Behold The Paintings of David Bowie: Neo-Expressionist Self Portraits, Illustrations of Iggy Pop, and Much More

in Art | June 19th, 2017

Would you believe that David Bowie, era-tran­scend­ing pop star, actor, and avid read­er, found not just the time to build a for­mi­da­ble art col­lec­tion (auc­tioned off for $41 mil­lion last year at Sothe­by’s), but to do quite a few paint­ings of his own? Even Bowie fans who know only his music will have seen one of those paint­ings, a self-por­trait which made the cov­er of his 1995 album Out­side. That same year he had his first show as a painter, “New Afro/Pagan and Work: 1975–1995,” at The Gallery, Cork Street.

“David Bowie paint­ings show a knowl­edge­able approach to art, influ­enced by Frank Auer­bach, David Bomberg, Fran­cis Bacon, Fran­cis Picabia…” says Very Pri­vate Gallery in a post on 25 of those works of art, adding that his style “also shows a touch of post-mod­ernism, more pre­cise­ly neo-expres­sion­ism move­ment.”

Com­pris­ing can­vas­es paint­ed between 1976 and 1996, the selec­tions include not just Bowie’s self-por­traits but depic­tions of such friends and asso­ciates as Iggy Pop, paint­ed in Berlin in 1978 just above, and pianist Mike Gar­son.

Bowieol­o­gists rec­og­nize his “Berlin era” in the late 1970s, which pro­duced the albums Low, Lodger, and “Heroes” (all to vary­ing degrees involv­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Bri­an Eno) as an espe­cial­ly fruit­ful peri­od of his musi­cal career. But the gal­leries and muse­ums of the Ger­man cap­i­tal also wit­nessed Bowie’s first immer­sion into the world of visu­al art, both as an enthu­si­ast and as a cre­ator. The city even found its way into some of his paint­ings, such as 1977’s Child in Berlin above. “Heroes”, the final album of Bowie’s “Berlin tril­o­gy,” even inspired a bit of Bowie art­work, the self-por­trait sketch below mod­eled on the record’s famous cov­er pho­to by Masayoshi Suki­ta, itself inspired by Erich Heck­el’s 1917 paint­ing Roquairol.

But just as Bowie the musi­cian and per­former could­n’t stop seek­ing out and incor­po­rat­ing new influ­ences, so did Bowie the painter’s atten­tion con­tin­u­al­ly turn to new sub­ject mat­ter, includ­ing the mythol­o­gy of the tribes inhab­it­ing present-day South Africa. At Very Pri­vate Gallery you can see not just more of his fin­ished work but more of his sketch­es, includ­ing stud­ies of Hunger City, the the­mat­ic set­ting of his elab­o­rate Dia­mond Dogs tour as well as for a film planned, but nev­er actu­al­ly shot, in the mid-1970s. Despite the con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ence in medi­um between music and images, Bowie’s visu­al work still comes across clear­ly as Bowie’s work — espe­cial­ly a face drawn, true to ele­gant­ly nos­tal­gic form, on a pack of Gitanes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

The Art from David Bowie’s Final Album, Black­star, is Now Free for Fans to Down­load and Reuse

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch a Star Get Devoured by a Supermassive Black Hole

in Astronomy | June 19th, 2017

Like­ly, in a moment of qui­et down­time, you’ve won­dered: Just what would hap­pen if a star, burn­ing bright in the sky, wan­dered by a black hole? What would that meet­ing look like? What kinds of cos­mic things would go down?

Now, thanks to an artis­tic ren­der­ing made avail­able by NASA, you don’t have to leave much to imag­i­na­tion. Above, watch a star stray a lit­tle too close to a black hole and get shred­ded apart by “tidal dis­rup­tions,” caus­ing some stel­lar debris to get “flung out­ward at high speed while the rest falls toward the black hole.”

This ren­der­ing isn’t the­o­ret­i­cal. It’s based on obser­va­tions gleaned from “an opti­cal search by the All-Sky Auto­mat­ed Sur­vey for Super­novae (ASAS-SN) in Novem­ber 2014.” The “tidal dis­rup­tions” wit­nessed above, writes NASA, “occurred near a super­mas­sive black hole esti­mat­ed to weigh a few mil­lion times the mass of the sun in the cen­ter of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 mil­lion light-years away.” It’s a sight to behold.

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:

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

The First Bloomsday: See Dublin’s Literati Celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses in Drunken Fashion (1954)

in History, Literature | June 16th, 2017

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse of the very first Blooms­day cel­e­bra­tion, filmed in Dublin in 1954.

The footage shows the great Irish comedic writer Bri­an O’Nolan, bet­ter known by his pen name Flann O’Brien, appear­ing very drunk as he sets off with two oth­er renowned post-war Irish writ­ers, Patrick Kavanagh and Antho­ny Cronin, and a cousin of James Joyce, a den­tist named Tom Joyce, on a pil­grim­age to vis­it the sites in James Joyce’s epic nov­el Ulysses.

The footage was tak­en by John Ryan, an artist, pub­lish­er and pub own­er who orga­nized the event. The idea was to retrace the steps of Leopold Bloom and oth­er char­ac­ters from the nov­el, but as Peter Costel­lo and Peter van de Kamp explain in this humor­ous pas­sage from their book, Flann O’Brien: An Illus­trat­ed Biog­ra­phy, things began to go awry right from the start:

The date was 16 June, 1954, and though it was only mid-morn­ing, Bri­an O’Nolan was already drunk.

This day was the fifti­eth anniver­sary of Mr. Leopold Bloom’s wan­der­ings through Dublin, which James Joyce had immor­talised in Ulysses.

To mark this occa­sion a small group of Dublin literati had gath­ered at the Sandy­cove home of Michael Scott, a well-known archi­tect, just below the Martel­lo tow­er in which the open­ing scene of Joyce’s nov­el is set. They planned to trav­el round the city through the day, vis­it­ing in turn the scenes of the nov­el, end­ing at night in what had once been the broth­el quar­ter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Night­town.

Sad­ly, no-one expect­ed O’Nolan to be sober. By rep­u­ta­tion, if not by sight, every­one in Dublin knew Bri­an O’Nolan, oth­er­wise Myles na Gopaleen, the writer of the Cruiskeen Lawn col­umn in the Irish Times. A few knew that under the name of Flann O’Brien, he had writ­ten in his youth a now near­ly for­got­ten nov­el, At Swim-Two-Birds. See­ing him about the city, many must have won­dered how a man with such extreme drink­ing habits, even for the city of Dublin, could have sus­tained a career as a writer.

As was his cus­tom, he had been drink­ing that morn­ing in the pubs around the Cat­tle Mar­ket, where cus­tomers, sup­pos­ed­ly about their law­ful busi­ness, would be served from 7:30 in the morn­ing. Now retired from the Civ­il Ser­vice, on grounds of “ill-health”, he was earn­ing his liv­ing as a free-lance jour­nal­ist, writ­ing not only for the Irish Times, but for oth­er papers and mag­a­zines under sev­er­al pen-names. He need­ed to write for mon­ey as his pen­sion was a tiny one. But this left lit­tle time for more cre­ative work. In fact, O’Nolan no longer felt the urge to write oth­er nov­els.

The rest of the par­ty, that first Blooms­day, was made up of the poet Patrick Kavanagh, the young crit­ic Antho­ny Cronin, a den­tist named Tom Joyce, who as Joyce’s cousin rep­re­sent­ed the fam­i­ly inter­est, and John Ryan, the painter and busi­ness­man who owned and edit­ed the lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Envoy. The idea of the Blooms­day cel­e­bra­tion had been Ryan’s, grow­ing nat­u­ral­ly out of a spe­cial Joyce issue of his mag­a­zine, for which O’Nolan had been guest edi­tor.

Ryan had engaged two horse drawn cabs, of the old fash­ioned kind, which in Ulysses Mr. Bloom and his friends dri­ve to poor Pad­dy Dig­nam’s funer­al. The par­ty were assigned roles from the nov­el. Cronin stood in for Stephen Dedalus, O’Nolan for his father, Simon Dedalus, John Ryan for the jour­nal­ist Mar­tin Cun­ning­ham, and A.J. Lev­en­thal, the Reg­is­trar of Trin­i­ty Col­lege, being Jew­ish, was recruit­ed to fill (unkown to him­self accord­ing to John Ryan) the role of Leopold Bloom.

Kavanagh and O’Nolan began the day by decid­ing they must climb up to the Martel­lo tow­er itself, which stood on a gran­ite shoul­der behind the house. As Cronin recalls, Kavanagh hoist­ed him­self up the steep slope above O’Nolan, who snarled in anger and laid hold of his ankle. Kavanagh roared, and lashed out with his foot. Fear­ful that O’Nolan would be kicked in the face by the poet­’s enor­mous farmer’s boot, the oth­ers has­tened to res­cue and restrain the rivals.

With some dif­fi­cul­ty O’Nolan was stuffed into one of the cabs by Cronin and the oth­ers. Then they were off, along the seafront of Dublin Bay, and into the city.

In pubs along the way an enor­mous amount of alco­hol was con­sumed, so much so that on Sandy­mount Strand they had to relieve them­selves as Stephen Dedalus does in Ulysses. Tom Joyce and Cronin sang the sen­ti­men­tal songs of Tom Moore which Joyce had loved, such as Silent, O Moyle. They stopped in Irish­town to lis­ten to the run­ning of the Ascot Gold Cup on a radio in a bet­ting shop, but even­tu­al­ly they arrived in Duke Street in the city cen­tre, and the Bai­ley, which John Ryan then ran as a lit­er­ary pub.

They went no fur­ther. Once there, anoth­er drink seemed more attrac­tive than a long tour of Joycean slums, and the siren call of the long van­ished plea­sures of Night­town.

Cel­e­brants of the first Blooms­day pause for a pho­to in Sandy­mount, Dublin on the morn­ing of June 16, 1954. From left are John Ryan, Antho­ny Cronin, Bri­an O’Nolan (a.k.a. Flann O’Brien), Patrick Kavanagh and Tom Joyce, cousin of James Joyce.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2013–likely before many of you start­ed to fre­quent our site. So it’s time to bring it back.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

On Blooms­day, Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

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

in History, Physics | June 16th, 2017

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the most accom­plished exam­ple of the poly­math­ic, artist-engi­neer “Renais­sance man,” came up with an aston­ish­ing num­ber of inven­tions great and small in the late 15th and ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, from the heli­copter to the musi­cal vio­la organ­ista, the tank to the auto­mat­ed bob­bin winder. Even the devices he was born too late to invent, he improved: humans had crossed the hum­ble bridge, for instance, for count­less cen­turies, but then Leonar­do cre­at­ed a new, self-sup­port­ing vari­ety whose design, as fol­lowed by a kid and his dad in the video above, still impress­es today.

“With a series of wood­en poles and beams, ‘Stick-Boy’ shows his Dad how to build Leonar­do da Vinci‘s self-sup­port­ing arch bridge, also known as the emer­gency bridge,” say the descrip­tion by Rion Nakaya at The Kid Should See This. “No nails, screws, rope, glues, notch­es, or oth­er fas­ten­ers are hold­ing the bridge in place… just fric­tion and grav­i­ty.”

Clear­ly it works, but how? Accord­ing to a post at the blog ArchiS­crip­tor on self-sup­port­ing struc­tures, all such bridges, from Leonar­do’s on down, real­ly do rely on only those two forces. “Notch­es in the mem­bers make it eas­i­er to con­struct, but strict­ly speak­ing aren’t nec­es­sary as long as there is some fric­tion. Grav­i­ty will do the rest.”

Leonar­do, the post con­tin­ues, “explored two forms of the struc­ture – a bridge and a dome. His work was com­mis­sioned by the Bor­gia fam­i­ly, with the man­date to design light and strong struc­tures which could be built and tak­en down quick­ly. This was to aid them in their con­stant strug­gle for pow­er with the Medici fam­i­ly in Renais­sance Italy.” The site of the Leonardo3 Muse­um adds, “we do not know whether this bridge was ever put to prac­ti­cal use, but it is not hard to believe that such a mod­u­lar con­struc­tion, extreme­ly easy to trans­port and to assem­ble, must have met with great favor from the Renais­sance lords who were always on the look­out for new tech­nolo­gies to put to mil­i­tary use.”

Leonar­do him­self called this “the bridge of safe­ty,” and it counts as only one of the inge­nious bridges he designed in his life­time. For the Duke Sforza he also invent­ed sev­er­al oth­ers includ­ing a revolv­ing bridge which, accord­ing to Leonar­do da Vin­ci Inven­tions, “could be quick­ly packed up and trans­port­ed for use by armies on the move to pass over bod­ies of water,” could “swing across a stream or moat and set down on the oth­er side so that sol­diers could pass with lit­tle trou­ble,” and “incor­po­rat­ed a rope-and-pul­ley sys­tem for both quick employ­ment and easy trans­port.” All use­ful tools indeed for those who once sought mil­i­tary dom­i­nance in Italy, but even more ben­e­fi­cial as inspi­ra­tion for the Renais­sance boys and girls of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

via The Kid Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Evelyn Glennie (a Musician Who Happens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Listen to Music with Our Entire Bodies

in Music, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Science, TED Talks | June 16th, 2017

Com­pos­er and per­cus­sion­ist Dame Eve­lyn Glen­nie, above, feels music pro­found­ly. For her, there is no ques­tion that lis­ten­ing should be a whole body expe­ri­ence:

Hear­ing is basi­cal­ly a spe­cial­ized form of touch. Sound is sim­ply vibrat­ing air which the ear picks up and con­verts to elec­tri­cal sig­nals, which are then inter­pret­ed by the brain. The sense of hear­ing is not the only sense that can do this, touch can do this too. If you are stand­ing by the road and a large truck goes by, do you hear or feel the vibra­tion? The answer is both. With very low fre­quen­cy vibra­tion the ear starts becom­ing inef­fi­cient and the rest of the body’s sense of touch starts to take over. For some rea­son we tend to make a dis­tinc­tion between hear­ing a sound and feel­ing a vibra­tion, in real­i­ty they are the same thing. It is inter­est­ing to note that in the Ital­ian lan­guage this dis­tinc­tion does not exist. The verb ‘sen­tire’ means to hear and the same verb in the reflex­ive form ‘sen­tir­si’ means to feel.

It’s a phi­los­o­phy born of necessity—her hear­ing began to dete­ri­o­rate when she was 8, and by the age of 12, she was pro­found­ly deaf. Music lessons at that time includ­ed touch­ing the wall of the prac­tice room to feel the vibra­tions as her teacher played.

While she acknowl­edges that her dis­abil­i­ty is a pub­lic­i­ty hook, it’s not her pre­ferred lede, a conun­drum she explores in her “Hear­ing Essay.” Rather than be cel­e­brat­ed as a deaf musi­cian, she’d like to be known as the musi­cian who is teach­ing the world to lis­ten.

In her TED Talk, How To Tru­ly Lis­ten, she dif­fer­en­ti­ates between the abil­i­ty to trans­late nota­tions on a musi­cal score and the sub­tler, more soul­ful skill of inter­pre­ta­tion. This involves con­nect­ing to the instru­ment with every part of her phys­i­cal being. Oth­ers may lis­ten with ears alone. Dame Eve­lyn encour­ages every­one to lis­ten with fin­gers, arms, stom­ach, heart, cheek­bones… a phe­nom­e­non many teenagers expe­ri­ence organ­i­cal­ly, no mat­ter what their ear­buds are plug­ging.

And while the vibra­tions may be sub­tler, her phi­los­o­phy could cause us to lis­ten more atten­tive­ly to both our loved ones and our adver­saries, by stay­ing attuned to visu­al and emo­tion­al pitch­es, as well as slight vari­a­tions in vol­ume and tone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

Hear a 20 Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Record­ings by Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Pauline Oliv­eros (RIP)

How Inge­nious Sign Lan­guage Inter­preters Are Bring­ing Music to Life for the Deaf: Visu­al­iz­ing the Sound of Rhythm, Har­mo­ny & Melody

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll is appear­ing onstage in New York City this June as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dramas of Sci-Fi Stories by Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin & More (1989)

in Audio Books, Radio, Sci Fi | June 16th, 2017

Image by Mr.Hasgaha, via Flickr Com­mons

If you dig through our archives, you can find no short­age of fine­ly-pro­duced radio drama­ti­za­tions of your favorite sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries. Dur­ing the 1950s, NBC’s Dimen­sion X adapt­ed sto­ries by the likes of Isaac Asi­mov, Ray Brad­bury, Robert Hein­lein, and even Kurt Von­negut. Lat­er in the ’50s, X Minus One con­tin­ued that tra­di­tion, dra­ma­tiz­ing sto­ries by Robert A. Hein­lein, Philip K. Dick, Poul Ander­son and oth­ers. By the 1970s, Mind Webs got into the act and pro­duced 188 adap­ta­tions–clas­sics by Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke. And the BBC did up Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy.

Those pro­duc­tions will keep you busy for a good while. But if you’re won­der­ing what the 1980s deliv­ered, then tune into Sci-Fi Radio, a series of 26 half-hour shows which aired on NPR Play­house, start­ing in 1989. Some of the adapt­ed sto­ries include: “Sales Pitch” and “Imposter” by Philip K. Dick, “Diary of the Rose” and “Field of Vision” by Ursu­la K. LeGuin, “Wall of Dark­ness” by Arthur C. Clarke, and “Frost and Fire” by Ray Brad­bury.

You can stream all episodes below, or over at Archive.org. Sci-Fi Radio will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Hope you enjoy.

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:

Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy: Hear the 1973 Radio Drama­ti­za­tion

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Lis­ten to 188 Dra­ma­tized Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries by Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard & More

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Hear 6 Clas­sic Philip K. Dick Sto­ries Adapt­ed as Vin­tage Radio Plays

Talking Heads Perform The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Together)

in Music | June 15th, 2017

Back in the sum­mer of 1975, the Talk­ing Heads were still an unknown band, labor­ing away in obscu­ri­ty. Amidst a sti­fling heat wave, they prac­ticed in every day in a New York City loft. And so it went until they got an ear­ly break–a chance to per­form live at CBGB, as the open­ing act for The Ramones. “Hilly [Kristal, own­er of CBGB, asked John­ny [Ramone] if we could open for them, and John­ny said, ‘Sure, they’re gonna suck, so no prob­lem,’ ” Chris Frantz (Talk­ing Heads drum­mer), recalled in an inter­view with The New York Post. “There were very few peo­ple in the audi­ence, maybe 10 alto­geth­er,” he adds. “Five came to see us and five came to see the Ramones.” The lucky ones.

By 1977, the bands had released their debut albums and embarked on a Euro­pean tour togeth­er. Equal­ly inno­v­a­tive but styl­is­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, their his­to­ries would remain for­ev­er intertwined–something that’s per­haps best cap­tured by the clip above. If we have our facts right, in Jan­u­ary 1977, the Talk­ing Heads opened a show at the Jab­ber­wocky Club at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty with a cov­er of The Ramones’ 1976 sin­gle “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend.”  You can lis­ten to the com­plete 20 minute set below. Also, in the Relat­eds fur­ther down, find footage of both bands play­ing at CBGB in 1974 and 1975.

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 Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

Download 36 Dadaist Magazines from The Digital Dada Archive (Plus Other Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

in Art, Magazines | June 15th, 2017

In search­ing for a trea­sure trove of pub­li­ca­tions spring­ing from the avant-garde, delib­er­ate­ly irra­tional, ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean “anti-art” art move­ment known as Dada, where would you first look? Many cor­ners of the world’s his­toric cul­tur­al cap­i­tals may come right to mind, but might we sug­gest the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa? Even if you don’t feel like trav­el­ing to the mid­dle of the Unit­ed States to plunge into an archive of high­ly pur­pose­ful non­sense, you can view their impres­sive col­lec­tion of Dada peri­od­i­cals (36 in total), books, leaflets, and ephemera online.

“Found­ed in 1979 as part of the Dada Archive and Research Cen­ter, the Inter­na­tion­al Dada Archive is a schol­ar­ly resource for the study of the his­toric Dada move­ment,” says its front page. The col­lec­tion con­tains “works by and about the Dadaists includ­ing books, arti­cles, micro­filmed man­u­script col­lec­tions, vide­o­record­ings, sound record­ings, and online resources,” and in its dig­i­tal form it “pro­vides links to scanned images of orig­i­nal Dada-era pub­li­ca­tions in the Inter­na­tion­al Dada Archive,” includ­ing the influ­en­tial Dada and 291, as well as “many of the major peri­od­i­cals of the Dada move­ment from Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and else­where, as well as books, exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logs, and broad­sides by par­tic­i­pants in the Dada move­ment.” (Note: if you click on mag­a­zines in the col­lec­tion, you can down­load the var­i­ous pages.)

The his­to­ry of the archive, writ­ten by Tim­o­thy Shipe, also address­es an impor­tant ques­tion: “Why Iowa? One answer lies in a clear affin­i­ty between the Dada move­ment and this Uni­ver­si­ty. The inter­na­tion­al­ist, mul­ti­lin­gual, mul­ti­me­dia nature of Dada makes Iowa, with its Inter­na­tion­al Writ­ers’ Pro­gram, its Writ­ers’ Work­shop, its Cen­ter for Glob­al Stud­ies, its Trans­la­tion Work­shop and Cen­ter, its dynam­ic pro­grams in music, dance, art, the­ater, film, lit­er­a­ture, and lan­guages, an espe­cial­ly appro­pri­ate place to house the Dada Archive. A brief glance at the his­to­ry of Dada will make this affin­i­ty clear.”

You can learn more about that his­to­ry from the Dada mate­r­i­al we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: the video series The ABCs of Dada which explains the move­ment (or at least explains it as well as any­one can hope to); the mate­r­i­al we gath­ered in cel­e­bra­tion of its hun­dredth anniver­sary last year; and three essen­tial Dadaist films by Hans Richter, Man Ray, and Mar­cel Duchamp. That will put into clear­er con­text the 36 jour­nals you can peruse in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa’s Dig­i­tal Dada Archive, some of which put out many issues, some of which stopped after the first, and all of which offer a glimpse of an artis­tic spir­it, scat­tered across sev­er­al dif­fer­ent coun­tries, which flared up briefly but bright­ly with anar­chic ener­gy, destruc­tive cre­ativ­i­ty, a for­ward-look­ing aes­thet­ic sense, and no small amount of humor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Jour­nal That Pub­li­cized the Avant-Garde Move­ment a Cen­tu­ry Ago (1917–21)

Down­load Alfred Stieglitz’s Pro­to-Dada Art Jour­nal, 291, The First Art Mag­a­zine That Was Itself a Work of Art (1916)

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anar­chic, Irra­tional “Anti-Art” Move­ment of Dadaism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear the 20 Favorite Punk Albums of Black Flag Frontman Henry Rollins

in Music | June 15th, 2017

The punk move­ment gave birth to hun­dreds of bands in a small amount of time, like a petri dish that just explodes under the right con­di­tions. Forty years lat­er, we are still liv­ing in the after­math of that explo­sion and sort­ing things out. Lists need to be made. And if you con­sid­er garage rock to be pro­to-punk, the list can be very long.

Four years ago, L.A. Week­ly cre­at­ed a list of the Top 20 punk albums of all time, but purists might despair to see Green Day on there or just any­thing after the ‘90s.

But they also turned to their colum­nist, Black Flag vocal­ist, intense spo­ken word per­former, and radio dee­jay Hen­ry Rollins, and asked him to cre­ate his own list. See them below, and hear them above (via this playlist).

• The Clash — The Clash (1977)
• Gen­er­a­tion X — Gen­er­a­tion X (1977)
• The Adverts — Cross­ing the Red Sea (1978)
• X Ray Spex — Germ Free Ado­les­cents (1978)
• The Sex Pis­tols — Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks (1977)
• The Ramones — The Ramones (1976)
• Eater — The Album (1977)
• The Damned — Damned Damned Damned (1977)
• The Fall — Hex Enduc­tion Hour (1982)
• The Buz­zcocks — Anoth­er Music In A Dif­fer­ent Kitchen (1978)
• The Saints — (I’m) Strand­ed (1977)
• UK Subs — Anoth­er Kind of Blues (1979)
• Wire — Pink Flag (1977)
• The Lurk­ers — Ful­ham Fall­out (1978)
• Alter­na­tive TV — The Image Has Cracked (1978)
• The Ruts — The Crack (1979)
• The Germs — GI (1979
• X — Los Ange­les (1980)
• The Min­ute­men — The Punch­line (1981)
• Stiff Lit­tle Fin­gers — Inflam­ma­ble Mate­r­i­al (1979)

In his brief intro, Rollins mulls over the eter­nal genre question–where does punk stop and post-punk begin?

Could Wire, also be con­sid­ered Post Punk? Where do you put bands like PIL, Joy Divi­sion, Tele­vi­sion, Pat­ti Smith, Sui­cide, and Killing Joke? What about Gang of Four, 999 and the Ban­shees? For me, as a lean def­i­n­i­tion, I go by the clas­sic UK 1977 grad­u­at­ing class, Pis­tols, Clash, etc., and go from there.

The list, he says, is in no par­tic­u­lar order, but it’s not a sur­prise to see the first Clash album at the top, fol­lowed by the debut albums of the Ramones, the Sex Pis­tols, The Damned, X, Wire, The Buz­zcocks, The Saints, The Germs, X‑Ray Spex, The Adverts, and Stiff Lit­tle Fin­gers. Very few on that list went on to top their debut, or even–such as the Pis­tols and The Germs–record a fol­low-up.

Rollins talked about this in an essay (also for the L.A. Week­ly) on why he loves anoth­er band on his list, the U.K. Subs.

How some of those bands were able to fol­low up with anoth­er album is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of musi­cal his­to­ry, as well as a study of tal­ent, vision and integri­ty. It is where the rub­ber tru­ly meets the road. After the explo­sive excite­ment of the ini­tial batch of songs has set­tled, the band often is left with a suc­cess-derived self-aware­ness that hangs like a cloud over the prac­tice room. The awful­ness of expec­ta­tion enters the equa­tion, and the results are not always good.

Rollins is a fan of the first four U.K. Subs LPs–“they are like desert island LPs. Records you can’t do with­out,” he once said.

Oth­er inter­est­ing choic­es on Rollins’ list: the shame­less Ramones-copy­ists The Lurk­ers, The Minutemen’s first album (instead of the undis­put­ed clas­sic Dou­ble Nick­els on the Dime), the less­er-known Eater, the Ruts, and the Fall’s Hex Enduc­tion Hour, which is punk in aes­thet­ic, but cer­tain­ly not in pro­duc­tion.

For a man who usu­al­ly has some­thing to say, it would have been cool to have some com­men­tary from Rollins on his choic­es. On the oth­er hand, maybe he’d just tell us to shut up. The music speaks for itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

Take Free Philosophy Courses from The Institute of Art and Ideas: From “The Meaning of Life” to “Heidegger Meets Van Gogh”

in Online Courses, Philosophy | June 14th, 2017

Back in 2014, we told you about how The Insti­tute of Art and Ideas (IAI) launched IAI Acad­e­my — an online edu­ca­tion­al plat­form that fea­tures free cours­es from world-lead­ing schol­ars “on the ideas that mat­ter.” They have since put online a num­ber of phi­los­o­phy cours­es, many striv­ing to address ques­tions that affect our lives today. We’ve list­ed a num­ber of them below, and added them to our list of 150+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es. For a com­plete list of IAI Acad­e­my cours­es, vis­it this page.

• Hei­deg­ger Meets Van Gogh: Art, Free­dom and Tech­nol­o­gy — Web video — Simon Glendin­ning, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics
• Dark Mat­ter of the Mind — Web video — Daniel Everett, Bent­ley Uni­ver­si­ty
• Fear and Trem­bling in the 21st Cen­tu­ry — Web video — Clare Carlisle, King’s Col­lege Lon­don
• Knowl­edge and Ratio­nal­i­ty — Web Video — Corine Besson, Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex
• Life, Mean­ing and Moral­i­ty — Web video — Christo­pher Hamil­ton, King’s Col­lege, Lon­don
• Minds, Moral­i­ty and Agency — Web video — Mark Row­lands, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
• On Roman­tic Love — Web video — Berit Bro­gaard, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
• The Human Com­pass — Web video — Janne Teller
• The Mean­ing of Life — Web video — Steve Fuller, Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick
• The Uni­verse As We Find It — Web video — John Heil, Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St Louis
• Unveil­ing Real­i­ty — Web video — Bryan Roberts, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics
• Why the World Does Not Exist — Web video — Markus Gabriel, Freiburg Insti­tute of Advanced Study.

Note: The cours­es are all free. How­ev­er, to take a course you will need to cre­ate a user account.

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 First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The Great War and Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

Søren Kierkegaard: A Free Online Course on the “Father of Exis­ten­tial­ism”

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course