Human All Too Human: A Roman Woman Visits the Great Pyramid in 120 AD, and Carves a Poem in Memory of Her Deceased Brother

in History, Twitter | September 26th, 2019

The phrase “his­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors” is a cliché, which means that it is at least half true; offi­cial his­to­ries are, to a sig­nif­i­cant degree “writ­ten,” or dic­tat­ed, by rul­ing elites. But as far as the actu­al writ­ing down, and exca­vat­ing, nar­rat­ing, argu­ing about, and revis­ing of his­to­ry goes… well, that is the work of his­to­ri­ans, who may work for pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions but who are not themselves—with sev­er­al notable excep­tions, of course—politicians, gen­er­als, or cap­tains of indus­try.

This is all to the good. His­to­ri­ans, and Twit­ter­sto­ri­ans, can tell sto­ries and present evi­dence that the vic­tors might rather see dis­ap­pear. And they can tell sto­ries we nev­er knew that we were miss­ing, but which human­ize the past by restor­ing the lives of ordi­nary peo­ple with ordi­nary con­cerns. Sto­ries of every­day ancient Romans and Egyp­tians, for exam­ple, or of ancient Romans in Egypt, vis­it­ing and van­dal­iz­ing the pyra­mids.

In one such poignant sto­ry, cir­cu­lat­ing on Twit­ter, a Roman woman named Ter­en­tia carved into the lime­stone fac­ing of the Great Pyra­mid some­time around 120 AD a touch­ing poem for her broth­er, who had just recent­ly died. As told by medieval­ist, lin­guist, and Senior Edi­tor at His­to­ry Today Dr. Kate Wiles, the poem might have been lost to the ages had it not been dis­cov­ered by Ger­man pil­grim Wil­helm von Bold­ense­le in 1335.

Know­ing Latin, Von Bold­ense­le read the poem, found it mov­ing, and copied it down. (See his man­u­script at the top.) Wiles quotes a part of the prose Eng­lish trans­la­tion:

I saw the pyra­mids with­out you, my dear­est broth­er, and here I sad­ly shed tears for you, which is all I could do. And I inscribe this lament in mem­o­ry of our grief. May thus be clear­ly vis­i­ble on the high pyra­mid the name of Dec­imus Gen­tianus….

We can sur­mise that Ter­en­tia must have had some means to trav­el, but in Wiles’ abridged Twit­ter ver­sion of the sto­ry, we also might assume she could be any­one at all, griev­ing the loss of a close rel­a­tive. Terentia’s grief is no less mov­ing or real when we learn that the inscrip­tion goes for on sev­er­al lines Wiles cut for brevi­ty.

Turn­ing to Emi­ly Ann Hemelrijk’s book Matrona Doc­ta: Edu­cat­ed Women in the Roman Elite from Cor­nelia to Julia Dom­na, Dr. Wiles’ source for the Great Pyra­mid poem, we find that Ter­en­tia wasn’t just an edu­cat­ed, upper class woman, she was a very well-con­nect­ed one. The inscrip­tion goes on to iden­ti­fy her broth­er as “a pon­tif­ex and com­pan­ion to your tri­umphs, Tra­jan, and both cen­sor and con­sul before his thir­ti­eth year of age.”

In his anthol­o­gy Women Writ­ers of Ancient Greece and Rome, Ian Michael Plant pro­vides even more his­tor­i­cal con­text. Of Ter­en­tia, we know lit­tle to noth­ing save the Von Boldensele’s copy of her six hexa­m­e­ters (and pos­si­bly more that he ignored). Of Dec­imus Gen­tianus, how­ev­er, we know that he not only served as a con­sul under Tra­jan but also as gov­er­nor of Mace­do­nia under Hadri­an. Ter­en­tia “chose the pyra­mid for her epi­taph to pro­vide a suit­ably grand and ever­last­ing site for her trib­ute to him,” writes Plant. (Cue Shelly’s “Ozy­man­dias.”)

Not only is the poem about a vic­tor, but it appears to shift its address from him to the ulti­mate vic­tor, Emper­or Tra­jan, in its final lines. Should this change our appre­ci­a­tion of the sto­ry as a slice of Roman tourist life and exam­ple of ancient wom­en’s writ­ing? No, but it shows us some­thing about what his­to­ry gets pre­served and why. Despite his­to­ri­ans’ best efforts, espe­cial­ly in pub­lic-fac­ing work, to make the past more acces­si­ble and relat­able, they, too, are lim­it­ed by what oth­er cul­tures chose to pre­serve and what to pass over.

Hemel­rijk admits, “the poem is no lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece,” but Von Bold­er­se­le saw enough mer­it in its sen­ti­ments to record it for pos­ter­i­ty. He also made a judg­ment about the inscription’s his­tor­i­cal import, giv­en its ref­er­ences, which is prob­a­bly the rea­son we have it today.

via Dr. Kate Wiles

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

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

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A Brief History of the Great American Road Trip

in History, Travel | September 24th, 2019

I live in Asia, where no few peo­ple express an inter­est in trav­el­ing to my home­land, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. When I meet such peo­ple, I always give them the same advice: if you go, make sure to take a cross-coun­try road trip. But then I would say that, at least accord­ing to the premise of the PBS Idea Chan­nel video above, “Why Do Amer­i­cans Love Road Trips?” While dri­ving from New York to Louisville, Nashville, and then Philadel­phia, host Mike Rugnetta the­o­rizes about the con­nec­tion between the road trip and the very con­cept of Amer­i­ca. It begins with phys­i­cal suit­abil­i­ty, what with the U.S.’ rel­a­tive­ly low gas prices, amenable ter­rain, and sheer size: “Amer­i­ca is big,” Rugnetta points out. “Some might say too big.”

As Rugnetta dri­ves far­ther, he goes deep­er: for quite a long stretch of U.S. his­to­ry, “progress and mobil­i­ty were peas in a pod, and mobil­i­ty has always been a sub­text of Amer­i­ca’s favorite soci­etal bul­wark, free­dom.” In oth­er words, “Amer­i­ca’s idea of its own awe­some­ness” — and does any word more clear­ly mark mod­ern Amer­i­can speech? — “is very much built on metaphors hav­ing to do with move­ment.”

In the 20th cen­tu­ry, move­ment came to mean cars, espe­cial­ly as the end of the Sec­ond World War and the begin­ning of the 1950s came around, at which time Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er, “inspired by the awe­some sys­tem of roads he saw in Ger­many,” autho­rized the con­struc­tion of a nation­al high­way sys­tem, the replace­ment for sto­ried but non-com­pre­hen­sive inter­state roads like Route 66.

From then on, the Unit­ed States saw an enor­mous surge in both car own­er­ship, auto-indus­try employ­ment, “the mid­dle class, sub­ur­bia, fast food,” and a host of oth­er phe­nom­e­na still seen as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can. “To say that mod­ern Amer­i­ca was built both by and for the car,” as Rugnetta puts it, “would not be an insane over­state­ment.” But he also notes that the idea of the road trip itself goes back to 1880s Ger­many, when Bertha Benz, wife of Benz Moter­wa­gen founder Karl Benz, took her hus­band’s then-exper­i­men­tal car on a then-ille­gal 66-mile dri­ve through the coun­try­side. The first Amer­i­can road trip was tak­en in 1903 by a doc­tor named Hor­a­tio Jack­son and, as the Rough Guides video above tells it, involved a bet, a dog, and — the whole way from San Fran­cis­co to New York — no sig­nage at all.

Rugnetta also presents a philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, derived from the Sorites Para­dox: at what point does a “dri­ve” turn into a “road trip?” Does it take a cer­tain num­ber of miles, of gas-tank refills, of road­side attrac­tions? A coast-to-coast dri­ve of the kind pio­neered by Jack­son unques­tion­ably qual­i­fies as a road trip. So does the auto­mo­bile jour­ney tak­en by Dutch­man Hen­ny Hogen­bi­jl in the sum­mer of 1955, his col­or film of which you can see above. Begin­ning with footage of Ams­ter­dam’s Schiphol Air­port, New World Sym­pho­ny shows off the sights Hogen­bi­jl saw while dri­ving from New York to Los Ange­les, with places like Nia­gara Falls, Chica­go, Mount Rush­more, Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park, and Salt Lake City as the stops in between — or the places, to use the phrase Rugnetta cred­its with great impor­tance in Amer­i­can myth, Hogen­bi­jl was just “passin’ through.”

Not long ago, a mod­ern-day Hogen­bi­jl made that great Amer­i­can road trip with the des­ti­na­tions reversed. Like Hogen­bi­jl, he filmed it; unlike Hogen­bi­jl, he filmed not the stops but the dri­ving itself, and every sin­gle minute it took him to get across the Unit­ed States at that. Lucky for the busy view­er, the video com­press­es this eight days of footage into a mere sev­en hours, adding an indi­ca­tor of the state being passed through in the low­er-left cor­ner of the frame. Even sped up, the view­ing expe­ri­ence under­scores a point I try to make to all the hope­ful road-trip­pers I meet on this side of the world: you must dri­ve across Amer­i­ca not just to expe­ri­ence how inter­est­ing the coun­try is, but at the same time how bor­ing it is. Allow me one use that most char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can locu­tion when I say that both Amer­i­ca’s inter­est­ing­ness and its bor­ing­ness, as well as its many oth­er qual­i­ties best seen on the road, inspire awe — that is, they’re awe­some.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Route 66 Became America’s Most Famous Road

If You Dri­ve Down a Stretch of Route 66, the Road Will Play “Amer­i­ca the Beau­ti­ful”

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

Four Inter­ac­tive Maps Immor­tal­ize the Road Trips That Inspired Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Down­load Dig­i­tized Copies of The Negro Trav­el­ers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civ­il Rights Guide to Trav­el­ing Safe­ly in the U.S. (1936–66)

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 or on Face­book.

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Nine Things a Woman Couldn’t Do in 1971

in Gender, History, Law, Life, Politics, Twitter | September 20th, 2019

As we bar­rel toward the cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion of wom­en’s suf­frage in the Unit­ed States, it’s not enough to bone up on the plat­forms of female pri­ma­ry can­di­dates (though that’s an excel­lent start).

A Twit­ter user and self-described Old Crone named Robyn recent­ly urged her fel­low Amer­i­cans to take a good long gan­der at a list of nine free­doms women in the Unit­ed States were not uni­ver­sal­ly grant­ed in 1971, the year Helen Red­dy released the soon-to-be anthem, “I Am Woman,” above.

Even those of us who remem­ber singing along as chil­dren may expe­ri­ence some shock that these facts check out on Snopes.

  1. CREDIT CARDS: Pri­or to the Equal Cred­it Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act of 1974, mar­ried women couldn’t get cred­it cards with­out their hus­bands’ sig­na­tures. Sin­gle women, divorcees, and wid­ows were often required to have a man cosign. The dou­ble stan­dard also meant female appli­cants were fre­quent­ly issued card lim­its up to 50% low­er than that of males who earned iden­ti­cal wages.
  2. PREGNANT WORKERS: The Preg­nan­cy Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act of 1978 pro­tect­ed preg­nant women from being fired because of their impend­ing mater­ni­ty. But it came with a major loop­hole that’s still in need of clos­ing. The lan­guage of the 41-year-old law stip­u­lates that the employ­ers must accom­mo­date preg­nant work­ers only if con­ces­sions are being made for oth­er employ­ees who are “sim­i­lar in their abil­i­ty or inabil­i­ty to work.”
  3. JURY DUTY: In 1975, the Supreme Court declared it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able for states to deny women the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve on juries. This is an are­na where we’ve all come a long way, baby. It’s now com­plete­ly nor­mal for men to be excused from jury duty as the pri­ma­ry care­givers of their young chil­dren.
  4. MILITARY COMBAT: In 2013, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Leon Panet­ta and for­mer Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey announced that the Pen­ta­gon was rescind­ing the direct com­bat exclu­sion rule that barred women from serv­ing in artillery, armor, infantry and oth­er such bat­tle roles. At the time of the announce­ment, the mil­i­tary had already seen more than 130 female sol­diers killed, and 800 wound­ed on the front­lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  5. IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS: Those who con­ceive of elite col­leges as breed­ing grounds for sex­u­al assault protests and Title IX activism would do well to remem­ber that Colum­bia Col­lege didn’t admit women until 1983, fol­low­ing in the mar­gin­al­ly deep­er foot­steps of oth­ers in the Ivy League—Harvard (1977), Dart­mouth (1972), Brown (1971), Yale (1969), and Prince­ton (1969). These days, sin­gle sex high­er edu­ca­tion options for women far out­num­ber those for men, but the net­work­ing pow­er and increased earn­ing poten­tial an Ivy League degree con­fers remains the same.
  6. WORKPLACE HARASSMENT: In 1977, women who’d been sex­u­al­ly harassed in the work­place received con­fir­ma­tion in three sep­a­rate tri­als that they could sue their employ­ers under Title VII of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex harass­ment was also unlaw­ful. In between was the tele­vi­sion event of 1991, Ani­ta Hill’s shock­ing tes­ti­mo­ny against her for­mer boss, U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice (then nom­i­nee) Clarence Thomas.
  7. SPOUSAL CONSENT: In 1993, spousal rape was offi­cial­ly out­lawed in all 50 states. Not tonight hon­ey, or you’ll have a headache in the form of your wife’s legal back up.
  8. HEALTH INSURANCE: In 2010, the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act decreed that any health insur­ance plan estab­lished after March of that year could not charge women high­er pre­mi­ums than men for iden­ti­cal ben­e­fits. This was bad news for women who got their health insur­ance through their jobs, and whose employ­ers were grand­fa­thered into dis­crim­i­na­to­ry plans estab­lished pri­or to 2010. Of course, that’s all ancient his­to­ry now.
  9. CONTRACEPTIVES: In 1972, the Supreme Court made it legal for all cit­i­zens to pos­sess birth con­trol, irre­spec­tive of mar­i­tal sta­tus, stat­ing “if the right of pri­va­cy means any­thing, it is the right of the indi­vid­ual, mar­ried or sin­gle, to be free from unwar­rant­ed gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into mat­ters so fun­da­men­tal­ly affect­ing a per­son as the deci­sion whether to bear or beget a child.” (It’s worth not­ing, how­ev­er, that in 1972, states could still con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it and pun­ish sex out­side of mar­riage.)

Fem­i­nism is NOT just for oth­er women.

- Old Crone

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Dig­i­tizes Over 16,000 Pages of Let­ters & Speech­es from the Women’s Suf­frage Move­ment, and You Can Help Tran­scribe Them

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Did People Eat in Medieval Times? A Video Series and New Cookbook Explain

in History | September 18th, 2019

A cou­ple days ago, Open Culture’s Ayun Hal­l­i­day brought us the delight­ful­ly amus­ing medieval comics of artist Tyler Gun­ther. With ref­er­ences to Game of Thrones and a piece of women’s head­gear called “Plan­e­tary Real­ness,” the sin­gle-pan­el gags use seem­ing­ly-peri­od-cor­rect imagery to play with our pre­sen­tist bias­es. The “Medieval Peas­ant Food Pyra­mid,” for exam­ple, shows a diet based on copi­ous amounts of ale, bread, and cheese, with goose pie once a year and nary a fruit or veg­etable in sight.

Stereo­types of medieval Euro­pean nutri­tion seem com­par­a­tive­ly benign, derived as much from fan­ta­sy enter­tain­ment as from mis­un­der­stand­ings of his­to­ry. But while it’s true peo­ple in Europe hun­dreds of years ago died young and in huge num­bers from plague, famine, war, and, yes, bad food, they also sur­vived long enough to pass on genes and build cities and towns that still exist today. They didn’t do so strict­ly on a diet of beer and bread.

If we want to know what peo­ple real­ly ate in, say, 12th cen­tu­ry Eng­land, we’ll find that their diets var­ied wide­ly from region to region, depend­ing on what cooks could grow, for­age, or pur­chase from oth­er locals. Every­one, in oth­er words, was a localvore. Each region had its recipes for breads and cheeses, and each its own dish­es made with its own ani­mals, herbs, spices, and roughage. And we’ll find that major his­tor­i­cal events could rad­i­cal­ly alter diets, as foods—and arable land—became scarcer or more plen­ti­ful.

Such were the find­ings of non-prof­it vol­un­teer his­to­ry group Iron Shep­herds, who used pri­ma­ry texts, images, and cook­ing meth­ods to recon­struct ten 12th-cen­tu­ry recipes from their native “home coun­ty of Cum­bria, in the North of Eng­land,” reports Atlas Obscu­ra. “[W]hile the coun­try became embroiled in a bloody civ­il war” over suc­ces­sion dur­ing a time known as The Anar­chy, Cum­bria became a part of Scot­land, and lived in rel­a­tive sta­bil­i­ty, “home to cul­tures rang­ing from the invad­ing Flem­ish and French­man to Celts and even Norse Vikings.”

Need­less to say, this diver­si­ty of cul­tures con­tributed to a diver­si­ty of tastes, and a col­or­ful range of dish­es with names like fru­men­ty, plumen­tum, and tard­po­lene. “Cumbria’s peas­ants, it turns out, ate much as we strive to today—though for vast­ly dif­fer­ent rea­sons…..” The peas­ants’ “diets con­sist­ed of plant-based, low-sug­ar meals of local­ly-sourced, if not home-grown ingre­di­ents.” Invol­un­tary fast­ing might have been a fea­ture for many peas­ants, but so too was “vol­un­tary, inter­mit­tent fast­ing…. In the name of reli­gious self-dis­ci­pline.”

What about the upper class­es? How might, say, a land­ed knight eat, once he fin­ished roam­ing his demesne and rest­ed safe at home with his staff and entourage? In the video at the top, Mod­ern His­to­ry TV’s Jason Kings­ley and food his­to­ri­an Chris Carr dis­cuss the dietary prac­tices of the priv­i­leged in medieval times. Again, here we find more sur­pris­ing­ly for­ward-think­ing pre­ven­ta­tive nutri­tion, though lim­it­ed by the med­i­cine of the time. Cooks would con­sult with the knight’s per­son­al physi­cian, who him­self would mon­i­tor his patient’s vitals—going so far as to taste the knight’s urine, a way of detect­ing what we now know as dia­betes. Too sweet? Cut out the sug­ar.

Iron Shepherd’s Medieval Meals cook­book has proven so pop­u­lar that it’s cur­rent­ly sold out, but you can see many more episodes of Mod­ern His­to­ry TV’s medieval series devot­ed to food at their chan­nel on YouTube, includ­ing the videos above on the diets of peas­ants, nobles, and knight’s vas­sals. There are also vlogs on “Hearty Food vs. Posh Food,” “Good Eat­ing,” and—in answer to that age-old ques­tion—“What did medieval peas­ants use instead of plas­tic wrap” to store their left­overs? Come for the food, stay for the live­ly videos on weapon­ry, hoods, and hay mak­ing.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

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

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

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Imagined Medieval Comics Illuminate the Absurdities of Modern Life

in Art, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Fashion, History, Museums | September 16th, 2019

In 2005, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture revised its famous food pyra­mid, jet­ti­son­ing the famil­iar hier­ar­chi­cal graph­ic in favor of ver­ti­cal rain­bow stripes rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous nutri­tion­al groups. A stick fig­ure bound­ed up a stair­case built into one side, to rein­force the idea of adding reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to all those whole grains and veg­gies.

The dietary infor­ma­tion it pro­mot­ed was an improve­ment on the orig­i­nal, but nutri­tion­al sci­en­tists were skep­ti­cal that the pub­lic would be able to parse the con­fus­ing graph­ic, and by and large this proved to be the case.

Artist Tyler Gun­ther, how­ev­er, was inspired:

I start­ed think­ing about the mes­sag­ing school chil­dren in 1308 were force fed to believe was part of a heart healthy diet, only to have the rug pulled out from under them 15 years lat­er when some monk rearranged the whole thing.

In oth­er words, you’d bet­ter dig into that annu­al goose pie, kids, while you’ve still got 6 glass­es of ale to wash it down.

The imag­ined over­lap between the mod­ern and the medieval is a fer­tile vein for Gunter, whose MFA in Cos­tume Design is often put to good use in his hilar­i­ous his­tor­i­cal comics:

Mod­ern men’s fash­ion is so incred­i­bly bor­ing. A guy wears a pat­tered shirt with a suit and he gets laud­ed as though he won the super bowl of fash­ion. But back in the Mid­dle Ages men made bold, brave fash­ion choic­es and I admire them great­ly for this. It’s so excit­ing to me to think of these inven­tive, strange, fan­tas­tic cre­ations being a part of the every­day mas­cu­line aes­thet­ic.

The shapes and struc­tures of women’s head­wear in the dark ages are tru­ly inspir­ing. Where were these milliners draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from? How were they engi­neered? How com­fort­able were they to wear? How did they fit through the major­i­ty of door­ways? What was it like to sit behind a par­tic­u­lar­ly large one in church? I’m still scrolling through many an inter­net his­to­ry blog to find the answers. 

Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog has proved a help­ful resource, as has Anne H. van Buren’s book Illu­mi­nat­ing Fash­ion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Nether­lands.

The Brook­lyn-based, Arkansas-born artist also makes peri­od­ic pil­grim­ages to the Clois­ters, where the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um hous­es a vast num­ber illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, pan­el paint­ings, altar pieces, and the famed Uni­corn Tapes­tries:

On my first trip to The Clois­ters I saw a paint­ing of St. Michael and the dev­il almost imme­di­ate­ly. I don’t think my life or art has been the same since. None of us know what the dev­il looks like. But you wouldn’t know that based on how con­fi­dent­ly this artist por­trays his like­ness. After gaz­ing at this paint­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time I want­ed so bad­ly to under­stand the imag­i­na­tion of who­ev­er could imag­ine an alli­ga­tor arms/face crotch/dragon pony­tail com­bo. I don’t think I’ve come close to scratch­ing the sur­face.

Every time I go to that muse­um I think, “Wow it’s like I’m on Game of Thrones” and then I have to remind myself kind­ly that this was real life. Almost every­thing there was an object that peo­ple inter­act­ed with as part of their aver­age dai­ly life and that fas­ci­nates me as some­one who lives in a world filled with mass pro­duced, plas­tic objects. 

Gunther’s draw­ings and comics are cre­at­ed (and aged) on that most mod­ern of conveniences—the iPad.

The British monar­chy and the First Ladies are also sources of fas­ci­na­tion, but the mid­dle ages are his pri­ma­ry pas­sion, to the point where he recent­ly cos­tumed him­self as a page to tell the sto­ry of Piers Gave­ston, 1st Earl of Corn­wall and Edward II’s dar­ling, aid­ed by a gar­ment rack he’d retooled as a medieval pageant cart-cum-pup­pet the­ater.

See the rest of Tyler Gunther’s Medieval Comics on his web­site and don’t for­get to sur­prise your favorite hygien­ist or oral sur­geon with his Medieval Den­tist print this hol­i­day sea­son.

All images used with per­mis­sion of artist Tyler Gun­ther

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley, with a spe­cial appear­ance by Tyler Gun­ther. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig Taking Batting Practice in Strikingly Restored Footage (1931)

in Film, History, Sports | September 13th, 2019

How would Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and oth­er famous ballplay­ers of bygone eras fare if put on the dia­mond today? Vari­a­tions on that ques­tion tend to come up in con­ver­sa­tion among enthu­si­asts of base­ball and its his­to­ry, and dif­fer­ent peo­ple bring dif­fer­ent kinds of evi­dence to bear in search of an answer: sta­tis­tics, eye­wit­ness accounts, analo­gies between par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal play­ers and cur­rent ones. But the fact remains that none of us have ever actu­al­ly seen the likes of Ruth, who played his last pro­fes­sion­al game in 1935, and Gehrig, who did so in 1939, in their prime. But now we can at least get a lit­tle clos­er by watch­ing the film clip above, which shows both of the titan­ic Yan­kees at bat­ting prac­tice on April 11, 1931.

What’s more, it shows them mov­ing at real-life speed. “Fox Movi­etone sound cam­eras made slow-motion cap­tures of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at bat­ting prac­tice dur­ing an exhi­bi­tion prac­tice in Brook­lyn, New York,” writes uploader Guy Jones (whose oth­er base­ball videos include Ruth hit­ting a home run on open­ing day the same year and Ruth’s last appear­ance at bat a decade lat­er). “With mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, we can wit­ness this footage adjust­ed to a nor­mal speed which results in a very high fram­er­ate.”

In oth­er words, the film shows Ruth and Gehrig not just mov­ing in the very same way they did in real life, but cap­tured with a smooth­ness uncom­mon in news­reel footage from the 1930s. For com­par­i­son, Jones includes at the end of the video “more footage of the prac­tice (shot at typ­i­cal fps) and the orig­i­nal un-edit­ed slow-mo cap­tures.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what this film reveals does­n’t impress observers of mod­ern base­ball. “Ruth and Gehrig in no way look like a mod­ern ballplay­er,” writes The Big Lead­’s Kyle Koster. “Ruth is off-bal­ance, falling into his swing. Gehrig rou­tine­ly lifts his back foot off the ground. Again, it’s bat­ting prac­tice so the com­pet­i­tive juices weren’t flow­ing. But even by that stan­dard, the whole exer­cise looks slop­py and inef­fi­cient.” Cut4’s Jake Mintz gets harsh­er, as well as more tech­ni­cal: “Tell me Ruth’s cocka­mamie swing mechan­ics would enable him to hit a 98-mph heater.” As for the Iron Horse, his “hack is a lit­tle bet­ter,” but still “absurd­ly low” by today’s stan­dards. It goes to show, Mintz writes, that “these two leg­ends, while unde­ni­ably tran­scen­dent in their time, would be good Double‑A hit­ters at best if they played today.” We evolve, our tech­nolo­gies evolve, and so, it seems, do the games we play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Home Movies of Duke Elling­ton Play­ing Base­ball (And How Base­ball Coined the Word “Jazz”)

Read Online Haru­ki Murakami’s New Essay on How a Base­ball Game Launched His Writ­ing Career

Fritz Lang’s M: The Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

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 or on Face­book.

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Expressionist Dance Costumes from the 1920s, and the Tragic Story of Lavinia Schulz & Walter Holdt

in Dance, History | September 12th, 2019

The most fruit­ful cre­ative part­ner­ships, long or short, have often been tem­pes­tu­ous. On the short­er side, and among the stormi­est, we have a hus­band-and-wife team who real­ized visions hith­er­to unseen onstage, and who very near­ly fell into total obscu­ri­ty after a mur­der-sui­cide brought their part­ner­ship to an end. But in the Ham­burg of the late 1910s and ear­ly 1920s, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, Lavinia Schulz and Wal­ter Holdt “cre­at­ed wild, Expres­sion­ist cos­tumes that looked like retro robots and Bauhaus knights,” twen­ty of them, for per­for­mances accom­pa­nied by avant-garde music. After their death in 1924, Schulz and Holdt’s work went into stor­age, nev­er to be found again until the late 1980s.

The cos­tumes had been gift­ed to the Muse­um für Kun­st und Gewerbe, which in 1925 “staged an evening in mem­o­ry of Lavinia Schulz and Wal­ter Holdt,” writes blog­ger Jan Reet­ze.

“After this, the masks, pho­tos and draw­ings” — includ­ing dances dia­grammed in a sys­tem of Schulz’s own inven­tion — “went into a cou­ple of ‘acro­bat’s bag­gage’ box­es and fell into obliv­ion on the muse­um’s attic. They were not even inven­to­ried. Which turned out to be a stroke of luck because this way the objects did­n’t fall into the hands of the Nazis, who, with­out any doubt, would have seen these works as ‘degen­er­ate art’ and in all prob­a­bil­i­ty would have destroyed them.”

You can see the cos­tumes in action in the video at the top of the post, and more of the pho­tos tak­en by Minya Diez-Dührkoop in the last year of Schulz and Holdt’s lives at Hyper­al­ler­gic. Their per­for­mances began in the expres­sion­ism with which the Berlin-edu­cat­ed Schultz had been asso­ci­at­ed and moved toward “the sup­posed puri­ty of pre-Judeo-Chris­t­ian, Aryan-Nordic cul­ture,” as Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher writes.

“Between 1920–24, the cou­ple per­formed their dance rou­tines to the bewil­dered and often antag­o­nis­tic audi­ences of Ham­burg. Though some crit­ics appre­ci­at­ed the pair’s tal­ent and star­tling orig­i­nal­i­ty, this praise was nev­er enough to pay the rent.”

“Accord­ing to con­tem­po­rary crit­ics, Lavinia seemed to be the more cre­ative one,” writes Reet­ze. “Wal­ter, on the oth­er hand, was the bet­ter and more dis­ci­plined dancer, he exact­ly knew his for­mal means and how to use them.” The coun­ter­part to Holdt’s rig­or was Schulz’s more pri­mal genius, a sen­si­bil­i­ty that man­i­fest­ed aes­thet­i­cal­ly — seen in her high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al use of every­day mate­ri­als like “wire, gyp­sum, papi­er mâché and indus­tri­al garbage” — and emo­tion­al­ly.

Reet­ze quotes from the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of com­pos­er Hans Heinz Stuck­en­schmidt, who briefly lived with the cou­ple: “Depri­va­tion, hunger, cold­ness, nordic land­scape with storm, ice, and cat­a­stro­phes: That was her world, and she had found her­self in it with Holdt.”

Schulz and Holdt also refused to be paid for their per­for­mances. “You can­not sell spir­i­tu­al ideas for mon­ey,” Schulz wrote. “Spir­it and mon­ey are two antag­o­nis­tic poles, and if you sell spir­i­tu­al ideas for mon­ey, you sold the spir­it to the mon­ey and lost the spir­it.” Even­tu­al­ly their pover­ty — as well as the unusu­al­ly volatile nature of their rela­tion­ship, said to spark phys­i­cal mar­i­tal spats on stage — reached a break­ing point. “Both were in their 20s, and had earned lit­tle mon­ey from their artis­tic work,” writes Meier. “In finan­cial ruin, on June 18, 1924, Schulz shot Holdt, and then turned the gun on her­self.” But against all odds, their still-star­tling cre­ativ­i­ty — the kind that can, per­haps, emerge only from the oppo­si­tion of two incom­pat­i­ble forces — lives on.

via Dan­ger­ous Mind

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kandin­sky, Klee & Oth­er Bauhaus Artists Designed Inge­nious Cos­tumes Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Before

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, the Tri­adic Bal­let, First Staged by Oskar Schlem­mer in 1922

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

An Online Trove of His­toric Sewing Pat­terns & Cos­tumes

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

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 or on Face­book.

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American Cities Then & Now: See How New York, Los Angeles & Detroit Look Today, Compared to the 1930s and 1940s

in Architecture, History | September 11th, 2019

Palimpsest has become clichéd as a descrip­tor of cities, but only due to its truth. Repeat­ed­ly eras­ing and rewrit­ing parts of cities over years, decades, and cen­turies has left us with built envi­ron­ments that reflect every peri­od of urban his­to­ry at once. Or at least in an ide­al world they do: we’ve all felt the dull­ness of new cities built whole, or of old cities that have bare­ly changed in liv­ing mem­o­ry, dull­ness that under­scores the val­ue of places in which a vari­ety of forms, styles, and eras all coex­ist. Take New York, which even in the 1930s pre­sent­ed the gen­teel­ly his­tor­i­cal along­side the thor­ough­ly mod­ern. The New York­er video above places dri­ving footage from that era along­side the same places — the Brook­lyn Bridge, Cen­tral Park, Harlem, the West Side High­way— shot in 2017, high­light­ing what has changed, and even more so what has­n’t.

Los Ange­les has under­gone a more dra­mat­ic trans­for­ma­tion, as Kevin McAlester’s side-by-side video of Bunker Hill in the 1940s and 2016 reveals. “An area of rough­ly five square blocks in down­town Los Ange­les,” says The New York­er, Bunker Hill was from 1959 “the sub­ject of a mas­sive urban-renew­al project, in which ‘improve­ment’ was gen­er­al­ly defined by the peo­ple who stood to prof­it from it, as well as their back­ers at City Hall, at the expense of any­one stand­ing in their way.”

The 53-year process turned a neigh­bor­hood of “some of the city’s most ele­gant man­sions and hotels,” lat­er sub­di­vid­ed and “pop­u­lat­ed by a mix of pen­sion­ers, immi­grants, work­ers, and peo­ple look­ing to get lost,” into an attempt­ed acrop­o­lis of works by archi­tec­tur­al super­stars, includ­ing Frank Gehry’s Dis­ney Con­cert Hall, recent Pritzk­er-win­ner Ara­ta Isoza­k­i’s Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, and John Port­man’s (movie-beloved) Bonaven­ture Hotel.

Above the clas­sic Amer­i­can build­ings of Detroit stands anoth­er of Port­man’s sig­na­ture glass-and-steel cylin­ders: the Renais­sance Cen­ter, com­mis­sioned in the 1970s by Hen­ry Ford II as the cen­ter­piece of the city’s hoped-for revival. Three decades ear­li­er, says The New York­er, “Detroit was the fourth-largest city in Amer­i­ca, draw­ing in work­ers with oppor­tu­ni­ties for sta­ble employ­ment on the assem­bly lines at the Ford, Gen­er­al Motors, and Chrysler plants.” But soon “fac­to­ries closed, and jobs van­ished from the city that had been the cen­ter of the indus­try.” The Motor City’s down­ward slide con­tin­ued until its 2013 bank­rupt­cy, but some auto man­u­fac­tur­ing remains, as shown in this split-screen video of Detroit over the past cen­tu­ry along­side Detroit in 2018. It even includes footage of the QLine, the street­car that opened in the pre­vi­ous year amid the lat­est wave of inter­est in restor­ing Detroit to its for­mer glo­ry. As in any city, the most sol­id future for Detroit must be built, in part, with the mate­ri­als of its past.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Col­orized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931

Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Record­ed in 1913: Caught Between the Tra­di­tion­al and the Mod­ern

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

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 or on Face­book.

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