Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War I Inspired Monet to Paint His Final Masterpieces & Create “the World’s First Art Installation”

in Art, History | October 4th, 2021

When one con­sid­ers which artists most pow­er­ful­ly evoke the hor­rors of trench war­fare, Claude Mon­et is hard­ly the first name to come to mind. And yet, once viewed that way, his final Water Lilies paint­ings — belong­ing to a series that, in repro­duc­tion, speaks to many of no more har­row­ing a set­ting than a doc­tor’s wait­ing room — can hard­ly be viewed in any oth­er. These eight large-scale can­vass­es con­sti­tute “a war memo­r­i­al to the mil­lions of lives trag­i­cal­ly lost in the First World War,” argues Great Art Explained cre­ator James Payne. Mon­et declined to include a hori­zon line in any of them, leav­ing view­ers in “a vast field of unfath­omable noth­ing­ness, of light, air, and water,” at once peace­ful and rem­i­nis­cent of “the bat­tle-rav­aged land­scape along the west­ern front.”

Those bat­tle­fields “had no begin­ning or end, and no hori­zons. Time and space was for­got­ten, as sol­diers were enveloped in a sea of mud, sur­round­ed by water­logged and sur­re­al land­scapes, which cov­ered their field of vision.” The Great War, as it was then known, still raged on when the sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an Mon­et began these works.  (“He could hear the sound of gun­fire from 50 kilo­me­ters away from his house in Giverny as he paint­ed,” notes Payne.)

By the time he fin­ished them, in the last year of his life, the fight­ing had been over for eight years. In a sense, these paint­ings may have kept him alive: “He was con­stant­ly ‘rework­ing’ them and seemed inca­pable of fin­ish­ing,” even though, by his own admis­sion, “he could no longer see the details or make out col­ors.”

When these Water Lilies were revealed to the pub­lic, mount­ed in their own spe­cial­ly designed gallery in Paris’ Musée de l’O­r­angerie (arranged by close per­son­al friend Georges Clemenceau), Mon­et was dead — which may, in part, explain the crit­ics’ will­ing­ness to deride them as the work of an artist who had lost his pow­ers. “Mon­et, reject­ed by crit­ics in the 19th cen­tu­ry for being too rad­i­cal, was now being crit­i­cized in the 20th cen­tu­ry for not being rad­i­cal enough.” It would take a lat­er gen­er­a­tion of artists — includ­ing Amer­i­can painters like Mark Rothko and Jack­son Pol­lock  — to see his last works as “a log­i­cal jump­ing-off point for abstrac­tion,” and the space that hous­es them as “the Sis­tine Chapel of impres­sion­ism.” World War I has passed out of liv­ing mem­o­ry, but “the world’s first art instal­la­tion” it inspired Mon­et to cre­ate has lost none of its pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Paint Water Lilies Like Mon­et in 14 Min­utes

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

1923 Pho­to of Claude Mon­et Col­orized: See the Painter in the Same Col­or as His Paint­ings

1,540 Mon­et Paint­ings in a Two Hour Video

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail

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, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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See Every Nuclear Explosion in History: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

in History, Physics, Technology | September 30th, 2021

There have been more than 2,000 nuclear explo­sions in all of his­to­ry — which, in the case of the tech­nol­o­gy required to det­o­nate a nuclear explo­sion, goes back only 76 years. It all began, accord­ing to the ani­mat­ed video above, on July 16, 1945, with the nuclear device code-named Trin­i­ty. The fruit of the labors of the Man­hat­tan Project, its explo­sion famous­ly brought to the mind of the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Robert J. Oppen­hemier a pas­sage from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, destroy­er of worlds.” But how­ev­er rev­e­la­to­ry a spec­ta­cle Trin­i­ty pro­vid­ed, it turned out mere­ly to be the over­ture of the nuclear age.

Cre­at­ed by Ehsan Rezaie of Orbital Mechan­ics, the video offers a sim­ple-look­ing but decep­tive­ly infor­ma­tion-rich pre­sen­ta­tion of every nuclear explo­sion that has so far occurred. It belongs to a per­haps unlike­ly but nev­er­the­less deci­sive­ly estab­lished genre, the ani­mat­ed nuclear-explo­sion time-lapse, of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured exam­ples from Busi­ness Insid­er’s Alex Kuzoian and artist Isao Hasi­mo­to here on Open Cul­ture.

The size of each cir­cle that erupts on the world map indi­cates the rel­a­tive pow­er of the explo­sion in its loca­tion (all infor­ma­tion also pro­vid­ed in the scrolling text on the low­er left); those det­o­nat­ed under­ground appear in yel­low, those det­o­nat­ed under­wa­ter in blue, and those det­o­nat­ed in the atmos­phere in red.

Trin­i­ty cre­at­ed an atmos­pher­ic explo­sion above New Mex­i­co’s Jor­na­da del Muer­to desert. (Oth­er­wise Oppen­heimer would­n’t have been able to wit­ness it change the world.) So did Lit­tle Boy and Fat Man, the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Those remain the only det­o­na­tions of nuclear weapons in com­bat, and thus the nuclear explo­sions every­one knows, but they, too, rep­re­sent only the begin­ning. As the Cold War sets in, some­thing of a test­ing vol­ley emerges between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, cul­mi­nat­ing in the colos­sal red dot of 1961’s Tsar Bom­ba, still the most pow­er­ful nuclear weapon ever test­ed. With the USSR long gone today, the explo­sions have only slowed. But in recent years, as the data on which this video is based indi­cates, nuclear test­ing has turned into a one-play­er game — and that play­er is North Korea.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Nuclear Bomb Explo­sion in His­to­ry, Ani­mat­ed

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

200 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

U.S. Det­o­nates Nuclear Weapons in Space; Peo­ple Watch Spec­ta­cle Sip­ping Drinks on Rooftops (1962)

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita–“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds” — Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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America’s First Banned Book: Discover the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puritans

in Books, History | September 29th, 2021

In the con­test for the title of the most Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal fig­ure of them all, Thomas Mor­ton’s name can’t be left out. Busi­nesslike, liti­gious, giv­en to rhap­sodies over nature, and not resis­tant to turn­ing celebri­ty, he was also — in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can man­ner — born else­where. Back in Devon, Eng­land, he’d made his name as a lawyer, rep­re­sent­ing mem­bers of the low­er class in court, but in 1622 he was hired by investor Sir Fer­di­nan­do Gorges on a trip to han­dle his affairs in the North Amer­i­can colonies. This was just two years after the found­ing of Ply­mouth Colony, whose suc­cess had inspired many an Eng­lish busi­ness­man to con­tem­plate get­ting in on the New World action him­self. In 1624, Gorges sent Mor­ton across the Atlantic again, this time with every­thing need­ed to found a colony of his own.

Mor­ton was not a Puri­tan, nor was he “on board with the strict, insu­lar, and pious soci­ety they had hoped to build for them­selves,” as Atlas Obscu­ra’s Matthew Taub puts it. Though his own colony of Mer­ry­mount became Ply­mouth’s rival in the fur trade, for the Puri­tans “the prob­lem wasn’t only that Mor­ton was tak­ing goods and com­merce away from Ply­mouth, but that he was giv­ing that busi­ness to the Native Amer­i­cans, includ­ing trad­ing guns to the Algo­nquins. With Plymouth’s monop­oly dis­solved and its per­ceived ene­mies armed, Mor­ton had per­haps done more than any­one else to under­mine the Puri­tan project in Mass­a­chu­setts.” And that was before Mor­ton erect­ed Mer­ry­moun­t’s 80-foot, antler-topped may­pole, around which he invit­ed res­i­dents to “drink, dance, and frol­ic.”

Obvi­ous­ly, Mor­ton’s reign as a “lord of mis­rule” (as Plymouth’s gov­er­nor William Brad­ford deemed him) could not be borne for long. “Dur­ing the 1628 fes­tiv­i­ties, a Puri­tan mili­tia led by Myles Stan­dish invad­ed Mer­ry­mount and chopped down the may­pole,” writes Taub, not­ing that the inci­dent inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1832 short sto­ry “The May-Pole of Mer­ry Mount.” Mor­ton also turned out to be an able chron­i­cler of the peri­od him­self, at least after the sub­se­quent tribu­la­tions that saw him sen­tenced to death by star­va­tion, helped to sur­vive by the Native Amer­i­can tribes with whom he had main­tained good rela­tions, safe­ly returned to Eng­land, and frus­trat­ed in his attempts to return to the colonies. Around 1630, he did what any true Amer­i­can, offi­cial or aspir­ing, would do: put togeth­er a law­suit.

Mor­ton demand­ed, writes World His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­di­a’s Joshua Mark, “that the gov­ern­ment of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony demon­strate by what author­i­ty they exer­cised their pow­er,” argu­ing for the revo­ca­tion of its char­ter “because the Puri­tans of Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony had not only mis­rep­re­sent­ed them­selves in obtain­ing the char­ter but had no right to col­o­nize the region in the first place as it was legal­ly in Gorges’ patent.” As the long (and in any case futile) legal pro­ceed­ings dragged on, Mor­ton got the idea of turn­ing his exten­sive briefs for the tri­al into “a three-vol­ume work of his­to­ry, nat­ur­al his­to­ry, satire, and poet­ry” called New Eng­lish Canaan, a Bib­li­cal allu­sion under­scor­ing Mor­ton’s crit­i­cal view of the Puri­tans as “abus­ing the natives and the land for prof­it and then jus­ti­fy­ing their actions in the name of their god and the scrip­tures.”

Lin­da Can­toni at Hot off the Press writes that “the first two books of New Eng­lish Canaan are most­ly non-con­tro­ver­sial, con­tain­ing Morton’s obser­va­tions on the native Amer­i­cans, whom he respect­ed great­ly, and on the rich nat­ur­al resources in New Eng­land. It was in the third book that Mor­ton rolled up his sleeves and got down to his real pur­pose of skew­er­ing the New Eng­land Puri­tans, who, he said, ‘make a great shewe of Reli­gion, but no human­i­ty.’ ” As a result, writes Men­tal Floss’ Jake Rossen, “his book was per­ceived as an all-out attack on Puri­tan moral­i­ty, and they didn’t take kind­ly to it. So they banned it,” mak­ing New Eng­lish Canaan what Christie’s called “Amer­i­ca’s first banned book” when they auc­tioned a copy off for $60,000. But you can read it for free at Project Guten­berg, bear­ing in mind the most Amer­i­can les­son of all from the life of Thomas Mor­ton: when all else fails, pub­lish a tell-all mem­oir.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Dig­i­tizes Its Col­lec­tion of Obscene Books (1658–1940)

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

When L. Frank Baum’s Wiz­ard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depict­ing Women in Strong Lead­er­ship Roles” (1928)

Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

When Christ­mas Was Legal­ly Banned for 22 Years by the Puri­tans in Colo­nial Mass­a­chu­setts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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How New Yorkers Dodged Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws by Inventing the World’s Worst Sandwich

in Food & Drink, History | September 28th, 2021

Three men feast on free lunch in a draw­ing by Charles Dana Gib­son

In one of my favorite episodes of The Simp­sons, beer-swill­ing Homer falls in love with a sand­wich. He spends his days nib­bling away at the “sick­en­ing, fes­ter­ing remains of a 10-foot hoagie,” Nathan Rabin writes, “long after decen­cy, self-respect, and sur­vival would all seem to dic­tate throw­ing it out.” The sand­wich may be yet anoth­er instance of the show pulling some obscure detail from Amer­i­can his­to­ry for com­ic effect — or maybe writer David M. Stern read Eugene O’Neill’s The Ice­man Cometh, in which the play­wright describes “an old des­ic­cat­ed ruin of dust-laden bread and mum­mi­fied ham or cheese.”

O’Neill’s sand­wich is so his­tor­i­cal, it has a name, the Raines Sand­wich, named after New York State Sen­a­tor John Raines, the author of an 1896 law that raised the cost of liquor licens­es sub­stan­tial­ly, upped the drink­ing age from six­teen to eigh­teen, and banned alco­holic bev­er­ages on Sun­days except in large hotels and lodg­ing hous­es which served a com­pli­men­ta­ry meal with their drinks. The law tar­get­ed work­ing peo­ple and their one day of respite, and it hit bar own­ers hard. “After all,” writes the Irish Exam­in­er, “labour­ers most­ly worked six days a week, with Sun­day their only full day for drink­ing, and Sun­day was the most prof­itable day for saloons.”

The com­pli­men­ta­ry-meal-with-drinks man­date, as it were, was designed so that wealthy patrons at lux­u­ry hotels could drink on Sun­days, but low-rent saloon own­ers seized on the loop­hole, trans­form­ing dive bars into room­ing hous­es overnight with table­cloths and “alleged bed­rooms” made from attics and base­ments. “It was then that the loos­est pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of a ‘sub­stan­tial meal’ became the Raines Sand­wich.” The sand­wich might be made of any­thing, even a brick between two slices of bread; it was rarely eat­en. Some­times, it would be served to a guest with their beer or whiskey, then whisked away and giv­en to some­one else. A sin­gle Raines Sand­wich might last the day, or even the whole week.

Some estab­lish­ments tried to get away with serv­ing crack­ers and moldy cheese alone (stal­wart New York Irish pub McSor­ley’s gave away crack­ers, cheese, and onions — a dish for which they now charge). But the courts required a sand­wich, at the very least to be served, and the city enforced the law with right­eous vig­or — thanks in large part to a young Theodore Roo­sevelt. As Dar­rell Hart­man writes at Atlas Obscu­ra, New York Repub­li­cans in Albany “spoke for a con­stituen­cy large­ly com­prised of rur­al small-town church­go­ers” wor­ried about urban vice. But Raines had a city ally in Roo­sevelt, then a “37-year-old fire­brand… push­ing a law-and-order agen­da as pres­i­dent of the city’s new­ly orga­nized police com­mis­sion.”

Roo­sevelt can­vassed the Low­er East Side with patrol­man Frank Rathge­ber, send­ing him into saloons in plain clothes to inves­ti­gate. “Rathge­ber said he saw many sand­wich­es but only one bed,” writes author Richard Zacks in Island of Vice. The sand­wich­es were moldy, and were tak­en away uneat­en. “He nev­er was asked to buy a sec­ond sand­wich” with sub­se­quent drinks, “or even to eat the first one.” Despite the reform crack­downs, the shady busi­ness of the Raines Sand­wich let saloon own­ers skirt the law until it was repealed, final­ly, in 1924. As Hart­man notes, behind the pur­port­ed good inten­tions of the Tem­per­ance move­ment lay a deter­mined cul­ture war:

Those in favor of the Sun­day ban, gen­er­al­ly mid­dle-class and Protes­tant, saw it as a cor­ner­stone of social improve­ment. For those against, includ­ing the city’s tide of Ger­man and Irish immi­grants, it was an act of repression—an espe­cial­ly spite­ful one because it lim­it­ed how the aver­age labor­er could enjoy him­self on his one day off. The Sun­day ban was not pop­u­lar, to say the least, among the city’s Jews, who’d already observed their Sab­bath the day before.

The Raines Law was as much about enforc­ing reli­gious obser­vance and cul­tur­al con­for­mi­ty on immi­grants as it was an attempt to com­bat crime, pover­ty, and vio­lence in the city. Those whose beliefs did not pre­vent them from enjoy­ing them­selves on Sun­day saw no rea­son to take the law any more seri­ous­ly than they would a rot­ting week-old sand­wich or a brick between two slices of moldy bread.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Thou­sands of Free Vin­tage Cock­tail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

The First Known Pho­to­graph of Peo­ple Shar­ing a Beer (1843)

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

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

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Watch a Gripping 10-Minute Animation About the Hunt for Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann

in Animation, Film, History | September 26th, 2021

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the Con­fer­ence on Jew­ish Mate­r­i­al Claims Against Ger­many con­duct­ed inter­views with 1,350 Amer­i­can adults, aged 18 and up.

Their find­ings, pub­lished as the Holo­caust Knowl­edge and Aware­ness Study, reveal a sharp decline in Amer­i­cans’ aware­ness of the state-spon­sored exter­mi­na­tion of six mil­lion Jew­ish men, women, and chil­dren by Nazi Ger­many and its col­lab­o­ra­tors.

This knowl­edge gap was par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced among the mil­len­ni­al respon­dents. Six­ty-six per­cent had not heard of Auschwitz — the largest of the Ger­man Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps and exter­mi­na­tion cen­ters, where over a mil­lion per­ished. Twen­ty-two per­cent of them had not heard of (or were unsure if they had heard of) the Holo­caust.

This is shock­ing to those of us who grew up read­ing The Diary of Anne Frank and attend­ing assem­blies where Holo­caust sur­vivors — often the old­er rel­a­tive of a class­mate — spoke of their expe­ri­ences, rolling up their sleeves to show us the ser­i­al num­bers that had been tat­tooed on their arms upon arrival at Auschwitz.

The study did make the heart­en­ing dis­cov­ery that near­ly all of the respon­dents — 93% — believed that the Holo­caust should be a top­ic of study in the schools, many cit­ing their belief that such an edu­ca­tion will pre­vent a calami­ty of that mag­ni­tude from hap­pen­ing again.

(In defense of mil­len­ni­als, it’s worth not­ing that in the decades since 1977, when more than half of the coun­try tuned in to watch the minis­eries Roots, the Civ­il War and the hor­rors of slav­ery had all but dis­ap­peared from Amer­i­can cur­ricu­lums, a direc­tion the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment is fight­ing to redress.)

The Holo­caust is such a huge sub­ject that there is a ques­tion of how to intro­duce it, ide­al­ly, in such a way that young peo­ple’s inter­est is sparked toward con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion.

The Dri­ver is Red, Ran­dall Christo­pher’s ani­mat­ed short, above, could make an excel­lent, if some­what unusu­al, start­ing place.

The film’s text is drawn from Israeli Mossad Spe­cial Agent Zvi Aha­roni’s first per­son account of the suc­cess­ful man­hunt that tracked Adolf Eich­mann, a mem­ber of Hein­rich Himm­ler’s inner cir­cle and archi­tect of the Nazi’s “final solu­tion,” to Argenti­na.

This event tran­spired in 1960, fif­teen years after Sovi­et troops lib­er­at­ed Auschwitz.

Aha­roni, voiced by actor Mark Pin­ter, recalls receiv­ing the tip that Eich­mann was liv­ing in Argenti­na under an assumed name, and locat­ing him in a mod­est dwelling on the out­skirts of Buenos Aires.

Film­mak­er Christo­pher builds the ten­sion dur­ing the ensu­ing stake­out with effec­tive, noir-ish, pen­cil sketch­es that take shape before our eyes, map­ping sur­veil­lance points, a cou­ple of hap­py acci­dents, and one har­row­ing moment where Aha­roni feared his for­eign accent might give him away.

There’s more to the sto­ry than can be packed in a four­teen minute film, but those four­teen min­utes are as grip­ping as any tight­ly plot­ted spy movie.

Christo­pher is less inter­est­ed in direct­ing the next James Bond flick than putting Holo­caust edu­ca­tion back on the table for all Amer­i­cans.

A 2016 New York Times arti­cle about the hand­writ­ten let­ter Eich­mann sent Israeli Pres­i­dent Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, beg­ging for clemen­cy, paved the way for the film by moti­vat­ing Christo­pher to fill in some gaps in his edu­ca­tion with regard to the Holo­caust.

As the then-46-year-old told Leo­rah Gavi­dor of The San Diego Read­er in 2018:

I (felt) so dumb, so igno­rant, being an adult in Amer­i­ca and not know­ing the his­to­ry of it.

My friends, peo­ple I told this sto­ry to, they were fas­ci­nat­ed. They would start lis­ten­ing very care­ful­ly when I start­ed to talk about this Nazi from Ger­many that was found 15 years after the war, halfway around the world. They didn’t know any­thing about it. That’s how I knew I was on to some­thing.

Before the film was com­plet­ed, Christo­pher staged a live read­ing of the script at San Diego’s Ver­ba­tim Books, then passed the mic to Holo­caust sur­vivor Rose Schindler, who told the audi­ence about sur­viv­ing Auschwitz.

As Christo­pher recalled:

Peo­ple were trip­ping. There’s three lines about Tre­blin­ka in the film, and this Nazi war crim­i­nal, and then they see some­one there, with the tat­too on her arm, in front of them, who expe­ri­enced this first­hand.

Mrs. Schindler became a Holo­caust edu­ca­tor in 1972, when her son’s teacher invit­ed her to share her sto­ry with his mid­dle school class­mates.

She is now 91.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Holo­caust in Film and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Online Course from UCLA 

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

100-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Helen Fagin Reads Her Let­ter About How Books Save Lives

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

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A Rare, Early Version of the King Arthur Legend Found & Translated

in History, Literature | September 23rd, 2021


The sto­ries of King Arthur and his court took shape over a peri­od of a few hun­dred years; like most ancient leg­ends, they evolved through many iter­a­tions — not a lit­tle like the sto­ries in mod­ern-day com­ic books. “The medieval Arthuri­an leg­ends were a bit like the Mar­vel Uni­verse,” explains Lau­ra Camp­bell, a medieval lan­guage schol­ar at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty. “They con­sti­tut­ed a coher­ent fic­tion­al world that had cer­tain rules and a set of well-known char­ac­ters who appeared and inter­act­ed with each oth­er in mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent sto­ries.”

The first account of Arthur comes from a text in Latin called the His­to­ria Brit­ton­um, a com­pi­la­tion of sources assem­bled some­time in 829 or 830. Here, Arthur is men­tioned as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, “var­i­ous­ly described,” notes the British Library, “as a war lord (dux bel­lo­rum), as a Chris­t­ian sol­dier who car­ries either an image of the vir­gin or Christ’s cross, and as a leg­endary fig­ure asso­ci­at­ed with mirac­u­lous events.”

Mer­lin the magi­cian — the fig­ure we most asso­ciate with mirac­u­lous events in the Arthuri­an leg­ends — doesn’t show up for anoth­er two hun­dred years or so, in Geof­frey of Monmouth’s His­to­ry of the Kings of Britain. “After Geof­frey,” writes Kathryn Wal­ton at Medievalists.net, “Mer­lin becomes a fix­ture of the Arthuri­an leg­end and appears in all kinds of dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the sto­ry across the Mid­dle Ages.” One Mer­lin sto­ry that appears in many ver­sions involves a fig­ure called Nimue, Viviane, and oth­er names in French, Eng­lish, and Welsh. (She is some­times iden­ti­fied with the Lady of the Lake).

The Mer­lin and Vivien sto­ries have “sur­vived through­out the ages in a way that not many oth­er sto­ries have,” the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester’s Robyn Pol­lack writes, “because writ­ers have found remark­able ways to trans­form the char­ac­ters and the nar­ra­tive over the cen­turies.” Now, schol­ars at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol have announced, two years after its dis­cov­ery, the authen­ti­ca­tion of a frag­ment con­tain­ing yet anoth­er ver­sion of the sto­ry.

Found glued into the bind­ing of a late 15th cen­tu­ry book at the Bris­tol pub­lic library (one of the world’s old­est libraries), the sev­en frag­ments in Old French, dat­ed between 1250 and 1275, con­tain the “most chaste ver­sion” of the Mer­lin and Viviane leg­end, says Leah Teth­er, co-author of the new Eng­lish trans­la­tion and com­men­tary, The Bris­tol Mer­lin: Reveal­ing the Secrets of a Medieval Frag­ment. “The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to be found in this par­tic­u­lar set of frag­ments is where Viviane, the enchantress, casts a spell.”

In oth­er ver­sions, her mag­ic inscribes three names on her groin, a spell that keeps Mer­lin away from the same area. In the re-dis­cov­ered frag­ment, which shows evi­dence of two scrib­al hands, Viviane engraves the three names on a ring, there­by pre­vent­ing Mer­lin from speak­ing to her. “With medieval texts there was no such thing as copy­right,” says Camp­bell, one of the pro­jec­t’s trans­la­tors and authors. “So, if you were a scribe copy­ing a man­u­script, there was noth­ing to stop you from just chang­ing things a bit.”

Part of a col­lec­tion of Arthuri­an sto­ries known as the Vul­gate Cycle, the frag­ment pro­vides fur­ther evi­dence of the Mer­lin char­ac­ter’s evo­lu­tion, and con­sid­er­able soft­en­ing, over time. At his first intro­duc­tion, Mer­lin was the lit­er­al son of Satan, a kind of antichrist sent to earth to wreak hav­oc. Over the cen­turies, he became much less sin­is­ter, trans­form­ing into the wise advi­sor of the ide­al Eng­lish king, Arthur, a char­ac­ter who did a fair bit of trans­form­ing him­self as his leg­end grew and changed.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

King Arthur in Film: Our Most Endur­ing Pop­u­lar Enter­tain­ment Fran­chise? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #104

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Medieval Scribes Dis­cour­aged Theft of Man­u­scripts by Adding Curs­es Threat­en­ing Death & Damna­tion to Their Pages

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

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Behold the Newly-Discovered Sketch by Vincent van Gogh Sketch, “Study for Worn Out” (1882)

in Art, History | September 23rd, 2021

Hav­ing been dead for more than 130 years now, Vin­cent van Gogh sel­dom comes up with a new piece of work. But when he does, you can be sure it will draw the art world’s atten­tion as few works by liv­ing artists could. Such has been the case with the new­ly dis­cov­ered Study for Worn Out, an 1882 sketch that recent­ly came into pos­ses­sion of the Van Gogh Muse­um, accord­ing to Margheri­ta Cole at My Mod­ern Met, “when a Dutch fam­i­ly request­ed that spe­cial­ists take a look at their unsigned draw­ing.” The fig­ure in the draw­ing strong­ly resem­bles the one in van Gogh’s 1890 paint­ing At Eter­ni­ty’s Gate. But it took the experts at the muse­um to deter­mine that the artist was none oth­er than van Gogh him­self.

“Today and yes­ter­day I drew two fig­ures of an old man with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands,” wrote the 29-year-old van Gogh to his broth­er in a let­ter from 1882. “What a fine sight an old work­ing man makes, in his patched bom­bazine suit with his bald head.” The imme­di­ate fruit of these labors was the pen­cil draw­ing Worn Out, for which “the artist employed one of his favorite mod­els, an elder­ly man named Adri­anus Jacobus Zuy­der­land who boast­ed dis­tinc­tive side­burns (and who appears in at least 40 of van Gogh’s sketch­es from this peri­od).” So writes Smithsonian.com’s Nora McGreevy, who adds that van Gogh revis­it­ed the work to adapt it as a paint­ing “just two months before his death” in an asy­lum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

“In draw­ings like these,”  says the Van Gogh Muse­um, “the artist not only dis­played his sym­pa­thy for the social­ly dis­ad­van­taged — no way infe­ri­or in his eyes to the well-to-do bour­geoisie — he active­ly called atten­tion to them too.” Anoth­er aim with Worn Out, adds McGreevy, was “to seek employ­ment at a British pub­li­ca­tion, but he either failed to fol­low through on this idea or had his work reject­ed.” This would have count­ed as just anoth­er seem­ing instance of fail­ure, the likes of which char­ac­ter­ized the painter’s short life. Lit­tle could he, his cor­re­spon­dents, or his mod­els have imag­ined that his works would one day become some of the most famous in the world — and cer­tain­ly not that one of his sketch­es would go on to be enshrined well over a cen­tu­ry lat­er, as it has been since last Fri­day at the muse­um that bears his name.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Rare Vin­cent van Gogh Paint­ing Goes on Pub­lic Dis­play for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Paint­ing Online

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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How England First Became England: An Animated History

in History | September 20th, 2021

Once you pay the Danegeld, you nev­er get rid of the Dane. So dis­cov­ered the rulers of the kings of the Anglo-Sax­on era, dur­ing which Eng­land became sub­ject to the threat of Viking inva­sions. It was­n’t, of course, the Eng­land we know today, but it was­n’t exact­ly not the Eng­land we know today either. The fact of the mat­ter, accord­ing to the ani­mat­ed Knowl­ed­gia video above, is that Eng­land did­n’t take its full form until 927 A.D.. In ten min­utes, it goes on to encap­su­late what hap­pened in the fore­go­ing cen­tu­ry and a half to make Eng­land as we know it a viable geo­graph­i­cal and polit­i­cal enti­ty — a process that was­n’t with­out its com­pli­ca­tions.

“As the Roman Empire began to fade from the British isles,” explains the video’s nar­ra­tor, “the area of mod­ern-day Eng­land start­ed to see a wave of migra­tion from Anglo-Sax­on Ger­man­ic tribes.” Then came attacks from the oth­er direc­tion, mount­ed by the Picts and Scots, whom the Ger­man­ic peo­ples even­tu­al­ly expelled — before tak­ing pow­er from the native Britons them­selves. After a few cen­turies of divi­sion into var­i­ous Anglo-Sax­on king­doms, along came the Vikings. By the year 875, only the king­dom of Wes­sex had­n’t been over­tak­en by the Danes. Its king, Alfred, start­ed the cus­tom of pay­ing them off before engag­ing and final­ly defeat­ing them in the Bat­tle of Eding­ton.

The fol­low­ing gen­er­a­tions of rulers of Wes­sex and the retak­en king­dom of Mer­cia pushed north, tak­ing back ter­ri­to­ry from the Danes a piece at at time. It was Æthel­stan, who ruled from 925 to 939, who final­ly made it all the way up through Northum­bria. “This is gen­er­al­ly the time that most his­to­ri­ans view the King­dom of Eng­land as hav­ing been cre­at­ed,” but Æthel­stan’s domain “was still not quite what we know as Eng­land today.” The king’s 937 inva­sion of Scot­land, cul­mi­nat­ing in his vic­to­ry in the Bat­tle of Brunan­burh, “may have tru­ly solid­i­fied the uni­ty of Eng­land, and stirred up a new sense of nation­al­ism and pride amongst the Eng­lish peo­ple.”

Not that the trou­bles end­ed there. After Æthel­stan’s death, the Vikings returned to do a bit of recon­quer­ing, sub­se­quent­ly un-recon­quered by the Eng­lish under Edmund. Lat­er came Eric Blood­axe of Nor­way, who made inroads into Eng­land as fear­some­ly as his name would sug­gest, only to lose his con­quered ter­ri­to­ries to the locals. The bloody con­flicts involved in all this did­n’t come to a pause until the reign of the apt­ly named Edgar the Peace­ful, which began in late 959. Under Edgar “the true foun­da­tions of the Eng­lish king­doms could final­ly be estab­lished,” and he passed many reforms — but made sure to uphold the Dan­ish law where it had been estab­lished. If recent his­to­ry had offered any les­son, it was that one should nev­er upset the Danes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map (519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

The Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don: 2,000 Years of Change Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

The Dif­fer­ence Between the Unit­ed King­dom, Great Britain and Eng­land: A (Pre-Brex­it) Video Explains

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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