What are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)? And How Can a Work of Digital Art Sell for $69 Million

in Art, Economics | March 16th, 2021

Val­ue in the art world depends on man­u­fac­tured desire for objects that serve no pur­pose and have no intrin­sic mean­ing out­side of the sto­ries that sur­round them, which is why it can be easy to fool oth­ers with fraud­u­lent copies. Col­lec­tors and experts are often eager to believe a well-told tale of spe­cial prove­nance. As Orson Welles says in F is for Fake, “Lots of oys­ters, only a few pearls. Rar­i­ty. The chief cause and encour­age­ment of fak­ery and phoni­ness.”

“Con­cepts of fak­ery and orig­i­nal­i­ty bounce off one anoth­er as reflec­tions,” Lidi­ja Groz­dan­ic writes of Welles’ doc­u­men­tary on “our innate infat­u­a­tion with exclu­siv­i­ty,” a film made when the inter­net con­sist­ed of 36 routers and 42 host com­put­ers — in total (includ­ing a link in Hawaii!). Now we are immersed in hyper­re­al­i­ty. Copies of dig­i­tal art­works are indis­tin­guish­able from each oth­er, since they can­not be said to exist in any mate­r­i­al sense. How can they be authen­ti­cat­ed? How can they become exclu­sive place­hold­ers for wealth?

The ques­tions have been tak­en up, and answered rather abrupt­ly, it seems, by the archi­tects of blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, who bring us NFTs, or “Non-Fun­gi­ble Tokens,” an acronym and phrase­ol­o­gy you’ve sure­ly heard, whether you’ve felt inclined to learn what they mean. The videos fea­tured today offer brief expla­na­tions, by ref­er­ence espe­cial­ly to the case of South Car­oli­na-based dig­i­tal artist named Mike Win­kle­mann, who goes by Beeple, and who first har­nessed the pow­er of NFTs to make mil­lions.

Most recent­ly, in a first-of-its-kind online auc­tion at Christies, Beeple’s mon­tage “‘Every­days — The First 5000 Days’… became the ‘What Does the Fox Say?’ of art sales,” writes Erin Grif­fiths at The New York Times.

A cryp­to whale known only by the pseu­do­nym Metako­van paid $69 mil­lion (with fees) for some indis­crim­i­nate­ly col­lat­ed pic­tures of car­toon mon­sters, gross-out gags and a breast­feed­ing Don­ald Trump — which sud­den­ly makes this com­put­er illus­tra­tor the third-high­est-sell­ing artist alive.

The crit­i­cism is per­haps unfair. As Christies argues in its defense, the piece reveals “Beeple’s enor­mous evo­lu­tion as an artist” over five years. Spe­cial­ist Noah Davis calls the col­lage, stitched togeth­er from Beeple’s body of work on Insta­gram, “a kind of Duchampian ready­made.” But it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter if Beeple’s work is avant-garde high art.

The lib­er­tar­i­an econo-speak “non­fun­gi­ble token” reveals itself as part of a world divorced from the usu­al cri­te­ria art his­to­ri­ans, cura­tors, auc­tion hous­es, and oth­ers apply in their judg­ments of authen­tic­i­ty and worth. Instead, the val­ue of NFTs rests main­ly on the fact that they are exclu­sive, with­out par­tic­u­lar­ly high regard for what they include. One may love the work of Beeple, but we should be clear, “what Christie’s sold was not an object” — there is no object — “but a ‘non­fun­gi­ble token,’” which is “bit­coinese for unique string of char­ac­ters, logged on a blockchain,” that can­not be exchanged or replaced… like own­ing a Mon­et with­out own­ing a Mon­et.

Unlike the Wu Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, bought for $2 mil­lion in 2015 by Mar­tin Shkre­li, con­tent attached to NFTs can be shared, viewed, copied, etc. over and over. “Mil­lions of peo­ple have seen Beeple’s art,” the BBC explains, “and the image has been copied and shared count­less times. In many cas­es, the artist even retains the copy­right own­er­ship of their work, so they can con­tin­ue to pro­duce and sell copies.”

Oth­er sales of NFTs include a ver­sion of the 10-year-old inter­net meme Nyan Cat that sold for $600,000, a clip of LeBon James block­ing a shot for $100,000, and a pic­ture of Lind­say Lohan for $17,000, which then resold for $57,000. Lohan artic­u­lat­ed the NFT ethos in a state­ment, say­ing, “I believe in a world which is finan­cial­ly decen­tral­ized.” This is not a world where judg­ments about the val­ue of art and cul­ture can be cen­tral­ized either. But pow­er can be, pre­sum­ably, in the form of cur­ren­cy, cryp­to-and oth­er­wise, trad­ed in spec­u­la­tive bub­bles.

“Some peo­ple com­pare it to buy­ing an auto­graphed print,” the BBC writes. Some com­pare it to the age-old scams warned of in folk tales. David Ger­ard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, calls NFT sell­ers “cryp­to-grifters… the same guys who’ve always been at it, try­ing to come up with a new form of worth­less bean that they can sell for mon­ey.” This eter­nal scam exists beyond the bina­ries posed by F is for Fake. Orig­i­nal­i­ty, authen­tic­i­ty, or oth­er­wise are most­ly beside the point.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Art Mar­ket Demys­ti­fied in Four Short Doc­u­men­taries

Banksy Shreds His $1.4 Mil­lion Paint­ing at Auc­tion, Tak­ing a Tra­di­tion of Artists Destroy­ing Art to New Heights

Warhol: The Bell­wether of the Art Mar­ket

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

Yo-Yo Ma Plays an Impromptu Performance in Vaccine Clinic After Receiving 2nd Dose

in Life, Music | March 14th, 2021

After get­ting his sec­ond dose of the COVID-19 vac­cine, Yo-Yo Ma “took a seat along the wall of the obser­va­tion area, masked and social­ly dis­tanced away from the oth­ers. He went on to pass 15 min­utes in obser­va­tion play­ing cel­lo for an applaud­ing audi­ence,” writes the Berk­shire Eagle. You can watch the scene above, which played out at Berk­shire Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege this week­end. And read more about it here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yo-Yo Ma Per­forms the First Clas­si­cal Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Men­tal Health Break and Watch His Mov­ing “Tiny Desk” Con­cert

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

Rare Vincent van Gogh Painting Goes on Public Display for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Painting Online

in Art, History | March 11th, 2021

Images cour­tesy of Sothe­bys

Not every Vin­cent van Gogh paint­ing hangs at the Van Gogh Muse­um, or indeed in a muse­um at all. Though many pri­vate col­lec­tors loan their Van Goghs to art insti­tu­tions that make them avail­able for pub­lic view­ing, some have nev­er let such prized pos­ses­sions out of their sight. Such, until recent­ly, was the case with Scène de rue à Mont­martre (Impasse des Deux Frères et le Moulin à Poivre), paint­ed in 1887 but not shown to the world until this year — in prepa­ra­tion for its auc­tion on March 25. Dur­ing its cen­tu­ry of pos­ses­sion by a sin­gle French fam­i­ly, the paint­ing count­ed as one of the few pri­vate­ly-held entries in Van Gogh’s Mont­martre series, which he paint­ed in the epony­mous neigh­bor­hood dur­ing the two years spent in Paris with his broth­er Theo.

“Unlike oth­er artists of his era, like Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh was attract­ed to the pas­toral side of Mont­martre and would tran­scribe this ambi­ence rather than its balls and cabarets.” So says Aurélie Van­de­vo­orde, head of the Impres­sion­ist and Mod­ern Art depart­ment at Sotheby’s Paris to The Art News­pa­per’s Anna San­son.

The land­scape “marks van Gogh’s turn to his dis­tinc­tive Impres­sion­ist style,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, and its “live­ly street is thought to be the same as that in Impasse des Deux Frères, which cur­rent­ly hangs at the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, and sim­i­lar­ly depicts a mill and flags pro­mot­ing the cabaret and bar through the gates.”

As depict­ed by Van Gogh more than 130 years ago, Mont­martre looks near­ly rur­al — quite unlike it does now, as any­one who’s fre­quent­ed the neigh­bor­hood in liv­ing mem­o­ry can attest. But the sta­tus of the paint­ing has changed even more than the sta­tus of the place: Scène de rue à Mont­martre “is expect­ed to sell for between $6 mil­lion and $9.7 mil­lion (€5 mil­lion to €8 mil­lion),” writes Smithsonian.com’s Isis Davis-Marks. Still, like most of Van Gogh’s Paris paint­ings, its val­ue does­n’t touch that of the work he did in his sub­se­quent Provençal sojourn (under the influ­ence of Japan­ese ukiyo‑e). “One such paint­ing, Laboureur dans un champ (1889),” adds Davis-Marks, “sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $81.3 mil­lion.” Well-heeled read­ers should thus keep an eye on Sothe­by’s site: this could be your chance to keep a (rel­a­tive­ly) afford­able Van Gogh in your own fam­i­ly for the next cen­tu­ry.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

In a Bril­liant Light: Van Gogh in Arles – A Free Doc­u­men­tary

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.

Saturday Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in October, 1975

in Comedy, Television | March 10th, 2021

How do you kick off the longest run­ning live sketch com­e­dy show in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry? If you’re in the cast and crew for the first episode of Sat­ur­day Night Live, you have no idea you’re doing any­thing of the kind. Still the pressure’s on, and the new­ly hired “Not Ready for Prime­time Play­ers” had a lot of com­pe­ti­tion on their own show that night. When Sat­ur­day Night, the orig­i­nal title for SNL, made its debut on Octo­ber 11, 1975, doing live com­e­dy on tele­vi­sion was an extreme­ly risky propo­si­tion.

So, what do you do if you’re pro­duc­ers Dick Eber­sol and Lorne Michaels? Put your riski­est foot for­ward — John Belushi, the “first rock & roll star of com­e­dy” writes Rolling Stone, and “the ‘live’ in Sat­ur­day Night Live.” The man who would be comedy’s king, for a time, before he left the stage too soon. His first sketch, and the first on-air for SNL, reveals “a ten­den­cy toward the time­less­ly pecu­liar,” Time mag­a­zine writes, that made the show an instant cult hit.

Rather than skew­er­ing top­i­cal issues or imper­son­at­ing celebri­ties, the first sketch, “The Wolver­ines” goes after the ripe tar­gets of an immi­grant (Belushi) learn­ing Eng­lish and his teacher, played by head writer Michael O’Donoghue, who insists on mak­ing Belushi repeat the tit­u­lar word in non­sen­si­cal phras­es like “I would like to feed your fin­ger­tips to the wolver­ines.”

Belushi’s accent has shades of Andy Kaufman’s “for­eign man” from Caspi­ar, and he gets a brief moment to dis­play his phys­i­cal com­e­dy skills when he keels over in imi­ta­tion of his teacher hav­ing a heart attack. “The Wolver­ines” is short, non­sen­si­cal, and weird­ly sweet. “No one would know what kind of show this was from see­ing that,” Michaels remem­bered. We can still look back at that wild­ly uneven first sea­son and won­der what kind of show SNL would be now if it had held on to the anar­chic spir­it of the ear­ly years. But that’s a lot to ask of a 45-year-old live com­e­dy show.

The night’s guest was George Car­lin, who did not appear in any sketch­es, but who did get three sep­a­rate mono­logues. The show also fea­tured two musi­cal guests, Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian. Andy Kauf­man made an appear­ance doing his famous Mighty Mouse bit, and the Mup­pets were there (not the fun Mup­pets, but a “dark and grumpy ver­sion” Jim Hen­son dis­owned after the first sea­son.)

The first episode was also the first to fea­ture the icon­ic intro, “Live from New York, it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” — deliv­ered by Chevy Chase. Though it has become a cel­e­bra­to­ry announce­ment, at the time “it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” was a dark reminder of the live com­e­dy vari­ety show, Sat­ur­day Night Live with Howard Cosell, then fail­ing through its first and only sea­son before its 18-episode run came to an end the fol­low­ing year.

See more from that weird first night above, includ­ing Carlin’s Foot­ball and Base­ball mono­logue and the for­got­ten SNL Mup­pets, just above.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

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

The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mural on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

in Art | March 5th, 2021

It would be dif­fi­cult to think of two artists who appear to have less in com­mon than Bob Ross and Banksy. One of them cre­ates art by pulling provoca­tive stunts, often ille­gal, under the cov­er of anonymi­ty; the oth­er did it by paint­ing innocu­ous land­scapes on pub­lic tele­vi­sion, spend­ing a decade as one of its most rec­og­niz­able per­son­al­i­ties. But game rec­og­nize game, as they say, in pop­u­lar art as in oth­er fields of human endeav­or. In the video above, Banksy pays trib­ute to Ross by lay­er­ing nar­ra­tion from an episode of The Joy of Paint­ing over the cre­ation of his lat­est spray paint strike, Cre­ate Escape: an image of Oscar Wilde, type­writer and all, break­ing out jail — on the actu­al exte­ri­or wall of the decom­mis­sioned HM Prison Read­ing.

“The expan­sive and unblem­ished prison wall was a dar­ing and per­fect spot for a Banksy piece,” writes Colos­sal’s Christo­pher Job­son. “It’s best known for its most famous inmate: Oscar Wilde served two years in the prison from 1895–1897 for the charge of ‘gross inde­cen­cy’ for being gay.” This expe­ri­ence result­ed in the poem The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture as read by Wilde him­self.

Where Wilde con­vert­ed his mis­for­tune into ver­bal art, Banksy ref­er­ences it to make a visu­al state­ment of char­ac­ter­is­tic brazen­ness and ambi­gu­i­ty. As with most of his recent pieces, Cre­ate Escape has clear­ly been designed to be seen not just by passers­by in Read­ing, but by the whole world online, which The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy should ensure.

“I thought we’d just do a very warm lit­tle scene that makes you feel good,” says Ross in voiceover. But what we see are the hands of a min­er’s-hel­met­ed Banksy, pre­sum­ably, prepar­ing his spray cans and putting up his sten­cil of Wilde in an inmate’s uni­form. “Lit­tle bit of white,” says Ross as a streak of that col­or is applied to the prison wall. “That ought to light­en it just a lit­tle.” In fact, every sam­ple of Ross’ nar­ra­tion reflects the action, as when he urges thought “about shape and form and how you want the limbs to look,” or when he tells us that “a nice light area between the darks, it sep­a­rates, makes every­thing real­ly stand out and look good.” With his sig­na­ture high-con­trast style, Banksy could hard­ly deny it, and he would seem also to share Ross’ feel­ing that in paint­ing, “I can cre­ate the kind of world that I want to see, and that I want to be part of.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

Banksy Strikes Again in Lon­don & Urges Every­one to Wear Masks

Banksy Debuts His COVID-19 Art Project: Good to See That He Has TP at Home

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

Pat­ti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s 1897 Love Let­ter De Pro­fundis: See the Full Three-Hour Per­for­mance

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.

Witness the Birth of Kermit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

in Comedy, Creativity, Television | February 19th, 2021

Long before “green” became syn­ony­mous with eco-friend­ly prod­ucts and pro­duc­tion, an 18-year-old Jim Hen­son cre­at­ed a pup­pet who would go on to become the color’s most cel­e­brat­ed face from his mother’s cast-off green felt coat and a sin­gle ping pong ball.

Ker­mit debuted in black and white in the spring of 1955 as an ensem­ble mem­ber of Sam and Friends, a live tele­vi­sion show com­prised of five-minute episodes that the tal­ent­ed Hen­son had been tapped to write and per­form, fol­low­ing some ear­li­er suc­cess as a teen pup­peteer.

Air­ing on the Wash­ing­ton DC-area NBC affil­i­ate between the evening news and The Tonight Show, Sam and Friends was an imme­di­ate hit with view­ers, even if they ranked Ker­mit, orig­i­nal­ly more lizard than frog, fourth in terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty. (Top spot went to a skull pup­pet named Yorick.)

Watch­ing the sur­viv­ing clips of Sam and Friends, it’s easy to catch glimpses of where both Ker­mit and Hen­son were head­ed.

While Hen­son voiced Sam and all of his pup­pet friends, Ker­mit wound up sound­ing the clos­est to Hen­son him­self.

Kermit’s sig­na­ture face-crum­pling reac­tions were by design. Where­as oth­er pup­pets of the peri­od, like the tit­u­lar Sam, had stiff heads with the occa­sion­al mov­ing jaw, Kermit’s was as soft as a foot­less sock, allow­ing for far greater expres­sive­ness.

Hen­son honed Kermit’s expres­sions by plac­ing live feed mon­i­tors on the floor so he and his pup­peteer bride-to-be Jane, could see the pup­pets from the audi­ence per­spec­tive.

Unlike pre­vi­ous­ly tele­vised pup­pet per­for­mances, which pre­served the exist­ing prosce­ni­ums of the the­aters to which the play­ers had always been con­fined, Hen­son con­sid­ered the TV set frame enough. Lib­er­at­ing the pup­pets thus­ly gave more of a sketch com­e­dy feel to the pro­ceed­ings, some­thing that would car­ry over to Sesame Street and lat­er, The Mup­pet Show.

By the 12th episode, Ker­mit has found a niche as wry straight man for wack­i­er char­ac­ters like jazz afi­ciona­do Har­ry the Hip­ster who intro­duced an ele­ment of musi­cal nota­tion to the ani­mat­ed let­ters and num­bers that would become a Sesame Street sta­ple.

And sure­ly we’re not the only ones who think the Mup­pets’ recent appear­ance in a Super Bowl ad pales in com­par­i­son to Ker­mit and Harry’s live com­mer­cial for Sam and Friends’ spon­sor, a region­al brand of bacon and lunch meat.

Sam and Friends ran from 1955 to 1961, but Kermit’s first per­for­mance on The Tonight Show in 1956, lip sync­ing to Rose­mary Clooney’s record­ing of “I’ve Grown Accus­tomed to Your Face” and mug­ging in a blonde braid­ed wig, hint­ed that he and Hen­son would soon out­grow the local tele­vi­sion pond.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

The Cre­ative Life of Jim Hen­son Explored in a Six-Part Doc­u­men­tary Series

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, cur­rent issue #63. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Take a Road Trip Across America with Cartoonist Lynda Barry in the 90s Documentary, Grandma’s Way Out Party

in Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Television, Travel | February 12th, 2021

Who wouldn’t love to take a road trip with beloved car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry? As evi­denced by Grandma’s Way Out Par­ty, above, an ear­ly-90s doc­u­men­tary made for Twin Cities Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion, Bar­ry not only finds the humor in every sit­u­a­tion, she’s always up for a detour, whether to a time hon­ored des­ti­na­tion like Mount Rush­more or Old Faith­ful, or a more impul­sive pit­stop, like a Wash­ing­ton state car repair shop dec­o­rat­ed with sculp­tures made from cast off muf­flers or the Mon­tana State Prison Hob­by Store.

Alter­nat­ing in the driver’s seat with then-boyfriend, sto­ry­teller Kevin Kling, she makes up songs on her accor­dion, clowns around in a cheap cow­girl hat, sam­ples an over­sized gas sta­tion donut, and chats up every­one she encoun­ters.

At the World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dako­ta, she breaks the ice by ask­ing a beard­ed local guy in offi­cial Corn Palace cap and t‑shirt if his job is the ful­fill­ment of a long held dream.

“Nah,” he says. “I thought it was a joke … in Far­go, they call it the world’s biggest bird feed­er. We do have the biggest birds in South Dako­ta. They get fed good.”

He leads them to Cal Schultz, the art teacher who designed over 25 years worth of murals fes­toon­ing the exte­ri­or walls. Nudged by Bar­ry to pick a favorite, Schultz choos­es one that his 9th grade stu­dents worked on.

“I would have loved to have been in his class,” Bar­ry, a teacher now her­self, says emphat­i­cal­ly. “I would have giv­en any­thing to have worked on a Corn Palace when I was 14-years-old.”

This point is dri­ven home with a quick view of her best known cre­ation, the pig­tailed, bespec­ta­cled Marlys, osten­si­bly ren­dered in corn—an hon­or Marlys would no doubt appre­ci­ate.

Bar­ry has long been laud­ed for her under­stand­ing of and respect for children’s inner lives, and we see this nat­ur­al affin­i­ty in action when she befriends Desmond and Jake, two young par­tic­i­pants in the Crow Fair Pow Wow, just south of Billings, Mon­tana.

Frus­trat­ed by her inabil­i­ty to get a han­dle on the pro­ceed­ings (“Why didn’t I learn it in school!? Why wasn’t it part of our cur­ricu­lum?”), Bar­ry retreats to the com­fort of her sketch­book, which attracts the curi­ous boys. Even­tu­al­ly, she draws their por­traits to give them as keep­sakes, get­ting to know them bet­ter in the process.

The draw­ings they make in return are trea­sured by the recip­i­ent, not least for the win­dow they pro­vide on the cul­ture with which they are so casu­al­ly famil­iar.

Bar­ry and Kling also chance upon the Stur­gis Motor­cy­cle Ral­ly, and after a bite at the Road Kill Cafe (“from your grill to ours”), Bar­ry wax­es philo­soph­i­cal about the then-unusu­al sight of so much tat­tooed flesh:

There’s some­thing about the fact that they want some­thing on them that they can’t wash off, that even on days when they don’t want peo­ple to know they’re a bik­er, it’s still there. And I have always loved that about peo­ple, like …drag queens who will shave off their eye­brows so they can draw per­fect eye­brows on, or any­body who knows they’re dif­fer­ent and does some­thing to them­selves phys­i­cal­ly so that even on their bad days, they can’t deny it. Because I think that in the end, that’s sort of what saves your life, that you wear your col­ors. You can’t help it.

The afore­men­tioned muf­fler store prompts some mus­ings that will be very famil­iar to any­one who has immersed them­selves in Mak­ing Comics, Pic­ture This, or any oth­er of Barry’s instruc­tion­al books con­tain­ing her won­der­ful­ly loopy, intu­itive cre­ative exer­cis­es:

I think this urge to cre­ate is actu­al­ly our ani­mal instinct. And what’s sad is if we don’t let that come through us, I don’t think we have a full life on this earth. And I think we get sick because of it. I mean, it’s weird that it’s an instinct, but it’s an option, just like you can take a wild ani­mal, a beau­ti­ful, wild ani­mal and put him in a zoo. They live, they’re fine in their cage, but you don’t get to see them do the thing that a chee­tah does best, which is, you know, just run like the wind and be able to jump and do the things… I mean, it’s our instinct, it’s instinc­tu­al, it’s our beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful, mag­i­cal, poet­ic, mys­te­ri­ous instinct. And every once in a while, you see the flower of it come right up out of a gas sta­tion. 

After 1653 miles and one squab­ble after over­shoot­ing a sched­uled stop (“You don’t want me to go to Butte!”), the two arrive at their final des­ti­na­tion, Barry’s child­hood home in Seat­tle. The occa­sion? Barry’s Fil­ipino grandmother’s 83rd birth­day, and plans are afoot for a potluck bash at the local VFW hall. Fans will swoon to meet this ven­er­at­ed lady and the rest of Barry’s extend­ed clan, and hear Barry’s reflec­tions on what it was like to grow up in a work­ing class neigh­bor­hood where most of the fam­i­lies were mul­ti-racial.

“I walked in and it was every­thing Lyn­da said,” Kling mar­vels.

Indeed.

The jour­ney is every­thing we could have hoped for, too.

Lis­ten to a post-trip inter­view with Kling on Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio.

H/t to read­er Char­lotte Book­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Lyn­da Barry’s New Book Offers a Mas­ter Class in Mak­ing Comics

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine — cur­rent issue: #63 Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How the Food We Eat Affects Our Brain: Learn About the “MIND Diet”

in Health, Science | February 10th, 2021

We humans did a num­ber on our­selves, as they say, when we invent­ed agri­cul­ture, glob­al trade routes, refrig­er­a­tion, pas­teur­iza­tion, and so forth. Yes, we made it so that mil­lions of peo­ple around the world could have abun­dant food. We’ve also cre­at­ed food that’s full of emp­ty calo­ries and lack­ing in essen­tial nutri­ents. For­tu­nate­ly, in places where healthy alter­na­tives are plen­ti­ful, atti­tudes toward food have changed, and nutri­tion has become a para­mount con­cern.

“As a soci­ety, we are com­fort­able with the idea that we feed our bod­ies,” says neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lisa Mosconi. We research foods that cause inflam­ma­tion and increase can­cer risk, etc. But we are “much less aware,” says Mosconi—author of Brain Food: The Sur­pris­ing Sci­ence of Eat­ing for Cog­ni­tive Pow­er—“that we’re feed­ing our brains too. Parts of the foods we eat will end up being the very fab­ric of our brains…. Put sim­ply: Every­thing in the brain that isn’t made by the brain itself is ‘import­ed’ from the food we eat.”

We learn much more about the con­stituents of brain mat­ter in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above by Mia Naca­mul­li. Amino acids, fats, pro­teins, traces of micronu­tri­ents, and glucose—“the brain is, of course, more than the sum of its nutri­tion­al parts, but each com­po­nent does have a dis­tinct impact on func­tion­ing, devel­op­ment, mood, and ener­gy.” Post-meal blahs or insom­nia can be close­ly cor­re­lat­ed with diet.

What should we be eat­ing for brain health? Luck­i­ly, cur­rent research falls well in line with what nutri­tion­ists and doc­tors have been sug­gest­ing we eat for over­all health. Anne Linge, reg­is­tered dietit­ian and cer­ti­fied dia­betes care and edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ist at the Nutri­tion Clin­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Med­ical Cen­ter-Roo­sevelt, rec­om­mends what researchers have dubbed the MIND diet, a com­bi­na­tion of the Mediter­ranean diet and the DASH diet.

“The Mediter­ranean diet focus­es on lots of veg­eta­bles, fruits, nuts and heart-healthy oils,” Linge says. “When we talk about the DASH diet, the pur­pose is to stop high blood pres­sure, so we’re look­ing at more serv­ings of fruits and veg­eta­bles, more fiber and less sat­u­rat­ed fat.” The com­bi­na­tion of the two, reports Angela Cab­o­ta­je at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Med­i­cine blog Right as Rain, results in a diet high in folate, carotenoids, vit­a­min E, flavonoids and antiox­i­dants. “All of these things seem to have poten­tial ben­e­fits to the cog­ni­tive func­tion,” says Linge, who breaks MIND foods down into the 10 cat­e­gories below:

Leafy greens (6x per week)
Veg­eta­bles (1x per day)
Nuts (5x per week)
Berries (2x per week)
Beans (3x per week)
Whole grains (3x per day)
Fish (1x per week)
Poul­try (2x per week)
Olive oil (reg­u­lar use)
Red wine (1x per day)

As you’ll note, red meat, dairy, sweets, and fried foods aren’t includ­ed: researchers rec­om­mend we con­sume these much less often. Harvard’s Health­beat blog fur­ther breaks down some of these cat­e­gories and includes tea and cof­fee, a wel­come addi­tion for peo­ple who pre­fer caf­feinat­ed bev­er­ages to alco­hol.

“You might think of the MIND diet as a list of best prac­tices,” says Linge. “You don’t have to fol­low every guide­line, but wow, if how you eat can pre­vent or delay cog­ni­tive decline, what a fab­u­lous thing.” It is, indeed. For a schol­ar­ly overview of the effects of nutri­tion on the brain, read the 2015 study on the MIND diet here and anoth­er, 2010 study on the crit­i­cal impor­tance of “brain foods” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Nutri­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try: Why Diet May Play an Essen­tial Role in Treat­ing Men­tal Health Con­di­tions, Includ­ing Depres­sion, Anx­i­ety & Beyond

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

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova Tells Protestors What to Do–and Not Do–If Arrested by Authoritarian Police

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 26th, 2021

Note: If the sub­ti­tles don’t play auto­mat­i­cal­ly, please click the “cc” at the bot­tom of the video.

Oli­garchic regimes built on cor­rup­tion and naked self-inter­est don’t typ­i­cal­ly exhib­it much in the way of cre­ativ­i­ty when respond­ing to crises of legit­i­ma­cy. The most recent chal­lenge to the oli­garchic rule of Vladimir Putin, for exam­ple, after the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion and jail­ing of his rival, anti-cor­rup­tion activist Alex­ey Naval­ny, revealed “the regime’s utter lack of imag­i­na­tion and inabil­i­ty to plan ahead,” writes Masha Gessen at The New York­er, and seems to promise an open­ing for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment.

Per­haps it’s safer to say, Joshua Yaf­fa writes, “that Russ­ian pol­i­tics are mere­ly enter­ing the begin­ning of a pro­tract­ed new phase,” that will involve more large, coor­di­nat­ed mass protests against the “per­ceived impuni­ty and law­less­ness of Putin’s sys­tem,” such as hap­pened all over the coun­try in recent days: “In St. Peters­burg, a siz­able crowd blocked Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thor­ough­fare. Sev­er­al thou­sand gath­ered in Novosi­birsk, the largest city in Siberia. Even in Yakut­sk, a far­away region­al cap­i­tal, where the day’s tem­per­a­tures reached minus fifty-eight degrees Fahren­heit, a num­ber of peo­ple came out to the cen­tral square.”

Footage from the protests “shows activists pelt­ing Russ­ian riot police and vehi­cles with snow­balls,” Dazed reports. Mas­sive, in-real-life protests have been orga­nized and sup­port­ed by online activists on Tik Tok, YouTube, and oth­er social media sites, where young peo­ple like viral teenag­er Neu­rol­era share tips—such as pre­tend­ing to be an indig­nant Amer­i­can—that might help pro­tes­tors avoid arrest. In one video call­ing on young stu­dents to attend Saturday’s protests, a young woman holds a book, and cap­tions “explain how she is read­ing about how cit­i­zens’ rights are guar­an­teed,” writes Bren­dan Cole at Newsweek. “But wait!” she says in one cap­tion, “In Rus­sia things hap­pen dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Russ­ian cit­i­zens, and espe­cial­ly young activists, do not walk into protest sit­u­a­tions unpre­pared for arrest and detention—particularly those who fol­low long­time trou­ble-mak­ers Pussy Riot, famous for stag­ing flam­boy­ant anti-Putin protests and get­ting arrest­ed. In the video at the top, the band/activist collective’s Nadya Tolokon­niko­va explains “how to behave when you’re arrest­ed.” Deten­tion “is an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence,” she says, but it need not “end up being such a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.” One must con­quer fear with knowl­edge. Dur­ing her first arrest, “I was scared because I felt that the police offi­cers held an enor­mous pow­er over me. That’s not true.”

The Eng­lish trans­la­tion seems inex­act and many of the intri­ca­cies of Russ­ian law will not trans­late to oth­er nation­al con­texts. Woven through­out the video, how­ev­er, are gen­er­al­ly pru­dent tips—like not adding crim­i­nal charges by attack­ing police dur­ing arrest. Last year, the group dis­trib­uted anti-sur­veil­lance make-up tips also use­ful to activists every­where. The viral spread of videos like Pussy Riot’s and Neurolera’s tuto­r­i­al show us a world­wide desire for youth­ful hope and deter­mi­na­tion in the face of bru­tal real­i­ties. Yaf­fa describes the “scenes of police employ­ing brute force” that filled his Russ­ian-lan­guage social media dur­ing the protests:

In one such video, from St. Peters­burg, a woman con­fronts a col­umn of riot police­men drag­ging a pro­test­er by his arms and asks, “Why are you arrest­ing him?” One of the police offi­cers kicks her in the chest, knock­ing her to the ground. Watch­ing these scenes, I couldn’t help but think of Belarus, where months of street protests against the rule of Alexan­der Lukashen­ka have been marked by bru­tal­i­ty and tor­ture by the secu­ri­ty forces, and a remark­able will­ing­ness from pro­test­ers to fight back against riot police, at times forc­ing them to retreat or aban­don mak­ing an arrest.

These images do not spread so read­i­ly in Eng­lish-lan­guage media, per­haps giv­ing a super­fi­cial impres­sion that the cur­rent anti-Putin, pro-Naval­ny move­ment is a new, young online phe­nom­e­non, rather than the con­tin­u­a­tion of a bat­tle-hard­ened resis­tance to twen­ty years of mis­rule. “Throw­ing the book at Naval­ny could spark protests of unde­ter­mined strength and longevi­ty,” Yaf­fa argues, from which mass move­ments around the world draw inspi­ra­tion for years to come.

via Dazed

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Pussy Riot: Watch the Band’s Ear­ly Performances/Protests Against the Putin Regime

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va Exchange An Extra­or­di­nary Series of Let­ters

Pussy Riot Releas­es First Video in a Year, Tak­ing on Russ­ian Oil Prof­its and Oth­er High-Pro­file Tar­gets

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

Rarely-Seen Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Are Now Free Online, Courtesy of the Uffizi Gallery

in Art, Literature | January 20th, 2021

We know Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy—espe­cial­ly its famous first third, Infer­no—as an extend­ed the­o­log­i­cal trea­tise, epic love poem, and vicious satire of church hypocrisy and the Flo­ren­tine polit­i­cal fac­tion that exiled Dante from the city of his birth in 1302. Most of us don’t know it the way its first read­ers did (and as Dante schol­ars do): a com­pendi­um in which “a num­ber of medieval lit­er­ary gen­res are digest­ed and com­bined,” as Robert M. Durl­ing writes in his trans­la­tion of the Infer­no.

These lit­er­ary gen­res include ver­nac­u­lar tra­di­tions of romance poet­ry from Provence, pop­u­lar long before Dante turned his Tus­can dialect into a lit­er­ary lan­guage to rival Latin. They include “the dream-vision (exem­pli­fied by the Old French Romance of the Rose)”; “accounts of jour­neys to the Oth­er­world (such as the Visio Pauli, Saint Patrick’s Pur­ga­to­ry, the Nav­i­ga­tio Sanc­ti Bren­dani)”; and Scholas­tic philo­soph­i­cal alle­go­ry, among oth­er well-known forms of writ­ing at the time.

By the time the Divine Com­e­dy cap­tured imag­i­na­tions in the peri­od of incunab­u­la, or the infan­cy of the print­ed book, many of these asso­ci­a­tions and influ­ences had reced­ed. And by the time of the Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion, the poem most impressed read­ers and illus­tra­tors of the text as a divine plan for a tor­ture cham­ber and an ency­clo­pe­dia of the tor­tures there­in. What­ev­er oth­er asso­ci­a­tions we have with Dante’s poem, we all know the nine cir­cles of hell and have an omi­nous sense of what goes on there.

No doubt we also have in our mind’s eye some of the hun­dreds of illus­tra­tions made of the text’s grue­some depic­tions of hell, from San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li to Robert Rauschen­berg. Illus­trat­ed edi­tions of Dante’s poem began appear­ing in 1472, and the first ful­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tion in 1491. By the late 16th cen­tu­ry, the poem had become a lit­er­ary clas­sic (the word Divine joined Com­e­dy in the title in 1555). By this time, the tra­di­tion of depict­ing a lit­er­al, rather than a lit­er­ary, hell was firm­ly estab­lished.

It was in this peri­od that Fred­eri­co Zuc­cari made the beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions you see here, com­plet­ed, Angela Giuf­fri­da writes at The Guardian, “dur­ing a stay in Spain between 1586 and 1588. Of the 88 illus­tra­tions, 28 are depic­tions of hell, 49 of pur­ga­to­ry and 11 of heav­en. After Zuccari’s death in 1609, the draw­ings were held by the noble Orsi­ni fam­i­ly, for whom the artist had worked, and lat­er by the Medici fam­i­ly before becom­ing part of the Uffizi col­lec­tion in 1738.”

The pen­cil-and-ink draw­ings have rarely been seen before because of their frag­ile con­di­tion. They were only exhib­it­ed pub­licly for the first time in 1865 for the 600th anniver­sary of Dante’s birth and of Ital­ian uni­fi­ca­tion. Now, they are on dis­play, vir­tu­al­ly, for free, as part of a “year-long cal­en­dar of events to mark the 700th anniver­sary of the poet’s death.” This is an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ty to see these illus­tra­tions, which have until now “only been seen by a few schol­ars and dis­played to the pub­lic only twice, and only in part,” says Uffizi direc­tor Eike Schmidt.

Much of the promised “didac­tic-sci­en­tif­ic com­ment” to accom­pa­ny each draw­ing is marked as “upcom­ing” on the Eng­lish ver­sion of the Uffizi site, but you can see high res­o­lu­tion scans of each draw­ing and zoom in to exam­ine the many tor­tures of the damned and the grotesque demons who tor­ment them. Learn much more at Khan Acad­e­my about how Dante’s lit­er­ary epic in terza rima left “a last­ing impres­sion on the West­ern imag­i­na­tion for more than half a mil­len­ni­um,” solid­i­fy­ing and reshap­ing images of hell “into new guis­es that would become famil­iar to count­less gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed.” If you like, you can also take a free course on Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.

via MyMod­ern­Met/The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Should We Read Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

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