Marie Osmond Performs the Dadaist Poem “Karawane” on the TV Show, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (1985)

in Life, Literature, Music, Poetry, Television | July 15th, 2016

Remem­ber Don­ny and Marie Osmond, the toothy, teenage Mor­mon sib­lings whose epony­mous tele­vi­sion vari­ety show was a whole­some 70’s mix of skits, songs, and ice skat­ing?

Their sur­pris­ing­ly endur­ing theme song reduced their pop­u­lar­i­ty to an eas­i­ly gras­pable bina­ry for­mu­la:

She was a lit­tle bit coun­try. He was a lit­tle bit rock and roll.

Turns out Marie was also more than a lit­tle bit Dada.

From 1985 to 1986, Marie served as actor Jack Palance’s cohost on Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a TV series explor­ing strange occur­rences, bizarre his­tor­i­cal facts, and oth­er such crowd-pleas­ing odd­i­ties… one of which was appar­ent­ly the afore­men­tioned Euro­pean avant-garde art move­ment, found­ed a hun­dred years ago this week.

If you don’t know as much about Dada as you’d like, Ms. Osmond’s brief primer is a sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy intro­duc­tion.

No cutesy boot­sy, easy ref­er­ences to melt­ing clocks here.

The high­light is her per­for­mance of Dada poet and man­i­festo author Hugo Bal­l’s non­sen­si­cal 1916 sound poem “Karawane.”

Lose the yel­low bathrobe and she could be a cap­tive war­rior princess on Game of Thrones, fierce­ly peti­tion­ing the Moth­er of Drag­ons on behalf of her peo­ple. (Invent some sub­ti­tles for extra Dada-inflect­ed fun!)

A sharp eyed young art stu­dent named Ethan Bates did catch one error in Marie’s les­son. The ’13’ cos­tume she pulls from a handy dress­ing room niche was not worn by Hugo Ball, but rather Dutch painter Theo Van Does­burg, one of the founders of the De Sti­jl move­ment.

Still you’ve got to hand it to Marie, who was slat­ed to per­form just a sin­gle line of the poem. When it came time to tape, she aban­doned the cue cards, blow­ing pro­duc­ers’ and crew’s minds by deliv­er­ing the poem in its unhinged entire­ty from mem­o­ry.

Now that’s rock and roll.

Below you’ll find footage of Ball him­self per­form­ing the work in 1916.

Marie’s ver­sion was even­tu­al­ly released by Rough Trade Records as a track on Lip­stick Traces, a com­pan­ion sound­track to Greil Mar­cus’ sem­i­nal book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

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

Down­load All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Jour­nal That Pub­li­cized the Avant-Garde Move­ment a Cen­tu­ry Ago (1917–21)

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

 

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A Young Nora Ephron Gets Animated About Breasts, Feminism, Journalism & New Possibilities (1975)

in Life | July 12th, 2016

In 1975, Nora Ephron sat down with Studs Terkel to talk about Crazy Sal­ad, her col­lec­tion of essays about women and the wom­en’s rights move­ment dur­ing the 1970s. If the excerpts ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank above reflect the entire­ty of the con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten here), then you can’t help but notice that the gen­der issues being dis­cussed then, dur­ing that late stage of sec­ond wave fem­i­nism, haven’t gone away today. They’re still very much out there. The dif­fer­ence is the enthu­si­asm, the sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty, that Ephron could­n’t con­tain then. “It’s excit­ing.” “It’s ok being a woman now. I like it. Try it some time!” Indeed.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Nora Ephron’s Lists: “What I Will Miss” and “What I Won’t Miss”

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The Creativity of Female Graffiti & Street Artists Will Be Celebrated in Street Heroines, a New Documentary

in Art, Creativity, Film, Life | July 11th, 2016

Street art is a fre­quent­ly dan­ger­ous game. The threat of arrest pales in com­par­i­son to some of the haz­ards long time prac­ti­tion­ers describe. While oth­er artists sketch in pleas­ant cafes, cre­ators of large-scale street pieces often have no choice but to wrig­gle through ragged holes in chain link fences and climb to ver­tig­i­nous heights to get to their can­vas­es.

There’s a pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of graf­fi­ti artist as lone wolf, but when it comes to the per­ils of the street, there’s safe­ty in num­bers. You need a crew. Female street artists must draw on the pow­er of sis­ter­hood.

As pho­to­jour­nal­ist Martha Coop­er notes in the trail­er for direc­tor Alexan­dra Hen­ry’s Street Hero­ines, above:

I think bring­ing women togeth­er empow­ers them and there’s been some resis­tance on the part of men…it has to do with cama­raderie too. It’s not that they’re say­ing, “You can’t do it,” but they’re just not allow­ing them in to their inner group.

Appar­ent­ly, street art is some­thing of an old boy’s club.

“What!?” gasps Lady Pink, a well known vet­er­an with over 35 years’ expe­ri­ence. “You need a penis to climb a lad­der? Does it help you hold on?”

The female cama­raderie Coop­er cites extends to the suc­cess­ful fund­ing of a Kick­starter cam­paign to com­plete this doc­u­men­tary on “the courage and cre­ativ­i­ty of female graf­fi­ti & street artists from around the world.” As the dead­line loomed, Lexi Bel­la & Danielle Mas­tri­on, two of the women fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary, issued an open invi­ta­tion to New York City-based female artists to join them in cre­at­ing a spur-of-the-moment mur­al in Brook­lyn, sur­ren­der­ing artis­tic con­trol to embrace com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

street heroines2

Many of the 25 artists Hen­ry has pro­filed thus far speak of using their work to bring beau­ty to the street, and to advo­cate on behalf of the oppressed. Such earnest­ness may dimin­ish them even fur­ther in the eyes of the old school He Man Woman Haters Club. Lexi Bel­la coun­ter­bal­ances the laugh­ably soft image cer­tain macho prac­ti­tion­ers may assign to them by speak­ing unapolo­get­i­cal­ly of the thrill of mak­ing one’s work as big as pos­si­ble “so mil­lions of peo­ple can see it.”

Street Hero­ines is aim­ing for release in 2017.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

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

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Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Happens When We Die

in History, Life | July 4th, 2016

Elie Wiesel not only sur­vived the Holo­caust but went on to live a full life with a pro­lif­ic career, the fruits of which includ­ed 57 books, most famous­ly 1960’s Night, a short and for­mal­ly dis­tinc­tive work drawn from his expe­ri­ence in the con­cen­tra­tion camps. “The only role I sought was that of wit­ness,” he wrote in 1978. “I believed that hav­ing sur­vived by chance, I was duty-bound to give mean­ing to my sur­vival, to jus­ti­fy each moment of my life.” And even before his death this past Sat­ur­day at age 87, the Nobel Peace Prize win­ner had learned much about what it means to come to life’s end.

“The body is not eter­nal, but the idea of the soul is,” Wiesel writes in Open Heart, the 2012 mem­oir he wrote after under­go­ing anoth­er brush with death, late in life, which neces­si­tat­ed emer­gency open-heart surgery. “The brain will be buried, but mem­o­ry will sur­vive it.” Oprah Win­frey reads those words back to him in an inter­view from that same year, a clip from which you can see above. “Now that you’ve had all this time to think about it,” she asks, “what do you think hap­pens when we die?”

“Some­how,” he replies, “I will become a child. Child­hood, for me, is a theme in all my work. Will I meet my par­ents again? I want to know that.” Win­frey express­es spe­cial inter­est in the visions of his own fam­i­ly he had in the hos­pi­tal, such as that of his father who had died at Buchen­wald, just weeks before the cam­p’s lib­er­a­tion, and the sight of whose face he had pre­vi­ous­ly glimpsed, just for a moment, dur­ing his Nobel award cer­e­mo­ny in 1986. His father’s sec­ond posthu­mous appear­ance made him think death might not be so bad after all, but “that is the dan­ger. You feel it’s so good to be with the dead, then why not join them?”

But Wiesel, who had done so much already, felt he “had more and more things to do. I haven’t even begun.” Indeed, con­tin­u­ing in his capac­i­ty as the “Con­science of the World,” he received four more awards and hon­ors between 2012 and 2014, made many appear­ances, and sure­ly wrote pages that will see pub­li­ca­tion in the years, or even decades, to come. But for all his accom­plish­ments, he him­self found noth­ing more unusu­al, as he said to Win­frey in a pre­vi­ous talk six­teen years ago, than his own nor­mal­i­ty, “that I sur­vived the Holo­caust and went on to love beau­ti­ful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnor­mal.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor (Thanks to the Pow­er of Music), Dies at 110

Bertrand Rus­sell on the Exis­tence of God & the After­life (1959)

Is There an After­life? Christo­pher Hitchens Spec­u­lates in an Ani­mat­ed Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Change Your Life! Learn the Japanese Art of Decluttering, Organizing & Tidying Things Up

in How to Learn for Free, Life, Random, Video - Politics/Society | July 4th, 2016

Cus­tom dic­tates that you should observe July 4th—Amer­i­ca’s Inde­pen­dence Day—out­doors, eat­ing hot dogs, drink­ing beer, wav­ing tiny flags on Main Street, and view­ing fire­works.

Why not lib­er­ate your­self from the tyran­ny of the tra­di­tion­al by spend­ing a por­tion of the day indoors, com­mu­ni­cat­ing affec­tion to your cloth­ing, as orga­ni­za­tion­al expert, Marie Kon­do, author of the best sell­ing book, The Life-Chang­ing Mag­ic of Tidy­ing Up, does in the instruc­tion­al video, above?

Most of us who dwell in small New York City apart­ments are already famil­iar with her teach­ings. Hers is a take-no-pris­on­ers approach to clut­ter con­trol. Any item that doesn’t “spark joy”—be it a pair of stretched-out sweat­pants, a long ago grad­u­a­tion present, a ream of children’s art­work, or a near­ly full bot­tle of slight­ly funky-smelling conditioner—must be dis­card­ed imme­di­ate­ly.

(Note to self: ask Mom what­ev­er became of my Spir­it of ’76 water­col­or. She had it framed because it won a prize. Best Bicen­ten­ni­al Obser­vance by a 4th Grad­er or some such. Things like that don’t just van­ish into thin air, unless…)

The total makeover Kon­do pro­pos­es is an ardu­ous, oft-emo­tion­al, week-long task. Don’t blow your entire July 4th hol­i­day try­ing to com­plete the job.

Instead, take an hour or two to refold your clothes. New York­ers’ draw­ers are where Kondo’s influ­ence is felt most deeply. Whether or not we sub­scribe to her prac­tice of treat­ing each gar­ment like a trea­sured friend, our under­wear def­i­nite­ly has more room to breathe, when not on active duty.

See below for a graph­ic demon­stra­tion of how to best fold shirts, pants, and sev­er­al species of undies, using Kondo’s Kon-Marie method.

And don’t be tempt­ed to decamp to the back­yard bar­be­cue when you run across chal­lenges like over­alls or baby one­sies. Watch below as Kon­do tack­les a shirt with kimono sleeves, a pair of Edo-style mata hike pants, and a sweater with a marked resem­blance to a Thneed.

If you’re begin­ning to feel like fire­works may be over­rat­ed, Kon­do deliv­ers a 45-minute overview of her phi­los­o­phy as part of the Talks at Google pro­gram below. Or lose your­self to an entire playlist of Kon­do fold­ing videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be read­ing from her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late at Indy Reads Books in down­town Indi­anapo­lis, Thurs­day, July 7. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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An Eye-Popping Collection of 400+ Japanese Matchbox Covers: From 1920 through the 1940s

in Art, Design, Life, Travel | July 1st, 2016

Matchbook 1

Phillu­me­ny — the prac­tice of col­lect­ing match­box­es — strikes me as a fun and prac­ti­cal hob­by. As a child, I was fas­ci­nat­ed with the con­tents of a large glass vase my grand­par­ents had ded­i­cat­ed to this pur­suit. Their col­lec­tion was an ersatz record of all the hotels and night­clubs they had appar­ent­ly vis­it­ed before trans­form­ing into a dowdy old­er cou­ple who enjoyed rock­ing in match­ing Bicen­ten­ni­al themed chairs, mon­i­tor­ing their bird feed­er.

As any seri­ous phillu­menist will tell you, one need not have a per­son­al con­nec­tion to the items one is col­lect­ing. Most match­box enthu­si­asts are in it for the art, a micro­cosm of 20th cen­tu­ry design. The urge to pre­serve these dis­pos­able items is under­stand­able, giv­en the amount of artistry that went into them. It was good busi­ness prac­tice for bars and restau­rants to give them to cus­tomers at no charge, even if they nev­er planned to strike so much as a sin­gle match.

Matchbook 2

Smoking’s hey­day is over, but until some­one fig­ures out how to make fire with a smart phone, match­box­es and books are unlike­ly to dis­ap­pear. Wher­ev­er you go, you’ll be able to find good­ies to add to your col­lec­tion, usu­al­ly for free.

Or you could stay at home, trawl­ing the Inter­net for some of the most glo­ri­ous, and sought after exam­ples of the form — those pro­duced in Japan between the two World Wars. As author Steven Heller, co-chair of the School of Visu­al Arts’ MFA Design pro­gram, writes in Print mag­a­zine:

The design­ers were seri­ous­ly influ­enced by import­ed Euro­pean styles such as Vic­to­ri­an and Art Nou­veau… (and lat­er by Art Deco and the Bauhaus, intro­duced through Japan­ese graph­ic arts trade mag­a­zines, and incor­po­rat­ed into the design of match­box labels dur­ing the late 1920s and ’30s). West­ern graph­ic man­ner­isms were har­mo­nious­ly com­bined with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese styles and geome­tries from the Mei­ji peri­od (1868–1912), exem­pli­fied by both their sim­ple and com­plex orna­men­tal com­po­si­tions. Since match­es were a big export indus­try, and the Japan­ese dom­i­nat­ed the mar­kets in the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, Eng­land, France, and even India, match­box design exhib­it­ed a hybrid typog­ra­phy that wed West­ern and Japan­ese styles into an intri­cate mélange.

Find some­thing that catch­es your eye? It shouldn’t cost more than a buck or two to acquire it, though Japan­ese clut­ter-con­trol guru, Marie Kon­do, would no doubt encour­age you to adopt car­toon­ist Roz Chast’s approach to match­book appre­ci­a­tion.

Matchbook 3

Ear­li­er this spring, Chast shared her pas­sion with read­ers of The New York­er, col­lag­ing some of her favorites into an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic where­in she revealed that she doesn’t col­lect the actu­al objects, just the dig­i­tal images. Those famil­iar with Can’t We Talk About Some­thing More Pleas­ant, Chast’s hilar­i­ous­ly painful mem­oir about her dif­fi­cult, aging par­ents’ “gold­en years,” will be unsur­prised that she opt­ed not to add to the unwel­come pile of “crap” that gets hand­ed down to the next gen­er­a­tion when a col­lec­tor pass­es away.

If you’re inspired to start a Chast-style col­lec­tion, have a rum­mage through the large album of Japan­ese vin­tage match­box cov­ers that web design­er, Jane McDe­vitt post­ed to Flickr, from which the images here are drawn.

Those 418 labels, culled from a friend’s grandfather’s col­lec­tion are just the tip of McDevitt’s match­box obses­sion. To date, she’s post­ed over 2050 cov­ers from all around the world, with the bulk hail­ing from East­ern Europe in the 50s and 60s.  You can vis­it her col­lec­tion of 400+ Japan­ese match­box cov­ers here. And if you’re into this stuff, check out the Japan­ese book, Match­box Label Col­lec­tion 1920s-40s.

Matchbook 4

via coudal.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be read­ing from her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late at Indy Reads Books in down­town Indi­anapo­lis, Thurs­day, July 7. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson’s Three Rules for Living Well: A Short and Succinct Life Philosophy

in Life, Music | June 30th, 2016

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Open Cul­ture know us to gush over our favorite celebri­ty cou­ples now and then: John and Yoko, Jean-Paul and Simone, Fri­da and Diego…. Not your usu­al tabloid fare, but the juicy details of these amorous part­ners’ lives also hap­pen to inter­sect with some of our favorite art, music and lit­er­a­ture. One cul­tur­al pow­er cou­ple we haven’t cov­ered much, sur­pris­ing­ly, well deserves the “pow­er” adjec­tive: Lou Reed and Lau­rie Ander­son, two per­son­al­i­ties whose influ­ence on the art and music of the last sev­er­al decades can hard­ly be over­stat­ed.

Has Reed’s rep­u­ta­tion at times been inflat­ed, and Anderson’s under­played? Maybe. She doesn’t get near­ly enough cred­it for the wit­ty, pro­found, mov­ing work she’s done, year after year (with one lengthy hia­tus) since the 70s. Reed’s career since the 70s con­sist­ed of more miss­es than hits. But put them togeth­er (in 1992) and you get a har­mo­nious meet­ing of Reed’s raw, gut-lev­el asser­tions and Anderson’s curi­ous, play­ful con­cepts.

Wit­ness their per­son­al strength togeth­er in the Char­lie Rose excerpt at the top of the post. Reed, who was often a dif­fi­cult inter­view sub­ject, to put it mild­ly, and who gained a rep­u­ta­tion as a bru­tal­ly unpleas­ant, abu­sive rock and roll diva (immor­tal­ized lov­ing­ly in Bowie’s “Queen Bitch”), comes off in this sit-down with Ander­son as almost warm and fuzzy. Did she make him want to be a bet­ter per­son? I don’t know. But Anderson’s short obit­u­ary after his 2013 death remem­bered Reed as a “prince and fight­er,” her longer obit as a “gen­er­ous” soul who enjoyed but­ter­fly hunt­ing, med­i­ta­tion, and kayak­ing. No rea­son he wasn’t all those things too.

When it came to music, Reed could pull his part­ner into the orbit of his sweet R&B songcraft, as in their duet of “Hang on to Your Emo­tions,” fur­ther up, and she could pull him out of it—like John Cale and Nico had done in the Vel­vet Underground—and into the avant-garde drone of her exper­i­men­tal scene (as above in the pair’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er and sax­o­phon­ist John Zorn). Just this past Spring, in one of the most touch­ing musi­cal trib­utes I’ve ever seen, Ander­son recre­at­ed Reed’s abra­sive screw-you to his record label, Met­al Machine Music, as a con­cep­tu­al art piece called Drones, lean­ing sev­er­al of his gui­tars against sev­er­al ful­ly-cranked vin­tage amps, let­ting the feed­back ring out for five days straight.

None of us can be Lou Reed and Lau­rie Ander­son; every cou­ple is hap­py, or unhap­py, in their own way. But what, in the grand tra­di­tion of min­ing celebri­ty cou­ple’s lives for advice, can we learn from them? I guess the over­all message—as Ander­son her­self sug­gest­ed in her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame accep­tance speech for Reed (above, in shaky audi­ence video)—is this: keep it sim­ple. Kansas State Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor Philip Nel points out Anderson’s “wise… thought­ful” words on the sub­ject of liv­ing well, deliv­ered in her speech at the 8:55 mark:

I’m remind­ed also of the three rules we came up with, rules to live by. And I’m just going to tell you what they are because they come in real­ly handy. Because things hap­pen so fast, it’s always good to have a few, like, watch­words to fall back on.

And the first one is: One. Don’t be afraid of any­one. Now, can you imag­ine liv­ing your life afraid of no one? Two. Get a real­ly good bull­shit detec­tor. And three. Three is be real­ly, real­ly ten­der. And with those three things, you don’t need any­thing else.

Can you imag­ine Lou Reed as “real­ly, real­ly ten­der”? He cer­tain­ly was in song, if not always in per­son. In any case, these three rules seem to me to encap­su­late a per­son­al phi­los­o­phy built solid­ly on fear­less integri­ty and com­pas­sion. Dif­fi­cult to live by, but well worth the effort. And because I’m now feel­ing super warm and fuzzy about Lou and Lau­rie, I’ll leave you with the short WNYC inter­view clip below, in which she reveals her favorite Lou Reed song, which he hap­pened to write about her.

via Nine Kinds of Pie

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island      

An Ani­mat­ed Lou Reed Explains The Vel­vet Underground’s Artis­tic Goals, and Why The Bea­t­les Were “Garbage”

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

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

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Photographer Bill Cunningham (RIP) on Living La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

in Design, Life, Media, Photography | June 27th, 2016

New York City lost some of its charm this week­end, with the news that Bill Cun­ning­ham, the Times’ beloved, on-the-street fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er, had passed away at the age of 87.

Much has been made over the fact that he was des­ig­nat­ed a liv­ing land­mark by the New York Land­marks Con­ser­van­cy. It’s an hon­or he earned, hit­ting the streets dai­ly in his usu­al mufti of khakis, sneak­ers, and bleu de tra­vail cot­ton jack­et to hunt his quar­ry by bicy­cle, but one could nev­er accuse him of court­ing it.

His employ­er fre­quent­ly sent him to cov­er the elite, but he had no inter­est in join­ing their ranks, despite his own grow­ing celebri­ty. His “Evening Hours” col­umn doc­u­ment­ed the dressed up doings on the “par­ty cir­cuit.” (This liv­ing New York land­mark nev­er shook his Boston accent, one of the chief delights of his week­ly video series for the Times.) A recent install­ment sug­gests that shoot­ing the likes of actress Nicole Kid­man and Vogue Edi­tor-in-Chief Anna Win­tour dur­ing tony pri­vate func­tions at MoMA and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art (“aht”) was far less excit­ing than encoun­ter­ing col­or­ful­ly clad Himalayan dancers and a children’s craft table at an entire­ly free Sun­day after­noon street fair spon­sored by the Rubin Muse­um of Art.

Play­wright Win­ter Miller shared this anec­dote the morn­ing Cunningham’s death was announced:

…he did­n’t give a fk about who was famous or not. I once met Bill Mur­ray in the lob­by of the old New York Times build­ing. He’d shown up to see if he could track down a pho­to of him and his then-wife that Bill had shot. I brought one Bill to the oth­er, but Bill (Cun­ning­ham) was out on the streets with his blue jack­et, white bike and cam­era. When he returned, I explained how I’d come to take Bill Mur­ray under my wing to help him track down this pho­to. Bill had no idea who Bill Mur­ray was and not unkind­ly told me (that) none of his pho­tos were dig­i­tal, so it would involve him per­son­al­ly dig­ging through old files and he did­n’t have time. I admired that he knew his pri­or­i­ties and nev­er strayed from his task. I had been eager to get Bill Mur­ray the thing he’d want­ed and would have combed though vast files myself… but I nev­er looked. Bill Cun­ning­ham’s files were impen­e­tra­ble to an out­sider.

One likes to think that Mur­ray, who’s known for using his fame as his tick­et to hang with ordi­nary mor­tals, would find much to love about that.

In fact, Mur­ray strikes me as the per­fect can­di­date to play Cun­ning­ham in a biopic cov­er­ing the six decades spent liv­ing and work­ing in a stu­dio over Carnegie Hall. As far as I know, Bill Cun­ning­ham New York, a fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary, is the only time his sto­ry has been cap­tured on the sil­ver screen. How can it be that no one has thought to make a movie cen­tered on the lost bohemi­an peri­od Cun­ning­ham recalls so fond­ly in the slideshow above? It sounds like an Amer­i­can spin on the Lost Generation—sneaking down to the unlocked stage for pho­tog­ra­ph­er Edit­ta Sher­man’s impromp­tu ama­teur per­for­mances of The Dying Swan, an elder­ly cir­cus per­former and her dog roam­ing the halls on a uni­cy­cle, some­one always in a state of undress…

Per­haps Murray’s fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor, Wes Ander­son, could be enlist­ed to set these wheels in motion. The col­or­ful cast of char­ac­ters seem tai­lor-made for this direc­tor, already a fash­ion world favorite.

The hats alone!

Pri­or to acquir­ing an Olym­pus Pen D half-frame cam­era from a friend in 1966, Cun­ning­ham worked as a milliner. Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe used to crack her­self up, try­ing them on in between class­es at the Actor’s Stu­dio. The wife of a Carnegie Hall neigh­bor and Cunningham’s boss, fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ray Solowin­s­ki, served as his mod­el. After he was estab­lished as a fash­ion expert in his own right, Cun­ning­ham admit­ted that his designs were “a lit­tle too exot­ic – you know, for nor­mal peo­ple”.

billhat6

I think they’re won­der­ful, and hope­ful­ly, Bill Mur­ray, Wes Ander­son and you will agree. See below. I think they’re won­der­ful, and hope­ful­ly, Bill Mur­ray, Wes Ander­son and you will agree. Hats off to the inim­itable Bill Cun­ning­ham, as much a fix­ture of New York as Carnegie Hall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

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

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