The Library of Congress Launches the National Screening Room, Putting Online Hundreds of Historic Films

in Film, History | October 16th, 2018

Pub­lic domain fans, pull your noses out of those musty old books on Project Guten­berg, but keep your eyes glued to the screen!

The Library of Con­gress just cut the rib­bon on the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, an online trove of cin­e­mat­ic good­ies, free for the stream­ing.

Giv­en that the col­lec­tion spans more than 100 years of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, from 1890–1999, not all of the fea­tured films are in the pub­lic domain, but most are, and those are free to down­load as well as watch.

Archivist Mike Mashon, who heads the Library’s Mov­ing Image Sec­tion, iden­ti­fies the project’s goal as pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with a “broad range of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al audio-visu­al mate­ri­als that will enrich edu­ca­tion, schol­ar­ship and life­long learn­ing.”

Can’t argue with that. Those seek­ing to become bet­ter versed in the art of con­sen­su­al kiss­ing whilst mus­ta­chioed will find sev­er­al valu­able take­aways in the above clip.

Per­son­al expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, com­pels me to expand upon Mashon’s stat­ed goal: artists, the­ater­mak­ers, filmmakers—use those down­load­able pub­lic domain films in your cre­ative projects! (Prop­er­ly attrib­uted, of course.)

You can edu­cate your­self about a par­tic­u­lar clip’s rights and the gen­er­al ins and outs of motion pic­ture copy­rights by scrolling past the clip’s call num­ber to click on “Rights & Access.”

The Library does empha­size that rights assess­ment is the individual’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. Few artists con­ceive of this as the fun part, but do it, or risk the sort of cre­ative heart­break ani­ma­tor Nina Paley set her­self up for when inte­grat­ing inad­e­quate­ly checked out vin­tage record­ings into her fea­ture-length Sita Sings the Blues, hav­ing “decid­ed (she) was just going to use this music, and let the chips fall where they may.”

A hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ple: Liza Min­nel­li’s 2nd or 3rd birth­day par­ty at her god­fa­ther Ira Gershwin’s Bev­er­ly Hills estate?

It’s adorable to the point of irre­sistible, but alas “for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es only,” a des­ig­na­tion that applies to all the Gersh­win home movies.

(Watch em, any­way! You nev­er know when you may be called upon to throw an opu­lent 1940’s‑style tod­dler par­ty. Fore­warned is fore­armed! Insta­gram’s gonna LOVE you.)

Copy­right-wise, a good way to hedge your bets is to look for mate­r­i­al filmed before 1922, like The New­ly­weds, DW Griffith’s meet-cute silent short, star­ring America’s Sweet­heart, Mary Pick­ford. Look to the lead­ing ladies of that era, if you want to find some wor­thy tales (and footage) to shoe­horn into your #metoo doc­u­men­tary.

Sounds like you’ve got a lot of research ahead of you, friend. But wait, there’s more!

Recharge your bat­ter­ies with a vis­it to Peking’s For­bid­den City cir­ca 1903.

Would­n’t that make a fine back­drop to your band’s next music video!

And dibs on the fabled div­ing horse of Coney Island, whose feats of der­ring-do were filmed by Thomas Edi­son.

I could watch that horse dive all day! And so could the audi­ence of that 8‑hour pup­pet opera I may wind up writ­ing one of these days. It’s set in Coney Island….

Read­ers, have a rum­mage and report back. What’s your favorite find in the Nation­al Screen­ing Room? Any plans for future use, real or imag­i­nary? Let us know.

If you’re not imme­di­ate­ly inspired, don’t despair. Just check back. New con­tent will be uploaded month­ly. There are also plans afoot to cre­ate edu­ca­tor les­son plans on his­tor­i­cal and social top­ics doc­u­ment­ed in the col­lec­tion. Teach­ers, imag­ine what your stu­dents might cre­ate with this class­room tool.…

Begin your vis­it to the Nation­al Screen­ing Room here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 26-Hour Playlist Featuring Music from Haruki Murakami’s Latest Novel, Killing Commendatore

in Literature, Music | October 16th, 2018

We know well the role music plays in the work of pro­lif­ic Japan­ese nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his pas­sion for jazz, his first love. He began as a jazz club own­er in Tokyo, and he has writ­ten two col­lec­tions of essays titled Por­trait in Jazz and Por­trait in Jazz 2. But Muraka­mi is no less a fan of clas­si­cal music and rock and roll—all three forms inter­twine in his nov­els and sto­ries, pro­vid­ing recur­ring motifs, sound­tracks, and back­drops. Music is more than the­mat­ic; it defines his lit­er­ary style, as he told lis­ten­ers on “Muraka­mi Radio,” his stint as a DJ on Tokyo FM.

“Rather than learn­ing sto­ry­telling tech­nique from some­one,” the nov­el­ist explained, “I’ve tak­en a musi­cal approach, while being very con­scious about rhythms, har­mo­ny and impro­vi­sa­tion.” Per­haps this approach explains the won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive qual­i­ty of his prose.

Read­ing his books, “you feel sad with­out know­ing why,” writes Charles Finch at The Inde­pen­dent, in a review of Murakami’s lat­est, Killing Com­menda­tore, “and yet, with­in that sad­ness glows a small ember of hap­pi­ness, because to feel sad is at least to feel hon­est­ly.” We could say some­thing sim­i­lar about the feel­ings evoked by an aria, a blues, or a Dylan song—music helps us access emo­tions for which we don’t have ready words.

Muraka­mi trans­lates that “inef­fa­ble yearn­ing” into writ­ing. “The obscure­ly lone­ly domes­tic images that run through his novels—rain, swim­ming, pas­ta, jazz, a par­tic­u­lar sort of warm, imper­son­al sex—root that yearn­ing in the truth of every­day life.” His newest nov­el brings in a third art, paint­ing; its pro­tag­o­nist, seek­ing to rein­vent his life and work, comes to dis­cov­er an impor­tant mes­sage through a series of mag­i­cal events. It’s famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for Muraka­mi, but don’t ask him to explain any of it. As he told Sarah Lyall at The New York Times, “I can­not explain any­thing at all… you just have to accept the form. A book is a metaphor.”

Bet­ter to get him talk­ing about music, which he is hap­py to do, mov­ing smooth­ly between styles with the same imag­i­na­tive leaps he makes on the page. Above, some fine soul has put togeth­er a playlist (listen to it on Spo­ti­fy here) for Killing Com­menda­tore and it is clas­sic Muraka­mi, a col­lec­tion of music from Sheryl Crow, Puc­ci­ni, the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet, Mozart, Thelo­nious Monk, Ver­di, Dylan, The Doors, Beethoven, Bruce Spring­steen, Rober­ta Flack, The Bea­t­les, The Beach Boys, and more. How do all of these artists fit togeth­er? Like the strange hap­pen­ings in Murakami’s world, you have to stop try­ing to make sense of things and just go with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Became a DJ on a Japan­ese Radio Sta­tion for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delight­ed Lis­ten­ers

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

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

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How Do You Help a Grieving Friend? Acknowledge Their Pain and Skip the Platitudes & Facile Advice

in Life, Psychology | October 16th, 2018

“What does it mean to protest suf­fer­ing, as dis­tinct from acknowl­edg­ing it?” writes Susan Son­tag in Regard­ing the Pain of Oth­ers. Acknowl­edg­ment, the recog­ni­tion of unimag­in­able pain and loss, is cen­tral, it turns out, to heal­ing. Grief expert Alan Wolfelt lists “acknowl­edg­ing the full real­i­ty of the loss” as the first in his “Six Needs of Mourn­ing.” But he also notes what so many in his field are quick to point out about con­tem­po­rary cul­ture: “Nor­mal thoughts and feel­ings con­nect­ed to loss are typ­i­cal­ly seen as unnec­es­sary and even shame­ful.”

The impor­tant work of griev­ing gets bypassed not only by our own inter­nal­ized shame, but by the unhelp­ful inter­ven­tions of oth­ers. Megan Devine—author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meet­ing Grief and Loss in a Cul­ture That Doesn’t Under­stand—explains the cen­tral role of acknowl­edg­ment, sim­ply being with oth­ers in the full scope of their pain, in the short ani­mat­ed video above. Many of us are taught to do any­thing but, to throw out advice and plat­i­tudes instead. (Illus­trat­ed here by an ani­mat­ed bun­ny toss­ing out rain­bows.)

Our motives may not be “nefar­i­ous,” she says, but—to use Sontag’s phrase—trying to fix someone’s suf­fer­ing amounts to a form of protest against it. And it only makes things worse. Devine is a psy­chother­a­pist and bereaved per­son her­self. Her book, notes Jane Brody at The New York Times, “grew out of the trag­ic loss of her beloved part­ner, who drowned at age 39 while the cou­ple was on vaca­tion.” She speaks not in the jar­gon of a clin­i­cian but in the frank lan­guage of a fel­low suf­fer­er and sur­vivor.

“You don’t need plat­i­tudes,” she writes on her web­site, “You don’t need cheer­lead­ing. You don’t need to be told this all hap­pened for a rea­son. You cer­tain­ly don’t need to be told that you need­ed your pain in order to learn some­thing about life. Some things can­not be fixed. They can only be car­ried.”

Being with some­one in their grief is “a rad­i­cal act,” says Devine. “In order to real­ly sup­port you, I have to acknowl­edge that things real­ly are as bad as they feel to you.” Offers of cheer or advice cre­ate defen­sive bar­ri­ers. Turn­ing toward someone’s suf­fer­ing gives them what they need the most: “Being heard helps. It’s the best med­i­cine we have. It makes things bet­ter, even when they can’t be made right.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

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

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130,000 Photographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Available Online, Courtesy of Stanford University

in Art, Photography | October 15th, 2018

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

It’s tak­en for grant­ed that every brand or ris­ing star must estab­lish and main­tain a con­stant pres­ence on var­i­ous social net­works. Indeed, the social media star—an enti­ty famous sole­ly for col­lect­ing fol­low­ers and post­ing glam­orous pho­tos with themed commentary—may seem like a phe­nom­e­non that could only exist in the inter­net age, though writ­ers like J.G. Bal­lard saw such things com­ing decades ago.

But before obses­sive pho­tog­ra­phy sat­u­rat­ed the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, Andy Warhol grasped the medium’s cen­tral impor­tance in the doc­u­men­ta­tion of every­day life. It just so hap­pened that his every­day life was filled with celebri­ty actors, mod­els, artists, and musi­cians.

Warhol, writes James D. Ellis at Light Stalk­ing, “was the pro­to-hip­ster,” a rest­less moth always on the hunt for a flame. “Much like our con­tem­po­rary cul­ture, Warhol found it dif­fi­cult to sit and do noth­ing. He had to leave his house or Fac­to­ry and expe­ri­ence his imme­di­ate sur­round­ings.”

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

And he had to pho­to­graph every one of those expe­ri­ences. Warhol used his Polaroids and 35mm the way we use iPhones. A court case in the ear­ly nineties once took up the ques­tion of whether Warhol’s pho­tographs could be con­sid­ered fine art, but the artist him­self, writes Pati­na Lee at Wide­walls, “was obvi­ous­ly unde­cid­ed about their val­ue and mean­ing,” say­ing “A pic­ture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pic­tures. It’s a visu­al diary.”

Warhol, Lee writes, “took his cam­era with him wher­ev­er he went, doc­u­ment­ing prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing, the high­est high class and the low­est trash (lit­er­al­ly, he took pho­tos of trash cans and of what they con­tained)…. This inclu­sive­ness is what made his pho­to­graph­ic under­tak­ings bor­der between art and mere obses­sive col­lect­ing, or as peo­ple like to cyn­i­cal­ly notice, con­sum­ing the life around him.” His con­sump­tion, and pho­tographs of trash, comes to us as trea­sure, an exten­sive record of Warhol’s New York in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Stan­ford University’s Can­tor Arts Cen­ter and Stan­ford Libraries have col­lab­o­rat­ed to make their Warhol pho­to archives avail­able to the pub­lic—pho­tos snapped “at dis­cos, din­ner par­ties, flea mar­kets, and wrestling match­es. Friends, boyfriends, busi­ness asso­ciates, socialites, celebri­ties, and passers­by.” This “trove of 3,600 con­tact sheets fea­tur­ing 130,000 pho­to­graph­ic expo­sures” doc­u­ments Warhol’s dai­ly life from 1976 until his death in 1987 and includes can­did pho­tos of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tru­man Capote, Bian­ca Jag­ger, Jim­my Carter, Martha Gra­ham, Kei­th Har­ing, Deb­bie Har­ry, Grace Jones, Jack­ie Kennedy, Liza Minel­li, Dol­ly Par­ton, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, and more.

The archive, writes San­dra Fed­er for Stan­ford News, “is the most com­plete col­lec­tion of the artist’s black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” It was acquired by the Can­tor in 2014 from the Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts. Giv­en that these are all con­tact sheets, nav­i­gat­ing the col­lect­ing can be a lit­tle bewil­der­ing. The Can­tor has pro­vid­ed a num­ber of tools to help. Click on Con­tact Sheets here to explore all 3,600+ con­tact sheets. Click Neg­a­tives to see indi­vid­ual frames, like those of Kei­th Har­ing, Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the top, Lou Reed fur­ther up, and Annie Lei­bovitz above. Or start brows­ing through pic­tures orga­nized by theme here.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Dig deep, and you’ll find the odd­est things, like Andy Warhol run­ning in Cen­tral Park for char­i­ty with Grace Jones and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gor­don Parks. What­ev­er Andy did, who­ev­er he hap­pened to do it with—and a stranger cast of char­ac­ters you will not find—it’s all in this huge pho­to archive some­where.

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 Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Short Film Takes You Inside the Recov­ery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests of Three Female Mus­es: Nico, Edie Sedg­wick & Mary Woronov

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

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Haruki Murakami Became a DJ on a Japanese Radio Station for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delighted Listeners

in Literature, Music, Radio | October 15th, 2018

In his native Japan, Haru­ki Muraka­mi has pub­lished not just fic­tion but all sorts of essays deal­ing with a vari­ety of sub­jects, from trav­el to music to writ­ing itself. One col­lec­tion of these pieces came out under the title Muraka­mi Radio, a pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tion for a broad­cast of the same name this past sum­mer on Tokyo FM. For its 55-minute dura­tion, Muraka­mi took the DJ’s seat and spun records (or rather, files from sev­er­al of his music-filled iPods) from his famous­ly vast per­son­al library, includ­ing The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA,” Joey Ramone’s ver­sion of “What a Won­der­ful World,” Eric Bur­don and The Ani­mals’ “Sky Pilot,” and Daryl Hall and John Oates’ ver­sion of “Love Train.” You can lis­ten to all his selec­tions in the Youtube Playlist above.

“It has been my hob­by to col­lect records and CDs since my child­hood, and thanks to that, my house is inun­dat­ed with such things,” wrote Muraka­mi in a mes­sage post­ed by Tokyo FM. “How­ev­er, I have often felt a sense of guilt toward the world while lis­ten­ing to such amaz­ing music and hav­ing a good time alone. I thought it may be good to share such good times with oth­er peo­ple while chat­ting over a glass of wine or a cup of cof­fee.”

He also chat­ted a bit him­self between songs, answer­ing lis­ten­er ques­tions and explain­ing the rela­tion­ship between the music he loves and the books he writes. “Rather than learn­ing sto­ry­telling tech­nique from some­one, I’ve tak­en a musi­cal approach, while being very con­scious about rhythms, har­mo­ny and impro­vi­sa­tion,” he said on-air. “It’s like writ­ing as I dance, even though I don’t actu­al­ly dance.”

For many of Murakami’s fans, Muraka­mi Radio (full record­ings of which do exist on the inter­net) marks the first time they’ve ever heard his actu­al voice, and it turns out to have a thing or two in com­mon with his autho­r­i­al one: take, for instance, his use of boku, the infor­mal per­son­al pro­noun favored by most of his nar­ra­tors. With the broad­cast ini­tial­ly announced as a one-off, it might also have seemed like the last chance to hear Muraka­mi speak, but the offi­cial Muraka­mi Radio site recent­ly announced two more edi­tions. The next one, sched­uled for Octo­ber 19th, will deal with not just music but anoth­er of Murakami’s pas­sions, run­ning. Any­one who’s read Murakami’s 1979 debut nov­el Hear the Wind Sing will remem­ber the talk­a­tive Sat­ur­day-night radio DJ who makes occa­sion­al appear­ances in the text — and may won­der if, near­ly 40 years lat­er, Muraka­mi chan­nels him again when he gets behind the micro­phone him­self.

via The Vinyl Fac­to­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979, Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground
Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & 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 or on Face­book.

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Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

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

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Should You Read Don Quixote?: An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature | October 15th, 2018

In “one of the strangest sto­ries in mod­ern film,” Mon­ty Python alum­nus and crit­i­cal­ly-laud­ed direc­tor Ter­ry Gilliam strove for three decades to make his take on Don Quixote, an ordeal that inspired two doc­u­men­taries and that did not end in tri­umph even when the film pre­miered to acclaim at Cannes this year after its long ges­ta­tion. Just a few weeks after­ward, Gilliam lost the rights to the film in a law­suit with its for­mer pro­duc­er. Nonethe­less, for all of the seri­ous set­backs on the road to its com­ple­tion, Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has still most­ly fared bet­ter than the pro­tag­o­nist of Cer­vantes’ nov­el.

But the delu­sion­al knight-errant and his much-put-upon squire’s ridicu­lous and inevitable fail­ures are what con­sti­tute the nov­el’s endur­ing appeal. Pub­lished in two vol­umes in 1605 and 1615, The Inge­nious Noble­man Sir Quixote of La Man­cha has become the best-sell­ing nov­el of all time, and by the accounts of its most illus­tri­ous admir­ers, the matrix of all mod­ern fic­tion. “The nov­el­ist need answer to no one but Cer­vantes,” says Milan Kun­dera. Mex­i­can nov­el­ist Car­los Fuentes called Don Quixote “the first mod­ern nov­el, per­haps the most eter­nal nov­el ever writ­ten and cer­tain­ly the foun­tain­head of Euro­pean and Amer­i­can fic­tion.”

Such effu­sive praise for Cer­vantes is near-uni­ver­sal, but like Gilliam’s film, and the fic­tion­al knight’s quest, the Span­ish writer’s epic adven­ture came to him late in life, when he was almost six­ty, hav­ing “spent most of his life as a strug­gling poet and play­wright,” says Ilan Sta­vans in the TED-Ed video above. He suc­ceed­ed after a long, undis­tin­guished career with a book that sat­i­rized the chival­ric romances which “dom­i­nat­ed Euro­pean cul­ture” at the time.

Cer­vantes’ bril­liant idea—conjuring a char­ac­ter who actu­al­ly believed these stories—gave us the great par­o­d­ic epic and, in its sec­ond vol­ume, a bril­liant work of pre-post-mod­ern metafic­tion in which the char­ac­ters Quixote meets have already read about his exploits in the first book. The mad hidal­go Don Quixote, unlike the stock fig­ures in pop­u­lar romances, actu­al­ly devel­ops and matures as a char­ac­ter, a unique fea­ture of fic­tion at the time and one rea­son Cer­vantes’ book is called the “first mod­ern nov­el.”

Oth­er foun­da­tion­al fea­tures of the nov­el include the rela­tion­ship of Quixote and San­cho Pan­za, a fic­tion­al study in con­trasts that may be the ori­gin of so many icon­ic duos since—from Sher­lock Holmes and Dr. Wat­son to Bat­man and Robin and the Odd Cou­ple. The novel’s com­mer­cial suc­cess was imme­di­ate and global—again mark­ing it as a prod­uct of moder­ni­ty. Pirat­ed copies cir­cu­lat­ed where it had been banned in the Amer­i­c­as. Assert­ing his pro­pri­etary rights over the char­ac­ter while also meet­ing read­er demand, he wrote and pub­lished vol­ume two to pre­empt spu­ri­ous sequels.

The TED-Ed video is part of a “Why you should read X” series trum­pet­ing the val­ue of great works of lit­er­a­ture. These efforts will, hope­ful­ly, inspire many peo­ple to pick up the books of Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, Edgar Allan Poe, Vir­ginia Woolf, and more. But ulti­mate­ly, great works of lit­er­a­ture should speak for them­selves. Why should you read Don Quixote? Well, yes, because it is the foun­da­tion of mod­ern fic­tion. But the real answer to the ques­tion lies between the nov­el­’s cov­ers. Pick up Don Quixote (I like Edith Grossman’s 2003 trans­la­tion), and find out for your­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

Get a First Glimpse of Ter­ry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the “Cursed” Film 29 Years in the Mak­ing

Why You Should Read One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

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

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Buckminster Fuller Creates Striking Posters of His Own Inventions

in Architecture, Art, Design | October 12th, 2018


In addi­tion to his for­mi­da­ble body of work in archi­tec­ture, design, and the­o­ry of the kind the world had nev­er known before, Buck­min­ster Fuller also knew how to pro­mote him­self. Some­times this meant appear­ing on late-night new-age talk shows, but at its core it meant com­ing up with ideas that would imme­di­ate­ly “read” as rev­o­lu­tion­ary to any­one who saw them in action. But how to put them before the eyes of some­one who has­n’t had the chance to see a geo­des­ic dome, a Dymax­ion House and Car, or even a Geodome 4 tent in real life?

The ascent of graph­ic design in the 20th cen­tu­ry, a cen­tu­ry Fuller saw begin and lived through most of, pro­vid­ed one promis­ing answer: posters. The ones you see here show off “Fuller’s most famous inven­tions, with line draw­ings from his patents super­im­posed over a pho­to­graph of the thing itself,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny’s Katharine Schwab.

“While they look like some­thing Fuller afi­ciona­dos might have cre­at­ed after the man’s death to cel­e­brate his work, Fuller actu­al­ly cre­at­ed them in part­ner­ship with the gal­lerist Carl Sol­way near the end of his career.”

These posters, “strik­ing with their two-lay­er design, are Fuller’s visu­al homage to his own genius — and an attempt to bring what he believed were world-chang­ing utopi­an con­cepts to the mass­es.” They’re also now on dis­play at the Edward Cel­la Art + Archi­tec­ture in Los Ange­les, whose exhi­bi­tion “R. Buck­min­ster Fuller: Inven­tions and Mod­els” runs until Novem­ber 2nd. “Fuller’s objects and prints func­tion not only as mod­els of the math­e­mat­i­cal and geo­met­ric prop­er­ties under­ly­ing their con­struc­tion but also as ele­gant works of art,” says the gallery’s site. “As such, the works rep­re­sent the hybrid­i­ty of Fuller’s prac­tice, and his lega­cy across the fields of art, design, sci­ence, and engi­neer­ing.”

You can see more of Fuller’s posters, which depict and visu­al­ly explain the struc­tures of such inven­tions as the geo­des­ic dome and Dymax­ion Car, of course, but also less­er-known cre­ations like a “Fly­’s Eye” dome cov­ered in bub­ble win­dows (indi­vid­u­al­ly swap­pable for solar pan­els), a sub­mersible for off­shore drilling, and a row­boat with a body reduced to two thin “nee­dles,” at Design­boom. Edward Cel­la Art + Archi­tec­ture has also made the posters avail­able for pur­chase at $7,000 apiece. That price might seem in con­tra­dic­tion with Fuller’s utopi­an ideals about uni­ver­sal acces­si­bil­i­ty through sheer low cost, but then, who could look at these and call them any­thing but works of art?

via Curbed

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Three-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller, One of the 20th Century’s Most Pro­duc­tive Design Vision­ar­ies

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Inno­va­tion that Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Map Design (1943)

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion with The North Face Cul­mi­nates with a New Geo­des­ic Dome Tent, the Geodome 4

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 or on Face­book.

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