Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography in Her First Online Course

in Online Courses, Photography | December 15th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Dol­ly Par­ton and Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Barack Oba­ma and fam­i­ly, Bruce Spring­steen, Whoopi Gold­berg, Bill Gates, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, Lady Gaga: name some­one who has risen to the very top of the zeit­geist over the past few decades, and Annie Lei­bovitz has prob­a­bly pho­tographed them. Her images, in fact, have often come to stand for the images of her sub­jects in the cul­ture: when we think of cer­tain celebri­ties, we instinc­tive­ly imag­ine them as they appeared on a Lei­bovitz-shot cov­er of Rolling Stone or Van­i­ty Fair. Safe to say, then, that she knows a thing or two about how to take a pic­ture that makes an impact.

The peo­ple at online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class have now pack­aged that knowl­edge in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy,” a course that joins their exist­ing line­up that includes Helen Mir­ren on act­ing, Steve Mar­tin on com­e­dy, Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing, and Her­bie Han­cock on jazz. For a price of $90 (or $180 for a year-long pass to all of their class­es), Mas­ter­class offers a pack­age of work­book-accom­pa­nied video lessons in which “Annie teach­es you how to devel­op con­cepts, work with sub­jects, shoot with nat­ur­al light, and bring images to life in post-pro­duc­tion.”

The ear­ly lessons in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy” cov­er sub­jects like mem­o­ries of her own devel­op­ment as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to dis­cus­sions of her influ­ences and her view of the medi­um itself. Lat­er on, she gets into the real-life case study of shoot­ing chef Alice Waters for Van­i­ty Fair, dig­i­tal post-pro­duc­tion, how to come up with the right con­cept (ide­al­ly, so her career has shown, one just strange or dar­ing enough to get peo­ple talk­ing), and how to work with your sub­ject. “There’s this idea that in por­trai­ture, it’s the pho­tog­ra­pher’s job to set the sub­ject at ease,” Lei­bovitz says in the class trail­er above. “I don’t believe that.”

Few aspects of Lei­bovitz’s method have drawn as much atten­tion as the way she han­dles her sub­jects,  which tends to involve both devel­op­ing enough of a rela­tion­ship with them to gain some under­stand­ing of their inner lives and putting them in sit­u­a­tions which, so she has stu­dious­ly learned while get­ting to know them, may lie a bit out­side of their com­fort zone. Few of us will ever have that much face time with a pho­tog­ra­ph­er like Lei­bovitz, let alone enough to ask her in-depth ques­tions about the craft, but if you sus­pect you might find your­self one day in a posi­tion to pho­to­graph the next Cait­lyn Jen­ner, Mark Zucker­berg, or Kim Kar­dashi­an — or some­one more impor­tant to you per­son­al­ly — the strate­gies explained in her Mas­ter­class course will sure­ly come in handy.

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:

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

School of Visu­al Arts Presents 99 Hours of Free Pho­tog­ra­phy Lec­tures

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Ansel Adams, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: 1958 Doc­u­men­tary Cap­tures the Cre­ative Process of the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

350 Animated Videos That Will Teach You Philosophy, from Ancient to Post-Modern

in Animation, Philosophy | December 15th, 2017

Phi­los­o­phy is not an idle pur­suit of leisured gen­tle­men and tenured pro­fes­sors, though the life cir­cum­stances of many a philoso­pher might make us think oth­er­wise. The fore­most exam­ple of a priv­i­leged philoso­pher is Mar­cus Aure­lius, famous expos­i­tor of Sto­icism, and also, inci­den­tal­ly, Emper­or of Rome. Yet we must also bear in mind that Epicte­tus, the oth­er most famous expos­i­tor of Sto­icism, whom Aure­lius quotes repeat­ed­ly in his Med­i­ta­tions, was born a slave.

Against cer­tain ten­den­cies of mod­ern think­ing, we might haz­ard to believe that both men shared enough com­mon human expe­ri­ence to arrive at some uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples ful­ly applic­a­ble to every­day life. Sto­icism, after all, is noth­ing if not prac­ti­cal. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the emperor’s advice below—how chal­leng­ing it might be for any­one, and how ben­e­fi­cial, not only for the indi­vid­ual, but—as Aure­lius makes plain—for every­one.

Begin the morn­ing by say­ing to your­self, I shall meet with the busy­body, the ungrate­ful, arro­gant, deceit­ful, envi­ous, unso­cial. All these things hap­pen to them by rea­son of their igno­rance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beau­ti­ful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to mine, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it par­tic­i­pates in the same intel­li­gence and the same por­tion of divin­i­ty, I can nei­ther be harmed by any of them, nor no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my broth­er, nor hate him. For we are made for coop­er­a­tion, like feet, like hands, like eye­lids, like the rows of the upper and low­er teeth. To act against one anoth­er then is con­trary to nature; and it is act­ing against one anoth­er to be vexed and to turn away.

Yes, a pas­sage that might have come from the speech­es of Gand­hi, the Dalai Lama, or Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. also belongs to the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions of ancient Rome, though in the mouth of an emper­or it may not sound to us as com­pelling­ly rad­i­cal.

Nowa­days, sev­er­al mil­lion more peo­ple have access to books, lit­er­a­cy, and leisure than in Mar­cus Aure­lius’ era (and one won­ders where even an emper­or found the time), though few of us, it’s true, have access to a nobleman’s edu­ca­tion. While cur­rent­ly under threat, the inter­net still pro­vides us with a wealth of free content—and many of us are much bet­ter posi­tioned than Epicte­tus was to edu­cate our­selves about philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions, schools, and ways of think­ing.

We can learn about the Sto­ics, for example—or get the gist, and hope­ful­ly a taste for more—with Alain de Botton’s video appe­tiz­er at the top, just one of 35 short ani­mat­ed videos on the phi­los­o­phy YouTube chan­nel of his School of Life.

We can cruise through a sum­ma­ry of Aristotle’s views on “flour­ish­ing” in the video above, nar­rat­ed by the always-affa­ble Stephen Fry as part of the BBC’s “His­to­ry of Ideas” series, cur­rent­ly up to 48 unique­ly ani­mat­ed videos fea­tur­ing oth­er smart-sound­ing celebri­ty nar­ra­tors like Har­ry Shear­er and Gillian Ander­son.

The Macat series of phi­los­o­phy explain­er videos (136 in total) may lack celebri­ty cred, but it makes up for it with some very thor­ough short sum­maries of impor­tant works in philosophy—as well as soci­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, and lit­er­a­ture. “The essen­tial pur­pose of pol­i­tics is free­dom,” Han­nah Arendt wrote in her 1958 The Human Con­di­tion, we learn above, a work of hers that is not focused on mass mur­der and total­i­tar­i­an­ism. Arendt had much more to say, and in this book, she relies on a clas­si­cal dis­tinc­tion well known to the Greeks and Romans and all who came after them: the con­trast between two kinds of life—the vita acti­va and vita con­tem­pla­ti­va.

While phi­los­o­phy may have become much more acces­si­ble, it has also become less “open access”—in the sense of being a pub­lic affair, tak­ing place in city squares and active­ly encour­aged by states­men and ordi­nary loi­ter­ers alike. For all its possibilities—and we hope they can remain—the inter­net has nev­er been able to recre­ate the Athen­ian ide­al of the philo­soph­i­cal pub­lic square, if such a thing ever real­ly exist­ed. But projects like Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy—spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke, and oth­er elite institutions—have sought for years to intro­duce peo­ple from every walk of life to the kinds of ideas that Athe­ni­ans sup­pos­ed­ly threw around like fris­bees in their spare time, includ­ing Plato’s notion (via his mouth­piece, Socrates) of “the good life,” which Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans pro­fes­sor Chris Sur­pre­nent, sum­ma­rizes above. See all of Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy’s 130 ani­ma­tions here.

The mate­r­i­al is out there. We’ve high­light­ed 350 philo­soph­i­cal ani­ma­tions above, and also sep­a­rate­ly gath­ered 200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. And, if you’re read­ing this, it’s a good bet you’ve prob­a­bly got a lit­tle time to spare. If it’s an old-fash­ioned sales pitch you need to get going, con­sid­er that for just pen­nies, er, min­utes a day, you can become more knowl­edge­able about ancient Greek and Roman thought, Kant­ian ethics, 20th cen­tu­ry Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, Niet­zsche, crit­i­cal think­ing skills, Scholas­tic the­o­log­i­cal thought, Bud­dhism, Wittgen­stein, Sartre, etc., etc, etc., etc. That said, how­ev­er, acquir­ing the con­cen­tra­tion, dis­ci­pline, and will to do your own think­ing about what you’ve learned, and to apply it, has nev­er been so free and easy to come by for any­one at any time in his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

48 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 25 Philoso­phers by The School of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

105 Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: A Project Spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks 

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

Why Coffee Naps Will Perk You Up More Than Either Coffee, or Naps, Alone

in Food & Drink, Health | December 15th, 2017

We’ve all had a cup of cof­fee after a nap. But maybe we’ve been doing it all wrong. Maybe we should put the cup of cof­fee before the nap. It sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive. But appar­ent­ly the cof­fee nap–a cup of joe fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by a quick nap–has some sci­en­tif­ic mer­its and unex­pect­ed health ben­e­fits.

Over at Vox, they’ve sum­ma­rized the find­ings of researchers at Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, who found that “when tired par­tic­i­pants took a 15-minute cof­fee nap, they went on to com­mit few­er errors in a dri­ving sim­u­la­tor than when they were giv­en only cof­fee, or only took a nap.”

Or “a Japan­ese study found that peo­ple who took a caf­feine nap before tak­ing a series of mem­o­ry tests per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter on them com­pared with peo­ple who sole­ly took a nap, or took a nap and then washed their faces or had a bright light shone in their eyes.”

The accom­pa­ny­ing Vox video above explains how the cof­fee nap works its mag­ic. The biol­o­gy and chem­istry all get dis­cussed in a quick two-minute clip.

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:

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

Will You Really Achieve Happiness If You Finally Win the Rat Race? Don’t Answer the Question Until You’ve Watched Steve Cutts’ New Animation

in Animation, Art, Economics, Life, Media | December 15th, 2017

Illus­tra­tor Steve Cutts sets his lat­est ani­ma­tion, “Hap­pi­ness,” in a teem­ing urban envi­ron­ment, with hun­dreds of near iden­ti­cal car­toon rats stand­ing in for human drudges in an unful­fill­ing, and not unfa­mil­iar race.

Packed sub­way cars, a bom­bard­ment of adver­tis­ing, soul-dead­en­ing office jobs, and Black Fri­day sales are just a few of the indig­ni­ties Cutts’ rodents are sub­ject­ed to, to the tune of Bizet’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.”

Ram­pant over-consumption—a major pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for this artist—offers illu­so­ry relief, and a great deal of fun for view­ers with the time to hit pause, to bet­ter savor the grim details.

The max­i­mal­ist frames read like a grat­i­fy­ing per­ver­sion of Richard Scarry’s relent­less­ly sun­ny Busy­town. As with Cutts’ 80s-throw­back Simpson’s couch gag: pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences and visu­al input whip by at sub­lim­i­nal warp speed. 

They may also serve as an anti­dote to the sort of mes­sag­ing we’re con­stant­ly on the receiv­ing end of, whether we live in city, coun­try or some­where in-between. Check out the scene as Cutts pans up from the sub­way plat­form, 52 sec­onds in:

The panty-clad female mod­el for Blah cologne’s fash­ion­ably black and white ad is ema­ci­at­ed near­ly to the point of death.

“You’re bet­ter than laces” flat­ters the lat­est (lace­less) shoe from a swoosh-bedecked footwear man­u­fac­tur­er, while a radi­a­tor-col­ored bev­er­age floats above the mot­to “Just drink it, morons.”

Krispo Flakes fight depres­sion with “the bits oth­er cere­als don’t want.”

Heav­en help us all, there’s even a poster for TRUMP The Musi­cal.

This freeze-frame scruti­ny could make an excel­lent activ­i­ty for any class where mid­dle and high school­ers are encour­aged to think crit­i­cal­ly about their role as con­sumers.

As Cutts, a one-time employ­ee of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, Iso­bar, who con­tributed to cam­paigns for such glob­al giants as Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, and Toy­ota, told Reverb Press in 2015:

These are things that affect us all on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el so nat­u­ral­ly they’re a main focus for a lot of my work. Human­i­ty has the pow­er to be great in so many ways and yet at the same time we are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed. I think it’s the con­flict between these two that fas­ci­nates me the most. As a race of beings we’ve made incred­i­ble achieve­ments in such a short space, but at the same time we seem so over­whelm­ing­ly intent on destroy­ing our­selves and every­thing around us. It would be very inter­est­ing to see where we’ll be in a hun­dred years. The term insan­i­ty is intrigu­ing – it’s almost like we’re encour­aged to act in a way that seems gen­uine­ly insane when you look at it objec­tive­ly, but it’s often accept­ed as nor­mal right now. I think we will have to evolve beyond our cur­rent think­ing and way of doing things if we want to sur­vive.

See more of Cutts’ ani­mat­ed work here. And while he doesn’t go out of his way to hype his online store, a gallery qual­i­ty print of The Rat Trap would make a fan­tas­tic gift from your cubi­cle mate’s Secret San­ta. (HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

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

The Tree of Modern Art: Elegant Drawing Visualizes the Development of Modern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

in Art, History, Magazines | December 14th, 2017

Select­ing cer­tain fea­tures, sim­pli­fy­ing them, exag­ger­at­ing them, and using them to pro­vide a deep insight, at a glance, into the sub­ject as a whole: such is the art of the car­i­ca­tur­ist, one that Miguel Covar­ru­bias ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el in the ear­ly- to mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Those skills, com­bined with his knowl­edge as an art his­to­ri­an, also served him well when he drew “The Tree of Mod­ern Art.” This aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing dia­gram first appeared in Van­i­ty Fair in May of 1933, a time when many read­ers of such mag­a­zines would have felt a great curios­i­ty about how, exact­ly, all these new paint­ings and sculp­tures and such — many of which did­n’t seem to look much like the paint­ings and sculp­tures they knew at all — relat­ed to one anoth­er.

“Because it stops in 1940, the tree fails to account for abstract expres­sion­ism and oth­er post–World War II move­ments,” writes Vox’s Phil Edwards, in a piece that includes a ver­sion of the Covar­ru­bias’ 1940 “Tree of Mod­ern Art” revi­sion with click­able exam­ples of rel­e­vant art­work.

But “the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture alone reveals a sur­pris­ing­ly large amount about the way art has evolved,” includ­ing how it “becomes broad­er and more inclu­sive over time,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a “glob­al affair”; how “artis­tic schools have become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly diverse”; how “the canon evolved quick­ly”; and how “all art is inter­twined,” cre­at­ed as it has so long been by artists who “work togeth­er, bor­row from each oth­er, and grow in tan­dem.”

You can also find the “Tree of Mod­ern Art” at the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, a hold­ing that illus­trates, as it were, just how wide a swath of infor­ma­tion design the term “map” can encom­pass. “The date is esti­mat­ed based on the ver­so of the paper being a blue lined base map of the Nation­al Park Ser­vice dat­ed 12/28/39,” says the col­lec­tion’s site. “This draw­ing was found in the papers of B. Ash­bur­ton Tripp” — also a map­mak­er in the col­lec­tion — “and we assume that Covar­ru­bias and Tripp were friends (ver­i­fied by Trip­p’s descen­dants) and that the blue line base map was some­thing Tripp was work­ing on in his land­scape archi­tec­ture busi­ness.”

The leg­end describes the tree as hav­ing been “plant­ed 60 years ago,” a num­ber that has now passed 130. Many more leaves have grown off those branch­es of impres­sion­ism, expres­sion­ism, post-impres­sion­ism, sur­re­al­ism, cubism, and futur­ism in the years since Covar­ru­bias drew the tree, but for some­one to go back and aug­ment such a ful­ly-real­ized cre­ation would­n’t do at all — as with any work of art, mod­ern or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Underground Cartoonist Robert Crumb Creates an Illustrated Introduction to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | December 14th, 2017

The use of an author’s name as an adjec­tive to describe some kind of gen­er­al style can seem, well, lazy, in a wink-wink, “you know what I mean,” kind of way. One must leave it to read­ers to decide whether deploy­ing a “Bald­win­ian” or a “Woolfi­an,” or an “Orwellian” or “Dick­en­sian,” is jus­ti­fied. When it comes to “Kafkaesque,” we may find rea­son to con­sid­er aban­don­ing the word alto­geth­er. Not because we don’t know what it means, but because we think it means what Kaf­ka meant, rather than what he wrote. Maybe turn­ing him into short­hand, “a clever ref­er­ence,” writes Chris Barsan­ti, pre­pares us to seri­ous­ly mis­un­der­stand his work.

The prob­lem moti­vat­ed author David Zane Mairowitz and under­ground comics leg­end Robert Crumb to cre­ate a graph­ic biog­ra­phy, first pub­lished in 1990 as Kaf­ka for Begin­ners. “The book,” writes Barsan­ti of a 2007 Fan­to­graph­ics edi­tion called Kaf­ka, “states its case rather plain: ‘No writer of our time, and prob­a­bly none since Shake­speare, has been so wide­ly over-inter­pret­ed and pigeon holed… [Kafkaesque] is an adjec­tive that takes on almost myth­ic pro­por­tions in our time, irrev­o­ca­bly tied to fan­tasies of doom and gloom, ignor­ing the intri­cate Jew­ish Joke that weaves itself through the bulk of Kafka’s work.’” Or, as Maria Popo­va puts it, “Kafka’s sto­ries, how­ev­er grim, are near­ly always also… fun­ny.”

Much of that humor derives from “the author’s cop­ing mech­a­nisms amid Prague’s anti-Semit­ic cul­tur­al cli­mate.” Mairowitz describes Kafka’s Jew­ish humor as “healthy anti-Semi­tism.… but soon­er or lat­er, even the most hate­ful of Jew­ish self-hatreds has to turn around and laugh at itself.” Crumb pro­vides graph­ic illus­tra­tions of Kafka’s espe­cial­ly mor­dant, absur­dist humor in adap­ta­tions of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and The Judge­ment and brief sketch­es from The Tri­al, The Cas­tle, and Ameri­ka. These illus­tra­tions draw out the grotesque nature of Kafka’s humor from the start, Barstan­ti notes, “with a grue­some graph­ic ren­der­ing of Kafka’s night­mares of his own death.”

Kafka’s self-vio­lence leaps out at us in its incred­i­ble speci­fici­ty, which can pro­duce hor­rors, like the ghoul­ish exe­cu­tion of “In the Penal Colony,” and dark­ly fun­ny fan­tasies like a “pork butcher’s knife” send­ing thin slices of Kaf­ka fly­ing around the room, “due to the speed of the work.” Turned into cold cuts, as it were. Crumb’s illus­tra­tion (top), imag­ines this gris­ly joke with exquis­ite glee—halo of blood spurts like squig­gly excla­ma­tion marks and bowler hat tak­ing flight. Along with Mairowitz’s lit­er­ary analy­sis and bio­graph­i­cal detail, Crumb’s fine­ly ren­dered illus­tra­tions make Kaf­ka an “invalu­able book,” Barsan­ti writes, one that gives Kaf­ka “back his soul.”

One only wish­es they had paid more atten­tion to Kafka’s weird ani­mal sto­ries, some of the fun­ni­est he ever wrote. Sto­ries like “Inves­ti­ga­tions of a Dog” and “In Our Syn­a­gogue” express with more vivid imag­i­na­tion and wicked humor Kafka’s pro­found­ly ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship to Judaism and to him­self as a “tor­tured, gen­tle, cru­el, and bril­liant,” and yet very fun­ny, out­sider.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Three Charles Bukows­ki Books Illus­trat­ed by Robert Crumb: Under­ground Com­ic Art Meets Out­sider Lit­er­a­ture

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

500,000 Years of Humans Degrading Nature Captured in a Biting Three Minute Animation by Steve Cutts

in Animation, Life | December 14th, 2017

Eng­lish ani­ma­tor Steve Cutts has a knack for sat­i­riz­ing the excess­es of mod­ern soci­ety. Just watch his 2012 short ani­ma­tion “Man,” and you’ll see what I mean. In three short min­utes, Cutts cov­ers a lot of ground, doc­u­ment­ing the rise of human civ­i­liza­tion and its ever-esca­lat­ing assault on nature and our nat­ur­al resources. It’s fun­ny. It’s bit­ing. And it may give you pause as we gear up for Christ­mas, the apoth­e­o­sis of Amer­i­can mate­ri­al­ism.

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:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

Hear Paul McCartney’s Experimental Christmas Mixtape: A Rare & Forgotten Recording from 1965

in Music | December 13th, 2017

If you hear some­one com­plain­ing about the scarci­ty of good Christ­mas music, you know they’re doing some­thing wrong. As we point­ed out a cou­ple years back, you can keep a Christ­mas par­ty going for hours upon hours with hol­i­day clas­sics and funky orig­i­nals from James Brown, John­ny Cash, The Jack­son 5, Dinah Wash­ing­ton, Willie Nel­son, Ella Fitzger­ald, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Low, Bad Reli­gion, Christo­pher Lee, The Ven­tures, and so much more besides.

And then there’s the Bea­t­les, whom we wouldn’t ever think of as an acquired taste, but whose Christ­mas records may only appeal to a spe­cial kind of fan, one who appre­ci­ates, and per­haps remem­bers, the band’s aggres­sive­ly cheer­ful spir­it of mar­ket­ing. Through­out the 60s, they made short, whim­si­cal Christ­mas “flexi discs” for fan club mem­bers. These are amus­ing, but hard­ly essen­tial, though I’d rec­om­mend putting 1967’s “Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again)” on any playlist, hol­i­day or oth­er­wise.

While the band made their light and breezy 1965 Christ­mas record, Paul McCart­ney under­took a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent hol­i­day solo side project—recording exper­i­men­tal tape loops at home, includ­ing, writes author Richie Unter­berg­er, “singing, act­ing, and sketch­es.” Only “three copies were pressed, one each for John, George, and Ringo.” As McCart­ney him­self described the record­ing, “I put togeth­er some­thing crazy, some­thing left field, just for the oth­er Bea­t­les, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening.”

You can hear what sur­vives of the record­ing above. McCart­ney calls it “Unfor­get­table” and begins the disc in an Amer­i­can announcer’s voice, “a fast-talk­ing New York DJ,” Rolling Stone writes, fol­lowed by Nat King Cole, then “an inven­tive selec­tion of songs by the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Martha and the Van­del­las.” McCart­ney described the project as “a mag­a­zine pro­gram: full of weird inter­views, exper­i­men­tal music, tape loops” and “some tracks I knew the oth­ers hadn’t heard.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of the exper­i­men­ta­tion has not sur­vived, or made it to a dig­i­tal for­mat. Nonethe­less, the tape “might be the ear­li­est evi­dence of the Bea­t­les using home record­ing equip­ment for specif­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal/a­vant-garde pur­pos­es,” Unter­berg­er notes, “some­thing that John and Paul did in the last half of the 1960s, though John’s ven­tures in this field are more wide­ly known than Paul’s.” It isn’t Christ­mas music, exact­ly, but when you put it on, you’ll know it began its life as a spe­cial mix­tape McCart­ney made just for his band­mates, not the fans. We might think of it as the hol­i­day album he real­ly want­ed to make.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

David Bowie Sends a Christ­mas Greet­ing in the Voice of Elvis Pres­ley

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

New Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive Features More Than 27,000 Digitized Letters, Manuscript Pages, Photos & More

in Archives, Literature | December 13th, 2017

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in Ara­cat­a­ca, March 1966.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

When Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez died in 2014, it was said that only the Bible had sold more books in Span­ish than the Colom­bian writer’s work: Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patri­arch, Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, The Gen­er­al in His Labyrinth… and yes, of course, One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, the 1967 nov­el William Kennedy described in a New York Times review as “the first piece of lit­er­a­ture since the Book of Gen­e­sis that should be required read­ing for the entire human race.”

Gar­cía Márquez began to hate such ele­vat­ed praise. It raised expec­ta­tions he felt he couldn’t ful­fill after the enor­mous suc­cess of that incred­i­bly bril­liant, seem­ing­ly sui gener­is sec­ond nov­el. Every­one in South Amer­i­ca read the book. To avoid the crowds, the author moved to Spain (where Mario Var­gas Llosa wrote a doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion on him). He needn’t have wor­ried.

Every­thing he wrote after­ward met with near-uni­ver­sal acclaim—bringing ear­li­er work like No One Writes to the Colonel, Leaf Storm, short sto­ry col­lec­tions like A Very Old Man with Enor­mous Wings, and decades of jour­nal­ism and non-fic­tion writing—to a much wider read­er­ship than he’d ever had before.

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s revised type­script of Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told, 1980.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

After Gre­go­ry Rabassa’s 1970 trans­la­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, waves of “mag­i­cal real­ist” and Latin Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture from the 50s and 60s swept through the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, much of it in trans­la­tion for the first time. Gar­cía Márquez declared the Eng­lish ver­sion of his nov­el bet­ter than the orig­i­nal, and affec­tion­ate­ly called Rabas­sa, “the best Latin Amer­i­can writer in the Eng­lish lan­guage.” Upwards of 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide now know the sto­ry of the Buendía fam­i­ly. “Pub­lished in 44 lan­guages,” The Atlantic notes, “it remains the most trans­lat­ed lit­er­ary work in Span­ish after Don Quixote, and a sur­vey among inter­na­tion­al writ­ers ranks it as the nov­el that has most shaped world lit­er­a­ture over the past three decades.”

The sto­ry of the book’s com­po­si­tion is even more fas­ci­nat­ing. In the Democ­ra­cy Now trib­ute video below, you can hear Gar­cía Márquez him­self tell it. And at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, we can see arti­facts like the pho­to­graph of the author at the top, in his home­town of Ara­cat­a­ca, Colom­bia in March of 1966, dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude. We can see scanned images of type­script like the page above from Chron­i­cle of a Death Fore­told.

In all, the archive “includes man­u­script drafts of pub­lished and unpub­lished works, research mate­r­i­al, pho­tographs, scrap­books, cor­re­spon­dence, clip­pings, note­books, screen­plays, print­ed mate­r­i­al, ephemera, and an audio record­ing of Gar­cía Márquez’s accep­tance speech for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1982… approx­i­mate­ly 27,500 items from Gar­cía Márquez’s papers.” These doc­u­ments and pho­tos, like that fur­ther down of young jour­nal­ist Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro and, just below, of the sea­soned famous nov­el­ist, with her broth­er, tell the sto­ry of a writer who lived his life steeped in the pol­i­tics and his­to­ry of Latin Amer­i­ca, and who trans­lat­ed those sto­ries faith­ful­ly for the rest of the world.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Fidel Cas­tro, undat­ed.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Enter, search, and explore the archive here. This amaz­ing resource opens up to the gen­er­al pub­lic a wealth of mate­r­i­al pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able to schol­ars and librar­i­ans. The project fea­tures “text-search­able Eng­lish- and Span­ish-lan­guage mate­ri­als, took 18 months and involved the efforts of librar­i­ans, archivists, stu­dents, tech­nol­o­gy staff mem­bers and con­ser­va­tors.” Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, 18 months is the time it took Gar­cía Márquez to write One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude, bar­ri­cad­ed in his office while he ran out of mon­ey, pulled for­ward by some irre­sistible force. “I did not stop writ­ing for a sin­gle day for 18 straight months, until I fin­ished the book,” he tells us. As always, we believe him.

Uniden­ti­fied pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez with Emma Cas­tro, 1957.
Cour­tesy Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s Extra­or­di­nary Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech, “The Soli­tude Of Latin Amer­i­ca,” in Eng­lish & Span­ish (1982)

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Describes the Cul­tur­al Mer­its of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

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

10 Reasons Why Hannibal’s Military Genius Still Captures Our Imagination Today

in History | December 13th, 2017

Note: This is a guest post from Patrick Hunt, author of the new book, Han­ni­bal.

Han­ni­bal Bar­ca, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Han­ni­bal, lived and waged war over two thou­sand years ago – but is he still rel­e­vant in a world where the Romans are long gone? His famous cross­ing of the Alps in win­ter with an intre­pid army and ele­phants is unfor­get­table, but are his bril­liant maneu­vers and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing still worth exam­in­ing? Despite the enig­ma of this great Carthagin­ian gen­er­al being unable to pre­serve Carthage after him, Hannibal’s tac­tics and meth­ods offer great lessons not only for mil­i­tary his­to­ry but also for civ­i­liza­tion at large. His­to­ry reveals the Romans had a des­tiny of world con­quest, but what is less well known is how much Han­ni­bal changed the ways in which the Romans con­duct­ed the wars that even­tu­al­ly brought them Pax Romana, a peace often forged out of vio­lence after a bru­tal expan­sion that killed and enslaved mil­lions, includ­ing Carthage a cen­tu­ry after Han­ni­bal.

Before Han­ni­bal, Rome was hemmed in by seas on almost all sides and could hard­ly expand except north­ward into Etr­uscan and Celtic ter­ri­to­ry; acquir­ing Sici­ly was Rome’s first step out­side its main­land. But Han­ni­bal forced Rome to fight a very dif­fer­ent kind of war; his vic­to­ries taught them how exploitable their mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was, and he pres­sured Rome to change for sur­vival. More rel­e­vant, while Han­ni­bal did­n’t invent spy­craft, he seem­ing­ly used it more effec­tive­ly than any oth­er ancient gen­er­al by his care­ful con­tin­gency plan­ning. Han­ni­bal set prece­dents for spy agen­cies and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and how to stage bat­tles in any kind of ter­rain and weather–templates that cur­rent nations still study and fol­low. Every mil­i­tary acad­e­my today offers detailed class­es and sem­i­nars on Hannibal’s tac­tics. I am fre­quent­ly invit­ed to lec­ture on Hannibal’s intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in venues like the U.S. Naval War Col­lege, where class­es are filled with Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force offi­cers along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. That is also why the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety spon­sored my Han­ni­bal field research – send­ing me to every Han­ni­bal bat­tle site and to Carthage in Tunisia, along with Spain, France, Italy and even Turkey where Han­ni­bal con­clud­ed his dra­mat­ic life — and also why Simon and Schus­ter pub­lished my biog­ra­phy Han­ni­bal this sum­mer. Here are some nuggets from 20 years of Han­ni­bal field­work found in this new book.

1. Han­ni­bal stud­ied his oppo­nents very care­ful­ly, employ­ing every means of gath­er­ing intel­li­gence in ene­my camps, includ­ing spies from allied pop­u­la­tions who pro­vi­sioned the Romans.
2. When nec­es­sary, Han­ni­bal paid for cred­i­ble intel­li­gence with sil­ver sup­plied from mines in Carthagin­ian Spain; as long as that sil­ver last­ed to pay for good intel, he was unbeat­able. Once Rome con­quered Spain’s sil­ver mines, Hannibal’s abil­i­ty to gath­er and exploit such mil­i­tary intel­li­gence was cut off. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion to Han­ni­bal’s access to sil­ver for intel or mer­ce­nary use and his bril­liant vic­to­ries.
3. Han­ni­bal usu­al­ly went for the unpre­dictable sur­prise maneu­ver that had nev­er been seen before, includ­ing cross­ing the Alps in win­ter and forc­ing the Romans to fight in the dead of win­ter and at night.
4. Han­ni­bal got into the minds of his ene­mies with psy-ops, expos­ing their weak­ness­es, trig­ger­ing their anger and van­i­ty, and mak­ing them fall into his traps; under­min­ing the con­fi­dence of the Roman foot sol­diers in big bat­tles and par­a­lyz­ing them with fear. Romans taught their chil­dren to fear Han­ni­bal as the bogey­man – always warn­ing in crises for cen­turies that “Han­ni­bal is at the Gates”.
5. Han­ni­bal proved it’s not the size of your army but how well pre­pared it is. He epit­o­mizes the old adage, “Bet­ter 10 men wise­ly led than 100 with a fool at the head.” Even if aus­tere, Hannibal’s lead­er­ship was leg­en­dar­i­ly charis­mat­ic – he even slept with his men on the ground wrapped in a blan­ket. He taught his men the bru­tal­i­ty of war with like­ly less PTSD than his ene­mies because he always pre­pared them with ideas like “fight or die.” Much lat­er, Machi­avel­li even allud­ed to Han­ni­bal in The Prince with the con­cept that it’s “bet­ter to be feared than loved.”
6. Han­ni­bal effec­tive­ly used the most mobile units pos­si­ble with his Numid­i­an cav­al­ry, often out­flank­ing the Roman infantry on mul­ti­ple cam­paigns, espe­cial­ly in his famous “dou­ble envel­op­ment” or where he fin­ished bat­tles with ambush­es from the rear where there was no escape.
7. Because his armies were almost always small­er – espe­cial­ly after his dif­fi­cult Alps cross­ing when he lost many sol­diers – Han­ni­bal aug­ment­ed his arse­nal with weapons of nature: forc­ing the Romans to cross the frozen Treb­bia Riv­er, hid­ing his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, dri­ving cap­tured cat­tle with torch­es tied to their horns to fool the Romans into think­ing he was on the move at night at Voltur­nus, mak­ing the Romans face the blind­ing dust and sand blow­ing from Africa at Can­nae. He even con­fused the Romans at Can­nae with some of his troops out­fit­ted with cap­tured Roman gear.
8. Sim­i­lar­ly, after study­ing ter­rain and topog­ra­phy, Han­ni­bal always chose his bat­tle sites when pos­si­ble for the best pos­si­ble advan­tage, espe­cial­ly con­strict­ing the larg­er Roman armies where they would be unable to out­flank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc., also choos­ing ter­rain where he could hide ambush­es in near­by forests.
9. Han­ni­bal sage­ly exploit­ed the 2‑consul Roman alter­nat­ing com­mand rotat­ed one day between an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vet­er­an and the next day with a polit­i­cal appointee pop­ulist lead­ing. On at least three occa­sions, Han­ni­bal anni­hi­lat­ed the Romans on the days when fools were the sup­posed com­man­ders. The fol­low­ing Roman gen­er­a­tions learned the hard les­son from this and the Sen­ate cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al army com­mand­ed by vet­er­an lead­er­ship. Even­tu­al­ly Rome also amped up its cav­al­ry and became less depen­dent on infantry thanks to Han­ni­bal.
10. Han­ni­bal taught his one for­mi­da­ble Roman oppo­nent Sci­pio how to imple­ment bril­liant tac­tics, how to mine data from mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and how to ben­e­fit from Spain’s mer­ce­nary sil­ver to bribe the Numid­i­ans to aban­don Carthage. Sci­pio – the only one to beat Han­ni­bal — respect­ed Han­ni­bal more than any oth­er Roman because he learned so much from him. It’s one of the great ironies in his­to­ry that Han­ni­bal is appar­ent­ly more famous than Sci­pio, and it’s not only because of cross­ing the Alps with ele­phants: ulti­mate­ly the Romans did­n’t appre­ci­ate a vic­to­ri­ous Sci­pio any more than the Carthagini­ans appre­ci­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous Han­ni­bal. Han­ni­bal will remain a pro­found enig­ma in that he could not ulti­mate­ly win the war with Rome, yet he could win so many bril­liant bat­tles with incred­i­bly mem­o­rable tac­tics still taught today.

The Roman book Strat­a­ge­ma­ta by Fron­ti­nus — a com­pi­la­tion of mil­i­tary strat­a­gems — has more clever rus­es of Han­ni­bal than any oth­er com­man­der up to that time. His­toric great com­man­ders or offi­cers who stud­ied or emu­lat­ed Han­ni­bal include but are not lim­it­ed to Julius Cae­sar, Belis­ar­ius, Charle­magne, Napoleon, Suvorov, Kutu­zov, von Clause­witz, Mont­gomery, Lid­dell Hart, Rom­mel, Pat­ton and Schwarzkopf, among many oth­ers. Even the term blitzkrieg allud­ed to Han­ni­bal’s clan (Bar­ca = “light­ning”) and his rapid advance in his inva­sion of Italy.”  So, of course, Han­ni­bal is at least as rel­e­vant as any oth­er mem­o­rable per­son in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in a time of world chaos and rethink­ing strate­gic alle­giances.

Post­script: Han­ni­bal (Simon and Schus­ter 2017) has been acclaimed in reviews from The New York Times, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, a starred Kirkus Review and many oth­ers, and also nom­i­nat­ed in the Kirkus List of Best Non­fic­tion Books of 2017.