Europe After the Rain: Watch the Vintage Documentary on the Two Great Art Movements, Dada & Surrealism (1978)

in Art, Film, History | May 7th, 2018

“Dada thrives on con­tra­dic­tions. It is cre­ative and destruc­tive. Dada denounces the world and wish­es to save it.” So says one nar­ra­tor of jour­nal­ist-film­mak­er Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Coun­cil of Great Britain doc­u­men­tary on not just the inter­na­tion­al avant-garde move­ment called Dada but the asso­ci­at­ed cur­rents of sur­re­al­ism churn­ing around that con­ti­nent dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. “Dada want­ed to replace the non­sense of man with the illog­i­cal­ly sense­less. Dada is sense­less, like nature. Dada is for nature, and against art. Philoso­phers have less val­ue for Dada than an old tooth­brush, and Dada aban­dons them to the great lead­ers of the world.”

Of the many bold and often con­tra­dic­to­ry claims made about Dada, none describe it as eas­i­ly under­stood. But Dada has less to do with intel­lec­tu­al, aes­thet­ic, or polit­i­cal coher­ence than with a cer­tain ener­gy. That ener­gy could fire up the likes of André Bre­ton, Sal­vador Dalí, René Magritte, Gior­gio de Chiri­co, and many oth­er artists besides, chan­nel­ing frus­tra­tions with the state of post-World War I Europe into a sen­si­bil­i­ty that demand­ed rip­ping every­thing up and build­ing it all again, begin­ning with the very foun­da­tions of sense.

Gold and his col­lab­o­ra­tors on Europe After the Rain under­stand this, audio­vi­su­al­ly inter­pret­ing the lega­cy of Dada, which despite its short lifes­pan left behind a host of still-strik­ing works in text, image, and sculp­ture, in a vari­ety of ways.

“The movie is full of trea­sures,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Oliv­er Hall, includ­ing “BBC inter­views with Max Ernst and Mar­cel Duchamp from the Six­ties, a read­ing of Artaud’s ‘Address to the Dalai Lama,’ an account of Freud’s meet­ing with Dalí.” He adds that its “re-enact­ment of Breton’s dia­logue with an offi­cial of the Par­ti com­mu­niste français is illu­mi­nat­ing, and com­ple­ments the oth­er valu­able mate­r­i­al on the ‘Pope of Sur­re­al­ism’: his work with shell-shocked sol­diers in World War I, tri­als and expul­sions of oth­er Sur­re­al­ists, col­lab­o­ra­tion with Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, less-than-hero­ic con­tri­bu­tions to the French Resis­tance, and study of the occult.” But then, the kind of mind that could launch a move­ment like Dada — which fifty years after its end remained fas­ci­nat­ing enough to inspire a doc­u­men­tary that itself holds its fas­ci­na­tion forty years on — is capa­ble, one sus­pects, of any­thing.

Watch the uncut ver­sion of Europe After the Rain above.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anar­chic, Irra­tional “Anti-Art” Move­ment of Dadaism

Read and Hear Tris­tan Tzara’s “Dada Man­i­festo,” the Avant-Garde Doc­u­ment Pub­lished 100 Years Ago (March 23, 1918)

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Dress Like an Intel­lec­tu­al Icon with Japan­ese Coats Inspired by the Wardrobes of Camus, Sartre, Duchamp, Le Cor­busier & Oth­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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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Visit an Online Collection of 64,259 Musical Instruments from Across the World

in History, Museums, Music | May 7th, 2018

The study of musi­cal instru­ments opens up vast his­to­ries of sound rever­ber­at­ing through the cen­turies. Should we embark on a jour­ney through halls of Europe’s musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums, for exam­ple, we should soon dis­cov­er how lim­it­ed our appre­ci­a­tion for music his­to­ry has been, how nar­rowed by the rel­a­tive hand­ful of instru­ments allowed into orches­tras, ensem­bles, and bands of all kinds. The typ­i­cal diet of clas­si­cal, roman­tic, mod­ern, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, or what­ev­er, the music most of us in the West grow up hear­ing and study­ing, has result­ed from a care­ful sort­ing process that over time chose cer­tain instru­ments over oth­ers.

Some of those his­toric instruments—the vio­lin, cel­lo, many wind and brass—remain in wide cir­cu­la­tion and pro­duce music that can still sound rel­e­vant and con­tem­po­rary. Oth­ers, like the Mel­lotron (above) or bar­rel organs (like the 1883 Cylin­der­pos­i­tiv at the top), remain wed­ded to their his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, mak­ing sounds that might as well have dates stamped on them.

You could—and many an his­to­ri­an has, no doubt—travel the world and pay a per­son­al vis­it to the muse­ums hous­ing thou­sands of musi­cal instru­ments humans have used—or at least invented—to car­ry melodies and har­monies and keep time. Such a tour might con­sti­tute a life’s work.

But if you’re on a bud­get or your grant doesn’t come through, you can still tour Europe’s musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums, and two muse­ums in Africa, from the com­fort of your home, office, or library thanks to MIMO, Musi­cal Instru­ment Muse­ums Online, a “con­sor­tium of some of Europe’s most impor­tant musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums” offer­ing “the world’s largest freely acces­si­ble data­base for infor­ma­tion on musi­cal instru­ments held in pub­lic col­lec­tions.”

The enor­mous online col­lec­tion hous­es, vir­tu­al­ly, tens of thou­sands of instru­ments from over two dozen regions around the globe. (There are 64,259 instru­ments in total.) Find an Ital­ian Basse de Vio­le (above) from 1547 or an ornate Egypt­ian darabuk­ka (below). And, of course, plen­ty of iconic—and rare—elec­tric gui­tars and bass­es.

You can search instru­ments by mak­er, coun­try, city, or con­ti­nent, time peri­od, muse­um, and type. (Wind, Per­cus­sion, Stringed, Zithers, Rat­tles, Bells, Lamel­la­phones, etc….) Researchers may encounter a few lan­guage hurdles—MIMO’s about page men­tions “search­ing in six dif­fer­ent lan­guages,” and the site actu­al­ly lists 11 lan­guage cat­e­gories in tabs at the top. But users may still need to plug pages into Google trans­late unless they read French or Ger­man or some of the oth­er lan­guages in which descrip­tions have been writ­ten. Refresh­ing­ly con­sis­tent, the pho­tographs of each instru­ment con­form to a stan­dard set by the con­sor­tium that pro­vides “detailed guide­lines on how to set up a repos­i­to­ry to enable the har­vest­ing of dig­i­tal con­tent.”

But enough about the site func­tions, what about the sounds? Well, in a phys­i­cal muse­um, you wouldn’t expect to take a three-hun­dred-year-old flute out of its case and hear it played. Just so, most of the instru­ments here can be seen and not heard, but the site does have over 400 sound files, includ­ing the enchant­i­ng record­ing of Sym­pho­nion Eroica 38a (above), as played on a mechan­i­cal clock from 1900.

As you dis­cov­er instru­ments you nev­er knew existed—such as the theramin-like Croix Sonore (Sonorus Cross), cre­at­ed by Russ­ian com­pos­er Nico­las Obukhov between 1926 and 1934—you can under­take your own research to find sam­ple record­ings online, such as “The Third and Last Tes­ta­ment,” below, Obukhov’s com­po­si­tion for 5 voic­es, organ, 2 pianos, orches­tra, and croix sonore. Obukhov’s exper­i­ments with instru­ments of his own inven­tion prompt­ed his exper­i­ments in 12-tone com­po­si­tion, in which, he declared, “I for­bid myself any rep­e­ti­tion.” Just one exam­ple among many thou­sands demon­strat­ing how instru­ment design forms the basis of a wild­ly pro­lif­er­at­ing vari­ety of musi­cal expres­sions that can start to seem end­less after a while.

via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

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

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Visit a Gallery of 300 Striking Posters from the May 1968 Uprising in Paris

in Art, History, Politics | May 4th, 2018

Among the many oth­er 50ths com­mem­o­rat­ed this year, one will large­ly go unno­ticed by the U.S. press, giv­en that it hap­pened in France, a coun­try we like to ignore as much as pos­si­ble, and con­cerned the pol­i­tics of anar­chists and com­mu­nists, peo­ple we like to pre­tend don’t exist except as car­i­ca­tures in scare-mon­ger­ing car­toons. But the French remem­ber May 1968, and not only on its fifti­eth. The wild­cat strikes, stu­dent march­es, and bar­ri­cades in the Latin Quar­ter haunt French pol­i­tics. “We’re slight­ly pris­on­ers of a myth,” laments his­to­ri­an Danielle Tar­takowsky.

The inter­na­tion­al his­tor­i­cal events sur­round­ing the strikes and march­es are well-known or should be. The found­ing ethos of the move­ment, Sit­u­a­tion­ism, per­haps less so. Read­ing Guy Debord’s Soci­ety of the Spec­ta­cle and the 1968 movement’s oth­er essen­tial texts can feel like look­ing into a fun­house mir­ror.

The 1966 pam­phlet man­i­festo that began the stu­dent agi­ta­tion—“On the Pover­ty of Stu­dent Life”—might sound mighty famil­iar: it has no kind words for con­sumerist stu­dent rad­i­cals who “con­vert their uncon­scious con­tempt into a blind enthu­si­asm.” Yet they have been attacked, it clar­i­fies, “from the wrong point of view.”

Since we seem to be, in some dena­tured way, reliv­ing events of fifty years ago, the think­ing of that not-so-dis­tant moment illu­mi­nates our cir­cum­stances. “If there’s one thing in com­mon between 1968 and today,” remarks Antoine Gué­gan, whose father Gérard staged Paris cam­pus sit-ins, “it’s young people’s despair. But it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of despair…. Today’s youth is fac­ing a moment of stag­na­tion, with lit­tle to lean on.” Despite the riotous, bloody nature of the times, a glob­al move­ment then found rea­son for hope.

We see it reflect­ed in the defi­ant art and cin­e­ma of the time, from rev­o­lu­tion­ary work by a 75-year-old Joan Miró to vérité film by 20-year-old wun­derkind Philippe Gar­rel. And we see it, espe­cial­ly, in the huge num­ber of posters print­ed to adver­tise the move­ment, rad­i­cal graph­ic designs that illus­trate the exhil­a­ra­tion and defi­ance of the loose col­lec­tive of Marx­ists-Lenin­ists, Trot­skyites, Maoists, Anar­chists, Sit­u­a­tion­ists, and so on who pro­pelled the move­ment for­ward.

Last year, we fea­tured a gallery of these arrest­ing images from the Ate­lier Pop­u­laire, a group of artists and stu­dents, notes Dan­ger­ous Minds, which “occu­pied the École des Beaux-Arts and ded­i­cat­ed its efforts to pro­duc­ing thou­sands of silk-screened posters using bold, icon­ic imagery and slo­gans as well as explic­it­ly collective/anonymous author­ship.” Today, we bring you a huge gallery of more than 300 such images, housed online at Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Some of the images are down­load­able. You can request down­loads of oth­ers from the uni­ver­si­ty library for pri­vate use or pub­li­ca­tion. These posters rep­re­sent a move­ment con­fronting an oppres­sive soci­ety with its own log­ic, a soci­ety of which Debord wrote just the pre­vi­ous year, “the spec­ta­cle is not a col­lec­tion of images; it is a social rela­tion between peo­ple that is medi­at­ed by images.” There is no under­stand­ing of the events of May 1968 with­out an under­stand­ing of its visu­al cul­ture as, Debord wrote, “a means of uni­fi­ca­tion.” Enter the gallery of posters and prints here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Gallery of Visu­al­ly Arrest­ing Posters from the May 1968 Paris Upris­ing

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

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

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Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical Debuted on Broadway 50 Years Ago: Watch Footage of the Cast Performing in 1968

in History, Music, Theatre | May 4th, 2018

As years go, 1968 is packed with notable events.

The Tet Offen­sive and the Apol­lo 8 mis­sion to the moon.

The assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

The first 747 took to the skies. Star Trek showed television’s first inter­ra­cial kiss.

And Hair: The Amer­i­can Trib­al Love-Rock Musi­cal, which debuted down­town hard on the heels of the Sum­mer of Love, reopened on Broad­way.

New York Times crit­ic Clive Barnes—a fan—caved to pres­sure from anx­ious pre­view audi­ence mem­bers, who want­ed him to warn prospec­tive tick­et buy­ers what they were in for. Tongue firm­ly in cheek, he com­plied with­in the body of a rave review:

A great many four let­ter words such as “love”

A num­ber of men and women (I should have count­ed)… total­ly nude

Fre­quent approv­ing ref­er­ences… to the expand­ing ben­e­fits of drugs

Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty

Mis­ce­gena­tion

Flow­ers

Then, as now, a grow­ing youth move­ment occu­pied the Amer­i­can public’s imag­i­na­tion.

If 2018’s Broad­way pro­duc­ers are will­ing to take a risk on a musi­cal that’s not adapt­ed from a pop­u­lar movie, we may well be enter­ing tick­et lot­ter­ies for Gon­za­lez! some­time in the very near future.

Back then, young peo­ple were in revolt against the Viet­nam War and the val­ues their par­ents held dear.

The orig­i­nal ver­sions, both on and off Broad­way, fea­tured two of the show’s three authors, Gerome Rag­ni and James Rado, as anti­heroes Berg­er and Claude. (Galt Mac­Der­mot wrote the music.)

While oth­er cast mem­bers emerged from New York’s hip­pie scene, Rag­ni and Rado’s back­grounds were some­what lack­ing in patchouli. Rado was an aspi­rant com­pos­er of tra­di­tion­al Broad­way musi­cals. Rag­ni, as a mem­ber of The Open The­ater, was a bit more tuned in, the­atri­cal­ly speak­ing.

As Rado recalled in an inter­view:

There was so much excite­ment in the streets and the parks and the hip­pie areas, and we thought if we could trans­mit this excite­ment to the stage it would be won­der­ful. … We hung out with them and went to their Be-Ins (and) let our hair grow.

Barnes wry­ly not­ed in his review that “these hard-work­ing and tal­ent­ed actors are in real­i­ty about as hip­pie as May­or Lind­say.”

But there’s noth­ing too wig-like about the hair swing­ing around in the above footage—from the Gram­mys, The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour, and the 1969 Tony Awards where the cast was intro­duced by Har­ry Bela­fonte. There’s a spon­tane­ity sel­dom seen in big bud­get musi­cals these days, though with a nation­al tour hit­ting the road and dozens of 50th anniver­sary pro­duc­tions pop­ping up across the coun­try, we may be in for a redux.

To learn more about Hair’s role in the­ater history—including under­study Diane Keaton’s refusal to get naked and a page from the Times’ the­ater list­ings show­ing what else was play­ing at the time—read The Bow­ery Boys pho­to-packed 50th anniver­sary salute.

Sing along with the orig­i­nal Off-Broad­way cast below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of the “Human Be-In,” the Land­mark Counter-Cul­ture Event Held in Gold­en Gate Park, 1967

89 Essen­tial Songs from The Sum­mer of Love: A 50th Anniver­sary Playlist

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Wednes­day, May 16 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Enter an Archive of Over 95,000 Aerial Photographs Taken Over Britain from 1919 to 2006

in History, Photography | May 3rd, 2018

As deep as we get into the 21st cen­tu­ry, many of us still can’t stop talk­ing about the 20th. That goes espe­cial­ly for those of us from the West, and specif­i­cal­ly those of us from Amer­i­ca and Britain, places that expe­ri­enced not just an event­ful 20th cen­tu­ry but a tri­umphant one: hence, in the case of the for­mer, the des­ig­na­tion “the Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry.” And even though that peri­od came after the end of Britain’s sup­posed glo­ry days, the “Impe­r­i­al Cen­tu­ry” of 1815–1914, the Unit­ed King­dom changed so much from the First World War to the end of the mil­len­ni­um — not just in terms of what lands it com­prised, but what was appear­ing and hap­pen­ing on them — that words can’t quite suf­fice to tell the sto­ry.

Enter Britain from Above, an archive of over 95,000 pieces of aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy of Britain tak­en not just from the air but from the sweep of his­to­ry between 1919 and 2006. Its pic­tures, says its about page, come from “the Aero­films col­lec­tion, a unique aer­i­al pho­to­graph­ic archive of inter­na­tion­al impor­tance.

The col­lec­tion includes 1.26 mil­lion neg­a­tives and more than 2000 pho­to­graph albums.” Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by Aero­films Ltd, an air sur­vey set up by a cou­ple vet­er­ans of World War I and lat­er expand­ed to include small­er col­lec­tions from the archives of two oth­er com­pa­nies, it “presents an unpar­al­leled pic­ture of the chang­ing face of Britain in the 20th cen­tu­ry” and “includes the largest and most sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of air pho­tographs of Britain tak­en before 1939.”

Here you see just four selec­tions from among those 95,000 images from the Aero­films col­lec­tion dig­i­tized by the four-year-long Britain from Above project with the goal of con­serv­ing its “old­est and most valu­able” pho­tographs. At the top of the post, see bomb dam­aged and cleared areas to the east of St Paul’s Cathe­dral, Lon­don, 1947. Then wing­walk­er Mar­tin Hearn does his dare­dev­il­ish job in 1932. Below that, a near­ly abstract pat­tern of hous­ing stretch­es out around St. Aidan’s Church in Leeds in 1929, the light ship Alarm pass­es the SS Col­le­gian in Liv­er­pool Bay in 1947; and Scot­land’s Loch Lev­en pass­es through the Mam na Gualainn in that same year.

Attain­ing a firm grasp of a place’s his­to­ry often requires what we metaphor­i­cal­ly call a “view from 30,000 feet,” but in the case of one of the lead­ing parts of the world in as tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and devel­op­men­tal­ly heady a time as the 20th cen­tu­ry, we mean it lit­er­al­ly. Enter the Britain from Above pho­to archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

A Daz­zling Aer­i­al Pho­to­graph of Edin­burgh (1920)

Amaz­ing Aer­i­al Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Cities Cir­ca 1906

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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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Dramatic Footage of San Francisco Right Before & After the Massively Devastating Earthquake of 1906

in Film, History | May 1st, 2018

Dis­as­ters both nat­ur­al and man-made—or in the case of cli­mate change, some mea­sure of both—can reduce built envi­ron­ments to ash and rub­ble with lit­tle warn­ing. In cas­es like the Lis­bon earth­quake, the Great Fire of Lon­don, or the bomb­ing of Dres­den, cities have been com­plete­ly rebuilt. In oth­ers, like the utter­ly destroyed Pom­peii, they lay in ruins for­ev­er, or like Cher­nobyl, become irra­di­at­ed ghost towns. Such events stand as sin­gu­lar moments in his­to­ry, like rup­tures in time, shak­ing faith in reli­gion, sci­ence, and gov­ern­ment.

In the case of the Great 1906 San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake, which destroyed 80% of the city with its esti­mat­ed mag­ni­tude of 7.9, the dis­as­ter also serves as a dire his­tor­i­cal warn­ing for what might hap­pen again if seis­mol­o­gists’ cur­rent grim prog­nos­ti­ca­tions prove cor­rect. In the film above, “A Trip Down Mar­ket Street” by the Miles broth­ers, we see the bustling city just four days before the quake. Film his­to­ri­an David Kiehn has dat­ed this footage to April 14th, 1906. The very con­vinc­ing sound design has been added by Mike Upchurch.

The film shows Mar­ket Street in full swing, Mod­el T’s jostling with horse­drawn car­riages over street­car tracks, while pedes­tri­ans weave in and out of the traf­fic. The four Miles broth­ers, Har­ry, Her­bert, Ear­le, and Joe, left for New York short­ly after shoot­ing in San Fran­cis­co and just missed the quake. They had sent the neg­a­tives ahead, bare­ly sav­ing this valu­able footage. They returned to find their stu­dios, and their city, destroyed by the quake and the near­ly four days of fires that fol­lowed it. They did what any film­mak­er would—started film­ing.

Their footage of the dev­as­ta­tion was long thought lost until it was re-dis­cov­ered at a flea mar­ket. Kiehn dig­i­tized the film and it was recent­ly screened at the Bay Area Edi­son The­ater while on its way to the Library of Con­gress, just before the 112th anniver­sary of the quake. The Miles broth­ers, says Kiehn, “shot almost two hours of film after the earth­quake and very lit­tle of it sur­vives. I think this is one of the longest sur­viv­ing pieces.” It begins with a har­row­ing trip down Mar­ket Street, reduced from bustling city cen­ter to waste­land.

The quake, writes Bill Van Niek­erken at the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, caused “unfath­omable dev­as­ta­tion… At least 700 are thought to have per­ished, with some esti­mates at more than 3,000…. 490 city blocks were lev­eled, with 28,188 build­ings destroyed. More than 200,000 peo­ple were left home­less.” From this hor­ror, Niek­erkan draws inspi­ra­tion. “San Fran­cis­co, how­ev­er, rose from the ash­es, rebuilt and became a greater city, a shin­ing sym­bol of the West.”

Per­haps the les­son, should sci­en­tists who fore­cast anoth­er major quake be right, is that the city can rebuild again. And in part because of the “wealth of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge” seis­mol­o­gists gained from the 1906 quake, it is much bet­ter pre­pared for such a calami­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Lon­don in Vivid Col­or 125 Years Ago: See Trafal­gar Square, the British Muse­um, Tow­er Bridge & Oth­er Famous Land­marks in Pho­tocrom Prints

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

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100 Years of Drag Queen Fashion in 4 Minutes: An Aesthetic Journey Moving from the 1920s Through Today

in Fashion, Film, Gender, History, Music | April 27th, 2018

Drag super­star RuPaul’s Drag Race pro­gram can be cred­it­ed with bring­ing his sub­cul­ture to a much wider audi­ence.

For ten sea­sons, view­ers out­side the major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas and select hol­i­day des­ti­na­tions where drag has flour­ished have tuned in to root for their favorite com­peti­tors.

As a result, main­stream Amer­i­ca has devel­oped a much more nuanced appre­ci­a­tion for the labor and artistry behind suc­cess­ful drag per­for­mance and per­son­ae.

Van­i­ty Fair’s “100 Years of Drag Queen Fash­ion,” above, is not so much an evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry of the form as a salute to some of its pio­neers, prac­ti­tion­ers, and patron saints.

Each decade opens with a Drag Race alum fac­ing the make­up mir­ror in a rel­a­tive­ly naked state.  Shangela Laquifa Wadley, Raja, and Detox all appear sans fard. Kim Chi’s heav­i­ly made up eyes are eye­lash-free.

The 70’s spin on the late, great Divine is more rem­i­nis­cent of cis-gen­der dis­co queen Don­na Sum­mer than the out­ra­geous plus-sized muse direc­tor John Waters referred to as “the most beau­ti­ful woman in the world, almost.”

As por­trayed in the video below, there’s a strong echo of 1930’s Pan­sy Per­former Jean Malin in RuPaul’s glam­orous pre­sen­ta­tion.

In real­i­ty, the resem­blance is not quite so strong. Although Malin got dolled up in Mae West drag in 1933’s Ari­zona to Broad­way, above, left to his own devices his stage pres­ence was that of an open­ly effem­i­nate gay man, or “pan­sy.” As Pro­fes­sor George Chauncey, direc­tor of Colum­bia University’s Research Ini­tia­tive on the Glob­al His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ties observes in his book, Gay New York:

 His very pres­ence on the club floor elicit­ed the cat­calls of many men in the club, but he respond­ed to their abuse by rip­ping them to shreds with the drag queen’s best weapon: his wit. ‘He had a lisp, and an atti­tude, but he also had a sharp tongue,’ accord­ing to one colum­nist. ‘The wise cracks and inquiries of the men who hoot­ed at his act found ready answer.’ And if hos­tile spec­ta­tors tried to use brute force to take him on after he had defeat­ed them with his wit, he was pre­pared to hum­ble them on those terms as well. ‘He was a huge youth,’ one paper report­ed, ‘weigh­ing 200, and a six foot­er. Not a few pro­fes­sion­al pugilists sighed because Jean seemed to pre­fer din­ner rings to box­ing rings.’ Although Mal­in’s act remained tame enough to safe­guard its wide appeal, it nonethe­less embod­ied the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between pan­sies and ‘nor­mal’ men. His behav­ior was con­sis­tent with their demean­ing stereo­type of how a pan­sy should behave, but he demand­ed their respect; he fas­ci­nat­ed and enter­tained them, but he also threat­ened and infu­ri­at­ed them.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Oth­er leg­endary fig­ures hon­ored by Van­i­ty Fair include Fran­cis Renault (1893–1955), Lav­ern Cum­mings (1925–1991), and Dan­ny LaRue (1927–2009).

Also some gen­der bend­ing lad by the name David Bowie, though if Van­i­ty Fair’s skin­ny Divine caus­es a slight sense of unease, the hideous vinyl rain­coat sport­ed by its snarling, whip-wield­ing Bowie fac­sim­i­le may send fans scut­tling for torch­es and pitch­forks.

As to the future, Joan Jet­son col­lars and pink wed­ding cake wigs appear to be part of drag’s fash­ion fore­cast.

Cis-male skele­tal struc­tures may not always lend them­selves to peri­od-appro­pri­ate female sil­hou­ettes, but the tow­er­ing heels on dis­play are faith­ful to the art of the drag queen, above all else.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Presents a Free Online Class on Fash­ion: Enroll in Fash­ion as Design Today

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers (1919): The First Gay Rights Movie Ever … Lat­er Destroyed by the Nazis

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

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An Archive of 8,000 Benjamin Franklin Papers Now Digitized & Put Online

in Archives, History | April 26th, 2018

Let me quick­ly pass along some good news from the Library of Con­gress: “The papers of Amer­i­can sci­en­tist, states­man and diplo­mat Ben­jamin Franklin have been dig­i­tized and are now avail­able online for the first time.… The Franklin papers con­sist of approx­i­mate­ly 8,000 items most­ly dat­ing from the 1770s and 1780s. These include the peti­tion that the First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress sent to Franklin, then a colo­nial diplo­mat in Lon­don, to deliv­er to King George III; let­ter­books Franklin kept as he nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty of Paris that end­ed the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War; drafts of the treaty; notes doc­u­ment­ing his sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tions, and cor­re­spon­dence with fel­low sci­en­tists.” Find the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of papers here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hamil­ton Mania Inspires the Library of Con­gress to Put 12,000 Alexan­der Hamil­ton Doc­u­ments Online

The Instru­ment Ben­jamin Franklin Invent­ed, the Glass Armon­i­ca, Plays Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sug­ar Plum Fairy”

Ben Franklin’s List of 200 Syn­onyms for “Drunk”: “Moon-Ey’d,” “Ham­mer­ish,” “Stew’d” & More (1737)

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