To Save Civilization, the Rich Need to Pay Their Taxes: Historian Rutger Bregman Speaks Truth to Power at Davos and to Fox’s Tucker Carlson

in Economics, History, Politics | February 25th, 2019

Cer­tain econ­o­mists may have down­grad­ed the labor the­o­ry of val­ue, but most of us can agree on the basic moral intu­ition that no one per­son is worth mil­lions, even bil­lions, more than almost every­one else on the plan­et. Yet we live in a soci­ety that allows indi­vid­u­als to hoard mil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars in cash, assets, and cap­i­tal gains, with­out even the pre­sump­tion that they demon­strate why they should have it–especially to the degree that the top 1% now holds more wealth than 90% in the U.S.

What social con­tract allows for this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not per­son­al­ly inter­est­ed in the answer from econ­o­mists, though I imag­ine there are many excel­lent­ly accred­it­ed pro­po­nents. The dom­i­nant assump­tions in eco­nom­ics come from fan­tasies like ceteris paribus, “all else being equal,” and the con­cept of “exter­nal­i­ties.” World his­tor­i­cal inequal­i­ty, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, and eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion do not seem to pose seri­ous prob­lems for most main­stream eco­nom­ic think­ing. But what do his­to­ri­ans say? This is, after all, a his­tor­i­cal ques­tion.

Many sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions have obtained in the past. Some­times they have result­ed in bloody rev­o­lu­tions, some­times sack­ing and pil­lag­ing, some­times redis­tri­b­u­tion schemes. Noblesse oblige: land grants, endow­ments, hos­pi­tals, muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties… these have not only eased the con­sciences of the rich but have stood out as appeas­ing acts of pub­lic gen­eros­i­ty. But the only thing that has real­ly mit­i­gat­ed the con­di­tions for soci­etal col­lapse under cap­i­tal­ism?

Accord­ing to Dutch his­to­ri­an and writer Rut­ger Breg­man, it’s high tax­es on high incomes and estates. It just so hap­pened, how­ev­er, at this year’s Davos World Eco­nom­ic Forum, as Breg­man lament­ed in a Davos pan­el dis­cus­sion, tax­es were the one thing bil­lion­aires would not dis­cuss. This was so, he observes, at a con­fer­ence that fea­tures Sir David Atten­bor­ough “talk­ing about how we’re wreck­ing the plan­et.”

I mean, I hear peo­ple talk­ing the lan­guage of par­tic­i­pa­tion and jus­tice and equal­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, but then, I mean, almost no one rais­es the real issue of tax avoid­ance, right? And of the rich are just not pay­ing their fair share. I mean, it feels like I’m at a firefighter’s con­fer­ence and no one’s allowed to speak about water.

Pic­tur­ing fire­fight­ers hoard­ing water and refus­ing to share it while the plan­et is going up in flames is a sin­is­ter image, but maybe the inten­tions are beside the point. Even where tax rates are high(ish), gov­ern­ments go out of their way to allow com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als to avoid pay­ing them. Sure­ly, many peo­ple believe this is nec­es­sary to cre­ate jobs? So what if those jobs lack secu­ri­ty, ben­e­fits, or a liv­ing wage?

Breg­man pulls back from the inflam­ma­to­ry metaphor to con­cede that one pan­el did address the issue. He was one of fif­teen par­tic­i­pants. We have to “stop talk­ing about phil­an­thropy,” he says, “and start talk­ing about tax­es,” just like Amer­i­cans did in the sup­pos­ed­ly hal­cy­on days of the 1950s, when under Repub­li­can pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er the top mar­gin­al tax rate was 91%. He says this to peo­ple like Michael Dell, who once asked Breg­man for an exam­ple of a 70% tax rate ever work­ing.

Oxfam’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Win­nie Byany­i­ma sub­stan­ti­ates his polemic, not­ing glob­al­ly “we have a tax sys­tem that leaks so much, that $170 bil­lion” annu­al­ly ends up in tax havens. This is wealth that is extract­ed from the planet’s resources, from gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and the labor hours and health of gross­ly under­paid work­ers. Then it is dis­ap­peared. If you’ve seen this video, you’ve seen the charges of “one-sid­ed­ness” lobbed by for­mer Yahoo CFO Ken Gold­man from the audi­ence. Byany­i­ma’s response rebuts all of his talk­ing points. She deserves her own cheer­lead­ing video edit.

Breg­man took the same con­fronta­tion­al stance in an unaired inter­view with Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son. After Carl­son seemed to agree with him, the his­to­ri­an bris­tled and point­ed out that as “a mil­lion­aire fund­ed by bil­lion­aires,” Carl­son has faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed and com­mu­ni­cat­ed the inter­ests of his employ­ers for decades, whether that’s the bru­tal scape­goat­ing of immi­grants or the defense of unlim­it­ed prof­i­teer­ing and huge tax cuts for the wealthy (and tax rais­es for every­one else). The host ends the inter­view sput­ter­ing insults and obscen­i­ties and sneers “I was will­ing to give you a hear­ing.” The prob­lem requires more than a con­de­scend­ing pat on the head, Breg­man argues.

His solu­tion to mas­sive inequal­i­ty and unrest, uni­ver­sal basic income, is one that, like high mar­gin­al tax rates, once appealed to Repub­li­cans. The pro­pos­al has a long his­to­ry, many seri­ous detrac­tors, and it’s also polit­i­cal­ly ignored. You can hear Bregman’s argu­ment for it above, and against Mar­garet Thatcher’s ruth­less­ly ahis­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of pover­ty as a “per­son­al­i­ty defect.” If you think UBI goes too far, or not near­ly far enough, maybe you’d be inter­est­ed in oth­er ideas, like a 15-hour work­week and open bor­ders, part of the “ide­al world” Breg­man says is pos­si­ble in his book Utopia for Real­ists. You can down­load it as a free audio­book if you sign up for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

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

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18 Classic Myths Explained with Animation: Pandora’s Box, Sisyphus & More

in Animation, History, K-12, Life, Literature | February 22nd, 2019

Greek myths have an incred­i­ble shelf life.

We may not retain all the play­ers’ names or the intri­ca­cies of the var­i­ous plot lines, but the cre­ative pun­ish­ments the gods—Zeus, in particular—visited upon those who dis­pleased them have pro­vid­ed mod­ern mor­tals with an endur­ing short­hand for describ­ing our own woes.

Tempt­ed to sneak a peek inside a lover’s diary? Take a tee­ny swig from the liquor cab­i­net whilst hous­esit­ting? Go snoop­ing in your teenager’s Inter­net his­to­ry?

DON’T DO IT, PANDORA!!!

But if curios­i­ty com­pels you to explore beyond the famous punch­lines of mythology’s great­est hits, TED-Ed’s ani­mat­ed Myths from Around the World series is a rec­om­mend­ed rum­mage.

Aver­ag­ing around five min­utes per tale, each episode is packed tight as a snake in a can of mixed nuts. Pre­pare to be sur­prised by some of the tid­bits that come spring­ing out.

Take Pandora’s box, above.

(Actu­al­ly it was a jar, but why quib­ble?)

Not to unleash too many major spoil­ers, but how many of us remem­bered that the thing con­tained a bit of good along with all that evil?

Or that the ves­sel she wasn’t allowed to open was but one of many gifts the gods bestowed upon her at birth? In fact, Zeus gave her two presents, that pret­ty box, jar, what­ev­er, and—wait for it—an irre­press­ibly inquis­i­tive nature.

Or the close con­nec­tion between Pan­do­ra and Prometheus? Zeus con­ceived of Pan­do­ra as a ret­ri­bu­tion for Prometheus steal­ing fire and return­ing it to earth.

Remem­ber Prometheus?

No, not the guy who’s doomed to spend his life rolling a mas­sive rock uphill, only to have it roll back down before he reach­es the top. That’s Sisy­phus, as in Sisyphean task, like laun­dry or clean­ing the cat lit­ter.

Prometheus is the Titan who winds up chained to a rock so Zeus can send a hun­gry vulture—some say eagle—to devour his liv­er once a day.

(Which kind of puts the cat lit­ter in per­spec­tive.)

In addi­tion to ancient Greek crowd pleasers, the 18-episode Myths from Around the World playlist delves into the famil­iar stuff of Norse, Chi­nese, and ancient Egypt­ian leg­ends, as well as less wide­ly known Cam­bo­di­an and Irish tales.

Each video’s descrip­tion has a link to a full Ted-Ed les­son, with the usu­al com­ple­ment of quizzes, resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties for teacher cus­tomiza­tion.

Watch the full playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Myth of Sisy­phus Won­der­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed in an Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film (1974)

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Has the Voynich Manuscript Finally Been Decoded?: Researchers Claim That the Mysterious Text Was Written in Phonetic Old Turkish

in Books, History | February 21st, 2019

There are still sev­er­al ancient lan­guages mod­ern schol­ars can­not deci­pher, like Minoan hiero­glyph­ics (called Lin­ear A) or Khipu, the intri­cate Incan sys­tem of writ­ing in knots. These sym­bols con­tain with­in them the wis­dom of civ­i­liza­tions, and there’s no telling what might be revealed should we learn to trans­late them. Maybe schol­ars will only find account­ing logs and inven­to­ries, or maybe entire­ly new ways of per­ceiv­ing real­i­ty. When it comes, how­ev­er, to a sin­gu­lar­ly inde­ci­pher­able text, the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, the lan­guage it con­tains encodes the wis­dom of a soli­tary intel­li­gence, or an obscure, her­mitic com­mu­ni­ty that seems to have left no oth­er trace behind.

Com­posed around the year 1420, the 240-page man­u­script appears to be in dia­logue with medieval med­ical and alchem­i­cal texts of the time, with its zodi­acs and illus­tra­tions botan­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, and anatom­i­cal. But its script only vague­ly resem­bles known Euro­pean lan­guages.

So it has seemed for the 300 years dur­ing which schol­ars have tried to solve its rid­dles, assum­ing it to be the work of mys­tics, magi­cians, witch­es, or hoax­ers. Its lan­guage has been var­i­ous­ly said to come from Latin, Sino-Tibetan, Ara­bic, and ancient Hebrew, or to have been invent­ed out of whole cloth. None of these the­o­ries (the Hebrew one pro­posed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence) has proven con­clu­sive.

Maybe that’s because everyone’s got the basic approach all wrong, see­ing the Voynich’s script as a writ­ten lan­guage rather than a pho­net­ic translit­er­a­tion of speech. So says the Ardiç fam­i­ly, a father and sons team of Turk­ish researchers who call them­selves Ata Team Alber­ta (ATA) and claim in the video above to have “deci­phered and trans­lat­ed over 30% of the man­u­script.” Father Ahmet Ardiç, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer by trade and schol­ar of Turk­ish lan­guage by pas­sion­ate call­ing, claims the Voyn­ich script is a kind of Old Tur­kic, “writ­ten in a ‘poet­ic’ style,” notes Nick Pelling at the site Cipher Mys­ter­ies, “that often dis­plays ‘phone­mic orthog­ra­phy,’” mean­ing the author spelled out words the way he, or she, heard them.

Ahmet noticed that the words often began with the same char­ac­ters, then had dif­fer­ent end­ings, a pat­tern that cor­re­sponds with the lin­guis­tic struc­ture of Turk­ish. Fur­ther­more, Ozan Ardiç informs us, the lan­guage of the Voyn­ich has a “rhyth­mic struc­ture,” a for­mal, poet­ic reg­u­lar­i­ty. As for why schol­ars, and com­put­ers, have seen so many oth­er ancient lan­guages in the Voyn­ich, Ahmet explains, “some of the Voyn­ich char­ac­ters are also used in sev­er­al pro­to-Euro­pean and ear­ly Semit­ic lan­guages.” The Ardiç fam­i­ly will have their research vet­ted by pro­fes­sion­als. They’ve sub­mit­ted a for­mal paper to an aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty.

Their the­o­ry, as Pelling puts it, may be one more “to throw onto the (already blaz­ing) hearth” of Voyn­ich spec­u­la­tion. Or it may turn out to be the final word on the trans­la­tion. Promi­nent Medieval schol­ar Lisa Fagin Davis, head of the Medieval Acad­e­my of America—who has her­self cast doubt on anoth­er recent trans­la­tion attempt—calls the Ardiçs’ work “one of the few solu­tions I’ve seen that is con­sis­tent, is repeat­able, and results in sen­si­cal text.”

We don’t learn many specifics of that text in the video above, but if this effort suc­ceeds, and it seems promis­ing, we could see an author­i­ta­tive trans­la­tion of the Voyn­ich, though there will still remain many unan­swered ques­tions, such as who wrote this strange, some­times fan­tas­ti­cal man­u­script, and to what end?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book,” the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Voyn­ich Man­u­script

Behold the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script: The 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

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

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The History of Ancient Greece in 18 Minutes: A Brisk Primer Narrated by Brian Cox

in History | February 21st, 2019

Ancient Greece nev­er exist­ed. Before you click away, fear­ing a tru­ly brazen attempt at his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, let’s put that state­ment in con­text. Ancient Greece “was no state with an estab­lished bor­der or cap­i­tal, but rather a mul­ti­tude of dis­tinct and com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent cities.” So says the video above, “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes,” which makes his­tor­i­cal cor­rec­tions — and often humor­ous ones — to that and a vari­ety of oth­er com­mon mis­per­cep­tions about per­haps the main civ­i­liza­tions to give rise to West­ern cul­ture as we know it.

“We might think we already know every­thing about Ancient Greece,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, actor Bri­an Cox. “The Parthenon, the 300 Spar­tans, and blind Home­r’s Ili­ad and Odyssey are famil­iar to all, yet there were far more than 300 Spar­tans, the Parthenon was actu­al­ly built as a kind of cen­tral bank, and no such uni­fied state as ancient Greece, with Athens as its cap­i­tal, ever exist­ed.”

Some of our unwar­rant­ed intel­lec­tu­al con­fi­dence about Ancient Greece sure­ly comes from the movies that draw on its his­to­ry and its sto­ries, such as the com­ic-book Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae drama­ti­za­tion 300 or, a cou­ple years ear­li­er, Troy, which deliv­ered Home­r’s Ili­ad in true Hol­ly­wood fash­ion — with Cox him­self as Agamem­non, com­man­der of the unit­ed Greek forces in the Tro­jan War.

That nine-year long siege, of course, fig­ures into “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes” as one of its most impor­tant episodes. The oth­er chap­ters cov­er the Cre­to-Myce­naean era that pre­ced­ed Ancient Greece, the bar­bar­ian attacks that plunged the region into a 400-year dark age, the Archa­ic Peri­od that saw the begin­ning of Greece’s far-flung agri­cul­ture-dri­ven col­o­niza­tion, the rise of the famous Athens and Spar­ta, the Grae­co-Per­sian Wars (as seen, in a sense, in 300), the Gold­en Age of Athens (the age of the con­struc­tion of the Parthenon, with­out which “the Greek clas­sics would­n’t have exist­ed at all: no sculp­ture, dra­ma, phi­los­o­phy”), the Pelo­pon­nesian War, and the time of Alexan­der the Great.

Alexan­der the Great died young in 323 BC, and Ancient Greece as we con­ceive of it today is thought not to have sur­vived him. But in anoth­er sense, it not only sur­vived but thrived: the Romans con­quered Greece in 146 BC, but “Greek cul­ture was vic­to­ri­ous even here: spread by the Romans, it final­ly con­quered the world. Romans began to read The Ili­ad and Odyssey in Greek, fol­lowed by the Greek New Tes­ta­ment.” (You can find out much more about the Romans in the same cre­ators’ video “Ancient Rome in 20 Min­utes.”) When in 330 the Roman emper­or Con­stan­tine built his new cap­i­tal on the site of the Greek colony of Byzan­tium, he start­ed the Byzan­tine Empire, “which extend­ed the life of Greek cul­ture anoth­er thou­sand years.” This left a for­mi­da­ble cul­tur­al lega­cy of its own — includ­ing, as this Russ­ian-made video makes a spe­cial point of telling us, “the weird Russ­ian alpha­bet.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course from Yale

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

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

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

The Gold­en Age of Ancient Greece Gets Faith­ful­ly Recre­at­ed in the New Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

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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The History of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Minutes: A Primer Narrated by Brian Cox

in History | February 20th, 2019

Two thou­sand years ago, Rome was half the world. A thou­sand years before that, it was “a tiny trib­al set­tle­ment of the Latins by the riv­er Tiber.” So, what hap­pened? An awful lot. But nar­ra­tor Bri­an Cox makes the his­to­ry and longevi­ty of Ancient Rome seem sim­ple in 20 min­utes in the Arza­mas video above, which brings the same tal­ent for nar­ra­tive com­pres­sion as we saw in an ear­li­er video we fea­tured with Cox describ­ing the his­to­ry of Russ­ian Art.

This is a far more sprawl­ing sub­ject, but it’s one you can absorb in 20 min­utes, if you’re sat­is­fied with very broad out­lines. Or, like one YouTube com­menter, you can spend six hours, or more, paus­ing for read­ing and research after each morsel of infor­ma­tion Cox toss­es out. The sto­ry begins with trade—cultural and economic—between the Latins and the Etr­uscans to the north and Greeks to the south. Rome grows by adding pop­u­la­tions from all over the world, allow­ing migrants and refugees to become cit­i­zens.

Indeed, the great Roman epic, the Aeneid, relates its found­ing by refugees from Troy. From these begin­nings come mon­u­men­tal inno­va­tions in build­ing and engi­neer­ing, as well as an alpha­bet that spread around the world and a lan­guage that spawned dozens of oth­ers. The Roman numer­al sys­tem, an unwieldy way to do math­e­mat­ics, nonethe­less gave to the world the stateliest means of writ­ing num­bers. Rome gets the cred­it for these gifts to world civ­i­liza­tion, but they orig­i­nat­ed with the Etr­uscans, along with famed Roman mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline and style of gov­ern­ment.

After Tar­quin, the last Roman king, com­mit­ted one abuse too many, the Repub­lic began to form, as did new class divides. Plebs fought Patri­cians for expand­ed rights, Sen­a­tus Pop­u­lusque Romanus (SPQR)—the sen­ate and the peo­ple of Rome—expressed an ide­al of uni­ty and polit­i­cal equal­i­ty, of a sort. An age of impe­r­i­al war ensues, con­quered peo­ples are osten­si­bly made allies, not colo­nials, though they are also made slaves and sup­ply the legions with “a nev­er end­ing sup­ply of recruits.”

These sketch­es of major cam­paigns you may remem­ber from your World Civ class: The Punic Wars with Carthage, and their com­man­der Han­ni­bal, con­duct­ed under the mot­to of Cato, the sen­a­tor who beat the drums of war by repeat­ing Cartha­go delen­da est—Carthage must be destroyed. The con­quer­ing of Corinth and the absorp­tion of Alexander’s Hel­lenist empire into Rome.

The sto­ry of the Empire resem­bles that of so many oth­ers: tales of hubris, fero­cious bru­tal­i­ty, geno­cide, and end­less build­ing. But it is also a sto­ry of polit­i­cal genius, in which, grad­u­al­ly, those peo­ples brought under the ban­ners of Rome by force were giv­en cit­i­zen­ship and rights, ensur­ing their loy­al­ty. Rel­a­tive peace—within the bor­ders of Rome, at least—could not hold, and the Repub­lic implod­ed in civ­il wars and the ruina­tion of a slave econ­o­my and extreme inequal­i­ty.

The wealthy gob­bled up arable land. The tri­bunes of the peo­ple, the Grac­chi broth­ers, sug­gest­ed a redis­tri­b­u­tion scheme. The sen­a­tors respond­ed with force, killing thou­sands. Two mass-mur­der­ing con­quer­ing gen­er­als, Pom­pey and Julius Cae­sar, fought over Rome. Cae­sar crossed the Rubi­con with his legions to take the city, assum­ing the title Imper­a­tor, a move that cost him his life.

But his mur­der didn’t stop the march of Empire. Under his nephew Augus­tus, a dic­ta­tor who called him­self a sen­a­tor, Rome spread, flour­ished, and estab­lished a 200-year Pax Romana, a time of thriv­ing arts and cul­ture, pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments, and a well-fed pop­u­lace.

Augus­tus had learned from the Grac­chi what nei­ther the venal sen­a­to­r­i­al class nor so many sub­se­quent emper­ors could. In order to rule effec­tive­ly, you’ve got to have the peo­ple on your side, or have them so dis­tract­ed, at least, by bread and cir­cus­es, that they won’t both­er to revolt. Watch the full video to learn about the next few hun­dred years, and learn more about Ancient Rome at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

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

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Famous Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci Celebrated in a New Series of Stamps

in Art, History | February 18th, 2019

No spe­cial occa­sion is required to cel­e­brate Leonar­do da Vin­ci, but the fact that he died in 1519 makes this year a par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able time to look back at his vast, inno­v­a­tive, and influ­en­tial body of work. Just last month, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A Life in Draw­ing” opened in twelve muse­ums across the Unit­ed King­dom. “144 of Leonar­do da Vinci’s great­est draw­ings in the Roy­al Col­lec­tion are dis­played in 12 simul­ta­ne­ous exhi­bi­tions across the UK,” says the exhi­bi­tion’s site, with each venue’s draw­ings “select­ed to reflect the full range of Leonar­do’s inter­ests – paint­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture, music, anato­my, engi­neer­ing, car­tog­ra­phy, geol­o­gy and botany.”

The Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust, writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, has even “sent a dozen draw­ings from Wind­sor Cas­tle to each of the 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions.” They’d pre­vi­ous­ly been in Wind­sor Castle’s Print Room, the home of a col­lec­tion of old mas­ter prints and draw­ings rou­tine­ly described as one of the finest in the world.

Now dis­played at insti­tu­tions like Liv­er­pool’s Walk­er Art Gallery, Sheffield­’s Mil­len­ni­um Gallery, Belfast’s Ulster Muse­um, and Cardif­f’s Nation­al Muse­um Wales, this selec­tion of Leonar­do’s draw­ings will be much more acces­si­ble to the pub­lic dur­ing the exhi­bi­tion than before.

But the Roy­al Mail has made sure that the draw­ings will be even more wide­ly seen, doing its part for the 500th anniver­sary of Leonar­do’s death by issu­ing them in stamp form.

“The stamps depict sev­er­al well-known works,” writes Art­net’s Kate Brown, “such as The skull sec­tioned (1489) and The head of Leda (1505–08), a study for his even­tu­al paint­ing of the myth of Leda, the queen of Spar­ta, which was the most valu­able work in Leonardo’s estate when he died and was appar­ent­ly destroyed around 1700. Oth­er stamps show the artist’s stud­ies of skele­tons, joints, and cats.”

While none of these images enjoy quite the cul­tur­al pro­file of a Vit­ru­vian Man, let alone a Mona Lisa, they all show that what­ev­er Leonar­do drew, he drew it in a way reveal­ing that he saw it like no one else did (pos­si­bly due in part, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed about here on Open Cul­ture, to an eye dis­or­der).

Though that may come across more clear­ly at the scale of the orig­i­nals than at the scale of postage stamps, even a glimpse at the intel­lec­tu­al­ly bound­less Renais­sance poly­math­’s draw­ings com­pressed into 21-by-24-mil­lime­ter squares will sure­ly be enough to draw many into his still-inspi­ra­tional artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic world. To the intrigued, may we sug­gest plung­ing into his 570 pages of note­books?

Note: If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, con­sid­er attend­ing the new course–The Genius of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A 500th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion–being offered through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. Reg­is­tra­tion opens on Feb­ru­ary 25. The class runs from April 16 through June 4.

via Colos­sal/Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

The Doo­dles in Leonar­do da Vinci’s Man­u­scripts Con­tain His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries on the Laws of Fric­tion, Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Dou­ble as Playable Vinyl Records

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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800 Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Are Now Online: Browse & Download Them Courtesy of the British Library and Bibliothèque Nationale de France

in Books, History, Libraries | February 15th, 2019

Kazuo Ishiguro’s nov­el The Buried Giant begins with an immer­sive depic­tion of what it might have been like to live in a Euro­pean vil­lage dur­ing the mid­dle ages. Or what it might feel like for us mod­erns, at least. The cou­ple at the cen­ter of the sto­ry spends sev­er­al pages fret­ting over the loss of a can­dle, their only one. With­out it, their nights are pitch black. In the day, they wan­der in a fog, unable to remem­ber any­thing. Though the cause of this turns out to be dark mag­ic, one can’t help think­ing that a smart­phone would imme­di­ate­ly solve all their prob­lems.

This was a time not only before mobile video, but when images of any kind were scarce, when every book was painstak­ing­ly copied by hand in care­ful, ele­gant script. Many of those rare, scrib­al copies were not illus­trat­ed, they were “illu­mi­nat­ed.” Their pages shone out into the dark­ness and fog. Most of the pop­u­la­tion could not read them, but they could, in rare instances when they might catch a glimpse, be deeply moved by the col­or­ful, styl­ized images and let­ter­ing.

For the intel­lec­tu­al class­es, illu­mi­na­tion con­sti­tut­ed a lan­guage of its own, fram­ing and inter­pret­ing med­ical, clas­si­cal, and legal texts, gospels and works by the church fathers. Not all books received this treat­ment but the “most lux­u­ri­ous,” notes the British Library, were “lit­er­al­ly ‘lit up’ by dec­o­ra­tions and pic­tures in bright­ly coloured pig­ments and bur­nished gold leaf.” For cen­turies, despite the explo­sion of image-mak­ing tech­nolo­gies of every kind, most of us, unless we were schol­ars or aris­to­crats, were in the same posi­tion vis-à-vis these stun­ning arti­facts as the aver­age medieval peas­ant. Medieval man­u­scripts were locked away in rare book rooms and seen by very few.

The sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly as libraries dig­i­tize their hold­ings. Last Novem­ber, hun­dreds more rare, valu­able medieval man­u­scripts became avail­able to every­one when the British Library and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France launched a joint project, mak­ing “800 man­u­scripts dec­o­rat­ed before the year 1200 avail­able freely” online, as the BL blog announced in 2016. Both insti­tu­tions pro­vid­ed 400 man­u­scripts each for dig­i­ti­za­tion. Some of these are cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the wild­ly pop­u­lar, sold-out British Library exhi­bi­tion Anglo-Sax­on King­doms: Art, Word, War. Now they are also vir­tu­al pub­lic prop­er­ty, as it were, thanks to a grant from the Polon­sky Foun­da­tion.

That these frag­ile arti­facts have been so inac­ces­si­ble, kept under glass and well away from insects, thieves, and van­dals, now means they are in a con­di­tion to be dig­i­tal­ly copied and uploaded in high res­o­lu­tion for close view­ing, com­par­i­son, and care­ful study. Medievalists.net describes the com­ple­men­tary web­sites the two libraries have launched:

The first, France-Eng­land: medieval man­u­scripts between 700 and 1200, has been cre­at­ed by the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France based on the Gal­li­ca mar­que blanche infra­struc­ture, using the IIIF stan­dard and Mirador view­er to make the images held by the dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions inter­op­er­a­ble and enable them to be com­pared side-by-side with­in the same dig­i­tal library or anno­tat­ed. The sec­ond web­site, Medieval Eng­land and France, 700‑1200, is aimed at a wider pub­lic audi­ence, and has been devel­oped by the British Library to show­case a selec­tion of man­u­scripts as well as arti­cles, essays and video clips.

The French site has ports of entry accord­ing to theme, author, place, and cen­tu­ry, and many links to resources for schol­ars. The British Library site fea­tures curat­ed selec­tions, intro­duced by acces­si­ble arti­cles. Laypeo­ple with lit­tle expe­ri­ence study­ing medieval man­u­scripts can learn about legal, med­ical, and musi­cal texts, see how the writ­ings of the church fathers received spe­cial atten­tion in monas­tic cul­ture, and learn how man­u­scripts cir­cu­lat­ed before 1200. Those who know what they are look­ing for can con­duct advanced search­es at the Medieval Man­u­scripts site, and down­load a full list of all 800 man­u­scripts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

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

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When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

in History, Life, Television | February 15th, 2019

Last year’s Fred Rogers doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor, pro­pelled François Clem­mons—bet­ter known to gen­er­a­tions of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood view­ers as Offi­cer Clemmons—back into the inter­na­tion­al spot­light.

One of the most strik­ing anec­dotes in the doc con­cerns a 1969 episode in which Mis­ter Rogers, who was white, invit­ed Offi­cer Clem­mons, who is black, to join him in soak­ing his bare feet in a back­yard baby pool on a hot summer’s day.

It was one of those giant leaps for mankind moments that pass­es itself off as a homey, fair­ly unre­mark­able step, though as Clem­mons told his friend Karl Lind­holm in a Sto­ryCorps inter­view, Rogers under­stood the pow­er­ful mes­sage this ges­ture would send.

Like­wise, his choice of Clem­mons to embody a friend­ly cop for his tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood, a part Clem­mons, who played the role for 30 years, was ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant to accept:

Fred came to me and said, “I have this idea, you could be a police offi­cer.” That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in the ghet­to. I did not have a pos­i­tive opin­ion of police offi­cers. Police­men were sick­ing police dogs and water hoses on peo­ple. And I real­ly had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excit­ed about being Offi­cer Clem­mons at all.

Rogers, who had met Clem­mons in a Pitts­burgh area church where the trained opera singer was per­form­ing, pre­vailed, stress­ing the impact such a pos­i­tive por­tray­al of a black author­i­ty fig­ure could have on the com­mu­ni­ty.

Offi­cer Clem­mons, the first recur­ring black char­ac­ter on a children’s series, paved the way for the mul­tira­cial casts of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, also on PBS.

If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, a song can also pack quite a wal­lop. It’s hard not to get choked up hear­ing Clem­mons sing “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You,” above, a tune he reprised in 1993, for his final appear­ance on the show.

Such sen­ti­ments are a nat­ur­al fit in pro­grams aimed at the preschool crowd, whose love of their fam­i­lies is rein­forced at every turn, but it’s still unusu­al to see these feel­ings artic­u­lat­ed so pure­ly when the only peo­ple in sight are grown men.

Clem­mons learned not to doubt Roger’s sin­cer­i­ty when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And Rogers grew to accept his friend’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, though this embrace came a bit less nat­u­ral­ly. In an inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair’s Chris Azzopar­di, Clem­mons was philo­soph­i­cal, recall­ing his “sur­ro­gate father’s” request to steer clear of gay clubs so as not to endan­ger the show’s whole­some image:

Sac­ri­fice was a part of my des­tiny. In oth­er words, I did not want to be a shame to my race. I didn’t want to be a scan­dal to the show. I didn’t want to hurt the man who was giv­ing me so much, and I also knew the val­ue as a black per­former of hav­ing this show, this plat­form. Black actors and actresses—SAG and Equity—90 per­cent of them are not work­ing. If you know that and here you are, on a nation­al plat­form you’re gonna sab­o­tage your­self?

I weighed this thing, the pros and the cons. And I thought, I not only have a nation­al plat­form, I’m get­ting paid. I was also get­ting a pro­mo­tion that I sim­ply could not have afford­ed to pay for. Every time I did the show, and every time Fred took us across the coun­try to do three, four, five per­son­al appear­ances, my name was being writ­ten into somebody’s heart—some lit­tle kid who would grow up and say, “Oh, I remem­ber him, I remem­ber that he could sing, I remem­ber that he was on Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood.” I didn’t have the mon­ey to pay for that, but I was get­ting it free. There were so many things that I got back for that sac­ri­fice that I kept my big mouth shut, kept my head down, kept my shoul­der to the plough.

Stu­dents at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, where Clem­mons was a long time fac­ul­ty pres­ence, were well acquaint­ed with the self-pro­claimed “Divaman’s”’ flam­boy­ant side:

Clem­mons has added col­or and soul to the Mid­dle­bury Col­lege scene for near­ly 25 years. As Alexan­der Twi­light Artist in Res­i­dence and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Spir­i­tu­al Choir, he is known by many names: the divo, the mae­stro, the rev­erend, doc­tor-madam-hon­ey-man, sportin’ life, and even black mag­ic. He has played the role of pro­fes­sor, choir­mas­ter, res­i­dent vocal soloist, advi­sor, con­fi­dant, and com­mu­ni­ty cheer­leader. Yet his pur­pose is sin­gu­lar: to share hope through song.

Lis­ten to Sto­ryCorps pod­cast episode #462 about Mis­ter Rogers’ and Fran­cois Clem­mons’ famous foot bath, as well as an inci­dent that took place five years pri­or where pro­test­ers staged a “wade in” at the “Whites Only” pool at St. Augus­tine, Florida’s Mon­son Motor Lodge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Col­ors of Mis­ter Rogers’ Hand-Knit Sweaters from 1979 to 2001: A Visu­al Graph Cre­at­ed with Data Sci­ence

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City on March 11 as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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