what­ev­er drew the ser­pents Lao­coön’s way, the moment they set upon him and his sons was immor­tal­ized by Rho­di­an sculp­tors Age­sander, Athen­odor­os, and Poly­dorus in Lao­coön and His Sons, among the most famous ancient sculp­tures in exis­tence since its exca­va­tion in 1506. (The sculp­ture was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed some­where between 200 BC and 70 AD.) Var­i­ous trib­utes have been paid to it over the cen­turies, most notably by an Aus­tri­an anatomist named Josef Hyrtl, whose built his high­ly Hal­loween-suit­able recre­ation out of skele­tons — both human and snake.

“Accord­ing to Christo­pher Polt, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the clas­si­cal stud­ies depart­ment at Boston Col­lege who tweet­ed a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the two ver­sions, Hyrtl cre­at­ed his take on the sculp­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na around 1850,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia. In response, a his­to­ri­an named Gre­go­ry Stringer tweet­ed that Hyrtl must have been able to intu­it the “prop­er pose” of Lao­coön’s right arm, since in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry the sculp­ture’s orig­i­nal arm was still miss­ing, yet to be redis­cov­ered and reat­tached, and since 1510 had been replaced in copies with an incor­rect­ly out­stretched sub­sti­tute. Lao­coön and His Sons now resides at the Vat­i­can (learn more about it in the Smarthis­to­ry video below), but Hyrtl’s skele­tal Lao­coön and His Sons was destroyed in the 1945 Allied bomb­ing of Vien­na.

In 2018, a sim­i­lar project was attempt­ed again for an exhib­it at the Hous­ton Muse­um of Nat­ur­al Sci­ence. The new all-skele­ton ver­sion of Lao­coön and His Sons was cre­at­ed, as the Hous­ton Press’ Jef Rouner reports, by taxi­der­mist Lawyer Dou­glas, taxi­dermy col­lec­tor Tyler Zottarelle, and artist Joshua Ham­mond. “It looks a lot like inter­pre­ta­tive dance,” Rouner quotes Dou­glas as say­ing of Hyrtl’s work. “It’s a beau­ti­ful piece, but I was con­cerned it wasn’t able to cap­ture the orig­i­nal strug­gle of ani­mal ver­sus human.” Though Age­sander, Athen­odor­os, and Poly­dorus’ orig­i­nal is known as a “pro­to­typ­i­cal icon of human agony,” it turns out that “get­ting per­pet­u­al­ly grin­ning skulls to seem in agony is hard­er than you might think.” But if any time of the year is right for grin­ning skulls to express the human expe­ri­ence, sure­ly this is it.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

Cel­e­brate The Day of the Dead with The Clas­sic Skele­ton Art of José Guadalupe Posa­da

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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