Rufus Wainwright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

We’ve seen 1999 mem­bers of Choir! Choir! Choir! per­form “When Doves Cry,” a mov­ing, mass trib­ute to Prince. And they’re now back, 1500 strong, with Rufus Wain­wright at the helm, singing Leonard Cohen’s beloved and oft-cov­ered song, Hal­lelu­jah.” Per­formed at the Hearn Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Toron­to, it must have been a won­der­ful thing to expe­ri­ence live in per­son.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

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The Steamy Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (1925–1929)

woolf love letter

Every­one loves a love story—especially a love affair. We may think our­selves above a juicy scan­dal…, but who are we kid­ding? Trag­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, for many famous peo­ple of the past—from Oscar Wilde to Alan Tur­ing to Tab Hunter—affairs could not only end careers and rep­u­ta­tions, they could end lives. Peo­ple who would much rather not have to hide their love have been forced to do so by rigid social pro­pri­ety, reli­gious moral­ism, and repres­sive law.

In oth­er famous cas­es, however—like that of Vir­ginia Woolf and her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West—an affair doesn’t end in tragedy but sim­ply in a cool­ing of pas­sions into a beau­ti­ful, last­ing friend­ship.

While prud­ish out­siders may have been scan­dal­ized, nei­ther Woolf’s nor Sackville-West’s hus­band found the rela­tion­ship shock­ing. Leonard Woolf, his wife report­ed, regard­ed the affair as “rather a bore… but not enough to wor­ry him.” Vita and her aris­to­crat­ic hus­band Harold Nicol­son, writes the Vir­ginia Woolf blog, “were both bisex­u­al and… had an open mar­riage.” Fur­ther­more, the bohemi­an artis­tic cir­cle in which the Woolfs moved—the Blooms­bury group—hard­ly trou­bled itself about such mun­dane goings-on as a steamy affair between two mar­ried women. So much for social scan­dal and soap-oper­at­ic the­atrics.

But while their love was not for­bid­den, what pas­sion they had while it last­ed! One need only read their let­ters to each oth­er, col­lect­ed in The Let­ters of Vita Sackville-West to Vir­ginia Woolf. Many of those epis­tles doc­u­ment the heat­ed peri­od between the mid-1920s, when their affair began, and 1929, when it end­ed on ami­able terms (in a friend­ship the let­ters doc­u­ment until Woolf’s sui­cide in 1941).

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Vir­ginia,” writes Sackville-West in a 1926 let­ter to Woolf, “You have bro­ken down my defences. And I real­ly don’t resent it… Please for­give me for writ­ing such a mis­er­able let­ter.” The brief, ago­nized let­ter cap­tures the exquis­ite pangs and pin­ions of roman­tic infat­u­a­tion. Woolf, in response, is the more reserved, but also the more col­or­ful, with play­ful, cryp­tic images that hint at who knows what:

“Always, always, always I try to say what I feel,” she writes, “I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don’t believe it, you’re a longeared owl and ass…. Open the top but­ton of your jer­sey and you will see, nestling inside, a live­ly squir­rel with the most inquis­i­tive habits, but a dear crea­ture all the same—”

In her diary, Woolf described Sackville-West on their first meet­ing in 1923 as “a pro­nounced sap­phist…. Snob as I am, I trace her pas­sions – 500 years back, & they become roman­tic to me, like old yel­low wine.” Woolf was ten years old­er than Sackville-West, and seemed to feel infe­ri­or to her lover, com­par­ing her­self unfa­vor­ably in a sexy 1925 diary entry:

Vita shines in the gro­cers shop in Sevenoaks…pink glow­ing, grape clus­tered, pearl hung…There is her matu­ri­ty and full-breast­ed­ness: her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coast­ing down back­wa­ters; her capac­i­ty I mean to take the floor in any com­pa­ny, to rep­re­sent her coun­try, to vis­it Chatsworth, to con­trol sil­ver, ser­vants, chow dogs; her motherhood…her in short (what I have nev­er been) a real woman.

The two had oth­er lovers, and Woolf, “as the old­er woman in the rela­tion­ship,” the Vir­ginia Woolf blog writes, felt “unwant­ed and dowdy” as Sackville-West strayed. But though the love affair end­ed, it not only pro­duced a close friend­ship, but a nov­el, Woolf’s Orlan­do, which Vita’s son Nigel called “the longest and most charm­ing love let­ter in lit­er­a­ture.”

Their love and friend­ship will also soon pro­duce a film, Vita and Vir­ginia, direct­ed by Chanya But­ton and writ­ten by Dame Eileen Atkins. And, if you were won­der­ing what Vita and Virginia’s pas­sion­ate exchanges would sound like in a 21st cen­tu­ry idiom, have a look at “The Col­lect­ed Sexts of Vir­ginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West” at The New York­er. The elo­quence of an epis­to­lary romance may be a thing of the past, but email and text have their own effi­cient charms:

Vita: Hey girl
Vir­ginia: Hey
Vita: Sup?
Vir­ginia: In bed
Vita: Hot
Vir­ginia: Come vis­it?
Vita: Mmm can’t. Have a toothache.

Cute. But what could ever replace one of Woolf’s last let­ters to her friend and for­mer lover, writ­ten in 1940 while Britain endured Ger­man air bom­bard­ments: “there you sit with the bombs falling around you. What can one say– except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange qui­et evening think­ing of you sit­ting there alone. Dearest—let me have a line…You have giv­en me such hap­pi­ness….”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf’s Hand­writ­ten Sui­cide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

Vir­ginia Woolf Loved Dos­to­evsky, Oscar Wilde Some­times Despised Dick­ens & Oth­er Gos­sip from The Read­ing Expe­ri­ence Data­base

Vir­ginia Woolf Offers Gen­tle Advice on “How One Should Read a Book”

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

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Happens When We Die

Elie Wiesel not only sur­vived the Holo­caust but went on to live a full life with a pro­lif­ic career, the fruits of which includ­ed 57 books, most famous­ly 1960’s Night, a short and for­mal­ly dis­tinc­tive work drawn from his expe­ri­ence in the con­cen­tra­tion camps. “The only role I sought was that of wit­ness,” he wrote in 1978. “I believed that hav­ing sur­vived by chance, I was duty-bound to give mean­ing to my sur­vival, to jus­ti­fy each moment of my life.” And even before his death this past Sat­ur­day at age 87, the Nobel Peace Prize win­ner had learned much about what it means to come to life’s end.

“The body is not eter­nal, but the idea of the soul is,” Wiesel writes in Open Heart, the 2012 mem­oir he wrote after under­go­ing anoth­er brush with death, late in life, which neces­si­tat­ed emer­gency open-heart surgery. “The brain will be buried, but mem­o­ry will sur­vive it.” Oprah Win­frey reads those words back to him in an inter­view from that same year, a clip from which you can see above. “Now that you’ve had all this time to think about it,” she asks, “what do you think hap­pens when we die?”

“Some­how,” he replies, “I will become a child. Child­hood, for me, is a theme in all my work. Will I meet my par­ents again? I want to know that.” Win­frey express­es spe­cial inter­est in the visions of his own fam­i­ly he had in the hos­pi­tal, such as that of his father who had died at Buchen­wald, just weeks before the cam­p’s lib­er­a­tion, and the sight of whose face he had pre­vi­ous­ly glimpsed, just for a moment, dur­ing his Nobel award cer­e­mo­ny in 1986. His father’s sec­ond posthu­mous appear­ance made him think death might not be so bad after all, but “that is the dan­ger. You feel it’s so good to be with the dead, then why not join them?”

But Wiesel, who had done so much already, felt he “had more and more things to do. I haven’t even begun.” Indeed, con­tin­u­ing in his capac­i­ty as the “Con­science of the World,” he received four more awards and hon­ors between 2012 and 2014, made many appear­ances, and sure­ly wrote pages that will see pub­li­ca­tion in the years, or even decades, to come. But for all his accom­plish­ments, he him­self found noth­ing more unusu­al, as he said to Win­frey in a pre­vi­ous talk six­teen years ago, than his own nor­mal­i­ty, “that I sur­vived the Holo­caust and went on to love beau­ti­ful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnor­mal.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor (Thanks to the Pow­er of Music), Dies at 110

Bertrand Rus­sell on the Exis­tence of God & the After­life (1959)

Is There an After­life? Christo­pher Hitchens Spec­u­lates in an Ani­mat­ed Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Change Your Life! Learn the Japanese Art of Decluttering, Organizing & Tidying Things Up

Cus­tom dic­tates that you should observe July 4th—Amer­i­ca’s Inde­pen­dence Day—out­doors, eat­ing hot dogs, drink­ing beer, wav­ing tiny flags on Main Street, and view­ing fire­works.

Why not lib­er­ate your­self from the tyran­ny of the tra­di­tion­al by spend­ing a por­tion of the day indoors, com­mu­ni­cat­ing affec­tion to your cloth­ing, as orga­ni­za­tion­al expert, Marie Kon­do, author of the best sell­ing book, The Life-Chang­ing Mag­ic of Tidy­ing Up, does in the instruc­tion­al video, above?

Most of us who dwell in small New York City apart­ments are already famil­iar with her teach­ings. Hers is a take-no-pris­on­ers approach to clut­ter con­trol. Any item that doesn’t “spark joy”—be it a pair of stretched-out sweat­pants, a long ago grad­u­a­tion present, a ream of children’s art­work, or a near­ly full bot­tle of slight­ly funky-smelling conditioner—must be dis­card­ed imme­di­ate­ly.

(Note to self: ask Mom what­ev­er became of my Spir­it of ’76 water­col­or. She had it framed because it won a prize. Best Bicen­ten­ni­al Obser­vance by a 4th Grad­er or some such. Things like that don’t just van­ish into thin air, unless…)

The total makeover Kon­do pro­pos­es is an ardu­ous, oft-emo­tion­al, week-long task. Don’t blow your entire July 4th hol­i­day try­ing to com­plete the job.

Instead, take an hour or two to refold your clothes. New York­ers’ draw­ers are where Kondo’s influ­ence is felt most deeply. Whether or not we sub­scribe to her prac­tice of treat­ing each gar­ment like a trea­sured friend, our under­wear def­i­nite­ly has more room to breathe, when not on active duty.

See below for a graph­ic demon­stra­tion of how to best fold shirts, pants, and sev­er­al species of undies, using Kondo’s Kon-Marie method.

And don’t be tempt­ed to decamp to the back­yard bar­be­cue when you run across chal­lenges like over­alls or baby one­sies. Watch below as Kon­do tack­les a shirt with kimono sleeves, a pair of Edo-style mata hike pants, and a sweater with a marked resem­blance to a Thneed.

If you’re begin­ning to feel like fire­works may be over­rat­ed, Kon­do deliv­ers a 45-minute overview of her phi­los­o­phy as part of the Talks at Google pro­gram below. Or lose your­self to an entire playlist of Kon­do fold­ing videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be read­ing from her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late at Indy Reads Books in down­town Indi­anapo­lis, Thurs­day, July 7. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch “Don’t Be a Sucker!,” the 1947 US Government Anti-Hatred Film That’s Relevant All Over Again

If you aren’t seri­ous­ly dis­turbed, even alarmed, that we in the U.S. have a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date from a major polit­i­cal par­ty who suc­ceeds by whip­ping up xeno­pho­bic fer­vor and telling us the coun­try must not only rein­sti­tute tor­ture, but must do “the unthink­able”… well…. I don’t real­ly know what to say to you. Per­haps more symp­tom than cause of a glob­al turn toward trib­al hatred, the GOP can­di­date has lent his name to a phe­nom­e­non char­ac­ter­ized by cultish devo­tion to an author­i­tar­i­an strong­man, ser­i­al false­hood, and easy, uncrit­i­cal scape­goat­ing. We needn’t look far back in time to see the his­tor­i­cal ana­logues, whether in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, at the end of the 19th, or dur­ing any num­ber of his­tor­i­cal moments before and after.

We also needn’t look very far back to find a his­to­ry of resis­tance to author­i­tar­i­an big­otry, and not only from Civ­il Rights cam­paign­ers and left­ists, but also, as you can see above, from the U.S. War Depart­ment. In 1947, the Depart­ment released the short pro­pa­gan­da film, “Don’t Be a Suck­er!”, aimed at mid­dle-class Amer­i­can Joes. Shot at Warn­er Stu­dios, the film opens with some typ­i­cal noirish crime sce­nar­ios, com­plete with con­vinc­ing­ly noir light­ing and cam­era angles, to visu­al­ly set up the char­ac­ter of the “suck­er” who gets tak­en in by sin­is­ter but seduc­tive characters—“people who stay up nights try­ing to fig­ure out how to take away” what the every­man has. What do naïve poten­tial marks in this anal­o­gy have to lose? Amer­i­can plen­ty: “plen­ty of food, big fac­to­ries to make things a man can use, big cities to do the busi­ness of a big coun­try, and peo­ple, lots of peo­ple.”

“Peo­ple,” the nar­ra­tor says, work­ing the farms and fac­to­ries, dig­ging the mines and run­ning the busi­ness­es: “all kinds of peo­ple. Peo­ple from dif­fer­ent coun­tries with dif­fer­ent reli­gions, dif­fer­ent col­ored skins. Free peo­ple.” Is this disin­gen­u­ous? You bet. We’re told this aggre­gate of peo­ple is “free to vote”—and we know this to be large­ly untrue in prac­tice for many, neces­si­tat­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act almost twen­ty years lat­er. Free to “pick their own jobs”? Employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion, seg­re­ga­tion, and sex­ism effec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed that for mil­lions. But the sen­ti­ments are noble, even if the facts don’t ful­ly fit. As our aver­age Joe wan­ders along, con­tem­plat­ing his advan­tages, he hap­pens upon a reac­tionary street­corner demogague harangu­ing against for­eign­ers, African-Amer­i­cans, Catholics, and Freema­sons (?) on behalf of “real Amer­i­cans.” Sounds plen­ty famil­iar.

The voice of rea­son comes from a nat­u­ral­ized Hun­gar­i­an pro­fes­sor who wit­nessed the rise of Nazism in Berlin and who explains to our every­man the strat­e­gy of fanat­ics and fascists—divide and rule. “We human beings are not born with prej­u­dices,” says the wise pro­fes­sor, “always they are made for us. Made by some­one who wants some­thing. Remem­ber that when you hear this kind of talk. Somebody’s going to get some­thing out of it. And it isn’t going to be you.” The remain­der of the film most­ly con­sists of the Hun­gar­i­an pro­fes­sor’s rec­ol­lec­tions of how the Nazis won over ordi­nary Ger­mans.

all american superman

“Don’t Be a Suck­er!” uses a clever rhetor­i­cal strat­e­gy, appeal­ing to the self-inter­est and van­i­ty of the every­man while couch­ing that appeal in egal­i­tar­i­an val­ues. The very recent his­tor­i­cal exam­ple of fas­cist Europe car­ries sig­nif­i­cant weight, where too often today that his­to­ry gets treat­ed like a joke, turned into crude and mud­dled memes. This film would have had real impact on the view­ing audi­ence, who would have seen it before their fea­ture in the­aters across the coun­try.

It’s worth not­ing that this film came out dur­ing a peri­od of increas­ing Amer­i­can pros­per­i­ty and com­par­a­tive eco­nom­ic equi­ty. The jobs “Don’t Be a Suck­er!” lists with pride have dis­ap­peared. Today’s every­man, we might say, has even more rea­son for sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to the dem­a­gogue’s appeals. The Inter­net Archive notes an irony here “in the light of Cold War anti-Com­mu­nist pol­i­tics, which real­ly came into their own in the year this film was made.” The street­corner pop­ulist calls to mind peo­ple like Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover (and he looks like George Wallace)—powerful gov­ern­ment author­i­ties who cast sus­pi­cion on every move­ment for Civ­il Rights and social equal­i­ty.

“Don’t Be a Suck­er!” may seem like an out­lier, but it’s rem­i­nis­cent of anoth­er piece of patri­ot­ic, anti-racist-and-reli­gious-big­otry propaganda—the Super­man car­toon above, which first appeared in 1949, dis­trib­uted to school chil­dren as a book cov­er by some­thing called The Insti­tute for Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy. You may have seen ver­sions of a full-col­or poster, reprint­ed in sub­se­quent years. Here, Super­man express­es the same egal­i­tar­i­an val­ues as “Don’t Be a Suck­er!” only instead of call­ing racism a con-job, he calls it “Un-Amer­i­can,” using the favorite denun­ci­a­tion of HUAC and oth­er anti-Com­mu­nist groups.

His­to­ry and the present moment may often prove otherwise—showing us just how very Amer­i­can racism and big­otry can be, but so too are numer­ous counter-move­ments on the left and, as these exam­ples show, from more con­ser­v­a­tive, estab­lish­ment cor­ners as well.

“Don’t Be a Suck­er!” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

h/t Daniel Buk

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Redis­cov­ered: The First Amer­i­can Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Cen­sors and For­got­ten for 80 Years

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

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

The Fight to Liberate the “Happy Birthday” Song, Told in a Short Documentary

You may have fol­lowed the sto­ry in the news lately–the song, “Hap­py Birth­day to You,” has offi­cial­ly entered the pub­lic domain, thanks to a court bat­tle fought by the doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Jen­nifer Nel­son. The bat­tle start­ed years ago when Nel­son was billed $1,500 to use “Hap­py Birth­day to You” in a doc­u­men­tary–the price of licens­ing a song still under copy­right. Wait, what? Flab­ber­gast­ed that “the world’s most pop­u­lar song,” which could be traced back to 1893, could still be under copy­right, Nel­son filed a class action suit against Warner/Chappell Music, the group claim­ing rights to “Hap­py Birth­day.” And won.

In this new short doc­u­men­tary from The Guardian, Nel­son tells the sto­ry of the song and her four-year strug­gle to give “Hap­py Birth­day” back to the world. With a lit­tle luck, “This Land is Your Land,” will be next.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

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An Eye-Popping Collection of 400+ Japanese Matchbox Covers: From 1920 through the 1940s

Matchbook 1

Phillu­me­ny — the prac­tice of col­lect­ing match­box­es — strikes me as a fun and prac­ti­cal hob­by. As a child, I was fas­ci­nat­ed with the con­tents of a large glass vase my grand­par­ents had ded­i­cat­ed to this pur­suit. Their col­lec­tion was an ersatz record of all the hotels and night­clubs they had appar­ent­ly vis­it­ed before trans­form­ing into a dowdy old­er cou­ple who enjoyed rock­ing in match­ing Bicen­ten­ni­al themed chairs, mon­i­tor­ing their bird feed­er.

As any seri­ous phillu­menist will tell you, one need not have a per­son­al con­nec­tion to the items one is col­lect­ing. Most match­box enthu­si­asts are in it for the art, a micro­cosm of 20th cen­tu­ry design. The urge to pre­serve these dis­pos­able items is under­stand­able, giv­en the amount of artistry that went into them. It was good busi­ness prac­tice for bars and restau­rants to give them to cus­tomers at no charge, even if they nev­er planned to strike so much as a sin­gle match.

Matchbook 2

Smoking’s hey­day is over, but until some­one fig­ures out how to make fire with a smart phone, match­box­es and books are unlike­ly to dis­ap­pear. Wher­ev­er you go, you’ll be able to find good­ies to add to your col­lec­tion, usu­al­ly for free.

Or you could stay at home, trawl­ing the Inter­net for some of the most glo­ri­ous, and sought after exam­ples of the form — those pro­duced in Japan between the two World Wars. As author Steven Heller, co-chair of the School of Visu­al Arts’ MFA Design pro­gram, writes in Print mag­a­zine:

The design­ers were seri­ous­ly influ­enced by import­ed Euro­pean styles such as Vic­to­ri­an and Art Nou­veau… (and lat­er by Art Deco and the Bauhaus, intro­duced through Japan­ese graph­ic arts trade mag­a­zines, and incor­po­rat­ed into the design of match­box labels dur­ing the late 1920s and ’30s). West­ern graph­ic man­ner­isms were har­mo­nious­ly com­bined with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese styles and geome­tries from the Mei­ji peri­od (1868–1912), exem­pli­fied by both their sim­ple and com­plex orna­men­tal com­po­si­tions. Since match­es were a big export indus­try, and the Japan­ese dom­i­nat­ed the mar­kets in the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, Eng­land, France, and even India, match­box design exhib­it­ed a hybrid typog­ra­phy that wed West­ern and Japan­ese styles into an intri­cate mélange.

Find some­thing that catch­es your eye? It shouldn’t cost more than a buck or two to acquire it, though Japan­ese clut­ter-con­trol guru, Marie Kon­do, would no doubt encour­age you to adopt car­toon­ist Roz Chast’s approach to match­book appre­ci­a­tion.

Matchbook 3

Ear­li­er this spring, Chast shared her pas­sion with read­ers of The New York­er, col­lag­ing some of her favorites into an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic where­in she revealed that she doesn’t col­lect the actu­al objects, just the dig­i­tal images. Those famil­iar with Can’t We Talk About Some­thing More Pleas­ant, Chast’s hilar­i­ous­ly painful mem­oir about her dif­fi­cult, aging par­ents’ “gold­en years,” will be unsur­prised that she opt­ed not to add to the unwel­come pile of “crap” that gets hand­ed down to the next gen­er­a­tion when a col­lec­tor pass­es away.

If you’re inspired to start a Chast-style col­lec­tion, have a rum­mage through the large album of Japan­ese vin­tage match­box cov­ers that web design­er, Jane McDe­vitt post­ed to Flickr, from which the images here are drawn.

Those 418 labels, culled from a friend’s grandfather’s col­lec­tion are just the tip of McDevitt’s match­box obses­sion. To date, she’s post­ed over 2050 cov­ers from all around the world, with the bulk hail­ing from East­ern Europe in the 50s and 60s.  You can vis­it her col­lec­tion of 400+ Japan­ese match­box cov­ers here. And if you’re into this stuff, check out the Japan­ese book, Match­box Label Col­lec­tion 1920s-40s.

Matchbook 4

via coudal.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day, author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, will be read­ing from her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late at Indy Reads Books in down­town Indi­anapo­lis, Thurs­day, July 7. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Terry Gilliam Explains His Never-Ending Fascination with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”

As I recall, if you asked men in the 1990s to describe ide­al the woman, a great many would have made ref­er­ences to Uma Thur­man, who spent that decade play­ing high-pro­file roles in acclaimed movies like Pulp Fic­tion and Gat­ta­ca—as well as less-acclaimed movies like The Avengers and Bat­man & Robin (but hey, you can’t pick win­ners all the time). But ani­ma­tor, direc­tor, Amer­i­can Mon­ty Python mem­ber and all-around vision­ary Ter­ry Gilliam made use of the pow­er­ful appeal of Thur­man’s pres­ence even ear­li­er, when—making The Adven­tures of Baron Mun­chausen—-he need­ed just the right young lady for a scene recre­at­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li’s Renais­sance paint­ing The Birth of Venus.

“The cast­ing direc­tor in L.A. said, ‘You’ve got to meet this girl,’ ” Gilliam remem­bers in the clip from this year’s BBC Arts doc­u­men­tary Bot­ti­cel­li’s Venus: The Mak­ing on an Icon at the top of the post. “There she was: stat­uesque, beau­ti­ful, intelligent—incredibly intel­li­gent.” He com­pares the orig­i­nal can­vas itself to a “widescreen cin­e­ma,” as well as, just as apt­ly, to a low­er art form entire­ly: “The winds are blow­ing, her hair starts bil­low­ing out, the dress­ing girl is bring­ing in the robe — it’s a real­ly fun­ny paint­ing, look­ing at it again, because she’s there, sta­t­ic, ele­gant, naked, sexy. The robe would­n’t look so good if the winds weren’t blow­ing, nor would her hair look so beau­ti­ful. It’s like, this is a com­mer­cial for sham­poo!”

As Mon­ty Python fans all know, Gilliam had worked with The Birth of Venus before, using his sig­na­ture cutout ani­ma­tion tech­nique, which defined much of the look and feel of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, to make Venus dance. “I like test­ing how much I like some­thing, or how beau­ti­ful some­thing is, by mak­ing fun of it,” he says to his BBC inter­view­er. “If it with­stands my silli­ness, it’s real­ly great art.” Fur­ther props to Bot­ti­cel­li come at the end of the clip, when she asks Gilliam if he thinks Venus rep­re­sents “the ulti­mate male fan­ta­sy.” “Oh, why not?” he imme­di­ate­ly replies. “You don’t do much bet­ter than that. I think he real­ly cracked that one.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Ter­ry Gilliam’s Debut Ani­mat­ed Film, Sto­ry­time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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