Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro Is Getting Adapted for the Stage by The Royal Shakespeare Company & Jim Henson’s Creature Shop

in Animation, Film, Theatre | July 1st, 2022

The films of Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li have won immense world­wide acclaim, in large part because they so ful­ly inhab­it their medi­um. Their char­ac­ters, their sto­ries, their worlds: all can come ful­ly to life only in ani­ma­tion. Still, it’s true that some of their mate­r­i­al did orig­i­nate in oth­er forms. The pre-Ghi­b­li break­out fea­ture Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, for instance, began as a com­ic book writ­ten and drawn by Miyaza­ki (who at first laid down the con­di­tion that it not be adapt­ed for the screen). Four years lat­er, by the time of My Neigh­bor Totoro, the nature of Ghi­b­li’s visions had become insep­a­ra­ble from that of ani­ma­tion itself.

Now, almost three and a half decades after Totoro’s orig­i­nal release, the pro­duc­tion of a stage ver­sion is well under­way. Play­bill’s Raven Brun­ner reports that the show “will open in Lon­don’s West End at The Bar­bi­can the­atre for a 15-week engage­ment Octo­ber 8‑January 21, 2023.

The pro­duc­tion will be pre­sent­ed by the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Joe Hisaishi.” Japan’s most famous film com­pos­er, Hisaishi scored Totoro as well as all of Miyaza­k­i’s oth­er Ghi­b­li films so far, includ­ing Por­co Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away (itself adapt­ed for the stage in Japan ear­li­er this year).

As you can see in the video just above, the RSC pro­duc­tion of Totoro also involves Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop. “The pup­pets being built at Crea­ture Shop are based on designs cre­at­ed by Basil Twist, one of the UK’s most inno­v­a­tive pup­peteers,” writes Dead­line’s Baz Bamigboye, and they’ll be sup­ple­ment­ed by the work of anoth­er mas­ter, “Mervyn Mil­lar, of Britain’s cut­ting-edge Sig­nif­i­cant Object pup­pet stu­dio.” Even such an assem­bly of pup­pet-mak­ing exper­tise will find it a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge to re-cre­ate the denizens of the enchant­ed coun­try­side in which Totoro’s young pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves — to say noth­ing of the tit­u­lar wood spir­it him­self, with all his mass, mis­chief, and over­all benev­o­lence. As for how they’re rig­ging up the cat bus, Ghi­b­li fans will have to wait until next year to find out.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

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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How the Byzantine Empire Rose, Fell, and Created the Glorious Hagia Sophia: A History in Ten Animated Minutes

in Animation, Architecture, History | June 1st, 2022

If you only know one fact about the Roman Empire, it’s that it declined and fell. If you know anoth­er, it’s that the Roman Empire gave way to the Europe we know today — in the full­ness of time, at least. A good deal of his­to­ry lies between our twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry and the fall of Rome, which in any case would­n’t have seemed like such a deci­sive break when it hap­pened. “Most his­to­ry books will tell you that the Roman Empire fell in the fifth cen­tu­ry CE,” says the nar­ra­tor of the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. “This would’ve come as a great sur­prise to the mil­lions of peo­ple who lived in the Roman Empire up through the Mid­dle Ages.”

This medieval Roman Empire, bet­ter known as the Byzan­tine Empire, began in the year 330. “That’s when Con­stan­tine, the first Chris­t­ian emper­or, moved the cap­i­tal of the Roman Empire to a new city called Con­stan­tino­ple, which he found­ed on the site of the ancient Greek city Byzan­tium.” Not only did Con­stan­tino­ple sur­vive the bar­bar­ian inva­sions of the Empire’s west­ern provinces, it remained the seat of pow­er for eleven cen­turies.

It thus remained a pre­serve of Roman civ­i­liza­tion, aston­ish­ing vis­i­tors with its art, archi­tec­ture, dress, law, and intel­lec­tu­al enter­pris­es. Alas, many of those glo­ries per­ished in the ear­ly thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, when the city was torched by the dis­grun­tled army of deposed ruler Alex­ios Ange­los.

Among the sur­viv­ing struc­tures was the jew­el in Con­stan­tino­ple’s crown Hagia Sophia, about which you can learn more about it in the Ted-ED les­son just above. The long con­ti­nu­ity of the holy build­ing’s loca­tion belies its own trou­bled his­to­ry: first built in the fourth cen­tu­ry, it was destroyed in a riot not long there­after, then rebuilt in 415 and destroyed again when more riots broke out in 532. But just five years lat­er, it was replaced by the Hagia Sophia we know today, which has since been a Byzan­tine Chris­t­ian cathe­dral, a Latin Catholic cathe­dral, a mosque, a muse­um (at the behest of sec­u­lar reformer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), and most recently a mosque again. The Byzan­tine Empire may be long gone, but the end of the sto­ry told by Hagia Sophia is nowhere in sight.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

360 Degree Vir­tu­al Tours of the Hagia Sophia

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recre­at­ed in Authen­tic Byzan­tine Chant

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & 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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Hayao Miyazaki, The Mind of a Master: A Thoughtful Video Essay Reveals the Driving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incredible Body of Work

in Animation, Film | May 9th, 2022

“If the cin­e­ma, by some twist of fate, were to be deprived overnight of the sound track and to become once again the art of silent cin­e­matog­ra­phy that it was between 1895 and 1930, I tru­ly believe most of the direc­tors in the field would be com­pelled to take up some new line of work.” So wrote François Truf­faut in the nine­teen-six­ties, argu­ing that, of film­mak­ers then liv­ing, only Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Alfred Hitch­cock could sur­vive such a return to silence. Alas, Truf­faut died in 1984, the very same year that saw the release of Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the first ani­mat­ed fea­ture by what would become Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. Had he lived longer, he would cer­tain­ly have had to grant its mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­ki pride of place in his small cat­a­log of mas­ter visu­al sto­ry­tellers.

“He does­n’t actu­al­ly write a script,” says Any-Mation Youtu­ber Cole Delaney in “Hayao Miyaza­ki: The Mind of a Mas­ter,” the video essay above. “He might write an out­line with his plan for a fea­ture, but gen­er­al­ly he draws an image and works from there.”

My Neigh­bor Totoro, for instance, began with only the image of a young girl and the tit­u­lar for­est crea­ture stand­ing at a bus stop; from that artis­tic seed every­thing else grew, like the enor­mous tree that Totoro and the chil­dren make grow in the film itself. Delaney also explores oth­er essen­tial aspects of Miyaza­k­i’s process, includ­ing the cre­ation of full worlds with dis­tinc­tive funi­ki, or ambi­ence; the incor­po­ra­tion of Ozu-style “pil­low shots” to shape a film’s space and rhythm; and the cre­ation of pro­tag­o­nists whose strong will trans­lates direct­ly into phys­i­cal motion.

“What dri­ves the ani­ma­tion is the will of the char­ac­ters,” says Miyaza­ki him­self, in a clip Delaney bor­rows from the NHK doc­u­men­tary 10 Years with Hayao Miyaza­ki. “You don’t depict fate, you depict will.” The mas­ter makes oth­er obser­va­tions on his work and life itself, which one sens­es he regards as one and the same. “I want to make a film that won’t shame me,” he says by way of explain­ing his noto­ri­ous per­fec­tion­ism. “I want to stay grumpy,” he says by way of explain­ing his equal­ly noto­ri­ous demeanor in the Ghi­b­li office. As for “the notion that one’s goal in life is to be hap­py, that your own hap­pi­ness is the goal… I just don’t buy it.” Rather, peo­ple must  “live their lives ful­ly, with all their might, with­in their giv­en bound­aries, in their own era.” The sur­pass­ing vital­i­ty of his films reflects his own: “Like it or not,” he says, “a film is a reflec­tion of its direc­tor,” and in these words Truf­faut would sure­ly rec­og­nize a fel­low auteurist-auteur.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

What Made Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta (RIP) a Mas­ter: Two Video Essays

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

The Aes­thet­ic of Ani­me: A New Video Essay Explores a Rich Tra­di­tion of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

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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Watch a New Animation of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

in Animation, Music, Nature, Physics | May 2nd, 2022

…I would like not to under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of the world view which is the result of sci­en­tif­ic effort. We have been led to imag­ine all sorts of things infi­nite­ly more mar­velous than the imag­in­ings of poets and dream­ers of the past.

- Richard Feyn­man

In 1955, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man gave a talk on the val­ue of sci­ence to mem­bers of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the wake of the destruc­tion of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, his involve­ment with the Man­hat­tan Project had been cause for seri­ous depres­sion and soul search­ing.

He con­clud­ed that the pur­suit of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge remained valu­able to soci­ety, even though such knowl­edge comes with­out oper­at­ing instruc­tions, and thus can be put to evil pur­pos­es.

In the Cal­tech speech, he cit­ed the life improv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and med­ical break­throughs that are the result of sci­en­tif­ic explo­rations, as well as the sci­en­tif­ic field­’s alle­giance to the con­cept that we must be free to dis­sent, ques­tion, and dis­cuss:

If we sup­press all dis­cus­sion, all crit­i­cism, pro­claim­ing “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom human­i­ty for a long time to the chains of author­i­ty, con­fined to the lim­its of our present imag­i­na­tion.

(This strikes a pro­found chord in 2022, remem­ber­ing how some extreme­ly vocal politi­cians and cit­i­zens took chang­ing pub­lic health man­dates as evi­dence of con­spir­a­cy, rather than an ever-deep­en­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of how an unfa­mil­iar virus was oper­at­ing.)

Any child with an inter­est in STEM will be grat­i­fied to learn that Feyn­man also found much to admire in “the fun …which some peo­ple get from read­ing and learn­ing and think­ing about (sci­ence), and which oth­ers get from work­ing in it.

Through­out his speech, he refrained from tech­ni­cal jar­gon, using lan­guage that those whose pas­sions skew more toward the arts can under­stand to invoke the expe­ri­ence of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.

His med­i­ta­tions con­cern­ing the inter­con­nect­ed­ness between every mol­e­cule “stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness” and every­thing else in the known uni­verse, includ­ing him­self, a human stand­ing beside the sea, try­ing to make sense of it all, is of a piece with Shake­speare and Walt Whit­man.

Unti­tled Ode to the Won­der of Life

by Richard Feyn­man

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.

There are the rush­ing waves

moun­tains of mol­e­cules

each stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness

tril­lions apart

yet form­ing white surf in uni­son.

Ages on ages before any eyes could see

year after year

thun­der­ous­ly pound­ing the shore as now.

For whom, for what?

On a dead plan­et

with no life to enter­tain.

Nev­er at rest

tor­tured by ener­gy

wast­ed prodi­gious­ly by the sun

poured into space.

A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea

all mol­e­cules repeat

the pat­terns of one anoth­er

till com­plex new ones are formed.

They make oth­ers like them­selves

and a new dance starts.

Grow­ing in size and com­plex­i­ty

liv­ing things

mass­es of atoms

DNA, pro­tein

danc­ing a pat­tern ever more intri­cate.

Out of the cra­dle

onto dry land

here it is

stand­ing: atoms with con­scious­ness;

mat­ter with curios­i­ty.

Stands at the sea,

won­ders at won­der­ing: I

a uni­verse of atoms

an atom in the uni­verse

The Mar­gin­a­lian’s (for­mer­ly Brain Pick­ings) Maria Popo­va seizes on this inter­lude for the final install­ment of her video series, The Uni­verse in Verse, above, col­lab­o­rat­ing with ani­ma­tor Kel­li Ander­son on a “per­spec­tive-broad­en­ing, mind-deep­en­ing” visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Feynman’s excerpt­ed remarks.

Flow­ing under and around Feynman’s nar­ra­tion is an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion by cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, whose renown in the field of music is on par with Feynman’s in physics, and who notes in the intro­duc­tion to The Quotable Feyn­man:

While he paid close atten­tion to prob­lems we face and gen­er­ate, he also knew that humans are a sub­set of nature, and nature held for him the great­est fas­ci­na­tion — for the imag­i­na­tion of nature is far, far greater than the imag­i­na­tion of man, and nature guards her secrets jeal­ous­ly.

Read Feynman’s com­plete speech to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty here.

Watch all nine chap­ters of The Uni­verse in Verse here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Video

- 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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Behold 3D Recreations of Pompeii’s Lavish Homes–As They Existed Before the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius

in Animation, Archaeology, Architecture, History | April 19th, 2022

“I pray that to their share of noble for­tunes [Zeus] send no Neme­sis of jeal­ous will, but in pros­per­i­ty and free from ills, exalt them and their city.” Pin­dar, Olympian Ode 8

Why are humans awestruck by nat­ur­al dis­as­ter? Or — more to the point — why are we dumb­found­ed when dis­as­ters destroy cities? We should hard­ly be sur­prised at this point when nature does what it invari­ably does: tec­ton­ic plates shift, vol­ca­noes erupt, hur­ri­canes and typhoons sweep the coasts…. These things have always hap­pened on Earth, with or with­out our help, and for many mil­lions of years before any­thing like us showed up.

Like the myth­i­cal Nar­cis­sus, we can only see our­selves and assume every­thing that hap­pens must be for us. After the Great Lis­bon Earth­quake in Por­tu­gal in 1755, “Lis­bon’s devout Catholic pop­u­la­tion saw the ruined city as divine pun­ish­ment,” writes Lau­ra Trethewey.

“The Protes­tant coun­tries of Europe also saw the destruc­tion as pun­ish­ment, but for back­ward Catholic behav­ior.” Mean­while, philoso­phers like Voltaire, who wrote Can­dide to sat­i­rize respons­es to the quake, saw the cat­a­stro­phe as more evi­dence that a cre­ator, if such a being had ever cared, cared no more.

In Greek and Roman mythol­o­gy, the gods nev­er stop med­dling, pun­ish­ing, reward­ing, etc. Nar­cis­sus is tempt­ed to gaze at him­self by Neme­sis, the god­dess who meets hubris with swift ret­ri­bu­tion. While gen­er­al­ly invoked as a lev­el­er of indi­vid­u­als who over­step, she also lev­els cities, as fifth cen­tu­ry BC Greek poet Pin­dar sug­gests when he begs Zeus to spare the island city of Aegi­na from her wrath. Per­haps, then, it was Neme­sis, winged vengeance her­self, that the cit­i­zens of Pom­peii believed bore down upon them, as molten lava, smoke, and ash.

From its ear­li­est sta­tus as a Roman-allied city (then Roman colony), Pom­peii grew into a very wealthy area, its sur­round­ing lands rich with vil­las and farms, its city cen­ter anchored by its Amphithe­ater, Odeon, Forum Baths and tem­ples, its run­ning water arriv­ing from the Seri­no Aque­duct. Maybe they had it too good? Maybe their extrav­a­gant good for­tune caused too much jeal­ous­ly in the neigh­bors? Maybe the gods demand­ed bal­ance. It’s very human to think so — to ascribe divine will, in the lack of expla­na­tion, for why some­thing so filled with teem­ing life should be destroyed for no rea­son at all.

It must have been the gods, who looked down on Pom­pei­i’s wealth and grew jeal­ous them­selves. In these 3D ani­mat­ed videos, see why ancient Pom­pei­ians would have been proud of their city, recre­at­ed here in part by Swe­den’s Lund Uni­ver­si­ty and Sto­ried Past Pro­duc­tions. “While in Pom­peii few could reach the elite,” notes the lat­ter in their descrip­tion of the video above, “many tried to recre­ate ‘the good life’ in their own ways.… From grand urban vil­las, to small pri­vate homes, to small­er apart­ments.” In these walk­throughs, you can “see all the dif­fer­ent things ‘home’ could mean in ancient Pom­peii.” You might also, if you aren’t care­ful, find your­self get­ting a lit­tle envi­ous of these doomed ancient urban­ites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

The Lit­tle-Known Bomb­ing of Pom­peii Dur­ing World War II

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

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

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Watch “Pass the Ball,” a Collaborative Animation Made by 40 Animators Across the Globe

in Animation | February 17th, 2022

Over 40 months, 40 ani­ma­tors con­tributed to mak­ing a short ani­ma­tion. The process went some­thing like this: An ani­ma­tor cre­at­ed a three sec­ond seg­ment, then passed it to anoth­er ani­ma­tor in a dif­fer­ent coun­try. Then, that next ani­ma­tor made a new con­tri­bu­tion, inch­ing things for­ward.

Above you can watch the final prod­uct. It’s the brain­child of Nathan Boey. Enjoy.

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 The Kids Should See This

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Tate Kids Presents Introductions to Art Movements: Cubism, Impressionism, Surrealism & More

in Animation, Art, K-12, Museums, Video - Arts & Culture | February 8th, 2022

Tate Kids has a sol­id grasp on the sort of hands on art-relat­ed con­tent that appeals to chil­dren — Make a mud paint­ing! Make a spaghet­ti sculp­ture! Pho­to fil­ter chal­lenge!

Chil­dren of all ages, grown ups who skipped out on art his­to­ry includ­ed, will ben­e­fit from their break­neck overviews of entire art move­ments.

Take cubism.

The Tate Kids’ ani­ma­tion, above, pro­vides a sol­id if speedy overview, zip­ping through eight can­vas­es, six artists, and expla­na­tions of the move­men­t’s two phas­es — ana­lyt­i­cal and syn­thet­ic. (Three phas­es if you count Orphism, the abstract, cubist influ­enced paint­ing style mar­ried artists Robert and Sonia Delau­nay hatched around 1912.)

Giv­en the intend­ed audi­ence, the fond friend­ship between the fathers of cubism, Georges Braque and Pablo Picas­so looms large, with nary a peep about Picasso’s nar­cis­sism and misog­y­ny. And it must be said that the narrator’s tone grates a bit — a bit too loud, a bit too wowed.

The Impres­sion­ists come off as the real cool kids, with a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tor, and nifty col­lage ani­ma­tions that find Camille Pis­sar­ro throw­ing horns and a Mohawked Alfred Sis­ley as they reject the Salon’s insis­tence on “myths, bat­tles and paint­ings of impor­tant peo­ple.”

Their defi­ant spir­it is sup­port­ed by crit­i­cism that most def­i­nite­ly has not stood the test of time:

Pure evil! 

Wall­pa­per! 

Like a mon­key has got hold of a box of paints!

Kid pre­sen­ters seize the con­trols for an intro­duc­tion to the mid-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese avant-garde move­ment, Gutai.

Their con­clu­sion?

Smash­ing things up is fun!

As are man­i­festos:

Let’s bid farewell to the hoax­es piled up on the altars and in the palaces, the draw­ing rooms and the antique shops…Lock up these corpses in the grave­yard!

Yay!

Those who are poor­ly equipped to stom­ach the nar­ra­tors’ whizbang enthu­si­asm should take a restora­tive min­utes to vis­it the muse­um oranges in hand, with 12-year-old Jae­da and 9‑year-old Fati­matu. Their calm will­ing­ness to engage with con­cep­tu­al art is a ton­ic:

When I start­ed art, I though art was just about mak­ing it per­fect, but you don’t have to care what oth­er peo­ple say. That could still mean an art to you.

Watch a Tate Kids Art Move­ments playlist on YouTube. Sup­ple­ment what you’ve learned with a host of Tate Kids activ­i­ties, col­or­ing pages, games, quizzes, artist bios and a gallery of crowd­sourced kid art.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Tate Dig­i­tizes 70,000 Works of Art: Pho­tos, Sketch­books, Let­ters & More

Watch the Tate Mod­ern Restore Mark Rothko’s Van­dal­ized Paint­ing, Black on Maroon: 18 Months of Work Con­densed Into 17 Min­utes

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

- 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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A Brief Animated History of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses & the Reformation–Which Changed Europe and Later the World

in Animation, History, Religion | January 31st, 2022

What­ev­er our reli­gious back­ground, we all soon­er or lat­er have occa­sion to speak of nail­ing the­ses to a door. Most of us use the phrase as a metaphor, but sel­dom entire­ly with­out aware­ness of the his­tor­i­cal events that inspired it. On Octo­ber 31, 1517, a Ger­man priest and the­olo­gian named Mar­tin Luther nailed to the door of Wit­ten­berg’s All Saints’ Church his own the­ses, 95 of them, which col­lec­tive­ly made an argu­ment against the Roman Catholic Church’s prac­tice of sell­ing indul­gences, or par­dons for sins. Luther could not accept that the poor should “spend all their mon­ey buy­ing their way out of pun­ish­ment so they can go to heav­en,” nor that it should be “eas­i­er for the rich to avoid a long time in pur­ga­to­ry.”

In oth­er words, Luther believed that the Church in his time had become “way too much about mon­ey and too lit­tle about God,” accord­ing to the nar­ra­tion of the short film above. Cre­at­ed by Tum­ble­head Stu­dios and show­cased by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic for the 500th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal the­sis-nail­ing, its five play­ful­ly ani­mat­ed min­utes tell the sto­ry of the Ref­or­ma­tion, which saw Protes­tantism split off from Catholi­cism as a result of Luther’s agi­ta­tion. It also man­ages to include such events as Luther’s own trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment, pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able only in Greek and Latin, into his native Ger­man, the pub­li­ca­tion of which cre­at­ed the basis of the mod­ern Ger­man lan­guage as spo­ken and writ­ten today.

Luther’s trans­la­tion gave ordi­nary peo­ple “the oppor­tu­ni­ty to read the Bible in their own lan­guage,” free from the inter­pre­ta­tions of the priests and the Church. It also gave them, per­haps less inten­tion­al­ly, the abil­i­ty to “use the words of the Bible as an argu­ment for all sorts of things.” Luther’s thoughts were soon mar­shaled “in the pow­er strug­gles of princes, in revolts, and in the strug­gle between kings, princes, and the Pope about who actu­al­ly decides what.” Squab­bles, bat­tles, and full-scale wars ensued. The con­se­quent insti­tu­tion­al schisms changed the world in ways vis­i­ble half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er — but they first changed Europe, where traces of that trans­for­ma­tion still reveal them­selves most strik­ing­ly. Few trav­el­ers can be trust­ed to find and explain those traces more ably than pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host Rick Steves.

In Luther and the Ref­or­ma­tion, his 2017 spe­cial above, Steves vis­its all the impor­tant sites involved in the cen­tral fig­ure’s life jour­ney, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion in micro­cosm of Europe’s grand shift from medieval­ism into moder­ni­ty.  In more than 40 years of pro­fes­sion­al trav­el, Steves has paid count­less vis­its to the mon­u­ments of Catholic Europe. Appre­ci­at­ing them, he admit­ted in a recent New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file, required him to “park my Protes­tant sword at the door.” His sto­ry-of-the-Ref­or­ma­tion tour, how­ev­er, lets him draw on his own Luther­an tra­di­tion with his char­ac­ter­is­tic enthu­si­asm. That enthu­si­asm, in part, that has made him a such a suc­cess­ful trav­el entre­pre­neur, though he pre­sum­ably knows when to stop amass­ing wealth: after all, it’s eas­i­er for a camel to go through the eye of a nee­dle than for a rich man to enter the king­dom of God. Or so the New Tes­ta­ment has it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the World’s Five Major Reli­gions: Hin­duism, Judaism, Bud­dhism, Chris­tian­i­ty & Islam

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Reli­gion: Watch New Ani­ma­tions by The Open Uni­ver­si­ty

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC – 2000 AD)

The Reli­gious Affil­i­a­tion of Com­ic Book Heroes

Chris­tian­i­ty Through Its Scrip­tures: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 11 Sea­sons of America’s Favorite Trav­el­er Free Online

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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