Carl Sagan’s Ambitious College Reading List: Plato, Shakespeare, Gide, and Plenty of Philosophy, Math & Physics (1954)

in Books, Science | November 14th, 2016

List of titles that Carl Sagan planned to read during one of his semesters at the University of Chicago. Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Carl Sagan may have passed away almost twen­ty years ago, but he con­tin­ues to influ­ence minds of all gen­er­a­tions through intel­lec­tu­al heirs like Neil DeGrasse Tyson (host of the remake of Sagan’s beloved 1980 TV series Cos­mos) as well as through the books he wrote in his life­time. But what books influ­enced Sagan, launch­ing him on the jour­ney toward astron­o­my, cos­mol­o­gy, astro­physics, astro­bi­ol­o­gy, and glob­al celebri­ty? Thanks to the Library of Con­gress’ Carl Sagan Archive, we now know at least forty titles from the no doubt volu­mi­nous amount of read­ing mate­r­i­al he digest­ed dur­ing his youth and edu­ca­tion.

Sagan wrote this read­ing list (which a fan has tran­scribed with links and post­ed to Red­dit) in 1954, as an under­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. On it he iden­ti­fies the books, as a young Charles Dar­win once wrote on his own list, to be read, whether whol­ly, par­tial­ly, or as a part of his course­work:

In Whole

In Part

Course Read­ings:

Pret­ty ambi­tious mate­r­i­al for a twen­ty-year-old, but remem­ber: we’re talk­ing about some­one who, around a decade ear­li­er, had already sketched out his ideas for human­i­ty’s space­far­ing future. It makes sense that such a child would grow up to read sci­ence fic­tion — and with the pub­li­ca­tion of Con­tact thir­ty years after that, write it — and even that he would take up math­e­mat­ics and physics as a course of aca­d­e­m­ic study.

But it takes a mind like Sagan’s not to lose sight of the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the non­spe­cial­ist pub­lic, as evi­denced by the pres­ence on his list of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can and Extra­or­di­nary Pop­u­lar Delu­sions. Nor did he neglect, even before his career began, the need to con­tex­tu­al­ize sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies in the realm of human thought and feel­ing, which extends from Pla­to and the Bible to Shake­speare, André Gide, and John Gun­ther — that last writer’s work, and cer­tain oth­er vol­umes on his list, also show­ing an advanced con­scious­ness of human lim­i­ta­tions and mor­tal­i­ty. All of it placed Sagan well, despite his trun­cat­ed time on Earth, to do work that will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

New Carl Sagan Archive Fea­tures His Dig­i­tized Home Movies, Stu­dent Jour­nal­ism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear 20 Minutes of Mark Frost’s New Secret History of Twin Peaks, the Book Fans Have Waited 25 Years to Read

in Audio Books, Books, Television | October 31st, 2016

We live in a good time to be a Twin Peaks fan. Amid the buzz of a third sea­son of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s inno­v­a­tive­ly sur­re­al prime­time dra­ma pre­mier­ing on Show­time next year, we’ve enjoyed the emer­gence of con­tem­po­rary Twin Peaks-relat­ed mate­ri­als (David Lynch’s hand-drawn map of the tit­u­lar small-town set­ting, the Japan­ese cof­fee com­mer­cials he set there) as well as new­er Twin Peaks-themed projects from oth­er cre­ators (an Atari game, an ele­men­tary school play). And now we can read Frost’s nov­el The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks, billed by its pub­lish­er as “the sto­ry mil­lions of fans have been wait­ing to get their hands on for 25 long years.”

The nov­el­’s “362 pages cov­er what hap­pened to some of the peo­ple of that icon­ic fic­tion­al town since we last saw them 25 years ago, but the time­line starts as ear­ly as the 1800s with the jour­nals of Lewis and Clark,” says fan site Wel­come to Twin Peaks. It also “also offers a deep­er glimpse into the cen­tral mys­tery that was only touched on by the orig­i­nal series, and will include over 100 four-col­or illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs.” The near­ly ten-hour audio­book ver­sion fea­tures the voic­es of orig­i­nal cast mem­bers like Michael Horse as Deputy Hawk, Russ Tam­blyn as Dr. Lawrence Jaco­by, and most Twin Peaks of all, Kyle MacLach­lan as FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

In the video and audio clips at the top of the post, you can sam­ple The Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks’ audio­book expe­ri­ence and get a sense of how it dif­fers from that of a nor­mal audio­book — and how the text itself dif­fers from that of a stan­dard nov­el. It takes the form not of a straight-ahead nar­ra­tive but a thor­ough FBI dossier, the print ver­sion of which Mered­ith Bor­ders of Birth.Movies.Death. describes as “an attrac­tive mul­ti-media hodge­podge, with Xerox­ed mani­la fold­ers and sticky notes, arrest reports, book cov­ers, pho­tos and sketch­es and maps and news­pa­per clip­pings.” The longer excerpt here delves into the sto­ry of Josie Packard, the wid­owed own­er of Packard Sawmill and a par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter in a cast of mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ters. Not to give too much away, but her past involves a fash­ion empire, a Hong Kong drug tri­ad, and a “leg­en­dar­i­ly beau­ti­ful pros­ti­tute.”

As always in Twin Peaks, the more you learn, the stranger things get. But a true fan wants just that, and they can have it and then some by pick­ing up their own copy of the book or audio­book, the lat­ter of which they can get for free if they take audio­book provider Audi­ble up on their 30-day tri­al offer.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Hauntingly Animates Paris’ Famed Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

in Animation, Books | October 26th, 2016

Since his break­out ear­ly days direct­ing com­mer­cials and music videos for the likes of Fat­boy Slim, Weez­er, Daft Punk, and the Breed­ers, Spike Jonze has honed a quirky visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that trans­lat­ed almost seam­less­ly to fea­ture film. But even at his quirki­est, Jonze hasn’t been about quirk for quirk’s sake. His characters—highly emo­tion­al robots, dog-head­ed men with bro­ken legs, tor­ment­ed pup­peteers, enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur dance troops—are under­dogs, weirdos, fig­ures on the fringes who make us ques­tion what it means to be peo­ple: to be lone­ly, in love, cre­ative­ly obsessed, and emo­tion­al­ly scram­bled.…

There is a para­dox inher­ent in Jonze’s films and videos. Their odd­ball plots and char­ac­ters cut through the cyn­i­cal veneer of cool that keeps us from ask­ing hard ques­tions about our emo­tion­al lives, but they do so in styl­is­tic exer­cis­es that in some cas­es them­selves become emblems of pop-cul­ture cool. Not so the short film “Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”), which takes its title from one of the most aching­ly heart­break­ing of Smiths’ songs. This is a love sto­ry for the book­ish and the crafty, set in Paris’ famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny book­store and fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed book cov­ers made from embroi­dered felt cutouts.

Co-writ­ten and with a look inspired by design­er Olympia Le-Tan, the short is “an absolute­ly beau­ti­ful stop-motion ani­ma­tion for book-lovers that’s part This Is Where We Live, part Going West, part cre­ative mag­ic only Spike Jonze can bring.” So writes Maria Popo­va at The Atlantic, sum­ma­riz­ing the ups and downs of the plot and allud­ing to a “hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing” that “comes only after an appro­pri­ate­ly dark and grim twist.”

Watch “To Die by Your Side” at the top of the post, then, just above, see a short behind-the-scenes teas­er video. “You just start with what the feel­ing is,” Jonze told Now­ness in an inter­view, “Me and Olympia both want­ed to make a love sto­ry.… It evolved nat­u­ral­ly and it all just start­ed with the feel­ing. From there you enter­tain your­self with ideas that excite you.” The quote explains why Jonze’s films and videos—for all their visu­al inven­tive­ness and imag­i­na­tive whimsy—nearly always stay ground­ed in can­did emo­tion­al real­ism. How­ev­er far and wide Jonze’ cin­e­mat­ic and nar­ra­tive  imag­i­na­tion takes us, his films always start with the feel­ing.

“Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”) first appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze and Beast­ie Boys, Togeth­er Again

Spike Jonze’s Imag­i­na­tive TV Ads

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

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

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The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook Collects Recipes From T.C. Boyle, Marina Abramović, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates & More

in Books, Food & Drink | October 25th, 2016

writers-cookbook-cover

The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book: A Col­lec­tion of Sto­ries with Recipes © 2016, edit­ed by Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett, illus­trat­ed by Amy Jean Porter, pub­lished by pow­er­House Books..

There will nev­er not be a mar­ket for the cook­book, with all its var­i­ous sub­cat­e­gories, from fad diet to celebri­ty chef. While The Onion’s pro­posed “Niet­zschean Diet” (which “lets you eat what­ev­er you fear most”) may nev­er catch on, one unusu­al cook­book niche does involve the recipes of famous writ­ers, artists, musi­cians and oth­er high- and pop-cul­ture fig­ures. The genre flour­ished in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, with Swingers & Singers in the Kitchen in 1967, Sal­vador Dalí’s Les Din­ers de Gala in 1973, and the MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book in 1978.

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Pre­dat­ing these celebri­ty recipe books, The Artists’ & Writ­ers’ Cook­book appeared in 1961. Brain Pick­ings describes the book as “a lav­ish 350-page vin­tage tome, illus­trat­ed with 19th-cen­tu­ry engrav­ings and orig­i­nal draw­ings by Mar­cel Duchamp, Robert Osbourn, and Alexan­dre Istrati.” It fea­tured 220 recipes by painters, nov­el­ists, poets, and sculp­tors like Man Ray, John Keats, Robert Graves, Harp­er Lee, Georges Simenon, and more. What’s old has become new again, with the recent reprint­ing of Dalí’s cook­book by Taschen and, on Octo­ber 11th, the pub­li­ca­tion of an updat­ed Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book, edit­ed by Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett and illus­trat­ed by Amy Jean Porter.

ajp_abramovic_spirit_x600

The 2016 ver­sion includes recipes from such liv­ing artists as Edwidge Dan­ti­cat, Ed Ruscha, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates, James Fran­co, Nik­ki Gio­van­ni, Mari­na Abramović, and many more. The recipes range from the whim­si­cal (see T.C. Boyle’s “Baked Camel (Stuffed)” fur­ther up) to the thor­ough­ly metaphor­i­cal (as in Abramović’s “Essen­tial Aphro­disi­ac Recipes,” above). In-between, we have such stan­dard fare as “The Util­i­tar­i­an, Amer­i­can-Style PB&J: An Artist’s Best Friend,” cour­tesy of Fran­co, which calls for the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents:

wheat bread
peanut but­ter
jel­ly
gin­ger ale (option­al)
pick­les (option­al)

Hait­ian nov­el­ist Edwidge Dan­ti­cat takes a seri­ous approach with a tra­di­tion­al recipe for “Soup Joumou.” She pref­aces this more exten­sive dish with a poet­ic descrip­tion of its nation­al impor­tance, con­clud­ing that it is con­sumed “as a sign of our inde­pen­dence, as a cel­e­bra­tion of a new begin­ning.…” The recipe may send you to the gro­cery, but—especially this time of year—you’ll find all of the ingre­di­ents at your near­est chain store:

1 pump­kin between 2–3 pounds, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 pound cab­bage, sliced and chopped
4 car­rots, peeled and sliced
3 stalks cel­ery, sliced and chopped
1 large onion, cut into small pieces
5 pota­toes, peeled and cubed
2 turnips, peeled and cubed (option­al)
1 lime cut in half and squeezed for a much juice as you can get from it
¼ pound mac­a­roni
3 gar­lic cloves, crushed or cut into small pieces
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig pars­ley
2 tea­spoons salt
2 tea­spoons ground pep­per
1 Scotch bay­o­net pep­per

Sounds deli­cious.

Neil Gaiman keeps things very sim­ple with “Coraline’s Cheese Omelette,” intro­duced with an excerpt from that dark children’s fan­ta­sy. For this, you like­ly have all you need on hand:

2 eggs
but­ter
cheese
1 table­spoon milk
a pinch of salt

The essays and nar­ra­tives in the new The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book are “at turns,” writes edi­tor Natal­ie Eve Gar­rett, “comedic and heart-wrench­ing, per­son­al and apoc­a­lyp­tic, with recipes that are enchant­i­ng to read and recre­ate.” As you can see from the small sam­pling here, you need not have any pre­ten­tions to haute cui­sine to fol­low most of them. And as the book’s subtitle—“A Col­lec­tion of Sto­ries with Recipes”—suggests, you needn’t cook at all to find joy in this diverse assem­blage of artists and writ­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions with food, that most per­son­al and inti­mate, yet also cul­tur­al­ly defin­ing and com­mu­nal of sub­jects. Pick up a copy of The Artists’ and Writ­ers’ Cook­book on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

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

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Watch 52,000 Books Getting Reshelved at The New York Public Library in a Short, Timelapse Film

in Books | October 24th, 2016

After being closed for 2+ years for repairs and restora­tion, The New York Pub­lic Library’s his­toric Rose Main Read­ing Room reopened ear­li­er this month. Above, you can watch 52,000 books get­ting reshelved in a quick, two-minute time­lapse film. Books get­ting reshelved. Paint dry­ing. A time lapse film can make every­thing inter­est­ing.

Then watch this very relat­ed item: The New York Pub­lic Library Unveils a Cut­ting-Edge Train That Deliv­ers Books.

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:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

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MoMA’s Artists’ Cookbook (1978) Reveals the Meals of Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois & More

in Art, Books, Food & Drink | October 20th, 2016

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If we can con­sid­er some cooks artists, sure­ly we can con­sid­er some artists cooks. Madeleine Con­way and Nan­cy Kirk sure­ly oper­at­ed on that assump­tion when they put togeth­er The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art Artists’ Cook­book, which col­lects 155 recipes from 30 such fig­ures not pri­mar­i­ly known for their culi­nary acu­men as Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Louise Bour­geois, Andy Warhol, Helen Franken­thaler, Roy Licht­en­stein, and Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude. (“Strange­ly,” write the wags at Phaidon, “there are no wraps.”)

moma-cookbook-1

Pub­lished in 1978, the Artists’ Cook­book has long since left print, though pricey sec­ond-hand copies of the MoMA-issued edi­tion and some­what more afford­able copies of the spi­ral-bound trade edi­tion still cir­cu­late: Nick Harvill Libraries, for instance offers one for $125.

“Sim­plic­i­ty is a recur­ring theme,” says their site of the recipes con­tained with­in, which include Dalí’s red sal­ad, de Koon­ing’s seafood sauce, Bour­geois’ French cucum­ber sal­ad, Andy Warhol’s per­haps pre­dictable boil­ing method for Camp­bel­l’s canned soup, Franken­thaler’s poached stuffed striped bass, Licht­en­stein’s not entire­ly seri­ous “pri­mor­dial soup” (involv­ing “8cc hydro­gen” and “5cc ammo­nia”), and Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude’s com­plete “quick and easy filet mignon din­ner par­ty.”

moma-cookbook-2

Tak­en as a whole, the project cap­tures not just a dis­tinc­tive moment in Amer­i­can cul­ture when you could pub­lish a cook­book with pret­ty much any theme — we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Dalí’s own, which came out in 1973, and the rock-star-ori­ent­ed Singers & Swingers in the Kitchen, from 1967 — but an equal­ly dis­tinc­tive moment, and place, in Amer­i­can art. MoMA, as you might expect, brought in the artists with whom they had the clos­est con­nec­tions, which in the mid-1970s meant a par­tic­u­lar­ly influ­en­tial cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions who most­ly rose to promi­nence, and stayed in promi­nence, in New York City.

moma-cookbook-3

That’s not to say that the con­trib­u­tors to The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art Artists’ Cook­book were born into the art world. Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va quotes excerpts of the book’s inter­views with the artists about their ear­ly culi­nary lives: Bour­geois rues the “wast­ed hours” spent cook­ing for her father (“in those days a man had the right to have his food ready for him at all times.” De Koon­ing recalls his child­hood in pover­ty in Hol­land where, “when you had din­ner, it was always brown beans.” Dalí and Warhol put their eccen­tric­i­ties on dis­play, the for­mer with his all-white table (“white porce­lain, white damask, and white flow­ers in crys­tal vas­es”) and the lat­ter with his dec­la­ra­tion that “air­plane food is the best food.” De gustibus, as they say in food and art alike, non dis­putan­dum est.

moma-recipe

via Phae­don/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cook­book: Philoso­pher Pon­ders Mak­ing Omelets in Long Lost Diary Entries

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Goethe’s Colorful & Abstract Illustrations for His 1810 Treatise, Theory of Colors: Scans of the First Edition

in Art, Books, History, Science | October 13th, 2016

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The great Jew­ish philoso­pher Baruch Spin­oza, it is said, drew his con­cep­tions of god and the uni­verse from his work as an opti­cian, grind­ing lens­es day after day. He lived a life sin­gu­lar­ly devot­ed to glass, in which his “evenings to evenings are equal.” So wrote Jorge Luis Borges in a poet­ic appre­ci­a­tion of Spin­oza, of which he lat­er com­ment­ed, “[Spin­oza] is pol­ish­ing crys­tal lens­es and is pol­ish­ing a rather vast crys­tal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. I think we might con­sid­er those tasks par­al­lel. Spin­oza is pol­ish­ing his lens­es, Spin­oza is pol­ish­ing vast dia­monds, his ethics.”

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The pol­ish­ing of lens­es, and work in optics gen­er­al­ly, has a long philo­soph­i­cal pedi­gree, from the exper­i­ments of Renais­sance artists and schol­ars, to the nat­ur­al philoso­phers of the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion who made their own micro­scopes and pon­dered the nature of light. Over a cen­tu­ry after Spinoza’s birth, poly­math artist and thinker Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe pub­lished his great work on optics, just one of many direc­tions he turned his gaze. Unlike Spin­oza, Goethe had lit­tle use for con­cepts of divin­i­ty or for sys­tem­at­ic think­ing.

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But unlike many free­think­ing aris­to­crat­ic dilet­tantes who were a fix­ture of his age, Goethe–-writes poet Philip Brant­i­ng­ham—“was a uni­ver­sal genius, one of those tal­ents whose works tran­scend race, nation, lan­guage-and even time.” It’s a dat­ed con­cept, for sure, but when we think of genius in the old Roman­tic sense, we most often think of Goethe, as a poet, philoso­pher, and sci­en­tist. When he turned his atten­tion to optics and the sci­ence of col­or, Goethe refut­ed the the­o­ries of New­ton and cre­at­ed some endur­ing sci­en­tif­ic art, which would lat­er inspire philo­soph­i­cal icon­o­clasts like Wittgen­stein and expres­sion­ist painters like Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky.

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We’ve fea­tured Goethe’s most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic work, Zur Far­ben­lehre (The­o­ry of Col­ors), in a pre­vi­ous post. Now we can bring you the supe­ri­or images above, from a first edi­tion scan at Stockholm’s Hager­stromer Med­ical Library, who host a col­lec­tion of scanned illus­tra­tions from dozens of first edi­tions of nat­u­ral­ist texts. The col­lec­tion spans a once sup­pressed phys­i­ol­o­gy text by Descartes—anoth­er optics the­o­rist—to Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring, the book that “launched the mod­ern con­ser­va­tion­ist move­ment.” In-between, find scans of illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs from the works of Carl Lin­naeus, Charles Dar­win, Louis Pas­teur, and dozens of oth­er nat­ur­al philoso­phers and sci­en­tists who made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to med­ical sci­ence.

original

In the case of Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors (1810), we get a high-qual­i­ty look at the images in what the author him­self con­sid­ered his best work. “Known as a fierce attack on Newton’s demon­stra­tion that white light is com­pos­ite,” writes the Hager­stromer Library, “Goethe’s colour the­o­ry remains an epochmak­ing work.” Goethe’s illus­tra­tions came direct­ly from “a large num­ber of obser­va­tions of sub­jec­tive colour-per­cep­tions, record­ed with all the exact­ness of a sci­en­tist and the keen insight of an artist.” It’s part­ly the bridg­ing of sci­ences and the arts—of Enlight­en­ment and Romanticism—that has made Goethe such a remark­able fig­ure in Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry. But as many of the fine­ly illus­trat­ed, care­ful­ly observed texts at the Hager­stromer Med­ical Library show, he wasn’t alone in that regard.

goethe-optics-6

In addi­tion to these clas­sic texts, the Hager­stromer also hosts the Wun­derkam­mer, an eclec­tic archive of (often quite bizarre) nat­u­ral­ist images and illus­tra­tions from the 16th to the 20th cen­turies. One MetaFil­ter user describes the col­lec­tion thus:

Wun­derkam­mer is a col­lec­tion of high res­o­lu­tion images from old books in the Hagströmer Med­ical Library. Some of my favorites are sea anemones, nerve cells, roost­er chas­ing off a mon­ster, 16th Cen­tu­ry eye surgery, mus­cles and bones of the hand and arm, ele­phant-head­ed humanoid and cup­ping. It can also be browsed by tag, bro­ken up into sub­ject (e.g. beast), emo­tion (e.g. strange), tech­nique (e.g. chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy) and era (e.g. 18th Cen­tu­ry).

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

Old Book Illus­tra­tions: Free Archive Lets You Down­load Beau­ti­ful Images From the Gold­en Age of Book Illus­tra­tion

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

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

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Henri Matisse Illustrates James Joyce’s Ulysses (1935)

in Art, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2016

Last year, fans of mod­ernist Irish lit­er­a­ture and impres­sion­ist art saw a must-own vol­ume go under the ham­mer at Bon­hams. “In 1935 the French artist, Hen­ri Matisse, was com­mis­sioned to illus­trate an edi­tion of Ulysses for sub­scribers to the Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Club in Amer­i­ca,” announced Artlyst. “Each of the 1,000 copies was signed by Matisse and 250 were also signed by James Joyce. A copy of the book signed by both men is esti­mat­ed at £6,000 to £8,000.”

In the event it went for £6,250, not a bad deal con­sid­er­ing the hands that wrote those sig­na­tures and the rar­i­ty, signed or unsigned, of this unusu­al book itself. (It cer­tain­ly beats, say, $37,000.) Brain­pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va writes that, after first spot­ting the Matisse-illus­trat­ed Ulysses here on Open Cul­ture, “I gath­ered up my year’s worth of lunch mon­ey and was able to grab one of the last copies avail­able online — a glo­ri­ous leather-bound tome with 22-karat gold accents, gilt edges, moire fab­ric end­pa­pers, and a satin page mark­er.” Ver­sions signed by Matisse are appar­ent­ly available–at a steep price–on Ama­zon.

Popo­va adds that “the Matisse draw­ings inside it, of course, are the most price­less of its offer­ings — dou­bly so because, for all their beau­ty, they’re a tragi­com­e­dy of qua­si-col­lab­o­ra­tion.” From whence the tragi­com­e­dy? Pub­lish­ing lore has it that, despite the pro­vi­sion of a full French trans­la­tion of the Ulysses text, Matisse made his illus­tra­tive etch­ings — in the fash­ion of many an under­grad­u­ate with a paper due — with­out ever hav­ing got around to read­ing the book him­self.

“I’ve nev­er ‘read’ Joyce’s Ulysses, and it’s quite plau­si­ble that I nev­er will,” Matis­se’s coun­try­man Pierre Bayard would write sev­en­ty years lat­er in his best­selling How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Yet “I feel per­fect­ly com­fort­able when Ulysses comes up in con­ver­sa­tion, because I can sit­u­ate it with rel­a­tive pre­ci­sion in rela­tion to oth­er books. I know, for exam­ple, that it is a retelling of the Odyssey, that its nar­ra­tion takes the form of a stream of con­scious­ness, that its action unfolds in Dublin over the course of a sin­gle day, etc.” — all things that Matisse, too, prob­a­bly knew about Ulysses.

He cer­tain­ly knew that it sup­pos­ed­ly retold the sto­ry of the Odyssey, and so, in a now-inge­nious-look­ing strat­e­gy to not just talk about an unread book but to illus­trate it, he went to the source. Or rather, he went to one of the count­less cul­tur­al, lit­er­ary, his­tor­i­cal, and lin­guis­tic sources upon which Joyce drew to com­pose his mas­ter­piece, bas­ing his art direct­ly on Home­r’s epic poem, in its own way a work more talked about than read. Joyce him­self, who once described much of the tex­tu­al con­tent of Ulysses as intend­ed to “keep the pro­fes­sors busy for cen­turies argu­ing over what I meant,” may well have admired Matis­se’s clar­i­ty of vision, no mat­ter how much-non read­ing it took to refine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load as a Free Audio Book & Free eBook

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

New Art Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses Fea­tures All 265,000 Words Writ­ten by Hand on Big Wood­en Poles

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates Baudelaire’s Cen­sored Poet­ry Col­lec­tion, Les Fleurs du Mal

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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