Kafka’s Parable “Before the Law” Narrated by Orson Welles & Illustrated with Pinscreen Art

in Animation, Film, Literature | September 8th, 2014

On Fri­day, we fea­tured Niko­lai Gogol’s “The Nose,” adapt­ed in 1963 through the work-inten­sive but aes­thet­i­cal­ly stun­ning means of “pin­screen ani­ma­tion” by Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er. But they had­n’t labored over it in total obscu­ri­ty; the year before, no less sol­id a pil­lar of Amer­i­can film than Orson Welles had com­mis­sioned their work for use in his adap­ta­tion of Franz Kafka’s The Tri­al, anoth­er work of lit­er­a­ture deeply con­cerned with the absurd. Crit­i­cal opin­ion varies about the film, which some con­sid­er Welles’ best work, oth­ers con­sid­er his worst, and oth­ers still con­sid­er a mix­ture of the two.

It cer­tain­ly remains one of his least-seen works, and yet it con­tains the most main­stream thing Alex­eieff and Park­er ever did. Very few deny the effec­tive­ness of the film’s pro­logue, which com­bines images straight from the hus­band-and-wife team’s pin­screen with Welles’ unmis­tak­able voice read­ing “Before the Law,” a para­ble from Kafka’s nov­el. Alex­eieff and Park­er’s images are still, rather than ani­mat­ed, which must have cut way down on the pro­duc­tion time.

“Before the law, there stands a guard,” Welles intones. “A man comes from the coun­try, beg­ging admit­tance to the law. But the guard can­not admit him. May he hope to enter at a lat­er time? That is pos­si­ble, said the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He’d been taught that the law was to be acces­si­ble to every man. ‘Do not attempt to enter with­out my per­mis­sion,’ says the guard. I am very pow­er­ful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more pow­er­ful than the last. By the guard’s per­mis­sion, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits.” These words estab­lish the basis for not just The Tri­al, but seem­ing­ly Kafka’s own legal sen­si­bil­i­ty, and indeed world­view. The man waits for years, star­ing at the guard and lav­ish­ing him with bribes. He grows old and enfee­bled. Final­ly, he asks why, despite the fact that “every man strives to attain the law,” nobody else but him has ever come to attempt pas­sage through its doors. “Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admit­tance,” the guard replies. “This door was intend­ed only for you! And now, I’m going to close it.” Welles then com­ments that “the log­ic of this sto­ry is the log­ic of a dream… a night­mare.” One under­stands why the direc­tor, who endured so many futile and absurd expe­ri­ences in the enter­tain­ment indus­try, would feel drawn to such a fable. As for how he chose such appro­pri­ate imagery for it — well, maybe just good luck.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

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.

Buddy Holly & Waylon Jennings in a Photo Booth (New York, 1959)

in Music | September 8th, 2014

Two Tex­ans, Bud­dy Hol­ly and Way­lon Jen­nings, met in a restau­rant in Lub­bock when they were teenagers. Hol­ly took the younger Jen­nings under his wing: He played gui­tar on Jen­ning’s first record­ing ses­sion in 1958. That same year, they col­lab­o­rat­ed on the song, “You’re the One.”  And, in late Jan­u­ary 1959, Hol­ly began a three-week tour across the Mid­west — dubbed the “Win­ter Dance Par­ty” — and had Jen­nings play bass in his band. Before they left, the two posed for a pic­ture in a pho­to booth at Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion in New York City.

The “Win­ter Dance Par­ty” would end in tragedy when Hol­ly climbed aboard a char­ter plane that crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa on Feb­ru­ary 3, 1959. Jen­nings got bumped from the flight, get­ting a chance to live beyond the Day the Music Died.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ear­li­est Footage of Elvis Pres­ley, Bud­dy Hol­ly and John­ny Cash (1955)

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

Nikolai Gogol’s Classic Story, “The Nose,” Animated With the Astonishing Pinscreen Technique (1963)

in Animation, Literature | September 7th, 2014

A mild-look­ing bar­ber slices into his morn­ing loaf of bread to find a human nose embed­ded with­in. You might imag­ine this image open­ing the next David Lynch movie, but it actu­al­ly sets up a more light­heart­ed, much old­er, and much more Russ­ian sto­ry: Niko­lai Gogol’s “The Nose.” (Find it in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.) The sto­ry soon intro­duces us to the man to whom the nose belongs, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial who wakes to find noth­ing but a smooth patch of flesh in the mid­dle of his face. The quest to reclaim his nose takes him to the archi­tec­tural­ly impos­ing, col­umn-inten­sive hall in which he works, where he finds that the organ through which he once breathed has not only grown a body of its own, but already risen above him in the ranks of the civ­il ser­vice. To find out how this increas­ing­ly bizarre, dream­like sce­nario resolves itself, you can either read Gogol’s sto­ry in the Eng­lish trans­la­tion free in Project Guten­berg’s copy of the Gogol Col­lec­tion The Man­tle and Oth­er Sto­ries, or you can watch Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er’s 1963 short above, which adapts “The Nose” by means of some­thing called pin­screen ani­ma­tion.

Ian Lums­den at Ani­ma­tion Blog describes Alex­eieff and Park­er’s par­tic­u­lar method as a form of “shad­ow ani­ma­tion in effect where­by Alexan­der works on the pos­i­tive side of a large black can­vas full of pins and Claire on the neg­a­tive side; the more the flat head­ed pins are pushed in the lighter is the effect, cre­at­ing the look of mez­zotint with its tex­tured shades of grey.” Lums­den adds that he “can scarce­ly con­ceive of a more labour inten­sive form of ani­ma­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that pins num­bered in their hun­dreds of thou­sands are used.” Just try to pay close atten­tion to some of the effects The Nose achieves and try not to wince at how demand­ing and painstak­ing an effort the ani­ma­tors, push­ing these tiny pins in and out to adjust the visu­al tex­tures just so, must have put forth to achieve them. Russ­ian lit­er­ary his­to­ri­an D.S. Mirsky calls the orig­i­nal sto­ry “a piece of sheer play, almost sheer non­sense,” where “more than any­where else Gogol dis­plays his extra­or­di­nary mag­ic pow­er of mak­ing great com­ic art out of noth­ing.” In these fun­ny and daz­zling but no doubt hard-won eleven min­utes Alex­eieff and Park­er express that sheer play with the most inten­sive ani­mat­ing work pos­si­ble.

You can find “The Nose” on our list of Ani­mat­ed Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion called 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revered Poet Alexan­der Pushkin Draws Sketch­es of Niko­lai Gogol and Oth­er Russ­ian Artists

George Saun­ders’ Lec­tures on the Russ­ian Greats Brought to Life in Stu­dent Sketch­es

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

Three Ani­mat­ed Shorts by the Ground­break­ing Russ­ian Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

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.

Help Kickstart Baba Brinkman’s Animated Rap Guide to Religion

in Animation, Religion | September 6th, 2014

If you’ve been fre­quent­ing Open Cul­ture long enough, you’ll know all about the Cana­di­an “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman and his epic raps. The sub­jects of Brinkman’s raps have includ­ed evo­lu­tion, arti­fi­cial selec­tion, The Can­ter­bury Tales, and British ver­sus Cana­di­an Eng­lish. Now, he’s try­ing to crowd­source a new rap album through Kick­starter. Actu­al­ly it’s an ani­mat­ed rap album about the sci­en­tif­ic study of reli­gion. You can lis­ten to two songs (of an even­tu­al eight) over at Kick­starter. They’re called “Reli­gion Evolves” and “Big Gods.”

Cur­rent­ly, 210 back­ers have pledged $13,419 towards the $20,000 he’s try­ing to raise. Above, Baba explains how the mon­ey will be spent. To move for­ward, the cam­paign needs to be ful­ly fund­ed by Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 9th, at 8:56 AM PDT. We hope you’ll help push Baba over the top. You can make a con­tri­bu­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hypnotic Performance on SNL (1979)

in Music, Television | September 5th, 2014

1979 was a strange year in music. A year of end­ings, in a way. Sid Vicious died, Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sab­bath… an old guard fad­ed away. On the oth­er hand, U2 went into the stu­dio for their debut, Kate Bush went on her first tour, and new wave emerged from punk’s end. It was also the year, notably or not, that Berlin/New York cabaret per­former Klaus Nomi broke, sort of. Nomi had been per­form­ing Wag­n­er and Vaude­ville in New York, and David Bowie, always on the make for unusu­al trav­el­ing com­pan­ions, invit­ed him to appear as a back­up singer on Sat­ur­day Night Live. Bowie him­self was in tran­si­tion, leav­ing behind his high con­cept work with Bri­an Eno on his Berlin Tril­o­gy (Low, ”Heroes,” and Lodger) and enter­ing anoth­er high pop phase. It was an abrupt, but nat­ur­al, shift for Bowie; tap­ping into Nomi’s art-pop affec­ta­tions may have seemed a per­fect way to bridge the two.

Bowie, Nomi, and flam­boy­ant New York per­for­mance artist Joey Arias do three songs, reach­ing back to Bowie’s folki­er times for “The Man Who Sold the World.” Bowie launch­es next into Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “TVC 15” in a skirt and heels, while Nomi and Arias drag around a pink plas­tic poo­dle. For the last num­ber, Lodger’s “When You’re a Boy,” Bowie per­haps invents the look of 80s new wave videos to come—from Peter Gabriel to the Pet Shop Boys—while wear­ing a life-size mar­i­onette cos­tume. Some amaz­ing mech­a­nism, pup­peteers off­stage or Bowie him­self, oper­ates the over­sized arms, and the whole thing takes SNL musi­cal per­for­mances to a place they’d nev­er been. Nomi was so impressed with the cos­tum­ing that he adopt­ed the huge plas­tic tuxe­do Bowie wears dur­ing the first song as his own, wear­ing one on the cov­er of his first album and per­form­ing in it until his death from AIDS in 1983. The broad­cast above took place on Decem­ber 15, 1979.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jäger­meis­ter (Cir­ca 1980)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Com­fort­ably Numb” Live (2006)

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

The Art of Swimming, 1587: A Manual with Woodcut Illustrations

in Art, History, Sports | September 5th, 2014

As the late great Robert Shaw remarked in Jaws, “here’s to swim­min’ with bow-legged women.”

Or fail­ing that, an extreme­ly bow-legged man, as fea­tured in Sir Ever­ard Dig­by’s 1587 trea­tise-cum-man­u­al, De Arte Natan­di (The Art of Swim­ming). Hub­ba hub­ba, who needs trunks?

There were no pools at the time. The male bathers pop­u­lat­ing Digby’s 40 plus wood­cut illus­tra­tions are riv­er swim­mers, like Ben Franklin, the inven­tor of swim fins and the only Found­ing Father to be induct­ed (posthu­mous­ly) into the Inter­na­tion­al Swim­ming Hall of Fame.

As Franklin would two cen­turies lat­er, Dig­by sought to bring both water safe­ty and prop­er form to the mass­es. Accord­ing to the BBC’s His­to­ry Mag­a­zine, the Cam­bridge Don’s goal was “to turn swim­ming from a dis­re­gard­ed skill of bargees and boat­men into an accom­plish­ment for gen­tle­men, to make them more like the Romans.”

To get clos­er to his goal, Dig­by breaks it down as deft­ly as an online swim instruc­tor in the era of youtube. When not deliv­er­ing the how to’s on back stroke, side stroke, and dog­gy pad­dle, he’s advis­ing absolute begin­ners on how to enter the water and steer clear of ani­mal-befouled holes, and help­ing more sea­soned stu­dents embell­ish their game with nifty tricks, (danc­ing, toe­nail cut­ting).

Pro­long the lazy days of sum­mer by brows­ing through more images from De Arte Natan­di at the Pub­lic Domain Review. Or see the text itself here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Illus­trat­ed in a Remark­able Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script (c. 1450)

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

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) Describes on Louie Her Undying Commitment to Comedy

in Comedy | September 4th, 2014

She didn’t earn the posthu­mous sobri­quet “Comedic Stilet­to” from The New York Times for noth­ing. “Raspy loud­mouth” come­di­an Joan Rivers inspired strong emo­tions and reli­able bursts of con­tro­ver­sy with her abra­sive, take-no-pris­on­ers style. Mas­ter­ing insult com­e­dy was a sur­vival skill for the com­ic who took as much as she dished out while com­ing up in the aggres­sive, most­ly male stand-up world. Before the late-night, fash­ion, and real­i­ty shows, auto­bi­og­ra­phy and doc­u­men­tary, and stints on QVC, Rivers carved paths, paved ways, blazed trails, and left oth­er pio­neer­ing marks for such mas­ters of the put-down as Roseanne Barr, Sarah Sil­ver­man, and oth­ers who—as a 1965 NYT review painful­ly put it—over­came “the hand­i­cap of a woman com­ic.” Ham-fist­ed jabs from the press aside, Rivers said many times she nev­er thought of her­self par­tic­u­lar­ly as a “woman com­ic,” and if that des­ig­na­tion ever sig­ni­fied a “hand­i­cap” or some sort of gim­mick it’s no won­der. She deserved bet­ter than to be patron­ized. Rivers was true to the craft, as every com­ic cur­rent­ly eulo­giz­ing her will tell you, and as she would tell us her­self, at every oppor­tu­ni­ty, but per­haps nev­er more earnest­ly than to Louis C.K. above in a clip from his show. C.K. is moved enough to put one of his sig­na­ture moves on her. Rivers’ response? “Nobody likes necrophil­i­acs.” She will haunt us from the grave with her mor­bid, scalpel-like one-lin­ers, may she rest in peace.

via @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robin Williams (1951–2014) Per­forms Unknown Shake­speare Play in 1970s Standup Rou­tine

Don Par­do (1918–2014), Voice of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Sug­gests Using Short Words

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

Yale Launches an Archive of 170,000 Photographs Documenting the Great Depression

in Archives, History, Photography | September 4th, 2014

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, The Farm Secu­ri­ty Administration—Office of War Infor­ma­tion (FSA-OWI) hired pho­tog­ra­phers to trav­el across Amer­i­ca to doc­u­ment the pover­ty that gripped the nation, hop­ing to build sup­port for New Deal pro­grams being cham­pi­oned by F.D.R.‘s admin­is­tra­tion.

Leg­endary pho­tog­ra­phers like Dorothea Lange, Walk­er Evans, and Arthur Roth­stein took part in what amount­ed to the largest pho­tog­ra­phy project ever spon­sored by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. All told, 170,000 pho­tographs were tak­en, then cat­a­logued back in Wash­ing­ton DC. The Library of Con­gress became their even­tu­al rest­ing place.

We first men­tioned this his­toric project back in 2012, when the New York Pub­lic Library put a rel­a­tive­ly small sam­pling of these images online. But today we have big­ger news.

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty has launched Pho­togram­mar, a sophis­ti­cat­ed web-based plat­form for orga­niz­ing, search­ing, and visu­al­iz­ing these 170,000 his­toric pho­tographs.

The Pho­togram­mar plat­form gives you the abil­i­ty to search through the images by pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Do a search for Dorothea Lange’s pho­tographs, and you get over 3200 images, includ­ing the now icon­ic pho­to­graph at the bot­tom of this post.

Pho­togram­mar also offers a handy inter­ac­tive map that lets you gath­er geo­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about 90,000 pho­tographs in the col­lec­tion.

And then there’s a sec­tion called Pho­togram­mar Labs where inno­v­a­tive visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques and data exper­i­ments will grad­u­al­ly shed new light on the image archive.

Accord­ing to Yale, the Pho­togram­mar project was fund­ed by a grant from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties (NEH). Direct­ed by Lau­ra Wexler, the project was under­tak­en by Yale’’s Pub­lic Human­i­ties Pro­gram and its Pho­to­graph­ic Mem­o­ry Work­shop. You can learn more about the gen­e­sis of the project and its tech­ni­cal chal­lenges here.

Top image: A migrant agri­cul­tur­al work­er in Marysville migrant camp, try­ing to fig­ure out his year’s earn­ings. Tak­en in Cal­i­for­nia in 1935 by Dorothea Lange.

Sec­ond image: Allie Mae Bur­roughs, wife of cot­ton share­crop­per. Pho­to tak­en in Hale Coun­ty, Alaba­ma in 1935 by Walk­er Evans.

Third image: Wife and chil­dren of share­crop­per in Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty, Arkansas. By Arthur Roth­stein. 1935.

Fourth image: Wife of Negro share­crop­per, Lee Coun­ty, Mis­sis­sip­pi. Again tak­en by Arthur Roth­stein in 1935.

Bot­tom image: Des­ti­tute pea pick­ers in Cal­i­for­nia. Moth­er of sev­en chil­dren. Age thir­ty-two. Tak­en by Dorothea Lange in Nipo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia, 1936.

h/t @pbkauf

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Found: Lost Great Depres­sion Pho­tos Cap­tur­ing Hard Times on Farms, and in Town

Down­load for Free 2.6 Mil­lion Images from Books Pub­lished Over Last 500 Years on Flickr

The Get­ty Adds Anoth­er 77,000 Images to its Open Con­tent Archive

The Fin­land Wartime Pho­to Archive: 160,000 Images From World War II Now Online

Foodie Alert: New York Public Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restaurant Menus (1851–2008)

in Archives, Design, Food & Drink, History | September 4th, 2014

To be a New York­er is to be a gourmand—of food carts, local din­ers, super­mar­kets, out­er bor­ough mer­ca­dos, what­ev­er lat­est upscale restau­rant sur­faces in a giv­en sea­son.… It is to be as like­ly to have a menu in hand as a news­pa­per, er… smart­phone…, and it is to notice the design of said menus. Well, some of us have done that. Often the added atten­tion goes unre­ward­ed, but then some­times it does. Now you, dear read­er, can expe­ri­ence well over one-hun­dred years of star­ing at menus, thanks to the New York Pub­lic Library’s enor­mous dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Fan­cy a time warp through din­ing halls abroad? You’ll not only find sev­er­al hun­dred New York restau­rants rep­re­sent­ed here, but hun­dreds more from all over the world. With a col­lec­tion of 17,000 menus and count­ing, a per­son could eas­i­ly get lost.

You may notice I used the word “gour­mand,” and not “food­ie” above. While it might be a gross anachro­nism to call some­one a “food­ie” in 1859, the year the menu for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Hotel (above) was print­ed, it might also import a cos­mopoli­tan con­cept of din­ing that didn’t seem to exist, at least at this estab­lish­ment. More than any­thing, the menu resem­bles the var­i­ous descrip­tions of pub food that pop­u­late Joyce’s Ulysses. Though much of it was deli­cious, I’m sure, for heavy eaters of meat, eggs, pota­toes, and bread, you won’t find a veg­etable so much as men­tioned in pass­ing. The fare does include such hearty sta­ples as “Hashed Fish,” “Stale Bread,” and “Break­fast Wine.” The design mar­ries flow­ery Vic­to­ri­an ele­ments with the kind of font found in Old West type­sets.

1939 was a good year for menus, at least in Europe. While New York insti­tu­tions like the Wal­dorf Asto­ria prac­ticed cer­tain design aus­ter­i­ties, the Mai­son Prunier, with loca­tions in Paris and Lon­don, spared no expense in the print­ing of their full-col­or fish­er­mans’ slice of life paint­ing on the menu cov­er above and the ele­gant typog­ra­phy of its exten­sive con­tents below. A ver­sion was print­ed in English—though The New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL) doesn’t seem to have a copy of it dig­i­tized. One Eng­lish phrase stands out at the bot­tom, how­ev­er: the trans­la­tion of “Tout Ce Qui Vient De La Mer–Everything From the Sea.” Oth­er menus for this restau­rant show the same kind of care­ful atten­tion to design. Click­ing on the pages of many of the NYPL menus—like this one from a 1938 Mai­son Prunier menu—brings up an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that links each dish to close-up views.

In a post on the NYPL menu col­lec­tion, Buz­zfeed specif­i­cal­ly com­pares New York menus of today with those of 100 years ago, not­ing that prices quot­ed sig­ni­fy cents, not dol­lars. A 1914 Del­moni­co “Rib of Roast” would run you .75 cents, for exam­ple, while a 2014 rib eye there sells for 58 big ones. Of course then, as now, many restau­rants con­sid­ered it gauche to print prices at all. See, for exam­ple, the din­ner menu at New Orleans’ St. Charles Hotel from 1908 below. We may have an all-inclu­sive feast here since this comes from a New Years Eve bill, which also includes a “Musi­cal Pro­gram” in two parts and a list of local “Amuse­ments” at such places as Blaney’s Lyric The­atre, Tulane, Dauphine, “French Orera” (sic), and the 2:00 pm races at City Park. Mati­nees and 8 o’clock shows every day except Sun­day.

The six­ties gave us an explo­sion of menus that par­al­lel in many cas­es the break­out designs of mag­a­zine and album cov­ers. See two stand­outs below. The North Ger­man Lloyd, just below, went with a funky chil­dren’s book-cov­er illus­tra­tion for its 1969 menu cov­er, though its inte­ri­or main­tains a min­i­mal­ist clar­i­ty. Below it, see the strik­ing first page of a menu for John­ny Garneau’s Gold­en Spike from that same year. The cov­er boasts a nos­tal­gic head­line sto­ry for Promon­to­ry News: “Gold­en Spike is Dri­ven: The last rail is laid! East meets West in Utah!” Put it on the cov­er of a  Band or CSNY album and no one bats an eye.

See many, many, many more menus at the NYPL site. With the steady growth of food schol­ar­ship, this col­lec­tion is cer­tain­ly a boon to researchers, as well as curi­ous gour­mands, food­ies, and rabid din­ers of all stripes.

via Buz­zfeed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

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

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

Derek Jarman Creates Pioneering Music Videos for The Smiths, Marianne Faithfull & the Pet Shop Boys

in Film, Music | September 4th, 2014

Today we think of music videos, per­haps quaint­ly and not always cor­rect­ly, as the cra­dle of mod­ern Hol­ly­wood’s sense-over­load­ing, log­ic-sac­ri­fic­ing, teen-tar­get­ing, “quick-cut” style. But the medi­um, espe­cial­ly in its for­ma­tive years, offered a wide-open can­vas not just to hacks, but to auteurs as well. Case in point: the British direc­tor, artist, and writer Derek Jar­man, well known for fea­tures like Car­avag­gio, The Last of Eng­land, and Blue, but maybe even bet­ter-known, depend­ing on which cir­cles you run in, for his short films meant to pro­mote songs from a vari­ety of musi­cal-cul­tur­al fig­ures: The Smiths, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, the Pet Shop Boys, Pat­ti Smith, the Sex Pis­tols, Bryan Fer­ry. At the top of the post, we see Jar­man push­ing the bound­aries of the music video, inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly, as ear­ly as 1979, with a 12-minute visu­al suite inter­pret­ing not one but three of Faith­ful­l’s songs.

Jar­man goes a minute longer just above for anoth­er, 1986 three-parter: The Smiths’ “The Queen is Dead,” “Pan­ic,” and “There is a Light that Nev­er Goes Out,” songs which allow him to ful­ly exer­cise his pen­chant for nos­tal­gia-sat­u­rat­ed styles of footage and acid crit­i­cism of the direc­tion of Eng­land. He would also col­lab­o­rate with his equal­ly satir­i­cal coun­try­men the Pet Shop Boys in the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s on no few­er than four sep­a­rate videos, two of which, both from 1987, appear below: “Rent” and “It’s a Sin.” What’s more, he direct­ed their 1989 live tour, which fea­tured not only elab­o­rate cos­tumes but whole new short films pro­ject­ed onstage. With his com­bi­na­tion of the­atri­cal sense and inter­est in abstract visu­al expres­sion, Jar­man must have seemed a per­fect fit for such an aes­thet­i­cal­ly mind­ed out­fit as the Pet Shop Boys. Those qual­i­ties also placed him well to define the nature of the music video itself — in which, at its best, we can still detect his influ­ence today.

Rent

It’s a Sin

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Car­avag­gio, Derek Jarman’s Take on the Baroque Painter’s Life, Work & Roman­tic Com­pli­ca­tions (1986)

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

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.