136 Paintings by Gustav Klimt Now Online (Including 63 Paintings in an Immersive Augmented Reality Gallery)

in Art | October 14th, 2021

At the end of World War II the Nazis burned an Aus­tri­an cas­tle full of mas­ter­pieces, includ­ing three paint­ings by Gus­tav Klimt enti­tled Phi­los­o­phy, Med­i­cine, and Jurispru­dence. Called the “Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings,” these were com­mis­sioned by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na for the ceil­ing of its Great Hall in 1900, then, upon com­ple­tion sev­en years lat­er, were deemed porno­graph­ic and nev­er exhib­it­ed. Until now, they were pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty only in black and white pho­tographs.

Thanks to cut­ting edge art restora­tion AI, the mono­chro­mat­ic images of Klimt’s Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings have been recon­struct­ed in col­or. They are now on dis­play in an online gallery of 130 paint­ings, plus a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion of 63 of the artist’s works, all brought togeth­er by Google Arts & Cul­ture and appro­pri­ate­ly called Klimt vs. Klimt. It’s a ret­ro­spec­tive explor­ing the artist’s many con­tra­dic­tions. Was he a “schol­ar or inno­va­tor? Fem­i­nist or wom­an­iz­er? Famous artist or hum­ble crafts­man? The answer, in most cas­es, is both,” notes Google. There’s more, of course, giv­en the venue, as Art Dai­ly explains:

The exhi­bi­tion fea­tures an immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Pock­et Gallery, which dig­i­tal­ly orga­nizes 63 of Klimt’s mas­ter­works under a sin­gle roof. Audi­ences can vir­tu­al­ly walk the halls of the gallery space at scale and zoom in on the paint­ings’ fine orna­men­ta­tion and pat­tern, char­ac­ter­is­tic of Klimt’s prac­tice, made pos­si­ble by the dig­i­ti­za­tion of his icon­ic art­works in ultra-high res­o­lu­tion.

With respect to the first pair of oppo­si­tions (that is, schol­ar or inno­va­tor?), Klimt was assured­ly both, though not exact­ly at the same time. Trained as an archi­tec­tur­al painter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Arts in Vien­na, his ear­ly work is solid­ly aca­d­e­m­ic — real­ist, for­mal, clas­si­cal and con­ser­v­a­tive.

So con­ser­v­a­tive an artist was Klimt, in fact, he was elect­ed an hon­orary mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, and in 1888 Klimt received the Gold­en Order of Mer­it from Aus­tri­an Emper­or Franz Josef I … before, that is, his work was judged obscene — a judg­ment that did sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle to hin­der Klimt’s career.

At the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Klimt abrupt­ly shift­ed focus, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the death of his artist broth­er Ernst and his father, a gold engraver, in 1892. He became a found­ing mem­ber of the Vien­na Seces­sion move­ment, pro­duc­ing some of his most famous Sym­bol­ist works dur­ing his “Gold­en Phase,” when many of his works con­tained real gold leaf in trib­ute not only to his father but to the Byzan­tine art he saw dur­ing vis­its to Venice and Raven­na. This was the height of Klimt’s career, when he pro­duced such works as The Kiss, The Embrace, and Ful­fill­ment and Expec­ta­tion, “prob­a­bly the ulti­mate stage of my devel­op­ment of orna­ment,” he said.

In many ways, Klimt embod­ied con­tra­dic­tion. An admir­er of soci­ety and lux­u­ry, he also spurned com­pa­ny, turned away all vis­i­tors, and spend­ing so much time paint­ing land­scapes dur­ing sum­mer hol­i­days that locals called him Wald­schrat, “for­est demon.” Renowned for his sex­u­al adven­tur­ous­ness (he sup­pos­ed­ly fathered 14 chil­dren), Klimt was also an intense­ly focused and iso­lat­ed indi­vid­ual. In a piece enti­tled “Com­men­tary on a Non-Exis­tent Self-Por­trait,” he writes:

I have nev­er paint­ed a self-por­trait. I am less inter­est­ed in myself as a sub­ject for a paint­ing than I am in oth­er peo­ple, above all women… There is noth­ing spe­cial about me. I am a painter who paints day and day from morn­ing to night… Who­ev­er wants to know some­thing about me… ought to look care­ful­ly at my pic­tures.

Look care­ful­ly at an online gallery of Klimt’s works here. And see the immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty gallery here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Gus­tav Klimt’s Mas­ter­pieces Destroyed Dur­ing World War II Get Recre­at­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Gus­tav Klimt’s Icon­ic Paint­ing The Kiss: An Intro­duc­tion to Aus­tri­an Painter’s Gold­en, Erot­ic Mas­ter­piece (1908)

Gus­tav Klimt’s Haunt­ing Paint­ings Get Re-Cre­at­ed in Pho­tographs, Fea­tur­ing Live Mod­els, Ornate Props & Real Gold

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

Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British Newsreel Angsts Over Whether Automated Machines Will Displace People

in Film, History, Technology | October 14th, 2021

When Amer­i­cans hear the phrase “slot machine,” they think of pen­sion­ers com­pul­sive­ly pulling levers day and night in Las Vegas. But when the British hear it, a much less bleak vision comes to their minds: the auto­mat­ed dis­pen­sa­tion of cig­a­rettes, cof­fee, gro­ceries, and even entire meals. Or at least such a vision came to the minds of Britons back in 1964, the year of the British Pathé news­reel above. With its bril­liant col­ors and jazzy score, Slot Machine Age proud­ly dis­played to the view­ing pub­lic the range of coin-oper­at­ed won­ders already mak­ing their way into dai­ly life, from pay phones and pin­ball machines to shoe-buffers and bot­tle-recy­cling sta­tions.

“This inven­tion, this brain­child of the boffins, has cre­at­ed a new dis­ease,” declares the announc­er: “slot machine fever.” Again, this has noth­ing to do with gam­bling, and every­thing to do with automa­tion. Near­ly 60 years ago, buy­ing some­thing from a machine was a nov­el­ty to most peo­ple in even the most high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries on Earth.

Yet even then the automat, where din­ers pulled all their dish­es from coin-oper­at­ed win­dows, had in cer­tain cities been an insti­tu­tion for decades. Alas, such estab­lish­ments did­n’t sur­vive the explo­sion of fast food in the 1970s, whose busi­ness mod­el made use of more, not less, human labor.

But in the 1960s, the age of the robot seemed well on its way — so much so that this phrase titles anoth­er, slight­ly lat­er British Pathé pro­duc­tion show­cas­ing a “semi-com­put­er­ized ver­sion of the dumb­wait­er” being tried out in hotel rooms. From it the film’s hon­ey­moon­ing cou­ple extract cock­tails, peanuts, tooth­paste, and “that last cig­a­rette of the day.” It even offers read­ing mate­r­i­al, a con­cept since tried again in France, Poland, San Fran­cis­co, and an eccen­tric book­store in Toron­to, but the glo­ri­ous age of all-around con­ve­nience pre­dict­ed in these news­reels has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. We cit­i­zens of the 21st cen­tu­ry are in many cas­es hard­ly pleased, but rather anx­ious about what we see as our grow­ing depen­dence on automa­tion. Still, with the coro­n­avirus-induced vogue for con­tact-free pay­ment and din­ing, per­haps it’s time to give the automat anoth­er chance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight

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.

What Makes a “Cult” Band? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #107

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 14th, 2021

What makes for a “cult band”? Not just a small audi­ence, because Grate­ful Dead fans are an arche­typ­i­cal cult. Not just a devot­ed, emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed audi­ence; no vol­ume of Swifties make Tay­lor Swift qual­i­fy as a cult act. Does the music have to be some­how inac­ces­si­ble, or the fans snob­by?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er and three oth­er musi­cians try to fig­ure it out:

• Tim Quirk, front­man of Too Much Joy, writer and music exec­u­tive
• Aaron David Glea­son, musi­cian and actor
• Chris Suna­mi writes The Pop Cul­ture Philoso­pher blog, among oth­er things

A few of the names that come up for con­sid­er­a­tion are Tom Waits, The Cure, XTC, Big Star, Bri­an Wil­son, Lou Reed, Guid­ed by Voic­es, David Bowie, R.E.M., The Res­i­dents, Os Mutantes, Tony Owens, Phil Judd, Mike “Sport” Mur­phy, and many more.

We talk about how the Inter­net has affect­ed fan­dom and the music busi­ness, the pow­er of musi­cians laud­ing each oth­er, and how music fan­dom relates to oth­er fan­dom.

Lis­ten to Tim on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music and The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Read his blog 5‑s­tar-songs. Read his arti­cle “Hope­less­ly Devote: Cult Bands.” Fol­low him @tbquirk.

Lis­ten to Aaron talk­ing about his songs on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, on Pret­ty Much Pop last year (talk­ing about Borat), and as part of a Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life audio­play (also fea­tur­ing PMP favorite Eri­ca Spyres and cult actress Lucy Law­less). Lis­ten to the song he men­tions that result­ed from a Tik-Tok col­lab­o­ra­tion with cult artist Emma Free­man. Fol­low him on Face­book.

Read Chris’ post-mortem on cult artist Foun­tains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger.

A cou­ple of arti­cles that fed into this includ­ed:

• “The 8 Most Annoy­ing Band Cult Fol­low­ings in Amer­i­ca” by Clay­ton Guse
• “The 12 Strangest Albums With Rabid Cult Fol­low­ings” by Sean Kel­ly
• “List ‘Em Care­ful­ly: The Top 15 Cult Acts” by Ted Maid­er (from back in 2011)

Just to explain one of Mark’s com­ments, there real­ly was a play­set for “the hatch” for the TV show Lost.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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.

Behold the Photographs of John Thomson, the First Western Photographer to Travel Widely Through China (1870s)

in History, Photography, Travel | October 13th, 2021

In the ear­ly 1860s, a few West­ern­ers had seen Chi­na — but near­ly all of them had seen it for them­selves. The still-new medi­um of pho­tog­ra­phy had yet to make images of every­where avail­able to view­ers every­where else, which meant an oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el­ing prac­ti­tion­ers like John Thom­son. “The son of a tobac­co spin­ner and shop­keep­er,” says BBC.com, ” he was appren­ticed to an Edin­burgh opti­cal and sci­en­tif­ic instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er where he learned the basics of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

In 1862 Thom­son sailed from Lei­th “with a cam­era and a portable dark room. He set up in Sin­ga­pore before explor­ing the ancient civ­i­liza­tions of Chi­na, Thai­land — then known as Siam — and Cam­bo­dia.” It is for his exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy of Chi­na in the late 1860s and ear­ly 1870s that he’s best known today.

First lav­ish­ly pub­lished in a series of books titled Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na and Its Peo­ple (now avail­able to read free online at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library: vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three, vol­ume four), they now con­sti­tute some of the ear­li­est and rich­est direct visu­al records of Chi­nese land­scapes, cityscapes, and soci­ety as they were in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The first West­ern pho­tog­ra­ph­er to trav­el wide­ly through the length and breadth of Chi­na,” Thom­son brought his cam­era on jour­neys “far more exten­sive than those under­tak­en by most West­ern­ers of his gen­er­a­tion,” extend­ing “beyond the rel­a­tive com­fort and safe­ty of the coastal treaty ports.” Those words come from schol­ar of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Allen Hock­ley, whose five-part visu­al essay “John Thom­son’s Chi­na” at MIT Visu­al­iz­ing Cul­tures pro­vides a detailed overview and his­tor­i­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of Thom­son’s work in Asia.

Thom­son’s pho­tographs, writes Hock­ley, “fall into two broad cat­e­gories: scenic views and types. Views encom­passed both nat­ur­al land­scapes and built envi­ron­ments. They could be panoram­ic, tak­ing in large swaths of scenery, or they might high­light spe­cif­ic nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na or indi­vid­ual struc­tures.”

Types “focused on the man­ners and cus­toms of Chi­nese peo­ple and tend­ed to high­light the defin­ing fea­tures of gen­der, age, class, eth­nic­i­ty, and occu­pa­tion.” A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, both Thom­son’s views and types have giv­en schol­ars in a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines much to dis­cuss.

“It is clear from his com­men­tary to Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na that, how­ev­er sym­pa­thet­ic he was towards Chi­nese peo­ple, he could often be supe­ri­or and high-hand­ed,” writes Andrew Hiller at Visu­al­iz­ing Chi­na. “If Thom­son nev­er sought to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of Britain’s pres­ence, his atti­tude towards Chi­na was ambiva­lent. Whilst crit­i­cal of what he saw as the cor­rup­tion and obfus­ca­tion of Qing offi­cials, he nev­er­the­less could see the country’s poten­tial.”

Thom­son also helped oth­ers to see that poten­tial — or at least those who could afford to buy his books, whose prices matched the qual­i­ty of their pro­duc­tion. But today, thanks to online archives like His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs of Chi­na and Well­come Col­lec­tion, they’re free for every­one to behold. Chi­na itself has become much more acces­si­ble since Thom­son’s day, of course, but it’s famous­ly a much dif­fer­ent place than it was 25 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. The land through which he trav­eled — and of which he took so many of the very ear­li­est pho­tographs — is now infi­nite­ly less acces­si­ble to us than it ever was to his fel­low West­ern­ers of the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Hear a lec­ture on Thom­son’s pho­tog­ra­phy in Chi­na from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don here.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

How Vivid­ly Col­orized Pho­tos Helped Intro­duce Japan to the World in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

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.

Watch Free Cult Films by Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Streaming Service

in Film | October 13th, 2021

For many Open Cul­ture read­ers, the Hal­loween sea­son offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty — not to say an excuse — to re-expe­ri­ence clas­sic hor­ror films: F.W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu from 1922, for instance, or even George Méliès The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, which launched the whole form in 1896. This year, may we sug­gest a home screen­ing of the for­mi­da­ble work of vin­tage cin­e­ma that is 1968’s The Astro Zom­bies? Writ­ten, pro­duced, and direct­ed by Ted Mikels — auteur of The Corpse Grinders and Blood Orgy of the She-Dev­ils — it fea­tures not just “a mad astro-sci­en­tist” played by John Car­ra­dine and “two gore-crazed, solar-pow­ered killer robot zom­bies,” but “a bloody trail of girl-next-door vic­tims; Chi­nese com­mu­nist spies; dead­ly Mex­i­can secret agents led by the insane­ly volup­tuous Tura Satana” and an “intre­pid CIA agent” on the case of it all.

You can watch The Astro Zom­bies for free, and new­ly remas­tered in HD to boot, at Kino Cult, the new stream­ing site from film and video dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber. Pull up the front page and you’ll be treat­ed to a wealth of tit­il­lat­ing view­ing options of a vari­ety of eras and sub­gen­res: “Dri­ve-in favorites” like Ape and Beware! The Blob; “gold­en age exploita­tion” like Reefer Mad­ness and She Shoul­da Said ‘No’!; and even clas­sics like Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fear and Desire.

True cult-film enthu­si­asts, of course, may well go straight to the avail­able selec­tions, thought­ful­ly grouped togeth­er, from “Mas­ter of Ital­ian Hor­ror” Mario Bava and pro­lif­ic Span­ish “B‑movie” king­pin Jesús Fran­co. Those look­ing to throw a fright night might con­sid­er Kino Cult’s offer­ings filed under “hard­boiled hor­ror”: Kill­bil­lies, The House with 100 Eyes, Bun­ny: The Killer Thing.

Few of these pic­tures skimp on the grotesque; few­er still skimp on the humor, a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in even the most har­row­ing hor­ror movies. Far from a pile of cyn­i­cal hack­work, Kino Cult’s library has clear­ly been curat­ed with an eye toward films that, although for the most part pro­duced inex­pen­sive­ly and with unre­lent­ing intent to pro­voke vis­cer­al reac­tions in their audi­ences, are hard­ly with­out inter­est to seri­ous cinephiles. The site even includes an “art­sploita­tion” sec­tion con­tain­ing such taboo-breach­ing works as Cur­tis Burz’s Sum­mer House. Among its gen­er­al recent addi­tions you’ll also find Dog­tooth by Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, per­haps the most dar­ing high-pro­file provo­ca­teur cur­rent­ly at work in the medi­um. Since Kino Cult has made all these films and more avail­able to stream at no charge, none of us, no mat­ter our par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, has an excuse to pass this Hal­loween un-enter­tained — and more to the point, undis­turbed. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

What Scares Us, and How Does this Man­i­fest in Film? A Hal­loween Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast (#66)

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.

Dave Grohl Falls Offstage & Breaks His Leg, Then Continues the Show as The Foo Fighters Play Queen’s “Under Pressure” (2015)

in Music | October 13th, 2021

How do you make the show go on after a bro­ken leg?

The bless­ing we give per­form­ers before they go onstage isn’t some­thing we actu­al­ly want to see hap­pen. Nonethe­less, stage injuries occur fre­quent­ly, and in some cas­es, severe­ly, as when Pat­ti Smith fell 15 feet into a con­crete orches­tra pit in 1977 and broke sev­er­al ver­te­brae in her back. “I felt like an ass­hole,” she told Cir­cus mag­a­zine, “but my doc­tor told me not to wor­ry, it hap­pens to every­body.”

Maybe not every­body, but when the Foo Fight­ers played Gothen­burg, Swe­den in 2015, Dave Grohl took a major spill from the front of the stage, break­ing his leg, while a crowd of 52,000 peo­ple watched. They also watched as, sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, his crew car­ried him back onstage while the rest of the band fit­ting­ly played Queen’s “Under Pres­sure.”

The fall hap­pened dur­ing the sec­ond song of the show, and Grohl returned to play the entire 26-song set, his doc­tor kneel­ing next to him, hold­ing his leg togeth­er.

It didn’t hurt until I wound up on my couch in my hotel room, with a beer in my hand. They gave me some real­ly strong painkillers—I nev­er take pills, but with­in half an hour I was like, “Get me the f—ing Oxys right now, man!” It was pret­ty painful. And then I thought I could just get up and do a show a week lat­er after surgery, but I lit­er­al­ly could not get out of bed for about six or sev­en days. It was so f—ing painful. I had nev­er expe­ri­enced any­thing like that in my life. 

With his leg in a cast, he deter­mined that the band would make their Fourth of July show in Wash­ing­ton, DC, a return to Grohl’s home­town. “I start­ed think­ing… ‘I might not be able to get onstage next week,’” he told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, “‘but I’m not miss­ing that Fourth of July show, and if that goes OK then we’re just going to keep going.’” The gig went so well the band kept tour­ing, Grohl perched in a spe­cial­ly-designed stage throne.

“I love my job,” Grohl said, “I mean, f–, I’m out there with a bro­ken leg and a plate and pins in a bone and I can’t even stand up, but I still want to get on stage and play, with my fam­i­ly. We’re not break­ing up any­time soon, that would be like your grand­par­ents get­ting a divorce.” There’s no shame in tak­ing it easy after an injury, but if you’re a ded­i­cat­ed per­former who lives onstage, you might heal even faster if you don’t. At the time, Grohl epit­o­mized anoth­er old cliche — if you love what you do, you won’t have to work a day in your life, even when you have to work with a bro­ken leg. Watch the fall just above and the tri­umphant return min­utes lat­er at the top of the post. Below you can see the reunion with the doc­tor who held his leg togeth­er.

Grohl’s fall, and oth­er moments, get revis­it­ed in his new mem­oir, The Sto­ry­teller: Tales of Life and Music.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Foo Fight­ers Per­form “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Bri­an John­son: When Live Music Returns

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

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

Meet Tsuneko Sasamoto, Japan’s First Female Photojournalist and Now, at 107, Japan’s Oldest Living Photojournalist

in Photography | October 12th, 2021

You should nev­er become lazy. It’s essen­tial to remain pos­i­tive about your life and nev­er give up. You need to push your­self and stay aware, so you can move for­ward. 

– Tsuneko Sasamo­to

Sound advice whether one is inter­est­ed in sus­tain­ing a cre­ative prac­tice or remain­ing vig­or­ous as one ages.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tsuneko Sasamo­to is an excel­lent poster child for both. Born in Tokyo in 1914, short­ly after the begin­ning of the first World War, she is Japan’s first female pho­to­jour­nal­ist and — at 107, its old­est liv­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ist.

Her tra­di­tion­al father thwart­ed her hopes of becom­ing a painter, but ear­ly encoun­ters with a black-and-white film by Man Ray and the work of Mar­garet Bourke-White sug­gest­ed that pho­tog­ra­phy might prove a sim­i­lar­ly ful­fill­ing path.

By 1940, she was able to par­lay a job as a part-time illus­tra­tor on the local news pages at Tokyo Nichinichi Shim­bun (now known as the Mainichi Shim­bun) into a pro­ba­tion­ary gig as a shoot­er, though as a young woman, she was con­strained by gen­der expec­ta­tions.

Unlike her male coun­ter­parts, she was not allowed to doc­u­ment WWII at the front. Instead, she was charged with spe­cial inter­est sto­ries of a patri­ot­ic nature and por­traits of diplo­mat­ic envoys. She deeply resent­ed her pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­dat­ed uni­form — skirts and heels that occa­sion­al­ly ham­pered her from get­ting the shot.

Her ambi­tion ben­e­fit­ed from a stub­born­ly defi­ant streak. An arti­cle in The Japan Times details how she weath­ered dis­crim­i­na­to­ry com­ments, resist­ed male fam­i­ly mem­bers’ scripts, and, in 1947, piped up to ask Gen­er­al Dou­glas MacArthur, Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Pow­ers, if he would grant her a redo when her cam­era mal­func­tioned at the rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny he was attend­ing.

Oth­er sub­jects from her eight decades-long career:

Stu­dent pro­test­ers

The wives of coal min­ers who were on strike against the then-largest coal mine in Japan

Young women train­ing to be geisha

The Impe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly

Social­ist Par­ty head Inejiro Asanu­ma the day before his 1960 assas­si­na­tion

A who’s who of Japan­ese nov­el­ists, poets, and artists

The 2011 earth quake and tsuna­mi

And, for her exhib­it 100 Women at the Japan­ese Cam­era Indus­try Insti­tute, she includ­ed some notable sur­vivors of the Mei­ji and ear­ly Showa eras, such as Queen of the Blues, Noriko Awaya. As Sasamo­to recalled:

I pho­tographed her toward the end of her life when she was in her eight­ies and bedrid­den. I was one of the few allowed to see her at that time, I think because I was born in the Taisho era (1912–26) and she felt I could under­stand her…. She kept telling me, ‘I am not for­mi­da­ble.’

Short­ly after turn­ing 100, Sasamo­to weighed in on dig­i­tal cam­eras — their lighter weight made them easy to car­ry around, but their func­tions were dif­fi­cult to under­stand.

As for her health reg­i­men: main­tain­ing con­tact with fam­i­ly and friends, a dai­ly piece of choco­late, a glass of red wine every night, and way more red meat than rec­om­mend­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Ger­da Taro, the First Female Pho­to­jour­nal­ist to Die on the Front Lines

Women Street Pho­tog­ra­phers: The Web Site, Instra­gram Account & Book That Ampli­fy the Work of Women Artists World­wide

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

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

Watch Jaco Pastorius: The Lost Tapes Documentary, the Fan-Made Film on the Most Innovative Bass Player of All Time

in Jazz, Music | October 12th, 2021

Peo­ple do not under­stand how hard a jazz musi­cian works for a liv­ing. I’m not putting nobody down, but I’m telling you nobody under­stands how hard jazz musi­cians work. Jazz is not big in the US, because the States are too wor­ried about Pac-Man and The Police. — Jaco

When Jaco Pas­to­rius uttered the quote above in a typ­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing and insight­ful inter­view with Gui­tar World from 1983, he meant no dis­re­spect to the mem­bers of The Police. It’s safe to say, in fact, that Pas­to­rius sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced crossover sub­gen­res in punk, New Wave, and No Wave, through com­po­si­tions like “Punk Jazz” — “a real jazz play­ers stab at a brave new music,” writes Gui­tar World’s Peter Mengazi­ol. In gen­er­al, Pas­to­rius’ music was “a fusion with ener­gy but with­out overkill.” He absorbed influ­ences from every­where, and noth­ing seemed out of bounds in his play­ing. “I am not an orig­i­nal musi­cian,” he says in the same inter­view:

I am a thief…. You see, I rip off every­thing. I have no orig­i­nals. Only ani­mals and chil­dren can under­stand my music; I love women, chil­dren, music, I love every­thing that’s going in the right direc­tion, every­thing that flows… I just love music. I don’t know what I’m doing! 

It’s not that Pas­to­rius nec­es­sar­i­ly thought of jazz as a more ele­vat­ed form than rock or funk or soul or pop — hard­ly. He regard­ed Hen­drix with the same wor­ship­ful awe as he did Motown bassist Jer­ry Jem­mott, and both equal­ly informed his play­ing and show­man­ship. Yet he seemed to feel under-appre­ci­at­ed in his time, and that is prob­a­bly because he was, even though he was acclaimed as one of the world’s great­est bass play­ers dur­ing his brief 35 years, and he rad­i­cal­ly altered the sound of pop­u­lar music on albums by Joni Mitchell and oth­er non-jazz-world stars.

But Pas­to­rius knew that few under­stood what he was try­ing to do with jazz-rock groups like Weath­er Report and Blood, Sweat & Tears and in his solo work. He knew he could sell records and sell out per­for­mances, but he did­n’t care about com­merce. (He spent the last few years of his life sleep­ing on park bench­es.)

Warn­er Bros. refused to release his third solo album, Hol­i­day for Pans — a selec­tion of orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions and tunes by the Bea­t­les, Coltrane, and Alan Hov­haness, cen­tered around the steel drum play­ing of Oth­el­lo Molin­eaux — on the basis that it was “extreme­ly eso­teric.” Described by The Pen­guin Guide to Jazz as “by far the most imag­i­na­tive project Pas­to­rius ever under­took,” Hol­i­day for Pans received a release in Japan in 1993, but remains unre­leased in the US, per­haps val­i­dat­ing the bassist’s opin­ion of his coun­try’s cul­tur­al lim­i­ta­tions.

The fan-made doc­u­men­tary at the top, Jaco Pas­to­rius — The Lost Tapes Doc­u­men­tary, first appeared “on a some­what obscure French chan­nel called ‘Real­cut’,” notes the site Jazz in Europe. The title refers the inter­view footage with choice sub­jects like Mar­cus Miller, Joe Zaw­in­ul, Peter Ersk­ine, Dave Car­pen­ter, and Paco Seri, all shot while the musi­cians “were on tour in France back in the mid noughties.” In 2008, “the images were defin­i­tive­ly lost,” the film­mak­ers write in their descrip­tion, only to sur­face again on a hard dri­ve in a dusty attic last year.

Tying these inter­views togeth­er with archival Inter­net footage of Pas­to­rius, the mak­ers of The Lost Tapes Doc­u­men­tary have done an excel­lent job of intro­duc­ing the man and his work to a broad audi­ence through the words of those who knew and played with him, and they’ve done so with “no bud­get, no finan­cial aid or no image pur­chase.… The peo­ple who worked on this project did it vol­un­tar­i­ly, out of pas­sion and love of music, and the film will in no way be mon­e­tized on the plat­forms.” Pas­to­rius would have approved. “I don’t want to sell shit,” he told Gui­tar World back in 1983. “I want to do what has to be done.” For him, that meant con­stant inno­va­tion and change. “I’m not a magi­cian, I’m not a politi­cian, I’m a musi­cian,” he said. “I have no goal. You don’t get bet­ter, you grow. I am a musi­cian, and I final­ly real­ized it!”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

How Jaco Pas­to­rius Invent­ed the Elec­tric Bass Solo & Changed Musi­cal His­to­ry (1976)

Bass Sounds: One Song High­lights the Many Dif­fer­ent Sounds Made by Dif­fer­ent Bass Gui­tars

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

Gustav Klimt’s Masterpieces Destroyed During World War II Get Recreated with Artificial Intelligence

in Art, Technology | October 11th, 2021

A cen­tu­ry after the death of Gus­tav Klimt, his art con­tin­ues to enrap­ture its view­ers. Maybe it has enrap­tured you, but no mat­ter how deep you’ve gone into Klimt’s oeu­vre, there are three paint­ings you’ve only ever seen in black and white. That’s not because he paint­ed them in that way; rich and bril­liant col­ors orig­i­nal­ly fig­ured into all his work, the most notable usage being the real gold lay­ered onto his best-known paint­ing, 1908’s The Kiss. In the year before The Kiss, he com­plet­ed an even more ambi­tious work: a series of paint­ings com­mis­sioned for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na’s Great Hall, meant to rep­re­sent the fields after which they were titled: Phi­los­o­phy, Med­i­cine, and Jurispru­dence.

Klimt’s “Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings,” as they’re now known, struck crit­ics at the time as pieces of “per­vert­ed excess.” Such charges must have been noth­ing new to Klimt, for whom unabashed eroti­cism and sub­jec­tive views of real­i­ty — nei­ther par­tic­u­lar­ly in fash­ion in the insti­tu­tions of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Vien­na — con­sti­tut­ed basic artis­tic prin­ci­ples.

Ulti­mate­ly, Klimt him­self bought Phi­los­o­phy, Med­i­cine, and Jurispru­dence back, and by the end of the Sec­ond World War all three had found their way into the hands of the Nazis. With defeat loom­ing, they chose to burn down rather than sur­ren­der the Aus­tri­an cas­tle in which they’d been stor­ing the Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings and oth­er works of art.

With the Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings sur­viv­ing only in black-and-white pho­tographs and scanty descrip­tions, gen­er­a­tions of Klimt enthu­si­asts have had to imag­ine how they real­ly looked. Now, Google Arts & Cul­ture and Vien­na’s Belvedere Muse­um have joined forces to fig­ure out to a greater degree of cer­tain­ty than ever, using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to deter­mine what col­ors Klimt would have applied to Phi­los­o­phy, Med­i­cine, and Jurispru­dence based on in-depth analy­ses of the rest of his work. You can get an overview of the process from the short video at the top of the post, and you can read about it in more detail at Google Arts & Cul­ture.

“Klimt’s three Fac­ul­ty Paint­ings were among the largest art­works Klimt ever cre­at­ed and in the field of Sym­bol­ist paint­ing they rep­re­sent Klimt’s mas­ter­pieces,” says Belvedere cura­tor Dr. Franz Smo­la in a Google Arts & Cul­ture blog post. “The col­ors were essen­tial for the over­whelm­ing effect of these paint­ings, and they caused quite a stir among Klimt’s con­tem­po­raries. There­fore the recon­struc­tion of the col­ors is syn­ony­mous with rec­og­niz­ing the true val­ue and sig­nif­i­cance of these out­stand­ing art­works.” The project comes as just one part of Klimt vs. Klimt: The Man of Con­tra­dic­tions, an online ret­ro­spec­tive fea­tur­ing more than 120 of the artist’s works avail­able to view in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty, as well as an ultra-high-res­o­lu­tion scan of The Kiss. Klimt’s paint­ings may no longer shock us, but they still have much to show us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Long-Lost Pieces of Rembrandt’s Night Watch Get Recon­struct­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

AI & X‑Rays Recov­er Lost Art­works Under­neath Paint­ings by Picas­so & Modigliani

Gus­tav Klimt’s Haunt­ing Paint­ings Get Re-Cre­at­ed in Pho­tographs, Fea­tur­ing Live Mod­els, Ornate Props & Real Gold

Gus­tav Klimt’s Icon­ic Paint­ing The Kiss: An Intro­duc­tion to Aus­tri­an Painter’s Gold­en, Erot­ic Mas­ter­piece (1908)

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 J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford English Dictionary and “Learned More … Than Any Other Equal Period of My Life” (1919–1920)

in Books, Literature | October 11th, 2021

When J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-1950s, its first crit­i­cal read­ers held some diverg­ing views on the books’ qual­i­ty. On the one hand, there was praise for the revival of fan­ta­sy for grown-ups, and com­par­isons to great epics of the past. On the oth­er hand, Tolkien’s prose was exco­ri­at­ed for its wordi­ness, length, and seem­ing­ly inex­haustible obses­sion with obscu­ri­ties. Both per­spec­tives seemed to miss some­thing impor­tant. Yes, Tolkien drew lib­er­al­ly from epics of the past such as the Norse Sagas and cre­at­ed a world as ful­ly-real­ized as any in ancient mythol­o­gy, build­ing in decades what took cen­turies to devel­op.

It’s also true that Tolkien wrote in a thor­ough­ly unusu­al way — unfa­mil­iar as he was with the con­ven­tions of con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary prose. But his style did not only derive from his work as a schol­ar of Anglo-Sax­on lit­er­a­ture. For all of the dis­cus­sion of Tolkien’s ency­clo­pe­dic tech­nique, no one seemed to note at the time that the author had, in fact, invent­ed for him­self (with apolo­gies to James Joyce) a new genre and way of writ­ing, a kind of ety­mo­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy, a kind of writ­ing he learned while work­ing on the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, that august cat­a­logue of the Eng­lish lan­guage which first appeared in full in 1928 — in ten vol­umes after fifty years of work.

The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary (OED) remains an indis­pens­able ref­er­ence for schol­ars of lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture, but it is not itself a typ­i­cal aca­d­e­m­ic text. It is a com­pendi­um, a mis­cel­lany, a descrip­tive map and time­line track­ing how Eng­lish evolves; it is the ulti­mate ref­er­ence work, a work of philol­o­gy, a dis­ci­pline that had fall­en out of fash­ion by the time of The Lord of the Rings. The first edi­tion of the OED, begun in 1878 (five years into the pro­posed time­line, the edi­tors had only reached the word “ant”), con­tained around 400,000 words. Between the years 1919 and 1920, Tolkien was respon­si­ble for the words between wag­gle and war­lock. He would lat­er say he “learned more in those two years than in any oth­er equal peri­od of my life.”

The OED estab­lish­es lin­guis­tic his­to­ries by cit­ing a word’s appear­ances in lit­er­a­ture and pop­u­lar press over time, trac­ing deriva­tions from oth­er lan­guages, and trac­ing the evo­lu­tion, and extinc­tion, of words and mean­ings. After his return from World War I, the future nov­el­ist found him­self work­ing under found­ing co-edi­tor Hen­ry Bradley, labor­ing away on words like wal­nut, wal­rus, and wampum, which “seem to have been assigned to Tolkien because of their par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult ety­molo­gies,” notes the OED blog. These entries would lat­er be sin­gled out by Bradley as “con­tain­ing ‘ety­mo­log­i­cal facts or sug­ges­tion not giv­en in oth­er dic­tio­nar­ies.’ ”

The expe­ri­ence as an OED lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er pre­pared Tolkien for his life­long career as a philol­o­gist. It also informed his lit­er­ary tech­nique, argue Peter Gilliv­er, Jere­my Mar­shall, and Edmund Wein­er, the authors of Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary and for­mer OED edi­tors, all. The authors show how Tolkien drew the lan­guage of his books direct­ly from his ety­mo­log­i­cal research. For exam­ple, “for decades it was assumed that he was being char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mod­est” when he declined to claim cred­it for the inven­tion of the word “hob­bit.” As it turned out, “an obscure list of myth­i­cal beings, pub­lished in 1895” came to light in 1977, includ­ing the word “ ‘hob­bits’, along with such oth­er irre­sistible crea­tures as ‘bog­gle­boes’ and gal­lytrots,” writes Kel­ly Grovi­er at The Guardian.

Tolkien’s rela­tion­ship to ety­mol­o­gy in The Hob­bit, The Lord of the Rings, and every oth­er lengthy piece of writ­ing Mid­dle Earth-relat­ed goes far beyond dig­ging up obscure words or coin­ing new ones. He learned to think like a lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er. As the authors write, “in describ­ing his own cre­ative process­es, Tolkien often com­ments on how the con­tem­pla­tion of an indi­vid­ual word can be the start­ing point for an adven­ture in imag­i­na­tion — and con­tem­plat­ing indi­vid­ual words is pre­cise­ly what lex­i­cog­ra­phers do.” Tolkien’s bound­less curios­i­ty about the roots of lan­guage led him to “invent every­thing,” writes Tolkien crit­ic John Garth, “from star mariners to cal­en­dars, flow­ers, cities, food­stuffs, writ­ing sys­tems and birth­day cus­toms, to men­tion just a few of the eclec­tic fea­tures of Mid­dle-earth.”

Decades after Tolkien’s first asso­ci­a­tion with the OED, he would become involved again with the pub­li­ca­tion in 1969 when the edi­tor of the dic­tio­nary’s Sup­ple­ment, his for­mer stu­dent Robert Burch­field, asked for com­ments on the entry for “Hob­bit.” Tolkien offered his own def­i­n­i­tion for just one of the many Tolkien­ian words that would even­tu­al­ly make into the OED (along with math­om, orc, mithril, and bal­rog). Burch­field pub­lished Tolkien’s def­i­n­i­tion almost exact­ly as writ­ten:

In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973): one of an imag­i­nary peo­ple, a small vari­ety of the human race, that gave them­selves this name (mean­ing ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by oth­ers halflings, since they were half the height of nor­mal men.

Learn more about Tolkien’s work on the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary’s first edi­tion in this arti­cle by Peter Gilliv­er and pick up a copy of Ring of Words here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

When the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee Reject­ed The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Mea­sured Up to Sto­ry­telling of the High­est Qual­i­ty” (1961)

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lit­tle-Known and Hand-Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book, Mr. Bliss

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