When IBM Created a Typewriter to Record Dance Movements (1973)

Increas­ing­ly many of us in the 21st cen­tu­ry have nev­er used a type­writer — indeed, have nev­er seen one in real life. But despite being deep into its obso­les­cence, the machine has a long cul­tur­al half-life. See­ing type­writ­ers in clas­sic and peri­od films, for exam­ple, keeps an idea of their look and feel in our minds. Nat­u­ral­ly it gets entan­gled with the romance of the writer, or rather the Writer, whom we imag­ine pound­ing away on a cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic mod­el: an Under­wood, an Olvetti. “If Olivet­tis could talk, you’d get the nov­el­ist naked,” writes Philip Roth in The Anato­my Les­son. From the then-new elec­tric IBM type­writ­ers, how­ev­er, you’d hear “only the smug, puri­tan­i­cal work­man­like hum telling of itself and all its virtues: I am a Cor­rect­ing Selec­tric II. I nev­er do any­thing wrong.”

Yet we under­es­ti­mate the influ­ence of the IBM Selec­tric, on not just writ­ing but late-20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can life in gen­er­al, at our per­il. Intro­duced in 1961, this tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary type­writer replaced the old “type­bars” — those thin met­al arms that whack a let­ter onto the page with each key­stroke — with a “type­ball,” a “com­pact unit con­tain­ing all the let­ters and sym­bols of a key­board, rotat­ed and piv­ot­ed to the cor­rect posi­tion before strik­ing.”

So writes IBM’s Jus­tine Jablon­s­ka in an essay on the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the type­ball, which could be swapped out and mod­i­fied accord­ing to the needs of the user. In 1973, IBM could say even to those users who need­ed to type out not words, sen­tences, and para­graphs but dances that, yes, there’s a type­ball for that.

Devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with New York City’s Dance Nota­tion Bureau, this unusu­al type­ball “had spe­cial Laban­o­ta­tion sym­bols, devel­oped in the 1920s by Hun­gar­i­an dancer/choreographer Rudolf Laban to ana­lyze and record move­ment and dance.” Each sym­bol­’s loca­tion “showed which part of the body — arm, leg, tor­so — was to be used. The symbol’s shape indi­cat­ed direc­tion. The symbol’s shad­ing showed the lev­el of an arm or leg. And its length con­trolled the time val­ue of a move­ment.” In total, writes Karen Hill at Zip­py Facts, Laban­o­ta­tion had “88 dif­fer­ent sym­bols, which could be arranged to form a com­plete vocab­u­lary for record­ing move­ment of any kind, from bal­let and mod­ern to eth­nic, even folk.” Beyond dance, the sys­tem could also record “move­ments in areas like sports, behav­ioral sci­ences, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, and even indus­tri­al oper­a­tions.”

This par­tic­u­lar type­ball show­cased the Selec­tric’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, but some had high­er hopes. In a 1975 paper, dance schol­ar Drid Williams com­pares its poten­tial impact to that of “Guten­berg’s inven­tion sev­er­al cen­turies ago,” sig­nal­ing that “the graph­ic lin­guis­tic sign can now be joined by its obvi­ous coun­ter­part, the print­ed human action sign.” But she also express­es regret that “ ‘the ball’ is being looked on by many as a mere prac­ti­cal aid to record­ing human move­ment and it is being asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cial­ist fields like dance. As usu­al, con­cern with the syn­tag­ma­ta obscures the real issues of the par­a­digms.” Indeed. A more prac­ti­cal-mind­ed assess­ment comes from Charles Ditchen­dorf, employed at the time at IBM’s Office Prod­ucts Divi­sion. “To the best of my knowl­edge,” Jablon­s­ka quotes him as say­ing, I didn’t sell one.” But then, when has dance ever been enslaved to the mar­ket?

via Ted Gioia on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Arnold Schoen­berg, Avant-Garde Com­pos­er, Cre­ates a Sys­tem of Sym­bols for Notat­ing Ten­nis Match­es

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Picasso Create a Masterpiece in Just Five Minutes (1955)

“One day in Paris a wealthy woman goes into a café and sees Picas­so,” writes Alas­tair Dry­burgh in Every­thing You Know About Busi­ness Is Wrong.

After a few min­utes, she sum­mons up the courage to approach him. ‘Mon­sieur Picas­so,’ she asks, ‘would you make a por­trait of me? I’ll pay you any­thing you want.’ Picas­so nods, grabs a menu, and in five min­utes has sketched the wom­an’s por­trait on the back of it. He hands it to her.

‘Five thou­sand francs,’ he says.

‘But Mon­sieur Picas­so, it only took you five min­utes.’

‘No, Madam, it took me my whole life.’

This anec­dote has been ele­vat­ed, in books like Dry­burgh’s, to the sta­tus of a “Picas­so Prin­ci­ple.” Indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es alike, this prin­ci­ple states, should price their goods and ser­vices in accor­dance not just with the time and effort required to do the job, but the time and effort required to make doing the job pos­si­ble in the first place.

Whether Picas­so ever actu­al­ly charged a rich lady in a café 5,000 francs for an impromp­tu por­trait, nobody knows. But that he pos­sessed the skills to cre­ate a ful­ly real­ized work of art in five min­utes is a mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic record, and you can wit­ness such an act in the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts video above.

The video’s source is Le Mys­tère Picas­so, a doc­u­men­tary by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot, the film­mak­er best known for 1950s thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Dia­boliques. Offi­cial­ly declared a French nation­al trea­sure and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the film cap­tures Picas­so in action, cre­at­ing orig­i­nal art­works right before the cam­era. “Not many of the works he cre­at­ed for the doc­u­men­tary sur­vive,” say this video’s notes, but three of them were recent­ly dis­played in the Roy­al Acad­e­my’s exhi­bi­tion Picas­so and Paper, a vir­tu­al tour of which appears just above. In Le Mys­tère Picas­so the artist paints 1955’s Vis­age: Head of a Faun in just five min­utes, a severe time con­straint imposed by Clouzot’s sup­ply of film stock.

The direc­tor’s ten­sion comes across as clear­ly as the painter’s con­cen­tra­tion. While Clouzot puffs away on his pipe, Picas­so gets right down to work. “Picas­so plays with the draw­ing,” says the video’s onscreen com­men­tary, “tak­ing it from flower to fish to chick­en to face and builds up from a mono­chrome draw­ing with bright, sat­u­rat­ed col­ors.” As the rolling counter on Clouzot’s cam­era ticks off the final meters of film, Picas­so trans­forms the work-in-progress almost com­plete­ly, con­jur­ing up a wild-eyed fig­ure in sil­hou­ette, nei­ther man nor beast, to dom­i­nate the fore­ground. He exe­cutes every brush­stroke unflinch­ing­ly, filled with the con­fi­dence of a painter long since assured of his mas­tery. In one sense, Vis­age: Head of a Faun took Picas­so five min­utes; more truth­ful­ly, it took him 74 years and five min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Picas­so Makes Won­der­ful Abstract Art

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Hear Classic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “White Room” & More

In the 60s and 70s, rock and folk bands intro­duced ear­ly Euro­pean music to the mass­es, with Medieval, Renais­sance, and Baroque strains run­ning through the songs of Simon and Gar­funkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Fair­port Con­ven­tion, and even Led Zep­pelin. For the most part, how­ev­er, arrange­ments stayed mod­ern, save the appear­ance of a few, still-rel­e­vant folk instru­ments like man­dolins, dul­cimers, and nylon-string gui­tars.

One can draw many lines in pop­u­lar cul­ture from this development—to prog-rock bal­ladry, goth rock’s dirges, metal’s medieval obses­sions, and what­ev­er that tech­no Gre­go­ri­an chant thing was in the 90s. In so many of these evo­lu­tion­ary moves, the trend has been toward more tech­nol­o­gy and away from acoustic music. So, how can play­ers of old Euro­pean instru­ments inter­est con­tem­po­rary audi­ences in their sound?

One pop­u­lar way they’ve done so is by play­ing hits from bands who drew from the tra­di­tion (and from a few who very much didn’t)—hits like Procul Harum’s Chaucer-ref­er­enc­ing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

At the top, Baroque lute play­er Daniel Estrem gives a solo instru­men­tal per­for­mance of the soul­ful tune, throw­ing in a sec­tion of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” to which “A Whiter Shade of Pale” alludes. (I wasn’t con­scious­ly com­bin­ing rock with clas­si­cal,” com­pos­er Gary Brook­er lat­er said. “It’s just that Bach’s music was in me.”) The song’s con­tra­pun­tal struc­ture trans­lates beau­ti­ful­ly to the lute, as does the sin­is­ter musi­cal­i­ty of Cream’s “White Room,” above, a song with a vague­ly Medieval-sound­ing descend­ing melody in its clas­sic psych-rock vers­es.

Of course, Euro­pean folk and clas­si­cal informed the increas­ing­ly com­plex com­po­si­tions of the Bea­t­les, includ­ing George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (or at least its first fin­ger­picked acoustic gui­tar demo ver­sion). In his take on the clas­sic, above, Estrem recov­ers the song’s folk influ­ence and retains its shifts in mood, from mourn­ful lament to hope­ful melody. Of course, Estrem not only has to trans­late these songs to a dif­fer­ent musi­cal idiom but to a very dif­fer­ent instrument—one with a tun­ing unlike the gui­tar on which so many pop songs are writ­ten.

Com­mon lutes at the end of the Renais­sance had 10 cours­es (a “course” is a set of two strings tuned to the same pitch). These instru­ments used “a more har­mon­i­cal­ly based ‘D minor tun­ing,’ instead of the more ‘gui­tar-like’ tun­ing that con­tin­ued to be used for the viol in the baroque era,” notes Case West­ern Reserve’s Ear­ly Music Instru­ment Data­base. They were suit­ed to a very dif­fer­ent kind of music than, say, the blues. But whether or not we ful­ly under­stand the chal­lenge of arrang­ing “House of the Ris­ing Sun” (called “the first folk rock song” when the Ani­mals record­ed it) for the Baroque lute, we can cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the results. Estrem makes a gen­tly plucked, elo­quent­ly word­less argu­ment for giv­ing the instru­ment a star­ring role in pop­u­lar music again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

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

Watch 12 Classic Chinese Films Online, Complete with English Subtitles (1920s-1940s)

The Chi­nese film indus­try began around the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, but unfor­tu­nate­ly noth­ing sur­vives of those first two decades–films lost to fire, to age, and just plain lost. Any per­son want­i­ng to study this his­to­ry must make do with syn­opses, pho­tos, and imag­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, after that? This YouTube playlist curat­ed by the Depart­ment of Asian Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia fea­tures a dozen notable films and influ­en­tial clas­sics from two and half decades of Chi­nese his­to­ry, some of the most tumul­tuous years for that nation. Chi­na oust­ed the British, fought off the Japan­ese, and began a rev­o­lu­tion under Mao. The print qual­i­ty varies here and there, but all are enter­tain­ing, from musi­cals to hor­ror movies to social dra­mas.

The col­lec­tion begins with the old­est sur­viv­ing film in the series, Labourer’s Love, a two-reel­er from 1922 direct­ed by Zhang Shichuan. Most of the orig­i­nal Chi­nese film­mak­ers were trained by Amer­i­cans, so ear­ly shorts like this tend­ed to be silent come­dies filled with visu­al gags–this one fea­tures a car­pen­ter who opens up a fruit stand to woo a woman, and uses his wood­work­ing skills and tools to increase his busi­ness.

By the late 20s how­ev­er, Chi­na was already devel­op­ing its own gen­res and styles, just as it was devel­op­ing a mod­ern nation­al­ist pride away from colo­nial influ­ence. The first mar­tial arts film would be pro­duced in 1928. Oth­er stu­dios opt­ed for folk­lore tales or fam­i­ly melo­dra­mas.

Trained and edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed Stat­ed, Sun Yu was one of the major film­mak­ers of the 1930s (a group of direc­tors known as the Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion film­mak­ers) until the inva­sion of Japan sent him flee­ing Shang­hai for the inte­ri­or. But the films he made for the left­ist film stu­dio Lian­hua are now clas­sics. Three of his are rep­re­sent­ed here: 1933’s Day­break, a tale of a young coun­try cou­ple who get cor­rupt­ed in the big city; Queen of Sports, a 1934 dra­ma of a plucky track star who has to nav­i­gate class stratas as well as com­pe­ti­tions; and maybe Sun Yu’s most famous film The Big Road (above), a sto­ry of six young men build­ing a road for the Chi­nese army to bat­tle the Japan­ese. Yes, it’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da, but Sun Yu was always focused on work­ing men and women. These three films also star Li Lili, con­sid­ered by some to be the “Chi­nese Mae West,” and who lived to a ripe age (as did Sun Yu). She has a role in Stan­ley Kwan’s Cen­ter Stage from 1992, his ode to the movie stars of the 1930s.

China’s first hor­ror film is also in this list: 1937’s Song at Mid­night, Ma-Xu Weibang’s retelling of Phan­tom of the Opera (with a bit of Franken­stein thrown in–the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios influ­ence is very appar­ent here). It’s also a musi­cal, with karaoke-like subs for you to sing along if you know Can­tonese.

Last­ly, Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town from 1947 is one of the most influ­en­tial on this list. A sick­ly man’s friend vis­its in the after­math of the Sino-Japan­ese war, and the wife rec­og­nizes him as a lover from long ago. Roman­tic ten­sions soon begin to smol­der. Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love bor­rowed its repressed, long­ing mood. And film­mak­er Tian Zhuangzhaung remade it in 2002, keep­ing the orig­i­nal set­ting. Many Chi­nese film­mak­ers and crit­ics con­sid­er it one of the best of all time, China’s Casablan­ca.

Hope­ful­ly this dozen will whet your appetite for more Chi­nese cin­e­ma and pro­vide an alter­na­tive to watch­ing anoth­er binge-wor­thy but shal­low Net­flix series.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Chi­nese Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Princess Iron Fan, Made Under the Strains of WWII (1941)

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

An Epic Retelling of the Great Chi­nese Nov­el Romance of the Three King­doms: 110 Free Episodes and Count­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Launch a 24/7 Livestream on YouTube, Featuring Rare Footage from the Band’s Archives

Last week, Nick Cave announced “It’s 10.30 Wednes­day evening, and if the world wasn’t in lock­down, I’d be onstage in Toulouse, France singing my heart out with The Bad Seeds. But I’m not. I’m doing the next best thing—sitting at home watch­ing Bad Seed TeeVee. Pure non-stop joy!” And you can too. Above, watch a new 24/7 YouTube livestream that will fea­ture, writes NME, “rare and unseen footage from the band’s archives,” includ­ing “pro­mo videos, inter­views, live footage, out­takes and oth­er exclu­sive unseen footage from the band’s archives.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His Top 10 Love Songs

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

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New Hilma af Klint Documentary Explores the Life & Art of the Trailblazing Abstract Artist

It’s not often an entire chap­ter of art his­to­ry text­books needs rewrit­ing, but as fans of Hilma af Klint see it, one such time has come. A Swedish artist and mys­tic who lived from the mid-19th to the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, af Klint left behind a body of work amount­ing to more than 1,200 paint­ings — all of which she insist­ed not be tak­en out of stor­age until 20 years after her death. She sus­pect­ed the pub­lic would­n’t be ready for them before then, and she was more right than she knew: offered the paint­ings as a dona­tion in the 1970s, Stock­holm’s Mod­er­na Museet turned them down. Only in the fol­low­ing decade did the art his­to­ry world begin to under­stand that, far from just a pro­duc­tive ama­teur paint­ing in obscu­ri­ty, af Kint might be the very first abstract artist.

Today af Klin­t’s abstract paint­ings, the first of which she pro­duced in mid­dle-age in 1906, have appre­ci­a­tors all over the world. Some, we’d like to think, came because of all the times we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured her here on Open Cul­ture; oth­ers were brought in by the Guggen­heim’s recent ret­ro­spec­tive Hilma af Klint: Paint­ings for the Future.

These paint­ings, says the muse­um’s web site, “were like lit­tle that had been seen before: bold, col­or­ful, and unteth­ered from any rec­og­niz­able ref­er­ences to the phys­i­cal world. It was years before Vasi­ly Kandin­skyKaz­imir Male­vichPiet Mon­dri­an, and oth­ers would take sim­i­lar strides to rid their own art­work of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al con­tent.” This year the sto­ry of af Klint and her work is told cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly in Beyond the Vis­i­ble, a new doc­u­men­tary by Ger­man film­mak­er Hali­na Dyrsch­ka whose trail­er appears at the top of the post.

In his review of the filmNew York Times crit­ic A.O. Scott briefly recounts af Klin­t’s ear­ly years: “Born in 1862 to an aris­to­crat­ic Swedish fam­i­ly and raised part­ly on the grounds of the mil­i­tary acad­e­my where her father was an instruc­tor, she trained at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stock­holm, mas­ter­ing the tra­di­tion­al gen­res of por­trait, still life and land­scape. By the late 1880s, her note­books and paint­ings began incor­po­rat­ing forms that, while they some­times evoked nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na (like snail shells, flower petals and insect wings), did not resem­ble any­thing in the vis­i­ble world.” This change in the artist’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty came along with her grow­ing inter­est in mys­ti­cism and ways of access­ing a realm beyond human sens­es. (She even offered a paint­ing to the Anthro­po­soph­i­cal Soci­ety founder Rudolf Stein­er, who reject­ed it.)

Scott calls Beyond the Vis­i­ble “a chap­ter in the whole­sale revi­sion of the crit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal record that began only recent­ly, and it enlists a pas­sion­ate and knowl­edge­able cadre of cura­tors, schol­ars, sci­en­tists and artists to press the argu­ment for af Klint’s impor­tance.” But “the paint­ings them­selves are the best evi­dence — even through the medi­a­tion of a home screen, their vibran­cy, wit and for­mal com­mand is thrilling.” With many movie the­aters tem­porar­i­ly shut down by the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic, you can watch the doc­u­men­tary through Kino Mar­quee’s “vir­tu­al cin­e­ma,” a ser­vice that streams over the inter­net but also sup­ports local art hous­es. Most of us may be no clos­er to the unseen world into which af Klint yearned to tap than were any of her every­day com­pa­tri­ots. But as far as his­tor­i­cal moments in which her work and life can find a fas­ci­nat­ed audi­ence, there’s nev­er been a bet­ter one.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Hilma af Klint: Pio­neer­ing Mys­ti­cal Painter and Per­haps the First Abstract Artist

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

Steve Mar­tin on How to Look at Abstract Art

An Inter­ac­tive Social Net­work of Abstract Artists: Kandin­sky, Picas­so, Bran­cusi & Many More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Rolling Stones Release a Timely Track, “Living in a Ghost Town”: Their First New Music in Eight Years

If there were ever a time to rush a pan­dem­ic-themed project to mar­ket, this is it. The move can seem well-inten­tioned, gen­er­ous, or cyn­i­cal, depend­ing on the artist and the audi­ence. The Rolling Stones proofed them­selves against the lat­ter crit­i­cism ages ago by build­ing cyn­i­cism into their brand. They know what their audi­ence wants, and they con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er, decade after decade, play­ing the hits. When vague social com­men­tary slips into a Stones tune, it vibrates at the same fre­quen­cy as their trade­mark sleaze.

But why would we expect rel­e­vance from a band that hasn’t released any new music in eight years? “On their most recent tour,” writes Alex­is Petri­dies at The Guardian, “which began in 2017 and would still be on course were it not for the coro­n­avirus pandemic—the most up-the-minute addi­tion to their setlist was 25 years old.” Who indeed “would have thought that the Rolling Stones would be ear­ly to mar­ket with a Covid-19-themed song?” They cer­tain­ly don’t need the mon­ey.

In fact, the band wrote and began record­ing the song in Feb­ru­ary 2019. “It wasn’t writ­ten for now,” Mick Jag­ger told Zane Lowe in an Apple Music inter­view. “But it was writ­ten about being in a place which was full of life, and then now (is) all bereft of life, so to speak. And when I went back to what I’d writ­ten orig­i­nal­ly lyri­cal­ly, it was all full of… well, I didn’t use them in the lyrics, it was all full of plague terms and things like that.” Jag­ger and Richards decid­ed they had to release the song, part of a col­lec­tion of new mate­r­i­al the band was work­ing on. Or as Richards put it in a state­ment:

So, let’s cut a long sto­ry short. We cut this track well over a year ago in L.A. for part of a new album, an ongo­ing thing, and then s— hit the fan. Mick and I decid­ed this one real­ly need­ed to go to work right now and so here you have it.

Richards sounds almost apolo­getic about the rushed ver­sion you hear above, which they fin­ished remote­ly after the lock­downs began, but in his inter­view with Lowe, he says he’s pleased. “We sort of did it from out­er space. But I actu­al­ly liked the way it turned out.” The track has a tight, bluesy, stripped-down dub groove. Shots of Sir Mick read­ing lyrics from his iPad, in what is pre­sum­ably his home stu­dio, add a Zoom meet­ing-like vibe to the video. “We’ve worked on it in iso­la­tion,” Jag­ger says.

He also admits he rewrote the lyrics, “but didn’t have to rewrite very much, to be hon­est. It’s very much how I orig­i­nal­ly did it. I was just jam­ming. I was just play­ing a gui­tar and just wrote it like that. I don’t know what frame of mind I must’ve been in. I mean, it was semi-humor­ous, then it got less humor­ous….” I think we’ve all said some­thing like that, many times, over the last few years. The Stones were in the right place and right time to play out the end of the 1960s, when things got decid­ed­ly less humor­ous. But who would have guessed they’d show up over fifty years lat­er to sound­track our cur­rent 21st cen­tu­ry tragedy?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Revis­it the Infa­mous Rolling Stones Free Fes­ti­val at Alta­mont: The Ill-Fat­ed Con­cert Took Place 50 Years Ago

A Big 44-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Rolling Stones Albums: Stream 613 Tracks

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

Experience New York City’s Fabled Mid-Century Nightclubs in an Interactive, COVID-19-Era, Student-Designed Exhibit

It’s been over a month since pub­lic health pre­cau­tions led almost every school in the Unit­ed States to switch to online instruc­tion.

While there are obvi­ous­ly much greater tragedies unfold­ing dai­ly, it’s hard not to empathize with stu­dents who have watched count­less spe­cial events—proms, com­mence­ments, spring sports, per­for­mances, hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed rites of passage—go poof.

In New York City, stu­dents in Par­sons School of Design’s Nar­ra­tive Spaces: Design Tools for Spa­tial Sto­ry­telling course were crest­fall­en to learn that their upcom­ing open-to-the-pub­lic exhi­bi­tion of group and solo projects in the West Village—the cen­ter­piece of the class and a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with an audi­ence out­side of the classroom—was sud­den­ly off the menu.

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Jeff Stark, who co-teach­es the class with Pamela Park­er, was dis­ap­point­ed on their behalves.

Stark’s own work, from Empire Dri­ve In to Miss Rock­away Arma­da, is root­ed in live expe­ri­ence, and New York City holds a spe­cial place in his heart. (He also edits the week­ly email list Non­sense NYC, an invalu­able resource for inde­pen­dent art and Do-It-Your­self events in the city.)

This year’s class projects stemmed from vis­its to the City Reli­quary, a small muse­um and civic orga­ni­za­tion cel­e­brat­ing every­day New York City arti­facts. Stu­dents were able to get up close and per­son­al with Chris Engel’s col­lec­tion of pho­tographs, menus, pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, and sou­venirs doc­u­ment­ing the hey­day of New York’s sup­per club nightlife, from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Stu­dent Rylie Cooke, an Aus­tralian who aspires to launch a design com­pa­ny, found that her research deep­ened her con­nec­tion to arti­facts she encoun­tered at the Reli­quary, as she came to appre­ci­ate the fabled Copaca­bana’s influ­ence on the pop­u­lar cul­ture, food, and music of the peri­od:

… with COVID-19 it became impor­tant to have this con­nec­tion to the arti­facts as I was­n’t able to phys­i­cal­ly touch or look at them when Par­sons moved to online for the semes­ter. I am a very hands-on cre­ative and I love curat­ing things, espe­cial­ly in an exhib­it for­mat.

Rather than scrap their goal of pub­lic exhi­bi­tion, the class decid­ed to take things into the vir­tu­al realm, hus­tling to adapt their orig­i­nal con­cepts to a pure­ly screen-based expe­ri­ence, The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing.

The plan to wow vis­i­tors with a peri­od-appro­pri­ate table in the cen­ter of their West Vil­lage exhi­bi­tion space became a grid of dig­i­tal place­mats that serve as por­tals to each project.

Cooke’s con­tri­bu­tion, A Seat at the Copaca­bana, begins with an inter­view in which base­ball great Mick­ey Man­tle recounts get­ting into a cloak­room brawl as he and fel­low New York Yan­kees cel­e­brat­ed a birth­day with a Sam­my Davis Jr. set. Recipes for steak and pota­toes, Chick­en a la King, rarebit, and arroz con pol­lo pro­vide fla­vor for a floor­show rep­re­sent­ed by archival footage of “Let’s Do the Copaca­bana” star­ring Car­men Miran­da, a Mar­tin and Lewis appear­ance, and a dance rehearsal from 1945. The tour ends at the Copa’s cur­rent incar­na­tion in Times Square, with a vision of pre-social­ly dis­tanced con­tem­po­rary mer­ry­mak­ers sal­sa-ing the night away.

(Nav­i­gate this exhib­it using tool­bar arrows at the bot­tom of the screen.)

Stu­dent Hongxi Chen’s inves­ti­ga­tions into The Chi­na Doll night­club result­ed in an elab­o­rate inter­ac­tive immer­sive expe­ri­ence on the top­ic of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion:

The Chi­na Doll… was found­ed in 1946 by Cau­casian stage pro­duc­er Tom Ball, who deemed it the only “all-ori­en­tal” night club in New York. While the club some­times played off “Ori­en­tal” stereo­types, and titled one of its shows “Slant-Eyed Scan­dals,” they fea­tured Asian dancers and Asian singers pre­sent­ing pop­u­lar songs in a way New York­ers had nev­er seen before. The Dim inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence unfolds with the sto­ry of Thomas, a wait­er at the Chi­na Doll.

As a junior in Par­sons’ Design and Tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram, Chen had plen­ty of pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence forg­ing vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments, but work­ing with a muse­um col­lec­tion was new to him, as was col­lab­o­rat­ing on a vir­tu­al plat­form.

He sought Stark’s advice on cre­at­ing vivid dia­logue for his fic­tion­al wait­er.

Jiaqi Liuan, a Design and Tech­nol­o­gy MFA stu­dent and vet­er­an of the Shang­hai pro­duc­tion of Sleep No More, Punchdrunk’s immer­sive retelling of Mac­Beth, helped chore­o­graph Chen’s Chi­na Doll dancers in an homage to The Flower Drum Songs Fan Tan Fan­nie num­ber.

Chen stayed up until 7 am for two weeks, devour­ing open source tuto­ri­als in an attempt to wran­gle and debug the many ele­ments of his ambi­tious project—audio, video, char­ac­ter mod­els and ani­ma­tion, soft­ware, game engines, and game serv­er plat­form.

As Chen not­ed at the exhibition’s recent Zoom open­ing (an event that was fol­lowed by a dig­i­tal dance par­ty), the mas­sive game can be a bit slow to load. Don’t wor­ry, it’s worth the wait, espe­cial­ly as you will have a hand in the sto­ry, steer­ing it to one of five dif­fer­ent end­ings.

Chen, an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent, could not safe­ly return to Chi­na and has not left his stu­dent apart­ment since mid-March, but game­ly states that remain­ing in the same time zone as his school allowed him to com­mu­ni­cate effi­cient­ly with his pro­fes­sors and the major­i­ty of his class­mates. (Cooke is back home in Aus­tralia.)

Adds Chen:

Even though we are fac­ing a dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stance under the pan­dem­ic and had to piv­ot our orig­i­nal ideas into a vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m glad that our class was able to quick­ly change plans and adapt to the sit­u­a­tion. This… actu­al­ly inspired me a lot and opened up ways to invite and con­nect peo­ple with vir­tu­al art­work.

Oth­er high­lights of The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing include Ming Hong Xian’s explo­ration of the famous West Vil­lage coun­try music club, The Vil­lage Barn (com­plete with tur­tle races) and What Are You? a per­son­al­i­ty test devised by Mi Ri Kim and Eleanor Mel­by, to help vis­i­tors deter­mine which clas­sic NYC sup­per club best suits their per­son­al­i­ty.

(Appar­ent­ly, I’m head­ed to Cafe Zanz­ibar, below, where the drinks are cheap, the aspirin is free, and Cab Cal­loway is a fre­quent head­lin­er.)

Stark admits that ini­tial­ly, his stu­dents may not have shared his swoon­ing response to the source mate­r­i­al, but they share his love of New York City and the desire to “get in the thick of it.” By bring­ing a Gen­er­a­tion Z per­spec­tive to this his­tor­i­cal ephemera, they stake a claim, mak­ing work that could help the City Reli­quary con­nect to a new audi­ence.

Enter The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing here.

Explore the City Reli­quary online here, and join in the civic pride by par­tic­i­pat­ing in its week­ly Insta­gram Live events, includ­ing Thurs­day Col­lec­tors’ Nights.

(All images used with per­mis­sion of the artists and The City Reli­quary)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her con­tri­bu­tion to art in iso­la­tion is a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Streaming Free on YouTube Today Only

Pink Floyd is help­ing you get through the coro­n­avirus by stream­ing free con­cert films on YouTube. First came Pulse, a 22-song set from the 1994 Divi­sion Bell tour. Now comes Pink Floyd: Live at Pom­peii, a 1972 con­cert film fea­tur­ing the band per­form­ing with­in the ancient Roman amphithe­atre at Pom­peii. It’s a clas­sic. Watch it above. And learn more about the film in our pri­or post here.

Note: The film is only stream­ing free on YouTube for 24 hours. So watch it while you can. Once the film goes dark, you can watch out­takes here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

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:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

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Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fascinating Look at His Report Cards

Albert Ein­stein was a pre­co­cious child.

At the age of twelve, he fol­lowed his own line of rea­son­ing to find a proof of the Pythagore­an The­o­rem. At thir­teen he read Kant, just for the fun of it. And before he was fif­teen he had taught him­self dif­fer­en­tial and inte­gral cal­cu­lus.

But while the young Ein­stein was engrossed in intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, he did­n’t much care for school. He hat­ed rote learn­ing and despised author­i­tar­i­an school­mas­ters. His sense of intel­lec­tu­al supe­ri­or­i­ty was resent­ed by his teach­ers.

In Sub­tle is the Lord: The Sci­ence and Life of Albert Ein­stein, author Abra­ham Pais tells a fun­ny sto­ry from Ein­stein’s days at the Luit­pold Gym­na­si­um, a sec­ondary school in Munich now called the Albert-Ein­stein-Gym­na­si­um:

At the Gym­na­si­um a teacher once said to him that he, the teacher, would be much hap­pi­er if the boy were not in his class. Ein­stein replied that he had done noth­ing wrong. The teacher answered, “Yes, that is true. But you sit there in the back row and smile, and that vio­lates the feel­ing of respect that a teacher needs from his class.”

The same teacher famous­ly said that Ein­stein “would nev­er get any­where in life.”

What both­ered Ein­stein most about the Luit­pold was its oppres­sive atmos­phere. His sis­ter Maja would lat­er write:

“The mil­i­tary tone of the school, the sys­tem­at­ic train­ing in the wor­ship of author­i­ty that was sup­posed to accus­tom pupils at an ear­ly age to mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline, was also par­tic­u­lar­ly unpleas­ant for the boy. He con­tem­plat­ed with dread that not-too-dis­tant moment when he will have to don a sol­dier’s uni­form in order to ful­fill his mil­i­tary oblig­a­tions.”

When he was six­teen, Ein­stein’s par­ents moved to Italy to pur­sue a busi­ness ven­ture. They told him to stay behind and fin­ish school. But Ein­stein was des­per­ate to join them in Italy before his sev­en­teenth birth­day. “Accord­ing to the Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship laws,” Maja explained, “a male cit­i­zen must not emi­grate after his com­plet­ed six­teenth year; oth­er­wise, if he fails to report for mil­i­tary ser­vice, he is declared a desert­er.”

So Ein­stein found a way to get a doc­tor’s per­mis­sion to with­draw from the school on the pre­text of “men­tal exhaus­tion,” and fled to Italy with­out a diplo­ma. Years lat­er, in 1944, dur­ing the final days of World War II, the Luit­pold Gym­na­si­um was oblit­er­at­ed by Allied bomb­ing. So we don’t have a record of Ein­stein’s grades there. But there is record of a prin­ci­pal at the school look­ing up Ein­stein’s grades in 1929 to fact check a press report that Ein­stein had been a very bad stu­dent. Wal­ter Sul­li­van writes about it in a 1984 piece in The New York Times:

With 1 as the high­est grade and 6 the low­est, the prin­ci­pal report­ed, Ein­stein’s marks in Greek, Latin and math­e­mat­ics oscil­lat­ed between 1 and 2 until, toward the end, he invari­ably scored 1 in math.

After he dropped out, Ein­stein’s fam­i­ly enlist­ed a well-con­nect­ed friend to per­suade the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, or ETH, to let him take the entrance exam, even though he was only six­teen years old and had not grad­u­at­ed from high school. He scored bril­liant­ly in physics and math, but poor­ly in oth­er areas. The direc­tor of the ETH sug­gest­ed he fin­ish prepara­to­ry school in the town of Aarau, in the Swiss can­ton of Aar­gau. A diplo­ma from the can­ton­al school would guar­an­tee Ein­stein admis­sion to the ETH.

At Aarau, Ein­stein was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find a lib­er­al atmos­phere in which inde­pen­dent thought was encour­aged.  “When com­pared to six years’ school­ing at a Ger­man author­i­tar­i­an gym­na­si­um,” he lat­er said, “it made me clear­ly real­ize how much supe­ri­or an edu­ca­tion based on free action and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty is to one rely­ing on out­ward author­i­ty.”

In Ein­stein’s first semes­ter at Aarau, the school still used the old method of scor­ing from 1 to 6, with 1 as the high­est grade. In the sec­ond semes­ter the sys­tem was reversed, with 6 becom­ing the high­est grade. Bar­ry R. Park­er talks about Ein­stein’s first-semes­ter grades in his book, Ein­stein: The Pas­sions of a Sci­en­tist:

His grades over the first few months were: Ger­man, 2–3; French, 3–4; his­to­ry, 1–2; math­e­mat­ics, 1; physics, 1–2; nat­ur­al his­to­ry, 2–3; chem­istry, 2–3; draw­ing, 2–3; and vio­lin, 1. (The range is 1 to 6, with 1 being the high­est.) Although none of the grades, with the excep­tion of French, were con­sid­ered poor, some of them were only aver­age.

The school head­mas­ter, Jost Win­tel­er, who had wel­comed Ein­stein into his home as a board­er and had become some­thing of a sur­ro­gate father to him dur­ing his time at Aarau, was con­cerned that a young man as obvi­ous­ly bril­liant as Albert was receiv­ing aver­age grades in so many cours­es. At Christ­mas in 1895, he mailed a report card to Ein­stein’s par­ents. Her­mann Ein­stein replied with warm thanks, but said he was not too wor­ried. As Park­er writes, Ein­stein’s father said he was used to see­ing a few “not-so-good grades along with very good ones.”

In the next semes­ter Ein­stein’s grades improved, but were still mixed. As Toby Hendy of the Youtube chan­nel Tibees shows in the video above, Ein­stein’s final grades were excel­lent in math and physics, but clos­er to aver­age in oth­er areas.

Ein­stein’s uneven aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance con­tin­ued at the ETH, as Hendy shows. By the third year his rela­tion­ship with the head of the physics depart­ment, Hein­rich Weber, began to dete­ri­o­rate. Weber was offend­ed by the young man’s arro­gance. “You’re a clever boy, Ein­stein,” said Weber. “An extreme­ly clever boy. But you have one great fault. You’ll nev­er allow your­self to be told any­thing.” Ein­stein was par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ed that Weber refused to teach the ground­break­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic the­o­ry of James Clerk Maxwell. He began spend­ing less time in the class­room and more time read­ing up on cur­rent physics at home and in the cafes of Zurich.

Ein­stein increas­ing­ly focused his atten­tion on physics, and neglect­ed math­e­mat­ics. He came to regret this. “It was not clear to me as a stu­dent,” he lat­er said, “that a more pro­found knowl­edge of the basic prin­ci­ples of physics was tied up with the most intri­cate math­e­mat­i­cal meth­ods.”

Ein­stein’s class­mate Mar­cel Gross­mann helped him by shar­ing his notes from the math lec­tures Ein­stein had skipped. When Ein­stein grad­u­at­ed, his con­flict with Weber cost him the teach­ing job he had expect­ed to receive. Gross­mann even­tu­al­ly came to Ein­stein’s res­cue again, urg­ing his father to help him secure a well-paid job as a clerk in the Swiss patent office. Many years lat­er, when Gross­mann died, Ein­stein wrote a let­ter to his wid­ow that con­veyed not only his sad­ness at an old friend’s death, but also his bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ries of life as a col­lege stu­dent:

“Our days togeth­er come back to me. He a mod­el stu­dent; I untidy and a day­dream­er. He on excel­lent terms with the teach­ers and grasp­ing every­thing eas­i­ly; I aloof and dis­con­tent­ed, not very pop­u­lar. But we were good friends and our con­ver­sa­tions over iced cof­fee at the Metropol every few weeks belong among my nicest mem­o­ries.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Albert Ein­stein Read  ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Dig­i­tal Ein­stein: Prince­ton Web Site Puts Thou­sands of Ein­stein’s Papers Online

Albert Ein­stein on Indi­vid­ual Lib­er­ty, With­out Which There Would Be ‘No Shake­speare, No Goethe, No New­ton’


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