Algerian Cave Paintings Suggest Humans Did Magic Mushrooms 9,000 Years Ago

in Art, History, Psychology | January 27th, 2021

We mod­erns might won­der what ancient peo­ples did when not hunt­ing, gath­er­ing, and repro­duc­ing. The answer is that they did mush­rooms, at least accord­ing to one inter­pre­ta­tion of cave paint­ings at Tas­sili n’A­j­jer in Alge­ria, some of which go back 9,000 years. “Here are the ear­li­est known depic­tions of shamans with large num­bers of graz­ing cat­tle,” writes ethnobotanist/mystic Ter­ence McKen­na in his book Food of the Gods: The Search for the Orig­i­nal Tree of Knowl­edge. “The shamans are danc­ing with fists full of mush­rooms and also have mush­rooms sprout­ing out of their bod­ies. In one instance they are shown run­ning joy­ful­ly, sur­round­ed by the geo­met­ric struc­tures of their hal­lu­ci­na­tions. The pic­to­r­i­al evi­dence seems incon­tro­vert­ible.”

McKen­na was­n’t the only schol­ar of the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence to take an inter­est in Tas­sili. Gior­gio Samor­i­ni had writ­ten about its ancient paint­ings a few years before, focus­ing on one that depicts “a series of masked fig­ures in line and hier­at­i­cal­ly dressed or dressed as dancers sur­round­ed by long and live­ly fes­toons of geo­met­ri­cal designs of dif­fer­ent kinds.” Each dancer “holds a mush­room-like object in the right hand,” but the key visu­al ele­ment is the par­al­lel lines that “come out of this object to reach the cen­tral part of the head of the dancer.” These “could sig­ni­fy an indi­rect asso­ci­a­tion or non-mate­r­i­al flu­id pass­ing from the object held in the right hand and the mind,” an inter­pre­ta­tion in line with the idea of “the uni­ver­sal men­tal val­ue induced by hal­lu­cino­genic mush­rooms and veg­e­tals, which is often of a mys­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al nature.”

The U.S. For­est Ser­vice acknowl­edges Tas­sili as “the old­est known pet­ro­glyph depict­ing the use of psy­choac­tive mush­rooms,” adding the pos­tu­late that “the mush­rooms depict­ed on the ‘mush­room shaman’ are Psilo­cybe mush­rooms.” That name will sound famil­iar to 21st-cen­tu­ry con­scious­ness-alter­ation enthu­si­asts, some of whom advo­cate for the use of psilo­cy­bin, the psy­che­del­ic com­pound that occurs in such mush­rooms, as not just a recre­ation­al drug but a treat­ment for con­di­tions like depres­sion. Cave art like Tas­sil­i’s sug­gests that such instru­men­tal uses of hal­lu­cino­genic plants — as vital parts of rit­u­als, for exam­ple — may stretch all the way back to the Neolith­ic era, when last the Sahara desert was a rel­a­tive­ly ver­dant savan­na rather than the vast expanse of sand we know today.

A sense of con­ti­nu­ity with the prac­tices of these long-ago pre­de­ces­sors — ancient Egyp­tians to the ancient Egyp­tians, as one Red­di­tor frames it — must enrich mush­room use for many psy­cho­nauts today. And indeed, the “bee-head­ed shaman” and his com­pa­tri­ots have had a robust cul­tur­al after­life: “A pop­u­lar­ly pub­lished draw­ing based on one of the Tas­sili fig­ures has become an icon of post-1990’s psy­che­delia,” says Bri­an Akers of Mush­room: The Jour­nal of Wild Mush­room­ing. The “abstract-bizarre” style of its images have also put it “among the sites favored by ancient ET the­o­riz­ing.” How­ev­er rich the visions expe­ri­enced by the cave-painters who once lived there, sure­ly none could have been as mind-blow­ing as the idea that their work would still fire up imag­i­na­tions nine mil­len­nia lat­er.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Psilo­cy­bin Could Soon Be a Legal Treat­ment for Depres­sion: Johns Hop­kins Pro­fes­sor, Roland Grif­fiths, Explains How Psilo­cy­bin Can Relieve Suf­fer­ing

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

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.

How Richard Feynman’s Diagrams Revolutionized Physics

in Physics, Science | January 26th, 2021

If you want to under­stand the­o­ret­i­cal physics these days—as much as is pos­si­ble with­out years of spe­cial­ized study—there are no short­age of places to turn on the inter­net. Of course, this was not the case in the ear­ly 1960s when Richard Feyn­man gave his famous series of lec­tures at Cal­tech. In pub­lished form, these lec­tures became the most pop­u­lar book on physics ever writ­ten. Feynman’s sub­se­quent auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essays and acces­si­ble pub­lic appear­ances fur­ther solid­i­fied his rep­u­ta­tion as the fore­most pop­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tor of physics, “a fun-lov­ing, charis­mat­ic prac­ti­cal jok­er,” writes Mette Ilene Holm­nis at Quan­ta mag­a­zine, even if “his per­for­ma­tive sex­ism looks very dif­fer­ent to mod­ern eyes.”

Feynman’s genius went beyond that of “ordi­nary genius­es,” his men­tor, Hans Bethe, direc­tor of the Man­hat­tan Project, exclaimed: “Feyn­man was a magi­cian.” That may be so, but he was nev­er above reveal­ing how he learned his tricks, such that any­one could use his meth­ods, whether or not they could achieve his spec­tac­u­lar results. Feyn­man didn’t only teach his stu­dents, and his mil­lions of read­ers, about physics; he also taught them how to teach them­selves. The so-called “Feyn­man tech­nique” for effec­tive study­ing ensures that stu­dents don’t just par­rot knowl­edge, but that they can “iden­ti­fy any gaps” in their under­stand­ing, he empha­sized, and bol­ster weak points where they “can’t explain an idea sim­ply.”

Years before he became the fore­most pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence, Feyn­man per­formed the same ser­vice for his col­leagues. “With physi­cists in the late 1940s strug­gling to refor­mu­late a rel­a­tivis­tic quan­tum the­o­ry describ­ing the inter­ac­tions of elec­tri­cal­ly charged par­ti­cles,” Holm­nis writes, “Feyn­man con­jured up some Nobel Prize-win­ning mag­ic. He intro­duced a visu­al method to sim­pli­fy the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble cal­cu­la­tions need­ed to describe basic par­ti­cle inter­ac­tions.” The video above, ani­mat­ed by Holm­nis, shows just how sim­ple it was—just a few lines, squig­gles, cir­cles, and arrows.

Holm­nis quotes Feyn­man biog­ra­ph­er James Gle­ick’s descrip­tion: Feyn­man “took the half-made con­cep­tions of waves and par­ti­cles in the 1940s and shaped them into tools that ordi­nary physi­cists could use and under­stand.” Feyn­man Dia­grams helped make sense of quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, a the­o­ry that “attempt­ed to cal­cu­late the prob­a­bil­i­ty of all pos­si­ble out­comes of par­ti­cle inter­ac­tions,” the video explains. Among the theory’s prob­lems was the writ­ing of “equa­tions meant keep­ing track of all inter­ac­tions, includ­ing vir­tu­al ones, a gru­el­ing, hope­less exer­cise for even the most orga­nized and patient physi­cist.”

Using his touch for the relat­able, Feyn­man drew his first dia­grams in 1948. They remain, wrote Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist Frank Wilczek, “a trea­sured asset in physics because they often pro­vide good approx­i­ma­tions to real­i­ty. They help us bring our pow­ers of visu­al imag­i­na­tion to bear on worlds we can’t actu­al­ly see.” Learn more about Feyn­man Dia­grams in the video above and at Holm­nis’ arti­cle in Quan­ta here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

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

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

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 26th, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

via Dazed

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

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

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

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

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 11 Seasons of America’s Favorite Traveler Free Online

in Television, Travel | January 26th, 2021

“Peo­ple who are addict­ed to Euro­pean trav­el, this is kind of a frus­trat­ing time for them,” says Rick Steves in a pod­cast inter­view with The New York Times’ Sam Ander­son from this past spring. He should know: since becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al trav­el guide and edu­ca­tor in the late 1970s, Steves has har­nessed his own Euro­pean trav­el addic­tion to build a busi­ness empire. To his fel­low Europhiles — and espe­cial­ly his fel­low Europhile but monoglot Amer­i­cans mak­ing their first leap across the Atlantic — Steves has sold a great many class­es, tours, guide­books, mon­ey belts, and neck pil­lows. Over the past three decades, almost every­one who’s got to know him has done so through his trav­el shows on pub­lic tele­vi­sion, espe­cial­ly Rick Steves’ Europe.

“Steves is a joy­ful and jaun­ty host, all eager-beaver smiles and expres­sive head tilts,” writes Ander­son of the show, whose star “gush­es poet­i­cal­ly about England’s Lake Dis­trict (‘a lush land steeped in a rich brew of his­to­ry, cul­ture and nature’) and Erfurt, Ger­many (‘this half-tim­bered medieval town with a shal­low riv­er gur­gling through its cen­ter’) and Istan­bul (‘this sprawl­ing metrop­o­lis on the Bosporus’) and Lis­bon (‘like San Fran­cis­co, but old­er and grit­ti­er and less expen­sive’).”

In recent years, sea­sons of Rick Steves’ Europe have become free to watch on Youtube. The eleven full sea­sons now avail­able also include “Ger­many’s Roman­tic Rhine”; Nor­mandy, “War-Torn Yet Full of Life”; “Feisty and Poet­ic” North Wales; “Lit­tle Europe: Five Micro-Coun­tries”; Basque coun­try; and The Best of Slove­nia.

As well known for his prac­ti­cal-mind­ed­ness as he is for his cheer­ful­ness, Steves has also pro­duced such spe­cial broad­casts as a three-part series on the trav­el skills nec­es­sary to cross huge swaths of Europe safe­ly and enjoy­ably. Giv­en the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, it will be a while before any of us can once again put our trav­el skills to the test. “This virus can stop our trav­el plans, but it can­not stop our trav­el dreams,” Steves declares on the pod­cast with Ander­son, lead­ing into the announce­ment of a new game: Rick Steves’ Europe Bin­go, “where the cards have all of the lit­tle goofy clichés that show up in almost every one of my shows,” from “Rick vis­its a church” and “Rick enjoys a local drink” to sig­na­ture lines like “Oh, baby!” and “Keep on trav­elin’.”

“You can turn it into a drink­ing game if you want,” Steves notes. And indeed, with or with­out the aid of alco­hol, there are much worse ways for trav­el­ers to pass the remain­der of the pan­dem­ic than with an extend­ed binge-watch of Rick Steves’ Europe, whose sea­sons are orga­nized into playlists below:

• Sea­son 2
• Sea­son 3
• Sea­son 4
• Sea­son 5
• Sea­son 6
• Sea­son 7
• Sea­son 8
• Sea­son 9
• Sea­son 10
• Sea­son 11

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Explore the Entire World–from the Com­fort of Quar­an­tine — with 4K Walk­ing Tours

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­terBooks 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Resilience Skills in a Time of Uncertainty: A Free Course from the University of Pennsylvania

in Online Courses, Psychology | January 25th, 2021

Who could use a course on resilience these days? To get you through this win­ter of dis­con­tent, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia has cre­at­ed a free ver­sion of Dr. Karen Reivich’s “Resilience Skills” course. (It’s part of the Foun­da­tions of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy Spe­cial­iza­tion offered through Cours­era.) This course teach­es stu­dents to 1.) under­stand the pro­tec­tive fac­tors that make one resilient, 2.) make use of non-cog­ni­tive strate­gies that decrease anx­i­ety, 3.) rec­og­nize think­ing traps and how they under­cut resilience, and 4.) cre­ate a buffer of pos­i­tiv­i­ty that boosts resilience in stress­ful sit­u­a­tions.

The course tech­ni­cal­ly runs four weeks, but it can be binge-watched at what­ev­er rate you like. The course draws on the instruc­tor’s book, The Resilience Fac­tor: 7 Keys to Find­ing Your Inner Strength and Over­com­ing Life’s Hur­dles. To take the course for free, select the “Audit” option dur­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process.

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:

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adversity–Take a Free & Time­ly Course Online

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Cocktails with a Curator: The Frick Pairs Weekly Art History Lectures with Cocktail Recipes

in Art, Food & Drink, Museums | January 25th, 2021

Once upon a time, not so long ago, First Fri­days at the Frick were a gra­cious way for New York­ers to kick off the week­end. Admis­sion was waived, par­tic­i­pants could take part in open sketch­ing ses­sions or enjoy live per­for­mance, and cura­tors were on hand to give mini lec­tures on the sig­nif­i­cance and his­tor­i­cal con­text of cer­tain prized paint­ings in the col­lec­tion.

Rather than pull the plug entire­ly when the muse­um closed due to the pan­dem­ic, the Frick sought to pre­serve the spir­it of this long­stand­ing tra­di­tion with week­ly episodes of Cock­tails with a Cura­tor, match­ing each selec­tion with recipes for make-at-home themed drinks, with or with­out alco­hol.

Much as we miss these com­mu­nal live events, there’s some­thing to be said for enjoy­ing these wild­ly enter­tain­ing, edu­ca­tion­al mini-lec­tures from the com­fort of one’s own couch, drink in hand, no need to crane past oth­er vis­i­tors for a view, or wor­ry that one might keel over from lock­ing one’s knees too long.

Deputy Direc­tor and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Cura­tor Xavier F. Salomon makes for an espe­cial­ly engag­ing host. His cov­er­age of James McNeill Whistler’s Sym­pho­ny in Flesh Col­or and Pink: Por­trait of Mrs. Frances Ley­land, above, touch­es on the artist’s affin­i­ty for but­ter­flies, music, Japan­ese themes and build­ing his own frames.

But the great­est delight is Salomon’s tal­ent for imbu­ing 19th-cen­tu­ry art world gos­sip with a sense of imme­di­a­cy.

Sip a sake high­ball (or a vir­gin san­gria-style refresh­er of plum juice and mint) and chew on the true nature of the artist’s rela­tion­ship with his ship­ping mag­nate patron’s wife.

Sake High­ball
sake (of your choice)
club soda (as much/little as need­ed)
lots of ice

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail
plum juice
ice
cut orange, lemon and apple (san­gria style)
mint leaves
sug­ar (as need­ed)

Salomon returns to con­sid­er one of the Frick’s most icon­ic hold­ings, François Bouch­er’s roco­co Four Sea­sons.

Com­mis­sioned in 1755 to serve as over-door dec­o­ra­tions for King Louis XV’s mis­tress Madame de Pom­padour, they now reside in the Frick’s ornate Bouch­er Room.

Salomon draws com­par­isons to anoth­er swoon­ing Frick favorite, Jean-Hon­oré Frag­o­nard’s series Progress of Love. While the roman­tic nature of these works is hard­ly a secret, Salomon is able to speak to the erot­ic sig­nif­i­cance of dol­phins, grapes, and tiny 18th-cen­tu­ry shep­herdess bon­nets.

Those who are respect­ing COVID pro­to­cols by court­ing out­doors this win­ter will wel­come Salomon’s thoughts on Winter’s cen­tral fig­ure, a coquette rid­ing in a sleigh dri­ven by a well-bun­dled man in Tar­tar dress:

Her hands may be warmed by a muff, but her upper body is com­plete­ly exposed. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of lux­u­ry and seduc­tion typ­i­cal of Bouch­er, all treat­ed in a fan­ci­ful, even humor­ous man­ner.

Also, is it just us, or is Cura­tor Salomon tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy his Proust-inspired Time Regained cock­tail in a kimono? (A perk of the vir­tu­al office…)

Time Regained
2 oz. Scotch whisky
0.75 oz. Dry ver­mouth
0.5 oz. Pis­co
0.25 oz. Jas­mine tea syrup (equal parts of jas­mine tea and sug­ar)

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail
Cold jas­mine tea
One spoon­ful of gold­en syrup
Top with ton­ic water

Salomon hands host­ing duties to col­league Aimee Ng for Ver­meer’s Mis­tress and Maid, one of three works by the Dutch Mas­ter in the Frick­’s col­lec­tion.

Here the dra­ma is less explic­it­ly informed by the boudoir, though there’s a big reveal around the 10 minute mark, thanks to recent advances in infrared reflec­tog­ra­phy and some well-coor­di­nat­ed art sleuthing.

As to the con­tents of the mes­sage the maid prof­fers her ermine trimmed mis­tress, we’ll nev­er know, although those of us with ready access to the Dutch spir­it gen­ev­er can have fun spec­u­lat­ing over a glass of Gen­ev­er Brûlée.

Gen­ev­er Brûlée
2 oz gen­ev­er
1 tea­spoon brown sug­ar
A few dash­es of clas­sic bit­ters
A dash of orange bit­ters
A splash of sparkling water
Gar­nished with a caramelized orange slice

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail

Juice of half an orange
2 dash­es orange blos­som water
A splash of sparkling water
Gar­nished with a caramelized orange slice

To explore a playlist of every Cock­tails with a Cura­tor episode, cov­er­ing such notable works as Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain, Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Win­ter, and Hans Holbein’s Sir Thomas More, click here.

To read more in-depth cov­er­age of each episode’s fea­tured art­work, along with its cock­tail and mock­tail recipes, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it 2+ Mil­lion Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Muse­ums Free Online

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Quentin Tarantino Shoots a Film at 3 Different Budget Levels: Reservoir Dogs ($1 Million), Pulp Fiction ($8 Million), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ($95 Million)

in Film | January 22nd, 2021

Quentin Taran­ti­no has nev­er shied away from talk­ing, at length and at a rapid clip, about his process. “In anoth­er life,” Col­in Mar­shall writes in a pre­vi­ous post on the sub­ject, he might have become a “fore­most prac­ti­tion­er” of the video essay on cin­e­ma. His metic­u­lous analy­ses of not only his own films but also the hun­dreds he references–or out­right steals from–can be dizzy­ing, the rav­ings of an over­ac­tive cre­ative mind that seems impos­si­ble to rein in.

Taran­ti­no has also giv­en us sig­nif­i­cant insight into his screen­writ­ing process, say­ing “I was put on Earth to face the blank page” and claim­ing that he watch­es the entire film in his mind’s eye before putting pen to paper. He wrote Pulp Fic­tion “off and on,” Mark Seal notes at Van­i­ty Fair, “in a one-room apart­ment with no phone or fax” in Ams­ter­dam. Then he sought out vet­er­an Hol­ly­wood typ­ist Lin­da Chen, who agreed to type, and edit, the man­u­script for free.

“His hand­writ­ing is atro­cious,” says Chen. “He’s a func­tion­al illit­er­ate. I was aver­ag­ing about 9,000 gram­mat­i­cal errors per page. After I would cor­rect them, he would try to put back the errors, because he liked them.”

As a writer, Tarantino’s quirks don’t actu­al­ly seem out of place. As a direc­tor, his process would not seem to lend itself to the most dis­ci­plined pro­duc­tion. The final prod­uct of that error-rid­den script, how­ev­er, became what Roger Ebert called “the most influ­en­tial” movie of the 90s, “so well writ­ten in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it—the noses of those zom­bie writ­ers who take ‘screen­writ­ing’ class­es that teach them the for­mu­las for ‘hit films.’” Of course, great writ­ing is an indis­pens­able part of mak­ing a great film, but so too is great film­mak­ing.…

How did Taran­ti­no go from fever­ish­ly hand-scrib­bled script to a “most influ­en­tial” film as a direc­tor? He has worked with­in strict lim­i­ta­tions, as on his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Reser­voir Dogs, with larg­er bud­gets and bet­ter sets, as on Pulp Fic­tion, and on his most recent film, the $95 mil­lion Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood. But he has always main­tained a con­sis­tent visu­al style eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able across all nine of his films.

In the video essay above from In Depth Cine, you can learn more of the sto­ry of how Taran­ti­no accom­plished his direc­to­r­i­al visions, and how that style fol­lowed him from film to film. The video gets into tech­ni­cal details like the choice of 35mm cam­eras and the light­ing place­ment. It also tells the sto­ry of how three films—Reser­voir Dogs, Pulp Fic­tion, and Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood—used their vast­ly dif­fer­ent bud­get lev­els, while all remain­ing true to each oth­er and to their writer and direc­tor’s inten­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

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

When the Grateful Dead Performed on Hugh Hefner’s Playboy After Dark & Secretly Dosed Everyone With LSD (1969)

in Music, Television | January 22nd, 2021

At one time, what­ev­er else peo­ple did with it, they real­ly did read Play­boy for the arti­cles. And what­ev­er oth­er vic­ar­i­ous thrills they might obtain from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy’s Pent­house vari­ety show or its fol­low-up, Play­boy After Dark, they def­i­nite­ly tuned in for the music. Guests includ­ed Ike & Tina Turn­er, The Byrds, Bud­dy Rich, Cher, Deep Pur­ple, Fleet­wood Mac, Step­pen­wolf, James Brown, and many more. On Jan­u­ary 18, 1969, the Grate­ful Dead per­formed, and it went exact­ly as one might expect, mean­ing “things got total­ly out-of-hand,” Dave Melamed writes at Live for Live Music, “but every­thing wound up work­ing out just fine.

Things worked out more than fine, despite, or because of, the fact that the band’s leg­endary sound-man Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley (at that time the largest sup­pli­er of LSD in the coun­try) dosed the cof­fee pot on set. Dead drum­mer Bill Kreutz­mann tells the sto­ry in the Conan clip below. It all start­ed, he says, dur­ing sound­check, when he noticed that the crew was act­ing “kin­da loose.” Know­ing Stan­ley as he did, he imme­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed the cause: “the whole crew, all of you” he says point­ing toward the Conan cam­era oper­a­tors, “was high on acid.”

There’s not much evi­dence of it in the footage. There don’t seem to be any tech­ni­cal prob­lems in the clip at the top. In their brief, jovial inter­view, Hefn­er and Gar­cia seem plen­ty relaxed. Jer­ry tells the Play­boy founder why the band has two drum­mers. (They “chase each oth­er around, sort of like the ser­pent that eats its own tail” and “make a fig­ure in your mind” if you stand between them.) Then he takes the stage and the band plays “Moun­tains of the Moon” and “St. Stephen.”

Hefn­er was so appre­cia­tive of what­ev­er hap­pened on set that he sent a per­son­al let­ter of thanks the fol­low­ing month (below), addressed to each mem­ber of the band. “Your par­tic­i­pa­tion played an impor­tant part in the suc­cess of this par­tic­u­lar show.” He enclosed a film of the per­for­mances and expressed his grat­i­tude “for hav­ing made the tap­ing ses­sion as enjoy­able to do as I think it will be to watch.”

Kreutz­mann relates some oth­er anec­dotes in his 2015 Conan inter­view, includ­ing a fun­ny bit about how the band got its name. But the best part of the appear­ance is watch­ing him imi­tate Hefn­er, who was appar­ent­ly plas­tered to the wall by the end of the set, the cof­fee real­ly start­ing to kick in.

This strange chap­ter of Grate­ful Dead his­to­ry is one of many memo­ri­al­ized in the new graph­ic nov­el, Grate­ful Dead Ori­gins.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Watch the Grate­ful Dead Slip Past Secu­ri­ty & Play a Gig at Colum­bia University’s Anti-Viet­nam Protest (1968)

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

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

How to Make a Savile Row Suit: A Short Documentary from the Museum of Modern Art

in Fashion, Online Courses | January 21st, 2021

Sav­ile Row is unfash­ion­able. This, of course, is its great strength: not for noth­ing does that Lon­don street stand as the last word in time­less tai­lor­ing. Since at least the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, men have gone to Sav­ile Row not just to com­mis­sion hand­made suits from their favorite shops, but to par­tic­i­pate in as many fit­tings as nec­es­sary through­out the process of bring­ing those suits ever clos­er to per­fec­tion. The result, over decades and indeed gen­er­a­tions of reg­u­lar patron­age, is the cul­ti­va­tion of not fash­ion but style. Even so, Sav­ile Row fig­ures in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s online course Fash­ion as Design, whose videos on the mak­ing of a bespoke three-piece suit you can see here.

It all hap­pens at Ander­son & Shep­pard, a fix­ture on the Row since 1906. In the first video, “behind a drawn cur­tain, a mas­ter cut­ter” — whose job includes not just cut­ting the cloth but inter­act­ing with the client — “takes an ini­tial series of 27 mea­sure­ments: 20 for the jack­et, 7 for the trousers. From these mea­sure­ments, the cut­ter fash­ions a pat­tern in heavy brown paper.”

We then see the cloth cut to this pat­tern, “and the many pieces of fab­ric are rolled for each gar­ment into tiny pack­ages, which await the tai­lors.” The sec­ond, which begins in the back of the house, shows how these tai­lors “receive their bun­dles of fab­ric and set about deci­pher­ing the cutter’s notes. Three weeks after a client’s mea­sure­ments have been tak­en, his suit will be ready for a first fit­ting.”

Empha­sis on “first”: though the young man being fit­ted here only appears for one ses­sion, some bespoke suits can require two, three, or more, worn each time as a wear­able rough draft held togeth­er with bright white thread and marked up for lat­er cor­rec­tion. This reflects not the tai­lor’s inabil­i­ty to get it right the first time, but the rig­or­ous desire of the Sav­ile Row habitué for an ide­al fit. (Ander­son & Shep­pard’s list of for­mer clients include such noto­ri­ous­ly per­fec­tion­ist dressers as Fred Astaire, Bryan Fer­ry, and Prince Charles.) Watch­ing this process from start fin­ish under­scores the truth of those famous words, “The dif­fer­ence between style and fash­ion is qual­i­ty” — famous words spo­ken by no less a detrac­tor of Sav­ile Row than Gior­gio Armani, but true ones nonethe­less.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dress Like an Intel­lec­tu­al Icon with Japan­ese Coats Inspired by the Wardrobes of Camus, Sartre, Duchamp, Le Cor­busier & Oth­ers

Recall­ing Albert Camus’ Fash­ion Advice, Noam Chom­sky Pans Glenn Greenwald’s Shiny Pur­ple Tie

Fash­ion Design­ers in 1939 Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Browse a Col­lec­tion of Over 83,500 Vin­tage Sewing Pat­terns

How Ladies & Gen­tle­men Got Dressed in the 18th Cen­tu­ry: It Was a Pret­ty Involved Process

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­terBooks 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Innovative Pinscreen Animations of Kafka’s “Before the Law”, Gogol’s “The Nose” & Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” (1932–1972)

in Animation, Literature | January 21st, 2021

What do Franz Kaf­ka, Niko­lai Gogol, and Mod­est Mus­sorgsky have in com­mon? They stand alone among their peers for their dark­ly humor­ous sen­si­bil­i­ties, fas­ci­na­tion with the grotesque, imag­i­na­tive takes on cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, and a pre­dis­po­si­tion for the pro­to-sur­re­al. Like the odd fig­ure lurch­ing through the first move­ment of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, they are gnom­ic artists: enig­mat­ic and ambigu­ous, giv­en to the apho­ris­tic in sto­ries and tone poems of mon­strous and mar­velous beings. It’s easy to imag­ine the three of them, or their works at least, in cryp­tic con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er.

We might imag­ine that con­ver­sa­tion as we watch three works by these major Euro­pean artists—all of which we’ve fea­tured on the site before—animated via the painstak­ing pin­screen method pio­neered by hus­band-and-wife, Russ­ian-and-French duo Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er.

The two invent­ed the tech­nique in the 1930s. Ded­i­cat­ed to this extreme­ly labor-inten­sive process, they made 6 short films over a peri­od of 50 years, includ­ing adap­ta­tions of Kafka’s “Before the Law,” nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Gogol’s “The Nose,” and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Moun­tain.

We know the Mus­sorgsky piece as a ter­ri­fy­ing vignette from Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Sev­en years before that mar­riage of clas­si­cal music and ani­ma­tion came out in 1940, Alex­eieff and Park­er released their ver­sion, at the top. Steve Stanch­field at Car­toon Research calls it “one of the most unusu­al and unique look­ing ani­mat­ed films ever cre­at­ed.” Its “delight­ful and at times hor­ri­fy­ing imagery… chal­lenge the view­er to com­pre­hend both their mean­ing and the mys­tery of how they were cre­at­ed.” The same could be said of “The Nose” (1963), whose impro­vised sound­track by Hai-Minh adds dra­mat­ic ten­sion to the eerie ani­ma­tion.

Each of these films uses the same method, a hand­made pin­screen device in which thou­sands of pins are pushed by hand out­ward and inward for each frame to cre­ate areas of light or dark. The pair intend­ed to move beyond the flat­ness of con­ven­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion tech­niques and cap­ture the depth and con­trast of chiaroscuro. They achieved this through the most aching­ly slow process imag­in­able, yet “the illu­sion of dimen­sion­al draw­ing in ani­ma­tion has rarely been cre­at­ed bet­ter,” Stanch­field writes, not even in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery.

Alex­eieff and Parker’s “Before the Law,” from a para­ble in Kafka’s The Tri­al, takes a pic­ture-book approach to the ani­ma­tion that would reward younger view­ers. Welles’ nar­ra­tion anchors the pro­duc­tion with even more than his usu­al grav­i­tas. In 1972, they returned to Mus­sorgsky, in the short Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, above. Here, after a pro­logue in French and the styl­iza­tions of the open­ing Pre­lude, the fig­ure of the “The Gnome” appears, a translu­cent homuncu­lus hatch­ing from an egg and danc­ing across the piano keys. I like to think Mus­sorgsky, Kaf­ka, and Gogol would find this imagery irre­sistible.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Para­ble “Before the Law” Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles & Illus­trat­ed with Pin­screen Art

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

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