18 Male Leonard Cohen Fans Over the Age of 65 Star in an Oddly Moving A Cappella Version of “I’m Your Man”

in Art, Creativity, Life, Music | December 14th, 2021

It’s going to be a tear­jerk­er, I think — artist Can­dice Bre­itz

Watch 18 diehard Leonard Cohen fans over the age of 65 ardent­ly fum­bling their way through the title track of his 1988 album, I’m Your Man, for a deep reminder of how we are trans­port­ed by the artists we love best.

These men, select­ed from a pool of over 400 appli­cants, don’t appear over­ly both­ered by the qual­i­ty of their singing voic­es, though clear­ly they’re giv­ing it their all.

Instead, their chief con­cern seems to be com­muning with Cohen, who had died the year before, at the age of 82.

Artist Can­dice Bre­itz zeroed in on the like­li­est can­di­dates for this project using a 10-page appli­ca­tion, in which inter­est­ed par­ties were asked to describe Cohen’s role in their lives.

Almost all were based in Cohen’s home­town of Mon­tre­al.

Many have been fans since they were teenagers.

Par­tic­i­pant Fer­gus Keyes described meet­ing Cohen at a 1984 sign­ing for his poet­ry col­lec­tion, Book of Mer­cy:

He told me he liked my name. He asked if he could use it in some future song. I said yes and he wrote it down in his lit­tle note­book. I said to him, ‘Some­times I don’t under­stand what you’re say­ing.’ And he said there was no wrong way of inter­pret­ing it, because he wrote for oth­ers and what­ev­er we inter­pret is right. 

There’s def­i­nite­ly a vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions on dis­play, above, in an excerpt of Bre­itz’ 40-minute work, I’m Your Man: A Por­trait of Leonard Cohen.

In per­son, it’s dis­played as an instal­la­tion in-the-round, with view­ers free to roam around in the mid­dle, as each par­tic­i­pant is pro­ject­ed on his own life-size video mon­i­tor for the dura­tion.

They’re our men.

Some stand­ing stiffly.

Oth­ers with eyes tight­ly shut.

Some can­not resist the temp­ta­tion to act out cer­tain choice lines.

One joy­ful unin­hib­it­ed soul beams and dances.

They keep time with their hands, feet, heads… a seat­ed man taps his cane.

One whis­tles, con­fi­dent­ly fill­ing the space most com­mon­ly occu­pied by an instru­men­tal, while the major­i­ty of the oth­ers fid­get.

There are suit jack­ets, a cou­ple of Cohen-esque fedo­ras, a t‑shirt from a 2015 Cohen event, and what appears to be a linen gown, topped with a chunky sweater vest.

Breitz’s only require­ment of the par­tic­i­pants was that they mem­o­rize the lyrics to the I’m Your Man album in its entire­ty, pri­or to enter­ing the record­ing stu­dio.

Each man laid his track down solo, singing along while lis­ten­ing to the album on ear­buds, unaware of exact­ly how his con­tri­bu­tion would be used. Sev­er­al pro­fessed shock to dis­cov­er, on open­ing night, that syn­chro­nous edit­ing had trans­formed them into mem­bers of an a cap­pel­la choir. 

The project may strike some view­ers as fun­ny, espe­cial­ly when an indi­vid­ual or group flubs a lyric or veers off tem­po, but the pur­pose is not mock­ery. Bre­itz worked to estab­lish trust, and the par­tic­i­pants’ will­ing­ness to extend it gives the piece its emo­tion­al foun­da­tion.

Vic­tor Shiff­man, co-cura­tor of the 2017 Cohen exhib­it A Crack in Every­thing at the com­mis­sion­ing Musée d’art con­tem­po­rain de Mon­tréal, told the Mon­tre­al Gazette:

They are not pre­cise­ly singers. They are just pas­sion­ate, ardent fans; their goal was to com­mu­ni­cate their devo­tion and love for Leonard by par­tic­i­pat­ing in this trib­ute. It is not about hit­ting the notes. The emo­tion comes through in the con­vic­tion these men por­tray and in the ded­i­ca­tion they show in hav­ing put them­selves out there. There is so much beau­ty in that work; it dis­arms us.

Hav­ing cen­tered sim­i­lar fan-based mul­ti­chan­nel video exper­i­ments around such works as Bob Marley’s Leg­end and John Lennon’s Work­ing Class Hero, Bre­itz explained the cast­ing of the Cohen project to CBC Arts:

I was real­ly inter­est­ed in this moment in life when one starts to look back and con­tem­plate what kind of a life one has lived and what kind of life one wish­es to con­tin­ue liv­ing as one approach­es the end of that life. And I think that even when he was a young man, Cohen was some­body who thought about and wrote about mor­tal­i­ty in very pro­found ways. So what I decid­ed to do was to invite a group of Cohen fans who real­ly would be up to the project of inter­pret­ing that com­plex­i­ty.

Pri­or to the work’s pre­miere, Bre­itz gath­ered the group for a toast, sug­gest­ing that the occa­sion was dou­bly spe­cial in that it was high­ly unlike­ly they would meet again.

Some­times artists are unaware of the pow­er­ful force they unleash.

Rather than going their sep­a­rate ways, the par­tic­i­pants formed friend­ships, reunite for non-solo Cohen sin­ga­longs, and in the words of one man, became “a real broth­er­hood… once you estab­lish that con­nec­tion, every­thing else dis­ap­pears.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Three Leonard Cohen Ani­ma­tions

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

Watch 4 Music Videos That Bring to Life Songs from Leonard Cohen’s Final Album, Thanks for the Dance

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist 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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Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals: What Makes Them Great Art

in Art | December 13th, 2021

It is pre­cise­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exer­cis­ing choice where­in our lot dif­fers from that of the artists of the past. For choice implies respon­si­bil­i­ty to one’s con­science, and, in the con­science of the artist, the Truth of Art is fore­most. — Mark Rothko

Born Mar­cus Rothkowitz in 1903, the painter Mark Rothko immi­grat­ed with his fam­i­ly from Rus­sia at age 10, flee­ing the per­se­cu­tion of Jews in his home coun­try. He grew up poor in Port­land, Ore­gon, won a schol­ar­ship to Yale in 1921, but “found him­self once more an out­sider, stig­ma­tized as a Jew,” says James Payne in the Great Art Explained video above. Feel­ing alien­at­ed and dis­af­fect­ed, he dropped out and moved to New York (to the dis­may of his fam­i­ly), “to wan­der around,” he lat­er wrote, ”bum about, starve a bit,” and paint. He co-found­ed a group of mod­ern artists who exhib­it­ed fre­quent­ly togeth­er and won crit­i­cal atten­tion, but Rothko strug­gled finan­cial­ly into mid­dle age and only began sell­ing his work dur­ing the “col­or field” peri­od that made him famous in the 1950s.

It wasn’t until 1958 that Rothko received his first major com­mis­sion, for what would become the Sea­gram Murals, so-called because they were meant for the lux­u­ri­ous Four Sea­sons restau­rant in the new­ly-built Sea­gram Build­ing on Park Avenue, a glit­ter­ing sym­bol of New York’s opu­lence, designed by archi­tects Mies van der Rohe and Philip John­son and filled with paint­ings by Rothko’s con­tem­po­raries. Rothko spent two years work­ing on the project, a series of paint­ings to fill the restau­ran­t’s small­er, exclu­sive din­ing room. He pro­duced a total of 30 pan­els, sev­en of which were to fit togeth­er in the restau­rant. Then, almost two years after receiv­ing the com­mis­sion for $35,000 (rough­ly $334,000 today), he abrupt­ly changed his mind, returned the mon­ey, and with­drew the works.

Ten years after Rothko’s deci­sion, “on the 25th of Feb­ru­ary 1970,” Payne tells us, “the Tate gallery in Lon­don received nine Mark Rothko can­vas­es” — pan­els from the Sea­gram Murals col­lec­tion — “a gen­er­ous dona­tion from the artist him­self. A few hours lat­er, Rothko was found dead in his stu­dio on East 69th Street in Man­hat­tan. The 66-year old painter had tak­en his own life…. His sui­cide would change every­thing, and shape the way we respond to his work.” But per­haps it’s not that trag­ic event that best pro­vides us with an under­stand­ing of the artist’s moti­va­tions. “Rothko’s con­tract with soci­ety was not torn up that day in 1970,” argues Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, “but a decade ear­li­er, in 1959,” when Rothko, “intense, soli­tary, left­wing, used to pover­ty and fail­ure,” con­ceived of an art to “har­row” well-heeled din­ers at the Four Sea­sons.

Rothko explic­it­ly mod­eled the Sea­gram Mur­al project after what he called the “somber vault” of Michelangelo’s Lau­rent­ian Library in Flo­rence, which he vis­it­ed on a trip to Italy in 1959. “He achieved just the kind of feel­ing I’m after,” said Rothko. “He makes the view­ers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and win­dows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads for­ev­er against the wall.” Aban­don­ing the brighter col­or schemes of his past works, he turned to blacks, reds, and maroons, a palette drawn from mosa­ic walls he’d seen in a Pom­pei­ian vil­la. Rothko report­ed­ly told jour­nal­ist John Fis­ch­er, an edi­tor at Harper’s, “I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.” Aware of how his col­or field paint­ings moved view­ers, often to tears, he hoped the murals would ampli­fy the effect to an unpalat­able degree.

Instead, when Rothko him­self dined at the Four Sea­sons for the first and only time, he spoiled his own appetite for the com­mis­sion. “Any­body who will eat that kind of food for those kinds of prices will nev­er look at a paint­ing of mine,” he told his assis­tant. That very evening he with­drew the paint­ings. “The fact that Rothko accept­ed the com­mis­sion in the first place is puz­zling,” Shi­ra Wolfe writes at Art­land. “He was revolt­ed by cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­ca, and felt dis­dain towards any­one who con­tributed to it – and the Four Sea­sons Restau­rant, in New York’s swanki­est sky­scraper, was des­tined to become the very epit­o­me of America’s cap­i­tal­ism.” From its begin­nings, the artist “felt ambiva­lent about the com­mis­sion, and had a con­tract drawn up which would allow him to back out of the deal and retrieve his paint­ings if nec­es­sary.”

It was the neces­si­ty of choice, even in the face of pover­ty and obscu­ri­ty, that most moved Rothko, as he wrote in a man­u­script from the 1940s, posthu­mous­ly pub­lished by his son Christo­pher Rothko as The Artist’s Real­i­ty: Philoso­phies of Art. In the book, Rothko con­trasts the mod­ern artist’s fate with that of artists of the past who lived by the whims of dukes, kings, and popes.

It will be point­ed out that the artist’s lot is the same today, that the mar­ket, through its denial or afford­ing of the means of sus­te­nance, exerts the same com­pul­sion. Yet there is this vital dif­fer­ence: the civ­i­liza­tions enu­mer­at­ed above had the tem­po­ral and spir­i­tu­al pow­er to sum­mar­i­ly enforce their demands. The Fires of Hell, exile, and, in the back­ground, the rack and stake, were cor­rec­tives if per­sua­sion failed. Today the com­pul­sion is Hunger, and the expe­ri­ence of the last four hun­dred years has shown us that hunger is not near­ly as com­pelling as the immi­nence of Hell and Death. Since the pass­ing of the spir­i­tu­al and tem­po­ral patron, the his­to­ry of art is the his­to­ry of men who, for the most part, have pre­ferred hunger to com­pli­ance, and who have con­sid­ered the choice worth­while. And choice it is, for all the trag­ic dis­par­i­ty between the two alter­na­tives. 

Rothko was “obvi­ous­ly torn between his hatred for the wealth and greed of cap­i­tal­ism and his desire to cre­ate his own spe­cial place for his art,” writes Wolfe. In the year after his death, just such a place would open, a mur­al project that real­ized a very dif­fer­ent set of inten­tions.

Orig­i­nal­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Philip John­son and Rothko – until the archi­tect bowed out due to the painter’s pecu­liar vision – the non-sec­tar­i­an Rothko Chapel in Hous­ton debuted in late Feb­ru­ary 1971. An octag­o­nal, clois­tered build­ing with four­teen large Rothko murals, the Chapel was com­mis­sioned by col­lec­tor and patron Dominique de Menil when she saw the Sea­gram Murals tak­ing shape in Rothko’s pur­pose-built New York stu­dio. It’s pos­si­ble, and per­haps mor­bid­ly tempt­ing, to judge Rothko’s work by the tragedy of his final per­son­al act, but he had more to say in his work after death. In the Sea­gram Murals, Rothko attempt­ed to real­ize a phi­los­o­phy of art he had artic­u­lat­ed years ear­li­er in The Artist’s Real­i­ty: “The law of Author­i­ty,” whether that of the Church, the State, or the Mar­ket, “has this sav­ing grace; it can be cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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

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

 

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What Makes Salvador Dalí’s Iconic Surrealist Painting “The Persistence of Memory” a Great Work of Art

in Art, History | December 10th, 2021

Sal­vador Dalí paint­ed melt­ing clocks. This is not as dras­tic an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion as it sounds: after first paint­ing such a coun­ter­in­tu­itive image, “Dalí, who knew the impor­tance of brand­ing, would use the melt­ing clocks for his entire career.” So says no less an expert than James Payne, the gal­lerist and video essay­ist behind the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained. In its lat­est episode Payne takes on the unre­lent­ing­ly pro­lif­ic Dalí’s most famous can­vas of all, The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry. Com­plet­ed in 1931, this work of art has by now spent about half a cen­tu­ry adorn­ing the walls of col­lege dorm rooms, among oth­er spaces inhab­it­ed by view­ers inter­est­ed in the alter­ation of their own per­cep­tive fac­ul­ties.

The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry does­n’t mark Dalí’s first use of melt­ing clocks, though it’s with­out doubt his most impor­tant. Yet “despite its huge cul­tur­al impact,” says Payne, the paint­ing is “quite small, about the size of a sheet of paper.” Against the back­ground of “a huge desert land­scape with vast depths of field, reduced to a shrunk­en world” — one har­bor­ing ref­er­ences to Goya, De Chiri­co, and Bosch — it vivid­ly real­izes a moment in the process of meta­mor­pho­sis.

“A key con­cept in the Sur­re­al­ist move­ment,” meta­mor­pho­sis is here “exem­pli­fied by the para­dox of Dalí’s ren­der­ing of the hard­est and most mechan­i­cal objects, watch­es, into a soft and flac­cid form.” Like all of the artist’s best work, it thus “exploits the ambi­gu­i­ty of our per­cep­tu­al process and plays with our own fears.” But what do the melt­ing clocks mean?

That, to Dalí’s own mind, is the wrong ques­tion: “I am against any kind of mes­sage,” he declared in one of his many tele­vi­sion appear­ances. Indeed, his fre­quent appear­ances on tele­vi­sion (What’s My Line?, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view, The Dick Cavett Show) and in oth­er media assured that, at a cer­tain point, “Dalí the artist had become a pris­on­er of Dalí the celebri­ty.” But his appear­ances in the spot­light also gave him the chance to dis­sem­i­nate the chaff of con­flict­ing expla­na­tions of his own work. Per­haps the melt­ing clocks refer to Ein­stein’s then-nov­el the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty; per­haps they sym­bol­ize impo­tence. Or it may all come down to Dalí’s obses­sion with death, which even in 1931 had long since tak­en both his moth­er and the younger broth­er of whom he believed him­self a rein­car­na­tion. In the event, Dalí could­n’t escape mor­tal­i­ty. None of us can, of course, and that, as much as any­thing else, may illu­mi­nate why The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry nev­er quite pass­es into the realm of kitsch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

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

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

Sal­vador Dalí’s Melt­ing Clocks Paint­ed on a Lat­te

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & 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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Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting “The Scream” Animated to Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Art, Music | December 9th, 2021

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944), and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

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:

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Stun­ning

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

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

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Download 215,000 Japanese Woodblock Prints by Masters Spanning the Tradition’s 350-Year History

in Archives, Art, Museums | December 8th, 2021

If you enjoy Japan­ese wood­block prints, that appre­ci­a­tion puts you in good com­pa­ny: with Vin­cent van Gogh, for exam­ple, and per­haps even more flat­ter­ing­ly, with many of your fel­low read­ers of Open Cul­ture. So avid is the inter­est in ukiyo‑e, the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” that you might even have missed one of the large, free online col­lec­tions we’ve fea­tured over the years. Take, for instance, the one made avail­able by the Van Gogh Muse­um itself, which fea­tures the work of such well-known mas­ters as Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, artist of The Great Wave off Kanaza­wa, and Uta­gawa Hiroshige, he of the One Hun­dred Views of Edo.

Edo was the name of Tokyo until 1868, a decade after Hiroshige’s death — an event that itself marked the end of an aes­thet­i­cal­ly fruit­ful era for ukiyo‑e. But the his­to­ry of the form itself stretch­es back to the 17th cen­tu­ry, as reflect­ed by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress’ online col­lec­tion “Fine Prints: Japan­ese, pre-1915.”

There you’ll find plen­ty of Hoku­sai and Hiroshige, but also oth­ers who took the art form in their own direc­tions like Uta­gawa Yoshi­fu­ji, whose prints include depic­tions of not just his coun­try­men but vis­it­ing West­ern­ers as well. (The results are some­what more real­is­tic than the ukiyo‑e Lon­don imag­ined in 1866 by Uta­gawa Yoshi­to­ra, anoth­er mem­ber of the same artis­tic lin­eage.)

As if all this was­n’t enough, you can also find more than 220,000 Japan­ese wood­block prints at Ukiyo‑e.org. Quite pos­si­bly the most expan­sive such archive yet cre­at­ed, it includes works from Hiroshige and Hoku­sai’s 19th-cen­tu­ry “gold­en age of print­mak­ing” as well as from the devel­op­ment of the art form ear­ly in the cen­tu­ry before. Even after its best-known prac­ti­tion­ers were gone, ukiyo‑e con­tin­ued to evolve: through Japan’s mod­ern­iz­ing Mei­ji peri­od in the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, through var­i­ous aes­thet­ic move­ments in the years up to the Sec­ond World War, and even on to our own time, which has seen the emer­gence even of pro­lif­ic non-Japan­ese print­mak­ers.

Of course, these ukiyo‑e prints weren’t orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed to be viewed on the inter­net; the works of Hoku­sai and Hiroshige may look good on a tablet, but not by their design. Still, they did often have the indi­vid­ual con­sumer in mind: these are artists “known today for their wood­block prints, but who also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art cura­tor John Car­pen­ter. His words greet the vis­i­tor to the Met’s online col­lec­tion of more than 650 illus­trat­ed Japan­ese books, which presents ukiyo‑e as it would actu­al­ly have been seen by most peo­ple when the form first explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty — not that, even then, its enthu­si­asts could imag­ine how many appre­ci­a­tors it would one day have around the world.

Below you can find a list of pri­or posts fea­tur­ing archives of Japan­ese wood­block prints. Please feel free to explore them at your leisure.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

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 Quirky Self-Portraits of 18th Century Painter Joseph Ducreux

in Art | December 6th, 2021

We all know him, the dap­per cross between a smarmy office bro and smug, pull-my-fin­ger uncle; lean­ing on his walk­ing stick, hat pushed back at a rak­ish angle, point­ing at the view­er with a leer.… The 18th-cen­tu­ry paint­ing, titled Self-Por­trait in the Guise of a Mock­er, enjoyed a brief but rich sec­ond life for a cou­ple years as a 21st cen­tu­ry meme, first appear­ing online in a 2009 image macro with the cap­tion “Dis­re­gard Females, Acquire Cur­ren­cy,” an over­ly stuffy, thus hilar­i­ous, rephras­ing of Noto­ri­ous B.I.G.’s “Get Mon­ey” lyrics. Thou­sands of imi­ta­tions fol­lowed. With­in a cou­ple years, Steve Buscemi’s face got pho­to­shopped in place of the grin­ning bon vivant, and the meme began its decline.

But whose face was it, pre-Busce­mi, giv­ing us that toothy grin and point, “like a man catch­ing sight of an old friend across a crowd­ed room,” the Pub­lic Domain Review writes, “or a politi­cian try­ing to charm a vot­er.” The gen­tle­man in ques­tion, in fact, hap­pened to be the artist, Joseph Ducreux, a high­ly skilled oil painter whose minia­ture of Marie Antoinette in 1769 won him a baronet­cy and the title of primer pein­tre de la reine (First Painter to the Queen).

This was an hon­or not giv­en to any old slouch. Ducreux worked along­side such mas­ters as Élis­a­beth Vigée Le Brun and Jacques-Louis David, despite the fact that he was not a mem­ber of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Paint­ing and Sculp­ture, unheard of at the time for a court painter.

Dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion, Ducreux hid out in Lon­don, where he made the last por­trait of Louis XVI before the king’s behead­ing. After­ward, he returned and, through his friend­ship with David, resumed his career as a por­trait painter, as well as an eccen­tric self-por­traitist, an avo­ca­tion he’d tak­en up in the 1780s and 90s to sat­is­fy his curios­i­ty about the the­o­ry of phys­iog­no­my, a pseu­do­science that attempt­ed to divine a per­son­’s char­ac­ter and per­son­al­i­ty from their facial expres­sions and bod­i­ly pos­tures.

These were remark­able paint­ings for their time, but they were not made with Tum­blr or Twit­ter in mind. Giv­en that they were made before the age of pho­tog­ra­phy and paint­ed on large can­vas­es in oils, the process of cre­at­ing these goofy self­ies would have been painstak­ing and time-con­sum­ing — hard­ly the kind of effort a work­ing artist applies to a joke.

Humor­ous as they are, and no doubt Ducreux had a healthy sense of humor, the por­traits were also meant to serve a sci­en­tif­ic pur­pose of a sort, and they show an artist push­ing past the con­ser­v­a­tive tra­di­tions of por­trai­ture in his day, chaf­ing at the sedate roy­al pos­tures and placid expres­sions that were sup­posed to tele­graph the aris­toc­ra­cy’s inner nobil­i­ty. We might sus­pect that through­out his career as a court painter, Ducreux him­self had rea­sons to sus­pect oth­er­wise about his sub­jects. But he only had per­mis­sion to prac­tice his the­o­ries on him­self.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Inti­ma­cy of Fri­da Kahlo’s Self-Por­traits: A Video Essay

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Self Por­traits: Explore & Down­load a Col­lec­tion of 17 Paint­ings Free Online

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

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

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Archaeologists Discover 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Footprints That Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

in Art, Creativity, Life, Science | December 3rd, 2021

Wet cement trig­gers a pri­mal impulse, par­tic­u­lar­ly in chil­dren.

It’s so tempt­ing to inscribe a pris­tine patch of side­walk with a last­ing impres­sion of one’s exis­tence.

Is the coast clear? Yes? Quick, grab a stick and write your name!

No stick?

Sink a hand or foot in, like a movie star…

…or, even more thrilling­ly, a child hominin on the High Tibetan Plateau, 169,000 to 226,000 years ago!

Per­haps one day your sur­face-mar­ring ges­ture will be con­ceived of as a great gift to sci­ence, and pos­si­bly art. (Try this line of rea­son­ing with the angry home­own­er or shop­keep­er who’s intent on mea­sur­ing your hand against the one now per­ma­nent­ly set into their new cement walk­way.)

Tell them how in 2018, pro­fes­sion­al ich­nol­o­gists doing field­work in Que­sang Hot Spring, some 80 km north­west of Lhasa, were over the moon to find five hand­prints and five foot­prints dat­ing to the Mid­dle Pleis­tocene near the base of a rocky promon­to­ry.

Researchers led by David Zhang of Guangzhou Uni­ver­si­ty attribute the hand­prints to a 12-year-old, and the foot­prints to a 7‑year-old.

In a recent arti­cle in Sci­ence Bul­letin, Zhang and his team con­clude that the children’s hand­i­work is not only delib­er­ate (as opposed to “imprint­ed dur­ing nor­mal loco­mo­tion or by the use of hands to sta­bi­lize motion”) but also “an ear­ly act of pari­etal art.”

The Ura­ni­um dat­ing of the traver­tine which received the kids’ hands and feet while still soft is grounds for excite­ment, mov­ing the dial on the ear­li­est known occu­pa­tion (or vis­i­ta­tion) of the Tibetan Plateau much fur­ther back than pre­vi­ous­ly believed — from 90,000–120,000 years ago to 169,000–226,000 years ago.

That’s a lot of food for thought, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly speak­ing. As Zhang told TIME mag­a­zine, “you’re simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal­ing with a harsh envi­ron­ment, less oxy­gen, and at the same time, cre­at­ing this.”

Zhang is stead­fast that “this” is the world’s old­est pari­etal art — out­pac­ing a Nean­derthal artist’s red-pig­ment­ed hand sten­cil in Spain’s Cave of Mal­travieso by more than 100,000 years.

Oth­er sci­en­tists are not so sure.

Anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Taçon, direc­tor of Grif­fith University’s Place, Evo­lu­tion and Rock Art Her­itage Unit, thinks it’s too big of “a stretch” to describe the impres­sions as art, sug­gest­ing that they could be chalked up to a range of activ­i­ties.

Nick Bar­ton, Pro­fes­sor of Pale­olith­ic Arche­ol­o­gy at Oxford won­ders if the traces, inten­tion­al­ly placed though they may be, are less art than child’s play. (Team Wet Cement!)

Zhang coun­ters that such argu­ments are pred­i­cat­ed on mod­ern notions of what con­sti­tutes art, dri­ving his point home with an appro­pri­ate­ly stone-aged metaphor:

When you use stone tools to dig some­thing in the present day, we can­not say that that is tech­nol­o­gy. But if ancient peo­ple use that, that’s tech­nol­o­gy.

Cor­nell University’s Thomas Urban, who co-authored the Sci­ence Bul­letin arti­cle with Zhang and a host of oth­er researchers shares his col­leagues aver­sion’ to def­i­n­i­tions shaped by a mod­ern lens:

Dif­fer­ent camps have spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tions of art that pri­or­i­tize var­i­ous cri­te­ria, but I would like to tran­scend that and say there can be lim­i­ta­tions imposed by these strict cat­e­gories that might inhib­it us from think­ing more broad­ly about cre­ative behav­ior. I think we can make a sol­id case that this is not util­i­tar­i­an behav­ior. There’s some­thing play­ful, cre­ative, pos­si­bly sym­bol­ic about this. This gets at a very fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of what it actu­al­ly means to be human.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Hear a Pre­his­toric Conch Shell Musi­cal Instru­ment Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist 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 a Mosaic from Caligula’s Party Boat Became a Coffee Table in a New York City Apartment 50 Years Ago

in Art, History | November 30th, 2021

Imag­ine own­ing Caligula’s cof­fee table — or, bet­ter yet, a cof­fee table made from the mosa­ic floor­ing that once cov­ered the infa­mous­ly cru­el Roman Emperor’s par­ty boats. Art deal­er and Man­hat­tan­ite Helen Fio­rat­ti owned such a table for 45 years, but she had no idea what it was until she hap­pened to go to a 2013 book sign­ing by author and Ital­ian stone expert Dario Del Bufa­lo. There, a friend noticed her table in Del Bufalo’s cof­fee table book, Por­phyry, “about the red­dish-pur­ple rock much used by Roman emper­ors,” notes Glo­ria Oladipo at The Guardian. Fio­rat­ti’s hus­band bought the piece from an aris­to­crat­ic Ital­ian fam­i­ly in the 1960s, then affixed it to a base and made into a table. “It was an inno­cent pur­chase,” Fioret­ti told The New York Times in 2017 after Italy’s Nemi muse­um seized the arti­fact and returned it to its home coun­try. Del Bufa­lo agreed, and it pained him to have to take it, but the arti­fact, he says in an inter­view above with Ander­son Coop­er, is price­less.

Caligu­la had two lux­u­ri­ous wood­en ships with elab­o­rate tile floors built to float on Lake Nemi, just a few miles out­side of Rome. “Stretch­ing 230 feet and 240 feet long and most­ly flat,” Brit McCan­d­less Farmer writes for Six­ty Min­utes, it was said they were once “topped with silk sails and fea­tured orchards, vine­yards, and even bath­rooms with run­ning water.” They even boast­ed lead pipes “inscribed Gaius Cae­sar Augus­tus Ger­man­i­cus, Caligula’s offi­cial name, accord­ing to a 1906 issue of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.” He was “once the most pow­er­ful man in the world,” says Ander­son Coop­er above, but Caligu­la became renowned for his bru­tal­i­ty, self-indul­gence, and pos­si­ble insan­i­ty. The third Roman emper­or was assas­si­nat­ed four years into his reign by a con­spir­a­cy of Prae­to­ri­ans and sen­a­tors. So hat­ed was he at the time that Romans attempt­ed to “chis­el him out of his­to­ry.” The sink­ing of his par­ty boats was one of many acts of van­dal­ism com­mit­ted against his waste­ful, vio­lent lega­cy.

Inter­est in the plea­sure ships was only piqued again when divers found the wreck­age in 1895. “The deck must have ben a mar­velous sight to behold,” wrote Ital­ian archae­ol­o­gist Rodol­fo Lan­ciani in 1898; “it goes beyond the pow­er of imag­i­na­tion for its strength and ele­gance.” Lan­ciani described in detail “the pave­ment trod­den by impe­r­i­al feet, made of disks of por­phyry and ser­pen­tine… framed in seg­ments and lines of enam­el, white and gold, white and red, or white, red, and green.” But it would be anoth­er few decades before the ships, sub­merged for almost 2,000 years, would see dry land again when Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, who was obsessed with Caligu­la, ordered Lake Nemi par­tial­ly drained in the 30s and the boats res­ur­rect­ed and housed in a near­by muse­um built for that pur­pose. Then, in 1944, retreat­ing Nazis alleged­ly set fire to the muse­um, after using it as a bomb shel­ter, destroy­ing Caligu­la’s plea­sure cruis­ers. No one knows how Fioret­ti’s mosa­ic made it out of Italy dur­ing this time.

It seems that the Emper­or’s star has been on the rise once more the past few years, since the dis­cov­ery of the mosa­ic and of Caligu­la’s impe­r­i­al plea­sure gar­den, Hor­ti Lami­ani, “the Mar-a-Lago of its day,” Franz Lidz writes at The New York Times. Unearthed in an exca­va­tion between 2006 and 2015, the now-sub­ter­ranean ruins found beneath a “con­demned 19th cen­tu­ry apart­ment com­plex, yield­ed gems, coins, ceram­ics, jew­el­ry, pot­tery, cameo glass, a the­ater mask, seeds of plants such as cit­ron, apri­cot and aca­cia that had been import­ed from Asia, and bones of pea­cocks, deer, lions, bears, and ostrich­es.” The ruins opened to tourists this past spring. As for Mrs. Fio­rat­ti, “I felt very sor­ry for her,” said Del Bufa­lo, “but I could­n’t do any­thing dif­fer­ent, know­ing that my muse­um in Nemi is miss­ing the best part.” He hopes to make a repli­ca to return to her Park Avenue liv­ing room for bev­er­age ser­vice. “I think my soul would feel a lit­tle bet­ter,” he says.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

What Did the Roman Emper­ors Look Like?: See Pho­to­re­al­is­tic Por­traits Cre­at­ed with Machine Learn­ing

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

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