Before Creating the Moomins, Tove Jansson Drew Satirical Art Mocking Hitler & Stalin

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, History, Magazines | November 2nd, 2020

Much of the world has only recent­ly dis­cov­ered the Moomins, those lov­able hip­popota­mus-like fig­ures — giv­en, it must be said, to moments of star­tling brusque­ness and com­plex­i­ty — cre­at­ed in the 1940s by Finnish artist Tove Jans­son. In forms rang­ing from dolls and school sup­plies to neck pil­lows and cell­phone cas­es, they’ve late­ly become a full-blown craze in South Korea, where I live. Like any mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful (and high­ly mer­chan­dis­able) char­ac­ters, the Moomins over­shad­ow the rest of Jansson’s oeu­vre. Hence exhi­bi­tions like Tove Jans­son (1914–2001) at Lon­don’s Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery, which “aims to rec­ti­fy the fact that less atten­tion has gen­er­al­ly been paid to her range as a visu­al artist.”

That descrip­tion comes from Simon Willis’ review of the show in the New York Review of Books. “In Octo­ber 1944, Tove Jans­son drew a cov­er for Garm, a Finnish satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, show­ing a brigade of Adolf Hitlers as pudgy lit­tle thieves,” Willis writes. These draw­er-rifling, house-burn­ing car­i­ca­tures “were not unusu­al for Jans­son, who had been belit­tling Stal­in and Hitler in the mag­a­zine since the ear­ly days of World War II.” But “peek­ing out at the chaos from behind the magazine’s title,” there was also a “tiny pale fig­ure with a long nose”: a pro­to-Moomin mak­ing an appear­ance the year before the pub­li­ca­tion of the first Moomin book. (And even he was forged in mock­ery, hav­ing first been drawn by Jans­son, so the sto­ry goes, as a car­i­ca­ture of Immanuel Kant.)

Hav­ing start­ed con­tribut­ing to Garm, accord­ing to the offi­cial Moomin web site, “in 1929 at the young age of 15 (her moth­er Signe Ham­marsten-Jans­son had worked for the pub­li­ca­tion since it start­ed),” she kept on doing so until the mag­a­zine fold­ed in 1953.

“Dur­ing that peri­od she drew more than 500 car­i­ca­tures, a hun­dred cov­er images and count­less oth­er illus­tra­tions for the mag­a­zine.” In them, writes Glas­stire’s Caleb Math­ern, “angels appear on bat­tle­fields. Rein­deer pre­pare to rain TNT. An effete, under­sized Hitler cries instead of eat­ing slices of cake. Jans­son even impugns Stalin’s man­hood with an over­sized scabbard/undersized sword joke.” To the young Jans­son, the best part was the chance, as she lat­er put it, “to be beast­ly to Stal­in and Hitler.”

Even after the suc­cess of the Moomins, Jans­son con­tin­ued to draw on the imagery and emo­tions of war: “The first time we meet young Moom­introll and his Moom­in­mam­ma in The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), they are refugees, cross­ing a strange and threat­en­ing land­scape in search of shel­ter. Moom­in­pap­pa, mean­while, is absent, as fathers often were dur­ing the war,” writes Aeon’s Richard W. Orange. In the next book “the world is threat­ened by a comet that sucks the water out of the sea, leav­ing an apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scape in its wake.” With the Cold War heat­ing up, the alle­go­ry would hard­ly have gone unno­ticed. Like all mas­ter satirists, Jans­son went on to tran­scend the sole­ly top­i­cal — and indeed, so the increas­ing­ly Moomin-crazed world has demon­strat­ed, the bound­aries of time and cul­ture.

via Aeon/Moomin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Pro­pa­gan­da Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Don­ald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

The Sub­lime Alice in Won­der­land Illus­tra­tions of Tove Jans­son, Cre­ator of the Glob­al­ly-Beloved Moomins (1966)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Legend of How Bluesman Robert Johnson Sold His Soul to the Devil at the Crossroads

in History, Music | October 30th, 2020

We remem­ber the blues­man Robert John­son as the Jimi Hen­drix of the 1930s, a gui­tarist of stag­ger­ing skill who died before age thir­ty. Both found main­stream suc­cess, but John­son’s came posthu­mous­ly: in fact, his music and Hen­drix’s first music hit it big in the same decade, the 1960s. King of the Delta Blues Singers, an album of John­son’s songs released by Colum­bia Records in 1961, had a great influ­ence on the likes of Bob Dylan, Kei­th Richards, Robert Plant, and Eric Clap­ton, who calls John­son “the most impor­tant blues singer that ever lived.” How did this poor young Mis­sis­sip­pi­an come by his for­mi­da­ble abil­i­ties? Why, he sold his soul to the dev­il at the cross­roads, of course.

Or at least that’s what we all seem to have heard. And indeed, does­n’t the leg­end make the open­ing line of “Cross Road Blues,” King of the Delta Blues’ open­ing num­ber, that much more evoca­tive? “I went down to the cross­roads,” he sings. “Fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above for mer­cy, ‘Take me, if you please.’ ” Well, it could’ve been the Lord, or it could have been the oth­er one. But in fact we have pre­cious lit­tle record of John­son’s life, and no direct ref­er­ences at all to his bar­gain with Beelze­bub (ani­ma­tions of which we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Why has the leg­end stuck? Music Youtube series Poly­phon­ic address­es that ques­tion in the video essay above.

An ear­li­er episode cov­ered deals with the dev­il through­out the his­to­ry of music. This time, the sub­ject is the cross­roads itself, the set­ting of John­son­ian lore no one ever fails to men­tion. “Of all the marks that humans make on the earth, cross­roads are among the sim­plest and most endur­ing,” says nar­ra­tor Noah Lefevre. “As long as humans orga­nize our­selves in towns and cities, cross­roads will remain, and so will the leg­ends of their dark pow­ers and of the strange spir­its who occu­py them.” The mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads goes back at least to the Greek god­dess Hecate, who rules over “lim­i­nal space, the tran­si­tion from the known to the great unknown beyond.” In the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, the mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads inter­sects, as it were, with the realm of Hait­ian voodoo.

“A reli­gion that mix­es Roman Catholic influ­ences with West African spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions” — and the one that gave us zom­bies — voodoo has “one all-pow­er­ful god, but you can only speak to him through spir­its known as loa.” And to talk to loa, you’ve got to go through Papa Leg­ba, the loa of the cross­roads. From the late 18th cen­tu­ry, voodoo began mak­ing its way through the Amer­i­can South, the cra­dle of the blues. Out of this rich set­ting came John­son’s pre­de­ces­sor Tom­my John­son (no rela­tion), a singer and gui­tarist who based his per­sona on the claim of hav­ing sold his own soul to the dev­il. Even Robert John­son’s men­tor Ike Zim­mer­man was said to have prac­ticed gui­tar in grave­yards at mid­night.

“John­son is seen today as the grand­fa­ther of rock-and-roll,” says Lefevre. “That comes not just from his vir­tu­oso play­ing, but also from his mythol­o­gy.” (Con­sid­er this lega­cy in light of how often rock-and-roll was in decades past called “the dev­il’s music.”) Today, in songs like “Hell­hound on My Trail,” we can hear both ref­er­ences to voodoo-inspired rit­u­als and oth­er forms of the occult as well as con­di­tions of life in a South removed only a gen­er­a­tion or two from slav­ery. This Poly­phon­ic episode may con­vince you that “the myth of John­son and the cross­roads may have been birthed out of sheer acci­dent,” but that’s no rea­son not to give King of the Delta Blues Singers a spin this Hal­loween — or any oth­er day besides.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in the New York Times 81 Years After His Death

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Glass Floor in a Dublin Grocery Store Lets Shoppers Look Down & Explore Medieval Ruins

in Architecture, History | October 28th, 2020

In South Korea, where I live, many recent build­ings — the new Seoul City Hall, Zaha Hadid’s Dong­dae­mun Design Plaza — have incor­po­rat­ed the cen­tu­ry-upon-cen­tu­ry old ruins dis­cov­ered on their sites. This makes lit­er­al­ly vis­i­ble, often through clear glass floors, the “5,000 years of unbro­ken his­to­ry” about which one often hears boasts in Korea. But nor is Europe his­tor­i­cal­ly impov­er­ished, and there the win­dow-onto-the-past archi­tec­tur­al tech­nique has been applied in even less like­ly places: a new Dublin loca­tion, for instance, of Ger­man chain dis­count super­mar­ket Lidl.

“Archi­tects dis­cov­ered the remains of an 11th-cen­tu­ry house dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the site on Aungi­er Street,” says the video from Irish broad­cast­er RTÉ above. “The sunken-floored struc­ture has been pre­served and is dis­played beneath the glass.” Archae­o­log­i­cal site direc­tor Paul Duffy described the dis­cov­ery as poten­tial­ly hav­ing “func­tioned as many things, as a house or an extra space for the fam­i­ly. It’s a domes­tic struc­ture, so you have to imag­ine that there would have been a sub­urb here of Hiber­no-Norse Dublin­ers, who were effec­tive­ly the ances­tors of the Vikings.”

We’re a long way indeed from James Joyce’s Dublin­ers of 900 years lat­er. But the new Lidl has put more than one for­mer­ly buried era of the city’s past on dis­play: “A sec­ond glass pan­el near the check­out tills allows shop­pers to glimpse an 18th-cen­tu­ry ‘pit trap’ from the stage of the old Aungi­er Street The­atre,” writes Irish Cen­tral’s Shane O’Brien, pit traps being devices “used to bring an actor on stage as if by mag­ic. Anoth­er work­ing area under the build­ing pre­serves “the foun­da­tions of the medieval parish church of St. Peter, which served parish­ioners for more than 600 years between 1050 AD and 1650 AD.”

In the RTÉ video, Dublin City Archae­ol­o­gist Ruth John­son frames this as a chal­lenge to the speed-ori­ent­ed con­struc­tion mod­el — “put up a hoard­ing, exca­vate a site, and then put up a devel­op­ment” — preva­lent dur­ing Ire­land’s recent “Celtic Tiger” peri­od of eco­nom­ic growth. That and oth­er fac­tors have made the built envi­ron­ment of Dublin, a city of many charms, less inter­est­ing than it could be. In his recent book Trans-Europe Express’ chap­ter on Dublin, crit­ic Owen Hather­ley writes that “con­tem­po­rary Irish archi­tec­ture is marked by a strik­ing par­si­mo­ny, a cheap­ness and care­less­ness in con­struc­tion.” Look­ing to the past isn’t always the answer, of course, but in this case Lidl has done well to take it lit­er­al­ly.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mag­nif­i­cent Ancient Roman Mosa­ic Floor Unearthed in Verona, Italy

Explore Metic­u­lous 3D Mod­els of Endan­gered His­tor­i­cal Sites in Google’s “Open Her­itage” Project

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

James Joyce’s Dublin Cap­tured in Vin­tage Pho­tos from 1897 to 1904

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When Billy Idol Went Cyberpunk: See His Tribute to Neuromancer, His Recording Session with Timothy Leary, and His Limited-Edition Floppy Disk (1993)

in History, Music, Technology | October 27th, 2020

Bil­ly Idol has long evad­ed straight­for­ward musi­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion, being a full-on star but one ful­ly belong­ing to nei­ther rock nor pop. He may have come up in the 1970s as the front­man of Gen­er­a­tion X, the first punk band to play Top of the Pops, but the hits he went on to make as an MTV-opti­mized solo artist in the 80s and 90s — “Eyes With­out a Face,” “Cra­dle of Love” — sit less than eas­i­ly with those ori­gins. But as the end of the mil­len­ni­um approached and the zeit­geist grew increas­ing­ly high-tech­no­log­i­cal, it seems to have occurred to the for­mer William Michael Albert Broad that, if he could­n’t be a punk, he could per­haps be a cyber-punk instead.

As bad luck would have it, the bio­me­chan­i­cal had already intrud­ed onto Idol­’s life in the form of a steel rod implant­ed in his leg after a motor­cy­cle acci­dent. This lost him the role of T‑1000, the killer cyborg in Ter­mi­na­tor 2, but it inspired him in part to record the ambi­tious con­cept album Cyber­punk in 1993. Like Pete Town­shend’s Psy­choderelict or Don­ald Fagen’s Kamakiri­ad from that same year (or David Bowie’s Out­side from 1995), Cyber­punk is built on a dystopi­an nar­ra­tive in which “the future has implod­ed into the present” and “mega-cor­po­ra­tions are the new gov­ern­ments. Com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed info-domains are the new fron­tiers.” Thus speaks Idol in the album’s open­ing man­i­festo.

“Though there is bet­ter liv­ing through sci­ence and chem­istry, we’re all becom­ing cyborgs. The com­put­er is the new cool tool. Though we say all infor­ma­tion should be free, it is not. Infor­ma­tion is pow­er and cur­ren­cy of the vir­tu­al world we inhab­it.” Here, “cyber­punks are the true rebels.” This would have sound­ed famil­iar to read­ers of William Gib­son, whose Neu­ro­mancer pop­u­lar­ized the aes­thet­ic and ethos of “high tech meets low life” — and shares a title with one of Cyber­punk’s songs. In fact, as Gib­son lat­er recalled, Idol “made it a con­di­tion of get­ting an inter­view with him, that every jour­nal­ist had to have read Neu­ro­mancer.” They did, “but when they met with Bil­ly, the first thing that became real­ly appar­ent was that Bil­ly had­n’t read it.”

What­ev­er his intel­lec­tu­al invest­ment in cyber­punk, Idol threw him­self into what he saw as the cul­ture sur­round­ing it. This effort involved fre­quent­ing Usenet’s alt.cyberpunk news­group; read­ing Mon­do 2000; and con­nect­ing with fig­ures like Gareth Bran­wyn, author of cyber­punk man­i­festos, and Mark Frauen­felder, co-founder of Boing Boing. “We are merg­ing with machines to become smarter, faster, and more pow­er­ful,” writes Frauen­felder in an essay includ­ed among the “mul­ti­me­dia” con­tents of the 3.5″ flop­py disk orig­i­nal­ly bun­dled with Cyber­punk. “Are you going to ignore tech­nol­o­gy, turn your back on it, and let author­i­ty enslave you with it, or are you going to learn every­thing you can about sur­viv­ing in the dig­i­tal age?”

Cyber­punk con­sti­tutes Idol­’s affir­ma­tive answer to that ques­tion. Much of his excite­ment about per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy sure­ly owes to the lib­er­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the pro­fes­sion­al-grade home record­ing stu­dio. “I’d always real­ly sort of worked through a team of a pro­duc­er and an engi­neer,” he said in one inter­view, “and in the end I think real­ly you felt like you weren’t get­ting as close to your ideas as you could be.” From his own home stu­dio he wit­nessed the 1992 Los Ange­les riots, which prompt­ed him then and there to rewrite the song “Shock to the Sys­tem” to reflect the tur­moil roil­ing out­side his door. (Film­mak­er Kathryn Bigelow would explore at greater length that explo­sion of urban dis­con­tent’s inter­sec­tion with cyber­punk cul­ture in 1995’s Strange Days.)

See­ing cyber­punk as the lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of a broad­er coun­ter­cul­ture, Idol cast a wide net for col­lab­o­ra­tors and inspi­ra­tions. He invit­ed Tim­o­thy Leary, the “cyberdel­ic” cul­tur­al icon who dreamed of mak­ing a Neu­ro­mancer com­put­er game, not just to inter­view him about the project but par­tic­i­pate in its record­ing. The album’s cen­ter­piece is a cov­er of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s “Hero­in,” and a dance cov­er at that. Though remem­bered as nei­ther an artis­tic nor a com­mer­cial suc­cess (the rea­sons for which Youtube music crit­ic Todd in the Shad­ows exam­ines in the video at the top of the post), Cyber­punk set some­thing of a prece­dent for main­stream musi­cians keen to use cut­ting-edge record­ing and pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy to go ful­ly D.I.Y. — to go, as it were, cyber-punk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gibson’s Sem­i­nal Cyber­punk Nov­el, Neu­ro­mancer, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (2002)

Dis­cov­er Rare 1980s CDs by Lou Reed, Devo & Talk­ing Heads That Com­bined Music with Com­put­er Graph­ics

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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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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Daisugi, the 600-Year-Old Japanese Technique of Growing Trees Out of Other Trees, Creating Perfectly Straight Lumber

in Architecture, History, Nature | October 23rd, 2020

Image by Wrath of Gnon

We’ve all admired the ele­gance of Japan’s tra­di­tion­al styles of archi­tec­ture. Their devel­op­ment required the kind of ded­i­cat­ed crafts­man­ship that takes gen­er­a­tions to cul­ti­vate — but also, more prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, no small amount of wood. By the 15th cen­tu­ry, Japan already faced a short­age of seedlings, as well as land on which to prop­er­ly cul­ti­vate the trees in the first place. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, this led to the cre­ation of an inge­nious solu­tion: daisu­gi, the grow­ing of addi­tion­al trees, in effect, out of exist­ing trees — cre­at­ing, in oth­er words, a kind of giant bon­sai.

“Writ­ten as 台杉 and lit­er­al­ly mean­ing plat­form cedar, the tech­nique result­ed in a tree that resem­bled an open palm with mul­ti­ple trees grow­ing out if it, per­fect­ly ver­ti­cal,” writes Spoon and Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. “Done right, the tech­nique can pre­vent defor­esta­tion and result in per­fect­ly round and straight tim­ber known as taru­ki, which are used in the roofs of Japan­ese tea­hous­es.”

These tea­hous­es are still promi­nent in Kyoto, a city still known for its tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al her­itage, and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly where daisu­gi first devel­oped. “It’s said that it was Kyoto’s pre­em­i­nent tea mas­ter, Sen-no-rikyu, who demand­ed per­fec­tion in the Kitaya­ma cedar dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art.

At the time “a form of very straight and styl­ized sukiya-zukuri archi­tec­ture was high fash­ion, but there sim­ply weren’t near­ly enough raw mate­ri­als to build these homes for every noble or samu­rai who want­ed one,” says a thread by Twit­ter account Wrath of Gnon, which includes these and oth­er pho­tos of daisu­gi in action. “Hence this clever solu­tion of using bon­sai tech­niques on trees.” Aes­thet­ics aside — as far aside as they ever get in Japan, at any rate — “the lum­ber pro­duced in this method is 140% as flex­i­ble as stan­dard cedar and 200% as dense/strong,” mak­ing it “absolute­ly per­fect for rafters and roof tim­ber.” And not only is daisu­gi’s prod­uct straight, slen­der, and typhoon-resis­tant, it’s mar­veled at around the world 600 years lat­er. Of how many forestry tech­niques can we say the same?

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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An Animated Video Shows the Building of a Medieval Bridge: 45 Years of Construction in 3 Minutes

in Architecture, History | October 22nd, 2020

With­out mas­sive feats of engi­neer­ing we rarely notice any­more because they seem so com­mon­place, the built envi­ron­ments we nav­i­gate each day wouldn’t exist. When we do turn our atten­tion to how the build­ings get made, we are met with sur­pris­es, curiosi­ties, puz­zles, moments of won­der. How much more is this the case when learn­ing about fix­tures of cities that are hun­dreds or thou­sands of years old, con­struct­ed with what we would con­sid­er prim­i­tive meth­ods, pro­duc­ing results that seem supe­ri­or in dura­bil­i­ty and aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty to most mod­ern struc­tures?

Of course, while mod­ern struc­tures can take months or even weeks to fin­ish, those of a more ancient or medieval age were con­struct­ed over decades and repaired, rebuilt, and restored over cen­turies. Con­sid­er the Charles Bridge, which cross­es the Vlta­va (Moldau) riv­er in Prague.

Con­struc­tion began on the famous structure—nearly 1,700 feet (516 meters) long and 33 feet (10 meters) wide—in 1357 under King Charles IV. Forty-five years lat­er, in 1402, the bridge was com­plet­ed. It was dam­aged in the Thir­ty Years’ War, then repaired, dam­aged in floods in the 15th, 18th, and 19th cen­turies, and repaired, and updat­ed with more mod­ern appoint­ments over time, such as gaslights. But its bones, as they say, stayed strong.

In the dig­i­tal­ly ani­mat­ed video above, you can watch the ini­tial con­struc­tion process in fast-motion–nearly half a cen­tu­ry con­densed into 3 min­utes. Built by archi­tect Peter Par­ler, it was orig­i­nal­ly called Stone Bridge. It acquired the king’s name in 1870. “The low-lying medieval struc­ture,” notes Google, who cel­e­brat­ed the 660th anniver­sary of the bridge in 2017, “is com­prised of 16 shal­low arch­es and three Goth­ic tow­ers, and lined with 30 Baroque-style stat­ues,” added some 200 years ago. Every build­ing has its secrets, and the Charles Bridge no doubt has more than most. One of the first has noth­ing to do with hid­den cham­bers or buried remains. Rather, “accord­ing to leg­end, dur­ing con­struc­tion, masons added a secret ingre­di­ent that they thought would make it stronger: eggs!”

See more ani­mat­ed videos of vin­tage con­struc­tion at the Pra­ha Arche­o­log­ic­ka chan­nel on YouTube and learn much more about medieval Prague’s many archi­tec­tur­al sur­pris­es at their site.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

Take an Aer­i­al Tour of Medieval Paris

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

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

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Take a Digital Drive Along Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Boulevard, the Famous Strip That the Artist Photographed from 1965 to 2007

in Architecture, History, Photography | October 20th, 2020

Ed Ruscha has lived near­ly 65 years in Los Ange­les, but he insists that he has no par­tic­u­lar fas­ci­na­tion with the place. Not every­one believes him: is dis­in­ter­est among the many pos­si­ble feel­ings that could moti­vate a paint­ing like The Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um on Fire? Nev­er­the­less, the plain­spo­ken Okla­homa-born artist has long stuck to his sto­ry, per­haps in order to let his often cryp­tic work speak for itself. Orig­i­nal­ly trained in com­mer­cial art, Ruscha has paint­ed, print­ed, drawn, and tak­en pho­tographs, the most cel­e­brat­ed fruit of that last pur­suit being 1966’s Every Build­ing on the Sun­set Strip, a book that stitch­es his count­less pho­tographs of that famous boule­vard — both sides of it — onto one long, con­tin­u­ous page.

What­ev­er you think of such a project, you can’t accuse it of a mis­match between form and sub­stance. Nor can you call it a cyn­i­cal one-off: between 1967 and 2007, Ruscha drove Sun­set Boule­vard with his cam­era no few­er than twelve times in order to pho­to­graph most or all of its build­ings.

These include gas sta­tions (an archi­tec­tur­al form to which Ruscha has made the sub­ject of its own pho­to book as well as one of his most famous paint­ings), drug­stores, appli­ance deal­ers, Cen­tral Amer­i­can restau­rants, karate schools, trav­el agen­cies, car wash­es, Mod­ernist office tow­ers, and two of the most char­ac­ter­is­tic struc­tures of Los Ange­les: low-rise, kitschi­ly named “ding­bat” apart­ment blocks and L‑shaped “La Man­cha” strip malls.

The mix of the built envi­ron­ment varies great­ly, of course, depend­ing on where you choose to go on this 22-mile-long boule­vard, only a short stretch of which con­sti­tutes the “Sun­set Strip.” It also depends on when you choose to go: not which time of day, but which era, a choice put at your fin­ger­tips by the Get­ty Research Insti­tute’s Ed Ruscha Streets of Los Ange­les Project, and specif­i­cal­ly its inter­ac­tive fea­ture 12 Sun­sets. In it you can use your left and right arrow keys to “dri­ve” east or west (in your choice between a van, a VW Bee­tle, or Ruscha’s own trusty Dat­sun pick­up), and your up and down but­ton to flip between the year of the pho­to shoots that make up the boule­vard around you.

Many long­time Ange­lenos (or enthu­si­asts of Los Ange­les cul­ture) will motor straight to the inter­sec­tion with Horn Avenue, loca­tion of the much-mythol­o­gized Sun­set Strip Tow­er Records from which the very Amer­i­can musi­cal zeit­geist once seemed to emanate. The Sacra­men­to-found­ed store was actu­al­ly a late­com­er to Los Ange­les com­pared to Ruscha him­self, and the build­ing first appears in his third pho­to shoot, of 1973. The next year the ever-chang­ing posters on its exte­ri­or walls includes Bil­ly Joel’s Piano Man. About a decade lat­er appear the one-hit likes of Lover­boy, and in the twi­light of the 1990s the street ele­va­tion touts the Beast­ie Boys and Rob Zom­bie. In 2007, Tow­er’s sig­na­ture red and yel­low are all that remain, the chain itself hav­ing gone under (at least out­side Japan) the year before.

12 Sun­sets’ inter­face pro­vides two dif­fer­ent meth­ods to get straight from one point to anoth­er: you can either type a spe­cif­ic place name into the “loca­tion search” box on the upper right, or click the map icon on the mid­dle left to open up the line of the whole street click­able any­where from down­town Los Ange­les to the Pacif­ic Ocean. This is a much eas­i­er way of mak­ing your way along Sun­set Boule­vard than actu­al­ly dri­ving it, even in the com­par­a­tive­ly nonex­is­tent traf­fic of 1965. Nev­er­the­less, Ruscha con­tin­ues to pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment it and oth­er Los Ange­les streets, using the very same method he did 55 years ago. The build­ings keep chang­ing, but the city has nev­er stopped exud­ing its char­ac­ter­is­tic nor­mal­i­ty so intense­ly as to become eccen­tric­i­ty (and vice ver­sa). What artist wor­thy of the title would­n’t be fas­ci­nat­ed?

Explore the Get­ty Research Insti­tute’s Ed Ruscha Streets of Los Ange­les Project here.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Ed Ruscha Reads From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in a Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing His 1966 Pho­tos of the Sun­set Strip

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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