How to Wear a Toga the Official Ancient Roman Way

in Fashion, History | April 4th, 2022

What does it take to wear an ancient Roman toga with dig­ni­ty and grace?

Judg­ing from the above demon­stra­tion by Dr Mary Har­low, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Ancient His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter, a cou­ple of helpers, who, in the first cen­tu­ry CE, would have invari­ably been enslaved, and thus inel­i­gi­ble for togas of their own.

The icon­ic out­er gar­ments, tra­di­tion­al­ly made of wool, begin as sin­gle, 12–16m lengths of fab­ric.

Extra hands were need­ed to keep the cloth from drag­ging on the dirty floor while the wear­er was being wrapped, to secure the gar­ment with addi­tion­al pleats and tucks, and to cre­ate the pouch-like umbo at chest lev­el, in a man­ner as aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing as every oth­er fold and drape was expect­ed to be.

As for­mal citizen’s garb, the toga was suit­able for vir­tu­al­ly every pub­lic occa­sion, as well as an audi­ence with the emper­or.

In addi­tion to slaves, the toga was off-lim­its to for­eign­ers, freed­men, and, with the notable excep­tion of adul­ter­ess­es and pros­ti­tutes, women.

Wealth­i­er indi­vid­u­als flaunt­ed their sta­tus by accent­ing their out­fit with stripes of Tyr­i­an Pur­ple.

The BBC reports that dying even a sin­gle small swatch of fab­ric this shade “took tens of thou­sands of des­ic­cat­ed hypo­branchial glands wrenched from the cal­ci­fied coils of spiny murex sea snails” and that thus dyed, the fibers “retained the stench of the invertebrate’s marine excre­tions.”

Achiev­ing that Tyr­i­an Pur­ple hue was “a very smelly process,” Dr. Har­low con­firms, “but if you could retain a lit­tle bit of that fishy smell in your final gar­ment, it would show your col­leagues that you could afford the best.”

Giv­en the laun­dry-relat­ed rev­e­la­tions of some toga inves­ti­gat­ing stu­dents in Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­si­ty’s Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance study abroad pro­gram, above, a fishy odor might not have been the great­est olfac­to­ry chal­lenge asso­ci­at­ed with this gar­ment.

The stu­dents also share how toga-clad Romans dealt with stairs, and intro­duce view­ers to 5 forms of toga:

Toga Vir­ilis  — the toga of man­hood

Toga Prae­tex­ta — the pre-toga of man­hood toga

Toga Pul­la — a dark mourn­ing toga

Toga Can­di­da- a chalk whitened toga sport­ed by those run­ning for office

Toga Pic­ta- to be worn by gen­er­als, prae­tors cel­e­brat­ing games and con­suls. The emperor’s toga pic­ta was dyed pur­ple. Uh-oh.

Their youth­ful enthu­si­asm for antiq­ui­ty is rous­ing, though Quin­til­ian, the first cen­tu­ry CE edu­ca­tor and expert in rhetoric might have had some thoughts on their clown­ish antics.

He cer­tain­ly had a lot of thoughts about togas, which he shared in his instruc­tive mas­ter­work, Insti­tu­tio Ora­to­ria:

The toga itself should, in my opin­ion, be round, and cut to fit, oth­er­wise there are a num­ber of ways in which it may be unshape­ly. Its front edge should by pref­er­ence reach to the mid­dle of the shin, while the back should be high­er in pro­por­tion as the gir­dle is high­er 

behind than in front. The fold is most becom­ing, if it fall to a point a lit­tle above the low­er edge of the tunic, and should cer­tain­ly nev­er fall below it. The oth­er fold which pass­es oblique­ly like a belt under the right shoul­der and over the left, should nei­ther be too tight nor too loose. The por­tion of the toga which is last to be arranged should fall rather low, since it will sit bet­ter thus and be kept in its place. A por­tion of the tunic also should be drawn back in order that it may not fall over the arm when we are plead­ing, and the fold should be thrown over the shoul­der, while it will not be unbe­com­ing if the edge be turned back. On the oth­er hand, we should not cov­er the shoul­der and the whole of the throat, oth­er­wise our dress will be undu­ly nar­rowed and will lose the impres­sive effect pro­duced by breadth at the chest. The left arm should only be raised so far as to form a right angle at the elbow, while the edge of the toga should fall in equal lengths on either side. 

Quin­til­lian was will­ing to let some of his high stan­dards slide if the wearer’s toga had been unti­died by the heat of rous­ing ora­tion:

When, how­ev­er, our speech draws near its close, more espe­cial­ly if for­tune shows her­self kind, prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing is becom­ing; we may stream with sweat, show signs of fatigue, and let our dress fall in care­less dis­or­der and the toga slip loose from us on every side…On the oth­er hand, if the toga falls down at the begin­ning of our speech, or when we have only pro­ceed­ed but a lit­tle way, the fail­ure to replace it is a sign of indif­fer­ence, or sloth, or sheer igno­rance of the way in which clothes should be worn.

We’re pret­ty sure he would have frowned on clas­si­cal archae­ol­o­gist Shel­by Brown’s exper­i­ments using a twin-size poly-blend bed sheet in advance of an ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry Col­lege Night at the Get­ty Vil­la.

Prospec­tive guests were encour­aged to attend in their “best togas.”

Could it be that the par­ty plan­ners , envi­sion­ing a civ­i­lized night of pho­to booths, clas­si­cal art view­ing, and light refresh­ments in the Her­cu­la­neum-inspired Get­ty Vil­la, were so igno­rant of 1978’s noto­ri­ous John Belushi vehi­cle Ani­mal House?

…Estne vol­u­men in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman San­dal with Nails Used for Tread

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

The Depths of Wikipedia: Enjoy a Compendium of the Online Encyclopedia’s Most Bizarre Pages

in Comedy, Education, Random, Web/Tech | April 4th, 2022

@depthsofwikipedia If the author­i­ties kill me for mak­ing this tik­tok just know I loved you guys #learnon­tik­tok #tik­tok­part­ner ♬ orig­i­nal sound — Annie Rauw­er­da

What’s your stance on Wikipedia, the free, open con­tent online ency­clo­pe­dia?

Stu­dents are often dis­cour­aged or dis­al­lowed from cit­ing Wikipedia as a source, a bias that a Wikipedia entry titled “Wikipedia should not be con­sid­ered a defin­i­tive source in and of itself” sup­ports:

As a user-gen­er­at­ed source, it can be edit­ed by any­one at any time, and any infor­ma­tion it con­tains at a par­tic­u­lar time could be van­dal­ism, a work in progress, or sim­ply incor­rect. Biogra­phies of liv­ing per­sons, sub­jects that hap­pen to be in the news, and polit­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly con­tentious top­ics are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these issues…because Wikipedia is a vol­un­teer-run project, it can­not con­stant­ly mon­i­tor every con­tri­bu­tion. There are many errors that remain unno­ticed for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years.

(Anoth­er entry coun­sels those who would per­sist to cite the exact time, date, and arti­cle ver­sion they are ref­er­enc­ing.)

Wikipedia has a clear­ly stat­ed pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing con­trib­u­tors from close para­phras­ing or out­right copy­ing and past­ing from out­side sources, though in a bit of a cir­cle-in-a-cir­cle sit­u­a­tion, sev­er­al not­ed authors and jour­nal­ists have been caught pla­gia­riz­ing Wikipedia arti­cles.

A list of Wikipedia con­tro­ver­sies, pub­lished on — where else? — Wikipedia is a hair rais­ing litany of polit­i­cal sab­o­tage, char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and “revenge edits”. (The list is cur­rent­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed by 338 ref­er­ence links, and has been char­ac­ter­ized as in need of update since Octo­ber 2021, owing to a lack of edits regard­ing the “con­tro­ver­sy about Main­land Chi­nese edi­tors.”)

It can be a pret­ty scary place, but Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan senior Annie Rauw­er­da, cre­ator of the Insta­gram account Depths of Wikipedia is unfazed. As she wrote in an arti­cle for the tech pub­li­ca­tion Input:

Wikipedia is a splen­did­ly exten­sive record of almost every­thing that mat­ters; a mod­ern-day Library of Alexan­dria that’s free, acces­si­ble, and dynam­ic. But Wikipedia is char­ac­ter­ized not only by what it is but also by what it is not. It’s not a soap­box, a bat­tle­ground, nor a blog.

It’s also becom­ing famous as Rauw­er­da’s play­ground, or more accu­rate­ly, a packed swap shop in which mil­lions of bizarre items are tucked away.

If your sched­ule lim­its the amount time you can spend down its myr­i­ad rab­bit holes, Rauw­er­da will do the dig­ging for you.

Turn­ing a selec­tion of Wikipedia excerpts into a col­lage for a friend’s quaran-zine inspired her to keep the par­ty going with screen­shots of odd­ball entries post­ed to a ded­i­cat­ed Insta­gram account.

Her fol­low­ers don’t seem to care whether a post con­tains an image or not, though the neu­ro­science major finds that emo­tion­al, short or ani­mal-relat­ed posts gen­er­ate the most excite­ment. “I used to post more things that were con­cep­tu­al,” she told Lithi­um Mag­a­zine,  “like mind-blow­ing physics con­cepts, but those didn’t lend them­selves to Insta­gram as well since they require a few min­utes of think­ing and read­ing.”

The bulk of what she posts come to her as read­er sub­mis­sions, though in a pinch, she can always turn to the “holy grail” — Wikipedia’s own list of unusu­al arti­cles.

In addi­tion to Insta­gram, her dis­cov­er­ies find their way into an infre­quent­ly pub­lished newslet­ter, and onto Tik­Tok and Twit­ter, where some of our recent faves include the def­i­n­i­tion of hum­ster, a list of games that Bud­dha would not play, and the Paul O’Sullivan Band, “an inter­na­tion­al­ly based, pop-rock band con­sist­ing of four mem­bers, all of whom are named Paul O’Sullivan.”

Along the way, she has found ways to give back, co-host­ing a vir­tu­al edit-a-thon and bring­ing some gen­uine glam­our to a livestreamed Wikipedia triv­ia con­test.

And she recent­ly authored a seri­ous arti­cle for Slate about Rus­sians scram­bling to down­load a 29-giga­byte file con­tain­ing Russ­ian-lan­guage Wikipedia after the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Media (Roskom­nad­zor) threat­ened to block it over con­tent relat­ed to the inva­sion of Ukraine.

(You can read more about how that’s going on Wikipedia…)

Sub­mit a link to Wikipedia page for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on the Depths of Wikipedia here.

Fol­low Annie Rauwin­da’s Depths of Wikipedia on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

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

When Stalin Starved Ukraine

in Current Affairs, History | March 29th, 2022

Since its launch last month, Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine has sent observers around the world scram­bling for con­text. It is a fact, for exam­ple, that Rus­sia and Ukraine were once “togeth­er” in the com­mu­nist mega-state that was the Union of Sovi­et Social­ist Republics. But it is also a fact that such Sovi­et togeth­er­ness hard­ly ensured warm feel­ings between the two lands. An espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant chap­ter of their his­to­ry is known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, or “death by star­va­tion.” Span­ning the years 1932 and 1933, this peri­od of famine result­ed in three to six mil­lion lives lost — and that accord­ing to the low­er accept­ed esti­mates.

“It was geno­cide,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Vox “Miss­ing Chap­ter’ video above, “car­ried out by a dic­ta­tor who want­ed to keep Ukraine under his con­trol, and would do every­thing in his pow­er to cov­er it up for decades. That dic­ta­tor was, of course, Joseph Stal­in, who accom­pa­nied bru­tal meth­ods of rule with tight con­trol of infor­ma­tion. “In 1917, after the fall of the Russ­ian Empire, Ukraine briefly gained free­dom,” the video explains. “But by 1922, it was forcibly inte­grat­ed into the new­ly formed Sovi­et Union.” A rur­al and high­ly fer­tile land, Ukraine was known as “the bread­bas­ket of the Sovi­et Union” — hence Stal­in’s desire to nip any poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion there in the bud.

First came a “wide­spread, vio­lent purge of Ukrain­ian intel­lec­tu­als along with priests and reli­gious struc­tures.” At the same time as they advanced this attempt­ed dis­man­tling of Ukrain­ian cul­ture, Sovi­et high­er-ups were also imple­ment­ing Stal­in’s five-year plan of indus­tri­al­iza­tion, con­sol­i­da­tion, and col­lec­tiviza­tion, includ­ing that of all agri­cul­ture. This was the time of the kulak, or “wealthy peas­ant,” the label invent­ed to dis­grace any­one resis­tant to this process. Any kulaks known to Stal­in faced a ter­ri­ble fate indeed, includ­ing exile, impris­on­ment, and even exe­cu­tion; those farm­ers who remained then fell vic­tim to the dic­ta­tor’s engi­neered famine.

Under the pre­text of enforc­ing delib­er­ate­ly unre­al­is­tic grain-pro­duc­tion quo­tas, Stal­in’s enforcers seized farms across Ukraine in order to sell their prod­ucts to the West. Before long, “Sovi­et police began seiz­ing not just grain, but any­thing edi­ble.” Farm­ers were stopped from leav­ing their home­land, where Stal­in intend­ed them to starve, “but even in this unimag­in­able suf­fer­ing, Ukraini­ans fought for their lives and each oth­er.” This video incor­po­rates inter­views with a grand­son and grand­daugh­ter of two such Ukraini­ans who left behind per­son­al records of the Holodomor. A sto­ry of endurance and sur­vival under the very worst cir­cum­stances, and ulti­mate­ly a return to nation­al inde­pen­dence, it goes some way to explain­ing how and why Ukraine con­tin­ues to put up such a valiant fight against the forces that have descend­ed upon it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

H.G. Wells Inter­views Joseph Stal­in in 1934; Declares “I Am More to The Left Than You, Mr. Stal­in”

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.

Adapting Agatha Christie for the Screen — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #118

in Film, Literature, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 28th, 2022

In light of the new­ly released, Kenneth Branagh-direct­ed film Death on the Nile, Pret­ty Much Pop dis­cuss­es the con­tin­u­ing appear­ance of the works of the world’s most suc­cess­ful mys­tery writer in film and TV. 

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by repeat guests Sarahlyn Bruck, Al Bak­er, and Nicole Pomet­ti to dis­cuss the recent films, the Sarah Phelps TV adap­ta­tions (like The ABC Mur­ders), the Poirot BBC TV series, and some old­er adap­ta­tions.

We take on the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of Poirot and how recent, grit­ti­er inter­pre­ta­tions com­pare with those of James Bond and Sher­lock Holmes. Also, how should a screen­writer adapt such fact-heavy nov­els? What works and does­n’t in terms of mod­ern­iz­ing them to cur­rent audi­ence expec­ta­tions? How did Christie keep things inter­est­ing for her­self writ­ing so many mys­ter­ies? How deep do her med­i­ta­tions on psy­chol­o­gy and ethics run in these books, and can that be ade­quate­ly con­veyed on screen? What’s the future of the mys­tery genre?

Here are a few rel­e­vant sources:

• “What Makes a Good Her­cule Poirot? (It’s More Than the Lit­tle Gray Cells.)” by Calum Marsh
• “Death on the Nile is a good old-fash­ioned mess of a movie” by Joshua Rivera
• “10 Agatha Christie Film Adap­ta­tions to Watch Ahead of ‘Death on the Nile’ ” by Sara Cen­tu­ry
• “The best Agatha Christie movies and TV shows to sati­ate your murder/mystery crav­ings” by Karen Rought

Lis­ten to Nicole’s Remakes, Reboots and Revivals pod­cast. Look into Sarahlyn’s book and oth­er writ­ings. Check out Al’s work fight­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion at Log­i­cal­ly.

Fol­low our guests at @remakespodcast (Nicole), @sarahlynbruck, and @ixisnox (Al).

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Japanese Researcher Sleeps in the Same Location as Her Cat for 24 Consecutive Nights!

in Biology, Data, Design, Life | March 25th, 2022

Cross cat nap­ping with bed hop­ping and you might end up hav­ing an “adven­ture in com­fort” sim­i­lar to the one that informs stu­dent Yuri Naka­hashi’s the­sis for Tokyo’s Hosei Uni­ver­si­ty.

For 24 con­sec­u­tive nights, Naka­hashi for­went the com­forts of her own bed in favor of a green sleep­ing bag, unfurled in what­ev­er ran­dom loca­tion one of her five pet cats had cho­sen as its sleep­ing spot that evening.

(The choice of which cat would get the plea­sure of dic­tat­ing each night’s sleep­ing bag coor­di­nates was also ran­dom­ized.)

As the own­er of five cats, Naka­hashi pre­sum­ably knew what she was sign­ing up for…

Cats rack out atop sofa backs, on stairs, and under beds…and so did Naka­hashi.

Her pho­tos sug­gest she logged a lot of time on a bare wood­en floor.

A Fit­Bit mon­i­tored the dura­tion and qual­i­ty of time spent asleep, as well as the fre­quen­cy with which she awak­ened dur­ing the night.

She doc­u­ment­ed the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of this exper­i­ment in an inter­ac­tive pub­lished by the Infor­ma­tion Pro­cess­ing Soci­ety of Japan.

She reports that she eager­ly await­ed the rev­e­la­tion of each night’s coor­di­nates, and that even when her sleep was dis­rupt­ed by her pets’ mid­dle of the night groom­ing rou­tines, bunk­ing next to them had a “relax­ing effect.”

Mean­while, our research sug­gests that the same exper­i­ment would awak­en a vast­ly dif­fer­ent response in a dif­fer­ent human sub­ject, one suf­fer­ing from ail­uro­pho­bia, say, or severe aller­gies to the pro­teins in feline sali­va, urine, and dan­der.

What’s real­ly sur­pris­ing about Nakahashi’s itin­er­ant, and appar­ent­ly plea­sure-filled under­tak­ing is how lit­tle dif­fer­ence there is between her aver­age sleep score dur­ing the exper­i­ment and her aver­age sleep score from the 20 days pre­ced­ing it.

At left, an aver­age sleep score of 84.2 for the 20 days lead­ing up to exper­i­ment. At right, an aver­age sleep score 83.7 dur­ing the exper­i­ment.

Nakahashi’s entry for the YouFab Glob­al Cre­ative Awards, a prize for “work that attempts a dia­logue that tran­scends the bound­aries of species, space, and time” reflects the play­ful spir­it she brought to her slight­ly off-kil­ter exper­i­ment:

 Is it pos­si­ble to add diver­si­ty to the way we enjoy sleep? Let’s think about food. In addi­tion to the taste and nutri­tion of the food, each meal is a spe­cial expe­ri­ence with diver­si­ty depend­ing on the peo­ple you are eat­ing with, the atmos­phere of the restau­rant, the weath­er, and many oth­er fac­tors. In order to bring this kind of enjoy­ment to sleep, we pro­pose an “adven­ture in com­fort” in which the cat decides where to sleep each night, away from the fixed bed­room and bed. This project is sim­i­lar to going out to eat with a good friend at a restau­rant, where the cat guides you to sleep.

She notes that tra­di­tion­al beds have an immo­bil­i­ty owing to “their phys­i­cal weight and cul­tur­al con­cepts such as direc­tion.”

This sug­gests that her work could be of some ben­e­fit to humans in decid­ed­ly less fan­ci­ful, invol­un­tary sit­u­a­tions, whose lack of hous­ing leads them to sleep in unpre­dictable, and inhos­pitable loca­tions.

Naka­hashi’s time in the green sleep­ing bag inspired her to cre­ate the below mod­el of a more flex­i­ble bed, using a polypropy­lene bag, rice and nylon film.

We have cre­at­ed a pro­to­type of a dou­ble-lay­ered inflat­able bed that has a pouch struc­ture that inflates with air and a jam­ming struc­ture that becomes hard when air is com­pressed. The pouch side soft­ly receives the body when inflat­ed. The jam­ming side becomes hard when the air is removed, and can be firm­ly fixed in an even space. The air is designed to move back and forth between the two lay­ers, so that when not in use, the whole thing can be rolled up soft­ly for stor­age. 

It’s hard to imag­ine the pres­ence of a pussy­cat doing much to ame­lio­rate the anx­i­ety of those forced to flee their famil­iar beds with lit­tle warn­ing, but we can see how Nakahashi’s design might bring a degree of phys­i­cal relief when sleep­ing in sub­way sta­tions, base­ment cor­ners, and oth­er har­row­ing loca­tions.

Via Spoon & Toma­go

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

How Yayoi Kusama, Obsessed with Polka Dots, Became One of the Most Radical Artists of All Time

in Art | March 25th, 2022

Yay­oi Kusama turned 93 this past Tues­day, and she remains not just artis­ti­cal­ly pro­duc­tive but glob­al­ly beloved. Her work itself con­tin­ues to appeal to an ever wider range of view­ers of all nation­al­i­ties and ages. “Yay­oi Kusama is a Japan­ese artist who is some­times called ‘the princess of pol­ka dots’,” says the brief intro­duc­tion to her life and work offered at Take Kids. “Although she makes lots of dif­fer­ent types of art – paint­ings, sculp­tures, per­for­mances and instal­la­tions – they have one thing in com­mon, DOTS!” That’s cer­tain­ly one way of describ­ing her, though any­one who’s fol­lowed her 70-year-long career will notice the con­spic­u­ous absence of oth­er, equal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of her art’s devel­op­ment: men­tal ill­ness, for instance, or enor­mous num­bers of phal­lus­es.

Yet even the new video essay on Kusama from Great Art Explained, a Youtube chan­nel very much pitched to an adult view­er­ship, takes as its focus the artist’s rela­tion­ship with var­i­ous­ly sized two-dimen­sion­al sol­id cir­cles. At the age of ten, says the chan­nel’s cre­ator James Payne, she “had her first hal­lu­ci­na­tion, which she described as flash­es of light, auras, or dense fields of dots. The dots would come to life and con­sume her and she would find her­self oblit­er­at­ed.” Since then, and though her art has “crossed from art to fash­ion and from film­mak­ing to per­for­mance art, her con­tin­u­ing explo­ration of the pol­ka dot has remained the one con­sis­tent motif.”

In approach­ing an artist through a sin­gle motif rather than a sin­gle work, this video breaks from the stan­dard Great Art Explained for­mat, but that does­n’t stop Payne from telling Kusama’s sto­ry with his usu­al suc­cinct­ness. He begins with her dis­com­fit­ing upbring­ing in a well-off rur­al Japan­ese house­hold and con­tin­ues to her dis­cov­ery of and sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, who made Kusama the nec­es­sary intro­duc­tions in the New York art world. Through her rig­or­ous work habits and con­tin­u­ous push­ing of aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal bound­aries, Kusama even­tu­al­ly became a fig­ure of some renown in that city’s avant-garde scene of the nine­teen-six­ties — a milieu that proved recep­tive to the “soft-sculp­ture phal­lus­es” with which many of her cre­ations then bris­tled.

Kusama returned to her home­land in the ear­ly 1970s, and soon there­after only those with the sharpest mem­o­ries of the avant-garde six­ties remem­bered her work. Only a 1989 ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Arts returned her to the inter­na­tion­al fame she has enjoyed ever since. Many of us now have vivid mem­o­ries of step­ping into her com­plete­ly mir­rored, dense­ly dot-lit “infin­i­ty rooms” over the years and in dif­fer­ent muse­ums around the world. Though Kusama began mak­ing them in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, they’ve turned out to be ide­al­ly suit­ed to the social-media era. “Peo­ple queue up for hours for just six­ty sec­onds in one of her infin­i­ty-room instal­la­tions,” says Payne. “Each image they take of infin­i­ty joins mil­lions more on the inter­net — itself infi­nite.” Only now, in Kusama’s tenth decade, has the rest of the world caught up with her.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Full Issues of MAVO, the Japan­ese Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine That Announced a New Mod­ernist Move­ment (1923–1925)

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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

Footage of George Harrison & Bob Dylan Rehearsing “If Not For You” at the Concert for Bangladesh (1971)

in Music | March 25th, 2022

“Dylan… was real­ly into the whole idea of it for the refugees.…” says George Har­ri­son over the restored footage above from 1971’s Con­cert for Bangladesh. The qui­et Beat­le’s scouser lilt will sure­ly tug at your heart­strings, as will Har­ri­son and Dylan’s care­ful rehearsal take of “If Not for You,” a song they did not end up play­ing togeth­er dur­ing the con­cert. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant shared moment nonethe­less. As fans know, “If Not for You” became a key­stone song for both artists at the turn of the 70s.

Dylan wrote the song the year pre­vi­ous as the first track on his 1970 New Morn­ing, a record crit­ics her­ald­ed as a return to form after the panned dou­ble album, Self Por­trait. Har­ri­son him­self sat in on a ses­sion for the song and record­ed a “lan­guid ear­ly ver­sion,” notes Bea­t­les Bible, “at Columbi­a’s Stu­dio B in New York.”

The track is “thought to be Har­rison’s first record­ed instance of slide gui­tar,” a tech­nique that would char­ac­ter­ize the sound of his dou­ble debut, All Things Must Pass. His pres­ence arguably helped shape the direc­tion of Dylan’s record­ing, which Dylan him­self would lat­er describe as “sort of Tex-Mex.”

Har­rison’s album, released in the same year as New Morn­ing, fea­tures his — per­haps bet­ter known — ver­sion of “If Not for You,” a song that has been cov­ered dozens of times since. (All Things Must Pass also fea­tures a 1968 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Har­ri­son and Dylan: name­ly, the open­ing track, “I’d Have You Any­time.”) It’s a song that seems to sum up the two musi­cians’ con­tent­ment with their mar­riages and lives at the time. The per­for­mance, though only a sound­check, pro­vides “an inti­mate glimpse,” crit­ic Simon Leng com­ments, “of the warm friend­ship between two major cul­tur­al fig­ures at a point when both were emo­tion­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble.”

On one hand, the Con­cert for Bangladesh was a world-his­tor­i­cal event, pro­vid­ing inspi­ra­tion for Live Aid and oth­er sta­di­um-sized ben­e­fit shows. “In one day,” as Ravi Shankar put it, “the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh.” NME called it “The Great­est Rock Spec­ta­cle of the Decade” and Rolling Stone’s edi­tors described “a brief incan­des­cent revival of all that was best about the Six­ties.”

But on the oth­er hand, in moments like these, we can see the con­cert as a turn into a more mature, sen­si­tive sev­en­ties. “Instead of cry­ing ‘I want you so bad,” wrote Ed Ward in his 1970 New Morn­ing review, Dylan is “cel­e­brat­ing the fact that not only has he found her, but they know each oth­er well, and get strength from each oth­er, depend on each oth­er.” In the take at the top, Jack What­ley observes, Har­ri­son and Dylan “spend the entire song look­ing at each oth­er, as if they’re singing about their own rela­tion­ship.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son “My Sweet Lord” Gets an Offi­cial Music Video, Fea­tur­ing Ringo Starr, Al Yankovic, Pat­ton Oswalt & Many Oth­ers

Bob Dylan’s Famous Tele­vised Press Con­fer­ence After He Went Elec­tric (1965)

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

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

Japanese Toy Designs from the Late 19th & Early 20th Century: Explore an Online Archive

in Art, History | March 24th, 2022

After two cen­turies of iso­la­tion, Japan re-opened to the world in the 1860s, at which point West­ern­ers imme­di­ate­ly became enam­ored with things Japan­ese. It was in that very same decade that Vin­cent Van Gogh began col­lect­ing ukiyo‑e wood­block prints, which inspired him to cre­ate “the art of the future.” But not every West­ern­er was drawn first to such ele­vat­ed fruits of Japan­ese cul­ture. When the American­ educator­ William ­Elliot­ Griff­is went to Japan in 1876 he mar­veled at a coun­try that seemed to be a par­adise of play: “We do not know of any coun­try in the world in which there are so many toy-shops, or so many fairs for the sale of things which delight chil­dren,” he wrote.

That quote comes from Matt Alt’s Pure Inven­tion: How Japan’s Pop Cul­ture Con­quered the World.  “While West­ern tastemak­ers vora­cious­ly con­sumed prints, glass­ware, tex­tiles, and oth­er grown-up delights, it was in fact toys that formed the back­bone of Japan’s bur­geon­ing export indus­try in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry,” Alt writes.

You can expe­ri­ence some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese visu­al art along with some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese toy cul­ture in the Ningyo-do Bunko data­base. This dig­i­tal archive’s more than 100 albums of water­col­or toy-design ren­der­ings from the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies are, in the words of Bib­liOdyssey’s Paul Ker­ri­g­an, “by turns scary and intrigu­ing.”

These masks, dolls, tops, and oth­er fan­ci­ful works of the toy­mak­er’s craft may not imme­di­ate­ly appeal to a gen­er­a­tion raised with smart­phones. But their designs, root­ed in Japan­ese mythol­o­gy and region­al cul­tures, nev­er­the­less exude both a still-uncom­mon artistry and a still-fas­ci­nat­ing “oth­er­ness.” If this seems like kid’s stuff, bear in mind the caus­es of Japan’s trans­for­ma­tion from a post-World War II sham­bles to per­haps the most advanced coun­try in the world. As Alt tells the sto­ry of this aston­ish­ing devel­op­ment, Japan went from mak­ing sim­ple tin jeeps to tran­sis­tor radios to karaoke machines to Walk­men to vast cul­tur­al indus­tries of comics, film, tele­vi­sion, and relat­ed mer­chan­dise: all toys, broad­ly defined, and we in the rest of the world under­es­ti­mate their pow­er at our per­il. Rum­mage through the designs here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

Watch Bat­tered & Bruised Vin­tage Toys Get Mes­mer­iz­ing­ly Restored to Near Mint Con­di­tion

On Christ­mas, Browse A His­tor­i­cal Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

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.

When James Brown Played Rikers Island Prison 50 Years Ago (1972)

in Music | March 18th, 2022

Though not as well known as John­ny Cash’s con­certs at Fol­som and San Quentin pris­ons, James Brown’s 1972 con­cert at Rik­ers Island equal­ly quelled ris­ing ten­sions, and dis­played the humil­i­ty of the artist at the top of his game. Fifty years ago on March 16, Brown and his full band played two sets in front of a crowd of around 550. And until a bet­ter source is found, the above video is the only mov­ing record of that event, a shot from a tele­vi­sion news broad­cast. How did this con­cert come about? Accord­ing to the research of New York Times writer Bil­ly Heller, a lot comes down to the tenac­i­ty of Glo­ria Bond, who worked at the New York Board of Cor­rec­tions.

Ear­li­er in 1972, Rik­ers Island had seen major unrest. Inhu­mane con­di­tions and over­crowd­ing had led to a riot that injured 75 inmates and 20 guards. The post-riot atmos­phere was a “pres­sure cook­er”. The Board had pre­vi­ous­ly brought in Coret­ta Scott King to speak to pris­on­ers, and Har­ry Bela­fonte to per­form. But James Brown was some­body dif­fer­ent, with music that was rev­o­lu­tion­ary, and lyrics that were influ­enced by, and an influ­ence on, the Black Pow­er move­ment.

Brown’s man­ag­er Charles Bob­bit told Glo­ria Bond that the God­fa­ther of Soul was a hard man to get a hold of and rarely came to the office. Accord­ing to Bond’s daugh­ter Anna, Glo­ria replied:

“She says to him: ‘Well, Mr. Bob­bit, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll bring my knit­ting and I’ll sit in that cor­ner over there,’” Anna Bond said. “‘I won’t both­er any­body. I’ll just wait till he comes.’”
Glo­ria Bond did just that. “Every­body in the office got to know her, and they’d bring her cof­fee,” Anna Bond said. “She became part of the entourage by sit­ting in her lit­tle cor­ner, knit­ting.” Even­tu­al­ly, Brown arrived at the office and came face to face with Glo­ria Bond. “And the rest is his­to­ry,” Anna Bond said.

It helped that Brown was on a musi­cal cru­sade to save kids from drugs and a fast track to prison. Hav­ing once served time in his younger days, Brown saw too many Black youth going to jail for drug-relat­ed crimes. He had record­ed a song, a spo­ken poem in the style of “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” called “King Hero­in.” The drug was dec­i­mat­ing com­mu­ni­ties by the turn of the decade.

At Rik­ers he told the most­ly young audi­ence: “When you leave here, you can have a good life or you can have a bad life. How­ev­er you do it when you get out is up to you.” Brown used his own life as a mod­el of ris­ing above adver­si­ty. He also brought his full game (and his full ensem­ble to the show), treat­ing this gig as impor­tant as a show at the Apol­lo, maybe more so.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er Diana Mara Hen­ry shot sev­er­al rolls of film that day and doc­u­ment­ed in black and white Brown and his band. Her quote from the short video below (note the incor­rect year) serves as a vibe for the whole expe­ri­ence:

“As an artist, you put every­thing you can into a per­for­mance and at some point you turn it over to the audi­ence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

James Brown Saves Boston After Mar­tin Luther King’s Assas­si­na­tion, Calls for Peace Across Amer­i­ca (1968)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Meet Anita Berber, the Cabaret Star Who Scandalized Weimar-Era Berlin

in Dance, Film, Gender, History | March 18th, 2022

Ani­ta Berber, the taboo-bust­ing, sex­u­al­ly omniv­o­rous, fash­ion for­ward, fre­quent­ly naked star of the Weimar Repub­lic cabaret scene, tops our list of per­form­ers we real­ly wish we’d been able to see live.

While Berber act­ed in 27 films, includ­ing Pros­ti­tu­tion, direc­tor Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gam­bler, and Dif­fer­ent from the Oth­ers, which film crit­ic Den­nis Har­vey describes as “the first movie to por­tray homo­sex­u­al char­ac­ters beyond the usu­al innu­en­do and ridicule,” we have a strong hunch that none of these appear­ances can com­pete with the sheer audac­i­ty of her stage work.

Audi­ences at Berlin’s White Mouse cabaret (some wear­ing black or white masks to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties) were tit­il­lat­ed by her Expres­sion­is­tic nude solo chore­og­ra­phy, as well as the troupe of six teenaged dancers under her com­mand.

As biog­ra­ph­er Mel Gor­don writes in The Sev­en Addic­tions and Five Pro­fes­sions of Ani­ta Berber: Weimar Berlin’s Priest­ess of Deprav­i­ty, Berber, often described as a “strip­per”, dis­played the pas­sion of a seri­ous artist, “respond(ing) to the audience’s heck­ling with show-stop­ping obscen­i­ties and inde­cent provo­ca­tions:”

Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dous­ing her­self in wine whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly uri­nat­ing… It was not long before the entire cabaret one night sank into a groundswell of shout­ing, screams and laugh­ter.  Ani­ta jumped off the stage in fum­ing rage, grabbed the near­est cham­pagne bot­tle and smashed it over a businessman’s head.

Her col­lab­o­ra­tions with her sec­ond hus­band, dancer Sebas­t­ian Droste, car­ried Berber into increas­ing­ly trans­gres­sive ter­ri­to­ry, both onstage and off.

Accord­ing to trans­la­tor Mer­rill Cole, in the intro­duc­tion to the 2012 reis­sue of Dances of Vice, Hor­ror and Ecsta­sy, a book of Expres­sion­ist poems, essays, pho­tographs, and stage designs which Droste and Berber co-authored, “even the bio­graph­i­cal details seduce:”

…a bisex­u­al some­times-pros­ti­tute and a shady fig­ure from the male homo­sex­u­al under­world, unit­ed in addic­tion to cocaine and dis­dain for bour­geois respectabil­i­ty, both high­ly tal­ent­ed, Expres­sion­ist-trained dancers, both beau­ti­ful exhi­bi­tion­ists, set out to pro­vide the Baby­lon on the Spree with the ulti­mate expe­ri­ence of deprav­i­ty, using an art form they had helped to invent for this pur­pose. Their brief mar­riage and artis­tic inter­ac­tion end­ed when Droste became des­per­ate for drugs and abscond­ed with Berber’s jew­el col­lec­tion.

This, and the descrip­tion of Berber’s pen­chant for “haunt(ing) Weimar Berlin’s hotel lob­bies, night­clubs and casi­nos, radi­ant­ly naked except for an ele­gant sable wrap, a pet mon­key hang­ing from her neck, and a sil­ver brooch packed with cocaine,” do a far more evoca­tive job of res­ur­rect­ing Berber, the Weimar sen­sa­tion, than any wordy, blow-by-blow attempt to recre­ate her shock­ing per­for­mances, though we can’t fault author Karl Toepfer, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of The­ater Arts at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty, for try­ing.

In Empire of Ecsta­sy: Nudi­ty and Move­ment in Ger­man Body Cul­ture, 1910–1935, Toepfer draws heav­i­ly on Czech chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Joe Jenčík’s eye­wit­ness obser­va­tions, to recon­struct Berber’s most noto­ri­ous dance, Cocaine, begin­ning with the “omi­nous scenery by Har­ry Täu­ber fea­tur­ing a tall lamp on a low, cloth-cov­ered table:”

This lamp was an expres­sion­ist sculp­ture with an ambigu­ous form that one could read as a sign of the phal­lus, an abstrac­tion of the female dancer’s body, or a mon­u­men­tal image of a syringe, for a long, shiny nee­dle pro­trud­ed from the top of it…It is not clear how nude Berber was when she per­formed the dance. Jenčík, writ­ing in 1929, flat­ly stat­ed that she was nude, but the famous Vien­nese pho­tog­ra­ph­er Madame D’O­ra (Dora Kalmus) took a pic­ture enti­tled “Kokain” in which Berber appears in a long black dress that expos­es her breasts and whose lac­ing, up the front, reveals her flesh to below her navel.

In any case, accord­ing to Jenčík, she dis­played “a sim­ple tech­nique of nat­ur­al steps and unforced pos­es.” But though the tech­nique was sim­ple, the dance itself, one of Berber’s most suc­cess­ful cre­ations, was appar­ent­ly quite com­plex. Ris­ing from an ini­tial con­di­tion of paral­y­sis on the floor (or pos­si­bly from the table, as indi­cat­ed by Täu­ber’s sceno­graph­ic notes), she adopt­ed a pri­mal move­ment involv­ing a slow, sculp­tured turn­ing of her body, a kind of slow-motion effect. The turn­ing rep­re­sent­ed the unrav­el­ing of a “knot of flesh.” But as the body uncoiled, it con­vulsed into “sep­a­rate parts,” pro­duc­ing a vari­ety of rhythms with­in itself. Berber used all parts of her body to con­struct a “trag­ic” con­flict between the healthy body and the poi­soned body: she made dis­tinct rhythms out of the move­ment of her mus­cles; she used “unex­pect­ed counter-move­ments” of her head to cre­ate an anguished sense of bal­ance; her “porce­lain-col­ored arms” made hyp­not­ic, pen­du­lum­like move­ments, like a mar­i­onet­te’s; with­in the pri­mal turn­ing of her body, there appeared con­tra­dic­to­ry turns of her wrists, tor­so, ankles; the rhythm of her breath­ing fluc­tu­at­ed with dra­mat­ic effect; her intense dark eyes fol­lowed yet anoth­er, slow­er rhythm; and she intro­duced the “most refined nuances of agili­ty” in mak­ing spasms of sen­sa­tion rip­ple through her fin­gers, nos­trils, and lips. Yet, despite all this com­plex­i­ty, she was not afraid of seem­ing “ridicu­lous” or “painful­ly swollen.” The dance con­clud­ed when the con­vulsed dancer attempt­ed to cry out (with the “blood-red open­ing of the mouth”) and could not. The dancer then hurled her­self to the floor and assumed a pose of motion­less, drugged sleep. Berber’s dance dra­ma­tized the intense ambi­gu­i­ty involved in link­ing the ecsta­t­ic lib­er­a­tion of the body to nudi­ty and rhyth­mic con­scious­ness. The dance tied ecsta­t­ic expe­ri­ence to an encounter with vice (addic­tion) and hor­ror (acute aware­ness of death).

A noble attempt, but for­give us if we can’t quite pic­ture it…

And what lit­tle evi­dence has been pre­served of her screen appear­ances exists at a sim­i­lar remove from  the dark sub­ject mat­ter she explic­it­ly ref­er­enced in her chore­o­graphed work — Mor­phine, Sui­cide, The Corpse on the Dis­sect­ing Table…

Cole opines:

There are a num­ber of nar­ra­tive accounts of her dances, some pinned by pro­fes­sion­al crit­ics, and almost all com­mend­ing her tal­ent, finesse, and mes­mer­iz­ing stage pres­ence. We also have film images from the var­i­ous silent films in which she played bit parts. There exist, too, many still pho­tographs of Berber and Droste, as well as ren­di­tions of Berber by oth­er artists, most promi­nent­ly the Dadaist Otto Dix’s famous scar­let-sat­u­rat­ed por­trait. In regard to the naked dances, unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have no mov­ing images, no way to watch direct­ly how they were per­formed.

For a dishy overview of Ani­ta Berber’s per­son­al life, includ­ing her alleged dal­liances with actress Mar­lene Diet­rich, author Lawrence Dur­rell, and the King of Yugoslavia, her influ­en­tial effect on direc­tor Leni Riefen­stahl, and her sad demise at the age of 29, a “car­rion soul that even the hye­nas ignored,” take a peek at Vic­to­ria Linchong’s bio­graph­i­cal essay for Messy Nessy Chic, or bet­ter yet, Iron Spike’s Twit­ter thread.

Berber was addict­ed to alco­hol, cocaine, opi­um, and mor­phine. But one of her favorite drugs was chlo­ro­form and ether, mixed in a bowl. She would stir the bowl with the bloom of a white rose, and then eat the petals.

Have you ever heard any­thing so extra in your ENTIRE LIFE. pic.twitter.com/sh9xL3it0E

— Iron Spike (@Iron_Spike) Jan­u­ary 11, 2020

via Messy Nessy

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Expe­ri­ence Footage of Roar­ing 1920s Berlin, Restored & Col­orized with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Down­load Hun­dreds of Issues of Jugend, Germany’s Pio­neer­ing Art Nou­veau Mag­a­zine (1896–1940)