The Five Minute Museum: A Stop Motion Animation Shows the History of Civilization at Breakneck Speed

in Animation, Comedy, Fashion, History, Museums | November 13th, 2020

Exper­i­men­tal direc­tor and ani­ma­tor Paul Bush’s 2015 short film The Five-Minute Muse­um, above, is the dizzy­ing anti­dote to stand­ing, foot­sore, in front of a vit­rine crowd­ed with Ancient Greek amphoras or exquis­ite­ly craft­ed pock­et watch­es and won­der­ing, not about his­to­ry, cul­ture or the nature of time, but whether you can jus­ti­fy spend­ing $15 for an under­whelm­ing cheese and toma­to sand­wich in the muse­um cafe.

It’s a break­neck stop motion jour­ney through the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion via six muse­um collections—three in Lon­don and three in Switzer­land.

Pre­sent­ed pri­mar­i­ly as stills that flash by at a rate of 24 per sec­ond, Bush groups like objects togeth­er, “there­by allow­ing the tri­umphs of human endeav­or to be seen even in far cor­ners of the land, by the bedrid­den, the infirm and the lazy.”

His sense of humor asserts itself the minute an assort­ment of ancient shards appear to ren­der them­selves into not just a state of whole­ness, but an entire up close soci­ety in close-up. It doesn’t take long for these ves­sels’ clash­ing of war­riors to give way to a com­pos­ite por­trait of idle youth, whose flir­ta­tions are stoked by a num­ber of man­ic pipers in rapid suc­ces­sion, and Andy Cow­ton’s orig­i­nal music and sound design.

It’s a shock when Bush slows down and pulls back to show the source objects in their muse­um cas­es, qui­et as a tomb, the sort of dis­play most vis­i­tors blow past en route to some­thing sex­i­er, like a dinosaur or a block­buster exhib­it requir­ing timed entry tick­ets.

Oth­er high­lights include a live­ly assort­ments of guns, hats, chairs, and plas­tic toys.

If you start feel­ing over­whelmed by the visu­al inten­si­ty, don’t wor­ry. Bush builds in a bit of a breather once you hit the clocks, the bulk of which pre­sum­ably hail from the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um in Zurich.

The inge­nious ani­mat­ed short was 10 years in the mak­ing, a fact the artist mod­est­ly down­plays:

It’s very sim­ple. Sim­ple sto­ry, a sim­ple tech­nique and that’s what I like. Poet­ry should be a lit­tle bit stu­pid. This is what Pushkin says, and I try and make my films a lit­tle bit stu­pid as well.

In addi­tion to the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um, you’ll find the fea­tured arti­facts housed in the British Muse­um, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, London’s Muse­um of the Home (for­mer­ly known as the Gef­frye Muse­um) as well as the Lucerne His­tor­i­cal Muse­um and the Bern His­tor­i­cal Muse­um.

Expect a much slow­er expe­ri­ence.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Help your­self to her free down­load­able poster series, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Japanese Traditions of Sashiko & Boro: The Centuries-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sustainable, Artistic Way

in Art, Fashion, History, How to Learn for Free, Life, Philosophy | October 26th, 2020

The state of our trou­bled plan­et dic­tates that dis­pos­ables are out.

Reusables are in.

And any­one who’s taught them­selves how to mend and main­tain their stuff has earned the right to flaunt it!

A quick scroll through Insta­gram reveals loads of vis­i­ble mend­ing projects that high­light rather than dis­guise the area of repair, draw­ing the eye to con­trast­ing threads rein­forc­ing a thread­bare knee, frayed cuff, ragged rip, or moth hole.

While some prac­ti­tion­ers take a freeform approach, the most pleas­ing stitch­es tend to be in the sashiko tra­di­tion.

Sashiko—fre­quent­ly trans­lat­ed as “lit­tle stabs”—was born in Edo peri­od Japan (1603–1868), when rur­al women attempt­ed to pro­long the life of their fam­i­lies’ tat­tered gar­ments and bed­ding, giv­ing rise to a hum­ble form of white-on-indi­go patch­work known as boro.

While sashiko can at times be seen serv­ing a pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion, such as on a very well pre­served Mei­ji peri­od jack­et in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s col­lec­tion, its pri­ma­ry use was always one born of neces­si­ty.

As Austin Bryant notes on Hed­dels, a news and edu­ca­tion web­site ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able goods:

Over gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies, these tex­tiles would acquire more and more patch­es, almost to the point of the com­mon observ­er being unable to rec­og­nize where the orig­i­nal fab­ric began. As they recov­ered after the end of World War II, to some the boro tex­tiles remind­ed the Japan­ese of their impov­er­ished rur­al past.

Keiko & Atsushi Futat­suya are a moth­er-and-son arti­san team whose posts on sashiko and boro go beyond straight­for­ward how-tos to delve into cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

Accord­ing to them, the goal of sashiko should not be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing rows of uni­form stitch­es, but rather “enjoy­ing the dia­logue” with the fab­ric.

As Atsushi explains in an Insta­gram post, view­ers see­ing their work with a West­ern per­spec­tive may respond dif­fer­ent­ly than those who have grown up with the ele­ments in play:

This is a pho­to of a “Boro-to-be Jack­et” in the process. This is the back (hid­ing) side of the jack­et and many non-Japan­ese would say this should be the front and should show to the pub­lic. The Japan­ese would under­stand why it is a back­side nat­u­ral­ly, but I would need to “explain” to the non-Japan­ese who do not share the same val­ue (why we) pur­pose­ful­ly make this side as “hid­ing” side. That’s why, I keep shar­ing in words. One pic­ture may be worth a thou­sand words, but the thou­sand words may be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent based on their (free) inter­pre­ta­tion. In shar­ing the cul­ture, some “actu­al words” would be also very impor­tant.

To try your hand at sashiko, you will need a long nee­dle, such as a cot­ton darn­ing nee­dle, white embroi­dery thread, and—for boro—an aging tex­tile in need of some atten­tion.

Should you find your­self slid­ing into a full blown obses­sion, you may want to order sashiko nee­dles and thread, and a palm thim­ble to help you push through sev­er­al weights of fab­ric simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

You’ll find many pat­terns, tips, and tuto­ri­als on the Futat­suya family’s Sashi.co YouTube chan­nel.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Explore the Beau­ti­ful Pages of the 1902 Japan­ese Design Mag­a­zine Shin-Bijut­sukai: Euro­pean Mod­ernism Meets Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Design

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

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Behold 19th-Century Japanese Firemen’s Coats, Richly Decorated with Mythical Heroes & Symbols

in Fashion, History | July 28th, 2020

Some fire­men today may com­plain about the bore­dom of all the time spent doing noth­ing at the sta­tion between calls, but when the hour comes to do bat­tle with a seri­ous blaze, no one can say they have it easy. Fire­fight­ing has, of course, nev­er been a par­tic­u­lar­ly relaxed gig, espe­cial­ly back in the days before not just water can­non-equipped heli­copters, and not just fire engines, but fire hoses as we know them today. Putting out urban con­fla­gra­tions with­out much water at hand is one thing, but imag­ine hav­ing to do it every day in a dense­ly packed, high­ly flam­ma­ble city like Tokyo — or rather Edo, as it was known between the ear­ly 17th and mid-19th cen­turies.

“Fires were fre­quent dur­ing this peri­od because of crowd­ed liv­ing con­di­tions and wood­en build­ings, and the fire­fight­ers’ objec­tive was to pre­vent a burn­ing house from spread­ing its flames to the neigh­bor­ing res­i­dences,” writes Antique Trader’s Kris Man­ty. With only weak water pumps at their dis­pos­al, Edo fire­men “did not save the home, but rather tore down the burn­ing struc­ture and extin­guished the fire. They did this by using long poles and oth­er fire imple­ments to demol­ish the blaz­ing house and once the fire was doused, the sur­round­ing homes were once again safe.” In peace­time they “emerged as lat­ter-day samu­rai heroes, with the mot­to, ‘duty, sym­pa­thy and endurance’ ” — and bedecked in tru­ly glo­ri­ous hand­made coats.

“Each fire­fight­er in a giv­en brigade was out­fit­ted with a spe­cial reversible coat (hikeshi ban­ten), plain but for the name of the brigade on one side and dec­o­rat­ed with rich­ly sym­bol­ic imagery on the oth­er,” says the Pub­lic Domain Review, where you can behold a gallery of such gar­ments.

“These coats would be worn plain-side out and thor­ough­ly soaked in water before the fire­fight­ers entered the scene of the blaze. No doubt the men wore them this way round to pro­tect the dyed images from dam­age, but they were prob­a­bly also con­cerned with pro­tect­ing them­selves, as they went about their dan­ger­ous work, through direct con­tact with the heroes and crea­tures rep­re­sent­ed on the insides of these beau­ti­ful gar­ments.”

At the top of the post appears an exam­ple of an Edo fire­man’s coat held by the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art, one embla­zoned with imagery from per­haps the best-known Japan­ese fable of all. “The cen­ter of this coat shows Momo­taro, a leg­endary boy born from a peach, stomp­ing on an ogre,” says the muse­um’s web site. “The smoke bil­low­ing behind him reminds us of the use of this coat, as does the fire­man’s hook pic­tured on the left sleeve. After their duty, fire­men reversed their coats to dis­play the bold and inspir­ing designs.” As with many promi­nent fig­ures of the age, Edo fire­fight­ers were also immor­tal­ized, coats and all, in ukiyo-e wood­block prints.

The noble image is not least thanks to the fact, writes Artelino’s Dieter Wanczu­ra, that “the great mas­ter Hiroshige I was the son of a fire war­den in the ser­vice of the shogu­nate,” and indeed a fire­fight­er him­self, keep­ing the job years into his print­mak­ing career. The prints fea­tured there include one depict­ing an 1805 clash “between sumo wrestlers and fire-fight­ers at Shin­mei shrine,” not an entire­ly unex­pect­ed occur­rence giv­en the row­dy pub­lic image of the kind of men who joined fire brigades. But “the aver­age Japan­ese always cher­ished a lik­ing for what they con­sid­ered to be hon­or­able ban­dits and out­casts” — and who today, any­where in the world, could argue with their style?

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Female Samu­rai War­riors Immor­tal­ized in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Pho­tos

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

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Bisa Butler’s Beautiful Quilted Portraits of Frederick Douglass, Nina Simone, Jean-Michel Basquiat & More

in Art, Creativity, Fashion, History | July 10th, 2020

Fiber artist Bisa But­ler’s quilt­ed por­traits of Black Amer­i­cans gain extra pow­er from their medi­um.

Each work is com­prised of many scraps, care­ful­ly cut and posi­tioned after hours of research and pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es.

Vel­vet and silk nes­tle against bits of vin­tage flour sacks, West African wax print fab­ric, den­im and, occa­sion­al­ly, hand-me-downs from the sitter’s own col­lec­tion.

In The Warmth of Oth­er Sons, a 12-foot, life-sized por­trait of an African Amer­i­can fam­i­ly who migrat­ed north in search of eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty, a wary-look­ing young girl clutch­es a purse to her chest. The purse is con­struct­ed from a com­mer­cial wax cot­ton print titled Michelle Obama’s Bag, which com­mem­o­rates one of the for­mer First Lady’s trips to Africa.

As anthro­pol­o­gist Nina Syl­vanus writes in Pat­terns in Cir­cu­la­tion: Cloth, Gen­der, and Mate­ri­al­i­ty in West Africa:

To wear this pattern…is both to hon­or and aspire to be rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful like Michele Oba­ma; It is con­sid­ered a must-have fash­ion piece in the wardrobe of styl­ish women in Abid­jan, Lomé, and Lagos.

The vibrant col­ors of Butler’s mate­ri­als also inform her por­traits, par­tic­u­lar­ly those inspired by his­tor­i­cal fig­ures whose images are most famil­iar in black-and-white.

She is also deeply influ­enced by her under­grad­u­ate years at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, where many of her pro­fes­sors were part of the AfriCO­BRA artists’ col­lec­tive. They encour­aged stu­dents to think of blank can­vas­es as black, rather than white, and to throw out the Beaux Arts palette in favor of West African fabric’s Kool-Aid colors—“bright orange, bright yel­low, crim­son red, intense blue.”

As she describes in the above video:

The ini­tial start is who’s it gonna be? Then after you choose that per­son, choose your col­or scheme. The col­or scheme is based on what you feel about that per­son. Peo­ple have col­or around them, in them, that is not evi­dent­ly vis­i­ble to the naked eye.

The Storm, the Whirl­wind, and The Earth­quake, her recent­ly com­plet­ed full-length por­trait of a 30-year old Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, reimag­ines the abolitionist’s 19th-cen­tu­ry garb as some­thing akin to a mod­ern day Harlem dandy’s bold embrace of col­or, pat­tern, and style, delib­er­ate­ly chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo. The rich col­or scheme extends to his skin and the homey back­ground fab­ric.

But­ler, who was raised in an art-filled New Jer­sey home by a Black Amer­i­can moth­er and a Ghan­ian father, also cred­its her grand­moth­er, the sub­ject of her first quilt­ed por­trait, with help­ing her find her aes­thet­ic.

An ear­ly attempt to paint a por­trait of her beloved rel­a­tive (and child­hood sewing instruc­tor) result­ed in dis­ap­point­ment on both sides. The crest­fall­en artist’s aunt tipped her off that the old­er lady’s men­tal self-pic­ture was that of some­one 30 years younger.

Inspired by the col­laged work of Romare Bear­den, But­ler gave it anoth­er go, this time in quilt­ed form, tak­ing care to rep­re­sent her grand­moth­er as an attrac­tive woman in the prime of life. This time her efforts were met with enthu­si­asm. “I could feel an ener­gy in the room that some­thing new was hap­pen­ing,” But­ler recalls.

Whether her sub­jects are liv­ing or dead, But­ler strives to bring the same sense of “dig­ni­ty and regal opu­lence” to unsung cit­i­zens that she does when cre­at­ing por­traits of such famous Amer­i­cans as Nina Simone, Zora Neale Hurston, Jack­ie Robin­son, Lau­ren Hill, Josephine Bak­er, and Jean-Michel Basquiat:

African Amer­i­cans have been quilt­ing since we were brought to this coun­try and need­ed to keep warm. Enslaved peo­ple were not giv­en large pieces of fab­ric and had to make do with the scraps of cloth that were left after cloth­ing wore out. From these scraps the African Amer­i­can quilt aes­thet­ic came into being. Some enslaved peo­ples were so tal­ent­ed that they were tasked for cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful quilts that adorned their enslavers beds. My own pieces are rem­i­nis­cent of this tra­di­tion, but I use African fab­rics from my father’s home­land of Ghana, batiks from Nige­ria, and prints from South Africa. My sub­jects are adorned with and made up of the cloth of our ances­tors. If these vis­ages are to be recre­at­ed and seen for the first time in a cen­tu­ry, I want them to have their African Ances­try back, I want them to take their place in Amer­i­can His­to­ry. I want the view­er to see the sub­jects as I see them. 

Explore the work of Bisa But­ler on the artist’s Insta­gram, or MyMod­ern­met and Colos­sal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Free Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

Too Big for Any Muse­um, AIDS Quilt Goes Dig­i­tal Thanks to Microsoft

The Solar Sys­tem Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Cre­ates a Hand­craft­ed Quilt to Use as a Teach­ing Aid in Her Astron­o­my Class

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

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DEVO Is Now Selling COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment: Energy Dome Face Shields

in Current Affairs, Design, Fashion, Health, Music | May 18th, 2020

Accord­ing to DEVO’s co-prin­ci­ple song­writer and bassist Ger­ald Casale, the exper­i­men­tal art band turned ear­ly MTV pop-punk dar­lings were “pro-infor­ma­tion, anti stu­pid con­for­mi­ty and knew that the strug­gle for free­dom against tyran­ny is nev­er-end­ing.”

Their sin­gu­lar per­for­mance garb also set them apart, and none more so than the bright red plas­tic Ener­gy Dome hel­mets they donned 40 years ago this month, upon the release of their third album, Free­dom of Choice.

The record, which the band con­ceived of as a funk album, explod­ed into main­stream con­scious­ness. The visu­als may have made an even more last­ing impact than the music, which includ­ed the chart top­ping “Whip It.”

Even the most anti-New Wave met­al­head could iden­ti­fy the source of those domes, which have been likened to upturned flower pots, dog bowls, car uri­nals, and lamp shades.

What they prob­a­bly don’t know is the Ener­gy Dome was “designed accord­ing to ancient zig­gu­rat mount pro­por­tions used in votive wor­ship. Like the mounds, it col­lects ener­gy and recir­cu­lates it. In this case, the dome col­lects ener­gy that escapes from the crown of the human head and push­es it back into the Medu­la Oblon­ga­ta for increased men­tal ener­gy.”

Thus sayeth Casale, any­way.

DEVO’s 2020 con­cert plans were, of course, scotched by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, but the band has found an alter­na­tive way to mark the 40th anniver­sary of Free­dom of Choice and the birth of its icon­ic head­gear.

In addi­tion to face masks embla­zoned with the famil­iar red tiered shape, DEVO­tees with mon­ey and con­fi­dence to spare can ante up for a DIY Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment kit that trans­forms a stan­dard-issue Ener­gy Dome into a face shield.

It’s worth not­ing that before tak­ing your con­vert­ed ener­gy dome out for a par­ti­cle deflect­ing spin, you’ll have to truf­fle up a hard hat sus­pen­sion lin­er and install it for a prop­er fit.

Casale her­ald­ed the open­ing of DEVO’s merch store in a Face­book post:

Here we are 40 years lat­er, liv­ing in the alter­nate real­i­ty night­mare spawned by Covid 19 and the botched response of our world “lead­ers” to do the right thing quick­ly. We are not exag­ger­at­ing when we say that 2020 could be the last time you might be able to exer­cise your free­dom of choice. If you don’t use it, you can cer­tain­ly lose it.

Uh, he’s talk­ing about vot­ing, right, rather than storm­ing the capi­tol build­ing to demand the pre­ma­ture reopen­ing of inessen­tial busi­ness­es or mak­ing out­sized threats in response to gro­cery store mask poli­cies?

Per­haps the pow­er of the Ener­gy Dome is such that it could reawak­en the pro-infor­ma­tion, anti-stu­pid­i­ty sen­si­bil­i­ties of some dor­mant DEVO fans among the unmasked rank and file.

As Casale him­self posit­ed in an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer: “You make it taste good so that they don’t real­ize there’s med­i­cine in it.”

Pre-order masks and PPE kits from DEVO’s offi­cial merch store.

Down­load instruc­tions for installing a hard hat sus­pen­sion replace­ment inside the Ener­gy Dome pri­or to attach­ing the shield.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Free Tem­plate for an Anti-Virus Face Shield: Down­load, and Then Use a Print­er, Paper & Scis­sors

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

in Fashion, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 8th, 2020

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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What the Iconic Painting, “The Two Fridas,” Actually Tells Us About Frida Kahlo

in Art, Fashion | March 30th, 2020

I nev­er paint­ed dreams. I paint­ed my own real­i­ty. —Fri­da Kahlo

You may be for­giv­en for assum­ing you already know every­thing there is to know about Fri­da Kahlo.

The sub­ject of a high pro­file bio-pic, a bilin­gual opera, and numer­ous books for chil­dren and adults, her image is near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous as Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s, though Fri­da exer­cised a great deal of con­trol over hers by paint­ing dozens of unsmil­ing self-por­traits in which her unplucked uni­brow and her tra­di­tion­al Tehua­na garb fea­ture promi­nent­ly.

(Whether she would appre­ci­ate hav­ing her image splashed across show­er cur­tains, light switch cov­ers, yoga mats, and t‑shirts is anoth­er mat­ter, and one even a force as for­mi­da­ble as she would be hard pressed to con­trol from beyond the grave. Her imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able coun­te­nance pow­ers every sou­venir stall in Mex­i­co City’s Coyoacán neigh­bor­hood, where Casa Azul, the home in which she both was born and died, attracts some 25,000 vis­i­tors month­ly.)

A recent episode of PBS’ dig­i­tal series The Art Assign­ment, above, exam­ines the dual­i­ty at Frida’s core by using her dou­ble self-por­trait, The Two Fridas (Las Dos Fridas), as a jump­ing off place.

Kahlo her­self explained that the tra­di­tion­al­ly dressed fig­ure on the right is the one her just-divorced ex-hus­band, mural­ist Diego Rivera had loved, while the unloved one on the left fails to keep the unteth­ered vein unit­ing them from soil­ing her Vic­to­ri­an wed­ding gown. (The vein, orig­i­nates on the right, ris­ing from a small child­hood por­trait of Rivera, that was among Kahlo’s per­son­al effects when she died.)

It’s an expres­sion of lone­li­ness and yet, the twin-like fig­ures are depict­ed ten­der­ly clasp­ing each other’s hands:

Bereft but com­fort­ed

Frac­tured but intact

Lone­ly but not iso­lat­ed

Bro­ken but beau­ti­ful

Humil­i­at­ed but proud

Kahlo’s bound­aries, it sug­gests, are high­ly per­me­able, in life, as in art, draw­ing from such influ­ences as Bronzi­no, El Gre­co, Modigliani, Sur­re­al­ism, and Catholic iconog­ra­phy in both Euro­pean reli­gious paint­ing and Mex­i­can folk art.

As for the new thing learned, this writer was unaware that when Kahlo mar­ried Rivera—her elder by 22 years—in a 1929 civ­il cer­e­mo­ny, she did so in skirt and blouse bor­rowed from her indige­nous maid… a fact which speaks to the end of her pop­u­lar­i­ty in cer­tain quar­ters.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

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

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These Boots Are Made for Walkin’: The Story Behind Nancy Sinatra’s Enduring #1 Hit (1966)

in Fashion, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 3rd, 2020

You put on your boots
And I’ll put on mine
And we’ll sell a mil­lion records
Any old time
- Lee Hazle­wood

Musi­cians!

Look­ing to increase your chances of a hit song, one that will worm its way into the public’s hearts and ears, earn­ing fat roy­al­ty checks for half a cen­tu­ry or more?

Try start­ing with a killer bass line.

Accord­ing to singer Nan­cy Sina­tra, song­writer Lee Hazle­wood and arranger Bil­ly Strange swung by her par­ents’ liv­ing room to pre­view a selec­tion of tunes they thought she might want to record.

The moment she heard “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”s mem­o­rable lick, she knew it was a win­ner.

(As did her famous father, who looked up from his news­pa­per after Hazle­wood and Strange depart­ed, to remark, “The song about the boots is best.”)

Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a song from the male POV, the 25-year-old, just-divorced Sina­tra felt its mes­sage would be less “harsh and abu­sive” deliv­ered by a “lit­tle girl.”

Hazle­wood agreed, but hedged his bets by direct­ing engi­neer Eddie Brack­ett to beef up Sinatra’s vocals with some light reverb.

As biog­ra­ph­er James Kaplan describes in Sina­tra: The Chair­man, Hazle­wood also offered some dis­creet direc­tion, insin­u­at­ing that the vibe to strive for was that of “a 14-year-old girl in love with a 40-year-old man.”

When Sina­tra failed to receive his mean­ing, he shucked all pre­tense of del­i­ca­cy. Nan­cy shared his march­ing orders in her 1985 biog­ra­phy Frank Sina­tra, My Father:

…I was still singing like Nan­cy Nice­La­dy. Lee hit the talk-back switch in the booth and his deep voice blew my ears off. ‘For chris­sake, you were a mar­ried woman, Nasty, you’re not a vir­gin any­more. Let’s do one for the truck dri­vers. Say some­thing tough at the end of this one… Bite the words.’

Or some­thing to that effect…

Kaplan includes how sev­er­al sources claim that Hazlewood’s actu­al instruc­tion was to sing it like “a six­teen-year-old girl who f**ks truck dri­vers.”

(Editor’s note: instruct­ing a young woman to do that in 2020 is far like­li­er to result in a law suit than a hit record.… and giv­en that most of the sources who abide by this ver­sion of Boots’ cre­ation myth pref­ace their state­ments with the word “appar­ent­ly,” it may not have flown in 1966 either.)

The song’s immense pop­u­lar­i­ty was giv­en an assist by the 1966 Col­or-Son­ics film, above, shot in 16mm for the public’s enjoy­ment on 26-inch Sco­pi­tone juke­box screens.

It also put a match to the Amer­i­can tin­der where go-go boots were con­cerned. Young women in Britain had already adopt­ed them as the per­fect footwear to accom­pa­ny Youthquake design­er Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants. Sina­tra and her maxi sweater-wear­ing back up dancers get the bulk of the cred­it on this side of the pond.

While “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” has been cov­ered by every­one from Ella Fitzger­ald and Duke Elling­ton to Bil­ly Ray Cyrus and Megadeth, the sweet­est cov­er remains song­writer Hazlewood’s, below, in which he namechecks the col­lab­o­ra­tors of his most famous hit with nary a men­tion of truck­ers or teenaged girls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

The Sex Pis­tols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Noth­ing Sacred?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC TONIGHT, Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, as her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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