Watch At the Museum, MoMA’s 8‑Part Documentary on What it Takes to Run a World-Class Museum

in Art | November 23rd, 2017

If you’ve ever vis­it­ed the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art — and prob­a­bly even if you haven’t — you’ll have a sense that the place does­n’t exact­ly run itself. As much or even more so than oth­er muse­ums, MoMA keeps the behind-the-scenes oper­a­tions behind the scenes, pre­sent­ing vis­i­tors with coher­ent art expe­ri­ences that seem to have mate­ri­al­ized whole. But that very puri­ty of pre­sen­ta­tion itself stokes our curios­i­ty: No, real­ly, how do they do it? Now, MoMA has offered us a chance to see for our­selves through a new series of short doc­u­men­taries called At the Muse­um, a look at and a lis­ten to the nuts and bolts of one of Amer­i­ca’s most­ly high­ly regard­ed art insti­tu­tions.

The series, which will run to eight episodes total, has released four thus far. In “Ship­ping & Receiv­ing,” some of the muse­um’s staff pre­pare 200 works of art in its col­lec­tion to ship to Paris for a spe­cial exhi­bi­tion at the Louis Vuit­ton Foun­da­tion while oth­ers get new shows installed at MoMA itself.

In “The Mak­ing of Max Ernst,” a cou­ple of cura­tors design a show of work by that sur­re­al­ist painter-sculp­tor-poet. In “Press­ing Mat­ters,” the open­ing of both the Ernst exhi­bi­tion, “Beyond Paint­ing,” and “Louise Bour­geois: An Unfold­ing Por­trait” fast approach, but sev­er­al impor­tant deci­sions remain to be made as well as works to be installed. In “Art Speaks,” MoMA staff and vis­i­tors take a step back and con­tem­plate the pur­pose of mod­ern art itself.

At the Muse­um could have assumed a high­ly tra­di­tion­al form, stop­ping method­i­cal­ly to wit­ness the dai­ly labors of every­one from MoMA’s direc­tors to cura­tors to installers to secu­ri­ty guards as nar­ra­tion earnest­ly explains to us their place in the art ecosys­tem. From the very first episode, how­ev­er, the series takes a dif­fer­ent and much more com­pelling tack, pro­vid­ing an uncom­ment­ed-upon series of fly-on-the-wall views of MoMA peo­ple at work, eaves­drop­ping on their con­ver­sa­tions, and occa­sion­al­ly weav­ing in their reflec­tions spo­ken direct­ly to the film­mak­ers. But just as the expe­ri­ence of MoMA changes with each new exhi­bi­tion, so does the form of At the Muse­um with each new episode, one of which will con­tin­ue appear­ing every Fri­day until Decem­ber 15th. Watch them all (here), and you’ll nev­er look at MoMA, or indeed any oth­er muse­um, in quite the same way.

At the Muse­um will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Browse Every Art Exhi­bi­tion Held at MoMA Since 1929 with the New “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er”

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 75,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Kids Record Audio Tours of NY’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (with Some Sil­ly Results)

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books 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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The 1991 Tokyo Museum Exhibition That Was Only Accessible by Telephone, Fax & Modem: Features Works by Laurie Anderson, John Cage, William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard & Merce Cunningham

in Art, Technology | November 22nd, 2017

The deep­er we get into the 21st cen­tu­ry, the more ener­gy and resources muse­ums put into dig­i­tiz­ing their offer­ings and mak­ing them avail­able, free and world­wide, as vir­tu­al expe­ri­ences on the inter­net. But what form would a vir­tu­al muse­um have tak­en before the inter­net as we know it today? Japan­ese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant NTT (best known today in the form of the cell­phone ser­vice provider NTT DoCo­Mo) devel­oped one answer to that ques­tion in 1991: The Muse­um Inside the Tele­phone Net­work, an elab­o­rate art exhib­it acces­si­ble nowhere in the phys­i­cal world but every­where in Japan by tele­phone, fax, and even — in a high­ly lim­it­ed, pre-World-Wide-Web fash­ion — com­put­er modem.

“The works and mes­sages from almost 100 artists, writ­ers, and cul­tur­al fig­ures were avail­able through five chan­nels,” says Mono­skop, where you can down­load The Muse­um Inside the Tele­phone Net­work’s cat­a­log (also avail­able in high res­o­lu­tion). “The works in ‘Voice & sound chan­nel’ such as talks and read­ings on the theme of com­mu­ni­ca­tion could be lis­tened to by tele­phone. The ‘Inter­ac­tive chan­nel’ offered par­tic­i­pants to cre­ate musi­cal tunes by push­ing but­tons on a tele­phone. Works of art, nov­els, comics and essays could be received at home through ‘Fax chan­nel.’ The ‘Live chan­nel’ offered artists’ live per­for­mances and tele­phone dia­logues between invit­ed intel­lec­tu­als to be heard by tele­phone. Addi­tion­al­ly, com­put­er graph­ics works could be accessed by modem and down­loaded to one’s per­son­al com­put­er screen for view­ing.”

“We need to rec­og­nize hon­est­ly that there were numer­ous prob­lems with The Muse­um Inside the Tele­phone Net­work,” writes cura­tor and crit­ic Asa­da Aki­ra in the cat­a­log’s intro­duc­tion. “Nei­ther the prepa­ra­tion time nor the means for car­ry­ing it out was suf­fi­cient. Thus there were not a few cre­ative artists whose par­tic­i­pa­tion would have been a great asset to the project, but whom we were forced to do with­out.” Yet its list of con­trib­u­tors, which still reads like a Who’s-Who of the avant-garde and oth­er­wise adven­tur­ous cre­ators of the day, includes archi­tects like Isoza­ki Ara­ta and Ren­zo Piano, musi­cians like Lau­rie Ander­son and Sakamo­to Ryuichi, direc­tors like Kuro­sawa Kiyoshi and Derek Jar­man, writ­ers like William S. Bur­roughs and J.G. Bal­lard, com­posers like John Cage and Philip Glass, chore­o­g­ra­phers like William Forsythe, Mer­ce Cun­ning­ham, and visu­al artists like Yokoo Tadanori and Jeff Koons.

The Muse­um Inside the Tele­phone Net­work launched as the first ven­ture of NTT’s Inter­Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­ter (ICC), a “21st-cen­tu­ry muse­um that will pro­vide inter­face between sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and art and cul­ture in the com­ing elec­tron­ic age,” as Asa­da described it in 1991. Hav­ing recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its 20th year open in Toky­o’s Opera City Tow­er, the ICC con­tin­ues to put on a vari­ety of non-vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tions very much in the spir­it of the orig­i­nal, and involv­ing some of the very same artists as well (as of this writ­ing, they’re ready­ing a music instal­la­tion co-cre­at­ed by Sakamo­to). But offline or on, any union of art and tech­nol­o­gy is only as inter­est­ing as the spir­it moti­vat­ing it, and the cre­ators of such projects would do well to keep in mind the words of The Muse­um Inside the Tele­phone Net­work con­trib­u­tor Kon­dou Kou­ji: “I hope that peo­ple will think of this as the expe­ri­ence of acci­den­tal­ly drift­ing into a tele­phone net­work, where­in awaits a vast world of plea­sure and fun.”

via @monoskop

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the 1913 Exhi­bi­tion That Intro­duced Avant-Garde Art to Amer­i­ca

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Japan­ese Com­put­er Artist Makes “Dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans” in 1964: When Giant Main­frame Com­put­ers Were First Used to Cre­ate Art

Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell: Nam June Paik’s Avant-Garde New Year’s Cel­e­bra­tion with Lau­rie Ander­son, John Cage, Peter Gabriel & More

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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60-Second Introductions to 12 Groundbreaking Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hopper, Pollock, Rothko & More

in Art, History | November 21st, 2017

Some art his­to­ri­ans ded­i­cate their entire careers, and indeed lives, to the work of a sin­gle artist. But what about those of us who only have a minute to spare? Address­ing the demand for the briefest pos­si­ble primers on the cre­ators of impor­tant art, paint­ings and oth­er­wise, of the past cen­tu­ry or so, the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts’ Painters in 60 Sec­onds series has pub­lished twelve episodes so far. Of those infor­ma­tion­al­ly dense videos, you see here the intro­duc­tions to Sal­vador Dalí, Mar­cel Duchamp, Edward Hop­per, Jack­son Pol­lock, and Mark Rothko.

Though short, these crash cours­es do find their way beyond the very basics. “There’s more to Dalí,” says the Roy­al Acad­e­my of the Arts’ Artis­tic Direc­tor Tim Mar­low, than “skill­ful­ly ren­dered fever dreams of sex and decay.

He paint­ed one of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s great cru­ci­fix­ions, but it’s more about physics than reli­gion, and he was as influ­enced by phi­los­o­phy as he was by Sig­mund Freud.” Ducham­p’s unortho­dox and influ­en­tial ideas “came togeth­er in one of the most ambi­tious works of the 20th cen­tu­ry, The Large Glass, an end­less­ly ana­lyzed work of machine-age erot­ic sym­bol­ism, sci­ence, alche­my, and then some.”

In the seem­ing­ly more staid Depres­sion-era work of Edward Hop­per, Mar­low points to “a pro­found con­tem­pla­tion of the world around us. Hop­per slows down time and cap­tures a moment of still­ness in a fran­tic world,” paint­ed in a time of “deep nation­al self-exam­i­na­tion about the very idea of Amer­i­can­ness.” Hop­per paint­ed the famous Nighthawks in 1942; the next year, and sure­ly on the very oth­er end of some kind of artis­tic spec­trum, Hop­per’s coun­try­man and near-con­tem­po­rary Jack­son Pol­lock paint­ed Mur­al, which shows “the young Pol­lock work­ing through Picas­so, con­tin­u­ing to frac­ture the archi­tec­ture of cubism” while “at the same time tak­ing on the lessons of the Mex­i­can mural­ists like Siqueiros and Oroz­co.”

Yet Mur­al also “starts to pro­claim an orig­i­nal­i­ty that is all Pol­lock­’s,” open­ing the gate­way into his hero­ic (and well-known) “drip peri­od.” Rothko, prac­tic­ing an equal­ly dis­tinc­tive but entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of abstrac­tion, end­ed up pro­duc­ing “some of the most mov­ing paint­ings in all of the 20th cen­tu­ry: sat­u­rat­ed stains of col­or.” Mak­ing ref­er­ence to clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture — going back, even, to Stone­henge — his work becomes “a kind of thresh­old into which you, the view­er, project your­self,” but its soft edges also give it a sense of “breath­ing, pul­sat­ing, and some­times, of dying.”

If you hap­pen to have more than a minute avail­able, how could you resist dig­ging a bit deep­er into the life and work of an artist like that? Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to get intro­duced to anoth­er: Hen­ri Matisse or Grant Wood, say, or Kaz­imir Male­vich or Joan Mitchell. You may just find one about whom you want to spend the rest of your years learn­ing.

See all videos, includ­ing new ones down the road, at the Painters in 60 Sec­onds series playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

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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An Artist with Synesthesia Turns Jazz & Rock Classics Into Colorful Abstract Paintings

in Art, Music, Neuroscience, Video - Arts & Culture | November 20th, 2017

For those in the arts, few moments are more bliss­ful than those spent “in the zone,” those times when the words or images or notes flow unim­ped­ed, the artist func­tion­ing as more con­duit than cre­ator.

Viewed in this light, artist Melis­sa McCrack­en’s chromes­the­sia—or sound-to-col­or synesthesia—is a gift. Since birth, this rare neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non has caused her to see col­ors while lis­ten­ing to music, an expe­ri­ence she likens to visu­al­iz­ing one’s mem­o­ries.

Trained as a psy­chol­o­gist, she has made a name for her­self as an abstract painter by trans­fer­ring her col­or­ful neu­ro­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions onto can­vas.

John Lennon’s “Julia” yields an impas­to flame across a pale green field.

The bold daf­fodil and phlox hues of Jimi Hendrix’s “Lit­tle Wing” could have sprung from Monet’s gar­den at Giverny.

McCrack­en told Broad­ly that chromes­thetes’ col­or asso­ci­a­tions vary from indi­vid­ual to indi­vid­ual, though her own expe­ri­ence of a par­tic­u­lar song only wavers when she is focus­ing on a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment, such as a bass line she’s nev­er paid atten­tion to before.

While her port­fo­lio sug­gests a woman of catholic musi­cal tastes, col­or­wise, she does tend to favor cer­tain gen­res and instru­ments:

Expres­sive music such as funk is a lot more col­or­ful, with all the dif­fer­ent instru­ments, melodies, and rhythms cre­at­ing a high­ly sat­u­rat­ed effect. Gui­tars are gen­er­al­ly gold­en and angled, and piano is more mar­bled and jerky because of the chords. I rarely paint acoustic music because it’s often just one per­son play­ing gui­tar and singing, and I nev­er paint coun­try songs because they’re bor­ing mut­ed browns.

Her favorite kind of music, jazz, almost always presents itself to her in shades of gold and blue, lead­ing one to won­der if per­haps the Utah Jazz’s uni­form redesign has a synes­thet­ic ele­ment.

Cer­tain­ly, there are a large num­ber of musi­cians—includ­ing Duke Elling­ton, Kanye West, and Bil­ly Joel—for whom col­or and music are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

View Melis­sa McCracken’s port­fo­lio here.

via Broad­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Syncs His Abstract Art to Mussorgsky’s Music in a His­toric Bauhaus The­atre Pro­duc­tion (1928)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

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

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Rare 1915 Film Shows Claude Monet at Work in His Famous Garden at Giverny

in Art, History | November 17th, 2017

Long ago, we showed you some star­tling footage of an elder­ly, arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir, paint­ing with hor­ri­bly deformed hands. Today we offer a more idyl­lic image of a French Impres­sion­ist painter in his gold­en years: Claude Mon­et on a sun­ny day in his beau­ti­ful gar­den at Giverny.

Once again, the footage was pro­duced by Sacha Gui­t­ry for his project Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land.” It was shot in the sum­mer of 1915, when Mon­et was 74 years old. It was not the best time in Mon­et’s life. His sec­ond wife and eldest son had both died in the pre­vi­ous few years, and his eye­sight was get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly worse due to cataracts. But despite the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal set­backs, Mon­et would soon rebound, mak­ing the last decade of his life (he died in 1926 at the age of 86) an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive peri­od in which he paint­ed many of his most famous stud­ies of water lilies.

At the begin­ning of the film clip we see Gui­t­ry and Mon­et talk­ing with each oth­er. Then Mon­et paints on a large can­vas beside a lily pond. It’s a shame the cam­era does­n’t show the paint­ing Mon­et is work­ing on, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the great artist all clad in white, a cig­a­rette dan­gling from his lips, paint­ing in his love­ly gar­den.

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:

1922 Pho­to: Claude Mon­et Stands on the Japan­ese Foot­bridge He Paint­ed Through the Years

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Rare Film of Sculp­tor Auguste Rodin Work­ing at His Stu­dio in Paris (1915)

Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

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Mona Lisa Selfie: A Montage of Social Media Photos Taken at the Louvre and Put on Instagram

in Art, Life | November 15th, 2017

“Over 6 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it the Mona Lisa at the Lou­vre each year. Many share their vis­it on social media.” Cre­at­ed by Daniel McK­ee, this dizzy­ing video gath­ers togeth­er hun­dreds of the pho­tos that get tak­en at the muse­um and then wind up on Insta­gram. Only a minute long, it’s a nice suc­cinct com­men­tary on our time…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

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How a Korean Potter Found a “Beautiful Life” Through His Art: A Short, Life-Affirming Documentary

in Art | November 15th, 2017

I like to think I appre­ci­ate all aspects of the cul­ture of South Korea, where I live, but dif­fer­ent attrac­tions bring dif­fer­ent for­eign­ers here. Some come for the food, some come for the music (pop, tra­di­tion­al, or some­where in between), some come for the med­ical tourism. Oth­ers, like British ceram­i­cist Roger Law, come for the pot­tery. The half-hour doc­u­men­tary above will give you an idea of what makes Kore­an pot­tery, and the Kore­an pot­ters who craft it, so dis­tinc­tive, tak­ing view­ers into the work­shop of Lee Kang-hyo, who has become famous by there bring­ing togeth­er the dis­tinct tra­di­tions of onggi glazed earth­en­ware pot­tery and buncheong white slip dec­o­ra­tion.

“As a high school stu­dent, I asked myself some fun­da­men­tal ques­tions,” says Lee in voiceover as we watch him beat the clay of what looks more and more like a large jar into shape. “What would be good to do for a liv­ing? What is my best tal­ent? How can I enjoy a life of peace? It was then I decid­ed to become an artist.” As he cre­ates, he tells us about the long his­to­ry of pot­tery in Korea and his expe­ri­ence prac­tic­ing and mas­ter­ing the tra­di­tions in which he works. Looked at ong­gi, he says, “I nev­er thought they were sim­ply big jars. I thought they were great sculp­ture.”

“My doc­u­men­tary tells the sto­ry of Lee Kang-hyo’s search for a beau­ti­ful life, through his work with clay and the love of his fam­i­ly,” says direc­tor Alex Wright, a sto­ry that “gives an insight into the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney that plays a vital part in his artis­tic prac­tice.” For Lee, this had to do as much with the heart and mind as with the hand, loos­en­ing up and light­en­ing up even as he grew more skilled, a real­iza­tion that first occurred when he became friend­ly with Japan­ese mas­ter pot­ter Koie Ryo­ji. “Kang-hyo, why don’t you try to change your think­ing?’ ” Lee remem­bers Koie ask­ing after he pre­sent­ed him with his lat­est piece. “And he lift­ed it up and crushed it. He said: ‘Form does­n’t always have to be straight. It can be beau­ti­ful.’ ”

That les­son holds in oth­er cul­tur­al spheres as well. “Ceram­ic cul­ture is very close­ly con­nect­ed to dietary life and food cul­ture,” Lee observes. “Korea has devel­oped a fer­ment­ed food cul­ture. A lot of foods are fer­ment­ed and stored, such as sauces and kim­chi,” which might stay in their ceram­ic jars for years before con­sump­tion. And so “Korea has devel­oped the skills to make big jars, more than any oth­er coun­try” with the “quick­est and most per­fect forms.” This might sound like the mak­ings of a rus­tic, util­i­tar­i­an pot­tery — and indeed cui­sine — but in fact the work of Lee and oth­er Kore­an mas­ters increas­ing­ly aligns with the grow­ing glob­al taste for things out­ward­ly sim­ple but inward­ly refined. In that par­tic­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ty, whether expressed as pot­tery or food or music or any­thing else, Korea might well lead the world.

Lee Kang-hyo ‘Ong­gi Mas­ter will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

“Prim­i­tive Pot­ter” Trav­els into the Back­coun­try for 10 Days with Only a Knife & Buck­skin and Makes Anasazi Pot­tery

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

Kintsu­gi: The Cen­turies-Old Japan­ese Craft of Repair­ing Pot­tery with Gold & Find­ing Beau­ty in Bro­ken Things

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

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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Why Did Leonardo da Vinci Write Backwards? A Look Into the Ultimate Renaissance Man’s “Mirror Writing”

in Art, History, Writing | November 13th, 2017

As the stand­out exam­ple of the “Renais­sance Man” ide­al, Leonar­do da Vin­ci racked up no small num­ber of accom­plish­ments in his life. He also had his eccen­tric­i­ties, and tried his hand at a num­ber of exper­i­ments that might look a bit odd even to his admir­ers today. In the case of one prac­tice he even­tu­al­ly mas­tered and with which he stuck, he tried his hand in a more lit­er­al sense than usu­al: Leonar­do, the evi­dence clear­ly shows, had a habit of writ­ing back­wards, start­ing at the right side of the page and mov­ing to the left.

“Only when he was writ­ing some­thing intend­ed for oth­er peo­ple did he write in the nor­mal direc­tion,” says the Muse­um of Sci­ence. Why did he write back­wards? That remains one of the host of so far unan­swer­able ques­tions about Leonar­do’s remark­able life, but “one idea is that it may have kept his hands clean. Peo­ple who were con­tem­po­raries of Leonar­do left records that they saw him write and paint left hand­ed. He also made sketch­es show­ing his own left hand at work. As a lefty, this mir­rored writ­ing style would have pre­vent­ed him from smudg­ing his ink as he wrote.”

Or Leonar­do could have devel­oped his “mir­ror writ­ing” out of fear, a hypoth­e­sis acknowl­edged even by books for young read­ers: “Through­out his life, he was wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­ers steal­ing his ideas,” writes Rachel A. Koestler-Grack in Leonar­do Da Vin­ci: Artist, Inven­tor, and Renais­sance Man. “The obser­va­tions in his note­books were writ­ten in such a way that they could be read only by hold­ing the books up to a mir­ror.” The blog Walk­er’s Chap­ters makes a rep­re­sen­ta­tive coun­ter­ar­gu­ment: “Do you real­ly think that a man as clever as Leonar­do thought it was a good way to pre­vent peo­ple from read­ing his notes? This man, this genius, if he tru­ly want­ed to make his notes read­able only to him­self, he would’ve invent­ed an entire­ly new lan­guage for this pur­pose. We’re talk­ing about a dude who con­cep­tu­al­ized para­chutes even before heli­copters were a thing.”

Per­haps the most wide­ly seen piece of Leonar­do’s mir­ror writ­ing is his notes on Vit­ru­vian Man (a piece of which appears at the top of the post), his enor­mous­ly famous draw­ing that fits the pro­por­tions of the human body into the geom­e­try of both a cir­cle and a square (and whose ele­gant math­e­mat­ics we fea­tured last week). Many exam­ples of mir­ror writ­ing exist after Leonar­do, from his coun­try­man Mat­teo Zac­col­in­i’s 17th-cen­tu­ry trea­tise on col­or to the 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry cal­lig­ra­phy of the Ottoman Empire to the front of ambu­lances today. Each of those has its func­tion, but one won­ders whether as curi­ous a mind as Leonar­do’s would want to write back­wards sim­ply for the joy of mas­ter­ing and using a skill, any skill, how­ev­er much it might baf­fle oth­ers — or indeed, because it might baf­fle them.

If you’re inter­est­ed in all things da Vin­ci, make sure you check out the new best­selling biog­ra­phy, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, by Wal­ter Isaac­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ele­gant Math­e­mat­ics of Vit­ru­vian Man, Leonar­do da Vinci’s Most Famous Draw­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

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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