Rare Video: Georges Bataille Talks About Literature & Evil in His Only TV Interview (1958)

in Literature, Philosophy, Television | May 26th, 2015

“Where oth­er trans­gres­sive fig­ures of the past have most­ly been tamed,” wrote Josh Jones in a post here last year, “[Georges] Bataille, I sub­mit, is still quite dan­ger­ous.” You can get a sense of that in the doc­u­men­tary fea­tured there, À perte de vue, which intro­duces the trans­gres­sive French intel­lec­tu­al’s life and thought, which from the 1920s to the 1960s pro­duced books like The Solar Anus, The Hatred of Poet­ry, and The Tears of Eros, all part of a body of work that cap­ti­vat­ed the likes of Susan Son­tag, Michel Fou­cault, and Jacques Der­ri­da.

At the top of this post, you can enjoy anoth­er, straighter shot of Bataille through his 1958 appear­ance oppo­site inter­view­er Pierre Dumayet — the only tele­vi­sion inter­view he ever did. The occa­sion: the pub­li­ca­tion of his book Lit­er­a­ture and Evil, a title that, Bataille says, refers to “two oppo­site kinds of evil: the first one is relat­ed to the neces­si­ty of human activ­i­ty going well and hav­ing the desired results, and the oth­er con­sists of delib­er­ate­ly vio­lat­ing some fun­da­men­tal taboos — like, for exam­ple, the taboo against mur­der, or against some sex­u­al pos­si­bil­i­ties.”

Bataille’s fans expect from him a cer­tain amount of taboo vio­la­tion, though exe­cut­ed in a spe­cif­ic lit­er­ary form — not just prose, but the dis­tinc­tive sort of prose, whether spo­ken or writ­ten, brought to per­fec­tion by mid­cen­tu­ry French intel­lec­tu­als. In this ten-minute clip, Bataille elab­o­rates on his con­vic­tion that we can’t sep­a­rate lit­er­a­ture from evil: if the for­mer stays away from the lat­ter, “it rapid­ly becomes bor­ing.” He also gets into a dis­cus­sion of Baude­laire, Kaf­ka (“both of them knew they were on the side of evil”), Shake­speare, the impor­tance of eroti­cism and child­ish­ness in lit­er­a­ture, and the inher­ent­ly anti-work nature of writ­ing. How­ev­er rel­e­vant you find Bataille’s ideas today, you have to give the man this: he nev­er gets bor­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Georges Bataille: An Intro­duc­tion to The Rad­i­cal Philosopher’s Life & Thought Through Film and eTexts

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

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 Magical Animated Music Video for the Japanese Pop Song, “On Your Mark”

in Animation | May 26th, 2015

On this site, we’ve fea­tured music videos by such acclaimed film­mak­ers as David Lynch, David Finch­er, Jim Jar­musch and even Andy Warhol. Now add to this list the leg­endary Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki.

Back in 1994, Miyaza­ki was stuck on the script for his next fea­ture Princess Mononoke. So he decid­ed to do a video for the song “On Your Mark” by Japan­ese pop duo Chage & Aska. The result­ing piece is a gor­geous, dense, enig­mat­ic work that not only recalls Miyazaki’s ear­li­est works like Nau­si­caa of the Val­ley of the Wind, but also the edgi­er visions of the future seen in films like Aki­ra or Ghost in the Shell. In fact, the short is such a mag­i­cal, mem­o­rable piece of film­mak­ing that it over­whelms the song.

The video unfolds in a non-lin­ear fash­ion, jump­ing for­ward and back, fork­ing into mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the same scene. Miyaza­ki isn’t con­cerned about you not get­ting the sto­ry. As he said in a 1995 inter­view, you can “inter­pret [the film] any­way you want.”

The piece opens with a giant struc­ture that looms over an oth­er­wise beau­ti­ful, bucol­ic land­scape. Miyaza­ki, who is nev­er espe­cial­ly forth­com­ing when talk­ing about his work, describes the world of “On Your Mark” like this: “There is so much radi­a­tion on the Earth­’s sur­face, humans can no longer live there. But, there is flo­ra, just like there is one around Cher­nobyl. It became a sanc­tu­ary for nature, with the humans liv­ing in the under­ground city.”

The video then shifts abrupt­ly to a scene straight out of Aki­ra. Down in that under­ground city, the police attack the high­rise head­quar­ters of a spooky reli­gious cult and res­cue a young girl with broad, feath­ered wings. An angel? Who knows. A lot of view­ers have not­ed the cult echoes that of Aum Shin­rikyo, the dooms­day cult that released Sarin gas into the sub­ways of Tokyo in March 1995. Of course, the video was made before the attack. Mamoru Oshii’s 1993 ani­mat­ed fea­ture Pat­la­bor 2 also had eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties to Aum, so much so that it was fea­tured in the 1995 Yam­a­ga­ta Doc­u­men­tary Film Fes­ti­val. Both film­mak­ers, it seems, tapped into that ugly under­cur­rent in the zeit­geist of Japan­ese cul­ture at that time.

As Miyazaki’s short pro­gress­es, it shows two cops who decide to do the right thing and break the girl out of the lab­o­ra­to­ry where she is being held. The first time they try, the cops (and pre­sum­ably the angel) plunge to their deaths. The sec­ond time they try – and it’s not real­ly clear how they get this do-over – they man­age to escape. The cops dri­ve to the irra­di­at­ed sur­face of the earth and watch in awe as the angel flies way.

In Miyazaki’s mind, the winged girl rep­re­sents hope:

If you don’t com­plete­ly give up on the sit­u­a­tion and you keep your hope, not let­ting any­one touch it, and then you have to let it go, you let it go where no one can touch it. It’s just that. Maybe there was a bit of exchange in the moment of let­ting her
go. That’s fine, that’s enough. …Prob­a­bly they’ll go back to being the police­men. I don’t know if they could go back, though. [laughs]

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

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

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

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

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Italian Astronaut Reads The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the International Space Station

in Astronomy, Books | May 26th, 2015

On Fri­day, to help cel­e­brate Dan­te’s 750th birth­day, Col­in Mar­shall pre­sent­ed for you Saman­tha Cristo­fore­t­ti, Italy’s first female astro­naut, read­ing lines from The Divine Com­e­dy aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Lit­tle did we know that, just a few days lat­er, we could serve up a new video of Cristo­fore­t­ti read­ing lines (this time in Eng­lish) from a much more mod­ern text — Dou­glas Adams’ The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979). The video was filmed as part of Tow­el Day, a cel­e­bra­tion held every May 25th, where fans across the uni­verse car­ry a tow­el in Adams’ hon­our. Above you can see Cristo­fore­t­ti, float­ing upside down, doing just that, and read­ing the sec­tion of the book that touch­es on tow­els, the “most mas­sive­ly use­ful thing an inter­stel­lar hitch hik­er can have.”

via

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Astro­naut Reads The Divine Com­e­dy on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion on Dante’s 750th Birth­day

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Robert De Niro Tells Graduating NYU Arts Grads, “You Made It… And You’re F*cked”

in Art, Creativity, Education, Graduation Speech, Life | May 25th, 2015

I’ve attend­ed my share of grad­u­a­tions and hence my share of grad­u­a­tion speeches—from politi­cians more inter­est­ed in stump­ing than inspir­ing their audi­ence; to local TV per­son­al­i­ties assur­ing grad­u­ates they too could become local TV per­son­al­i­ties; to the real Patch Adams, who wasn’t near­ly as fun­ny as Robin Williams in his less-than-fun­ny turn as Patch Adams. My expe­ri­ence has taught me that grad­u­a­tion speech­es gen­er­al­ly suck.

But not for the most recent batch of grad­u­ates of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, who got both brac­ing hon­esty and career val­i­da­tion from a speak­er most like­ly to give it to you straight. With his trade­mark foul-mouth gruff­ness, De Niro told the grad­u­at­ing class what every aspir­ing artist needs to know: “You made it,” he said, “and you’re f*cked.” The world, De Niro told his audi­ence, is not open­ing its arms to embrace art school grads. For all our pop cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty, the so-called “cre­ative class”—as we’re told again and again—is most­ly in decline.

Of course it’s nev­er been an easy road for artists. De Niro knows this full well not only through his own ear­ly expe­ri­ences before super­star­dom but from his upbring­ing: both his moth­er and father were bohemi­an painters with tur­bu­lent, fas­ci­nat­ing lives. And so he also knows of what he speaks when he tells the NYU grads that they “didn’t have a choice.” Where prag­mat­ic account­ing grads may be “pas­sion­ate about account­ing,” De Niro says, “it’s more like­ly that they used rea­son and log­ic and com­mon sense to reach for a career that could give them the expec­ta­tion of suc­cess and sta­bil­i­ty.”

Not the arts grads, the famous actor says: “You dis­cov­ered a tal­ent, devel­oped an ambi­tion and rec­og­nized your pas­sion.” Their path, he sug­gests, is one of self-actu­al­iza­tion:

When it comes to the arts, pas­sion should always trump com­mon sense. You aren’t just fol­low­ing dreams, you’re reach­ing for your des­tiny. You’re a dancer, a singer, a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, a musi­cian, a film­mak­er, a writer, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, a direc­tor, a pro­duc­er, an actor, an artist. Yeah, you’re f***ed. The good news is that that’s not a bad place to start.

Maybe not. And maybe, for those dri­ven to sing, dance, paint, write, etc., it’s the only place to start. Grant­ed, NYU stu­dents are already a pret­ty select and priv­i­leged bunch, who cer­tain­ly have a leg up com­pared to a great many oth­er strug­gling artists. Nev­er­the­less, giv­en cur­rent eco­nom­ic real­i­ties and the U.S.’s depress­ing aver­sion to arts edu­ca­tion and fund­ing, these grads have a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult road ahead, De Niro says. And who bet­ter to deliv­er that hard truth with such con­vic­tion and good humor?

h/t @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Jim Car­rey Com­mence­ment Speech: It’s Bet­ter to Fail at What You Love Than Fail at What You Don’t

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

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

Mœbius Illustrates Paulo Coelho’s Inspirational Novel The Alchemist (1998)

in Art, Books | May 25th, 2015

When Paulo Coel­ho’s nov­el The Alchemist came out in Eng­lish, the lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty it even­tu­al­ly attained seri­ous­ly impressed me. Then I went to Latin Amer­i­ca, where the Span­ish ver­sion seemed to have won a vaster read­er­ship still. I haven’t yet gone to Brazil to gauge the book’s pop­u­lar­i­ty on the streets of Coel­ho’s home­land since its first pub­li­ca­tion to rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle inter­est, but it sure­ly has­n’t gone unknown there. As many fans as The Alchemist has, though, the inspi­ra­tion-and-des­tiny-inflect­ed appeal of the text entire­ly escapes some read­ers, in whichev­er lan­guage they read it. Per­haps they’d pre­fer an edi­tion illus­trat­ed by Mœbius?

Born Jean Giraud, Mœbius’ career guar­an­tees him a per­ma­nent place as one of the most influ­en­tial com­ic artists ever to live. Even apart from the achieve­ments in the medi­um in which he became famous — his found­ing work on Heavy Met­al, his cre­ation of non­tra­di­tion­al west­ern out­law Blue­ber­ry — he did a good deal of work that brought his sin­gu­lar­ly imag­i­na­tive aes­thet­ic into oth­er cre­ative realms, such as con­cept art from Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owky’s Dune and illus­tra­tions for Dan­te’s Par­adiso. In some sense, it might have seemed nat­ur­al for him to lend his hand to Coel­ho’s fan­ta­sy tale of an Andalu­sian shep­herd boy on a trea­sure-hunt­ing jour­ney to Egypt.

The Illus­trat­ed Alchemist: A Fable About Fol­low­ing Your Dream came out in 1998, and it includ­ed 35 Mœbius illus­tra­tions, four of which you see here. The artist’s sig­na­ture style, which he usu­al­ly used in the ser­vice of dark, com­plex fusions of past and present, might at first sound ill-suit­ed for Coel­ho’s sim­ple fable, but Mœbius adapts well to the mate­r­i­al. Even if you put down the book uncon­vinced by Coel­ho’s argu­ments about fol­low­ing your dream, you might con­sid­er look­ing to Mœbius instead with our post on his tips for aspir­ing artists. Either way, The Illus­trat­ed Alchemist itself show­cas­es a col­lab­o­ra­tion between two well-known cre­ators who most def­i­nite­ly paid their dues.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Paulo Coel­ho Start­ed Pirat­ing His Own Books (And Where You Can Find Them)

Paulo Coel­ho on the Fear of Fail­ure

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Mœbius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

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.

Discover Japan’s Earthquake Proof Underground Bike Storage System: The Future is Now

in Design, Sports, Technology, Travel | May 25th, 2015

Behold, the inge­nious under­ground bicy­cle stor­age of Japan! What a vision of futur­ist effi­cien­cy — the only thing miss­ing is Ray­mond Scott’s Pow­er­house (aka Bugs Bun­ny fac­to­ry music).

Japan­ese cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor Dan­ny Choo strapped a cam­era to his seat to cap­ture a bike’s eye view of the robot­ic Eco Cycle Anti-Seis­mic Under­ground Bicy­cle Park. It takes an aver­age of 8 sec­onds for two-wheel­ers to make the jour­ney — human involve­ment stops at the street lev­el card read­er.

(One inter­net com­menter won­dered what hap­pens if the sys­tem malfunctions…and all I can say is I once spent what felt like an eter­ni­ty, trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Man­sion.)

As futur­is­tic visions go, it’s a finite one. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly design allows for fair­ly easy de-instal­la­tion, should pub­lic demand for safe, sub­ter­ranean bike park­ing wane.

It’s also earth­quake-proof, a fea­ture which gives rise to all sorts of dystopi­an Plan­et of the Apes-style fan­tasies (replace Apes with Bikes).

Cities from Lon­don and Paris to New York and Hangzhou have embraced bike­shar­ing schemes, but the Japan­ese mod­el allows cyclists to keep their own rides. Signs post­ed at street lev­el remind rid­ers to remove per­son­al effects like pets (!) before using the sys­tem.) Unlim­it­ed park­ing and retrieval comes in at under 20 bucks a month.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As of this writ­ing, the cycle-friend­ly Nether­lands is plot­ting the world’s largest bike park — under­der­ground — to be launched in 2018.

Hat tip to Dan­ny Choo.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Turn Your Bike into an Elec­tric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copen­hagen Wheel”

The Physics of the Bike

How Leo Tol­stoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Oth­er Tales of Life­long Learn­ing

Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer

in Books | May 23rd, 2015

Bill Gates — Microsoft CEO turned phil­an­thropist, life­long learn­er and fan of The Great Cours­es — is rec­om­mend­ing sev­en texts you should read this sum­mer. They’re not exact­ly light beach read­ing. But you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll get more dialed into issues on Gates’ mind. On his web­site, the video above comes accom­pa­nied by rea­sons for read­ing each work.:

Hyper­bole and A Half , by Allie Brosh:The Book, based on Brosh’s wild­ly pop­u­lar web­site, con­sists of brief vignettes and com­ic draw­ings her young About Life. The adven­tures she recounts are most­ly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in pub­lic. You will rip through it in three hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s fun­ny and smart as hell. I must have inter­rupt­ed Melin­da a dozen times to read to her pas­sages that made ​​me laugh out loud.

The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, an evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, has a gift for mak­ing sci­ence enjoy­able. This Book is as acces­si­ble as the TV series Cos­mos is for Younger Audi­ences-and as Rel­e­vant for Old­Er Audi­ences. It’s an engag­ing, well-illus­trat­ed sci­ence text­book offer­ing com­pelling answers to big ques­tions, like “how did the uni­verse form?” And “what caus­es earth­quakes?” It’s also a plea for read­ers of all ages to approach mys­ter­ies with rig­or and curiosity.Dawkins’s antag­o­nis­tic (and, to me, overzeal­ous) view of reli­gion has earned him a lot of angry crit­ics, but I con­sid­er him to be one of the great sci­en­tif­ic writer / explain­ers of all time.

If what?, by Ran­dall Munroe. The sub­ti­tle of the book is “Seri­ous Sci­en­tif­ic Answers to Absurd Hypo­thet­i­cal Ques­tions,” and that’s exact­ly what it is. Peo­ple write Munroe with ques­tions that range over all fields of sci­ence: physics, chem­istry, biol­o­gy. Ques­tions like, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” (The answer, it turns out, is “high enough that it would dis­in­te­grate before it hit the ground.”) Munroe’s expla­na­tions are fun­ny, but the sci­ence under­pin­ning his answers is very accu­rate. It’s an enter­tain­ing read, and you’ll also learn a bit about things like bal­lis­tics, DNA, the oceans, the atmos­phere, and light­ning along the way.

XKCD, by Ran­dall Munroe. A col­lec­tion of posts from Munroe’s Blog XKCD, which is made up of Car­toons he Draws mak­ing fun of things-Most­ly Sci­en­tists and Com­put­ers, But lots of Oth­er things too. There’s One About Sci­en­tists hold­ing A Press Con­fer­ence to Reveal Their dis­cov­ery That Life is arsenic-based. They research press con­fer­ences and find out that some­times it’s good to serve food that’s relat­ed to the sub­ject of the con­fer­ence. The last pan­el is all the reporters dead on the floor because they ate arsenic. It’s that kind of humor, which not every­body loves, but I do.

On Immu­ni­ty , by Eula Biss. When I stum­bled across this book on the Inter­net, I thought it might be a worth­while read. I had no idea what a plea­sure read­ing it would be. Biss, an essay­ist and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er, exam­ines what lies behind peo­ple’s fears of vac­ci­nat­ing their chil­dren. Like many of us, she con­cludes that vac­cines are safe, effec­tive, and almost mirac­u­lous tools for pro­tect­ing chil­dren against need­less suf­fer­ing. But she is not out to demo­nize any­one who holds oppos­ing views. This is a thought­ful and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book about a very impor­tant top­ic.

How to Lie With Sta­tis­tics , by Dar­rell Huff. I Picked up this Short, Easy-to-Read Book after See­ing it on A Wall Street Jour­nal list of good Books for Investors . I enjoyed it so much That it WAS One of A Hand­ful of Books I rec­om­mend­ed to every­one at TED this year. It was first pub­lished in 1954, but aside from a few anachro­nis­tic exam­ples (it has been a long time since bread cost 5 cents a loaf in the Unit­ed States), it does not feel dat­ed. One chap­ter shows you how visu­als can be used to exag­ger­ate trends and give dis­tort­ed comparisons‑a time­ly reminder, giv­en how often info­graph­ics show up in your Face­book and Twit­ter feeds these days. A use­ful intro­duc­tion to the use of sta­tis­tics, and a help­ful refresh­er for any­one who is already well versed in it.

Should We Eat Meat?, by Vaclav Smil. The rich­er the world gets, the more meat it eats. And the more meat it eats, the big­ger the threat to the plan­et. How do we square this cir­cle? Vaclav Smil takes his usu­al clear-eyed view of the whole land­scape, from meat’s role in human evo­lu­tion to hard ques­tions about ani­mal cru­el­ty. While it would be great if peo­ple want­ed to eat less meat, I do not think we can expect large num­bers of peo­ple to make dras­tic reduc­tions. I’m bet­ting on inno­va­tion, includ­ing high­er agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the devel­op­ment of meat sub­sti­tutes, to help the world meet its need for meat. A time­ly book, though prob­a­bly the least beach-friend­ly one on this list.

You can get more ideas from Bill Gates at Gates Notes.

If you’re look­ing to do some more DIY edu­ca­tion this sum­mer, don’t miss the fol­low­ing rich col­lec­tions:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

Norman Rockwell Illustrates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (1936–1940)

in Art, Books, Literature | May 22nd, 2015

There’s no get­ting around it: Nor­man Rock­well was a square. There’s also no get­ting around the fact that his career helped define the way main­stream Amer­i­cans saw them­selves for decades. And while an artist like Rockwell—so steeped in nos­tal­gia, so lack­ing in irony and a taste for transgression—might have fad­ed into com­plete irrel­e­vance amidst the tumult of the six­ties, the oppo­site in fact occurred. Instead of pale, freck­le-faced scamps and neigh­bor­ly civ­il ser­vants, Rock­well paint­ed like­ness­es of world lead­ers like Nehru and Nass­er, as well as a now icon­ic sym­bol of the Civ­il Rights strug­gle on a 1964 Look mag­a­zine cov­er.

The six­ties Rock­well, though still very much a pur­vey­or of small town Amer­i­cana, became a some­what weight­i­er fig­ure, even if he nev­er gained (or sought) accep­tance in the art world. But we might think of Rock­well as work­ing on two reg­is­ters through­out his career—as the PG-rat­ed painter of mis­chie­vous, child­ish nice­ness, and the earnest com­men­ta­tor on mores and val­ues in adult soci­ety. In a way, these two sides of America’s most pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor mir­ror those of the nation’s most pop­u­lar writer, Mark Twain. Though sep­a­rat­ed by a gen­er­a­tion, the two, writes the Mark Twain House & Museum’s web­site, are “twinned in many ways in the pub­lic con­scious­ness.”

In part, this is because Rock­well illus­trat­ed for Her­itage Press two of Twain’s most famous books, The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer in 1936 and The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn in 1940. Above, see three of Rockwell’s illus­tra­tions from Tom Sawyer and, below, one from his Huck Finn. The dif­fer­ences between the two books (so hilar­i­ous­ly con­trast­ed by Louis CK), could stand for the two sides of both Twain and Rock­well. As the Mark Twain House puts it, “some crit­ics have dis­missed [Twain and Rockwell’s] work as light­weight, blithe­ly ignor­ing the impor­tant state­ments they made on race.” Tom Sawyer is a light­weight book, the work of Twain the pop­u­lar humorist. (Twain him­self would say, “my books are water: those of the great genius­es are wine. Every­body drinks water.”) Huck Finn on the oth­er hand is a seri­ous adult nov­el with seri­ous adult themes. For all of its flaws, it makes an admirable attempt to iden­ti­fy with and faith­ful­ly ren­der the plight of enslaved peo­ple.

Twain’s great strength as a seri­ous writer was his wealth of empa­thy, a qual­i­ty Rock­well man­i­fest­ed as well. In fact, in order to best rep­re­sent Twain’s books, the illus­tra­tor trav­eled to their set­ting, Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri, where he “acquired a new respect for the char­ac­ters,” writes the Nor­man Rock­well Muse­um. “The longer I worked at the task,” Rock­well wrote, “the more in love with the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties I became.” Illus­tra­tion and design blog Today’s Inspi­ra­tion points out that Rock­well pur­chased old clothes from the Han­ni­bal locals to “soak up the atmos­phere”: “Of all the illus­tra­tors (and there were quite a few) that illus­trat­ed these nov­els in the past, Rock­well was the first to vis­it Mark Twain’s home town. In typ­i­cal Rock­well fash­ion, no amount of detail or research was ignored, faked or quick­ly glossed over.”

Today’s Inspi­ra­tion zooms in on details from sev­er­al of the Tom Sawyer paint­ings to show the fine, almost Ver­meer-like atten­tion Rock­well lav­ished on each illus­tra­tion. The exten­sive exam­i­na­tion of these ear­ly Rock­well clas­sics makes a good case for the folksy illus­tra­tor as a “sto­ry­telling genius with pal­let and brush.” Rock­well may be dis­missed as a cre­ator of kitsch, and in some cas­es the charge is jus­ti­fied, but—like Twain—even his lighter work depend­ed on a fine atten­tion to details of set­ting and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that make his work mem­o­rable and mov­ing, in its corni­est and its weight­i­est moments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50,000 Nor­man Rock­well Pho­tographs Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

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

The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

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

Astronaut Reads The Divine Comedy on the International Space Station on Dante’s 750th Birthday

in Poetry | May 22nd, 2015

“On April 24th,” writes The New York­er’s John Klein­er, “Saman­tha Cristo­fore­t­ti, Italy’s first female astro­naut, took time off from her reg­u­lar duties in the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion to read from the Divine Com­e­dy.” You can watch a clip of that read­ing of the first can­to of the Par­adiso above. “As Cristo­fore­t­ti spun around the globe at the rate of sev­en­teen thou­sand miles an hour, her read­ing was beamed back to earth and shown in a movie the­ater in Flo­rence.”

While that stands alone as a neat event in and of itself, more cel­e­bra­tion of the epic Ital­ian poem fol­lowed. “Ten days lat­er,” Klein­er con­tin­ues, “the actor Rober­to Benig­ni recit­ed the last can­to of Par­adiso in the Ital­ian Sen­ate” to a stand­ing ova­tion. Benig­ni, one of world cin­e­ma’s best-known rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ital­ian cul­ture, seems to have a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong appre­ci­a­tion for Dante Alighieri, the best-known rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture; you can see him recite the first can­to of the Infer­no just above.

The occa­sion? Dan­te’s 750th birth­day. Though you’ll find no unsuit­able occa­sion to cel­e­brate the Divine Com­e­dy (find it in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free eBooks), this past month has proven a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich one. Today we’ve gath­ered a few more pieces of Dan­teiana so you can con­duct your own per­son­al appre­ci­a­tion. You might con­sid­er as a first stop the Prince­ton Dante Project, which “com­bines a tra­di­tion­al approach to the study of Dan­te’s Com­e­dy with new tech­niques of com­pil­ing and con­sult­ing data, images, and sound,” fea­tur­ing a search­able new verse trans­la­tion, texts of Dan­te’s minor works (with trans­la­tions), his­tor­i­cal and inter­pre­tive lec­tures, more than sev­en­ty com­men­taries, and links to Dante sites from all over the world.

“When Dante began work on the Com­e­dy [cir­ca 1308], none of the dif­fer­ent dialects spo­ken in Italy’s many city-states had any par­tic­u­lar claim to pre­em­i­nence,” writes Klein­er for The New York­er. “Such was the force and influ­ence of the Com­e­dy that the Tus­can dialect became Italy’s lit­er­ary lan­guage and, even­tu­al­ly, its nation­al one.” But if you don’t speak Ital­ian (as much as the lin­guis­tic impor­tance of the Divine Com­e­dy might inspire you to learn it), you might pre­fer an Eng­lish read­ing, which you’ll find here.

Dante has, for so many of us, shaped our very notions of heav­en and hell, but per­haps more impres­sive­ly, as the poet­’s 750th birth­day pass­es, his major work shows no signs of falling into irrel­e­vance. No mat­ter how many of us now have dif­fer­ent visions of the after­life than he did, and no mat­ter how many of us have no visions of it at all, we keep read­ing Dante — whether in Ital­ian or Eng­lish, whether in the Sen­ate or on the inter­net, whether on Earth or in space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Dalí, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

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

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

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.