How to Draw Bugs Bunny: A Primer by Legendary Animator Chuck Jones

in Animation | June 20th, 2014

Bugs Bun­ny, that car­rot-chomp­ing, cross-dress­ing ras­cal, might have been cre­at­ed by Tex Avery in the 1940 car­toon A Wild Hare, but he real­ly came into his own under the direc­tion of Chuck Jones. In car­toons like What’s Opera, Doc and Rab­bit Sea­son, Jones refined Bugs’ char­ac­ter, turn­ing him into some­one who was wit­ty, resource­ful and, most of all, cool. Whether or not he was going up against Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam or Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian, Bugs always seemed to have the upper hand. Jones once com­pared Bugs with his vain, self-aggran­diz­ing rival Daffy Duck by say­ing, “Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.”

In the video above, Jones shows you how to draw Bugs, and, of course, he makes it look like a cinch. “If you were to draw Bugs,” says Jones in his clipped, pre­cise dic­tion, “the best way to do it is learn how to draw a car­rot and then you can hook a rab­bit on to it.” Not the most help­ful advice for aspir­ing ani­ma­tors. Yet watch­ing Jones sketch out the world’s most famous rab­bit in a mere cou­ple of min­utes is a joy to see.

The trick to draw­ing Bugs, appar­ent­ly, is the nose.  After rough­ing out a cir­cle for the head and a reni­form oval for the body, Jones draws a tiny tri­an­gle for the nose. From there, he sketch­es out two lines, radi­at­ing out­ward from the nose, which deter­mines the loca­tion of Bugs’ ears and eyes. As Jones fills in the rest of the face, he reveals that the inspi­ra­tion of Bugs’ broad, toothy grin was Nor­we­gian fig­ure skater turned 1930s Hol­ly­wood star Sonia Henie. Not, per­haps, the first per­son to come to mind.

To see the Bugs in action, be sure to watch one of Jones’s great­est car­toons, Hare-Way to the Stars. It fea­tures Bugs squar­ing off against Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian in his quest to blow up the Earth with his Illudi­um Q‑36 Explo­sive Space Mod­u­la­tor. More great ani­ma­tions can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Per­forms the Voic­es of Bugs Bun­ny and Oth­er Car­toon Leg­ends

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

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.

Stephen Hawking Shows His Funny Side in John Oliver’s Series “Great Minds: People Who Think Good”

in Comedy, Physics | June 19th, 2014

John Oliv­er kicked off his new series “Great Minds: Peo­ple Who Think Good” with an extend­ed inter­view with Stephen Hawk­ing. For a moment there, it all feels a bit like a clas­sic Ali G inter­view. (Remem­ber Sacha Baron Cohen’s price­less inter­view with Noam “Nor­man” Chom­sky?) But, soon enough, you real­ize that Hawk­ing is in on the joke. And he deliv­ers some good lines, with the hint of a smile.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

Stephen Hawk­ing: Aban­don Earth Or Face Extinc­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

Though I sel­dom long for my native cul­ture when abroad, when the need for a hit of Amer­i­cana does arise (and I say this cur­rent­ly writ­ing from Seoul, South Korea), I fill my iPod with old time radio. Many shows from Amer­i­ca’s “Gold­en Age” of wire­less broad­cast­ing can fill this need, but one could do much worse than Dimen­sion X, the ear­ly-1950s sci­ence-fic­tion pro­gram we fea­tured ear­li­er this month, or its late-1950s suc­ces­sor X Minus One, whose episodes you can also find at the Inter­net Archive. Both show­case Amer­i­can cul­ture at its mid-20th-cen­tu­ry finest: for­ward-look­ing, tem­pera­men­tal­ly bold, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly adept, and sat­u­rat­ed with earnest­ness but for the occa­sion­al sur­pris­ing­ly know­ing irony or bleak edge of dark­ness. That last comes cour­tesy of these shows’ writ­ing tal­ent, a group which includes such canon­i­cal names as Philip K. Dick, Ray Brad­bury, Isaac Asi­mov, and Robert Hein­lein.

X Minus One’s run, which last­ed from April 1955 to Jan­u­ary 1958, includ­ed a heap­ing help­ing of the evi­dent­ly high­ly radio-adapt­able Ray Brad­bury: his sto­ries “And The Moon Be Still As Bright,” “Mars is Heav­en,” “The Veldt,” “Dwellers in Silence,” “Zero Hour,” “To the Future,” and “Mar­i­onettes, Inc.,” all appeared as episodes. From Robert A. Hein­lein’s hard­er-bit­ten body of work the show pro­duced “Uni­verse,” “Requiem,” and “The Roads Must Roll.” Isaac Asi­mov, one of the most sci­en­tif­ic of that era’s sci­ence-fic­tion writ­ers, wrote the source mate­r­i­al for “Night­fall,” “C‑Chute,” and “Host­ess.” The pen of Philip K. Dick, sure­ly the most pure­ly imag­i­na­tive of the bunch, for its part pro­duced “The Defend­ers” and “Colony.” Amer­i­ca let fly all sorts of visions of the future back then, from the opti­mistic to the pes­simistic, the utopi­an to the dystopi­an, the pro­gres­sive to the regres­sive. The afore­men­tioned writ­ers did it best by mix­ing all those sen­si­bil­i­ties into each of their visions, which you can hear, along with those of many oth­ers, in X Minus One’s robust archive. You can stream sev­er­al of the episodes below.

“The Defend­ers” (Philip K. Dick)

“Night­fall” (Isaac Asi­mov)

“Zero Hour” (Ray Brad­bury)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

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.

Marcel Proust Fills Out a Questionnaire in 1890: The Manuscript of the ‘Proust Questionnaire’

in Literature | June 19th, 2014

Mar­cel Proust, the author of the great mod­ernist work À la recherche du temps per­du (Remem­brance of Things Past), was the very def­i­n­i­tion of the sen­si­tive artist. Per­pet­u­al­ly bat­tling bouts of depres­sion and ill health, Proust lived at home with his par­ents until their deaths. Though he became a recluse lat­er in life, sleep­ing by day and writ­ing fever­ish­ly at night, he poured his soul into his epic nov­el, detail­ing his strug­gles in a man­ner that has con­nect­ed deeply with gen­er­a­tions of read­ers. Proust has become over the years an icon of artis­tic sin­cer­i­ty.

In the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the con­fes­sion book was all the rage in Eng­land. It asked read­ers to answer a series of per­son­al ques­tions designed to reveal their inner char­ac­ters. In 1890, Proust, still a teenag­er, took this ques­tion­naire, answer­ing the ques­tions with frank sin­cer­i­ty. The orig­i­nal man­u­script was uncov­ered in 1924, two years after Proust’s death, and in 2003, it was auc­tioned off for rough­ly $130,000. You can see the orig­i­nal 1890 man­u­script above and, if your French isn’t up to snuff, we have a trans­la­tion below.

Many decades lat­er, French TV host Bernard Piv­ot start­ed using this exact type of ques­tion­naire to inter­view thinkers, lead­ers and celebri­ties. It proved to be a great device for get­ting a glimpse into the inner work­ings of a star’s mind. James Lip­ton adapt­ed the ques­tion­naire for his own show, Inside the Actors Stu­dio (watch above), while mis­at­tribut­ing its ori­gins to Proust. Nonethe­less, the name ‘The Proust Ques­tion­naire” stuck. The quiz is also a reg­u­lar fea­ture in the mag­a­zine Van­i­ty Fair. You can read the respons­es from the likes of Rachel Mad­dow, Har­ri­son Ford and Louis CK, whose answers read like an exten­sion of his stand up rou­tine. And if you’re eager to take the test your­self, you can do so here.

The prin­ci­pal aspect of my per­son­al­i­ty:
The need to be loved; more pre­cise­ly, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired.

The qual­i­ty that I desire in a man:
Man­ly virtues, and frank­ness in friend­ship.

The qual­i­ty that I desire in a woman:
Fem­i­nine charms.

Your chief char­ac­ter­is­tic:
[Left Blank]

What I appre­ci­ate most about my friends:
To have ten­der­ness for me, if their per­son­age is exquis­ite enough to ren­der quite high the price of their ten­der­ness.

My main fault:
Not know­ing, not being able to “want”.

My favorite occu­pa­tion:
Lov­ing.

My dream of hap­pi­ness:
I am afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroy­ing it by speak­ing it.

What would be my great­est mis­for­tune?
Not to have known my moth­er or my grand­moth­er.

What I should like to be:
Myself, as the peo­ple whom I admire would like me to be.

The coun­try where I should like to live:
A coun­try where cer­tain things that I should like would come true as though by mag­ic, and where ten­der­ness would always be rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed.

My favorite col­or:
The beau­ty is not in the col­ors, but in their har­mo­ny.

My favorite bird:
The swal­low.

My favorite prose authors:
Cur­rent­ly, Ana­tole France and Pierre Loti.

My favorite poets:
Baude­laire and Alfred de Vigny.

My heroes in fic­tion:
Ham­let.

My favorite hero­ines in fic­tion.
Bérénice.

My favorite com­posers:
Beethoven, Wag­n­er, Schu­mann.

My favorite painters:
Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Rem­brandt.

My heroes in real life:
Mr. Dar­lu, Mr. Boutroux.

My hero­ines in his­to­ry:
Cleopa­tra.

My favorite names:
I only have one at a time.

What I hate most of all:
What is bad about me.

His­tor­i­cal fig­ures that I despise the most:
I am not edu­cat­ed enough.

The mil­i­tary event that I admire most:
My mil­i­tary ser­vice!

The gift of nature that I would like to have:
Will-pow­er, and seduc­tive­ness.

How I want to die:
Improved—and loved.

My present state of mind:
Bore­dom from hav­ing thought about myself to answer all these ques­tions.

Faults for which I have the most indul­gence:
Those that I under­stand.

My mot­to:
I should be too afraid that it bring me mis­for­tune.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er Dis­cuss­es His Love for Read­ing Proust, and Why “Lit­er­a­ture is Cru­cial to Any Democ­ra­cy”

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Lis­ten­ing to Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past on the Cen­ten­ni­al of Swann’s Way

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.

Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel Shot on 16mm Film with Amateur Japanese Actors (1983)

in Film, Television | June 18th, 2014

The Dis­ney Chan­nel aired Tim Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel only once, on Hal­loween night in 1983, but it must have giv­en those few who saw the broad­cast much to pon­der over the fol­low­ing three decades. For all that time, the 35-minute adap­ta­tion of that old Ger­man folk­tale stood as per­haps the hard­est-to-see item in the Edward Scis­sorhands and The Night­mare Before Christ­mas auteur’s cat­a­log. Of course, back in 1983, the 25-year-old Bur­ton had­n’t yet made either of those movies, nor any of the oth­er beloved­ly askew fea­tures for which we know him today. He had to his name only a cou­ple of ani­mat­ed shorts made at CalArts and a stop-motion homage to his hero Vin­cent Price. Still, that added up to enough to land him this project, his first live-action film made as an adult, which he used as an out­let for his fas­ci­na­tion with Japan.

Using an all-Japan­ese cast, shoot­ing with the 16-mil­lime­ter aes­thet­ic of old mar­tial arts movies, and tak­ing a spe­cial-effects tech­nique or two from the Godzil­la man­u­al, Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel looks (and sounds) like no ver­sion of the sto­ry you’ve seen before, or will like­ly ever see again. But at least you can now watch it as often as you like, owing to its recent sud­den appear­ance on Youtube after that long absence from pub­lic viewa­bil­i­ty, bro­ken only by screen­ings at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and the Ciné­math­èque Française. In it we expere­ince the inter­sec­tion of the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, the new and strange free­dom of ear­ly cable tele­vi­sion, and the sheer audac­i­ty of a young film­mak­er — not to men­tion a heck of a hand-to-hand com­bat ses­sion between Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch who would make them din­ner. Her din­ner, that is.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

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.

Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)

in Letters, Literature, Psychology | June 18th, 2014

Feel­ings about James Joyce’s Ulysses tend to fall rough­ly into one of two camps: the reli­gious­ly rev­er­ent or the exasperated/bored/overwhelmed. As pop­u­lar exam­ples of the for­mer, we have the many thou­sand cel­e­brants of Blooms­day—June 16th, the date on which the nov­el is set in 1904. These rev­el­ries approach the lev­el of saints’ days, with re-enact­ments and pil­grim­ages to impor­tant Dublin sites. On the oth­er side, we have the reac­tions of Vir­ginia Woolf, say, or cer­tain friends of mine who left wry com­ments on Blooms­day posts about pick­ing up some­thing more “read­able” to cel­e­brate. (A third cat­e­go­ry, the scan­dal­ized, has more or less died off, as scat­ol­ogy, blas­phe­my, and cuck­oldry have become the stuff of sit­coms.) Anoth­er famous read­er, Carl Jung, seems at first to damn the nov­el with some faint praise and much scathing crit­i­cism in a 1932 essay for Europäis­che Revue, but ends up, despite him­self, writ­ing about the book in the lan­guage of a true believ­er.

A great many read­ers of Jung’s essay may per­haps nod their heads at sen­tences like “Yes, I admit I feel I have been made a fool of” and “one should nev­er rub the reader’s nose into his own stu­pid­i­ty, but that is just what Ulysses does.” To illus­trate his bore­dom with the nov­el, he quotes “an old uncle,” who says “’Do you know how the dev­il tor­tures souls in hell? […] He keeps them wait­ing.’” This remark, Jung writes, “occurred to me when I was plow­ing through Ulysses for the first time. Every sen­tence rais­es an expec­ta­tion which is not ful­filled; final­ly, out of sheer res­ig­na­tion, you come to expect noth­ing any longer.” But while Jung’s cri­tique may val­i­date cer­tain hasty read­ers’ hatred of Joyce’s near­ly unavoid­able 20th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­work, it also probes deeply into why the nov­el res­onates.

For all of his frus­tra­tion with the book—his sense that it “always gives the read­er an irri­tat­ing sense of inferiority”—Jung nonethe­less bestows upon it the high­est praise, com­par­ing Joyce to oth­er prophet­ic Euro­pean writ­ers of ear­li­er ages like Goethe and Niet­zsche. “It seems to me now,” he writes, “that all that is neg­a­tive in Joyce’s work, all that is cold-blood­ed, bizarre and banal, grotesque and dev­il­ish, is a pos­i­tive virtue for which it deserves praise.” Ulysses is “a devo­tion­al book for the object-besot­ted white man,” a “spir­i­tu­al exer­cise, an aes­thet­ic dis­ci­pline, an ago­niz­ing rit­u­al, an arcane pro­ce­dure, eigh­teen alchem­i­cal alem­bics piled on top of one anoth­er […] a world has passed away, and is made new.” He ends the essay by quot­ing the novel’s entire final para­graph. (Find longer excerpts of Jung’s essay here and here.)

Jung not only wrote what may be the most crit­i­cal­ly hon­est yet also glow­ing response to the nov­el, but he also took it upon him­self in Sep­tem­ber of 1932 to send a copy of the essay to the author along with the let­ter below. Let­ters of Note tells us that Joyce “was both annoyed and proud,” a fit­ting­ly divid­ed response to such an ambiva­lent review.

Dear Sir,

Your Ulysses has pre­sent­ed the world such an upset­ting psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lem that repeat­ed­ly I have been called in as a sup­posed author­i­ty on psy­cho­log­i­cal mat­ters.

Ulysses proved to be an exceed­ing­ly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusu­al efforts, but also to rather extrav­a­gant pere­gri­na­tions (speak­ing from the stand­point of a sci­en­tist). Your book as a whole has giv­en me no end of trou­ble and I was brood­ing over it for about three years until I suc­ceed­ed to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I’m pro­found­ly grate­ful to your­self as well as to your gigan­tic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall prob­a­bly nev­er be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grind­ing of nerves and of grey mat­ter. I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have writ­ten about Ulysses because I could­n’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grum­bled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of ver­i­ta­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal peach­es. I sup­pose the dev­il’s grand­moth­er knows so much about the real psy­chol­o­gy of a woman, I did­n’t.

Well, I just try to rec­om­mend my lit­tle essay to you, as an amus­ing attempt of a per­fect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and hap­pened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gath­er from my arti­cle what Ulysses has done to a sup­pos­ed­ly bal­anced psy­chol­o­gist.

With the expres­sion of my deep­est appre­ci­a­tion, I remain, dear Sir,

Yours faith­ful­ly,

C. G. Jung

With this let­ter of intro­duc­tion, Jung was “a per­fect stranger” to Joyce no longer. In fact, two years lat­er, Joyce would call on the psy­chol­o­gist to treat his daugh­ter Lucia, who suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia, a trag­ic sto­ry told in Car­ol Loeb Schloss’s biog­ra­phy of the novelist’s famous­ly trou­bled child. For his care of Lucia and his care­ful atten­tion to Ulysses, Joyce would inscribe Jung’s copy of the book: “To Dr. C.G. Jung, with grate­ful appre­ci­a­tion of his aid and coun­sel. James Joyce. Xmas 1934, Zurich.”

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Need to Enjoy Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses on Blooms­day

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

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

The Oldest Known Illustration of Circumcision (2400 B.C.E.)

in Art, History | June 17th, 2014

What do we have here? Just the old­est known illus­tra­tion of cir­cum­ci­sion being per­formed. Actu­al­ly, it’s a col­or­ful re-cre­ation of a bas-relief (see orig­i­nal here) found in an Egypt­ian tomb built for Ankhma­bor in Sakkara, Egypt. It dates back to around 2400 B.C.E.

The ori­gins of cir­cum­ci­sion remain unclear. Accord­ing to this online essay, a stele (carv­ing on stone) from the 23rd cen­tu­ry B.C.E. sug­gests that an author named “Uha” was cir­cum­cised in a mass rit­u­al. He wrote:

“When I was cir­cum­cised, togeth­er with one hun­dred and twen­ty men, there was none there­of who hit out, there was none there­of who was hit, and there was none there­of who scratched and there was none there­of who was scratched.”

By the time you get to 4,000 B.C.E., you start to find exhumed Egypt­ian bod­ies that show signs of cir­cum­ci­sion. And then come the artis­tic depic­tions. The Sakkara depic­tion comes with the per­haps help­ful writ­ten warn­ing,“Hold him and do not allow him to faint.”

via Elif Batu­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

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

The Famous Letter Where Freud Breaks His Relationship with Jung (1913)

in Letters, Psychology | June 17th, 2014

Freud and Jung. Jung and Freud. His­to­ry has close­ly asso­ci­at­ed these two who did so much exam­i­na­tion of the mind in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Europe, but the sim­ple con­nec­tion of their names belies a much more com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between the men them­selves. At the top of the post, you can see the let­ter that Sig­mund Freud, father of psy­cho­analy­sis, wrote to Carl Gus­tav Jung, founder of ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy, in order to end that rela­tion­ship entire­ly. “At first Freud saw in Jung a suc­ces­sor who might lead the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic move­ment into the future,” say the cura­tor’s com­ments at the Library of Con­gress’ web site, “but by 1913 rela­tions between the two men had soured.

While Freud claims in his let­ter that it is ‘demon­stra­bly untrue’ that he treats his fol­low­ers as patients, in the very same let­ter we find him allud­ing to Jung’s ‘ill­ness.’ ” Freud calls it “a con­ven­tion among us ana­lysts that none of us need feel ashamed of his own neu­ro­sis. But one [mean­ing Jung] who while behav­ing abnor­mal­ly keeps shout­ing that he is nor­mal gives ground for the sus­pi­cion that he lacks insight into his ill­ness. Accord­ing­ly, I pro­pose that we aban­don our per­son­al rela­tions entire­ly.”

“I shall lose noth­ing by it,” he con­tin­ues, “for my only emo­tion­al tie with you has been a long thin thread — the lin­ger­ing effect of past dis­ap­point­ments — and you have every­thing to gain, in view of the remark you recent­ly made to the effect that an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with a man inhib­it­ed your sci­en­tif­ic free­dom.” This rela­tion­ship, writes Lionel Trilling in a review of The Cor­re­spon­dence Between Sig­mund Freud and C.G. Jung, “had its bright begin­ning in 1906 and came to its embit­tered end in 1913,” when Freud wrote this let­ter.  “Freud and Jung were not good for one anoth­er; their con­nec­tion made them sus­cep­ti­ble to false atti­tudes and ambigu­ous tones. [ … ] The intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al dif­fer­ences between the two men, pro­found as these even­tu­al­ly became, would per­haps not of them­selves have brought about a break so dras­tic as did take place had not their alien­at­ing ten­den­cy been rein­forced by per­son­al con­flicts.” Only a com­par­a­tive study of Freud and Jung’s meth­ods would yield a com­plete under­stand­ing of their roles in the strug­gle for the soul of psy­cho­analy­sis. But on a more basic lev­el, this hard­ly counts as the first nor the last col­lapse, in any field of human endeav­or, of a per­haps overde­ter­mined suc­ces­sion between an emi­nence and his would-be pro­tege — though it may count as one of the most elo­quent­ly doc­u­ment­ed ones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

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.

Ultra Violet — Artist and Friend of Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol — Dies at 78

in Art | June 16th, 2014

“When I got off the boat from France years ago, the first per­son I met was Sal­vador Dalí, and I real­ized I was born sur­re­al­ist,” said Isabelle Collin Dufresne, bet­ter known by her artis­tic nom-de-plume Ultra Vio­let. Dufresne died Sat­ur­day in New York City after years of bat­tling can­cer. She may have been inspired by Dalí, but she was also a legit­i­mate artist in her own right.

Though per­haps not as well known as oth­er “super­stars” linked to Andy Warhol such as Edie Sedg­wick or the Vel­vet Under­ground, Ultra Vio­let worked in a sim­i­lar pop style. Her cre­ations were sym­bol­ic, approach­able and vibrant. Of course, she asso­ci­at­ed strong­ly with the col­or in her namesake—violet was one of the most impor­tant col­ors in her palette.

“It’s in my col­or, my sig­na­ture, but it’s also in the col­or of mourn­ing, the roy­al col­or,” she said of a vio­let memo­ri­am to the events of Sep­tem­ber 11.

A New York­er by choice, Ultra Vio­let was one of prob­a­bly thou­sands to cre­ate art after the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks. “IXXI” was dis­tinct­ly non-polit­i­cal. It nei­ther attacks nor defends; it only memo­ri­al­izes. It por­trays the Roman numer­als for nine and 11. A palin­drome, she not­ed.

Once alleged­ly “exor­cised” in her home­town in France, Dufresne grew up in a con­ser­v­a­tive, reli­gious house­hold. It wasn’t until she came to the Unit­ed States that she became a seri­ous par­tic­i­pant in the art world.

She is prob­a­bly best known for her 1988 life reflec­tion, Famous for 15 Min­utes: My Years with Andy Warhol.

The youth­ful ener­gy around many of the Fac­to­ry artists didn’t always age well. As an old­er woman, Ultra Vio­let some­times looked strange with her vio­let hair and flam­boy­ant cloth­ing, and she was some­times crit­i­cized for pro­duc­ing slop­py work instead of devel­op­ing a tighter style with age.

Pieces like 2007’s “Elec­tric Love Chair” even ref­er­ence the glo­ry days of Pop Art, but Ultra Vio­let spent most of her life exper­i­ment­ing with new ideas and tech­nolo­gies for the pro­duc­tion of art.

“I’m inter­est­ed more in the future than in the past,” she told Ernie Manouse in a 2005 inter­view.

 This is a guest post from Zach Lind­sey, an Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Teacher liv­ing in Austin, Texas. He’s writ­ten about artists’ mus­es before, for Lehigh Val­ley Style and Be About It.

The Making of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pressure”: Demos, Studio Sessions & More

in Music | June 16th, 2014

Before “Ice Ice Baby” became the most ubiq­ui­tous ear­worm of 1989, its sam­pled groove drove a song record­ed 8 years ear­li­er, Queen and David Bowie’s bril­liant col­lab­o­ra­tion “Under Pres­sure.” Sty­lus mag­a­zine—who declared Queen bassist John Deacon’s three-note riff the num­ber one bassline of all time—called the song “pos­sessed of under­stat­ed cool […] min­i­mal and pre­cise.” And if some­how you’ve nev­er heard it, have a lis­ten; you’ll sure­ly agree. Bowie and Fred­die Mercury’s trad­ed lines and melod­ic scat­ting build to pow­er­ful crescen­dos then pull back into deeply mov­ing har­monies. Lyri­cal­ly the song com­petes with any­thing writ­ten by either artist. As it turns out, Queen and Bowie wrote the song in a day, or as Bowie has it, “one evening flat.” “Quite a feat,” “for what is actu­al­ly a fair­ly com­pli­cat­ed song,” he wrote in response to a fan’s ques­tion on his offi­cial web­site.

Bowie remem­bers that “the riff had already been writ­ten by Fred­die and the oth­ers” when he joined them in the stu­dio in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. In fact, “Under Pres­sure” evolved out of anoth­er song entire­ly, “Feel Like,” writ­ten by drum­mer Roger Tay­lor, which you can hear above in a very rough demo record­ing. A great many of the ele­ments are there—Brian May’s restrained gui­tar work, Taylor’s midtem­po clock­work drum­ming, and many of the vocal melodies that would end up on “Under Pres­sure.” But that icon­ic bassline is miss­ing, as is, of course, the lat­er song’s oth­er big star. You can see the influ­ence Bowie had on the the­mat­ic direc­tion of the new song. “Feel Like” is a clas­sic Queen lament over lost love, “Under Pres­sure” an apoc­a­lyp­tic cry of both fear and empa­thy.

And that bassline? Every­one recalls that John Dea­con him­self came up with it. But Dea­con, ever mod­est, cred­it­ed it to Bowie in a 1984 inter­view. In either case, Dea­con appar­ent­ly for­got the riff, and May had to remind him of it—a fun­ny moment you can hear above in a record­ing of stu­dio ses­sions for the song. Bri­an May recalls that Bowie lived near the stu­dio and that they “went out for a meal or some drinks or some­thing.” This may well be, but he doesn’t tell us that Bowie orig­i­nal­ly joined the band in the stu­dio to sing back­ing vocals for an even­tu­al­ly scrapped R&B song called “Cool Cat.” An ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocal tracks from “Under Pres­sure” (below) quotes both Tay­lor and May’s descrip­tions of what was, some­what con­trary to Bowie’s under­state­ment, actu­al­ly a 24-hour-long ses­sion, pow­ered by wine and cocaine.

Their rem­i­nisces, record­ed in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen, also inform us that Bowie and Mer­cury “swap[ped] vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.” Though the band sounds light­heart­ed enough in the stu­dio ses­sions, the song­writ­ing, May remem­bers, was fraught with ten­sion. “It was very hard,” he said in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us.” Bowie, says May, “took over the song lyri­cal­ly” and insist­ed on pre­sid­ing over the final mix ses­sion, which “didn’t go well,” accord­ing to Queen engi­neer Rein­hold Mack. For his part, May has said he would “love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

While he hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fol­lowed through on that desire, May and Roger Tay­lor did con­tribute a dance mix of “Under Pressure”—the so-called “Rah Mix”—to 1999’s Great­est Hits III (hear it above). The remix was a top 20 hit, but I, for one, think it’s impos­si­ble to improve on the orig­i­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

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

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