Visit a Gallery of 300 Striking Posters from the May 1968 Uprising in Paris

in Art, History, Politics | May 4th, 2018

Among the many oth­er 50ths com­mem­o­rat­ed this year, one will large­ly go unno­ticed by the U.S. press, giv­en that it hap­pened in France, a coun­try we like to ignore as much as pos­si­ble, and con­cerned the pol­i­tics of anar­chists and com­mu­nists, peo­ple we like to pre­tend don’t exist except as car­i­ca­tures in scare-mon­ger­ing car­toons. But the French remem­ber May 1968, and not only on its fifti­eth. The wild­cat strikes, stu­dent march­es, and bar­ri­cades in the Latin Quar­ter haunt French pol­i­tics. “We’re slight­ly pris­on­ers of a myth,” laments his­to­ri­an Danielle Tar­takowsky.

The inter­na­tion­al his­tor­i­cal events sur­round­ing the strikes and march­es are well-known or should be. The found­ing ethos of the move­ment, Sit­u­a­tion­ism, per­haps less so. Read­ing Guy Debord’s Soci­ety of the Spec­ta­cle and the 1968 movement’s oth­er essen­tial texts can feel like look­ing into a fun­house mir­ror.

The 1966 pam­phlet man­i­festo that began the stu­dent agi­ta­tion—“On the Pover­ty of Stu­dent Life”—might sound mighty famil­iar: it has no kind words for con­sumerist stu­dent rad­i­cals who “con­vert their uncon­scious con­tempt into a blind enthu­si­asm.” Yet they have been attacked, it clar­i­fies, “from the wrong point of view.”

Since we seem to be, in some dena­tured way, reliv­ing events of fifty years ago, the think­ing of that not-so-dis­tant moment illu­mi­nates our cir­cum­stances. “If there’s one thing in com­mon between 1968 and today,” remarks Antoine Gué­gan, whose father Gérard staged Paris cam­pus sit-ins, “it’s young people’s despair. But it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of despair…. Today’s youth is fac­ing a moment of stag­na­tion, with lit­tle to lean on.” Despite the riotous, bloody nature of the times, a glob­al move­ment then found rea­son for hope.

We see it reflect­ed in the defi­ant art and cin­e­ma of the time, from rev­o­lu­tion­ary work by a 75-year-old Joan Miró to vérité film by 20-year-old wun­derkind Philippe Gar­rel. And we see it, espe­cial­ly, in the huge num­ber of posters print­ed to adver­tise the move­ment, rad­i­cal graph­ic designs that illus­trate the exhil­a­ra­tion and defi­ance of the loose col­lec­tive of Marx­ists-Lenin­ists, Trot­skyites, Maoists, Anar­chists, Sit­u­a­tion­ists, and so on who pro­pelled the move­ment for­ward.

Last year, we fea­tured a gallery of these arrest­ing images from the Ate­lier Pop­u­laire, a group of artists and stu­dents, notes Dan­ger­ous Minds, which “occu­pied the École des Beaux-Arts and ded­i­cat­ed its efforts to pro­duc­ing thou­sands of silk-screened posters using bold, icon­ic imagery and slo­gans as well as explic­it­ly collective/anonymous author­ship.” Today, we bring you a huge gallery of more than 300 such images, housed online at Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Some of the images are down­load­able. You can request down­loads of oth­ers from the uni­ver­si­ty library for pri­vate use or pub­li­ca­tion. These posters rep­re­sent a move­ment con­fronting an oppres­sive soci­ety with its own log­ic, a soci­ety of which Debord wrote just the pre­vi­ous year, “the spec­ta­cle is not a col­lec­tion of images; it is a social rela­tion between peo­ple that is medi­at­ed by images.” There is no under­stand­ing of the events of May 1968 with­out an under­stand­ing of its visu­al cul­ture as, Debord wrote, “a means of uni­fi­ca­tion.” Enter the gallery of posters and prints here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Gallery of Visu­al­ly Arrest­ing Posters from the May 1968 Paris Upris­ing

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

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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Enter an Online Interactive Documentary on M.C. Escher’s Art & Life, Narrated By Peter Greenaway

in Art | April 23rd, 2018

Despite their enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty, the enig­mat­ic works of Dutch artist M.C. Esch­er have not, per­haps, received their due in the high art world. But he is beloved by col­lege-dorm-room-dec­o­ra­tors, Haight-Ash­bury hip­pies, math­e­mati­cians, doc­tors, and den­tists, who put his art on their walls, says Micky Pil­lar, for­mer cura­tor of the Esch­er Muse­um in The Hague, because “they think it’s a great way of get­ting peo­ple engaged and for­get­ting about real­i­ty.” Math­e­mat­i­cal giants Roger Pen­rose and HSM Cox­eter “were daz­zled by Escher’s work as stu­dents in 1954,” notes The Guardian’s Maev Kennedy. Mick Jag­ger was a huge fan, though Esch­er turned him down when asked to draw an album cov­er, annoyed at being addressed by his first name (Mau­rits).

Esch­er, says Ian Dejardin—director of the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery in London—“may have been the only per­son in the world who had nev­er heard of the Rolling Stones.” It wasn’t that he ignored the world around him, but that he focused his career on invent­ing anoth­er one, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion first from the Ital­ian coun­try­side and cityscapes, after set­tling in Rome, and lat­er turn­ing to what he called “men­tal imagery”: the para­dox­i­cal por­traits, fan­tas­ti­cal shift­ing shapes, and mind-bend­ing pat­terns, so absorb­ing that peo­ple in wait­ing rooms for­get their dis­com­fort and anx­i­ety when look­ing at them.

One of the most famous of such works, 1939’s Meta­mor­pho­sis II, owes its cre­ation to the his­tor­i­cal pres­sures of Ital­ian fas­cism and the geo­met­ric fas­ci­na­tions of Islam­ic art. After leav­ing Rome in 1935 as polit­i­cal ten­sions rose, Esch­er found him­self inspired by his sec­ond vis­it to The Alham­bra in Spain. Its “lav­ish tile work,” as the Nation­al Gallery of Art writes, “sug­gest­ed new direc­tions in the use of col­or and the flat­tened pat­tern­ing of inter­lock­ing forms.” So intri­cate and tech­ni­cal­ly daz­zling is the four-meter-long print that it mer­its an in-depth look at its con­text and com­po­si­tion.

That’s exact­ly what you’ll find at a new “inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary” on Meta­mor­pho­sis II, by the mak­ers of a sim­i­lar fea­ture on Hierony­mus Bosch’s Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The online resource lets users scroll across the print, zoom­ing in to an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of detail, or zoom­ing out to see how it tran­si­tions sec­tion by sec­tion, from the word “meta­mor­phose,” to a checker­board pat­tern, to lizards, hon­ey­combs, bees, hum­ming­birds, fish, etc.. Along the way, you can click on lit­tle col­ored hexa­gons (that trans­form into cubes) and bring up short arti­cles on Escher’s life and aspects of the work at hand. Each of these fea­turettes is nar­rat­ed (in the Eng­lish ver­sion) by British film­mak­er and artist Peter Green­away. Once you open one of these explana­to­ry win­dows, a nav­i­ga­tion tool (above) appears at the bot­tom of the screen.

We see how the var­i­ous ani­mals in Escher’s “sys­tem­at­ic tes­sel­la­tions,” as he called them, were cho­sen by virtue of their shape as well as Escher’s inter­est in their life cycles and meth­ods of orga­ni­za­tion. “Nature was a source of won­drous beau­ty for Esch­er,” the doc­u­men­tary explains. “In his jour­nals and let­ters, he often wrote about what sur­prised, amazed or moved him” in the nat­ur­al world. Some of the Meta­mor­pho­sis II sec­tions appeared in lat­er works like 1943’s Rep­tiles. Esch­er drew atten­tion both to the nat­ur­al world’s vari­ety and its genius for repeat­ed pat­terns. But the move­ment from one ani­mal to the next has noth­ing to do with zool­o­gy.

Esch­er delight­ed in play­ing “mind asso­ci­a­tion games.” We learn that as a child, “he would lie in bed and think of two sub­jects for which he had to cre­ate a log­i­cal con­nec­tion.” In one exam­ple he gave, he would attempt to find his way from “a tram con­duc­tor to a kitchen chair.” Meta­mor­pho­sis II gives us a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of such games, men­tal leaps that chal­lenge our sense of the order of things. The doc­u­men­tary sit­u­ates this fas­ci­nat­ing work in a his­tor­i­cal and aes­thet­ic con­text that allows us to make sense of it while adding to our appre­ci­a­tion for its strange­ness, offer­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways of approach­ing the work, as well as an invi­ta­tion to make your own.

One fea­ture, the “Meta­mor­pho­sis Machine,” lets you choose from a selec­tion of start­ing and end­ing pat­terns. Then it fills in the trans­for­ma­tion in the mid­dle. The results are hard­ly Esch­er-qual­i­ty, but they are a fun and acces­si­ble way of under­stand­ing the work of an artist whose vision can seem for­bid­ding, with its impos­si­ble spaces and dis­ori­ent­ing trans­for­ma­tions. Enter the Meta­mor­pho­sis II inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

M.C. Esch­er Cov­er Art for Great Books by Ita­lo Calvi­no, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

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

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

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The Salvador Dalí Action Figure

in Art | April 23rd, 2018

First came the Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure, the Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure, and the Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, Com­plete with Detach­able Ear. And soon they can all pal around with the Sal­vador Dalí Action Fig­ure.

With six days to go, 693 back­ers have pledged $15,676 to a Kick­starter cam­paign that’s hop­ing to raise a total of $26,158. Should they reach that goal, a com­pa­ny called Today Is Art Day will put into pro­duc­tion a charm­ing Dali fig­ure. Stand­ing five inch­es tall, the fig­ure “comes with 3 sets of wacky inter­change­able mus­tach­es” and “deluxe mus­tach­es made of stain­less steel.” The Dalí fig­ure “holds his sig­na­ture melt­ing clock,” and there are five Dalí mas­ter­pieces to dis­play on a minia­ture easel. Appar­ent­ly endorsed by the Gala-Sal­vador Dalí Foun­da­tion, the fig­ure should go into pro­duc­tion this August. Help Kick­start things here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Librar­i­an Action Fig­ure: The Caped Cru­sad­er Who Fights Against Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Igno­rance & Cen­sor­ship Every­where

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

The Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, Com­plete with Detach­able Ear

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How the Iconic Eames Lounge Chair Is Made, From Start to Finish

in Art | April 18th, 2018

In 1956, Charles and Ray Eames unveiled a lounge chair that did some­thing spe­cial. It took mod­ern design and made it com­fort­able. It placed “the sit­ter into a volup­tuous lux­u­ry that few mor­tals since Nero have known.” Below, you can revis­it the orig­i­nal unveil­ing of the Eames Lounge Chair, which took place on the Home Show, an Amer­i­can day­time TV pro­gram host­ed by Arlene Fran­cis. And above, you can watch the mak­ing of the Eames Lounge Chair, which remains very much in pro­duc­tion and demand today. It’s still a sta­ple of the Her­man Miller fur­ni­ture col­lec­tion. Some aspects of the pro­duc­tion have got­ten a bit more high tech, of course. And the orig­i­nal Brazil­ian rose­wood has been replaced by a more sus­tain­able Pal­isander rose­wood. But the high-touch process remains oth­er­wise large­ly the same. Orig­i­nal­ly priced at $310, the Eames Lounge Chair will now set you back $5,295.

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:

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Lounge Chair Debuts on Amer­i­can TV (1956)

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

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An Avalanche of Novels, Films and Other Works of Art Will Soon Enter the Public Domain: Virginia Woolf, Charlie Chaplin, William Carlos Williams, Buster Keaton & More

in Art, Books, Film, Literature, Music | April 17th, 2018

There may be no sweet­er sound to the ears of Open Cul­ture writ­ers than the words “pub­lic domain”—you might even go so far as to call it our “cel­lar door.” The phrase may not be as musi­cal, but the fact that many of the world’s cul­tur­al trea­sures can­not be copy­right­ed in per­pe­tu­ity means that we can con­tin­ue to do what we love: curat­ing the best of those trea­sures for read­ers as they appear online. Pub­lic domain means com­pa­nies can sell those works with­out incur­ring any costs, but it also means that any­one can give them away for free. “Any­one can re-pub­lish” pub­lic domain works, notes Life­hack­er, “or chop them up and use them in oth­er projects.” And there­by emerges the remix­ing and repur­pos­ing of old arti­facts into new ones, which will them­selves enter the pub­lic domain of future gen­er­a­tions.

Some of those future works of art may even become the next Great Amer­i­can Nov­el, if such a thing still exists as any­thing more than a hack­neyed cliché. Of course, no one seri­ous­ly goes around say­ing they’re writ­ing the “Great Amer­i­can Nov­el,” unless they’re Philip Roth in the 70s or William Car­los Williams (top right) in the 20s, who both some­how pulled off using the phrase as a title (though Roth’s book does­n’t quite live up to it.) Where Roth casu­al­ly used the con­cept in a light nov­el about base­ball, Williams’ The Great Amer­i­can Nov­el approached it with deep con­cern for the sur­vival of the form itself. His mod­ernist text “engages the tech­niques of what we would now call metafic­tion,” writes lit­er­ary schol­ar April Boone, “to par­o­dy worn out for­mu­las and con­tent and, iron­i­cal­ly, to cre­ate a new type of nov­el that antic­i­pates post­mod­ern fic­tion.”

We will all, as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2019, have free, unfet­tered access to Williams’ metafic­tion­al shake-up of the for­mu­la­ic sta­tus quo, when “hun­dreds of thou­sands of… books, musi­cal scores, and films first pub­lished in the Unit­ed States dur­ing 1923” enter the pub­lic domain, as Glenn Fleish­man writes at The Atlantic. Because of the com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of U.S. copy­right law—especially the 1998 “Son­ny Bono Act” that suc­cess­ful­ly extend­ed a copy­right law from 50 to 70 years (for the sake, it’s said, of Mick­ey Mouse)—it has been twen­ty years since such a mas­sive trove of mate­r­i­al has become avail­able all at once. But now, and “for sev­er­al decades from 2019 onward,” Fleish­man points out, “each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works pub­lished 95 years ear­li­er.”

In oth­er words, it’ll be Christ­mas all over again in Jan­u­ary every year, and while you can browse the pub­li­ca­tion dates of your favorite works your­self to see what’s com­ing avail­able in com­ing years, you’ll find at The Atlantic a short list of lit­er­ary works includ­ed in next-year’s mass-release, includ­ing books by Aldous Hux­ley, Win­ston Churchill, Carl Sand­burg, Edith Whar­ton, and P.G. Wode­house. Life­hack­er has sev­er­al more exten­sive lists, which we excerpt below:

Movies [see many more at Indiewire]

All these movies, includ­ing:

  • Cecil B. DeMille’s (first, less famous, silent ver­sion of) The Ten Com­mand­ments
  • Harold Lloyd’s Safe­ty Last!, includ­ing that scene where he dan­gles off a clock tow­er, and his Why Wor­ry?
  • A long line-up of fea­ture-length silent films, includ­ing Buster Keaton’s Our Hos­pi­tal­ityand Char­lie Chaplin’s The Pil­grim
  • Short films by Chap­lin, Keaton, Lau­rel and Hardy, and Our Gang (lat­er Lit­tle Ras­cals)
  • Car­toons includ­ing Felix the Cat(the char­ac­ter first appeared in a 1919 car­toon)
  • Mar­lene Dietrich’s film debut, a bit part in the Ger­man silent com­e­dy The Lit­tle Napoleon; also the debuts of Dou­glas Fair­banks Jr. and Fay Wray

Music

All this music, includ­ing these clas­sics:

  • “King Porter Stomp”
  • “Who’s Sor­ry Now?”
  • “Tin Roof Blues”
  • “That Old Gang of Mine”
  • “Yes! We Have No Bananas”
  • “I Cried for You”
  • “The Charleston”—written to accom­pa­ny, and a big fac­tor in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of, the Charleston dance
  • Igor Stravinsky’s “Octet for Wind Instru­ments”

Lit­er­a­ture

All these books, and these books, includ­ing the clas­sics:

  • Mrs. Dal­loway by Vir­ginia Woolf
  • Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
  • The Ego and the Id by Sig­mund Freud
  • Towards a New Archi­tec­ture by Le Cor­busier
  • Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter Wim­sey nov­el by Dorothy L. Say­ers
  • Two of Agatha Christie’s Her­cule Poirot nov­els, The Mur­der of Roger Ack­royd and The Mur­der on the Links
  • The Pris­on­er, vol­ume 5 of Mar­cel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (note that Eng­lish trans­la­tions have their own copy­rights)
  • The Com­plete Works of Antho­ny Trol­lope
  • George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan
  • Short sto­ries by Christie, Vir­ginia Woolf, H.P. Love­craft, Kather­ine Mans­field, and Ernest Hem­ing­way
  • Poet­ry by Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay, E.E. Cum­mings, William Car­los Williams, Rain­er Maria Rilke, Wal­lace Stevens, Robert Frost, Suku­mar Ray, and Pablo Neru­da
  • Works by Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, Edith Whar­ton, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bul­gakov, Jean Cocteau, Ita­lo Sve­vo, Aldous Hux­ley, Win­ston Churchill, G.K. Chester­ton, Maria Montes­sori, Lu Xun, Joseph Con­rad, Zane Grey, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Bur­roughs

Art

These art­works, includ­ing:

  • Con­stan­tin Brâncuși’s Bird in Space
  • Hen­ri Matisse’s Odal­isque With Raised Arms
  • Mar­cel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bach­e­lors, Even (The Large Glass)
  • Yokoya­ma Taikan’s Metempsy­chosis
  • Work by M. C. Esch­er, Pablo Picas­so, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Max Ernst, and Man Ray

Again, these are only par­tial lists of high­lights, and such high­lights…. Speak­ing for myself, I can­not wait for free access to the very best (and even worst, and weird­est, and who-knows-what-else) of 1923. And of 1924 in 2020, and 1925 and 2021, and so on and so on….

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Pub­lic Domain: A Deep­er Dive Into the Col­lec­tion

The Pub­lic Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

List of Great Pub­lic Domain Films 

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

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Artists Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera Visit Leon Trotsky in Mexico: Vintage Footage from 1938

in Art, History | April 11th, 2018


Here’s some very rare footage of the great Mex­i­can painters Diego Rivera and Fri­da Kahlo pay­ing a vis­it to exiled Sovi­et rev­o­lu­tion­ary Leon Trot­sky and his wife, Natalia Sedo­va, in Coy­ocoán, Mex­i­co, in 1938.

The Trot­skys had arrived the year before, after Rivera peti­tioned the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Lázaro Cár­de­nas to grant the con­tro­ver­sial Marx­ist leader and the­o­rist sanc­tu­ary in Mex­i­co. When the Trot­skys arrived on a Nor­we­gian oil tanker at the port city of Tampi­co in Jan­u­ary of 1937, Rivera was not well, but Kahlo board­ed the ship to wel­come the Trot­skys and accom­pa­nied them on an armored train to Mex­i­co City. She invit­ed the Trot­skys to stay at her fam­i­ly home, La Casa Azul (the Blue House) in Coy­ocoán, now a sec­tion of Mex­i­co City. By the time this footage was tak­en by a vis­it­ing Amer­i­can named Ivan Heisler, Trot­sky and Kahlo had either had, or were about to have, a brief affair, and the friend­ship between the two cou­ples would soon fall apart. In ear­ly 1939 Trot­sky moved to anoth­er house in the same neigh­bor­hood, where he was assas­si­nat­ed in August of 1940.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mov­ing Short Films of Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the “Blue House”

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Attempt­ing to Set the World Record for Most Fri­da Kahlo Looka­likes in One Place: It Hap­pened in Dal­las

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Doc Martens Now Come Adorned with William Blake’s Art, Thanks to a Partnership with Tate Britain

in Art, Design | April 9th, 2018


On a recent trip to Port­land, I found myself at the city’s flag­ship Pearl Dis­trict Dr. Martens’ store and was instant­ly trans­port­ed back to much younger days when I scrimped and saved to buy my first pair of “Docs” at the local DC punk bou­tique. Big and clunky, the boots and shoes have been asso­ci­at­ed with out­sider and alter­na­tive cul­ture for decades (and, sad­ly, through no fault of their own, with neo-Nazis, as a recent Port­land con­tro­ver­sy remind­ed). The brand has since applied its “Air­Wair” sole to styles much less evoca­tive of leather-clad punks, but the originals–the eight-eye “1460” boot and three-eye “1461” shoe–will for­ev­er retain their icon­ic sta­tus, in the clas­sic col­ors of black and “oxblood” red.

“Orig­i­nal­ly a mod­est work-boot that was even sold as a gar­den­ing shoe,” as the company’s his­to­ry tells it, the near­ly inde­struc­tible footwear first achieved cult sta­tus in work­ing-class British sub­cul­tures in the ear­ly days of “glam, punk, Two Tone, and ear­ly goth.”

The flam­boy­ance of the Dr. Martens’ clien­tele gave it license to exper­i­ment with unortho­dox styles, like shiny patent leather in eye-pop­ping col­ors, an ani­mal print series and, most recent­ly, an artist series, fea­tur­ing 1460s and 1461s cov­ered in leather repro­duc­tions of paint­ings by artists like Hierony­mus Bosch, Gian­ni­co­la Di Pao­lo, and William Hog­a­rth (unfor­tu­nate­ly all sold out on their web­site).

One of the recent addi­tions to this pan­theon seems like a per­fect fit: the William Blake Docs, offer­ing your “choice of gnos­tic kicks for a night out,” as Dan­ger­ous Minds quips. A part­ner­ship with Tate Britain, the boot ver­sion is wrapped in Blake’s Satan Smit­ing Job with Sore Boils (c. 1826) and the shoe dis­plays The House of Death (c. 1795). See both paint­ings below.

Like anoth­er new addi­tion to the artist series—with art­work from J.M.W. Turn­er—the Blake Dr. Martens draw on the work of a vio­lent­ly orig­i­nal Eng­lish artist with solid­ly work­ing-class roots. Unlike his con­tem­po­rary Turn­er, Blake spent most of his days in obscu­ri­ty, cre­at­ing a DIY visu­al and poet­ic mythol­o­gy rich enough to counter the reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal hege­mo­ny of the day, which was a total­ly punk rock thing to do in the 18th cen­tu­ry.

“I must cre­ate a sys­tem, or be enslaved by anoth­er man’s,” Blake wrote. Does the stamp­ing of his icon­o­clas­tic art­work on a cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic, com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful boot (and shoe, and leather satchel, and T‑shirt) mean that he’s been absorbed into exact­ly the kind of sys­tem he spent his life oppos­ing? Isn’t that just punk’s eter­nal dilem­ma.…

See a short film from Tate Britain cel­e­brat­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr. Martens at the shoemaker’s web­site and see much more William Blake in the Relat­ed Con­tent links below.

If you want to snag your own William Blake Dr. Martens, you can find the 3‑Eye Oxfords and 1460 Boot on Ama­zon.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

William Blake’s Mas­ter­piece Illus­tra­tions of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

William Blake’s Last Work: Illus­tra­tions for Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1827)

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

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