Isaac Asimov on How Libraries Can Radically Change Your Life (1971)

in Letters | December 30th, 2022

Back in 1971, Isaac Asi­mov sent a let­ter to cel­e­brate the open­ing of a new library in Troy, Michi­gan. Thought­ful as always, his let­ter addressed the chil­dren of the Troy com­mu­ni­ty as fol­lows: “Con­grat­u­la­tions on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the far­thest reach­es of the Uni­verse, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and con­sole you—and most of all, a gate­way, to a bet­ter and hap­pi­er and more use­ful life.”

In total, 97 writ­ers (includ­ing Dr. Spock, Dr. Seuss and E.B. White) sent let­ters to mark the occa­sion. You can read through them in the Troy Library Flickr stream here.

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

Isaac Asi­mov Laments the “Cult of Igno­rance” in the Unit­ed States (1980)

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future of Civilization–and Rec­om­mends Ways to Ensure That It Sur­vives (1978)

How Isaac Asi­mov Went from Star Trek Crit­ic to Star Trek Fan & Advi­sor

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Watch Restored Versions of Classic Fleischer Cartoons on Youtube, Featuring Betty Boop, Koko the Clown & Others

in Animation, Film, History | December 30th, 2022

Quite a few gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­can chil­dren have by now grown up know­ing the names of Max and Dave Fleis­ch­er — albeit know­ing even bet­ter the names of the char­ac­ters they ani­mat­ed, like Bet­ty Boop, Pop­eye the Sailor, and Super­man. The kids who first thrilled to Max Fleis­cher’s ear­ly “Out of the Inkwell” series, which he start­ed in the late nine­teen-tens and con­tin­ued into the late nine­teen-twen­ties, would nat­u­ral­ly have seen them in a movie the­ater. But most of us under the age of eighty would have received our intro­duc­tion to the live­ly, whim­si­cal, and often bizarre world of the broth­ers Fleis­ch­er through the tele­vi­sion, a medi­um hun­gry for car­toons prac­ti­cal­ly since its incep­tion.

Now view­ers of all ages can enjoy Fleis­ch­er car­toons on Youtube, and in new­ly restored form at that. “The Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored team is ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing Fleis­cher’s films by restor­ing them from orig­i­nal prints and neg­a­tives,” writes Boing Boing’s Rusty Blazen­hoff, adding that “Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed vis­it­ed the Black­hawk Films scan­ning facil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia and spoke with restora­tion expert Steve Stanch­field about the process of bring­ing these clas­sic films back to life.”

The charm of Fleis­ch­er car­toons may still feel effort­less a cen­tu­ry after their cre­ation, but any­one famil­iar with ani­ma­tion knows how painstak­ing that cre­ation would have been; by the same token, bring­ing the sur­viv­ing films back to pris­tine con­di­tion is a more com­pli­cat­ed job than most view­ers would imag­ine.

The cur­rent offer­ings on Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored’s chan­nel include Bet­ty Boop and Pudgy in “Hap­py You and Mer­ry Me,” Bim­bo the Dog in “Teacher’s Pest,” and even the short but lav­ish Tech­ni­col­or fan­ta­sy “Some­where in Dream­land,” which bright­ened up the grim days of the Great Depres­sion for all who saw it. The restor­ers have also worked their mag­ic on Fleis­ch­er hol­i­day car­toons like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer” and “Christ­mas Comes But Once a Year” (includ­ing with the lat­ter a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the new restora­tion with the exist­ing six­teen-mil­lime­ter DVD print). Yes, Christ­mas has just passed, but it will come again next year, and bring with it the lat­est gen­er­a­tion’s chance to be delight­ed by Fleis­ch­er car­toons crisper and more vivid than the ones with which any of us grew up.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

The Trick That Made Ani­ma­tion Real­is­tic: Watch a Short His­to­ry of Roto­scop­ing

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

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 or on Face­book.

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Pelé’s Great World Cup Goals (RIP)

in Sports | December 29th, 2022

Today, the soc­cer leg­end, Pelé, passed away at age 82. The most dom­i­nant play­er of his gen­er­a­tion, Pelé turned pro­fes­sion­al at age 15, won the World Cup at age 17 in 1958 (before win­ning two more World Cups in 1962 and 1970), and ulti­mate­ly scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 pro­fes­sion­al match­es, aver­ag­ing near­ly one goal per game. On the inter­na­tion­al stage, he scored 77 goals for Brazil, 12 of them in the World Cup.

The high­light reel above fea­tures the young Pelé’s goals in the 1958 World Cup. Sep­a­rate­ly, you can see his 5 great­est goals in the World Cup finals here. And, for good mea­sure, we’ve added more footage below that high­lights his mag­i­cal skills across his career.

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 

Video: Bob Mar­ley Plays a Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Albert Camus’ Lessons Learned from Play­ing Goalie: “What I Know Most Sure­ly about Moral­i­ty and Oblig­a­tions, I Owe to Foot­ball”

Why Jorge Luis Borges Hat­ed Soc­cer: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

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The Book of Leaves: A Beautiful Stop Motion Film Featuring 12,000 Pressed Leaves

in Nature | December 29th, 2022

Brett Foxwell metic­u­lous­ly col­lect­ed over 12,000 leaves while walk­ing through forests and parks. Then he care­ful­ly arranged the leaves, many at dif­fer­ent stage of devel­op­ment, into a stop motion sequence. He says:

While col­lect­ing leaves, I con­ceived that the leaf shape [of] every sin­gle plant type I could find would fit some­where into a con­tin­u­ous ani­mat­ed sequence of leaves if that sequence were expan­sive enough. If I did­n’t have the per­fect shape, it meant I just had to col­lect more leaves.

Above, you can see the result of his painstak­ing work. You can also watch anoth­er exact­ing Foxwell ani­ma­tion, The Woodswim­mer, here.

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!

via Petapix­el/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch “The Woodswim­mer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entire­ly with Wood, and “Bru­tal­ly Tedious” Tech­niques

Stun­ning­ly Elab­o­rate Ottoman Cal­lig­ra­phy Drawn on Dried Leaves

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

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Watch You Suck at Cooking, a Hilarious Source for Tasty Recipes and Food Hacks of Questionable Veracity

in Comedy, Food & Drink, Video - Arts & Culture | December 29th, 2022

Is it just us, or did half of Gen Z teach them­selves how to cook on Tik­Tok dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic?

The recipes that go viral have more in com­mon with gonzo sci­ence exper­i­ments than Julia Child’s Coq au Vin.

Hacks are gold­en in this forum — whether or not they actu­al­ly work — and run­ning time is of the essence.

There’s an unmis­tak­able visu­al vocab­u­lary, too — from the god shots of man­i­cured hands dump­ing pre-mea­sured ingre­di­ents into mix­ing bowls to the reveal of the com­plet­ed dish just sec­onds lat­er.

One has to be con­ver­sant in these tropes to sub­vert them as glee­ful­ly as the anony­mous cre­ator of the sev­en year old online series You Suck at Cook­ing.

Unlike such Tik­Tok heavy hit­ters as cloud bread or whipped cof­fee, most of You Suck at Cook­ing’s dish­es are things you might con­sid­er prepar­ing on a reg­u­lar basis, how­ev­er trendy they may be at the moment.

The respon­si­ble par­ty’s cook­ing and edit­ing skills are sol­id, but his writ­ing is the real star here. We also appre­ci­ate the mas­sive amount of plan­ning and care that goes into every five minute episode.

He’s an unabashed coin­er of vocab­u­lary and elab­o­rate ways to refer to straight­for­ward appli­ances and ingre­di­ents. His deliv­ery is mild man­nered, but he doesn’t mince words when it comes to culi­nary bias­es — e.g., condi­ment­ing only one side of the bun is a cer­ti­fi­able burg­er crime and if you don’t like pick­les, one thing you can do is seek help.

Sim­ple dish­es such as overnight oats require so lit­tle instruc­tion, he’s freed up to skew­er the ques­tion­able claims of food-focused well­ness “experts” by lean­ing all the way in.

The spir­it of the project car­ries over into his writ­ten step-by-steps on the rare occa­sions when mere video demon­stra­tion will not suf­fice.

(His cook­book, You Suck at Cook­ing: The Absurd­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide to Suck­ing Slight­ly Less at Mak­ing Food, was pub­lished anony­mous­ly in 2019.)

To get the most from your expe­ri­ence, we rec­om­mend you first watch his deep fried Kore­an-style corn­dog How To, then fol­low the writ­ten recipe:

1. Go to the store 

2. Buy corn dogs 

3. Enjoy 

If you insist on mak­ing corn dogs your­self, first read these fry­ing safe­ty tips

The rea­son home fry­ers are safer than doing it on the stove­top is because they lim­it the heat of your oil so it won’t catch fire. It’s easy to let it get too hot which is very bad news. 

Bat­ter

    • 1 ¼ cups flour 
    • 2 table­spoon sug­ar 
    • ½ tea­spoon salt 
    • 1.3 tea­spoon yeast 
    • 1 egg 
    • 100 ml warm water

Wang­jan­gle until your wrist is furi­ous (I did it for a few min­utes tops)

Let it sit for half an hour 

Dry off any­thing you’re rolling in it 

Peg your dogs 

Roll ‘em 

Roll them in arti­san Ital­ian bread crumbs (okay seri­ous­ly this is a fla­vor game chang­er and I can’t rec­om­mend them enough. Kor­tal­ian food just has such depth. 

Fry for 3 min­utes 

Cool for a few min­utes 

I think any­thing else is pret­ty straight for­ward

When it comes to cook­ing hacks, our hero is a cham­pi­on fab­u­list.

It’s safe to assume that the first tip is legit, after which… well, let’s just say that some of his orange peel­ing meth­ods remind us in the best pos­si­ble way of our old pal Shel Silverstein’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.

Enjoy a playlist of all 150 episodes of You Suck at Cook­ing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

10,000 Vin­tage Recipe Books Are Now Dig­i­tized in The Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book & Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials

in Architecture, History | December 28th, 2022

More than a mil­len­ni­um and a half after its fall, we still look back with won­der on the accom­plish­ments of the ancient Roman Empire. Few ele­ments of its lega­cy impress us as much as its built envi­ron­ment — or in any case, what’s left of its built envi­ron­ment. Still, the fact that any­thing remains at all of the struc­tures built by the Romans tells us that they were doing some­thing right: specif­i­cal­ly, they were doing con­crete right. Just how they made that aston­ish­ing­ly durable build­ing mate­r­i­al has been a sub­ject of research even in recent years, and we even fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture back in 2017. But could we make Roman con­crete today?

Such is the task of Shawn Kel­ly, host of the Youtube chan­nel Cor­po­ral’s Cor­ner, in the video above. Using mate­ri­als like vol­canic ash, pumice and lime­stone, he makes a brick that looks more than sol­id enough to go up against any mod­ern con­crete.

As of this writ­ing, this sim­ple video has racked up more than three mil­lion views, a num­ber that reflects our endur­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the ques­tion of how the ancient Romans cre­at­ed their world — as well as the ques­tion addressed in the high­er-tech Prac­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing video below, “Was Roman Con­crete Bet­ter?”

The fact of the mat­ter is that, despite pos­sess­ing tech­nolo­gies the Romans could hard­ly have imag­ined, their con­crete lasts longer than ours. Why that should be the case comes down, in large part, to water: we put a great deal more of it into our con­crete than the Romans did, in order to pour it more cheap­ly and eas­i­ly. But this makes it more frag­ile and sub­ject to dete­ri­o­ra­tion over time (as seen in the ear­ly dilap­i­da­tion of cer­tain Bru­tal­ist build­ings), even despite our use of chem­i­cal addi­tives and steel rein­force­ment. Roman con­crete was also mixed with sea­wa­ter, which caused the for­ma­tion of crys­tals with­in the mate­r­i­al that actu­al­ly strength­ened it as it aged — thus cement­ing, as one wag in the com­ments puts it, the Romans’ place in his­to­ry.

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:

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Trav­el Today

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

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 or on Face­book.

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How Fast Food Began: The History of This Thoroughly American (and Now Global) Form of Dining

in Food & Drink, History | December 28th, 2022

What is the most Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion of all? The mind first goes in the direc­tions of church, of the mil­i­tary, of foot­ball. But if we con­sid­er only the sys­tems of mod­ern life devel­oped on Unit­ed States soil, the most influ­en­tial must sure­ly be fast food. That influ­ence man­i­fests in not just the home­land but the rest of the world as well, and like every robust Amer­i­can cre­ation, fast food both changes and adapts to the for­eign lands in which it takes root. Though unknown in the U.S., the yel­low motor­cy­cles of McDon­ald’s deliv­ery­men are an every­day sight in the cap­i­tal of South Korea, where I live. That could hard­ly have fig­ured in even the far­thest-reach­ing visions Richard and Mau­rice McDon­ald had for the entire­ly new mod­el of ham­burg­er stand they launched in San Bernardi­no, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1948.

Back in post­war Amer­i­ca, “car cul­ture reigns supreme. Dri­ve-in movies and dri­ve-in restau­rants become all the rage, tak­ing con­ve­nience to anoth­er lev­el.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the clip above, from the fast-food episode of the Net­flix series His­to­ry 101. But before long, dri­ve-ins would be rel­e­gat­ed to the sta­tus of his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, and fast food on the McDon­ald’s mod­el would become near­ly omnipresent.

As with much else in Amer­i­can indus­tri­al his­to­ry, the key was effi­cien­cy. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly run a dri­ve-in, the McDon­ald broth­ers under­stood well how cum­ber­some such oper­a­tions could be, and how they encour­aged cus­tomers to linger rather than spend their mon­ey and be on their way. The stripped-down menu, the stream­lined cook­ing process: every ele­ment was now engi­neered for speed above all.

McDon­ald’s did not, how­ev­er, invent the dri­ve-through. That hon­or goes to a Texas estab­lish­ment called Pig Stand, which first erect­ed that pil­lar of the Amer­i­can way of life back in 1921. In Fast Food: The Fast Lane of Life, the His­to­ry Chanel doc­u­men­tary above, the pres­i­dent of Texas Pig Stands says that the chain’s founder Jessie G. Kir­by “was famous for his quote of say­ing that peo­ple with cars are so lazy that they don’t want to get out of them to go eat. That prophe­cy proved to be very true.” Even as the spread of car own­er­ship across Amer­i­ca and then the world made dri­ve-through fast food into a viable propo­si­tion, it put (and con­tin­ues to put) greater and greater pres­sure on the busi­ness­es to deliv­er their prod­uct in short­er and short­er times.

“Beyond the chal­lenges of tech­ni­cal hard­ware that deliv­ered things fast, the indus­try had to deliv­er a pipeline to deliv­er the food,” says the doc­u­men­tary’s nar­ra­tor. “Through­out the eight­ies, the burg­er giants set about design­ing a net­work of sup­pli­ers that could deliv­er mil­lions of tons of foods to thou­sands of restau­rants at exact­ing stan­dards of uni­for­mi­ty.” This uni­for­mi­ty — ham­burg­ers that cost and taste exact­ly the same, every­where — enchant­ed Andy Warhol, that maven of Amer­i­can mass cul­ture. It has also, arguably, done its part to triv­i­al­ize the rit­u­als of prepar­ing and con­sum­ing food, to say noth­ing of the health dan­gers posed by fre­quent indul­gence in salty, sug­ary, oily meals, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of a seden­tary auto­mo­tive lifestyle. But if you don’t under­stand fast food — and all the tech­no­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social fac­tors that have made it not just pos­si­ble but world-dom­i­nant — can you claim under­stand Amer­i­ca?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whop­per — While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

30,000 Peo­ple Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Gro­cery Store Shelves Run Emp­ty (1990)

How Eat­ing Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en Became a Christ­mas Tra­di­tion in Japan

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

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 or on Face­book.

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American Gothic Explained: How Grant Wood Created His Iconic American Painting (1930)

in Art, History | December 27th, 2022

“We should fear Grant Wood. Every artist and every school of artists should be afraid of him, for his dev­as­tat­ing satire.” Gertrude Stein wrote those words after see­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic, the 1930 paint­ing that would become one of the most icon­ic images cre­at­ed in the Unit­ed States. Yet Wood him­self “said he paint­ed Amer­i­can Goth­ic to extol rur­al Amer­i­can val­ues, real peo­ple in their well-ordered world: an image of reas­sur­ance dur­ing the onset of the Great Depres­sion.” That’s how Art His­to­ry School host Paul Priest­ley puts it in the video above, which asks of the paint­ing, “Is it a satire, or a pos­i­tive state­ment of Amer­i­can rur­al life?”

It could be nei­ther; then again, it could be both. That very ambi­gu­i­ty goes some way to explain­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess — as well as its per­sis­tence in the cul­ture through fre­quent and unceas­ing par­o­dy. Yet in its day, the paint­ing also angered some of its view­ers: “An Iowan farmer’s wife who’d seen the pic­ture in the papers in 1930 tele­phoned Wood to express her anger,” says Priest­ly.

“She claimed she wished to come over and smash his head for depict­ing her coun­try­men as grim Bible-thumpers.” Wood main­tained that he was one of them, “dress­ing in rugged over­alls after the paint­ing was com­plet­ed and telling the press, ‘All the real­ly good ideas I’d ever had come to me while I was milk­ing a cow.’

Yet Wood was no farmer. A son of Cedar Rapids, he trav­eled exten­sive­ly to Europe to study Impres­sion­ism and post-Impres­sion­ism. There he first saw the work of Jan van Eyck, whose com­bi­na­tion of visu­al clar­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty inspired him to devel­op the sig­na­ture look and feel of the move­ment that would come to be known as Region­al­ism. He became “half Euro­pean artiste, half Iowan farm boy,” as Vox’s Phil Edwards puts it in the video just above, all the bet­ter to strad­dle his home­land’s widen­ing divide between town and coun­try. “In 1880, almost half of all Amer­i­cans were on the farm,” but by 1920 more than half the pop­u­la­tion lived in cities. Amer­i­can Goth­ic came a decade lat­er, and most of a cen­tu­ry there­after, it still makes Amer­i­cans ask them­selves — earnest­ly or sar­don­ical­ly — just what kind of peo­ple they are.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What’s the Key to Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s Endur­ing Fame? An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Paint­ing

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

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 or on Face­book.

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