The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Minutes

in Art | June 8th, 2015

Ear­li­er this year, Col­in Mar­shall intro­duced you to The Art Assign­ment, a week­ly web series that cel­e­brates the cre­ative process and “today’s most inno­v­a­tive artis­tic minds.” The series typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures the hosts, John Green and Sarah Urist Green, “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you [the audi­ence] an art assign­ment.” But some­times they take a break from their trav­els and look back at influ­en­tial artists who shaped the mod­ern art scene — like Andy Warhol.

Above, you can watch “The Case for Andy Warhol,” a three minute video that puts Warhol’s life and work in artis­tic per­spec­tive, explain­ing why his work, some­times dis­missed as a pass­ing fad, is real­ly worth your time and con­sid­er­a­tion.

When you’re done with the clip, you can head over to this Smart His­to­ry clip where Steven Zuck­er and Sal Khan break down the artis­tic mer­its of Warhol’s famous soup cans. This one runs sev­en min­utes.

And stay tuned, The Art Assign­ment will be back soon with a primer on Mark Rothko.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange

Watch Lucian Freud’s Very Last Day of Painting (2011)

in Art | June 8th, 2015

All artists are mor­tal. Lucian Freud was, by any­one’s def­i­n­i­tion, an artist. There­fore, Lucian Freud was mor­tal — as, so his artis­tic vision empha­sized, are the sub­jects of his “stark and reveal­ing paint­ings of friends and inti­mates, splayed nude in his stu­dio,” which, wrote William Grimes in Freud’s 2011 New York Times obit­u­ary, “recast the art of por­trai­ture and offered a new approach to fig­u­ra­tive art.” Freud “put the pic­to­r­i­al lan­guage of tra­di­tion­al Euro­pean paint­ing in the ser­vice of an anti-roman­tic, con­fronta­tion­al style of por­trai­ture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordi­nary peo­ple — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the can­vas, vul­ner­a­ble to the artist’s ruth­less inspec­tion.”

Or, in Freud’s own words: “I work from the peo­ple that inter­est me and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know.” Just as every mor­tal artist’s career must begin with a first work, so it must end with a final work, and in the clip at the top of the post you can wit­ness a few min­utes from the very last day the painter spent paint­ing some­body who inter­est­ed him and whom he cared about, in a room he lived in and knew. He spent it on this can­vas, an enor­mous and unfin­ished por­trait of his assis­tant David Daw­son and his whip­pet Eli called Por­trait of the Hound.

“Every morn­ing, sev­en days a week, I sat for Lucian,” said Daw­son to The Tele­graph’s Mar­tin Gay­ford. “There was a very open accep­tance of his not hav­ing so long to live. But he still had a burn­ing desire to make a very good paint­ing, right up to the end. He was paint­ing three weeks before he died.” Daw­son shot this footage of Freud’s final work­ing day, July 3, 2011, which made it into the doc­u­men­tary Lucian Freud: Paint­ed Life [part one, part two]. “We are in Freud’s home, which is very qui­et, with lots of paint­ings on the walls, and filled with a sub­tle, nat­ur­al light,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Elisa Wouk Almi­no. “He was par­tic­u­lar about paint­ing under a north­ern light, which he once described as ‘cold and clear and con­stant.’ ”

Whether Freud lived the last tru­ly painter­ly life, we can’t know for sure; we do know, how­ev­er, that he lived one of the most res­olute­ly painter­ly lives in recent his­to­ry. “Lucian did­n’t both­er about what he did­n’t need to,” said his final sub­ject. “What was impor­tant was try­ing to make the best paint­ing he pos­si­bly could. Work was what kept him going: that need to get out of bed, pick up a paint­brush and make anoth­er mark, make anoth­er deci­sion. So that was what he did. It was a good way to go about liv­ing a life.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Creepy Cut Out Animation of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Novel, The Unnamable

in Animation, English Language, Literature | June 8th, 2015

Morn­ing, friend! Ready to kick off your week with a Beck­et­t­ian night­mare vision?

Samuel Beck­ett schol­ar Jen­ny Trig­gs was earn­ing a mas­ters in Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art when she cre­at­ed the unset­tling, cut out ani­ma­tion for his 1953 nov­el, The Unnam­able, above. (Her PhD exhi­bi­tion, a decade lat­er, was a mul­ti-screen video response to Beckett’s short sto­ry, Ping.)

The wretched crea­tures haunt­ing the film con­jure Bosch and Gilliam, in addi­tion to Ire­land’s best known avant-garde play­wright.

Trig­gs seem to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from the name­less narrator’s phys­i­cal self-assess­ment:

I of whom I know noth­ing, I know my eyes are open because of the tears that pour from them unceas­ing­ly. I know I am seat­ed, my hands on my knees, because of the pres­sure against my rump, against the soles of my feet? I don’t know. My spine is not sup­port­ed. I men­tion these details to make sure I am not lying on my back, my legs raised and bent, my eyes closed.

Despite the narrator’s effort to keep track of his parts, Trig­gs ensures that some­thing will always be miss­ing. Her char­ac­ters make do with rods, bits of chess pieces or noth­ing at all in places where limbs should be.

Are these birth defects or some sort of wartime dis­abil­i­ty that pre­cludes pros­thet­ics?

One char­ac­ter is described as “noth­ing but a shape­less heap… with a wild equine eye.”

The nar­ra­tor steels him­self “to invent anoth­er fairy tale with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that fol­lows.” Mean­while, he’s tor­ment­ed by a spir­i­tu­al push-me-pull-you that feels very like the one afflict­ing Vladimir and Estragon in Wait­ing for Godot:

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll nev­er know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Trig­gs describes The Unnam­able as a book that begs to be read aloud, and her nar­ra­tors Louise Milne and Chris Noon are deserv­ing of praise for pars­ing the mean­der­ing text in such a way that it makes sense, at least atmos­pher­i­cal­ly.

To go on means going from here, means find­ing me, los­ing me, van­ish­ing and begin­ning again, a stranger first, then lit­tle by lit­tle the same as always, in anoth­er place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know noth­ing, being inca­pable of see­ing, mov­ing, think­ing, speak­ing, but of which lit­tle by lit­tle, in spite of these hand­i­caps, I shall begin to know some­thing, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swal­lows me up, I’ll nev­er know, which is per­haps mere­ly the inside of my dis­tant skull where once I wan­dered, now am fixed, lost for tini­ness, or strain­ing against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever mur­mur­ing my old sto­ries, my old sto­ry, as if it were the first time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads From His Nov­el Watt

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

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

Brazilian Man Sings The Beatles’ “Yesterday” as Doctors Perform Brain Surgery on Him

in Music | June 7th, 2015

It’s a bit­ter­sweet scene. Actu­al­ly, more bit­ter than sweet. The video above doc­u­ments a recent oper­a­tion where doc­tors removed a brain tumor from Antho­ny Kulkamp, a 33 year old Brazil­ian banker, all while he sang and played The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” on the gui­tar. Clear­ly the song was­n’t an arbi­trary pick, not with lyrics like:

Yes­ter­day, all my trou­bles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
oh, I believe in yes­ter­day

Sud­den­ly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shad­ow hang­ing over me
Oh, yes­ter­day came sud­den­ly.

There was a point to singing “Yes­ter­day” and oth­er songs. Sur­geons were able to mon­i­tor Kulkam­p’s cere­bral activ­i­ty and ensure that his sen­so­ry, motor, and speech areas remained unharmed dur­ing the oper­a­tion. Dr Jean Abreu Macha­do, a clin­i­cal direc­tor at the hos­pi­tal in Brazil, told The Tele­graph: “By keep­ing the patient awake dur­ing surgery, these areas [of the brain] can be mon­i­tored in real time. A kind of map­ping of impor­tant areas can be done.”

Mr. Kulkamp was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal last Wednes­day, and we hope to see him play­ing some­thing opti­mistic before too long. Maybe a lit­tle “Here Comes the Sun” …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Singing: New, High-Speed MRI Machine Images Man Singing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

Hear the Enchanting Jorge Luis Borges Read “The Art of Poetry”

in Literature, Poetry | June 5th, 2015

Very few peo­ple can offer us a sat­is­fy­ing def­i­n­i­tion of poet­ry. Enu­mer­at­ing the tech­ni­cal qual­i­ties of lit­er­ary verse, as Eng­lish teach­ers do each day, seems like a pal­try expla­na­tion of what poet­ry is and does. Even the poets them­selves have strug­gled might­i­ly to find the con­tours of their art, only to end in gnom­ic koans or exas­per­at­ed sighs. “A poem should not mean / But be,” con­cludes Archibald MacLeish’s “ Ars Poéti­ca,” after telling us a poem should be “dumb,” “silent,” and “word­less.” MacLeish’s con­tem­po­rary Mar­i­anne Moore famous­ly spent five decades revis­ing her attempt, “Poet­ry.” Final­ly, she reduced it to three irri­ta­ble lines in which she con­fess­es her “dis­like” and “per­fect con­tempt” for her own art, how­ev­er “gen­uine” it may be.

These pinched mod­ernists not only resist­ed didac­tic con­cep­tions of poet­ry put forth by the ancients, but they also turned away from the grandiose rhetoric of the Roman­tics, who saw poets, in Per­cy Shelley’s unfor­get­table phrase, as the “unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world.” Per­haps they were right to do so. Per­haps also, there is anoth­er way to approach the sub­ject, a way open to one poet only—Jorge Luis Borges. No one but Borges could make the claims for poet­ry as he does in his “Arte Poéti­ca” in such a mov­ing and per­sua­sive way: Poet­ry, he tells us, is the knowl­edge of time, of death, of infin­i­ty, and of our very selves. “Hum­ble and immor­tal,” poet­ry allows us “To see in every day and year a sym­bol”

Of all the days of man and his years
And con­vert the out­rage of the years
Into a music, a sound, and a sym­bol

To see in death a dream, in the sun­set
A gold­en sad­ness, such is poet­ry

With ref­er­ence to the mys­ti­cal pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher Her­a­cli­tus in the first and last stan­za, Borges makes his case with state­ments that seem the very oppo­site of humil­i­ty, and yet feel utter­ly right; poet­ry is immor­tal, it is “a green eter­ni­ty,” like Ulysses’ Itha­ca, it is “end­less like a riv­er flow­ing.” Or at least we feel it should be. Borges gives us a Pla­ton­ic ide­al of poet­ry, and it is one he might say, humbly, every poet should aspire to.

At the top of the post, you can hear Borges him­self read his poem, in Span­ish with Eng­lish titles, in a video shot in Uruguay and Borges’ native Argenti­na and fea­tur­ing a stir­ring Span­ish gui­tar score aug­ment­ing Borges’ solemn voice. Be sure to read the full text of Borges’ poem. As read­ers often do after fin­ish­ing one of the Argen­tine master’s pro­found­ly poet­ic works, you may find your­self for some time after­wards under a kind of spell, from an incan­ta­tion that seems, at last, to unlock the secrets of art, of poet­ry, and of so much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Borges Explains The Task of Art

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appre­ci­ate Poet­ry

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

Eugène Delacroix Illustrates Goethe’s Faust, “One of the Very Greatest of All Illustrated Books”

in Art, Literature | June 5th, 2015

Did our post last month on Édouard Manet’s illus­tra­tions of Stephane Mal­lar­mé’s trans­la­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven get you excit­ed enough to track down Dover Pub­li­ca­tions’ col­lec­tion of those haunt­ing images? If so, you’ll notice that the book also con­tains Eugène Delacroix’s illus­tra­tions of Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe’s Faust, a bold set of art­works that earned high praise, at least from Goethe him­self: “Delacroix,” said the writer upon view­ing the lith­o­graphs made for the tex­t’s 1828 edi­tion, “has sur­passed my own vision.” You can see/read a com­plete ver­sion online here.

Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s Julie L. Mell­by uses that line to open a post on Delacroix’s Faust, “con­sid­ered by most his­to­ri­ans to be one of the finest pub­li­ca­tions of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Gor­don Ray calls Delacroix’s illus­tra­tions ‘the high point of Roman­tic book illus­tra­tion,’ and David Bland called the vol­ume ‘one of the very great­est of all illus­trat­ed books.’ ” On that Prince­ton page you’ll find images scanned straight from Prince­ton’s copy of the book, and here we offer a select few to get you start­ed appre­ci­at­ing how Delacroix inter­pret­ed Goethe’s oft-told tale of divine wagers, pacts with the dev­il, and the temp­ta­tions of infi­nite knowl­edge.

“Every time I look at the engrav­ings of Faust I am seized with a long­ing to use an entire­ly new style of paint­ing that would con­sist, so to speak, in mak­ing a lit­er­al trac­ing of nature.” Delacroix wrote that in his jour­nal before tak­ing on the project of illus­trat­ing Faust him­self.

Maria Popo­va at Brain­Pick­ings quotes it in her own post on the work that result­ed in “a mes­mer­iz­ing dia­logue across dis­ci­plines between these two genius­es, half a cen­tu­ry apart in age.” (You can see more images on her site.) Whether or not Goethe knew he had writ­ten a work that would still res­onate with human­i­ty cen­turies lat­er, he did seem to under­stand that no one who saw Delacroix’s visions of it would ever for­get them.

H/T Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty / Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

Watch Goethe’s Haunt­ing Poem, “Der Erlkönig,” Pre­sent­ed in an Art­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Baude­laire, Balzac, Dumas, Delacroix & Hugo Get a Lit­tle Baked at Their Hash Club (1844–1849)

The Death Masks of Great Authors: Dante, Goethe, Tol­stoy, Joyce & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Characters Reimagined in the Style of 19th-Century Woodblock Prints

in Animation, Art | June 5th, 2015

Like illus­tra­tor Bill Mudron, I’m drawn to the back­grounds of direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures. The shad­owy land­scapes and tra­di­tion­al wood­en hous­es exert a ton­ic effect, even as giant many-eyed insects roam free and curs­es turn par­ents into pigs. The char­ac­ters can become a bit cloy­ing (espe­cial­ly when dubbed for Eng­lish-speak­ing audi­ences), but I’ll nev­er tire of watch­ing that cat bus charg­ing through the Japan­ese coun­try­side.

Mudron’s take on six of Miyaza­k­i’s most fer­tile land­scapes, includ­ing Spir­it­ed Away’s bath­house, above, were ren­dered entire­ly in Pho­to­shop, but aes­thet­i­cal­ly, they’re of a piece with artist Kawase Hasui’s late-19th and ear­ly-20th cen­tu­ry wood­block prints. (You can pur­chase Mudron’s prints and sup­port his work here.)

Mudron told The Cre­ators Project that his project was born of read­ing a two-vol­ume book on Hasui, right after see­ing The King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness, Mami Sunada’s doc­u­men­tary about Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li.

Tak­ing his lead from the fig­ures in Hasui’s shin-hanga (“new prints”), Mudron makes Miyazaki’s char­ac­ters whol­ly sub­or­di­nate to their set­ting. It’s pret­ty hard to ignore the weird spir­its throng­ing the bridge that leads to the bath­house when watch­ing the film of Spir­it­ed Away, but Mudron suc­ceeds by pin­ning them to a sin­gle moment in time and shift­ing the focus to their des­ti­na­tion.

Study the above detail from “Night Falls on the Spir­it Realm.” There’s still a lot going on on that bridge, but rel­a­tive to the big pic­ture at the top of the page, these spir­its are as anony­mous as the umbrel­la tot­ing fig­ures in Hasui’s “Snow at Heian Shrine, Kyoto,” below.

Scroll down for Muldron’s view of icon­ic loca­tions from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, and Princess Mononoke.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mag­i­cal Ani­mat­ed Music Video for the Japan­ese Pop Song, “On Your Mark”

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

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

Hip Hop Hits Sung Wonderfully in Sign Language: Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” & More

in Language Lessons, Music | June 5th, 2015

The first time I went to see David Sedaris read some of his hilar­i­ous essays live, I end­ed up laugh­ing much more than I expect­ed. By luck of seat­ing, I found myself at the right of the stage, fac­ing his sign lan­guage inter­preter. She didn’t just quick­ly parse what he said. No, she also became a sort of dou­ble act with the author, throw­ing her whole body and facial expres­sions into mak­ing Sedaris’ prose sing. Espe­cial­ly when he came to some sex­u­al idiom or turn of phrase, we all became aware of the audience’s gaze shift­ing right­ward to see what his sign­er would do. (The won­drous Inter­net has not revealed her name–possibly one of our read­ers knows.)

That’s a pre­am­ble to say that the lat­est YouTube sen­sa­tion above, Shel­by Mitchus­son, who signs her way through Eminem’s “Lose Your­self,” should come as no sur­prise to those who have encoun­tered such live­ly inter­pre­ta­tion, turn­ing lan­guage for the deaf into a per­for­mance art. Mitchus­son admits she’s still a begin­ner, but her 3 mil­lion views says she has made fans of the deaf and hear­ing alike. (And for once the YouTube com­ments don’t make you sad for human­i­ty.)

But Mitchusson’s “hit” leads to a whole world of Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage (ASL) stars once you jump down the YouTube rab­bit hole. Just over a year ago, Jim­my Kim­mel had on three ASL inter­preters to com­pete in a rap bat­tle to Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yel­low” which you can see below.

One of them, the pink-haired Amber Gal­loway Gal­lego, had her own time in the viral video lime­light back in 2013. Her spir­it­ed ver­sions of Snoop Lion, Kendrick Lamar, and oth­ers dur­ing Lol­la­palooza earned her many Inter­net views, no doubt for her las­civ­i­ous per­for­mance of rap and r’n’b’s smut­ti­est lyrics. She even received cov­er­age in Rolling Stone, where the San Anto­nio, TX native tells sto­ries of sign­ing “Baby Got Back” at a bar­be­cue at the begin­ning of her career. Her YouTube chan­nel fea­tures her own ver­sions of all the cur­rent pop hits (Tay­lor Swift, Car­ly Rae Jepsen) and clas­sics (The Human League, Celine Dion).

The his­to­ry of sign lan­guage is long and deep, with a rough guess at 137 rec­og­nized ver­sions around the globe, accord­ing to Eth­no­logue. (But as deaf com­mu­ni­ties often devel­op their own dialects, it’s hard to tell.)

And the Inter­net, specif­i­cal­ly YouTube–along with the beat-heavy genre of hip hop–has brought a sub­cul­ture into the main­stream, some­thing that years of advo­ca­cy by deaf groups could­n’t quite man­age to do. Thanks again, Inter­net!

You can find some online ASL lessons here, or in our meta col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Helen Keller & Annie Sul­li­van Appear Togeth­er in Mov­ing 1930 News­reel

Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

10 Million Years of Evolution Visualized in an Elegant, 5‑Foot Long Infographic from 1931

in Education, Science | June 4th, 2015

Click here to see the entire his­tom­ap in large, zoomable, for­mat.

The ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry belonged to Cecil B. DeMille and his epic films both Bib­li­cal and clas­si­cal: The Ten Com­mand­ments, Cleopa­tra, Sam­son and Delilah. The grand scale of these pseu­do-his­to­ries required the most up-to-date cin­e­mat­ic inven­tion of the day, and the most impe­r­i­al vision, one lat­er decades looked upon rather cyn­i­cal­ly. But just as the epic has roared back with a vengeance—with tech­no­log­i­cal feats that make The Great­est Show on Earth look like com­mu­ni­ty theater—so anoth­er medi­um of ambi­tious scope once pop­u­lar between the wars has made a reap­pear­ance: the his­tor­i­cal info­graph­ic, or as it was called back then, the “histomap”—5‑foot long visu­al his­to­ries of a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines.

As with film, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy has advanced to such a degree to make this ear­ly means of con­dens­ing huge amounts of data per­haps seem quaint. But if we imag­ine a world pre-inter­net, when the prospect of visu­al­iz­ing a sub­ject as com­plex as, say, evo­lu­tion, would be daunt­ing indeed, we might just find the his­tom­ap as impres­sive a means of con­vey­ing infor­ma­tion as its ear­ly read­ers did. These huge graphs of big ideas, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, fit “with a trend in non­fic­tion book pub­lish­ing of the 1920s and 1930s: the ‘out­line,’ in which large sub­jects (the his­to­ry of the world! every school of phi­los­o­phy! All of mod­ern physics!) were dis­tilled into a form com­pre­hen­si­ble to the most une­d­u­cat­ed lay­man.”

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured that 1931 “His­to­ry of the World!” his­tom­ap, an impres­sive con­dens­ing of 4000 years of human activ­i­ty. The evo­lu­tion graph­ic you see here, also from 1931 and “arranged” by John B. Sparks, is equal­ly impres­sive, and speaks to the times in ways that DeMille’s Bible movies did as well. Bear in mind that the Scopes Mon­key Tri­al had only con­clud­ed six years ear­li­er, and the country—as it is again today—was hot­ly divid­ed over the sub­ject rep­re­sent­ed here. Nonethe­less, Sparks and pub­lish­er Rand McNal­ly game­ly pre­sent­ed this “Sto­ry of the Emer­gence and Pro­gres­sion of Life” with con­fi­dent pre­ci­sion and with­out apol­o­gy.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how the sci­ence here has aged, though some of it, I’d sus­pect, not par­tic­u­lar­ly well. In any case, the form of this ele­gant data map, with its grace­ful lines of descent flow­ing down the page like mag­ma, com­ple­ments its con­tent. Rather than pre­sent­ing the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion as a for­gone con­clu­sion or belief, Sparks’ graph­ic lays out all of the evi­dence, and fits it togeth­er neat­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly. Some mod­ern evo­lu­tion info­graph­ics sur­pass the visu­al appeal, but not the lev­el of sci­en­tif­ic detail shown here. Oth­ers reduce the sci­ence, and the design, to the lev­el of over­sim­pli­fied ide­ol­o­gy. And though we may have enough his­tor­i­cal dis­tance to make info­graph­ic­ss of hun­dreds of years of evo­lu­tion­ary thought, it may seem that the tech­nol­o­gy of the evo­lu­tion info­graph­ic may not have advanced as much as we might expect.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­played in a 5‑Foot-Long “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Info­graph­ic) From 1931

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

Watch 570 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion on Earth in 60 Sec­onds

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

The Art of The Black Panthers: A Short Documentary on the Revolutionary Artist Emory Douglas

in Art, History | June 4th, 2015

Known as the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Artist by his fel­low Black Pan­thers and offi­cial­ly titled their Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Emory Dou­glas pro­vid­ed the strik­ing visu­als and designed the lay­out to the news­pa­per that bore the organization’s name when it pre­miered in 1967. In this short but insight­ful doc­u­men­tary by the out­fit known as Dress Code, Dou­glas looks back at his time with Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. New­ton and the oth­er Pan­thers dur­ing that most tumul­tuous decade and a half.

Dou­glas reminds us that San Fran­cis­co was seg­re­gat­ed just as much as the South dur­ing the ear­li­er part of the 20th cen­tu­ry and that police bru­tal­i­ty was, well, just like today, but with­out cell phone cam­eras. Iron­i­cal­ly, it was because Dou­glas went to juve­nile deten­tion (he first got arrest­ed at 13 years old) that he learned screen­print­ing in the print shop there, prim­ing him to help Cleaver start up the The Black Pan­ther news­pa­per in his apart­ment.

Dou­glas’ graph­ic design style was born from necessity–thick black lines did not let col­or seep out as much in the print­ing, and talk­ing about col­or, he could only afford one or two. Pro­fes­sor Colette Gaiter called Dou­glas the “Nor­man Rock­well of the ghet­to,” afford­ing the poor and oppressed a nor­mal­cy in its depic­tions usu­al­ly giv­en to the mid­dle class. And although pigs had sym­bol­ized pow­er, greed and cor­rup­tion long before Dou­glas was born, it was his depic­tion of cops and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures as anthro­po­mor­phic swine that has stuck with us to this day.

At its height, The Black Pan­ther news­pa­per had a week­ly cir­cu­la­tion of 400,000, but in the ear­ly ‘80s, Dou­glas stepped down as design­er. He has nev­er stopped work­ing for social jus­tice and by the 2000s, his huge body of work began to tour gal­leries and muse­ums, admired for its tech­nique and beau­ty, along with its mes­sage.

A cri­tique of Dress Code’s doc­u­men­tary is that it only affords us sliv­ers of Dou­glas’ art–zoomed in and ani­mat­ed.

This oth­er doc from a 2008 stu­dio vis­it pro­vides a bit more con­text, and for those who would like to see the art along­side the essays, calls to action, and col­lages in the orig­i­nal issues, there are plen­ty of them scanned online for you to read.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kick­start the The­atri­cal Release of the First Com­pre­hen­sive Black Pan­ther Par­ty Doc­u­men­tary

Mal­colm X, Debat­ing at Oxford, Quotes Shakespeare’s Ham­let (1964)

Wattstax Doc­u­ments the “Black Wood­stock” Con­cert Held 7 Years After the Watts Riots (1973)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.