Celebrate The Day of the Dead with The Classic Skeleton Art of José Guadalupe Posada

in Art, Religion | November 2nd, 2014

In Mex­i­co on Novem­ber 2, mor­tal­i­ty is approached with music and laugh­ter.

“On the Day of the Dead, when the spir­its come back to us,” explains the Dr. Vig­il char­ac­ter in the 1984 film of Mal­colm Lowry’s Under the Vol­cano, “the road from heav­en must be made easy, and not slip­pery with tears.”

The souls of the dead are wel­comed back with offer­ings of food and drink. Skulls and frol­ick­ing skele­tons, often dressed in full cos­tume, are depict­ed on alters, food and else­where — a play­ful reminder that all of us, despite our van­i­ties, will one day turn to dust.

The ori­gins of the Day of the Dead and its basic motifs can be traced back 3000 years, to the Aztecs, but the satir­i­cal skele­tons of its present-day iconog­ra­phy bear the strong influ­ence of one man who died 101 years ago: the print­mak­er and draughts­man José Guadalupe Posa­da.

Posa­da was an obscure news­pa­per illus­tra­tor when he set­tled in Mex­i­co City in 1888 and began work­ing for a com­pa­ny that pub­lished graph­ic fly­ers designed to bring the news of the day to a large­ly illit­er­ate pub­lic. Posada’s engrav­ings soon caught on.

“Long drawn to the sen­sa­tion­al,” writes Jesse Cordes Sel­bin at the Hen­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, “Posada’s inter­est cen­tered on such fan­tas­tic and unsa­vory aspects of life as mur­ders, rob­beries, bull­fights, polit­i­cal scan­dals, and illic­it love affairs. While his polit­i­cal work alter­nate­ly sat­i­rized Pres­i­dent Por­firio Díaz and laud­ed the pop­ulist rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers Emil­iano Zap­a­ta and Fran­cis­co Madero, for the most part his prints suc­cess­ful­ly struck the fine line between hard-hit­ting and light-heart­ed, res­onat­ing wide­ly through­out Mex­i­co.”

Despite their hum­ble pur­pose, Posada’s engrav­ings were a major influ­ence on the devel­op­ment of 20th cen­tu­ry Mex­i­can art. Octavio Paz described his tech­nique as “a min­i­mum of lines and a max­i­mum of expres­sion.” In his intro­duc­tion to Mex­i­co: Splen­dors of Thir­ty Cen­turies, Paz writes, “By birthright Posa­da belongs to a man­ner that has left its stamp on the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry: Expres­sion­ism. Unlike the major­i­ty of Expres­sion­ist artists, how­ev­er, Posa­da nev­er took him­self too seri­ous­ly.”

Oth­ers, how­ev­er, did. The mural­ists who flour­ished in post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Mex­i­co revered Posa­da. Diego Rivera and José Clemente Oroz­co, in par­tic­u­lar, praised him as an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure. In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Oroz­co writes:

Posa­da used to work in full view, behind the shop win­dows, and on my way to school and back, four times a day, I would stop and spend a few enchant­ed min­utes in watch­ing him, and some­times I even ven­tured to enter the shop and snatch up a bit of the met­al shav­ings that fell from the min­i­mum-coat­ed met­al plate as the mas­ter’s graver passed over it. This was the push that first set my imag­i­na­tion in motion and impelled me to cov­er paper with my ear­li­est lit­tle fig­ures; this was my awak­en­ing to the exis­tence of the art of paint­ing.

The most influ­en­tial of Posada’s works were his Calav­eras, mean­ing “skulls,” or, by exten­sion, “skele­tons.” Per­haps the most famous work from the series is Calav­era Cat­ri­na (above), a zinc etch­ing com­plet­ed in about 1910. It depicts a woman of the social class known as the Catrins (from a Span­ish word mean­ing “over-ele­gant”), a group who denied their Maya her­itage and thought of them­selves only as Euro­pean.

In 1947 Diego Rivera paid homage to Posa­da by plac­ing him at the cen­ter of his panoram­ic Dream of a Sun­day After­noon in the Alame­da Cen­tral with a full-length ver­sion of the Calav­era Cat­ri­na on his arm, while Rivera him­self, depict­ed as a young boy, stands on the oth­er side hold­ing her bony hand. For more of Posada’s Calav­eras, scroll down.

The Folk Dance Beyond the Grave:

Anoth­er zinc etch­ing from around 1910, El Jarabe en ultra­tum­ba (“The Folk Dance Beyond the Grave”) depicts a mer­ry group of skele­tons eat­ing, drink­ing, mak­ing music and danc­ing the tra­di­tion­al jarabe. The repro­duc­tion is from the posthu­mous 1930 mono­graph Las Obras de José Guadalupe Posa­da, Grabador Mex­i­cano.

Calav­era from Oax­a­ca:

Calav­era Oax­aque­ña (“Calav­era from Oax­a­ca”) was first pub­lished on a broad­side in 1910. It shows a proud-look­ing skele­ton dressed as a char­ro, run­ning past a crowd of skele­tons with a blood-stained knife in his hand.

Calav­era of Don Quixote:

In this etch­ing made some­time between 1910 and Posada’s death in 1913, Don Quixote rides into bat­tle wear­ing an upside-down bar­ber’s basin he imag­ines to be the leg­endary hel­met of Mam­bri­no, a sol­id-gold rel­ic said to make its wear­er invul­ner­a­ble. He van­quish­es every foe. “This is the calav­era of Don Quixote,” says the cap­tion on the orig­i­nal broad­side pub­li­ca­tion, “the first-class one, the match­less one, the gigan­tic one.”

Click on the images above to view them in a larg­er for­mat. You can view more prints by Posa­da at MoMA and The Pub­lic Domain Review.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead (1957)

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

J.K. Rowling Publishes New Harry Potter Story About the Malevolent Dolores Umbridge

in Literature, Sci Fi | November 1st, 2014

Although J.K. Rowl­ing wrote the final book in the Har­ry Pot­ter series in 2007, she con­tin­ues to give Pot­ter fans an occa­sion­al fix, pub­lish­ing short works that add a lit­tle more col­or and detail to the Har­ry Pot­ter sto­ry. Ardent fans know that Rowl­ing wrote a short Pre­quel in 2008. Also, ear­li­er this year, she began writ­ing new sto­ries about the 2014 Quid­ditch World Cup Finals for Pot­ter­more, the web­site for all things Har­ry Pot­ter. She lat­er fol­lowed with a sto­ry that takes the form of an arti­cle pub­lished in The Dai­ly Prophet  (“Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quid­ditch World Cup Final”), which gives us the first glimpse of the adult Har­ry Pot­ter.

Now, on Hal­loween, we get “The Sto­ry of Dolores Jane Umbridge” — a short fic­tion­al essay that gives us a more com­plete per­son­al por­trait of the char­ac­ter that read­ers found so easy to dis­like. In the essay [SPOILER ALERT], we learn that Umbridge was, gasp, a half blood, who had demon­strat­ed a cer­tain capac­i­ty for wicked­ness at a young age: “Even at sev­en­teen, Dolores was judge­men­tal, prej­u­diced and sadis­tic, although her con­sci­en­tious atti­tude, her sac­cha­rine man­ner towards her supe­ri­ors, and the ruth­less­ness and stealth with which she took cred­it for oth­er peo­ple’s work soon gained her advance­ment.”

Rowl­ing then appends some per­son­al com­ments to the sto­ry, explain­ing the ori­gins of the Umbridge char­ac­ter. She writes:

Once, long ago, I took instruc­tion in a cer­tain skill or sub­ject (I am being vague as vague can be, for rea­sons that are about to become obvi­ous), and in doing so, came into con­tact with a teacher or instruc­tor whom I dis­liked intense­ly on sight.

The woman in ques­tion returned my antipa­thy with inter­est. Why we took against each oth­er so instant­ly, hearti­ly and (on my side, at least) irra­tional­ly, I hon­est­ly can­not say. What sticks in my mind is her pro­nounced taste for twee acces­sories. I par­tic­u­lar­ly recall a tiny lit­tle plas­tic bow slide, pale lemon in colour that she wore in her short curly hair.… [H]er ten­den­cy to wear frills where (I felt) frills had no busi­ness to be, and to car­ry under­sized hand­bags, again as though they had been bor­rowed from a child’s dress­ing-up box, jarred, I felt, with a per­son­al­i­ty that I found the reverse of sweet, inno­cent and ingen­u­ous.

To learn more about the fic­tion­al and non-fic­tion­al sides of Dolores Umbridge, read Rowl­ing’s new piece here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Happy Halloween! Louis Armstrong Performs Skeleton in the Closet (1936)

in Film, Museums, Music | October 31st, 2014

Should you hap­pen to be in the vicin­i­ty of Coro­na, Queens this Hal­loween after­noon, the Louis Arm­strong House Muse­um will be wel­com­ing trick-or-treaters ’til 6pm. (Fun-sized Snick­ers be damned! Go any­way, just to see “To Jack Bradley, the ‘Great­est’ Pho­to Tak­er,” a col­lec­tion of can­did, pri­vate moments cap­tured by the friend Satch­mo described as his “white son.”)

If pre-exist­ing engage­ments pre­vent you from haunt­ing Coro­na today, vir­tu­al chills await you, above, with “The Skele­ton In The Clos­et,” Armstrong’s show-stop­ping num­ber from 1936’s Pen­nies From Heav­en. (That masked man on the drums is fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Lionel Hamp­ton.)

The vin­tage Hal­loween con­tent is a real treat. Gimme ghosts, gob­lins, and an “old desert­ed man­sion on an old for­got­ten road” over psy­cho gore or depressed pre­fab sex­i­ness any day, not just Octo­ber 31.

Pen­nies From Heav­en was Armstrong’s first major screen appear­ance. At the insis­tence of star Bing Cros­by, his turn as a math­e­mat­i­cal­ly-chal­lenged band­leader snagged him a main title cred­it, a first for an African-Amer­i­can actor appear­ing oppo­site whites.

The role itself is not a pil­lar of race advance­ment, but Ricky Ric­car­di, the Arm­strong House’s Archivist notes that Arm­strong remained fond of the work, reen­act­ing an entire scene from mem­o­ry when he and Cros­by appeared as guests on the David Frost Show in 1971.

Ric­car­di sub­jects “The Skele­ton in the Clos­et” to a close musi­cal and per­for­mance analy­sis on his Won­der­ful World of Louis Arm­strong blog, a major source of year round good­ies for Arm­strong fans.

Rat­tle your bones!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

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

44 Essential Movies for the Student of Philosophy

in Film, Philosophy | October 30th, 2014

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “philo­soph­i­cal film”? The Matrix, most like­ly, an obvi­ous exam­ple of a movie—or franchise—that explores time­less ques­tions: Who are we? What is real­i­ty? Are our lives noth­ing more than elab­o­rate sim­u­la­tions pro­grammed by hyper­in­tel­li­gent super­com­put­ers? Okay, that last one may be of more recent vin­tage, but it’s close­ly relat­ed to that ancient cave alle­go­ry of Plato’s that asks us to con­sid­er whether our expe­ri­ences of the world are noth­ing more than illu­sions ema­nat­ing from a “real” world that lies hid­den from view. Anoth­er influ­ence on The Matrix is Rene Descartes, whose dual­is­tic sep­a­ra­tion of con­scious­ness and body receives the max­i­mum of dra­mat­ic treat­ment.

But The Matrix is only one film among a great many that con­cern them­selves with clas­sic prob­lems of phi­los­o­phy. In a 2010 post for Mubi, Matt Whit­lock com­piled a list of 44 “Essen­tial Movies for a Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy.” Along with The Matrix, oth­er films of the past cou­ple decades get men­tions—Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, The Tru­man Show (“the true home of Plato’s Cave in mod­ern movies”), Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, I Heart Huck­abees, Being John Malkovich, Incep­tion. Also appear­ing on the list are clas­sics like Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal—which illus­trates, Whit­lock writes, “The Angst of The Absurd.” All of these films appear under the sub­head­ing “Famous thought exper­i­ments or dis­cus­sion of a famous philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem.”

Anoth­er cat­e­go­ry on the list is “Movies fea­tur­ing a philoso­pher.” The media-savvy Slavoj Žižek gets two men­tions, for 2006’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma and 2005’s Žižek! (excerpt above). Since Whit­lock com­piled the list, Žižek has received yet anoth­er fea­ture-length treatment—2012’s The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy. Astra Tay­lor, direc­tor of Žižek!, also includ­ed him in 2009’s The Exam­ined Life, along­side Peter Singer, Michael Hardt, Judith But­ler, Sunau­ra Tay­lor, and Cor­nel West. After the doc­u­men­taries, we have “Movies with philoso­pher as a char­ac­ter,” includ­ing Derek Jarman’s Wittgen­stein, with Clan­cy Chas­say as the iras­ci­ble logi­cian, Rober­to Rossellini’s 1958 Socrates, star­ring Jean Syl­vere in the title role, and, of course, Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, with Tony Steed­man as “So-Crates.”

The final three sub­cat­e­gories in Whitlock’s list are “Movies fea­tur­ing the ideas of par­tic­u­lar philoso­phers,” “Movies based on Nov­els writ­ten by famous philoso­phers,” and “Oth­er.” In the last bas­ket, Whit­lock places the PBS string-the­o­ry doc­u­men­tary The Ele­gant Uni­verse and Finnish per­for­mance artist M.A. Numminen’s bizarre adap­ta­tion of Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus. Whit­lock nar­rows the field by rul­ing out “movies that make you think deep crazy stuff” or those with “some new ‘exis­ten­tial twist’ on com­mon top­ics.” Instead, he sticks to those films “that (seem to be) incar­na­tions of clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ments or movies that have a major philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem as a main theme… that include top­ics that a seri­ous stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy needs to under­stand.”

Like most such lists, this one doesn’t claim to be defin­i­tive, and the four years since its com­pi­la­tion have pro­duced sev­er­al films that might war­rant inclu­sion. Yet anoth­er ref­er­ence from 2010—William G. Smith’s Socrates and Sub­ti­tles: A Philosopher’s Guide to 95 Thought-Pro­vok­ing Movies from Around the World—casts a wider net. But Whitlock’s list seems to me a very use­ful start­ing point for think­ing about the rela­tion­ship between phi­los­o­phy and film. Below, see the first ten films on the list:

Zizek! (2005)
Exam­ined Life (2008)
Der­ri­da (2002)
The Ister (2004)
The Pervert’s Guide To Cin­e­ma (2009)
Being In The World (2010)
Bill And Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture (2001)
When Niet­zsche Wept (2007)
The Last Days Of Immanuel Kant (1994)
The Alchemist Of Hap­pi­ness (2004)

Take a look at his full list here, and by all means, offer your own sug­ges­tions for films that fit the cri­te­ria in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Watch The Real­i­ty of the Vir­tu­al: 74 Min­utes of Pure Slavoj Žižek (2004)

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Did Bach’s Wife Compose Some of “His” Masterpieces? A New Documentary Says Yes

in Film, Music | October 30th, 2014

You may have heard of, or indeed read, Aus­tralian con­duc­tor Mar­tin Jarvis’ 2011 book Writ­ten By Mrs. Bach, which inves­ti­gates the ques­tion of whether Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s “cel­lo suites were com­posed by the Ger­man musi­cian’s sec­ond wife, Anna Mag­dale­na Bach.” Now, the book has become a doc­u­men­tary — adding the no doubt enrich­ing ele­ment of sound to the pro­ceed­ings — whose trail­er you can watch above. In it, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, “a pro­fes­sor of music, a com­pos­er and an Amer­i­can expert in doc­u­ment foren­sics advance the case.”

“Prof Jarvis said he aims to over­turn the ‘sex­ist’ con­ven­tion that recog­nised com­posers were always a ‘sole male cre­ator,’ to final­ly rein­state Mrs Bach into the his­to­ry books,” writes the Tele­graph’s Han­nah Fur­ness. “While Anna is known to have tran­scribed for Bach in his lat­er years, researchers found the hand­writ­ing did not have the ‘slow­ness or heav­i­ness’ usu­al­ly attrib­uted to some­one who is mere­ly copy­ing, but was like­ly to have flowed from her own mind,” bol­stered by “numer­ous cor­rec­tions to scores writ­ten in her hand, sig­nalling she is like­ly to have been com­pos­ing it as she went along.” A ter­ri­bly intrigu­ing ques­tion, but as with the ques­tion of Shake­speare­an author­ship, who held the pen now mat­ters less than what came out of it.

The works under scruti­ny here include “Bach’s unac­com­pa­nied cel­lo suites, of which there are six — the first of them pop­u­lar­ized as the theme of the film Mas­ter and Com­man­der: The Far Side of the World”; “the aria that begins and ends per­haps the most famous key­board work of all time, The Gold­berg Vari­a­tions”; and “a por­tion of the two-book mas­ter­work orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for the harp­si­chord known as the The Well-Tem­pered Clavier.” That infor­ma­tion comes from the Post, who also offer clips of these pieces. We’ve embed­ded them here for you to enjoy — and, no mat­ter who wrote them, you cer­tain­ly will. How often in his­to­ry, after all, do you encounter both man and wife who can com­pose for the ages?

via The Wash­ing­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Man Hauls a Piano Up a Mountain in Thailand and Plays Beethoven for Injured Elephants

in Life, Music | October 30th, 2014

If we’ve fea­tured Jazz for Cows on Open Cul­ture, then why not Clas­si­cal Music for Ele­phants? Actu­al­ly, they’re not just any ele­phants fea­tured above. They’re old, injured, hand­i­capped, some­times blind ele­phants who live in the moun­tains of Thai­land. And the gen­tle­man play­ing a slow move­ment from Beethoven’s “Pathé­tique Sonata” is Paul Bar­ton. On his Youtube chan­nel, Bar­ton men­tions that he hauled his piano into the moun­tains, to Ele­phantstay — a refuge for the ani­mals. And, emphat­i­cal­ly, he tells us that the piano’s keys are made of plas­tic, not of ivory, see­ing that the trade of ivory has caused ele­phants so much mis­ery.

Bar­ton has a playlist of 23 videos of ele­phants and his piano play­ing, the most viral of which was anoth­er clip where Bar­ton plays a 12 bar blues on the piano with Peter the Ele­phant. Peter’s par­tic­i­pa­tion was entire­ly impromp­tu and com­plete­ly of his own accord. You can see a pho­to gallery of Paul and the ele­phants here, and catch a radio inter­view with him here.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Modern Art Was Used As a Torture Technique in Prison Cells During the Spanish Civil War

in Art, History | October 29th, 2014

We’ve all got those friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers who con­sid­er “mod­ern art” a form of tor­ture. Next time they com­plain about an exhi­bi­tion you bring them to, just tell them how relieved they should feel that they did­n’t fight in the Span­ish Civ­il War — not just for the obvi­ous rea­sons; they could have found them­selves sub­ject not just to actu­al tor­ture, but tor­ture direct­ly inspired by mod­ernist aes­thet­ic prin­ci­ples. “A Span­ish art his­to­ri­an has found evi­dence that sug­gests some Civ­il War jail cells were built like 3‑D mod­ern art paint­ings in order to tor­ture pris­on­ers,” reports BBC News. “The cells were built in 1938 for the repub­li­can forces fight­ing Gen­er­al Fran­co’s Fas­cist Nation­al­ist army, who even­tu­al­ly won pow­er.” The find­ing comes from his­to­ri­an Jose Milicua, who dis­cov­ered ref­er­ences to these mod­ern-art cells among court papers from “the 1939 tri­al of French anar­chist Alphonse Lau­ren­cic, a repub­li­can, by a Fran­co-ist mil­i­tary court.”

“Dur­ing the tri­al,” the BBC arti­cle con­tin­ues, “Lau­ren­cic revealed he was inspired by mod­ern artists, such as sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dali and Bauhaus artist Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky” to cre­ate the six-foot-by-four-foot cells placed secret­ly in Barcelona (see a re-cre­ation above), which fea­tured “slop­ing beds at a 20-degree angle that were almost impos­si­ble to sleep on,” “irreg­u­lar­ly shaped bricks on the floor that pre­vent­ed pris­on­ers from walk­ing back­wards or for­wards,” walls “cov­ered in sur­re­al­ist pat­terns designed to make pris­on­ers dis­tressed and con­fused,” and light­ing effects “to make the art­work even more dizzy­ing.” Evi­dence also indi­cates that, else­where in Spain, Nation­al­ist pris­on­ers “were forced to watch Sal­vador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s film Un Chien Andalou,” espe­cial­ly an end­less loop of its “graph­ic sequence of an eye­ball being cut open” (at the top of the post).

Iron­i­cal­ly, those impris­oned in such cells would have wound up there in the name of their fas­cist cause, which like the Fran­co-back­ing Nazi regime in Ger­many, con­sid­ered mod­ernism “degen­er­a­tive.” Pre­sum­ably, they did­n’t leave their impris­on­ment with any more sym­pa­thet­ic idea of mod­ern art than the one they’d gone in with. “A sub­cur­rent of shock and provo­ca­tion has always lurked with­in avant-garde art, which delib­er­ate­ly sets out to chal­lenge bour­geois con­ven­tion and to elic­it a strong response” writes the New York Times’ John Rock­well. “My own expe­ri­ence has been that oppo­nents of new art are much too quick to pre­sume provo­ca­tion, let alone provo­ca­tion intend­ed lit­er­al­ly to tor­ture. Still, there can be no doubt that out­rage was and is a goal of some artists, even if they rarely pushed it to the log­i­cal extreme that Lau­ren­cic took it.” You can learn more about this unusu­al­ly artis­tic form of war­fare in this All Things Con­sid­ered inter­view with art his­to­ri­an Vic­to­ria Com­balia. (Lis­ten below.) And do try to sup­press those fan­tasies of throw­ing your more Philis­tine acquain­tances in there for an hour or two.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Restored Ver­sion of Un Chien Andalou: Luis Buñuel & Sal­vador Dalí’s Sur­re­al Film (1929)

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Maya Angelou Tells Studs Terkel How She Learned to Count Cards & Hustle in a New Animated Video

in Life, Literature | October 29th, 2014

Blank on Blank returns with anoth­er one of their visu­al­ly-dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed videos. This one lets us time trav­el back to 1970 when Studs Terkel, the great Amer­i­can author, his­to­ri­an, and radio broad­cast­er, sat down with acclaimed poet Maya Angelou. The inter­view took place short­ly after Angelou pub­lished her 1969 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and the con­ver­sa­tion turns, amus­ing­ly, to her child­hood years, when she learned how to hus­tle and count cards from her step father, Dad­dy Clidell. I bet Bukows­ki is applaud­ing wher­ev­er he is. Blank on Blank made this video in part­ner­ship with the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, which we fea­tured on our site late last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Blank on Blank Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

Watch Luis Buñuel’s Surreal Travel Documentary A Land Without Bread (1933)

in Film | October 29th, 2014

You don’t get the warm fuzzies from a Luis Buñuel movie. The most famous moment from his first film — Un Chien andalou, co-direct­ed with Sal­vador Dalí — is a woman get­ting her eye slashed with a straight razor. While on clos­er inspec­tion the gut­ted eye is from a dead don­key, the image still has the pow­er to shock 85 years lat­er. Though the movie was a col­lab­o­ra­tion, you can dis­cern Buñuel’s vision in this ear­ly work — shots of ants com­ing out of bod­i­ly ori­fices is pure Dalí; the caus­tic satire against the cler­gy is pure Buñuel. Dalí’s images are strange and beau­ti­ful. Buñuel’s are sub­ver­sive.

Though Dalí and Buñuel worked togeth­er again on the scorch­ing­ly anti-Catholic L’Age d’or, their col­lab­o­ra­tion fell apart in pre-pro­duc­tion. Dalí just want­ed to tweak those in pow­er. Buñuel, a com­mit­ted left­ist, want­ed to under­mine the whole bour­geoisie.

Land With­out Bread (Las Hur­des: Tier­ra Sin Pan) is Buñuel’s first movie with­out Dalí. Though lack­ing many of the overt sur­re­al­ist flour­ish­es of his ear­li­er movies – no ocu­lar muti­la­tion here – this 1933 film is much more unset­tling. Osten­si­bly a doc­u­men­tary about the Las Hur­des region locat­ed in a remote cor­ner of Spain, the film is in fact a lac­er­at­ing par­o­dy of trav­el doc­u­men­taries. Nov­el­ist Gra­ham Greene, in a review of the movie for Night and Day mag­a­zine, called it “an hon­est and hideous pic­ture.” You can watch it above.

Las Hur­des is poor but not as com­i­cal­ly awful as Buñuel depicts it. He paints the pic­ture of unleav­ened wretched­ness. Dis­ease, depri­va­tion and grind­ing despair are in just about every frame of the movie. And if the images weren’t mis­er­able enough, Buñuel had no prob­lem with cre­at­ing a lit­tle of his own mis­ery. In one noto­ri­ous scene, a don­key is stung to death by a swarm of angry bees. Buñuel accom­plished this by hav­ing the doomed beast slathered with hon­ey and placed next to a cou­ple of downed hives. Anoth­er scene sought to illus­trate that the moun­tain pass­es in Las Hur­des were treach­er­ous by show­ing a moun­tain goat tum­bling off a crag­gy slope to cer­tain death. Only the goat wasn’t clum­sy, it was wound­ed. If you look close­ly at the low­er right of the frame in that scene, you can see a puff of smoke from a crewmember’s gun. Buñuel, obvi­ous­ly, was not a mem­ber of PETA.

He jux­ta­pos­es these grim images with a monot­o­ne voice over that heaps dis­dain and con­de­scen­sion onto its sub­ject. Yet the nar­ra­tion is so height­ened, so pre­pos­ter­ous, so cru­el that you find your­self ques­tion­ing its verac­i­ty. Below is a par­tic­u­lar­ly infa­mous pas­sage of the movie’s nar­ra­tion.

Dwarfs and morons are very com­mon in the upper Hur­danos moun­tains. Their fam­i­lies employ them as goat herders if they’re not too dan­ger­ous. The ter­ri­ble impov­er­ish­ment of this race is due to the lack of hygiene, under nour­ish­ment and con­stant inter­mar­riage. The small­est one of these crea­tures is 28 years old. Words can­not express the hor­ror of their mirth­less grins as they play a sort of hide and go seek.

All this places the view­er into a very uncom­fort­able posi­tion. Buñuel’s por­tray­al of the locals makes them seem so alien that empa­thy is all but impos­si­ble. All that you are left with is, aside from revul­sion, an abstract­ed form of pity. It’s not all that dif­fer­ent from the Oh Dearism you get from watch­ing a news report on a par­tic­u­lar­ly blight­ed cor­ner of the Third World. The dif­fer­ence is that Buñuel, unlike the news, makes you acute­ly, uncom­fort­ably aware of your priv­i­leged posi­tion in rela­tion to the movie’s sub­ject.

Land With­out Bread will be added to our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Read Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel’s Recipe for the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni, and Then See Him Make One

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 lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Free: Stream Songs from Bob Dylan’s Upcoming Release, The Basement Tapes Complete

in Music | October 28th, 2014

As his loy­al fans already know, Bob Dylan will release next week a six-CD col­lec­tion called The Base­ment Tapes Com­plete: The Boot­leg Series, Vol. 11, which fea­tures 139 songs record­ed dur­ing the late 1960s, when, Dylan, recov­er­ing from a motor­cy­cle acci­dent, holed him­self up in a base­ment in Sauger­ties, NY and began play­ing music casu­al­ly with The Band. The sto­ry behind the mak­ing of The Base­ment Tapes gets nice­ly told by Sasha Frere-Jones in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, and over at NPR you can now stream a selec­tion of songs from the upcom­ing Base­ment Tapes release. Just thought you might want to know.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings