New Archive Showcases Dr. Seuss’s Early Work as an Advertising Illustrator and Political Cartoonist

in Art, History, Literature | August 9th, 2012

Most peo­ple know Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) as a writer and illus­tra­tor of some of the world’s most-beloved children’s books. And while it’s true that some of his char­ac­ters have not fared well since his death in 1991, his lega­cy as a play­ful moral­ist is secure with par­ents and teach­ers every­where. But few peo­ple know that Geisel got his start as a satirist and illus­tra­tor for adults, pub­lish­ing arti­cles and illus­tra­tions in Judge, Life, Van­i­ty Fair, and the Sat­ur­day Evening Post. He went on to promi­nence as an adver­tis­ing illus­tra­tor dur­ing the Depres­sion, most famous­ly with a 17-year cam­paign for a bug-repel­lant called Flit—made by Stan­dard Oil—whose slo­gan, “Quick, Hen­ry, the Flit!” became a pop­u­lar catch phrase in the 30s.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, has a spe­cial col­lec­tion of Geisel’s adver­tis­ing work from the 30s and 40s (such as the image above) for clients like Stan­dard, NBC, and Ford. The images show Geisel the illus­tra­tor devel­op­ing visu­al themes that char­ac­ter­ize his children’s books—the cir­cus imagery, ele­phants, daz­zling phys­i­cal stunts, wide-eyed, fur­ry crea­tures, com­plex Rube Gold­berg machines, and the sig­na­ture dis­em­bod­ied point­ing gloves. Dur­ing World War II, Geisel shift­ed his focus from adver­tis­ing to pol­i­tics and con­tributed week­ly car­toons to PM mag­a­zine, a lib­er­al pub­li­ca­tion. UCSD also has an online cat­a­log of Geisel’s polit­i­cal car­toons, such as the 1941 ad for U.S. Sav­ings Bonds below.

 

via Coudal

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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

in Animation, History, Politics | August 6th, 2012

George Orwell pub­lished his satir­i­cal alle­go­ry Ani­mal Farm in 1945 at the tail end of World War II. While Orwell claimed his inspi­ra­tion for the farm set­ting was a bucol­ic vil­lage scene, it’s tempt­ing to imag­ine that he also drew some of his ideas from Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da car­toons made dur­ing WWII by Dis­ney (see below) and Warn­er Broth­ers. One par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing exam­ple from 1942 is Loony Tunes’ “The Duck­ta­tors,” set on a farm that becomes Europe under a new­ly-hatched Adolf Hitler duck­ling, sport­ing the fore­lock and mus­tache and shout­ing “sieg heil” as soon as he emerges from his jet-black egg. Hitler-duck’s pos­tur­ing appeals to a strut­ting, broad­ly stereo­typ­i­cal Ital­ian goose (Mus­soli­ni), and many of the ducks and geese on the farm, who line to up salute and, um… goos­es­tep. There are plen­ty of lit­tle gags thrown in—it’s all played for comedy—but of course, there is a mes­sage (or two) here.

First, cut to the sim­per­ing “Dove of Peace,” an androg­y­nous crea­ture who wrings its hands and says, “Have they for­got? ‘Tis love that’s right, and naught is gained by show of might.” This is clear­ly a car­i­ca­ture of Neville Cham­ber­lain, whose inef­fec­tu­al poli­cies enabled and embold­ened Hitler.

Cham­ber­lain is remem­bered for pre­ma­ture­ly declar­ing that his appease­ment of Hitler in the 1938 Munich Pact (here rep­re­sent­ed by a barn­yard “Peace Con­fer­ence”) had secured “peace for our time.” The ref­er­ence is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of a wartime dig at the U.S.’s British allies.

Hitler-duck tears up the “Peace Con­fer­ence” treaty and beats up the British and French ducks. Then a (painful­ly racist) Japan­ese duck rows ashore singing “I’m a Japan­ese Sandman”—a stand in for Tojo Hide­ki or Emper­or Hiro­hi­to. The three “Duck­ta­tors” rule the roost and tram­ple the Dove of Peace under­foot. His­tor­i­cal alle­go­ry gives way to slap­stick, and the wimpy Dove morphs into a pudgy, vic­to­ri­ous Churchill with the Duck­ta­tors’ heads mount­ed on his wall. Then, mes­sage num­ber two appears with fan­fare: “If you’d like to make this true, here’s all you have to do: For Vic­to­ry Buy Unit­ed States Sav­ings Bonds and Stamps.” Over­all, The Duck­ta­tors is a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of wartime adver­tis­ing, and of con­tem­po­rary U.S. feel­ings towards its Euro­pean allies. You can down­load The Duck­ta­tors here.

Find Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Films Here:

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Too Big for Any Museum, AIDS Quilt Goes Digital Thanks to Microsoft

in Art, History, Life, Politics | August 3rd, 2012

Twen­ty-five years ago a group of friends gath­ered in a San Fran­cis­co apart­ment to memo­ri­al­ize com­pan­ions who had died of AIDS. They used one of the old­est tech­niques around to hon­or their loved ones: they made a quilt, the now-famous AIDS Memo­r­i­al Quilt, with unique pan­els for each per­son felled by the dis­ease. Now includ­ing some 48,000 pan­els, the quilt has grown into a mas­sive, pub­lic expres­sion of grief. Its pan­els come from around the world. It was even nom­i­nat­ed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. (Find more on the his­to­ry of the quilt here.)

Like any good archive—and the quilt is an archive of life and loss—the AIDS Memo­r­i­al Quilt serves as a his­tor­i­cal repos­i­to­ry, a store­house of sen­ti­men­tal infor­ma­tion for scores of peo­ple. But beyond that the quilt is a piece of polit­i­cal folk art. AIDS, after all, is a unique­ly polit­i­cal dis­ease, at least in the Unit­ed States. The idea for the quilt was con­ceived dur­ing a can­dle­light march for assas­si­nat­ed San Fran­cis­co May­or George Moscone and Super­vi­sor Har­vey Milk. Efforts to lift the stig­ma of AIDS are close­ly linked to gay rights activism.

While the quilt is on view in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. this sum­mer, Microsoft offers the world up close and per­son­al access. Even if the Mall is too small to hold the entire quilt, the Inter­net isn’t. All 48,000 pan­els are new­ly dig­i­tized through a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Microsoft and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the Names Quilt Foun­da­tion.

You can fly like a bird over the whole, beau­ti­ful piece. You can zoom in to read the thou­sands of names—some in block let­ters, oth­ers stitched in cur­sive. You can count the rain­bows, too.

You can also search the quilt by name or, if you know it, by the block num­ber of a par­tic­u­lar pan­el through the AIDS Quilt Touch inter­face. The site allows unique search­es for each time the quilt has been dis­played. This is impor­tant because the quilt is so mas­sive that the Mall in Wash­ing­ton can’t hold it all. It’s always dis­played in sec­tions, so if you want to know where a spe­cial pan­el has been on view, recent­ly, it’s now pos­si­ble to find out.

Kate Rix is a free­lance writer based in Oak­land. See more of her work at .

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Versailles 3D, Created by Google, Gives You an Impressive Tour of Louis XIV’s Famous Palace

in Architecture, Google, History, Travel | August 1st, 2012

With 3D scale mod­els, music, and video, Google’s Ver­sailles 3D brings the best of 21st cen­tu­ry web arts to 18th cen­tu­ry art his­to­ry. The palace was built by Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” who exem­pli­fied all of the author­i­tar­i­an excess­es of the French monar­chy. For­tu­nate­ly for pos­ter­i­ty, he was also a patron of the arts, to whom we owe much of the work of Moliere, Racine and painters such as Charles Le Brun. And then there is his archi­tec­tur­al lega­cy, the palace of Ver­sailles, which start­ed out as a hum­ble hunt­ing lodge, built by his father Louis XIII in 1624. In the next sev­er­al decades, father, then son, com­mis­sioned the elab­o­rate set of build­ings that con­sti­tute Europe’s largest chateau and the seat of French gov­ern­ment from Louis XIV’s ascen­sion until the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1789. If you’re think­ing of vis­it­ing, the offi­cial chateau de Ver­sailles web­site has slideshows of grounds and gal­leries, a bou­tique, and some worth­while inter­ac­tive fea­tures. But Google, as usu­al, has tried to out­do its com­pe­ti­tion, this time by part­ner­ing with it. In con­nec­tion with the Ver­sailles cura­tors, The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has cre­at­ed a mul­ti­me­dia almost-sub­sti­tute for a real life excur­sion to the gar­gan­tu­an and endur­ing sym­bol of Ancien Regime France.

The next video is a pre­view of a “Google Chrome Exper­i­ment” called “Chaos to Per­fec­tion,” an “inter­ac­tive stroll around the palace,” accom­pa­nied by an orig­i­nal sound­track from French band Phoenix. (The “exper­i­ment” itself is some­what slow load­ing, and requires the Chrome brows­er).

Final­ly, the engi­neers at Google (and part­ners Aloest, Wes­t­im­ages, le Fab­Shop and Les 84) give us a look behind the scenes of Ver­sailles 3D. Won­der how they cre­at­ed the elab­o­rate 3D scale mod­els of the palace grounds and build­ings? Well, the video below pro­vides a bar­rage of back­stage glimpses of the process, along with scenes from the open­ing of the Palace His­to­ry Gallery on June 14th.

And, of course, there will be mobile apps, Google promis­es, “soon.”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Leni Riefenstahl Captures Jesse Owens Dashing Nazi Dreams at the 1936 Olympics

in History | July 27th, 2012

Jesse Owens, the son of a share­crop­per and grand­son of slaves, went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and upset Hitler’s visions of Aryan suprema­cy. He did it not once, but four times, win­ning gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, the long jump and the 4 x 100 meter relay. The first race was cap­tured by the Ger­man filmmaker/propagandist Leni Riefen­stahl in her famous film doc­u­ment­ing the 1936 Games, Olympia. It’s all queued up above and ready to go.

Now the cru­el foot­note to this sto­ry: after his four vic­to­ries, Owens returned to the U.S. and imme­di­ate­ly con­front­ed the cold racist atti­tudes of his coun­try­men. There was no pause, no reprieve, even for an Olympic gold medal­ist. Lat­er, he recalled:

When I came back to my native coun­try, after all the sto­ries about Hitler, I could­n’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I could­n’t live where I want­ed. I was­n’t invit­ed to shake hands with Hitler, but I was­n’t invit­ed to the White House to shake hands with the Pres­i­dent, either.

New York City did hold a tick­er-tape parade in his hon­or. But when he attend­ed a recep­tion at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria, he was forced to ride the freight ele­va­tor. And he did­n’t make it to the White House until Eisen­how­er named him an “Ambas­sador of Sports” in 1955. FDR and Tru­man nev­er both­ered to extend an invi­ta­tion to the Olympic hero. Stephen elab­o­rates on all of this below:

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Alexander Hamilton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poetry Evening

in History, Poetry | July 27th, 2012

Recent­ly we brought you the sto­ry of the Alexan­der Hamil­ton-Aaron Burr duel, as told in a drunk­en stu­por by Mark Gagliar­di and star­ring Zom­bieland’s Michael Cera as Hamil­ton. Now we have anoth­er unusu­al nar­ra­tor of the life of Amer­i­ca’s first Trea­sury Sec­re­tary. Lin-Manuel Miran­da, Tony award-win­ning writer and star of the Broad­way musi­cal In the Heights, com­posed “The Hamil­ton Mix­tape,” a song detail­ing the found­ing father’s rise from hum­ble begin­nings as (in the words of John Adams) “the bas­tard brat of a Scot­tish ped­dler,” to the upper ech­e­lons of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment. Born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton’s sto­ry is as boot­strap as they come, and Miran­da took his ver­sion all the way to the top. In the video above, he per­forms “The Hamil­ton Mix­tape” for Barack and Michelle Oba­ma at the White House Evening of Poet­ry, Music, and the Spo­ken Word, held on May 12, 2009.

To learn more about Alexan­der Hamil­ton, vis­it AllThingHamilton.com.

And check out Miran­da’s lyrics below the jump. (more…)

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The Science of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Modern Technology

in History, Science, Video - Science | July 26th, 2012

For all the recent scan­dal and the trau­ma of past Games, the Olympics remain a pageant of grandeur and glo­ry, and there is no greater sym­bol of its ideals than the Olympic Flame. The video above, from the Ontario Sci­ence Cen­tre, explains the evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy that keeps the flame burn­ing from its light­ing to the clos­ing cer­e­monies. It’s a pret­ty cool sto­ry, set to a bom­bas­tic sound­track wor­thy of its sub­ject and car­ried by an ani­mat­ed run­ner who just peeled him­self off of an ancient Athen­ian vase.

Intro­duced in the 1928 Sum­mer Olympics in Ams­ter­dam, the flame revives a sym­bol from antiq­ui­ty, com­mem­o­rat­ing Prometheus’s audac­i­ty and remind­ing war­ring city states to put aside hos­til­i­ties for as long as it burned. In the mod­ern Olympics, between the light­ing and the open­ing cer­e­monies, the flame, in its styl­ized torch, makes a pil­grim­age to the host city via relay, a prac­tice that began with the 1936 games in Berlin. This year’s relay start­ed on May 19th in Land’s End in Corn­wall and ends this Fri­day, the 27th at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don. The torch will have trav­eled through 1,000 places in the UK, cov­ered a total of 8,000 miles (and pass­ing through 8,000 hands), mov­ing over land, air, and water, with­out once hav­ing to be relit.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! We’ll thank you for it.

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The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela Retold with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

in History, Media, Technology | July 18th, 2012

Back in March, we told you about the launch of The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. Part­ly fund­ed by Google, the archive lets you revis­it impor­tant moments in Man­de­la’s life — his Ear­ly Life, his Prison Years, and his Pres­i­den­tial Years.

That Dig­i­tal Archive offers one way to tell Man­de­la’s sto­ry. Now here’s anoth­er. The cre­ators of the web site Man­dela Sto­ry launched a short video yes­ter­day that looks at Man­de­la’s life through the lens of social media. And it’s meant to raise a seri­ous ques­tion: “Would Man­dela have spent 27 years in cap­tiv­i­ty if he (and oth­ers) had access to the same tech­nol­o­gy, social media plat­forms and tools as we do today?”

It’s short and cer­tain­ly cre­ative. And if it speaks to you, you should check out Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line, a clip cre­at­ed by The Rijksmu­se­um that imag­ines the social life of the great Dutch painter.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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