Download Original Bauhaus Books & Journals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy & More

in Art, Books | October 12th, 2015

In 1919, Ger­man archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius found­ed Bauhaus, the most influ­en­tial art school of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Bauhaus defined mod­ernist design and rad­i­cal­ly changed our rela­tion­ship with every­day objects. Gropius wrote in his man­i­festo Pro­gramm des Staatlichen Bauhaus­es Weimar that “There is no essen­tial dif­fer­ence between the artist and the arti­san.” His new school, which fea­tured fac­ul­ty that includ­ed the likes of Paul Klee, Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, did indeed erase the cen­turies-old line between applied arts and fine arts.

Bauhaus archi­tec­ture sand­blast­ed away the ornate flour­ish­es com­mon with ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry build­ings, favor­ing instead the clean, sleek lines of indus­tri­al fac­to­ries. Design­er Mar­cel Breuer reimag­ined the com­mon chair by strip­ping it down to its most ele­men­tal form. Her­bert Bay­er rein­vent­ed and mod­ern­ized graph­ic design by focus­ing on visu­al clar­i­ty. Gun­ta Stöl­zl, Mar­i­anne Brandt and Chris­t­ian Dell rad­i­cal­ly remade such diverse objects as fab­rics and tea ket­tles.

Nowa­days, of course, get­ting one of those Bauhaus tea ket­tles, or even an orig­i­nal copy of Gropius’s man­i­festo, would cost a small for­tune. For­tu­nate­ly for design nerds, typog­ra­phy mavens and archi­tec­ture enthu­si­asts every­where, the good folks over at Mono­skop have post­ed online a whole set of beau­ti­ful­ly designed pub­li­ca­tions from the sto­ried school.

Click here to pick out indi­vid­ual works or here to just get all of them. Sad­ly, though, you can’t down­load a teaket­tle.

The list of Books in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive includes:

• 1. Wal­ter Gropius (ed.), Inter­na­tionale Architek­tur, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925.
• 2. Paul Klee, Päd­a­gogis­ches Skizzen­buch, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925, 50 pp.
  • Ped­a­gog­i­cal Sketch­book, intro. & trans. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, New York: Fred­er­ick A. Praeger, 1953 (in Eng­lish)
  • Παιδαγωγικό Σημειωματάριο, trans. Β. Λαγοπούλου, 1976. (in Greek)
  • Ped­a­gogikheskie eskizy, trans. N. Druzhkovoy, 2005. (in Russ­ian)
• 3. Adolf Mey­er (ed.), Ein Ver­suchshaus des Bauhaus­es in Weimar, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1924.
• 4. Die Bühne am Bauhaus, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925.
  • The The­ater of the Bauhaus, trans. Arthur S. Wensinger, Mid­dle­town, Conn.: Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1961. (in Eng­lish)
• 5. Piet Mon­dri­an, Neue Gestal­tung, Neo­plas­tiz­imus, Nieuwe Beeld­ing, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925.
• 6. Theo van Does­burg, Grund­be­griffe der neuen gestal­tenden Kun­st, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925.
  • Prin­ci­ples of Neo-Plas­tic Art, Lon­don: Lund Humphries, 1969. (in Eng­lish)
• 7. Wal­ter Gropius (ed.), Neue Arbeit­en der Bauhauswerk­stäf­fen, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925.
• 8. L. Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1925, 115 pp; 2nd ed., 1927, 140 pp. Incl. “Dynamik der Gross-Stadt.”
  • Paint­ing Pho­tog­ra­phy Film, trans. Janet Selig­man, Lon­don: Lund Humphries, 1969. (in Eng­lish)
• 9. Kandin­sky, Punkt und Lin­ie zu Fläche: Beitrag zur Analyse der malerischen Ele­mente, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1926.
  • Point and Line to Plane: Con­tri­bu­tion to the Analy­sis of the Pic­to­r­i­al Ele­ments, trans. Howard Dearstyne and Hilla Rebay, New York: Solomon R. Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, 1947, 200 pp. (in Eng­lish)
• 10. J.J.P. Oud, Hol­ländis­che Architek­tur, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1929.
• 11. Kasimir Male­witsch, Die gegen­stand­slose Welt, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1927.
• 12. Wal­ter Gropius, Bauhaus­baut­en Dessau, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1930.
• 13. Albert Gleizes, Kubis­mus, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1928.
• 14. Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, Von Mate­r­i­al zur Architek­tur, Munich: Albert Lan­gen, 1929, 241 pp; fac­sim­i­le repr., Mainz and Berlin: Flo­ri­an Kupfer­berg, 1968.
  • The New Vision: From Mate­r­i­al to Archi­tec­ture, trans. Daphne M. Hoff­man, New York: Breuer War­ren and Put­nam, 1930; exp.rev.ed. as The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist, New York: George Wit­ten­born, 1947, 92 pp. (in Eng­lish)

And here are some key Bauhaus jour­nals:

1. bauhaus 1 (1926). 5 pages, 42 cm. Down­load (23 MB).
2. bauhaus: zeitschrift für bau und gestal­tung 2:1 (Feb 1928). Down­load (17 MB).
3. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:1 (Jan 1929). Down­load (17 MB).
4. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:2 (Apr-Jun 1929). Down­load (15 MB).
5. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:3 (Jul-Sep 1929). Down­load (16 MB).
6. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 2 (Jul 1931). Down­load (15 MB).

Get more in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Home­made Hand Pup­pets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Cre­ate an Abstract Com­po­si­tion

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

100,000+ Wonderful Pieces of Theater Ephemera Digitized by The New York Public Library

in Archives, Dance, Design, Film, Theatre | September 11th, 2015

Liv­ing in New York, it’s not unusu­al to encounter ardent the­ater lovers who’ve care­ful­ly pre­served decades worth of pro­grams, tick­ets, and ephemera from every play they’ve ever seen. These col­lec­tions can get a bit hoarder‑y, as any­one who’s ever sort­ed through the belong­ings of a recent­ly depart­ed life­long audi­ence mem­ber can attest.

If the­ater is dead — as gloomy Cas­san­dras have been pre­dict­ing since the advent of screens — these mono­liths of Play­bills and stubs con­sti­tute one hell of a tomb.

(Go ahead, toss that 1962 pro­gram to The Sound of Music…and why not dri­ve a stake through poor Uncle Mau­rice’s cold, dead heart while you’re at it? All he ever want­ed was to sit, eyes shin­ing in the dark, and maybe hang around the stage door in hopes of scor­ing Acad­e­my Award win­ner, Warn­er Bax­ter’s auto­graph, below. )

For those of us who con­ceive of the­atre as a still-liv­ing enti­ty, the New York Pub­lic Library’s recent deci­sion to start dig­i­tiz­ing its Bil­ly Rose The­atre Divi­sion archive is cause for cel­e­bra­tion. Such grand scale com­mit­ment to this art form’s past ensures that it will enjoy a robust future. Hope­ful­ly some­day all of the approx­i­mate­ly 10 mil­lion items in the Bil­ly Rose archive can be accessed from any­where in the world. But, for now, you can start with over 100,000 items. The com­par­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age avail­able now is still a boon to direc­tors, design­ers, writ­ers, and per­form­ers look­ing for inspi­ra­tion.

It’s also wild­ly fun for those of us who nev­er made it much past play­ing a poin­set­tia in the sec­ond grade hol­i­day pageant.

Tru­ly, there’s some­thing for every­one. The library sin­gles out a few tan­ta­liz­ing morsels on its web­site:

A researcher can exam­ine a 1767 pro­gram for a per­for­mance of Romeo and Juli­et in Philadel­phia, study Katharine Hepburn’s per­son­al papers (ed. note: wit­ness the many moods of Kate, above), review Elia Kazan’s work­ing script and notes for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Street­car Named Desire, exam­ine posters for Har­ry Houdini’s per­for­mances, read a script for an episode of Cap­tain Kan­ga­roo, view set designs for the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of Guys & Dolls and cos­tume designs for the Ziegfeld Fol­lies, ana­lyze a video­tape of the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of A Cho­rus Line, and find rich sub­ject files and scrap­books that doc­u­ment the most pop­u­lar and obscure per­for­mances from across the cen­turies. 

You might also prowl for Hal­loween cos­tumes. What kid wouldn’t want to trick or treat as one of Robert Ten Eyck Stevenson’s 1926 designs for the Green­wich Vil­lage Fol­lies?

There’s cer­tain­ly no shame in moon­ing over a for­got­ten star… for the record, the one above is Alla Naz­i­mo­va in Salomé.

And there’s some­thing gal­va­niz­ing about see­ing a famil­iar star escap­ing the con­fines of her best known role, the only one for which she is remem­bered, truth be told…

For me, the hands down pearl of the col­lec­tion is the telegram at the top of the page. For­mer First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt sent it Gyp­sy Rose Lee to her­ald the re-open­ing of Gyp­sy, the musi­cal based on her life.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, telegrams were once an open­ing night tra­di­tion, as was stay­ing up to read the review in the ear­ly edi­tion, hot off the press.

More infor­ma­tion on vis­it­ing the archive, online or in per­son, can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and per­former, whose lat­est play, Fawn­book, opens in New York this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Drawings & Paintings of Richard Feynman: Art Expresses a Dramatic “Feeling of Awe”

in Art, Physics, Science | September 10th, 2015

I first encoun­tered bon­go-play­ing physi­cist Richard Feyn­man in a col­lege com­po­si­tion class geared toward sci­ence majors. I was not, mind you, a sci­ence major, but a dis­or­ga­nized sopho­more who reg­is­tered late and grabbed the last avail­able seat in a required writ­ing course. Skep­ti­cal, I thumbed through the read­ing in the col­lege book­store. As I browsed Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man!—the first of many pop­u­lar mem­oirs released by the affa­ble con­trar­i­an scientist—the human­ist in me perked up. Here was a guy who knew how to write; a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who spoke the lan­guage of every­day peo­ple.

Feyn­man cul­ti­vat­ed his pop­ulist per­sona to appeal to those who might be oth­er­wise turned off by abstract, abstruse sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, his name has come to stand for the best exam­ples of pop­u­lar sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is often through one of Feynman’s acces­si­ble, non-spe­cial­ist books or pre­sen­ta­tions that peo­ple learn of his work with the Man­hat­tan project, his con­tri­bu­tions to quan­tum mechan­ics, and his Nobel Prize. But Feynman’s extracur­ric­u­lar pursuits—from safe-crack­ing to drum­ming to exper­i­ment­ing with LSD—were also gen­uine expres­sions of his idio­syn­crat­ic char­ac­ter, as was anoth­er of his pas­sions for which he is not very well known: art.

Feyn­man took up the pur­suit at the age of 44, and con­tin­ued to draw and paint for the rest of his life, sign­ing his work “Ofey.” Many of his draw­ings dis­play the awk­ward, off-kil­ter per­spec­tive of the begin­ner, and a great many oth­ers look very accom­plished indeed. In an intro­duc­to­ry essay to a pub­lished col­lec­tion of his art­work, Feyn­man describes what moti­vat­ed him to take up this par­tic­u­lar avo­ca­tion:

I want­ed very much to learn to draw, for a rea­son that I kept to myself: I want­ed to con­vey an emo­tion I have about the beau­ty of the world. It’s dif­fi­cult to describe because it’s an emo­tion. It’s anal­o­gous to the feel­ing one has in reli­gion that has to do with a god that con­trols every­thing in the uni­verse: there’s a gen­er­al­i­ty aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so dif­fer­ent and behave so dif­fer­ent­ly are all run ‘behind the scenes’ by the same orga­ni­za­tion, the same phys­i­cal laws. It’s an appre­ci­a­tion of the math­e­mat­i­cal beau­ty of nature, of how she works inside; a real­iza­tion that the phe­nom­e­na we see result from the com­plex­i­ty of the inner work­ings between atoms; a feel­ing of how dra­mat­ic and won­der­ful it is. It’s  — of sci­en­tif­ic awe — which I felt could be com­mu­ni­cat­ed through a draw­ing to some­one who had also had that emo­tion. I could remind him, for a moment, of this feel­ing about the glo­ries of the uni­verse.

As you can see above, he took his work seri­ous­ly. Most of his draw­ings con­sist of por­traits and nudes, with the occa­sion­al land­scape or still life. You can see more exten­sive gal­leries of Feynman’s art at Amus­ing­Plan­et, Muse­um Syn­di­cate and Brain Pick­ings.

Feynman’s preoccupation—and full immersion—in the rela­tion­ship between the arts and sci­ences marks him as a Renais­sance man in per­haps the purest def­i­n­i­tion of the term: his approach close­ly resem­bles that of Leonar­do da Vin­ci, a like­ness that comes to the fore in the work below, which is either a col­lec­tion of sketch­es doo­dled over with for­mu­lae, or a col­lec­tion of for­mu­lae cov­ered with doo­dles. Either way, it’s a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the vision­ary mind of Feyn­man and his regard for ordi­nary lan­guage, peo­ple, and objects—and for “sci­en­tif­ic awe.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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

How Did David Fincher Become the Kubrick of Our Time? A New, 3.5 Hour Series of Video Essays Explains

in Film | September 10th, 2015

Most film-lovers must long for the next Stan­ley Kubrick, a new the­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous, aes­thet­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, big bud­get-com­mand­ing, and take-after-take per­fec­tion­is­tic cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary for our time. But some film-lovers believe our time already has its own Stan­ley Kubrick in David Finch­er, direc­tor of such high­ly acclaimed pic­tures as Fight Club, Zodi­ac, The Social Net­work, The Game, and Sev­en — excuse me, Se7en. And just like Kubrick, Finch­er did­n’t start off at that lev­el of the game. No, his career first gath­ered momen­tum with com­mer­cials, a bunch of music videos for the likes of The Motels, Paula Abdul, and Rick Spring­field, and of course, Alien 3 — excuse me, Alien³.

So what exact­ly went wrong with that crit­i­cal­ly sav­aged yet (we now real­ize) auteur-direct­ed chap­ter of the Alien fran­chise? That ques­tion gets addressed in detail ear­ly on in the lat­est mul­ti-part video essay from Cameron Beyl’s Direc­tors Series.

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured the Direc­tors Series’ pre­vi­ous essay in April, but if you don’t, it should­n’t sur­prise you to learn that it exam­ined the Kubrick oeu­vre. Beyl end­ed it with a dec­la­ra­tion of his own mem­ber­ship in the afore­men­tioned Finch­er-Is-Our-Kubrick club, and cinephiles all over the inter­net thrilled to his announce­ment of Finch­er as his next object of analy­sis.

To date, five episodes of The Direc­tors Series: David Finch­er have come out, which deal with Fincher’s career as fol­lows:

1. “Bap­tism By Fire” (Rick Spring­field­’s music videos and The Beat of the Life Drum, assort­ed music videos and com­mer­cials, Alien 3)
2. “Redemp­tion & Tri­umph” (assort­ed com­mer­cials, Se7en)
3. “Cap­tur­ing the Zeit­geist” (The Game, Fight Club, Pan­ic Room)
4. “Into the Dig­i­tal Realm” (var­i­ous com­mer­cials and music videos, Zodi­ac, The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton)
5. “The Bleed­ing Edge”

Even though the series has­n’t yet reached The Social Net­work, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, and Gone Girl, you won’t come away from the case Beyl has assem­bled so far uncon­vinced of Fincher’s influ­ences, pref­er­ences, and obses­sions: crime, decay, punk, obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, sur­veil­lance, cor­po­rate and per­son­al wealth, unusu­al illus­tra­tive visu­al effects, col­ors like blue and orange in high con­trast, nihilism, pre­de­ces­sors like Rid­ley and Tony Scott — the list goes on, and will go on as long as Fincher’s career does. It says a great deal about his film­mak­ing skill and style that his work has become so wide­ly known for both its over­whelm­ing­ly “grit­ty, grimy” and over­whelm­ing­ly “cold, clin­i­cal” look and feel. But if any direc­tor can ever arrive at this sort of tow­er­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry rep­u­ta­tion, Finch­er can, and if any video essays can explain how he did, the Direc­tors Series can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jack Kerouac’s Poetry & Prose Read/Performed by 20 Icons: Hunter S. Thompson, Patti Smith, William S. Burroughs, Johnny Depp & More

in Music, Poetry | September 7th, 2015

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Last year, we fea­tured a few read­ings and per­for­mances of the work of Jack Ker­ouac by musi­cians like Pat­ti Smith, John Cale, Thurston Moore, and Joe Strum­mer. Those tracks got laid down for 1997’s Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness, a trib­ute to the author of On the Road and The Dhar­ma Bums and an Amer­i­can cul­tur­al pres­ence as res­o­nant as they come. Now, you can lis­ten to the whole thing on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here) and rev­el in ren­di­tions of Ker­ouac’s poet­ry and prose by an even wider selec­tion of beloved alter­na­tive musi­cians: War­ren Zevon, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Ved­der, REM’s Michael Stipe, Son­ic Youth’s Lee Ranal­do show up on the ros­ter, to name but a few.

It also fea­tures con­tri­bu­tions from a great many sub­cul­ture-defin­ing non-musi­cians, includ­ing writ­ers like Hunter S. Thomp­son and William S. Bur­roughs, come­di­an Richard Lewis, actor Matt Dil­lon, poet Mag­gie Estep, and a gen­uine Beat emi­nence like Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti. It even brings in cul­tur­al fig­ures who, though known for oth­er pur­suits, also estab­lished enough of a side career in music to hold their own in the record­ing stu­dio, like John­ny Depp and The Bas­ket­ball Diaries author Jim Car­roll. We even hear Ker­ouac as inter­pret­ed with the help of no less a life­long musi­cian — and no less unex­pect­ed a musi­cian on an album like this — than Aero­smith’s Steven Tyler.

“Four­teen of the 25 tracks on this 79½-minute disc are drawn from Ker­ouac’s poet­ry book Pomes All Sizes,” writes All Music Guide’s William Ruhlmann. “The rest come from his nov­els (noth­ing from On the Road, though) and let­ters, with some unpub­lished work also includ­ed.” Ruhlmann points out Ker­ouac’s own lack of enthu­si­asm for rock and pref­er­ence for jazz, high­light­ing Ranal­do, Zevon, Dil­lon, and Lewis’ con­tri­bu­tions as clos­est to the man’s own sen­si­bil­i­ty. But alto­geth­er, he writes, they “present a good sam­pling of Ker­ouac’s lit­er­ary con­cerns, and, whether appro­pri­ate or not, the record­ings demon­strate his exten­sive influ­ence” — a per­fect demon­stra­tion of how the cool of one era can inspire the cool of anoth­er.

Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness will be added to our list of col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Pat­ti Smith, John Cale & Oth­er Cul­tur­al Icons (with Music by Joe Strum­mer)

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Albert Einstein​ & Sigmund Freud​ Exchange Letters and Debate How to Make the World Free from War (1932)

in Letters, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology | September 3rd, 2015

The prob­lem of vio­lence, per­haps the true root of all social ills, seems irre­solv­able. Yet, as most thought­ful peo­ple have real­ized after the wars of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the dan­gers human aggres­sion pose have only increased expo­nen­tial­ly along with glob­al­iza­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment. And as Albert Ein­stein rec­og­nized after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasaki—which he part­ly helped to engi­neer with the Man­hat­tan Project—the aggres­sive poten­tial of nations in war had reached mass sui­ci­dal lev­els.

After Einstein’s involve­ment in the cre­ation of the atom­ic bomb, he spent his life “work­ing for dis­ar­ma­ment and glob­al gov­ern­ment,” writes psy­chol­o­gist Mark Lei­th, “anguished by his impos­si­ble, Faus­t­ian deci­sion.” Yet, as we dis­cov­er in let­ters Ein­stein wrote to Sig­mund Freud in 1932, he had been advo­cat­ing for a glob­al solu­tion to war long before the start of World War II. Ein­stein and Freud’s cor­re­spon­dence took place under the aus­pices of the League of Nation’s new­ly-formed Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Intel­lec­tu­al Coop­er­a­tion, cre­at­ed to fos­ter dis­cus­sion between promi­nent pub­lic thinkers. Ein­stein enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly chose Freud as his inter­locu­tor.

In his first let­ter to the psy­chol­o­gist, he writes, “This is the prob­lem: Is there any way of deliv­er­ing mankind from the men­ace of war?” Well before the atom­ic age, Ein­stein alleges the urgency of the ques­tion is a mat­ter of “com­mon knowledge”—that “with the advance of mod­ern sci­ence, this issue has come to mean a mat­ter of life and death for Civ­i­liza­tion as we know it.”

Ein­stein reveals him­self as a sort of Pla­ton­ist in pol­i­tics, endors­ing The Repub­lic’s vision of rule by elite philoso­pher-kings. But unlike Socrates in that work, the physi­cist pro­pos­es not city-states, but an entire world gov­ern­ment of intel­lec­tu­al elites, who hold sway over both reli­gious lead­ers and the League of Nations. The con­se­quence of such a poli­ty, he writes, would be world peace—the price, like­ly, far too high for any world leader to pay:

The quest of inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty involves the uncon­di­tion­al sur­ren­der by every nation, in a cer­tain mea­sure, of its lib­er­ty of action—its sov­er­eign­ty that is to say—and it is clear beyond all doubt that no oth­er road can lead to such secu­ri­ty.

Ein­stein express­es his pro­pos­al in some sin­is­ter-sound­ing terms, ask­ing how it might be pos­si­ble for a “small clique to bend the will of the major­i­ty.” His final ques­tion to Freud: “Is it pos­si­ble to con­trol man’s men­tal evo­lu­tion so as to make him proof against the psy­chosis of hate and destruc­tive­ness?”

Freud’s response to Ein­stein, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber, 1932, sets up a fas­ci­nat­ing dialec­tic between the physicist’s per­haps dan­ger­ous­ly naïve opti­mism and the psychologist’s unsen­ti­men­tal appraisal of the human sit­u­a­tion. Freud’s mode of analy­sis tends toward what we would now call evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, or what he calls a “’mythol­o­gy’ of the instincts.” He gives a most­ly spec­u­la­tive account of the pre­his­to­ry of human con­flict, in which “a path was traced that led away from vio­lence to law”—itself main­tained by orga­nized vio­lence.

Freud makes explic­it ref­er­ence to ancient sources, writ­ing of the “Pan­hel­lenic con­cep­tion, the Greeks’ aware­ness of supe­ri­or­i­ty over their bar­bar­ian neigh­bors.” This kind of pro­to-nation­al­ism “was strong enough to human­ize the meth­ods of war­fare.” Like the Hel­lenis­tic mod­el, Freud pro­pos­es for indi­vid­u­als a course of human­iza­tion through edu­ca­tion and what he calls “iden­ti­fi­ca­tion” with “what­ev­er leads men to share impor­tant inter­ests,” thus cre­at­ing a “com­mu­ni­ty of feel­ing.” These means, he grants, may lead to peace. “From our ‘mythol­o­gy’ of the instincts,” he writes, “we may eas­i­ly deduce a for­mu­la for an indi­rect method of elim­i­nat­ing war.”

And yet, Freud con­cludes with ambiva­lence and a great deal of skep­ti­cism about the elim­i­na­tion of vio­lent instincts and war. He con­trasts ancient Greek pol­i­tics with “the Bol­she­vist con­cep­tions” that pro­pose a future end of war and which are like­ly “under present con­di­tions, doomed to fail.” Refer­ring to his the­o­ry of the com­pet­ing bina­ry instincts he calls Eros and Thanatos—roughly love (or lust) and death drives—Freud arrives at what he calls a plau­si­ble “mythol­o­gy” of human exis­tence:

The upshot of these obser­va­tions, as bear­ing on the sub­ject in hand, is that there is no like­li­hood of our being able to sup­press human­i­ty’s aggres­sive ten­den­cies. In some hap­py cor­ners of the earth, they say, where nature brings forth abun­dant­ly what­ev­er man desires, there flour­ish races whose lives go gen­tly by; unknow­ing of aggres­sion or con­straint. This I can hard­ly cred­it; I would like fur­ther details about these hap­py folk.

Nonethe­less, he says weari­ly and with more than a hint of res­ig­na­tion, “per­haps our hope” that war will end in the near future, “is not chimeri­cal.” Freud’s let­ter offers no easy answers, and shies away from the kinds of ide­al­is­tic polit­i­cal cer­tain­ties of Ein­stein. For this, the physi­cist expressed grat­i­tude, call­ing Freud’s lengthy response “a tru­ly clas­sic reply…. We can­not know what may grow from such seed.”

This exchange of let­ters, con­tends Hum­boldt State Uni­ver­si­ty phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor John Pow­ell, “has nev­er been giv­en the atten­tion it deserves.… By the time the exchange between Ein­stein and Freud was pub­lished in 1933 under the title Why War?, Hitler, who was to dri­ve both men into exile, was already in pow­er, and the let­ters nev­er achieved the wide cir­cu­la­tion intend­ed for them.” Their cor­re­spon­dence is now no less rel­e­vant, and the ques­tions they address no less urgent and vex­ing. You can read the com­plete exchange at pro­fes­sor Powell’s site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

The Famous Let­ter Where Freud Breaks His Rela­tion­ship with Jung (1913)

Sig­mund Freud Appears in Rare, Sur­viv­ing Video & Audio Record­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

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

Marilyn Monroe Recounts Her Harrowing Experience in a Psychiatric Ward in a 1961 Letter

in Film, Letters | August 26th, 2015

By the end of 1960, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was com­ing apart.

She spent much of that year shoot­ing what would be her final com­plet­ed movie – The Mis­fits (see a still from the trail­er above). Arthur Miller penned the film, which is about a beau­ti­ful, frag­ile woman who falls in love with a much old­er man. The script was pret­ty clear­ly based on his own trou­bled mar­riage with Mon­roe. The pro­duc­tion was by all accounts spec­tac­u­lar­ly pun­ish­ing. Shot in the deserts of Neva­da, the tem­per­a­ture on set would reg­u­lar­ly climb north of 100 degrees. Direc­tor John Hus­ton spent much of the shoot rag­ing­ly drunk. Star Clark Gable dropped dead from a heart attack less than a week after pro­duc­tion wrapped. And Mon­roe watched as her hus­band, who was on set, fell in love with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Inge Morath. Nev­er one blessed with con­fi­dence or a thick skin, Mon­roe retreat­ed into a daze of pre­scrip­tion drugs. Mon­roe and Miller announced their divorce on Novem­ber 11, 1960.

A few months lat­er, the emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ed movie star was com­mit­ted by her psy­cho­an­a­lyst Dr. Mar­i­anne Kris to the Payne Whit­ney Psy­chi­atric Clin­ic in New York. Mon­roe thought she was going in for a rest cure. Instead, she was escort­ed to a padded cell. The four days she spent in the psych ward proved to be among the most dis­tress­ing of her life.

In a riv­et­ing 6‑page let­ter to her oth­er shrink, Dr. Ralph Green­son, writ­ten soon after her release, she detailed her ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.

There was no empa­thy at Payne-Whit­ney — it had a very bad effect — they asked me after putting me in a “cell” (I mean cement blocks and all) for very dis­turbed depressed patients (except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I had­n’t com­mit­ted. The inhu­man­i­ty there I found archa­ic. They asked me why I was­n’t hap­py there (every­thing was under lock and key; things like elec­tric lights, dress­er draw­ers, bath­rooms, clos­ets, bars con­cealed on the win­dows — the doors have win­dows so patients can be vis­i­ble all the time, also, the vio­lence and mark­ings still remain on the walls from for­mer patients). I answered: “Well, I’d have to be nuts if I like it here.”

Mon­roe quick­ly became des­per­ate.

I sat on the bed try­ing to fig­ure if I was giv­en this sit­u­a­tion in an act­ing impro­vi­sa­tion what would I do. So I fig­ured, it’s a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. I admit it was a loud squeak but I got the idea from a movie I made once called “Don’t Both­er to Knock”. I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it, and it was hard to do because I had nev­er bro­ken any­thing in my life — against the glass inten­tion­al­ly. It took a lot of bang­ing to get even a small piece of glass — so I went over with the glass con­cealed in my hand and sat qui­et­ly on the bed wait­ing for them to come in. They did, and I said to them “If you are going to treat me like a nut I’ll act like a nut”. I admit the next thing is corny but I real­ly did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indi­cat­ed if they did­n’t let me out I would harm myself — the fur­thest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Green­son I’m an actress and would nev­er inten­tion­al­ly mark or mar myself. I’m just that vain.

Dur­ing her four days there, she was sub­ject­ed to forced baths and a com­plete loss of pri­va­cy and per­son­al free­dom. The more she sobbed and resist­ed, the more the doc­tors there thought she might actu­al­ly be psy­chot­ic. Monroe’s sec­ond hus­band, Joe DiMag­gio, res­cued her by get­ting her released ear­ly, over the objec­tions of the staff.

You can read the full let­ter (where she also talks about read­ing the let­ters of Sig­mund Freud) over at Let­ters of Note. And while there, make sure you pick up a copy of the very ele­gant Let­ters of Note book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1952)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Judy!: 1993 Judith Butler Fanzine Gives Us An Irreverent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Structuralist Gender Theorist

in Gender, Philosophy | August 20th, 2015

Punk rock and its accoutrements—including the hand­made, Xerox­ed ‘zine—pass into his­to­ry, replaced by Tay­lor Swift and Snapchat, or what­ev­er. But as a piece of his­to­ry, the ‘zine will always stand as a mark­er of a par­tic­u­lar era, of the 80s/early 90s explo­sion of crit­i­cal con­scious­ness fos­tered by young kids read­ing Niet­zsche, Fou­cault, and Camus, then form­ing their own bands, labels, and net­works. Cru­cial to the peri­od is the emer­gence of Riot Grrrl bands like Biki­ni Kill and their assault on oppres­sive gen­der pol­i­tics, in punk rock and every­where else. And cru­cial to many such punks’ under­stand­ing of gen­der was the work of crit­i­cal the­o­rist Judith But­ler.

“Riot Grrrl didn’t her­ald the begin­nings of third wave fem­i­nism,” writes Sophia Satchell Baeza in Can­vas, “we’ll give that to the emer­gence of post-struc­tural­ist Queer the­o­ry, and the work of Judith Butler—but it did help define it aes­thet­i­cal­ly as much as for­mal­ly for a new gen­er­a­tion of indig­nant fem­i­nists.” An essen­tial part of that aesthetic—the ‘zine—spread the tenets of Riot Grrrl anger, deter­mi­na­tion, and irony to cities far and wide. And, in 1993, a group of intel­lec­tu­al scen­esters cre­at­ed the ulti­mate punk homage to Butler’s unde­ni­able influ­ence: Judy!, an hon­est-to-good­ness Judith But­ler fanzine, com­plete with murky, mimeo­graphed pho­to spreads and ser­i­al killer type­script. (See the cov­er at the top, with pho­to of Judy Gar­land.) “Let’s talk about that real glam­our gal of the­o­ry, Judy But­ler,” begins one free-form intro­duc­to­ry essay.

She’s espe­cial­ly good to see live, if you can. Her per­for­mances are rife with wit­ty repar­tee about her mom or what­ev­er and the three times I’ve seen her, she’s been sport­ing lit­tle tai­lored black jack­ets. She’s a bit Gap but she’s still a fox.

This cav­a­lier hip­ster tone hides the voice of a like­ly grad stu­dent, who men­tions M.L.A. (the Mod­ern Lan­guage Association’s con­fer­ence), and oth­er post-struc­tural­ist the­o­rists like Gay­a­tri Spi­vak, Eve Sedg­wick, and Julia Kris­te­va. There are foot­notes and ref­er­ences to Butler’s clas­sic Gen­der Trou­ble amidst much more irrev­er­ent, cat­ty rhetoric like “Judy is the num­ber one dom­i­na­tor, and the only thing you or I can do is sub­mit glad­ly.” It’s great fun, if that’s what you’re into—and if you get the com­bo of ‘zine aes­thet­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic fem­i­nist the­o­ry. There’s even a quiz to test your knowl­edge of the lat­ter’s high priest­ess pro­fes­sors and inscrutable argot: “are you a the­o­ry-fetishiz­ing bis­cuit­head?”

As much as it know­ing­ly pokes fun at itself, in both form and con­tent the arti­fact rep­re­sents a per­fect hybridiza­tion of street­wise mid-nineties punk rock and chal­leng­ing mid-nineties high fem­i­nist the­o­ry. Cen­tral to the lat­ter, Judith But­ler chal­lenges cul­tur­al norms in ways that very much inform our pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty today. And ‘zine cul­ture, though it may appear most­ly in muse­ums and ret­ro­spec­tives these days, lives on in spir­it in the work of hip, cul­tur­al mavens like Rook­ie’s Tavi Gevin­son. Above, see But­ler dis­cuss her the­o­ry of gen­der per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty. And Read the entire issue of Judy!, the fanzine, here.

via Pro­gres­sive Geo­gra­phies

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

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

How Can I Know Anything at All? BBC Animations Feature the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Hume, Popper & More

in Animation, Philosophy | August 19th, 2015

How did every­thing begin? What makes us human? What is the self? How do I live a good life? What is love? We’ve all asked these ques­tions, if only with­in our heads, and recent­ly a series of BBC ani­ma­tions writ­ten by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton and nar­rat­ed by a vari­ety of celebri­ties have done their lev­el best to answer them–or at least to point us in the direc­tion of answer­ing them for our­selves by not just telling but wit­ti­ly show­ing us what great minds have thought and said on the issues before we came along. Most recent­ly, they’ve tak­en on that eter­nal conun­drum, “How can I know any­thing at all?”

The already philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined will have rec­og­nized this as the foun­da­tion­al ques­tion of epis­te­mol­o­gy, that for­mi­da­ble branch of phi­los­o­phy con­cerned with what we know, how we know, and whether we can know in the first place. Many famil­iar names in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy have stepped onto this field, includ­ing Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, with whose thoughts this series of extreme­ly brief explana­to­ry videos begins. It lays out his anal­o­gy of the bee­tle in a box, where­in each per­son holds a box con­tain­ing what they call a “bee­tle,” but nobody can look inside anoth­er’s box to con­firm whether their idea of a bee­tle aligns with any­one else’s.

In Wittgen­stein’s view, says actor Aidan Turn­er, “there can’t be more to the pub­lic mean­ing of a lan­guage than we’re capa­ble of teach­ing each oth­er, and the pri­vate ‘something’—the ‘beetle’—can’t have a role in that teach­ing, because we can’t get at it.” The next video, in ask­ing whether we should believe in mir­a­cles, brings in Scot­tish Enlight­en­ment thinker David Hume, who thought that “if we fol­low the rule of pro­por­tion­ing our beliefs to the avail­able evi­dence, there will always be more evi­dence that the eye­wit­ness accounts were mis­tak­en than not.” Hume’s pre­de­ces­sor George Berke­ley makes an appear­ance to weigh in on whether any­thing exists—or, more pre­cise­ly, whether any­thing exists besides our minds, which con­vince us that we expe­ri­ence real things out there in the world.

Final­ly, the series lands on a method we can use to know, one sci­ence has relied on, with seem­ing suc­cess, for quite some time now: Karl Pop­per’s idea of fal­si­fi­ca­tion. “Rather than look­ing for sup­port­ing evi­dence, Pop­per argued that sci­en­tists go out of their way to refute their own hypothe­ses, test­ing them to destruc­tion,” leav­ing those that remain, at least pro­vi­sion­al­ly, as knowl­edge. Though none of these videos exceed two min­utes in length, each one, dense with both philo­soph­i­cal and pop-cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, will leave you with more knowl­edge about epis­te­mol­o­gy than you went in with—assuming they don’t leave you dis­be­liev­ing in knowl­edge itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

How to Live a Good Life? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Aris­to­tle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dating Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

in Food & Drink, History, Life, Museums | August 17th, 2015

Ecce panis—try your hand at the kind of loaf that Mel Brooks’ 2000-year-old man might have sunk his teeth into. Lit­er­al­ly.

In 1930 a loaf of bread dat­ing to AD 79 (the year Vesu­vius claimed two pros­per­ous Roman towns) was exca­vat­ed from the site of a bak­ery in Her­cu­la­neum.

Eighty-three years lat­er, the British Muse­um invit­ed Lon­don chef Gior­gio Locatel­li, above, to take a stab at cre­at­ing an edi­ble fac­sim­i­le for its Pom­peii Live exhi­bi­tion.

The assign­ment wasn’t as easy as he’d antic­i­pat­ed, the telegenic chef con­fess­es before whip­ping up a love­ly brown miche that appears far more mouth water­ing than the car­bonized round found in the Her­cu­la­neum oven.

His recipe could be mis­tak­en for mod­ern sour­dough, but he also has a go at sev­er­al details that speak to bread’s role in ancient Roman life:

Its perime­ter has a cord baked in to pro­vide for easy trans­port home. Most Roman homes were with­out ovens. Those who didn’t buy direct from a bak­ery took their dough to com­mu­ni­ty ovens, where it was baked for them overnight.

The loaf was scored into eight wedges. This is true of the 80 loaves found in the ovens of the unfor­tu­nate bak­er, Mod­es­tus. Locatel­li spec­u­lates that the wedges could be used as mon­e­tary units, but I sus­pect it’s more a busi­ness prac­tice on par with piz­za-by-the-slice.

(Nowa­days, Roman piz­za is sold by weight, but I digress.)

The crust bears a tell­tale stamp. Locatel­li takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to brand his with the logo of his Miche­lin-starred restau­rant, Locan­da Locatel­li. His inspi­ra­tion is stamped ‘Prop­er­ty of Cel­er, Slave of Q. Gra­nius Verus.’ To me, this sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the bread was found in a com­mu­nal oven.

Locatel­li also intro­duces a Flintston­ian vision when he alludes to spe­cial­ly-devised labor sav­ing machines to which Roman bak­ers yoked “ani­mals,” pre­sum­ably donkeys…or know­ing the Romans and their class sys­tem, slaves.

His pub­lished recipe is below.  Here is a con­ver­sion chart for those unfa­mil­iar with met­ric mea­sure­ments.

INGREDIENTS

400g biga aci­da (sour­dough)

12g yeast

18g gluten

24g salt

532g water

405g spelt flour

405g whole­meal flour

Melt the yeast into the water and add it into the biga. Mix and sieve the flours togeth­er with the gluten and add to the water mix. Mix for two min­utes, add the salt and keep mix­ing for anoth­er three min­utes. Make a round shape with it and leave to rest for one hour. Put some string around it to keep its shape dur­ing cook­ing. Make some cuts on top before cook­ing to help the bread rise in the oven and cook for 30–45 min­utes at 200 degrees.

For an even more arti­sanal attempt (and extreme­ly detailed instruc­tions) check out the Arti­san Pom­peii Miche recipe on the Fresh Loaf bread enthu­si­ast com­mu­ni­ty.

True Roman bread for true Romans!

via Metafil­ter/Make

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

Ani­ma­tion Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

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