Andy Warhol’s Christmas Art

in Art | December 24th, 2013

You may have read our post on the cre­ative ways in which John Waters express­es his love for Christ­mas. We’d all like to receive one of the Christ­mas cards the Hair­spray film­mak­er has designed him­self every year since 1964, but did you know that anoth­er famous cre­ator, one also per­ceived as eccen­tric and pos­sessed of his very own con­cepts of taste, embraced the sea­son with equal artis­tic vig­or?  “Andy Warhol’s fond­ness for Campbell’s Soup cans is well doc­u­ment­ed,” writes Jen­nifer M. Wood at Men­tal Floss. “Less well known but equal­ly ardent was his love of the hol­i­day sea­son. Yes, from poin­set­tias to San­ta hats, the enig­mat­ic artist who promised we’d all have our 15 min­utes of fame spent much of the 1950s work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in blot­ted line draw­ings, cre­at­ing every­thing from shoe adver­tise­ments to greet­ing cards.”

The arti­cle goes on to dis­play the fruits of Warhol’s pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­est in Christ­mas, which ran his per­son­al gamut of both tech­nique and visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty. At the top, we have his sim­ple 1954 ink-and-paper draw­ing of a “Christ­mas Fairy,” bear­ing the greet­ing “Mer­ry Christ­mas to you.” Just above, you can see his col­or ren­der­ing, from three years lat­er, of a Christ­mas orna­ment. Wood reports that such works went up for sale at two events this year from fine-art auc­tion house Christie’s: “ ‘Warhol­i­day,’ a pop-up event at the San Fran­cis­co Mul­ber­ry Store [which] fea­tured 36 works by the late, great artist, some of them nev­er-before-seen and all of them for sale,” and “ ‘A Christ­mas Thing,’ an online-only auc­tion that fea­tured 100 orig­i­nal pho­tos, prints, and draw­ings from the mas­ter of Pop Art” ben­e­fit­ing The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts.” And as we can call no pre­sen­ta­tion of Warhol’s work com­plete, even on Christ­mas Eve, with­out the inclu­sion of some­thing that will get a view­er or two ask­ing whether it counts as art at all, behold his 1981 Polaroid of San­ta Claus:

Find more Andy Warhol Christ­mas-themed art at Men­tal Floss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Charles Dickens’ Hand-Edited Copy of His Classic Holiday Tale, A Christmas Carol

in Literature | December 23rd, 2013

Click for larg­er image

No hol­i­day sea­son can seem to pro­voke as much anx­i­ety, or even out­right dis­cord, as Christ­mas. But there are at least a few things most every­one can agree on. I would like to think one of them is A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas (and its sound­track). Anoth­er, I’m sure, is Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol (1843). Some read­ers might object to the tale’s maudlin sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But few would say it isn’t a great sto­ry, and well told. And in Dick­ens’ day, you might be lucky enough to catch the author him­self read­ing it aloud. Accord­ing to cura­tor Issac Gewirtz, Dick­ens gave some­where around 150 read­ings of A Christ­mas Car­ol. This, at a time, Gewirtz tells us, when “pub­lic read­ings of fic­tion or poet­ry [were] not done; it was con­sid­ered a des­e­cra­tion of one’s art and a low­er­ing of one’s dig­ni­ty.” Nev­er­the­less, while Dick­ens may have let his own chil­dren down, he would not dis­ap­point his loy­al read­ers.

As is gen­er­al­ly the case when a work of prose goes to the stage, the text need­ed prun­ing. NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered brings us these images of Dick­ens’ “prompt­book” for his per­for­mances, a copy of the text great­ly abridged by Dick­ens’ own hand and now resid­ing at the New York Pub­lic Library. While Dick­ens’ first per­for­mance ran three hours, lat­er ver­sions took about half that time. In-between, he slashed out whole para­graphs, sim­pli­fied words and phras­es, and removed entire pages. “What’s inter­est­ing to see,” says Gewirtz, “is how much of the atmos­pher­ics have been delet­ed.” Instead, Dick­ens con­veys the mood with mar­gin­al stage cues like “soft­en very much” and “tone to mys­tery.” It is intrigu­ing to imag­ine Dick­ens tak­ing on the roles of Scrooge, Mar­ley, and Cratch­et père and fils, but alas we’ll nev­er get to hear him. We can, how­ev­er, hear the voice of Dick­ens’ great-grandaugh­ter, nov­el­ist Mon­i­ca Dick­ens (below), who in 1950 record­ed her ver­sion of the fam­i­ly Christ­mas fable.

Monica’s daugh­ter Mary Dan­by, also a nov­el­ist, tells the BBC that her mother’s ren­di­tion is faith­ful to the Dick­ens’ fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of read­ings, begun by Charles him­self. There­fore, Monica’s phras­ing is as much like Charles Dick­ens’ as we’re like­ly to hear. Dick­en­sian­ism is still some­thing of a fam­i­ly busi­ness, as is writ­ing. “In my fam­i­ly,” says Dick­ens’ great-great-grandaugh­ter Mary, “they think you are a bit odd if you haven’t writ­ten a book.” Still, I doubt their Christ­mases are any bet­ter, or any worse, than the rest of ours.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Christ­mas Car­ol Pre­sent­ed in a Thomas Edi­son Film (1910)

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

Cel­e­brate the 200th Birth­day of Charles Dick­ens with Free Movies, eBooks and Audio Books

The His­toric Meet­ing Between Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky Revealed as a Great Lit­er­ary Hoax

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

Listen to the Beatles’ Christmas Records: Seven Vintage Recordings for Their Fans (1963 — 1969)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

1963:

Every year from 1963 to 1969, the Bea­t­les record­ed a spe­cial Christ­mas greet­ing to their fans. It start­ed when “Beat­le­ma­nia” took off and the band found itself unable to answer all the fan mail.  “I’d love to reply per­son­al­ly to every­one,” says Lennon in the 1963 mes­sage, “but I just haven’t enough pens.” The first mes­sage was intend­ed to make their most loy­al fans feel appre­ci­at­ed. Like those that fol­lowed, the 1963 mes­sage was mailed as a paper-thin vinyl “flexi disc” to mem­bers of the Bea­t­les fan club. The record­ing fea­tures the Bea­t­les’ trade­mark wit and whim­sy, with a cho­rus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ringo” and a ver­sion of “Good King Wences­las” that refers to Bet­ty Grable. It was made on Octo­ber 17, 1963 at Abbey Road Stu­dios, just after the band record­ed “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

1964:

The band record­ed their next hol­i­day greet­ing, Anoth­er Bea­t­les Christ­mas Record, on Octo­ber 26, 1964, the same day they record­ed the song “Hon­ey Don’t.” Lennon’s rebel­lious nature begins to show, as he pokes fun at the pre­pared script: “It’s some­body’s bad hand wrot­er.”

1965:

Record­ed on Novem­ber 8, 1965 dur­ing the Rub­ber Soul ses­sions at Abbey Road, the 1965 mes­sage fea­tures a re-work­ing of “Yes­ter­day,” with the refrain “Oh I believe on Christ­mas Day.” The band’s gift for free-asso­ci­a­tion­al role play­ing is becom­ing more appar­ent. One piece of dia­logue near the end was even­tu­al­ly re-used by pro­duc­er George Mar­tin and his son Giles at the end of the re-mixed ver­sion of “All You Need is Love” on the 2006 album Love: “All right put the lights off. This is John­ny Rhythm say­ing good night to you all and God Bless­es.”

1966:

You can sense the band’s cre­ative pow­ers grow­ing in the 1966 mes­sage, Pan­tomime: Every­where It’s Christ­mas. The record­ing was made at Abbey Road on Novem­ber 25, 1966, dur­ing a break from work­ing on “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” The Bea­t­les were just begin­ning work on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band. Instead of sim­ply thank­ing their fans and recount­ing the events of the year, the Bea­t­les use sound effects and dia­logue to cre­ate a vaude­ville play based around a song that goes, “Every­where it’s Christ­mas, at the end of every year.” Paul McCart­ney designed the cov­er.

1967:

This was the last Christ­mas mes­sage record­ed by the Bea­t­les all togeth­er in one place. Titled Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again), it reveals the group’s con­tin­u­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion with sound effects and sto­ry­telling. The sce­nario, writ­ten by the band ear­li­er on the day it was record­ed (Novem­ber 28, 1967), is about a group of peo­ple audi­tion­ing for a BBC radio play. Lennon and Ringo Starr designed the cov­er.

1968:

By the Christ­mas sea­son of 1968, rela­tions with­in the Bea­t­les were becom­ing strained. The hol­i­day mes­sage was pro­duced around the time the “White Album” was released, in Novem­ber of 1968. The four mem­bers’ voic­es were record­ed sep­a­rate­ly, in var­i­ous loca­tions. There’s plen­ty of self-mock­ery. Per­haps the most strik­ing moment comes when the Amer­i­can singer Tiny Tim (invit­ed by George Har­ri­son) strums a ukulele and sings “Nowhere Man” in a high falset­to.

1969:

The Bea­t­les were in the process of break­ing up when they record­ed (sep­a­rate­ly) their final Christ­mas mes­sage in Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 1969. A cou­ple of months ear­li­er, just before the release of Abbey Road, Lennon had announced to the oth­ers that he was leav­ing the group. Yoko Ono appears promi­nent­ly on the record­ing, singing and talk­ing with Lennon about peace. Fit­ting­ly, the 1969 mes­sage incor­po­rates a snip­pet from the Abbey Road record­ing of “The End.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

Short Film Shows What Happens When a Letter from World War II Finally Gets Delivered 69 Years Later

in History, Letters, Life, Random | December 20th, 2013

A few years ago, I stum­bled upon a nev­er-sent let­ter writ­ten to a friend when we were both in col­lege. The con­tents weren’t heavy. Dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion is the most like­ly expla­na­tion for why it nev­er went in the mail. I cracked the enve­lope and had a look.

It was a time cap­sule, for sure, a cringe-induc­ing one. It was­n’t so much the life I was report­ing on as how I framed it, self-aggran­dize­ment strain­ing to pass as non­cha­lance. For­tu­nate­ly, an artist acquain­tance hap­pened to be run­ning a project— send her your shred­d­a­ble doc­u­ments, and even­tu­al­ly, she’d send you a few sheets of hand­made paper in which your mulched data min­gled with that of oth­ers. Tru­ly a beau­ti­ful way to dis­pose of the evi­dence.

But what hap­pens when nei­ther the writer, nor the intend­ed recip­i­ent, is the find­er of the lost let­ter? In Feb­ru­ary 2013, some mail post­ed by Lt. Joseph O. Matthews, a sol­dier sta­tioned at a mil­i­tary train­ing facil­i­ty in Jack­sonville, North Car­oli­na, found its way to Abbi Jacob­son, an actress (and col­or­ing book author!) rent­ing an apart­ment on Mac­Dou­gal Street in New York City. Addressed to Matthew’s wife, the can­cel­la­tion mark was dat­ed Decem­ber 2, 1944.

Jacob­son opened the let­ter, the con­di­tion of the enve­lope hav­ing sug­gest­ed that she would not be the first to breach its con­tents dur­ing the 69 years it had spent wan­der­ing in the wilder­ness. The words inside were roman­tic, a young offi­cer inform­ing the bride he’d left back home that he’d soon be ship­ping out to Oki­nawa. Eager to pull an Amélie by reunit­ing the let­ter with those to whom it would mean the most, Jacob­son enlist­ed the help of her friend, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Todd Bieber. Togeth­er they searched records at City Hall, look­ing for clues. When that approach proved fruit­less, they cre­at­ed the Lost Let­ter Project, a web por­tal that invit­ed the pub­lic to join in the search.

An avalanche of tweets, Face­book updates, and human inter­est pieces ensued. In no time at all, they had their man, or rather his descen­dants, Lt. Matthews hav­ing passed away in 1999, crush­ing Jacob­son’s dreams of hand deliv­er­ing the let­ter to “a lit­tle old man and a lit­tle old lady.” (I’m will­ing to bet Jacob­son will one day wish there was a giant blender capa­ble of turn­ing dig­i­tal state­ments like how cute would that be, my god, right? I love old peo­ple into hand­made paper.)

Bieber’s video reveals what became of Lt. Matthews and his wife. Even more inter­est­ing is how the let­ter res­onates with his grown chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly a cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal ref­er­ence at odds with the man they thought they knew.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is all for stuff­ing your stock­ing with a hol­i­day gift sub­scrip­tion to the East Vil­lage Inky, her award win­ning hand-illus­trat­ed zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch Three Films by the Immensely Prolific & Widely-Admired “B‑Movie” Filmmaker, Roger Corman

in Film | December 19th, 2013

I just caught a clever dou­ble-bill: Going Attrac­tions, April Wright’s doc­u­men­tary on the his­to­ry and future of the Amer­i­can dri­ve-in movie the­ater, and Demen­tia 13, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s 1963 dri­ve-in-geared fea­ture debut (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Going Attrac­tions fea­tures a good deal of com­men­tary from Roger Cor­man, the inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed and immense­ly pro­lif­ic film­mak­er whose career has defined the very con­cept of the high-qual­i­ty “B‑movie.” In fact, so Wright revealed at the Q&A, Cor­man nev­er went to dri­ve-ins him­self, so appalling did he find their sub­stan­dard audio­vi­su­al pre­sen­ta­tions of his pic­tures, made cheap­ly but not with­out painstak­ing efforts to look and sound expen­sive. Still work­ing after over 50 films to his cred­it as direc­tor and near­ly 400 as pro­duc­er, the Detroit-born, Oxford-edu­cat­ed, Los Ange­les-based Cor­man, as well as mak­ing such revival-house clas­sics as Soror­i­ty Girl, The Wild Angels, and sev­er­al not­ed adap­ta­tions of Edgar Allan Poe, launched the careers of not just Cop­po­la but oth­er auteurs like Mar­tin Scors­ese (Box­car Bertha, 1972), Monte Hell­man (Beast from Haunt­ed Cave, 1959), and Peter Bog­danovich (Voy­age to the Plan­et of Pre­his­toric Women, 1968).

Cor­man also worked with actors now as famous as they come, as in 1960’s Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors at the top, which fea­tures a young Jack Nichol­son. 1962’s The Intrud­er, just above, stars William Shat­ner in a sto­ry that con­fronts racism with a frank­ness unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of that era. 1963’s The Ter­ror, below, brings back Nichol­son, team­ing him with San­dra Knight and Boris Karloff. Accord­ing to a 1967 pro­file by Roger Ebert, Cor­man “shot all of Karlof­f’s scenes in two days to save on the pay­roll. Then when he got into the cut­ting room with his film, he real­ized to his hor­ror that his hor­ror film made no sense. Karloff was gone. What to do? Cor­man called in two of the bit play­ers, shot them in close-up (the sets had already been torn down or had fall­en down), and had one ask the oth­er: ‘Now tell me what all this means.’ And then the oth­er one did. Along the way, work­ing quick­ly and impro­vis­ing a lot of his scenes, Cor­man devel­oped a dis­tinc­tive, per­son­al style with­out think­ing much about it.” Yet such seem­ing­ly laugh­able tech­niques have served the man well: he titled his auto­bi­og­ra­phy How I Made a Hun­dred Movies in Hol­ly­wood and Nev­er Lost a Dime. What film­mak­er at any lev­el of crit­i­cal regard can say the same? You can find Cor­man’s films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

From the Drain: A Creepy Comedy David Cronenberg Made in Film School (1967)

in Film | December 17th, 2013

You’d expect a bit of strange­ness from David Cro­nen­berg‘s stu­dent films, but for most of its short length, From the Drain, which he made in 1967 while attend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, seems to deliv­er strange­ness of an unex­pect­ed kind. Play­ing more like Wait­ing for Godot than his lat­er vivid-to-the point of har­row­ing pic­tures like Crash, Video­drome, or The Fly, this thir­teen-minute black-and-white film, only Cro­nen­berg’s sec­ond, presents us with two fel­lows seat­ed, ful­ly clothed, in a bath­tub. The sit­u­a­tion looks bizarre, and as soon as the play­ers start talk­ing, it reveals itself as even more bizarre than we’d thought: evi­dent­ly, one of these men has mis­tak­en the tub for “the Dis­abled War Vet­er­ans’ Recre­ation Cen­ter.” The con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues with­out its par­tic­i­pants leav­ing their porce­lain con­fines, mak­ing a cer­tain kind of sense on the sur­face but none at all beneath. This feels almost like the realm of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, which would­n’t debut and begin exert­ing its vast influ­ence on young comedic film­mak­ers until 1969.

We’d feel more secure in our laugh­ter if we did­n’t know who its direc­tor would go on to become. These days, when you watch any­thing by Cro­nen­berg, per­haps the best-known liv­ing auteur of tech­no­log­i­cal men­ace, “body hor­ror,” and form­less dread, you can rest rea­son­ably assured that some­thing will soon­er or lat­er go hor­ri­bly, vis­cer­al­ly awry onscreen. So it comes to pass in From the Drain, whose title gives some sug­ges­tion as to the nature of the ulti­mate malev­o­lence. Don’t let the hyper-far­ci­cal dia­logue, the goofy per­for­mances, or the clas­si­cal gui­tar sound­track mis­lead you; here we def­i­nite­ly have a project by the king of unset­tle­ment, though at a time when he pre­sum­ably had yet to earn even the title of prince of unset­tle­ment, a point from which he could look for­ward to decades of more advanced and much creepi­er visu­al effects. At this point in his career, how­ev­er, with the bleak-look­ing Hol­ly­wood satire Maps to the Stars due out in the near future, he seems to need noth­ing so elab­o­rate, still unset­tling us, but pre­fer­ring to do it sub­tly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no, and Truf­faut

600 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Mike Tyson Lists the Philosophy & History Books He’s Reading These Days

in Books, History, Philosophy, Sports | December 16th, 2013

Last year, Mike Tyson staged a one-man Broad­way show, direct­ed by Spike Lee, called “Mike Tyson: The Undis­put­ed Truth.” In Novem­ber, the box­ing leg­end pub­lished an auto­bi­og­ra­phy by the same title. And now comes this: a short let­ter in The Wall Street Jour­nal where Iron Mike lists the phi­los­o­phy and his­to­ry texts he’s read­ing these days. The list includes:

• The Quotable Kierkegaard, edit­ed by Gor­don Mari­no, “a col­lec­tion of awe­some quotes from that great Dan­ish philoso­pher.”

[Note: Niet­zsche is his favorite philoso­pher. Says Tyson, “He’s just insane. You have to have an IQ of at least 300 to tru­ly under­stand him.”

• Alexan­der the Great: The Mace­don­ian Who Con­quered the World by Sean Patrick.

Why? Because “Alexan­der kept push­ing for­ward. He did­n’t want to have to go home and be dom­i­nat­ed by his moth­er.” The same impulse drove Tyson to box his way out of Brownsville, Brook­lyn. That’s all cov­ered in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

What else is Tyson read­ing? Love let­ters. He men­tions Napoleon’s love let­ters to Josephine, and Vir­ginia Woolf’s let­ter to her hus­band before com­mit­ting sui­cide. Tyson then quips “I don’t real­ly do any light read­ing, just deep, deep stuff. I’m not a light kind of guy.”

Get more at The Wall Street Jour­nal.

H/T Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iron Mike Tyson Sings “The Girl From Ipane­ma”

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

The Art of Making Timelapse Films

in Art | December 13th, 2013

Michael Shain­blum released a new time­lapse film this week called “Into the Atmos­phere,” which is his visu­al trib­ute to Cal­i­for­ni­a’s beau­ti­ful deserts, moun­tains and coast­lines. Even if you’ve seen your fair share of time­lapse films before, as I’m sure many of you have, you might be inter­est­ed in this oth­er new­ly-released film called “The Art of The Time­lapse.” Pro­duced by The Cre­ators Project, the short film gives you a glimpse of what goes into mak­ing a time­lapse — the req­ui­site gear, the favor­able light­ing con­di­tions, the ide­al land­scape, and more. Shain­blum is your guide. You can find an archive of his films here.

If you’d like to dig deep­er into the art of mak­ing time­lapse films, we’d rec­om­mend check­ing out The Basics of Time Lapse Pho­tog­ra­phy with Vin­cent Laforet, a four-part video series, on Canon’s edu­ca­tion web site. The first episode appears below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Le Fla­neur: Time Lapse Video of Paris With­out the Peo­ple

Orson Welles Records Two Songs with the 1980s Heavy-Metal Band Manowar

in Music | December 12th, 2013

Heavy met­al music enjoyed the plea­sures of excess in the 1980s, an era when, if you believe cer­tain biog­ra­phers, writer-actor-auteur Orson Welles did the very same. Though some describe the life of the man who made Cit­i­zen Kane as hav­ing by then fall­en into a final peri­od of great deca­dence, he still man­aged to leave his mark on a num­ber of unusu­al projects. Many of my gen­er­a­tion fond­ly remem­ber his per­for­mance as the man-made plan­et Uni­cron, eater of worlds, in 1986’s Trans­form­ers: The Movie, but those slight­ly old­er may have first encoun­tered Welles’ late work on Bat­tle Hymns, the debut album by sword-and-sor­cery-mind­ed met­al (tech­ni­cal­ly, “epic met­al”) band Manowar, for whose track “Dark Avenger,” below, he pro­vid­ed suit­ably epic nar­ra­tion: “And they placed in his hands a sword made for him called Vengeance, forged in brim­stone and tem­pered by the woe­ful tears of the Unavenged.” Who but Welles (or maybe Christo­pher Lee) could sell a line like that?

Five years lat­er, Manowar would return to the Welles well for their fifth album Fight­ing the World, whose track “Defend­er,” below, fea­tures a posthu­mous appear­ance orig­i­nal­ly record­ed as a demo dur­ing the Bat­tle Hymns ses­sions. Fight­ing the World, inci­den­tal­ly, appeared as the first ever dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and mixed heavy met­al album, an achieve­ment unshy­ly declared on the band’s web site.

There you’ll also learn that Manowar not only includ­ed fan­ta­sy imagery in both their lyrics and on their cov­ers before their col­leagues did, but that they also designed and built their own speak­er cab­i­nets and gui­tars first, record­ed songs in 16 lan­guages first, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with “Ger­many’s best­selling fan­ta­sy author, Wolf­gang Hohlbein” first. They also declare them­selves “the loud­est band in the world (a record they have bro­ken on three sep­a­rate occa­sions),” but give a place of even high­er hon­or on the list to their dis­tinc­tion as “the only band ever to record with Orson Welles” — epic met­al, met­al, or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free­dom Riv­er: A Para­ble Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metal­li­ca’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

The Physics of Mosh Pits at Heavy Met­al Con­certs (Explained by Cor­nell Grad Stu­dents)

Orson Welles Reads Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in a 1977 Exper­i­men­tal Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Errol Morris Meditates on the Meaning and History of Abraham Lincoln’s Last Photograph

in History, Photography | December 11th, 2013

I believe it was Jacques Der­ri­da, though I don’t recall exact­ly where, who said that some of the most reveal­ing text of any work can be found in the foot­notes. In doc­u­men­tar­i­an Errol Mor­ris’ recent pho­to-essay series on Lin­coln for The New York Times, foot­notes, chronolo­gies, snip­pets of inter­view, and end­less­ly recur­sive ref­er­ences con­tin­u­ous­ly intrude on the sto­ries he tells. In this way, the series, called “The Inter­minable, Ever­last­ing Lin­colns,” enacts the ten­sion Mor­ris iden­ti­fies as “the push-pull of his­to­ry,” a con­test between sev­er­al ways of approach­ing the past: “Facts vs. beliefs. Our desire to know the ori­gins of things vs. our desire to rework, to recon­fig­ure the past to suit our own beliefs and predilec­tions. Per­haps noth­ing bet­ter illus­trates this than two rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent pre­dis­po­si­tions to objects—the sto­ry­teller vs. the col­lec­tor.”

The way sto­ry after sto­ry inevitably nests with­in each his­tor­i­cal arti­fact seems to be Mor­ris’ over­ar­ch­ing theme as he charts the his­to­ry of Lin­coln iconog­ra­phy by ref­er­ence to a sin­gle image, a pho­to of Lin­coln by Alexan­der Gard­ner that exists in only one known orig­i­nal print, called O‑118 after col­lec­tor of Lin­coln pho­tog­ra­phy Lloyd Osten­dorf (see the retouched ver­sion above, the orig­i­nal print below). This print, along with 13 oth­ers, was made either four or five days before Lincoln’s assas­si­na­tion.

Mor­ris’ fas­ci­na­tion with this pho­to­graph is as var­i­ous­ly moti­vat­ed as the num­ber of dif­fer­ent views he adopts in exam­in­ing its prove­nance, its his­to­ry, and its mean­ing. For one thing, O‑118 is sup­pos­ed­ly the last pho­to­graph tak­en of Lin­coln alive. In 1922, The New York Times pub­lished the orig­i­nal print (above) with text by James Young, who wrote:

Prob­a­bly no oth­er pho­to­graph of Lin­coln con­veys more clear­ly the abid­ing sad­ness of the face. The lines of time and care are deeply etched, and he has the look of a man bor­der­ing upon old age, though he was only 56. Proof that the cam­era was but a few feet away may be found by scruti­ny of the pic­ture…. The print has been untouched, and this pic­ture is an exact like­ness of the Pres­i­dent as he looked in the week of his death.

The photo’s cap­tion also includ­ed infor­ma­tion that Mor­ris makes a great deal of: “The Cracked Neg­a­tive Caused it To Be Dis­card­ed. It Has Only Once Before Been Pub­lished, and Then in a Retouched Form.” For one thing, Mor­ris seems to asso­ciate the pho­to­graph with what Wal­ter Ben­jamin called “aura”; The print, it seems, was the only one Gard­ner was able to make before the cracked neg­a­tive became use­less and mass pro­duc­tion from the source impos­si­ble. Un-retouched, the print shows a “frac­ture cut­ting through the top of Lincoln’s head.” For the sto­ry­teller, writes Mor­ris, “the crack is the begin­ning of a legend—the leg­end of a death fore­told. The crack seems to antic­i­pate the bul­let fired into the back of Lincoln’s head at Ford’s The­ater on Good Fri­day, April 14, 1865.” Using the rhetor­i­cal term for “a fig­ure of antic­i­pa­tion,” a nar­ra­tive fea­ture that fore­shad­ows, fore­tells, or proph­e­sies, Mor­ris calls this “the pro­lep­tic crack.”

His wind­ing nar­ra­tive, replete with the anti­quar­i­an minu­ti­ae of col­lec­tors, moves from the day—February 5, 1865—that Lin­coln and his son Tad walked to Gardner’s stu­dio on 7th Street in Wash­ing­ton, DC for the pho­to ses­sion, through the use of pho­tog­ra­phy as an aid to Lin­coln painters and sculp­tors, to the mean­ing of Lin­coln for such diverse peo­ple as Leo Tol­stoy, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, and our cur­rent Pres­i­dent. Mor­ris’ series ranges far and wide, vis­it­ing with his­to­ri­ans and col­lec­tors along the way, and telling many a sto­ry, some freely spec­u­la­tive, some wist­ful, some trag­ic, and all some­how cir­cling back to O‑118. Like much of Mor­ris’ doc­u­men­tary work, it’s an exer­cise in collage—of the meth­ods of the schol­ar, the essay­ist, and the archivist—and like its sub­ject, it’s a frac­tured, but ever­last­ing­ly fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion. Fol­low Mor­ris’ entire series below.

Pro­logue: Pre­mo­ni­tions

Part 1: Feb­ru­ary 5, 1865

Part 2: The Pro­lep­tic Crack

Part 3: In the Cau­ca­sus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Errol Mor­ris Film Asks Whether We Will Ever Know the Truth About the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion

The Last Sur­viv­ing Wit­ness of the Lin­coln Assas­si­na­tion

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

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