Renaissance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades & Now You Can Hear the Songs Performed by Modern Singers

in History, Music | November 9th, 2023

Image cour­tesy of The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um

On any giv­en week­end, in any part of the state where I live, you can find your­self stand­ing in a hall full of knives, if that’s the kind of thing you like to do. It is a very niche kind of expe­ri­ence. Not so in some oth­er weapons expos—like the Arms and Armor gal­leries at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, where every­one, from the most war­like to the staunchest of paci­fists, stands in awe at the intri­cate orna­men­ta­tion and incred­i­bly deft crafts­man­ship on dis­play in the suits of armor, lances, shields, and lots and lots of knives.

We must acknowl­edge in such a space that the worlds of art and of killing for fame and prof­it were nev­er very far apart dur­ing Europe’s late Medieval and Renais­sance peri­ods. Yet we encounter many sim­i­lar arti­sanal instru­ments from the time, just as fine­ly tuned, but made for far less bel­liger­ent pur­pos­es.

As Maya Cor­ry of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge—an insti­tu­tion with its own impres­sive arms and armor col­lec­tion—com­ments in the video above (at 2:30), one unusu­al kind of 16th cen­tu­ry knife meant for the table, not the bat­tle­field, offers “insight into that har­mo­nious, audi­ble aspect of fam­i­ly devo­tions,” prayer and song.

From the col­lec­tion of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, in Cam­bridge. (Johan Oost­er­man )

These knives, which have musi­cal scores engraved in their blades, brought a table togeth­er in singing their prayers, and may have been used to carve the lamb or beef in their “strik­ing bal­ance of dec­o­ra­tive and util­i­tar­i­an func­tion.” At least his­to­ri­ans think such “nota­tion knives,” which date from the ear­ly 1500s, were used at ban­quets. “The sharp, wide steel would have been ide­al for cut­ting and serv­ing meat,” writes Eliza Grace Mar­tin at the WQXR blog, “and the accen­tu­at­ed tip would have made for a per­fect skew­er.” But as Kris­ten Kalber, cura­tor at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, which hous­es the knives at the top of the post, tells us “din­ers in very grand feasts didn’t cut their own meat.” It’s unlike­ly they would have sung from the bloody knives held by their ser­vants.

The knives’ true pur­pose “remains a mys­tery,” Mar­tin remarks, like many “rit­u­als of the Renais­sance table.”  Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tor Kirstin Kennedy admits in the video above that “we are not entire­ly sure” what the “splen­did knife” she holds was used for. But we do know that each knife had a dif­fer­ent piece of music on each side, and that a set of them togeth­er con­tained dif­fer­ent har­mo­ny parts in order to turn a room­ful of din­ers into a cho­rus. One set of blades had the grace on one side, with the inscrip­tion, “the bless­ing of the table. May the three-in-one bless that which we are about to eat.” The oth­er side holds the bene­dic­tion, to be sung after the din­ner: “The say­ing of grace. We give thanks to you God for your gen­eros­i­ty.”

Com­mon enough ver­biage for any house­hold in Renais­sance Europe, but when sung, at least by a cho­rus from the Roy­al Col­lege of Music, who recre­at­ed the music and made the record­ings here, the prayers are superbly grace­ful. Above, hear one ver­sion of the Grace and Bene­dic­tion from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um knives; below, hear a sec­ond ver­sion. You can hear a cap­ti­vat­ing set of choral prayers from the Fitzwilliam Muse­um knives at WQXR’s site, record­ed for the Fitzwilliam’s “Madon­nas & Mir­a­cles” exhib­it. We are as unlike­ly now to encounter singing kitchen knives as we are to run into a horse and rid­er bear­ing 100 pounds of fine­ly-wrought wear­able steel sculp­ture. Such strange arti­facts seem to speak of a strange peo­ple who val­ued beau­ty whether carv­ing up the main course or cut­ting down their ene­mies.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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

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Why People Hate Brutalist Buildings on American College Campuses

in Architecture, History | November 8th, 2023

Many Amer­i­cans receive their intro­duc­tion to the style known as Bru­tal­ism in col­lege. This owes less to cours­es in twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry archi­tec­ture than to uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es them­selves, which tend to have been expand­ed or even whol­ly con­struct­ed in the decades imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War. As Vox’s Dean Peter­son explains in the new video above, its vet­er­ans returned home eager to receive the ter­tiary edu­ca­tion to which the G.I. Bill enti­tled them, which “neces­si­tat­ed that uni­ver­si­ties build new facil­i­ties to han­dle bal­loon­ing admis­sions. And with so many new build­ings being need­ed, what did archi­tects of the day turn to? Bru­tal­ism.”

“Not just a style of archi­tec­ture but an entire aes­thet­ic ethos,” Bru­tal­ism had devel­oped through inspi­ra­tion from the work of Charles-Édouard Jean­neret, bet­ter known as Le Cor­busier. While oth­er archi­tects had employed con­crete before him, he was the one to make the bold choice of leav­ing it exposed on the sur­face in its raw form: béton brut, to use the term that gave the move­ment its name.

To qual­i­fy under the rubric of this “new Bru­tal­ism,” as archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham (lat­er to become famous for his ultra-mod­ern view of Los Ange­les) referred to it, a struc­ture should demon­strate “mem­o­ra­bil­i­ty as an image,” “clear exhi­bi­tion of struc­ture,” and “val­u­a­tion of mate­ri­als ‘as found’ ” — in con­trast to the nine­teen-fifties’ pro­lif­er­a­tion of seem­ing­ly fea­ture­less glass-sheathed sky­scrap­ers designed by mod­ernists like Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe and his many imi­ta­tors.

“Bru­tal­ist build­ings strove for hon­esty in their mate­ri­als and struc­ture,” says Peter­son. “They showed you how they were con­struct­ed.” Though acclaimed in their day as built state­ments of a break from the staid past into a whol­ly reimag­ined future, many cam­pus Bru­tal­ist build­ings in the Unit­ed States sub­se­quent­ly fell into dis­re­pair, owing to the eco­nom­ic down­turn of the sev­en­ties and the resul­tant laps­es into “deferred main­te­nance” — which, deferred long enough, shades into planned demo­li­tion. Such has been the case with Evans Hall, the sta­tis­tics, eco­nom­ics, and math­e­mat­ics build­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, which, since its con­struc­tion in 1971, played an impor­tant part in the his­to­ry of com­put­er sci­ence, not least as the node through which the whole of the west coast con­nect­ed to ARPANET, the mil­i­tary-built pre­cur­sor to the inter­net.

Today, objec­tions to Evans Hal­l’s Bru­tal­ist aes­thet­ics, as well as to its loca­tion in front of the San Fran­cis­co Bay and its poor earth­quake-safe­ty rat­ing (that last being fair­ly com­mon among UC Berke­ley’s struc­tures), have led to its being emp­tied out with an eye toward replace­ment. Though it may be too late for Evans Hall, much of Amer­i­ca’s Bru­tal­ist her­itage can still be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. “Be patient,” says archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Rohan (author of a study of Amer­i­can Bru­tal­ist Paul Rudolph). “Just because you find some­thing unfash­ion­able at the moment does­n’t mean you should erad­i­cate it.” This is not, per­haps, advice par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to col­lege stu­dents, but giv­en the like­li­hood of their expo­sure to Bru­tal­ism not just on cam­pus but also on Insta­gram, they may turn out to be its best hope yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Secret Room with Drawings Attributed to Michelangelo Opens to Visitors in Florence

in Art, History, Museums | November 7th, 2023

Images on this page come cour­tesy of the Musei del Bargel­lo

In the year 1530, Michelan­ge­lo was sen­tenced to death by Pope Clement VII — who, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, was born Giulio de’ Medici. That famous dynasty, which once seemed to hold absolute eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er in Flo­rence, had just seen off a vio­lent chal­lenge to its rule by repub­li­can-mind­ed Flo­ren­tines who, embold­ened by the sack of Rome in 1527, took their city from the House of Medici that same year. Alas, that par­tic­u­lar Repub­lic of Flo­rence proved short-lived, thanks to the pope and Emper­or Charles V’s agree­ment agreed to use mil­i­tary pow­er to return it to Medici hands.

Dur­ing the strug­gles against the Medici, the Flo­rence-born Michelan­ge­lo had come to the aid of his home­town by work­ing on its for­ti­fi­ca­tions. It seems to have been his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the revolt that drew the ire of the Medici, despite their court’s on-and-off patron­age of his work for the pre­ced­ing four decades.

Mer­ci­ful­ly, they nev­er actu­al­ly exe­cut­ed Michelan­ge­lo, and indeed par­doned him before long–not least so he could fin­ish his work on the Sis­tine Chapel and the Medici fam­i­ly tomb. But how did he occu­py him­self while still liv­ing under the death sen­tence?

As one the­o­ry has it, he sim­ply hid out — and in a cor­ner of what’s now the Medici Chapels Muse­um at that. In a “tiny cham­ber beneath the Medici Chapels in the Basil­i­ca of San Loren­zo in 1530,” writes the Guardian’s Angela Giuf­fri­da, Michelan­ge­lo spent a cou­ple months “mak­ing dozens of draw­ings that are rem­i­nis­cent of his pre­vi­ous works, includ­ing a draw­ing of Leda and the Swan, a paint­ing pro­duced dur­ing the same year that was lat­er lost.” All of these he drew direct­ly on the walls, and their exis­tence “remained unknown until 1975 when Pao­lo Dal Pogget­to, then the direc­tor of the Medici Chapels, one of five muse­ums that make up the Bargel­lo Muse­ums, was search­ing for a suit­able space to cre­ate a new exit for the muse­um.”

“Oth­ers doubt that Michelan­ge­lo, already in his 50s and an acclaimed artist with pow­er­ful patrons, would have spent time in such a dingy hide out,” writes the New York Times’ Jason Horowitz. “But many schol­ars believe that the sketch­es show his hand”: the “impos­ing nude near the entrance” that evokes The Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ; the sketch­es that “resem­ble the cen­tral fig­ure of his The Fall of Phaeton. Some even think a flexed and dis­em­bod­ied arm on the wall evokes his David stat­ue.” And start­ing next week, vis­i­tors will be able to judge these very draw­ings for them­selves.

Not that you can just waltz into this stan­za seg­re­ta: “Vis­its will be kept to groups of four and lim­it­ed to 15 min­utes, with 45 minute lights-out peri­ods in between to pro­tect the draw­ings,” Horowitz writes. ‘Tick­ets, each con­nect­ed to a spe­cif­ic per­son whose I.D. will be checked to pre­vent tour oper­a­tors from gob­bling them up, will cost 32 euros (about $34), and include access to the Medici tombs.” Dur­ing your own fif­teen min­utes in this cramped, obscure room turned taste­ful­ly-lit gallery, you may or may not feel the pres­ence of Michelan­ge­lo, but you’ll sure­ly find your­self remind­ed that a true artist nev­er stops cre­at­ing, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances in which he finds him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Painstak­ing and Nerve-Rack­ing Process of Restor­ing a Draw­ing by Michelan­ge­lo

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

School Prin­ci­pal, Forced to Resign After Stu­dents Learn About Michelangelo’s David, Vis­its the Renais­sance Stat­ue in Flo­rence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Historical Primers That Help Explain the Century-Long Conflict

in History | November 6th, 2023

On Octo­ber 7th, Hamas invad­ed Israel and bru­tal­ly mas­sa­cred 1,400 Israelis, most­ly civil­ians. On a per capi­ta basis, the attack amount­ed to twelve 9/11s (per The Econ­o­mist). It also marked the sin­gle blood­i­est attack on Jews since the Holo­caust. Faced with an exis­ten­tial threat, Israel has launched its own dev­as­tat­ing inva­sion of Gaza, with the goal of destroy­ing Hamas lead­er­ship. Already, the assault has left 9,000 civil­ians dead and tipped the pop­u­la­tion into a human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Bar­ring a cease­fire, the casu­al­ties will almost cer­tain­ly mount from here.

This explo­sion of vio­lence rep­re­sents the lat­est chap­ter in a cen­tu­ry-long strug­gle between Jews and Arabs in the region. For those who have a ten­u­ous grasp of the his­to­ry of this con­flict (it’s admit­ted­ly long and com­pli­cat­ed), we’ve pulled togeth­er some help­ful resources that explain key turn­ing points in the strug­gle. Over­all, these resources strive to offer a bal­anced account of the con­flict, mean­ing they try to rec­og­nize the per­spec­tive of both sides and avoid offer­ing a naked­ly par­ti­san account. While not per­fect or com­pre­hen­sive, the resources offer a start­ing point for putting today’s events in his­tor­i­cal con­text.

To start, the Vox primer above traces the arc of the con­flict, start­ing with the rise of nation­al­ism and Zion­ism in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, and the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion (1917) that announced sup­port for the estab­lish­ment of a “nation­al home for the Jew­ish peo­ple” in Pales­tine. From there, the video cov­ers the ris­ing ten­sion between Jews and Arabs dur­ing the 1930s, then the Holo­caust and the Unit­ed Nations’ plan (1947) to divide the con­test­ed ter­ri­to­ry into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews accept­ed the plan. The Arabs did­n’t and launched an attack on the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, start­ing the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Israel won, achieved state­hood, seized lands orig­i­nal­ly del­e­gat­ed to the Pales­tini­ans and expelled res­i­dents, some­times vio­lent­ly, from their homes. Next comes the Six-Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kip­pur War (odd­ly not men­tioned by Vox). Then, we have the rise of the PLO and lat­er Hamas (two orga­ni­za­tions that have denied Israel’s right to exist); the vex­ing Israeli set­tler move­ment; the start of the first Intifa­da in 1987; attempts to make peace cul­mi­nat­ing in the Oslo Accords in 1993; and final­ly the break­down of those peace efforts, thanks to extrem­ists on both sides. Vox ends the nar­ra­tive in about 2015, won­der­ing about the future–the future we’re expe­ri­enc­ing right now.

Imme­di­ate­ly above, you can lis­ten to a recent pod­cast host­ed by The Atlantic’s Derek Thomp­son. Fea­tur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with two his­to­ri­ans (Ben­ny Mor­ris and Zachary Fos­ter), the pod­cast walks us through “the ori­gins of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, from antiq­ui­ty to Octo­ber 7”–reinforcing and elab­o­rat­ing on points made in the Vox video. Even­tu­al­ly, the host and his­to­ri­ans also “share their thoughts on Israel’s mil­i­tary response, the future of the con­flict, and the ‘miss­ing mod­er­ate mid­dle’ on both sides.”

We come next to a New York Times inter­view with David K. Shipler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book, Arab and Jew: Wound­ed Spir­its in a Promised Land. Here, the con­ver­sa­tion focus­es on the piv­otal events of 1948, and how the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have devel­oped their own nar­ra­tives of the events that took place that year. As Shipler explains, these nar­ra­tives have shaped the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian strug­gle ever since, and they con­tin­ue to shape the events on the ground in Gaza today. To under­stand the nar­ra­tives is to under­stand why the con­flict has endured for so long.

?si=8GHuZeoxc9pKivQi

Final­ly, we’re adding a video designed for a younger audi­ence from John Green’s World His­to­ry Crash Course. Com­plet­ed in 2015, the video does­n’t cov­er the cur­rent cri­sis. But it pro­vides anoth­er overview of the deep­er his­tor­i­cal con­flict, while touch­ing on the same nar­ra­tives that Shipler out­lines above.

We’ll try to post more resources as we find them…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Leonardo da Vinci Created the Design for the Miter Lock, Which Is Still Used in the Panama and Suez Canals

in History, Technology | November 1st, 2023

“A Man, a Plan, a Canal — Pana­ma”: we all know the piece of infra­struc­ture to which this famous palin­drome refers. But who, exact­ly, is the man? Some might imag­ine Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt in the role, giv­en his over­sight of the pro­jec­t’s acqui­si­tion by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. But it’s more com­mon­ly thought to be George W. Goethals, the Roo­sevelt-appoint­ed chief engi­neer who brought it to com­ple­tion two years ear­ly. Then again, one could also make the case for French diplo­mat Fer­di­nand de Lesseps, who orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of not only the Pana­ma Canal but also the Suez Canal. And as long as we’re reach­ing back in his­to­ry, how does Leonar­do da Vin­ci strike you?

True, Leonar­do died rough­ly four cen­turies before the Pana­ma Canal broke ground. But that its mech­a­nism works at all owes to one of his many inven­tions: the miter lock, doc­u­ment­ed in one of his note­books from 1497. The design, as explained in the Lesics video above, involves “two V‑shaped wood­en gates” attached with hinges to the sides of a riv­er.

Giv­en their shape, the water flow­ing through the riv­er nat­u­ral­ly forces the gates to close, one side form­ing a neat joint with the oth­er. Inside, “as the water lev­el ris­es, the pres­sure on the gate increas­es,” which seals it even more tight­ly. To facil­i­tate re-open­ing the “per­fect water­tight lock” thus formed, Leonar­do also spec­i­fied a set of sluice valves in the gates that can be opened to even out the water lev­els again.

The twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry builders of the Pana­ma Canal ben­e­fit­ed from tech­nolo­gies unavail­able in Leonar­do’s time: pow­er­ful motors, for instance, that could open and close the gates more effi­cient­ly than human mus­cle. And though it has under­gone improve­ments over the past cen­tu­ry (such as the replace­ment of the geared sys­tem attached to those motors with even more effec­tive hydraulic cylin­ders), its struc­ture and oper­a­tion remain vis­i­bly derived from Leonar­do’s ele­gant miter lock, as do those of the Suez Canal. About 80 ships pass through those two famous water­ways each and every day, and ships of a size scarce­ly imag­in­able in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry at that: not bad for a cou­ple pieces of 500-year-old engi­neer­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Explore the Largest Online Archive Explor­ing the Genius of Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Animated: The Rise & Fall of the Largest Cities in the World, from 3,000 BC to the 2020s

in History | November 1st, 2023

This is the first era of human his­to­ry when more of us live in cities than not. That’s what we’ve often been told in recent years, at least, though the specifics do depend on what kinds of urban­ized areas  you count as prop­er cities. Still, this would seem to mark an impor­tant inflec­tion point in human his­to­ry, the past five mil­len­nia of which has also been the his­to­ry of great cities ris­ing and falling, in absolute terms but also rel­a­tive to one anoth­er in size, pow­er, and influ­ence. You can see this ani­mat­ed in the video above from car­to­graph­i­cal-his­tor­i­cal Youtu­ber Ollie Bye, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his visu­al­iza­tions of the his­to­ry of Lon­don, of the British Empire, and of the entire world.

Here, Bye charts the largest cities in the world between the year 3000 BC and today, indi­cat­ing their size on the map while also rank­ing them on an ever-chang­ing leader­board below. Out front in the very begin­ning was Uruk, cap­i­tal of the Mesopotami­an cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion (and a promi­nent loca­tion in the Epic of Gil­gamesh).

A thou­sand years lat­er, it was the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal of Thebes; a thou­sand years after that, it was the lat­er Egypt­ian cap­i­tal of Alexan­dria. From that point on, the shuf­fle at the bot­tom of the screen grows more and more rapid: the title of largest city in the world is lost by Con­stan­tino­ple to Cte­siphon; by Lin’an, briefly, to Cairo, and then to Hangzhou; by Lon­don to New York.

It was in the nine­teen-fifties that Tokyo — a city left in sham­bles by the Sec­ond World War a decade ear­li­er — over­took New York for the top spot. There it has remained ever since, see­ing off such dif­fer­ent chal­lengers in dif­fer­ent eras as Osa­ka, Mex­i­co City, and New Del­hi. When Bye’s ani­ma­tion leaves off, in 2021, that last has a pop­u­la­tion of 31.1 mil­lion against Toky­o’s 37.3 mil­lion. Whether the Japan­ese cap­i­tal has pro­por­tion­ate­ly more pow­er or influ­ence in the world today than Bei­jing, São Paulo, or Los Ange­les is, of course, a sep­a­rate and less objec­tive ques­tion. But no vis­i­tor to Tokyo can deny that it must have achieved some­thing like the pin­na­cle of urban civ­i­liza­tion per se — and has some­how kept the rents rea­son­able to boot.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion Lets You See the Rise of Cities Across the Globe, from 3700 BC to 2000 AD

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Meet the Man Who Created the Iconic Emblem of the Day of the Dead: José Guadalupe Posada

in Art, History, Politics | October 31st, 2023

Odds are you’re acquaint­ed with the lady pic­tured above.

She’s called La Cat­ri­na, and her like­ness adorns count­less t‑shirts and tote bags.

She is a pop­u­lar Hal­loween cos­tume and a main­stay of Day of the Dead cel­e­bra­tions.

She pops up in the ani­mat­ed fam­i­ly fea­ture, Coco, to guide its young hero to the Land of the Dead. 

She’s spent the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry mak­ing cameos in numer­ous artists works, most famous­ly Diego Rivera’s sur­re­al 1947 mur­al, Sueño de una Tarde Domini­cal en la Alame­da Cen­tral, a fever dream that places her front and cen­ter, arm in arm with a dis­tin­guished-look­ing, mus­ta­chioed gent in a bowler hat.

That gent is her orig­i­nal cre­ator, José Guadalupe Posa­da, a hard­work­ing print­mak­er and polit­i­cal car­toon­ist who pro­duced over 20,000 images dur­ing his life­time, on sub­jects rang­ing from the Mex­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and oth­er events, both cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal, to pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment and the dai­ly lives of aver­age men and women. 

The artist fre­quent­ly ham­mered his point home by depict­ing the par­ties in his works as calav­eras - exu­ber­ant skele­tons seem­ing­ly unaware they had lost all flesh and blood. 

Posa­da was still a teenag­er in 1871 when a home­town paper picked up his first car­toons. One report­ed­ly enraged a local politi­cian to such a degree that the paper was forced to cease pub­li­ca­tion.

La Cat­ri­na was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1913, as a broad­sheet illus­tra­tion accom­pa­ny­ing a satir­i­cal poem about chick­pea ven­dors. It’s believed that Posa­da intend­ed his image to be a jab at upper class Mex­i­can women obsessed with Euro­pean fash­ions.

(Rivera was the one who changed her name from La Cucaracha — the cock­roach — to the much more lyri­cal La Cat­ri­na. He also plant­ed the seed that Posa­da, who died pen­ni­less and large­ly for­got­ten, had been a rev­o­lu­tion­ary. The Mex­i­can pro­gres­sive print­mak­ing col­lec­tive El Taller Grafi­ca Pop­u­lar took graph­ic inspi­ra­tion from his calav­eras, while embrac­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing this myth.

What’s that they say about imi­ta­tion being the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery?

After Posada’s death, his col­leagues at the pub­lish­ing firm of Anto­nio Vane­gas Arroy­or, saved time and mon­ey by con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce work from his blocks and plates. 

As Jim Nikas, found­ing direc­tor of the Posa­da Art Foun­da­tion told Atlas Obscu­ra “If the image was neu­tral enough, you could change the text and use it as an illus­tra­tion for any sto­ry.”

Whether increas­ing pub­lic aware­ness of harm­ful agri­cul­tur­al pes­ti­cides, protest­ing Amer­i­can immi­gra­tion poli­cies, or, uh, sell­ing tequi­la, 21st cen­tu­ry artists, activists, and entre­pre­neurs con­tin­ue to har­ness Posada’s vision for their own pur­pos­es.

Nikas, who sam­pled Posada’s La Calav­era de Don Quixote for an Occu­py Wall Street col­lab­o­ra­tion with Art Hazel­wood and Mar­sha Shaw writes that “the calav­era is some­thing we all have bio­log­i­cal­ly in com­mon and, accord­ing­ly, may be used to con­vey mes­sages:

Posa­da and his pub­lish­ers used depic­tions of calav­eras not only to remind us of our col­lec­tive mor­tal­i­ty but also to shed light. His illus­tra­tions were often satir­i­cal car­i­ca­tures uproot­ed from the cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate and used to poke fun at our human con­di­tion. This use was evo­lu­tion­ary, occur­ring over time, and as applic­a­ble today as it was over a cen­tu­ry ago.

See more of José Guadalupe Posada’s calav­eras in the Library of Con­gress’ Prints and Pho­tographs Divi­sion col­lec­tion.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How the CIA Secretly Used Jackson Pollock & Other Abstract Expressionists to Fight the Cold War

in Art, History | October 27th, 2023

What’s the dif­fer­ence between the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and a cup of yogurt? If you leave the cup of yogurt alone for 200 years, it devel­ops a cul­ture. So goes one of many jokes long in cir­cu­la­tion about the sup­posed Amer­i­can ten­den­cy toward low-mind­ed, expe­di­ent philis­tin­ism. I grant, as an Amer­i­can myself, that such humor sur­rounds at least a grain of truth. But there was a time when the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of the U.S., an orga­ni­za­tion not often accused of exces­sive high-mind­ed­ness, took an active role in pro­mot­ing the coun­try’s home-grown avant-garde — an appro­pri­ate term, notes Lucie Levine at JSTOR Dai­ly, since it “began as a French mil­i­tary term to describe van­guard troops advanc­ing into bat­tle,” and Amer­i­can mod­ern art had become a con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­tics by oth­er means.

“Up until World War II, Amer­i­ca had nev­er pro­duced large, influ­en­tial art move­ments like in Europe,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Con­spir­a­cy of Art video above. After the war, “some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pened: a brood of rad­i­cal Amer­i­can painters helped make New York City the cen­ter of the art world.”

Mark Rothko, Willem de Koon­ing, and Jack­son Pol­lock: they and oth­er artists “cap­tured the world’s atten­tion with large-scale works of pure col­or and form.” This move­ment came to be known as abstract expres­sion­ism, and in the eyes of the new­ly estab­lished Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, it came to show promise as pro­pa­gan­da. If shown abroad, it could func­tion as pro­pa­gan­da, high­light­ing “the dif­fer­ences between Amer­i­can and Sovi­et pol­i­tics”  — and more specif­i­cal­ly, “the appeal of Amer­i­can cul­ture over Sovi­et Cul­ture.”

“Was Jack­son Pol­lock a weapon in the Cold War?” asks the New York­er’s Louis Menand. While Pol­lock was indeed pro­mot­ed abroad with CIA mon­ey (usu­al­ly pro­vid­ed through lay­ers of orga­ni­za­tion­al mis­di­rec­tion), you don’t look at a paint­ing like Laven­der Mist and “think about ‘artis­tic free enter­prise’ or the CIA, or the cul­tur­al pol­i­tics of Par­ti­san Review. You think about how a painter could have tak­en all he had expe­ri­enced across a cre­ative thresh­old that no one had crossed before, and pro­duced this par­tic­u­lar thing.” But its “impor­tance for a cer­tain strand of Cold War cul­tur­al pol­i­tics is part of the sto­ry of how it got to us, a gen­er­a­tion or more lat­er, and that his­to­ry is worth know­ing.” It’s also worth ask­ing, should the Unit­ed States once again find itself face-to-face with a for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al adver­sary, whether it will be pre­pared to draft a few Pol­locks back into ser­vice.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch “Jack­son Pol­lock 51,” a His­toric Short Film That Cap­tures Pol­lock Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art on a Sheet of Glass

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

How the CIA Helped Shape the Cre­ative Writ­ing Scene in Amer­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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