How Doors Open onto Philosophical Mysteries in Robert Bresson’s Films: A Short Video Essay by Kogonada

in Film, Philosophy | August 14th, 2017

FYI: Last Fri­day, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed for you the new fea­ture film by kog­o­na­da, whose many video essays–on Ozu, Lin­klater, Mal­ick, Ander­son, etc.–we’ve shown you here before. Rather by coin­ci­dence, The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion just post­ed kog­o­nada’s lat­est video essay, this one exam­in­ing how “doors open onto philo­soph­i­cal mys­ter­ies in the films of French mas­ter Robert Bres­son.” Watch “Once There Was Every­thing” above, and pair it with his oth­er Bres­son essay (“Hands of Bres­son”) from three years ago. It appears right below.

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:

Video Essay­ist Kog­o­na­da Makes His Own Acclaimed Fea­ture Film: Watch His Trib­utes to Its Inspi­ra­tions Like Ozu, Lin­klater & Mal­ick

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Tran­scends Sci­ence Fic­tion

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

Cin­e­mat­ic Exper­i­ment: What Hap­pens When The Bicy­cle Thief’s Direc­tor and Gone With the Wind’s Pro­duc­er Edit the Same Film

How Richard Lin­klater (Slack­er, Dazed and Con­fused, Boy­hood) Tells Sto­ries with Time: Six Video Essays

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers & Francis Stewart’s Censored Photographs of a WWII Japanese Internment Camp

in History, Photography | August 11th, 2017

Image by Ansel Adams

In places where atroc­i­ties or wide­spread human rights vio­la­tions occur, we some­times hear ordi­nary cit­i­zens lat­er claim they didn’t know what was going on. In the case of the intern­ment of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans dur­ing World War II, this would be almost impos­si­ble to believe. “120,000 peo­ple,” notes Newsweek, “lost their prop­er­ty and their free­dom,” round­ed up in full view of their neigh­bors. Every major pub­li­ca­tion of the time report­ed on Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 Exec­u­tive Order. Newsweek wrote “that peo­ple in coastal areas ‘were more anx­ious than ever to get rid of their aliens after rumors that sig­nal lights were seen before sub­ma­rine attacks’ ” off the coast of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. There were many such rumors, the kind that spread xeno­pho­bic fear and para­noia, and which peo­ple used to vocal­ly sup­port, or tac­it­ly approve of, send­ing their neigh­bors to intern­ment camps because of their ances­try.

Image by Fran­cis Stew­art

Oth­er reac­tions were less than sub­tle. The West Seat­tle Her­ald con­front­ed read­ers with the blunt head­line “GET ‘EM OUT!” Nonethe­less, Newsweek’s Rob Verg­er writes, “the pol­i­cy was by no means greet­ed with unan­i­mous sup­port,” and a vig­or­ous pub­lic debate played out, with oppo­nents point­ing to the bla­tant racism and vio­la­tions of civ­il rights. Two-thirds of the internees were Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. Yet all Japan­ese Amer­i­cans were repeat­ed­ly called “aliens,” lan­guage con­sis­tent with the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Japan­ese pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns emerg­ing at the same time.

Once the camps were built and the internees impris­oned, how­ev­er, a mas­sive pro­pa­gan­da effort began, not only the sell the camps as a nec­es­sary nation­al secu­ri­ty mea­sure, but to por­tray them as idyl­lic vil­lages where the patri­ot­ic internees patient­ly wait­ed out the war by farm­ing, play­ing base­ball, mak­ing arts and crafts, run­ning gen­er­al stores, attend­ing school, wav­ing flags, and run­ning news­pa­pers.

Image by Clem Albers

Much of that infor­ma­tion was con­veyed to the pub­lic visu­al­ly by pho­tog­ra­phers hired by the War Relo­ca­tion Author­i­ty to doc­u­ment the camps. Among them were Clem Albers, Fran­cis Stew­art, and Dorothea Lange—well known for her pho­tographs of the Great Depres­sion. All three vis­it­ed the camp called Man­za­nar in the foothills of the Sier­ra moun­tains. Anoth­er famous pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Ansel Adams, gained access to Man­za­nar by virtue of his friend­ship with its direc­tor, Ralph Mer­ritt.

Image by Dorothea Lange

Their pho­tographs, for the most part, show busi­ly work­ing men and women, smil­ing school­child­ren, and lots of patri­ot­ic leisure activ­i­ties, like Stewart’s pho­to of sixth grade boys play­ing soft­ball, fur­ther up. The pho­tog­ra­phers were strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed from pho­tograph­ing guards, watch­tow­ers, search­lights, or barbed wire, and the heavy mil­i­tary pres­ence at the camp is near­ly always out of frame, with some very rare excep­tions, like Albers’ pho­to­graph above of mil­i­tary police.

Image by Ansel Adams

Adams worked under these pro­hi­bi­tions as well, but his pho­tos cap­tured camp life as hon­est­ly as he could. The stun­ning land­scapes some­times com­pete, even in the back­ground, with the real sub­ject of some of his images (as in the pho­to at the top). But he also con­veyed the harsh bar­ren­ness of the region. He tried to inti­mate the oppres­sive police appa­ra­tus by cap­tur­ing its shad­ow. “The pur­pose of my work,” he wrote to the Library of Con­gress in 1965 upon donat­ing his col­lec­tion, “was to show how these peo­ple, suf­fer­ing under a great injus­tice, and loss of prop­er­ty, busi­ness and pro­fes­sions, had over­come a sense of defeat and despair [sic].” His images often show internees “in hero­ic pos­es,” writes Dini­tia Smith, as above, in order to enno­ble their con­di­tions. Lange’s pho­tographs, on the oth­er hand, like that of a young girl below, “seem­ing­ly unstaged and unlight­ed… bear the hall­marks” of her “dis­tinc­tive­ly doc­u­men­tary style.” Her pic­tures “com­press intense human emo­tion into care­ful­ly com­posed frames.” Some of her pho­tos show smil­ing, relaxed sub­jects. Many oth­ers, like the pho­to­graph of a bar­racks inte­ri­or fur­ther down, show the faces of weary, uncer­tain, and despon­dent civil­ian pris­on­ers of war.

Image by Dorothea Lange

Per­haps because of her refusal to sen­ti­men­tal­ize the camps, or because of her left-wing pol­i­tics and oppo­si­tion to intern­ment (both known before she was hired), Lange’s work was cen­sored, not only through restrict­ed access, but through the impound­ment of over 800 pho­tographs she took at 21 loca­tions. Those pho­tos were recent­ly pub­lished in a book called Impound­ed: Dorothea Lange and the Cen­sored Images of Japan­ese Amer­i­can Intern­ment and hun­dreds of them are free to view online at the Den­sho Dig­i­tal Repository’s Dorothea Lange Col­lec­tion. The Nation­al Park Service’s col­lec­tion fea­tures 16 pic­tures from Lange’s vis­it to Man­za­nar. At the NPS site, you’ll also find col­lec­tions of pho­tographs from that camp by Adams, Albers, and Stew­art. Each, to one degree or anoth­er, faced a form of cen­sor­ship in what they could pho­to­graph or whether their work would be shown at all. What most ordi­nary peo­ple saw at the time did not tell the whole sto­ry. For all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, writes Ober­lin Library, “life at a Japan­ese intern­ment camp was com­pa­ra­ble to the life of a pris­on­er behind bars.”

Image by Dorothea Lange

h/t @Histouroborus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

478 Dorothea Lange Pho­tographs Poignant­ly Doc­u­ment the Intern­ment of the Japan­ese Dur­ing WWII

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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

36 Abstract Covers of Vintage Psychology, Philosophy & Science Books Come to Life in a Mesmerizing Animation

in Animation, Books, Design, Psychology, Science | August 11th, 2017

Ani­mat­ed ebook cov­ers are the wave of the future.

Graph­ic and motion design­er Hen­ning M. Led­er­er surfs that wave on the most unex­pect­ed of boards—a col­lec­tion of abstract mid-cen­tu­ry cov­ers drawn from the Insta­gram feed of artist Julian Mon­tague, who shares his enthu­si­asm for vin­tage min­i­mal­ism.

Led­er­er first came to our atten­tion in 2015, when we cov­ered the first install­ment of what seems des­tined to become an ongo­ing project.

His lat­est effort, above, con­tin­ues his explo­rations in the sub­jects which most fre­quent­ly trad­ed in these sorts of geo­met­ric covers—science, psy­chother­a­py, phi­los­o­phy and soci­ol­o­gy.

No word on what inspired him to toss in the first cov­er, which fea­tures a cheer­ful, Play­mo­bil-esque mush­room gath­er­er. It’s endear­ing, but—to quote Sesame Street—is not like the oth­ers. Those of us who can’t deci­pher Cyril­lic script get the fun of imag­in­ing what sort of text this is—a mycol­o­gy man­u­al? A children’s tale? A psy­cho­log­i­cal examination—and ulti­mate­ly rejection—of mid­cen­tu­ry pub­lish­ers’ fas­ci­na­tion for spi­rals, diag­o­nal bars, and oth­er non-nar­ra­tive graph­ics?

Whether or not you’d be inclined to pick up any of these titles, you may find your­self want­i­ng to dance to them, com­pli­ments of musi­cian Jörg Stier­le’s trip­py elec­tron­ics.

Or take your cue from yet anoth­er cov­er  con­tained there­in: I. P. Pavlov’s Essays in Psy­chol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try with a Spe­cial Sec­tion on Sleep and Hyp­no­sis.

Here’s the one that start­ed it all:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

500+William S. Bur­roughs Book Cov­ers from Across the Globe: 1950s Through the 2010s

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

The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Videotape” Now Finally Revealed

in Music | August 10th, 2017

“Video­tape” ends Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rain­bows, and like many of their albums, it tends towards the fune­re­al. (Think of the drunk­en “Life in a Glasshouse” from Amne­si­ac or “Motion Pic­ture Sound­track” from Kid A). And at first, it does sound very sim­ple, four plain­tive descend­ing chords and Thom Yorke’s high melody over the top of it.

But in this 10 minute video essay from Vox Pop: Ear­worm, the song’s struc­ture is peeled back to reveal a secret–that the chord sequence is not on the down­beat, but shift­ed a half-beat ear­li­er. Hence, it is a heav­i­ly syn­co­pat­ed song that removes all clues to its syn­co­pa­tion.

Advanced musi­cians out there might not be blown away by any of this, but for fans of Radio­head and those just com­ing to music the­o­ry, the video is a good intro­duc­tion to com­plex rhythm ideas. The fun comes from the back­wards way in which Vox and War­ren Lain–who devot­ed a whole 30 min­utes to explor­ing the song–came across the secret.

It starts with video of Thom Yorke try­ing to play a live ver­sion along to a click track, and then to Phil Selway’s drums. For some rea­son Yorke can’t do it. And that’s because his brain is want­i­ng to put the chords on the down­beat, the most nat­ur­al, obvi­ous choice. To play off beat, with­out fur­ther rhyth­mic infor­ma­tion, shows the band “fight­ing against not just their own musi­cal instincts, but their own brain­waves” as the Vox host explains.

There is much dis­cus­sion in the YouTube com­ments over whether these 10 min­utes are worth the analy­sis. It’s not that Radio­head invent­ed any­thing new here–check out the off-beat open­ing of some­thing like XTC’s “Wake Up”–but more that the band goes through the whole song (at least in the record­ed ver­sion) with­out reveal­ing the real rhythm, like play­ing in a cer­tain key and nev­er touch­ing the root note.

To sum up: Radio­head push them­selves in the stu­dio and take those exper­i­ments into the live expe­ri­ence and chal­lenge them­selves. Which is way more than the major­i­ty of rock bands ever do. And bless ‘em, Yorke and co., for doing so.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

The Hid­den Secrets in “Day­dream­ing,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radio­head Music Video

Eight Radio­head Albums Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Paper­back Books

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Stream 935 Songs That Appeared in “The John Peel Festive 50” from 1976 to 2004: The Best Songs of the Year, as Selected by the Beloved DJ’s Listeners

in Music | August 8th, 2017

Image by Zetkin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve devot­ed space here before to leg­endary BBC DJ John Peel’s musi­cal lega­cy, from his for­mi­da­ble record col­lec­tion to his many hours of “Peel Ses­sions,” the record­ings he made in BBC stu­dios of artists like David Bowie, Joy Divi­sion, The Smiths, The Spe­cials, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees and so, so many more–usually when they were on the cusp of super­star­dom or endur­ing cult sta­tus. It was Peel’s par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for dis­cov­er­ing and pro­mot­ing such artists that set him apart from his peers. Rather than rid­ing the cul­tur­al wave of the moment, he lis­tened at the mar­gins, cul­ti­vat­ing and curat­ing what he heard. Whether punk, glam, new wave, hard­core, ska, tech­no, or indus­tri­al, it seems John Peel got there first, and the rest of the indus­try fol­lowed after him.

Peel did not approach his role in a crit­i­cal vein—sitting in judg­ment of the music around him. He approached it as an enthu­si­as­tic and obses­sive fan, which explains much of his appeal to the lis­ten­ers who loved his broad­casts. He hon­ored those lis­ten­ers each year by com­pil­ing a list of their favorites in what he called “The John Peel Fes­tive 50.” This end-of-the-year event “became a Christ­mas insti­tu­tion, writes the BBC, “more loved than fairy lights and Christ­mas crack­ers.”

Lis­ten­ers of Peel’s show vot­ed for their three favorite tracks in Novem­ber. The fol­low­ing month, the high­est-ranked “Fes­tive 50” were all played on the air. He described the process as a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, crowd­sourced endeav­or, as we would say today.

It’s real­ly just me mark­ing every sin­gle vote down in a ledger. There is obvi­ous­ly the temp­ta­tion to slip some­thing in that I like, espe­cial­ly if it’s just out­side the 50, and some­thing crap has gone above it. But I have a very work­man-like brain so it just would­n’t be on to fix it.

Peel “wasn’t always hap­py with what the lis­ten­ers vot­ed for,” often feel­ing “there were too many ‘white boys with gui­tars’ mak­ing an appear­ance.” The pre­dictabil­i­ty of sev­er­al of the lists irked him, and seemed to work against the spir­it of his mis­sion to tire­less­ly pro­mote adven­tur­ous, exper­i­men­tal music. Peel may have been pop­u­lar, but in mat­ters of taste, he was no pop­ulist. For the most part, how­ev­er, he remained faith­ful to the fans’ picks, and not­ed that he nev­er would have been able to choose the top three songs of the year him­self: “I couldn’t get any few­er than a list of 250.”

The tra­di­tion, with a few hic­cups, con­tin­ued from its incep­tion in 1976 till Peel’s death in 2004, and the mas­sive Spo­ti­fy playlist above aggre­gates the hun­dreds of those picks—932 songs, to be exact, over 70 hours of music. From Dylan, Clap­ton, and the Stones to Neko Case—and along the way, no short­age of tracks from the punk and post-punk artists most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Peel’s show. While the listener’s picks do fall heav­i­ly into the “white boys with gui­tars” cat­e­go­ry, there’s plen­ty more besides, includ­ing ear­ly tracks from Eric B. & Rakim, P.J. Har­vey, Stere­o­lab, 10,000 Mani­acs, Cocteau Twins, and many more. You can explore the tracks in Peel’s “Fes­tive 50” lists here. They’re sort­ed by decade: 1970s — 1980s — 1990s — 2000s.

Note: Here’s a direct link to the Spo­ti­fy playlist, and if you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

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

Senator Al Franken Does a Pitch Perfect Imitation of Mick Jagger (1982)

in Comedy, Music, Politics | August 7th, 2017

If Sen­a­tor Al Franken won’t run for Pres­i­dent in 2020, per­haps he’d tem­per fans’ dis­ap­point­ment with a repeat of his ear­ly 80’s turn as Mick Jag­ger, above.

The per­for­mance took place at Stock­ton State, a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed in New Jersey–what the late Tom Davis, Franken’s long time Sat­ur­day Night Live writ­ing part­ner and Kei­th Richards to his Jag­ger called “the Blair Witch scrub forests twen­ty-five miles north of Atlantic City.”

Franken’s per­for­mance is an immer­sive tri­umph, espe­cial­ly for those who remem­ber his best known SNL char­ac­ter, the lisp­ing­ly upbeat Stu­art Smal­l­ey.

His Jag­ger is the oppo­site of Stuart–butch, preen­ing, ath­let­ic … a less than sober stu­dent fan in the Stock­ton State crowd might have drunk­en­ly won­dered if he or she had acci­den­tal­ly bought tick­ets to the Tat­too You tour. Those lips are pret­ty con­vinc­ing.

The cos­tum­ing is dead on too, and Franken did not take the route Chris Far­ley would lat­er take, lam­poon­ing the male strip­pers of Chip­pen­dales. He may not be Jag­ger-rangy, but he’s cer­tain­ly fit in an out­fit that leaves no room to hide.

As Davis recalled in his 2010 mem­oir, Thir­ty-Nine Years of Short-Term Mem­o­ry Loss: The Ear­ly Days of SNL from Some­one Who Was There:

As we start­ed “Under My Thumb,” Franken came run­ning out as Mick Jag­ger, wear­ing yel­low foot­ball pants and Capezios and was so good, it was scary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Franken and Davis at Stock­ton State nev­er sold very well… maybe it would be re-released if one of us became pres­i­dent, or shot a pres­i­dent.

Know­ing that Davis, who died five years ago, would like­ly nev­er have pre­dict­ed the out­come of the recent elec­tion, and that Sen­a­tor Franken, out­spo­ken as he is, is in no posi­tion to joke about the sec­ond option, we sug­gest truf­fling up a used copy, if you’d like to see more.

And for comparison’s sake, here are the orig­i­nals per­form­ing to an are­na-sized crowd in Ari­zona in 1981:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Defends the Rights of the Indi­vid­ual After His Leg­endary 1967 Drug Bust

When Bowie & Jagger’s “Danc­ing in the Street” Music Video Becomes a Silent Film: Can the Worst Music Video Ever Get Even Worse?

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

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

10 Longevity Tips from Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, Japan’s 105-Year-Old Longevity Expert

in Health, Life | August 4th, 2017

Pho­to by Karsten Thor­maehlen, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Robert Brown­ing’s poem “Abt Vogler” imag­ines com­pos­er Georg Joseph Vogler as an old man reflect­ing on his dimin­ish­ing pow­ers and the like­li­hood that his life’s work would not sur­vive in the public’s mem­o­ry.

Let us over­look the fact that Vogler was 65 when he died, or that Brown­ing, who lived to 77, was 52 when he com­posed the poem.

What’s most strik­ing these days is its sig­nif­i­cance to longevi­ty expert, physi­cian, and chair­man emer­i­tus of St. Luke’s Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty, Dr. Shigea­ki Hino­hara, who passed away last month at the age of 105:

My father used to read it to me. It encour­ages us to make big art, not small scrib­bles. It says to try to draw a cir­cle so huge that there is no way we can fin­ish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the dis­tance.

Like many cen­te­nar­i­ans, Dr. Hino­hara attrib­uted his longevi­ty to cer­tain prac­tices, back­ing it up with numer­ous books on the top­ic (includ­ing Liv­ing Long, Liv­ing Good).

He touched on some of these beliefs in a 2009 Japan Times inter­view with Judit Kawaguchi, from which the fol­low­ing point­ers are drawn.

Ten Tips For a Healthy Old Age from Dr. Shigea­ki Hino­hara

Eat to Live Don’t Live to Eat

As far as Clint East­wood, Sis­ter Wendy Beck­ett and Fred Rogers are con­cerned, Dr. Hino­hara was preach­ing to the choir. Your aver­age Ital­ian great grand­moth­er would be appalled.

For break­fast I drink cof­fee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a table­spoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arter­ies and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cook­ies, or noth­ing when I am too busy to eat. I nev­er get hun­gry because I focus on my work. Din­ner is veg­gies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat.

Keep on Truckin’…

Nor was Dr. Hino­hara a sit-around-the-piaz­za-drink­ing-limon­cel­lo-with-his-cronies kind of guy. For him a vig­or­ous­ly plot­ted out cal­en­dar was syn­ony­mous with a vig­or­ous old age:

Always plan ahead. My sched­ule book is already full … with lec­tures and my usu­al hos­pi­tal work.

Moth­er Was Wrong…

…at least when it comes to bed­time and the impor­tance of con­sum­ing three square meals a day. Dis­co naps and bot­tled water all around!

We all remem­ber how as chil­dren, when we were hav­ing fun, we often for­got to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that atti­tude as adults, too. It’s best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bed­time.

To Hell with Obscu­ri­ty!

You may not be able to pull in the same crowds as a man whose career spans found­ing a world class hos­pi­tal in the rub­ble of post WWII Tokyo and treat­ing the vic­tims of the rad­i­cal Aum Shin­rikyo cult’s sarin gas sub­way attack, but you can still share your ideas with those younger than you. If noth­ing else, expe­ri­ence will be on your side:

 Share what you know. I give 150 lec­tures a year, some for 100 ele­men­tary-school chil­dren, oth­ers for 4,500 busi­ness peo­ple. I usu­al­ly speak for 60 to 90 min­utes, stand­ing, to stay strong.

Don’t Slack on Every­day Phys­i­cal Activ­i­ty

Dr. Hino­hara schlepped his own bags and turned his back on such mod­ern con­ve­niences as ele­va­tors and esca­la­tors:

I take two stairs at a time, to get my mus­cles mov­ing.

Hav­ing Fun Is Bet­ter Than Tylenol (Or Bitch­ing About It)

Rather than turn­ing off young friends and rel­a­tives with a con­stant litany of phys­i­cal com­plaints, Dr. Hino­hara sought to emu­late the child who for­gets his toothache through the diver­sion of play. And yes, this was his med­ical opin­ion:

Hos­pi­tals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke’s we have music and ani­mal ther­a­pies, and art class­es.

Think Twice Before You Go Under the Knife

Not will­ing to put all your trust into music ther­a­py work­ing out for you? Con­sid­er your age and how a side dish of surgery or radi­a­tion might impact your all over enjoy­ment of life before agree­ing to rad­i­cal pro­ce­dures. Espe­cial­ly if you are one of those afore­men­tioned sit-around-the-piaz­za-drink­ing-limon­cel­lo-with-your-cronies type of guys.

When a doc­tor rec­om­mends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doc­tor would sug­gest that his or her spouse or chil­dren go through such a pro­ce­dure. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, doc­tors can’t cure every­one. So why cause unnec­es­sary pain with surgery? 

Divest of Mate­r­i­al Bur­dens

Best sell­ing author and pro­fes­sion­al orga­niz­er, Marie Kon­do, would approve of her countryman’s views on “stuff”:

Remem­ber: You don’t know when your num­ber is up, and you can’t take it with you to the next place.

Pick a Role Mod­el You Can Be Wor­thy Of

It need not be some­one famous. Dr. Hino­hara revered his dad, who intro­duced him to his favorite poem and trav­eled halfway across the world to enroll at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty as a young man.

Lat­er I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the prob­lem.

Find a Poem That Speaks to You and Let It Guide You

The good doc­tor didn’t rec­om­mend this course of action in so many words, but you could do worse than to fol­low his exam­ple. Pick a long one. Reread it fre­quent­ly. For added neu­ro­log­i­cal oomph, mem­o­rize a few lines every day. Bedaz­zle peo­ple half your age with an off-book recita­tion at your next fam­i­ly gath­er­ing. (It’ll dis­tract you from all that turkey and stuff­ing.)

“Abt Vogler”

- Robert Brown­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

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

Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Notebooks Now Online: Browse 570 Digitized Pages

in Art, History, Science | July 25th, 2017

Quick, what do you know about Leonar­do da Vin­ci? He paint­ed the Mona Lisa! He wrote his notes back­wards! He designed super­cool bridges and fly­ing machines! He was a genius about, um… a lot of oth­er… things… and, um, stuff…

Okay, I’m sure you know a bit more than that, but unless you’re a Renais­sance schol­ar, you’re cer­tain to find your­self amazed and sur­prised at how much you didn’t know about the quin­tes­sen­tial Renais­sance man when you encounter a com­pi­la­tion of his note­books—Codex Arun­del—which has been dig­i­tized by the British Library and made avail­able to the pub­lic.

The note­book, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, rep­re­sents “the liv­ing record of a uni­ver­sal mind.” And yet, though a “technophile” him­self, “when it came to pub­li­ca­tion, Leonar­do was a lud­dite…. He made no effort to get his notes pub­lished.”

For hun­dreds of years, the huge, secre­tive col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts remained most­ly unseen by all but the most rar­i­fied of col­lec­tors. After Leonar­do’s death in France, writes the British Library, his stu­dent Francesco Melzi “brought many of his man­u­scripts and draw­ings back to Italy. Melzi’s heirs, who had no idea of the impor­tance of the man­u­scripts, grad­u­al­ly dis­posed of them.” Nonethe­less, over 5,000 pages of notes “still exist in Leonardo’s ‘mir­ror writ­ing’, from right to left.” In the note­books, da Vin­ci drew “visions of the aero­plane, the heli­copter, the para­chute, the sub­ma­rine and the car. It was more than 300 years before many of his ideas were improved upon.”

The dig­i­tized note­books debuted in 2007 as a joint project of the British Library and Microsoft called “Turn­ing the Pages 2.0,” an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that allows view­ers to “turn” the pages of the note­books with ani­ma­tions. Onscreen gloss­es explain the con­tent of the cryp­tic notes sur­round­ing the many tech­ni­cal draw­ings, dia­grams, and schemat­ics (see a selec­tion of the note­books in this ani­mat­ed for­mat here). For an over­whelm­ing amount of Leonar­do, you can look through 570 dig­i­tized pages of Codex Arun­del here. For a slight­ly more digestible, and read­able, amount of Leonar­do, see the British Library’s brief series on his life and work, includ­ing expla­na­tions of his div­ing appa­ra­tus, para­chute, and glid­er.

And for much more on the man—including evi­dence of his sar­to­r­i­al “pref­er­ence for pink tights” and his shop­ping lists—see Jonathan Jones’ Guardian piece, which links to oth­er note­book col­lec­tions and resources. The artist and self-taught poly­math made an impres­sive effort to keep his ideas from pry­ing eyes. Now, thanks to dig­i­tized col­lec­tions like those at the British Library, “any­one can study the mind of Leonar­do.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

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

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

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

Wes Anderson Names 12 of His Favorite Art Films

in Film | July 20th, 2017

Image by Raf­fi Asdouri­an, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Asked to list their favorite films of all times, most direc­tors tend towards the canon. And why not? 8 1/2–loved by Scors­ese and Lynch and many others–is an indis­putable mas­ter­piece, for exam­ple. So is The God­fa­ther, Rashomon, Ver­ti­go, and any num­ber of movies that make top film lists over and over. The point is, most of the time, these lists are samey.

That’s why this list from Wes Ander­son is a hoot. Here he’s not asked to list his favorites of all time, but rather to cre­ate a Top 10 list of Cri­te­ri­on titles. Yet here’s his M.O.: “I thought my take on a top-ten list might be to sim­ply quote myself from the brief fan let­ters I peri­od­i­cal­ly write to the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion team,” he says.

A lot of these films are rar­i­ties, and Ander­son admits he’s only just seen some of them for the first time. Mar­tin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one. Rober­to Rossellini’s The Tak­ing of Pow­er by Louis XIV is anoth­er. Of the lat­ter, he says, “This is a won­der­ful and very strange movie. I had nev­er heard of it. The man who plays Louis can­not give a con­vinc­ing line read­ing, even to the ears of some­one who can’t speak French—and yet he is fas­ci­nat­ing.”

Anderson’s com­ments are often ques­tions, not defin­i­tive state­ments. Like us, he is just as mys­ti­fied by a film, and that feel­ing is prob­a­bly why he likes them in the first place.

Of that Rosselli­ni film he won­ders “What does good act­ing actu­al­ly mean?” And of Claude Sautet’s Classe tous risques he asks, “Who is our Lino Ven­tu­ra?” refer­ring to the Ital­ian-born French actor who was once described as “The French John Wayne.” (So, the real ques­tion is this: who is our mod­ern day John Wayne?)

We’ll leave the rest for you to read, but for a direc­tor so invest­ed in arti­fice and nos­tal­gia it was a sur­prise to hear how much he loves sur­re­al­ist Luis Buñuel:

“He is my hero. Mike Nichols said in the news­pa­per he thinks of Buñuel every day, which I believe I do, too, or at least every oth­er.”

Wes Ander­son­’s Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Top 10

1. The Ear­rings of Madame de… (dir. Max Ophuls)
2. Au hasard Balt­haz­ar (dir. Robert Bres­son)
3.Pigs and Battleships/The Insect Woman/Intentions of Mur­der (dir. Shohei Ima­mu­ra)
4. The Tak­ing of Pow­er by Louis XIV (dir. Rober­to Rosselli­ni)
5. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (dir. Mar­tin Ritt)
6. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (dir. Peter Yates)
7. Classe tous risques (dir. Claude Sautet)
8. L’enfance nue (dir. Mau­rice Pialat)
9. Mishi­ma: A Life in Four Chap­ters (dir. Paul Schrad­er)
10. The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel (dir. Luis Buñuel)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no From Below.

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films: The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Attempting to Set the World Record for Most Frida Kahlo Lookalikes in One Place: It Happened in Dallas

in Art, Random | July 14th, 2017

Fun fact: The Dal­las Muse­um of Art and the Lati­no Cen­ter for Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment cel­e­brat­ed Fri­da Kahlo’s 110th birth­day last week. And the fes­tiv­i­ties were capped off with an attempt to set the Guin­ness World Record for the largest gath­er­ing of peo­ple dressed as Fri­da Kahlo in one space.

Accord­ing to the rules of Fri­da Fest, to par­tic­i­pate in the record attempt, indi­vid­u­als had to pro­vide their own cos­tume, and make sure their cos­tumes includ­ed the fol­low­ing ele­ments:

• A uni­brow drawn onto the face join­ing the eye­brows. This can be done with make-up or by stick­ing hair.
• Arti­fi­cial flow­ers worn in the hair, a min­i­mum of three arti­fi­cial flow­ers must be worn.
• A red or pink shawl.
• A flower-print­ed dress that extends to below the knees on all sides; the dress must not have any slits up the side.

Notes NPR, there’s “no offi­cial word yet on whether a record was set, but pri­or to Thurs­day, there did­n’t appear to be anoth­er record-hold­er list­ed in the Guin­ness World Records.”

You can see a gallery of 44 pho­tos on the muse­um’s Face­book page. Enjoy.

Pho­to Cour­tesy of Ash­ley Gongo­ra and Kathy Tran — at Dal­las Muse­um of Art.

Pho­to Cour­tesy of Ash­ley Gongo­ra and Kathy Tran — at Dal­las Muse­um of Art.

via Neatora­ma

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

The Artist as Artist’s Mod­el: Au Naturel Por­traits of Fri­da Kahlo Tak­en by Art Patron Julien Levy (1938)