The Doodles in Leonardo da Vinci’s Manuscripts Contain His Groundbreaking Theories on the Laws of Friction, Scientists Discover

in History, Physics | December 18th, 2017

Just like the rest of us, Leonar­do da Vin­ci doo­dled and scrib­bled: you can see it in his dig­i­tized note­books, which we fea­tured this past sum­mer. But the pro­to­typ­i­cal Renais­sance man, both unsur­pris­ing­ly and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, took that scrib­bling and doo­dling to a high­er lev­el entire­ly. Not only do his mar­gin notes and sketch­es look far more ele­gant than most of ours, some of them turn out to reveal his pre­vi­ous­ly unknown ear­ly insight into impor­tant sub­jects. Take, for instance, the study of fric­tion (oth­er­wise known as tri­bol­o­gy), which may well have got its start in what at first just looked like doo­dles of blocks, weights, and pul­leys in Leonar­do’s note­books.

This dis­cov­ery comes from Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor Ian M. Hutch­ings, whose research, says that depart­men­t’s site, “exam­ines the devel­op­ment of Leonar­do’s under­stand­ing of the laws of fric­tion and their appli­ca­tion. His work on fric­tion orig­i­nat­ed in stud­ies of the rota­tion­al resis­tance of axles and the mechan­ics of screw threads, but he also saw how fric­tion was involved in many oth­er appli­ca­tions.”

One page, “from a tiny note­book (92 x 63 mm) now in the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um in Lon­don, dates from 1493” and “con­tains Leonardo’s first state­ment of the laws of fric­tion,” sketch­es of “rows of blocks being pulled by a weight hang­ing over a pul­ley – in exact­ly the same kind of exper­i­ment we might do today to demon­strate the laws of fric­tion.”

“While it may not be pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy unequiv­o­cal­ly the empir­i­cal meth­ods by which Leonar­do arrived at his under­stand­ing of fric­tion,” Hutch­ings writes in his paper, “his achieve­ments more than 500 years ago were out­stand­ing. He made tests, he observed, and he made pow­er­ful con­nec­tions in his think­ing on this sub­ject as in so many oth­ers.” By the year of these sketch­es Leonar­do “had elu­ci­dat­ed the fun­da­men­tal laws of fric­tion,” then “devel­oped and applied them with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess to prac­ti­cal mechan­i­cal sys­tems.”

And though tri­bol­o­gists had no idea of Leonar­do’s work on fric­tion until the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, seem­ing­ly unim­por­tant draw­ings like these show that he “stands in a unique posi­tion as a quite remark­able and inspi­ra­tional pio­neer of tri­bol­o­gy.” What oth­er fields of inquiry could Leonar­do have pio­neered with­out his­to­ry hav­ing prop­er­ly acknowl­edged it? Just as his life inspires us to learn and invent, so research like Hutch­ings’ inspires us to look clos­er at what he left behind, espe­cial­ly at that which our eyes may have passed over before. You can open up Leonar­do’s note­books and have a look your­self. Just make sure to learn his mir­ror writ­ing first.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

Why Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Write Back­wards? A Look Into the Ulti­mate Renais­sance Man’s “Mir­ror Writ­ing”

The Ele­gant Math­e­mat­ics of Vit­ru­vian Man, Leonar­do da Vinci’s Most Famous Draw­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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The Not Yorker: A Collection of Rejected & Late Cover Submissions to The New Yorker

in Art, Magazines | December 18th, 2017

What’s hap­pened to the thou­sands of cov­er designs that have been sub­mit­ted to The New York­er? And then been reject­ed, either sum­mar­i­ly or with much con­sid­er­a­tion? Prob­a­bly most have fad­ed into obliv­ion. But at least some are now see­ing the light of day over at The Not York­er, a web site that col­lects “declined or late cov­er sub­mis­sions” to the sto­ried mag­a­zine. See a gallery of declined illus­tra­tions here.

The cre­ators of the new site encour­age illus­tra­tors to sub­mit their reject­ed cov­ers here. And lest there be any doubt, The Not York­er is not offi­cial­ly affil­i­at­ed with The New York­er.

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!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The New York­er’s “Com­ma Queen” Mer­ci­ful­ly Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Who/Whom, Lay/Lie, Less/Fewer & Beyond

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

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Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography in Her First Online Course

in Online Courses, Photography | December 15th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Dol­ly Par­ton and Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Barack Oba­ma and fam­i­ly, Bruce Spring­steen, Whoopi Gold­berg, Bill Gates, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, Lady Gaga: name some­one who has risen to the very top of the zeit­geist over the past few decades, and Annie Lei­bovitz has prob­a­bly pho­tographed them. Her images, in fact, have often come to stand for the images of her sub­jects in the cul­ture: when we think of cer­tain celebri­ties, we instinc­tive­ly imag­ine them as they appeared on a Lei­bovitz-shot cov­er of Rolling Stone or Van­i­ty Fair. Safe to say, then, that she knows a thing or two about how to take a pic­ture that makes an impact.

The peo­ple at online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class have now pack­aged that knowl­edge in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy,” a course that joins their exist­ing line­up that includes Helen Mir­ren on act­ing, Steve Mar­tin on com­e­dy, Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing, and Her­bie Han­cock on jazz. For a price of $90 (or $180 for a year-long pass to all of their class­es), Mas­ter­class offers a pack­age of work­book-accom­pa­nied video lessons in which “Annie teach­es you how to devel­op con­cepts, work with sub­jects, shoot with nat­ur­al light, and bring images to life in post-pro­duc­tion.”

The ear­ly lessons in “Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy” cov­er sub­jects like mem­o­ries of her own devel­op­ment as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to dis­cus­sions of her influ­ences and her view of the medi­um itself. Lat­er on, she gets into the real-life case study of shoot­ing chef Alice Waters for Van­i­ty Fair, dig­i­tal post-pro­duc­tion, how to come up with the right con­cept (ide­al­ly, so her career has shown, one just strange or dar­ing enough to get peo­ple talk­ing), and how to work with your sub­ject. “There’s this idea that in por­trai­ture, it’s the pho­tog­ra­pher’s job to set the sub­ject at ease,” Lei­bovitz says in the class trail­er above. “I don’t believe that.”

Few aspects of Lei­bovitz’s method have drawn as much atten­tion as the way she han­dles her sub­jects,  which tends to involve both devel­op­ing enough of a rela­tion­ship with them to gain some under­stand­ing of their inner lives and putting them in sit­u­a­tions which, so she has stu­dious­ly learned while get­ting to know them, may lie a bit out­side of their com­fort zone. Few of us will ever have that much face time with a pho­tog­ra­ph­er like Lei­bovitz, let alone enough to ask her in-depth ques­tions about the craft, but if you sus­pect you might find your­self one day in a posi­tion to pho­to­graph the next Cait­lyn Jen­ner, Mark Zucker­berg, or Kim Kar­dashi­an — or some­one more impor­tant to you per­son­al­ly — the strate­gies explained in her Mas­ter­class course will sure­ly come in handy.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

School of Visu­al Arts Presents 99 Hours of Free Pho­tog­ra­phy Lec­tures

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Ansel Adams, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: 1958 Doc­u­men­tary Cap­tures the Cre­ative Process of the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

 

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350 Animated Videos That Will Teach You Philosophy, from Ancient to Post-Modern

in Animation, Philosophy | December 15th, 2017

Phi­los­o­phy is not an idle pur­suit of leisured gen­tle­men and tenured pro­fes­sors, though the life cir­cum­stances of many a philoso­pher might make us think oth­er­wise. The fore­most exam­ple of a priv­i­leged philoso­pher is Mar­cus Aure­lius, famous expos­i­tor of Sto­icism, and also, inci­den­tal­ly, Emper­or of Rome. Yet we must also bear in mind that Epicte­tus, the oth­er most famous expos­i­tor of Sto­icism, whom Aure­lius quotes repeat­ed­ly in his Med­i­ta­tions, was born a slave.

Against cer­tain ten­den­cies of mod­ern think­ing, we might haz­ard to believe that both men shared enough com­mon human expe­ri­ence to arrive at some uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples ful­ly applic­a­ble to every­day life. Sto­icism, after all, is noth­ing if not prac­ti­cal. Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the emperor’s advice below—how chal­leng­ing it might be for any­one, and how ben­e­fi­cial, not only for the indi­vid­ual, but—as Aure­lius makes plain—for every­one.

Begin the morn­ing by say­ing to your­self, I shall meet with the busy­body, the ungrate­ful, arro­gant, deceit­ful, envi­ous, unso­cial. All these things hap­pen to them by rea­son of their igno­rance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beau­ti­ful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to mine, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it par­tic­i­pates in the same intel­li­gence and the same por­tion of divin­i­ty, I can nei­ther be harmed by any of them, nor no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my broth­er, nor hate him. For we are made for coop­er­a­tion, like feet, like hands, like eye­lids, like the rows of the upper and low­er teeth. To act against one anoth­er then is con­trary to nature; and it is act­ing against one anoth­er to be vexed and to turn away.

Yes, a pas­sage that might have come from the speech­es of Gand­hi, the Dalai Lama, or Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. also belongs to the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions of ancient Rome, though in the mouth of an emper­or it may not sound to us as com­pelling­ly rad­i­cal.

Nowa­days, sev­er­al mil­lion more peo­ple have access to books, lit­er­a­cy, and leisure than in Mar­cus Aure­lius’ era (and one won­ders where even an emper­or found the time), though few of us, it’s true, have access to a nobleman’s edu­ca­tion. While cur­rent­ly under threat, the inter­net still pro­vides us with a wealth of free content—and many of us are much bet­ter posi­tioned than Epicte­tus was to edu­cate our­selves about philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions, schools, and ways of think­ing.

We can learn about the Sto­ics, for example—or get the gist, and hope­ful­ly a taste for more—with Alain de Botton’s video appe­tiz­er at the top, just one of 35 short ani­mat­ed videos on the phi­los­o­phy YouTube chan­nel of his School of Life.

We can cruise through a sum­ma­ry of Aristotle’s views on “flour­ish­ing” in the video above, nar­rat­ed by the always-affa­ble Stephen Fry as part of the BBC’s “His­to­ry of Ideas” series, cur­rent­ly up to 48 unique­ly ani­mat­ed videos fea­tur­ing oth­er smart-sound­ing celebri­ty nar­ra­tors like Har­ry Shear­er and Gillian Ander­son.

The Macat series of phi­los­o­phy explain­er videos (136 in total) may lack celebri­ty cred, but it makes up for it with some very thor­ough short sum­maries of impor­tant works in philosophy—as well as soci­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, and lit­er­a­ture. “The essen­tial pur­pose of pol­i­tics is free­dom,” Han­nah Arendt wrote in her 1958 The Human Con­di­tion, we learn above, a work of hers that is not focused on mass mur­der and total­i­tar­i­an­ism. Arendt had much more to say, and in this book, she relies on a clas­si­cal dis­tinc­tion well known to the Greeks and Romans and all who came after them: the con­trast between two kinds of life—the vita acti­va and vita con­tem­pla­ti­va.

While phi­los­o­phy may have become much more acces­si­ble, it has also become less “open access”—in the sense of being a pub­lic affair, tak­ing place in city squares and active­ly encour­aged by states­men and ordi­nary loi­ter­ers alike. For all its possibilities—and we hope they can remain—the inter­net has nev­er been able to recre­ate the Athen­ian ide­al of the philo­soph­i­cal pub­lic square, if such a thing ever real­ly exist­ed. But projects like Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy—spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke, and oth­er elite institutions—have sought for years to intro­duce peo­ple from every walk of life to the kinds of ideas that Athe­ni­ans sup­pos­ed­ly threw around like fris­bees in their spare time, includ­ing Plato’s notion (via his mouth­piece, Socrates) of “the good life,” which Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans pro­fes­sor Chris Sur­pre­nent, sum­ma­rizes above. See all of Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy’s 130 ani­ma­tions here.

The mate­r­i­al is out there. We’ve high­light­ed 350 philo­soph­i­cal ani­ma­tions above, and also sep­a­rate­ly gath­ered 200+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. And, if you’re read­ing this, it’s a good bet you’ve prob­a­bly got a lit­tle time to spare. If it’s an old-fash­ioned sales pitch you need to get going, con­sid­er that for just pen­nies, er, min­utes a day, you can become more knowl­edge­able about ancient Greek and Roman thought, Kant­ian ethics, 20th cen­tu­ry Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, Niet­zsche, crit­i­cal think­ing skills, Scholas­tic the­o­log­i­cal thought, Bud­dhism, Wittgen­stein, Sartre, etc., etc, etc., etc. That said, how­ev­er, acquir­ing the con­cen­tra­tion, dis­ci­pline, and will to do your own think­ing about what you’ve learned, and to apply it, has nev­er been so free and easy to come by for any­one at any time in his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

48 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to 25 Philoso­phers by The School of Life: From Pla­to to Kant and Fou­cault

105 Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: A Project Spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks 

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

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Why Coffee Naps Will Perk You Up More Than Either Coffee, or Naps, Alone

in Food & Drink, Health | December 15th, 2017

We’ve all had a cup of cof­fee after a nap. But maybe we’ve been doing it all wrong. Maybe we should put the cup of cof­fee before the nap. It sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive. But appar­ent­ly the cof­fee nap–a cup of joe fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by a quick nap–has some sci­en­tif­ic mer­its and unex­pect­ed health ben­e­fits.

Over at Vox, they’ve sum­ma­rized the find­ings of researchers at Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, who found that “when tired par­tic­i­pants took a 15-minute cof­fee nap, they went on to com­mit few­er errors in a dri­ving sim­u­la­tor than when they were giv­en only cof­fee, or only took a nap.”

Or “a Japan­ese study found that peo­ple who took a caf­feine nap before tak­ing a series of mem­o­ry tests per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter on them com­pared with peo­ple who sole­ly took a nap, or took a nap and then washed their faces or had a bright light shone in their eyes.”

The accom­pa­ny­ing Vox video above explains how the cof­fee nap works its mag­ic. The biol­o­gy and chem­istry all get dis­cussed in a quick two-minute clip.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

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Will You Really Achieve Happiness If You Finally Win the Rat Race? Don’t Answer the Question Until You’ve Watched Steve Cutts’ New Animation

in Animation, Art, Economics, Life, Media | December 15th, 2017

Illus­tra­tor Steve Cutts sets his lat­est ani­ma­tion, “Hap­pi­ness,” in a teem­ing urban envi­ron­ment, with hun­dreds of near iden­ti­cal car­toon rats stand­ing in for human drudges in an unful­fill­ing, and not unfa­mil­iar race.

Packed sub­way cars, a bom­bard­ment of adver­tis­ing, soul-dead­en­ing office jobs, and Black Fri­day sales are just a few of the indig­ni­ties Cutts’ rodents are sub­ject­ed to, to the tune of Bizet’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.”

Ram­pant over-consumption—a major pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for this artist—offers illu­so­ry relief, and a great deal of fun for view­ers with the time to hit pause, to bet­ter savor the grim details.

The max­i­mal­ist frames read like a grat­i­fy­ing per­ver­sion of Richard Scarry’s relent­less­ly sun­ny Busy­town. As with Cutts’ 80s-throw­back Simpson’s couch gag: pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences and visu­al input whip by at sub­lim­i­nal warp speed. 

They may also serve as an anti­dote to the sort of mes­sag­ing we’re con­stant­ly on the receiv­ing end of, whether we live in city, coun­try or some­where in-between. Check out the scene as Cutts pans up from the sub­way plat­form, 52 sec­onds in:

The panty-clad female mod­el for Blah cologne’s fash­ion­ably black and white ad is ema­ci­at­ed near­ly to the point of death.

“You’re bet­ter than laces” flat­ters the lat­est (lace­less) shoe from a swoosh-bedecked footwear man­u­fac­tur­er, while a radi­a­tor-col­ored bev­er­age floats above the mot­to “Just drink it, morons.”

Krispo Flakes fight depres­sion with “the bits oth­er cere­als don’t want.”

Heav­en help us all, there’s even a poster for TRUMP The Musi­cal.

This freeze-frame scruti­ny could make an excel­lent activ­i­ty for any class where mid­dle and high school­ers are encour­aged to think crit­i­cal­ly about their role as con­sumers.

As Cutts, a one-time employ­ee of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, Iso­bar, who con­tributed to cam­paigns for such glob­al giants as Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, and Toy­ota, told Reverb Press in 2015:

These are things that affect us all on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el so nat­u­ral­ly they’re a main focus for a lot of my work. Human­i­ty has the pow­er to be great in so many ways and yet at the same time we are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed. I think it’s the con­flict between these two that fas­ci­nates me the most. As a race of beings we’ve made incred­i­ble achieve­ments in such a short space, but at the same time we seem so over­whelm­ing­ly intent on destroy­ing our­selves and every­thing around us. It would be very inter­est­ing to see where we’ll be in a hun­dred years. The term insan­i­ty is intrigu­ing – it’s almost like we’re encour­aged to act in a way that seems gen­uine­ly insane when you look at it objec­tive­ly, but it’s often accept­ed as nor­mal right now. I think we will have to evolve beyond our cur­rent think­ing and way of doing things if we want to sur­vive.

See more of Cutts’ ani­mat­ed work here. And while he doesn’t go out of his way to hype his online store, a gallery qual­i­ty print of The Rat Trap would make a fan­tas­tic gift from your cubi­cle mate’s Secret San­ta. (HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

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

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The Tree of Modern Art: Elegant Drawing Visualizes the Development of Modern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

in Art, History, Magazines | December 14th, 2017

Select­ing cer­tain fea­tures, sim­pli­fy­ing them, exag­ger­at­ing them, and using them to pro­vide a deep insight, at a glance, into the sub­ject as a whole: such is the art of the car­i­ca­tur­ist, one that Miguel Covar­ru­bias ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el in the ear­ly- to mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Those skills, com­bined with his knowl­edge as an art his­to­ri­an, also served him well when he drew “The Tree of Mod­ern Art.” This aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing dia­gram first appeared in Van­i­ty Fair in May of 1933, a time when many read­ers of such mag­a­zines would have felt a great curios­i­ty about how, exact­ly, all these new paint­ings and sculp­tures and such — many of which did­n’t seem to look much like the paint­ings and sculp­tures they knew at all — relat­ed to one anoth­er.

“Because it stops in 1940, the tree fails to account for abstract expres­sion­ism and oth­er post–World War II move­ments,” writes Vox’s Phil Edwards, in a piece that includes a ver­sion of the Covar­ru­bias’ 1940 “Tree of Mod­ern Art” revi­sion with click­able exam­ples of rel­e­vant art­work.

But “the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture alone reveals a sur­pris­ing­ly large amount about the way art has evolved,” includ­ing how it “becomes broad­er and more inclu­sive over time,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a “glob­al affair”; how “artis­tic schools have become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly diverse”; how “the canon evolved quick­ly”; and how “all art is inter­twined,” cre­at­ed as it has so long been by artists who “work togeth­er, bor­row from each oth­er, and grow in tan­dem.”

You can also find the “Tree of Mod­ern Art” at the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, a hold­ing that illus­trates, as it were, just how wide a swath of infor­ma­tion design the term “map” can encom­pass. “The date is esti­mat­ed based on the ver­so of the paper being a blue lined base map of the Nation­al Park Ser­vice dat­ed 12/28/39,” says the col­lec­tion’s site. “This draw­ing was found in the papers of B. Ash­bur­ton Tripp” — also a map­mak­er in the col­lec­tion — “and we assume that Covar­ru­bias and Tripp were friends (ver­i­fied by Trip­p’s descen­dants) and that the blue line base map was some­thing Tripp was work­ing on in his land­scape archi­tec­ture busi­ness.”

The leg­end describes the tree as hav­ing been “plant­ed 60 years ago,” a num­ber that has now passed 130. Many more leaves have grown off those branch­es of impres­sion­ism, expres­sion­ism, post-impres­sion­ism, sur­re­al­ism, cubism, and futur­ism in the years since Covar­ru­bias drew the tree, but for some­one to go back and aug­ment such a ful­ly-real­ized cre­ation would­n’t do at all — as with any work of art, mod­ern or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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See Ridley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Advertisement of All Time

in Film, Television | December 14th, 2017

I have often thought that eat­ing some real­ly seri­ous brown bread is a bit like push­ing a bike up a very steep hill, a hill called “health.” So what a sur­prise to find that in 2006 a poll of 1,000 Britons vot­ed this 1973 ad for Hov­is bread as the Favorite British Com­mer­cial of All Time. And none oth­er than Rid­ley Scott direct­ed it. Indeed, this sto­ry of a young lad deliv­er­ing bread by bicy­cle up a steep cob­ble­stone min­ing-town street is laced through with nos­tal­gia and a sen­ti­men­tal use of Dvorak’s “New World” Sym­pho­ny. (So beloved is it that Brits often request the clas­si­cal work on radio as “the Hov­is music.”)

Before Rid­ley Scott became a block­buster film direc­tor, he cut his teeth by direct­ing episod­ic tele­vi­sion in the UK, and then form­ing an adver­tis­ing pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny with his broth­er Tony called RSA Films (Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates). Accord­ing to Scott, he was involved in the pro­duc­tion of rough­ly 2,700 com­mer­cials over the company’s 10 years.

This icon­ic ad was one of sev­er­al he direct­ed that year for Hov­is, but this is the one that stuck. It might be the sim­plic­i­ty of the ad, the Sisyphean strug­gle of its young pro­tag­o­nist (who at least gets to eas­i­ly ride home), or any num­ber of fac­tors, but it would be a stretch to real­ly see the auteur in this film. If any­thing, it’s rem­i­nis­cent of his kitchen sink meets French New Wave short film from 1965, “Boy and Bicy­cle,” which is inter­est­ing more as an odd­i­ty and a star­ring vehi­cle for his broth­er than a great film.

The Inde­pen­dent tracked down the boy in the Hov­is ad, Carl Bar­low, who was 13 at the time, but is now 57 and a retired fire­fight­er.

“It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hov­is boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys could­n’t ride a bike, and the oth­er would­n’t cut his hair into the pud­ding bowl style — it was the Sev­en­ties after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part.”

This year, as part of an ad cam­paign for Evans Bicy­cles, Mr. Bar­low made his way to the top of the hill one more time, with the help of an elec­tric bike:

The orig­i­nal com­mer­cial is not Rid­ley Scott’s most famous one. That would go to his Apple Mac­in­tosh “1984” ad that screened dur­ing the Super Bowl. This list shows a few more that Scott direct­ed, into the 1990s.

Final­ly, an icon­ic com­mer­cial invites par­o­dy, and, in fact, cher­ished come­di­ans The Two Ron­nies made fun of the Hov­is ad in this brief skit from 1978.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

How Rid­ley Scott Turned Footage From the Begin­ning of The Shin­ing Into the End of Blade Run­ner

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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