Take a Journey Inside Vincent Van Gogh’s Paintings with a New Digital Exhibition

in Art, Technology | March 18th, 2019

Vin­cent van Gogh died in 1890, long before the emer­gence of any of the visu­al tech­nolo­gies that impress us here in the 21st cen­tu­ry. But the dis­tinc­tive vision of real­i­ty expressed through paint­ings still cap­ti­vates us, and per­haps cap­ti­vates us more than ever: the lat­est of the many trib­utes we con­tin­ue to pay to van Gogh’s art takes the form Van Gogh, Star­ry Night, a “dig­i­tal exhi­bi­tion” at the Ate­lier des Lumières, a dis­used foundry turned pro­jec­tor- and sound sys­tem-laden mul­ti­me­dia space in Paris. “Pro­ject­ed on all the sur­faces of the Ate­lier,” its site says of the exhi­bi­tion, “this new visu­al and musi­cal pro­duc­tion retraces the intense life of the artist.”

Van Gogh’s inten­si­ty man­i­fest­ed in var­i­ous ways, includ­ing more than 2,000 paint­ings paint­ed in the last decade of his life alone. Van Gogh, Star­ry Night sur­rounds its vis­i­tors with the painter’s work, “which rad­i­cal­ly evolved over the years, from The Pota­to Eaters (1885), Sun­flow­ers (1888) and Star­ry Night (1889) to Bed­room at Arles (1889), from his sun­ny land­scapes and nightscapes to his por­traits and still lives.”

It also takes them through the jour­ney of his life itself, includ­ing his “sojourns in Neunen, Arles, Paris, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and Auvers-sur-Oise.” It will also take them to Japan, a land van Gogh dreamed of and that inspired him to cre­ate “the art of the future,” with a sup­ple­men­tal show titled Dreamed Japan: Images of the Float­ing World.

Both Van Gogh, Star­ry Night and Dreamed Japan run until the end of this year. If you hap­pen to have a chance to make it out to the Ate­lier des Lumières, first con­sid­er down­load­ing the exhi­bi­tion’s smart­phone and tablet appli­ca­tion that pro­vides record­ed com­men­tary on van Gogh’s mas­ter­pieces. That counts as one more lay­er of this elab­o­rate audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence that, despite employ­ing the height of mod­ern muse­um tech­nol­o­gy, nev­er­the­less draws all its aes­thet­ic inspi­ra­tion from 19th-cen­tu­ry paint­ings — and will send those who expe­ri­ence it back to those 19th-cen­tu­ry paint­ings with a height­ened appre­ci­a­tion. Near­ly 130 years after Van Gogh’s death, we’re still using all the inge­nu­ity we can muster to see the world as he did.

via MyMod­ern­met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Watch the Trail­er for a “Ful­ly Paint­ed” Van Gogh Film: Fea­tures 12 Oil Paint­ings Per Sec­ond by 100+ Painters

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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How Does the Rorschach Inkblot Test Work?: An Animated Primer

in Neuroscience, Psychology | March 18th, 2019

A fright­en­ing mon­ster?

Two friend­ly bears?

Say what!?

As any­body with half a brain and the gift of sight knows, the black and red inkblot below resem­bles noth­ing so much as a pair of gnomes, gavot­ting so hard their knees bleed.

…or per­haps it’s open to inter­pre­ta­tion.

Back in 2013, when Open Cul­ture cel­e­brat­ed psy­chol­o­gist Her­mann Rorschach’s birth­day by post­ing the ten blots that form the basis of his famous per­son­al­i­ty test, read­ers report­ed see­ing all sorts of things in Card 2:

A uterus

Lungs

Kiss­ing pup­pies

A paint­ed face

Lit­tle calfs

Tin­ker­bell check­ing her butt out in the mir­ror

Two oui­ja board enthu­si­asts, sum­mon­ing demons

Angels

And yes, high-fiv­ing bears

As Ror­shach biog­ra­ph­er Damion Searls explains in an ani­mat­ed Ted-ED les­son on how the Rorschach Test can help us under­stand the pat­terns of our per­cep­tions, our answers depend on how we as indi­vid­u­als reg­is­ter and trans­form sen­so­ry input.

Ror­shach chose the blots that gar­nered the most nuanced respons­es, and devel­oped a clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem to help ana­lyze the result­ing data, but for much of the test’s his­to­ry, this code was a high­ly guard­ed pro­fes­sion­al secret.

And when Ror­shach died, a year after pub­lish­ing the images, oth­ers began admin­is­ter­ing the test in ser­vice of their own spec­u­la­tive goals—anthropologists, poten­tial employ­ers, researchers try­ing to fig­ure out what made Nazis tick, come­di­ans…

The range of inter­pre­ta­tive approach­es earned the test a rep­u­ta­tion as pseu­do-sci­ence, but a 2013 review of Rorshach’s volu­mi­nous research went a long way toward restor­ing its cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Whether or not you believe there’s some­thing to it, it’s still fun to con­sid­er the things we bring to the table when exam­in­ing these cards.

Do we see the image as fixed or some­thing more akin to a freeze frame?

What part of the image do we focus on?

Our records show that Open Cul­ture read­ers over­whelm­ing­ly focus on the hands, at least as far as Card 2 goes, which is to say the por­tion of the blot that appears to be high-fiv­ing itself.

Nev­er mind that the high five, as a ges­ture, is rumored to have come into exis­tence some­time in the late 1970s. (Rorschach died in 1922.) That’s what the major­i­ty of Open Cul­ture read­ers saw six years ago, though there was some vari­ety of per­cep­tion as to who was slap­ping that skin:

young ele­phants

despon­dent humans

monks

lawn gnomes

Dis­ney dwarves

red­head­ed women in Japan­ese attire

chim­panzees with traf­fic cones on their heads

(In full dis­clo­sure, it’s most­ly bears.)

Maybe it’s time for a do over?

Read­ers, what do you see now?

Image 1: Bat, but­ter­fly, moth

Rorschach_blot_01

Image 2: Two humans

Rorschach_blot_02

Image 3: Two humans

800px-Rorschach_blot_03

Image 4: Ani­mal hide, skin, rug

Rorschach_blot_04

Image 5: Bat, but­ter­fly, moth

Rorschach_blot_05

Image 6: Ani­mal hide, skin, rug

Rorschach_blot_06

Image 7: Human heads or faces

Rorschach_blot_07

Image 8: Ani­mal; not cat or dog

689px-Rorschach_blot_08

Image 9: Human

647px-Rorschach_blot_09

Image 10: Crab, lob­ster, spi­der,

751px-Rorschach_blot_10

View Searls’ full TED-Ed les­son here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

The Psy­cho­log­i­cal & Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders Expe­ri­enced by Char­ac­ters in Alice in Won­der­land: A Neu­ro­science Read­ing of Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Tale

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Lou Reed Archive Opens at the New York Public Library: Get Your Own Lou Reed Library Card and Check It Out

in Archives, Literature, Music | March 18th, 2019

This past Octo­ber marked the fifth anniver­sary of Lou Reed’s death. This month marks what would have been his 77th birth­day. It seems like as good a time as any to revis­it his lega­cy. As of this past Fri­day, any­one can do exact­ly that in per­son at the New York Pub­lic Library. And they can do so with their own spe­cial edi­tion NYPL Lou Reed library card. The NYPL has just opened to the pub­lic the Lou Reed Archive, “approx­i­mate­ly 300 lin­ear feet,” the library writes in a press release, “of paper records, elec­tron­ic records, and pho­tographs, and approx­i­mate­ly 3,600 audio and 1,300 video record­ings.”

These arti­facts span the musi­cian, writer, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and “tai-chi student”’s life from his 1958 high school band The Shades to “his job as a staff song­writer for the bud­get music label, Pick­wick Records, and his rise to promi­nence through the Vel­vet Under­ground and sub­se­quent solo career, to his final per­for­mance in 2013.”

It is more than fit­ting that they should find a home at the New York insti­tu­tion, in the city where Lou Reed became Lou Reed, “the most lit­er­ary of rock stars,” writes Andrew Epstein for the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, “one who aspired to make rock music that could stand on the same plane as works of lit­er­a­ture.” See a list of the Lou Reed Archive col­lec­tions below:

  • Orig­i­nal man­u­script, lyrics, poet­ry and hand­writ­ten tai-chi notes
  • Pho­tographs of Reed, includ­ing artist prints and inscrip­tions by the pho­tog­ra­phers
  • Tour itin­er­aries, agree­ments, road man­ag­er notes and paper­work
  • 600+ hours of live record­ings, demos, stu­dio record­ings and inter­views
  • Reed’s own exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy work
  • Album, book, and tour art­work; mock-ups, proofs and match-prints
  • Lou Reed album and con­cert posters, hand­bills, pro­grams, and pro­mo­tion­al items
  • Lou Reed press for albums, tours, per­for­mances, books, and pho­tog­ra­phy exhibits
  • Fan mail
  • Per­son­al col­lec­tions of books, LPs and 45s

Reed left his first “last­ing lega­cy” at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, as Syra­cuse itself affirmed after his death in 2013, as “a crim­i­nal, a dis­si­dent and a poet.” There, he stud­ied under his lit­er­ary hero, Del­more Schwartz, was report­ed­ly expelled from ROTC for hold­ing an unloaded gun to his superior’s head, and was sup­pos­ed­ly turned away from his grad­u­a­tion by police. Once in New York, how­ev­er, Reed not only pilot­ed the Vel­vet Under­ground into ever­last­ing cult infamy, jump­start­ing waves of punk, post-punk, new wave, and a few dozen oth­er sub­gen­res. He also car­ried forth the lega­cy of the New York poet­ry, Epstein argues.

He had “seri­ous con­nec­tions to the poet­ry world”—not only to Schwartz, but also to the Beats and the New York School—to poets who “played a sur­pris­ing­ly large role in the emer­gence of the Vel­vet Under­ground.” Like all great art, Reed’s best work was more than the sum of its “mul­ti­ple and com­plex influ­ences.” But it should be appre­ci­at­ed along­side mid-cen­tu­ry New York poets as much as jazz exper­i­men­tal­ists like Ornette Cole­man and Cecil Tay­lor who inspired his freeform approach. “Reed’s body of work,” writes Epstein, “rep­re­sents a cru­cial but over­looked instance of poetry’s rich back-and-forth dia­logue with pop­u­lar cul­ture.”

Sim­i­lar things might be said about Reed’s engage­ments with film, the­ater, the visu­al arts, and the New York avant-garde gen­er­al­ly, which he also trans­mut­ed and trans­lat­ed into his scuzzy brand of rock and roll. The NYPL archive doc­u­ments his rela­tion­ships with not only his band­mates and manager/patron Andy Warhol, but also Robert Quine, John Zorn, Robert Wil­son, Julian Schn­abel, and Lau­rie Ander­son. And yet, despite the many rivers he wad­ed into in his long career, immers­ing in some more deeply than oth­ers, it was the New York lit­er­ary world whom he most want­ed to embrace his work.

Accept­ing an award in 2007 from Syra­cuse, Reed said, “I hope, Del­more, if you’re lis­ten­ing you are final­ly proud as well. My name is final­ly linked to yours in the part of heav­en reserved for Brook­lyn poets.” Head over to The Library for the Per­form­ing Arts in Lin­coln Cen­ter to get your own Lou Reed library card. If you’re lucky enough to spend some time with this exten­sive col­lec­tion, maybe con­sid­er how all Reed’s work was, in some way or anoth­er, informed by a life­long devo­tion to New York poet­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lou Reed’s The Raven, a Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe Fea­tur­ing David Bowie, Ornette Cole­man, Willem Dafoe & More

Meet the Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

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

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Bohemian Rhapsody’s Bad Editing: A Breakdown

in Film | March 18th, 2019

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody may have won the Oscar for Best Edit­ing. But video essay­ist Thomas Flight isn’t per­suad­ed. In a 13-minute video, Flight decon­structs a 104-sec­ond clip from the biopic, reveal­ing the exces­sive 60 cuts that make up the scene. That trans­lates into a dizzy­ing cut every 1.8 sec­onds on aver­age.

For Thomas Flight, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody is noth­ing short of a “mas­ter­class in bad edit­ing.” For you, Flight’s video offers a nice short crash course in film edit­ing.

Accord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post, the pub scene decon­struct­ed in Flight’s video was actu­al­ly edit­ed by Dex­ter Fletcher–and not John Ottman, the film edi­tor who helped sal­vage the film and then won top hon­ors at the Oscars. Asked about the botched scene, Ottman told WaPo: “When­ev­er I see it, I want to put a bag over my head. Because that’s not my aes­thet­ic. If there’s ever an extend­ed ver­sion of the film where I can put a cou­ple scenes back, I will recut that scene!”

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:

How to Film Thought: A Close Look at the Mas­ter­ful Edit­ing of Sher­lock, Star­ring Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Scenes from Bohemi­an Rhap­sody Com­pared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Hear How Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Would Sound If Sung by John­ny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sina­tra & 38 Oth­er Artists

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An Animated Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life & Thought

in Philosophy | March 15th, 2019

There’s no shame if you’ve nev­er known how to pro­nounce Friedrich Niet­zsche’s name cor­rect­ly. Even less if you nev­er remem­ber how to spell it. If these hap­pen to be the case, you may be less than famil­iar with his phi­los­o­phy. Let Alain de Botton’s ani­mat­ed School of Life video briefly intro­duce you, and you’ll nev­er for­get how to say it: “Knee Cha.” (As for remem­ber­ing the spelling, you’re on your own.) You’ll also get a short biog­ra­phy of the dis­grun­tled, dys­pep­tic Ger­man philoso­pher, who left a promis­ing aca­d­e­m­ic career at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel in his mid-20s and embarked to the Swiss Alps to write his vio­lent­ly orig­i­nal books in soli­tude before suc­cumb­ing to a men­tal break­down at 44 when he saw a cart dri­ver beat­ing a horse.

Niet­zsche died after remain­ing almost entire­ly silent for 11 years. In these years and after his death, thanks to the machi­na­tions of his sis­ter Eliz­a­beth, his thought was twist­ed into a hate­ful car­i­ca­ture. He has since been reha­bil­i­tat­ed from asso­ci­a­tions with the Nazis, but he still calls up fear and loathing for many peo­ple because of his relent­less cri­tiques of Chris­tian­i­ty and rep­u­ta­tion for star­ing too long into abysses. Maybe we can’t help but hear fascis­tic over­tones in his con­cept of the uber­men­sch, and his ideas about slave moral­i­ty can make for uncom­fort­able read­ing. Those steeped in Nietzsche’s thought may not feel that de Botton’s com­men­tary gives these ideas their prop­er crit­i­cal due.

Like­wise, Niet­zsche him­self is treat­ed as some­thing of an uber­men­sch, an approach that pulls him out of his social world. Impor­tant fig­ures who had a tremen­dous impact on his per­son­al and intel­lec­tu­al life—like Arthur Schopen­hauer, Richard and Cosi­ma Wag­n­er, Lou Salomé, and Nietzsche’s sister—don’t even receive a men­tion. But this is a lot to ask from a six-minute sum­ma­ry. De Bot­ton hits some of philo­soph­i­cal high­lights and explains some mis­con­cep­tions. Yes, Niet­zsche held no brief for Chris­tian­i­ty at all, but this was because it caused tremen­dous suf­fer­ing, he thought, by mak­ing peo­ple moral­ly stunt­ed and bit­ter­ly resent­ful.

Instead, he argued, we should embrace our desires, and use so-called sin­ful pas­sions like envy to lever­age our ambi­tions. Niet­zsche is not a seduc­er, cor­rupt­ing the youth with promis­es of great­ness. You may very well fail, he admit­ted, and fail mis­er­ably. But to deny your­self is to nev­er become who you are. Niet­zsche schol­ar Babette Babich has described this aspect of the philosopher’s thought as the ethics of the sup­port­ive friend. She quotes David B. Alli­son, who writes that Nietzsche’s advice comes to us “like a friend who seems to share your every concern—and your aver­sions and sus­pi­cions as well. Like a true friend, he rarely tells you what you should do.”

Except that he often does. Babich also writes about Niet­zsche as edu­ca­tor, and indeed he con­sid­ered edu­ca­tion one of the high­est human goods, too pre­cious to be squan­dered on those who do not appre­ci­ate it. His phi­los­o­phy of edu­ca­tion is con­sis­tent with his views on cul­ture. Since God is Dead, we must replace scrip­ture and litur­gy with art, lit­er­a­ture, and music. So far, so many a young Niet­zsche enthu­si­ast, pur­su­ing their own form of Niet­zschean edu­ca­tion, will be on board with the philosopher’s pro­gram.

But as de Bot­ton also explains, Niet­zsche, who turned Diony­sus into a philo­soph­i­cal ide­al, might have issued one pre­scrip­tion too many for the aver­age col­lege stu­dent: no drink­ing. If that’s too much to stom­ach, we should at least take seri­ous­ly that stuff about star­ing into abysses. Niet­zsche meant it as a warn­ing. Instead, writes Peter Pre­vos at The Hori­zon of Rea­son, “we should go beyond star­ing and brave­ly leap into the bound­less chasm and prac­tice philo­soph­i­cal base jump­ing.” No mat­ter how much Niet­zsche you read, he’s nev­er going to tell you that means. We only become who we are, he sug­gests, when we fig­ure it on our own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

How Did Niet­zsche Become the Most Mis­un­der­stood & Bas­tardized Philoso­pher?: A Video from Slate Explains

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philo­soph­i­cal Recipe for Get­ting Over the Sources of Regret, Dis­ap­point­ment and Suf­fer­ing in Our Lives

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

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The CIA’s Rectal Tool Kit for Spies–Created for Truly Desperate Situations During The Cold War

in History, Technology | March 15th, 2019

Though glob­al espi­onage remains a going con­cern in the 21st cen­tu­ry, some­how the pop­u­lar sto­ries we tell about it return again and again to the Cold War. Maybe it has to do with the demand those most­ly pre-dig­i­tal decades made upon the phys­i­cal inge­nu­ity of spies as well as the tools of spy­craft. Take, for instance, one par­tic­u­lar­ly inge­nious CIA-issued tool kit on dis­play at the Inter­na­tion­al Spy Muse­um in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. “Filled with escape tools,” says the Spy Muse­um’s web site, “this kit could be stashed inside the body where it would not be found dur­ing a search.” Take one guess as to where inside the body, exact­ly, it could be stashed.

You can get a clos­er look at the rec­tal tool kit in the Atlas Obscu­ra video above. This “tight­ly sealed, pill-shaped con­tain­er full of tools that could aid an escape from var­i­ous sticky sit­u­a­tions,” as that site’s Lizzie Philip describes it, “was issued to CIA oper­a­tives dur­ing the height of the Cold War.”

Built to con­tain a vari­ety of escape tools like “drill bits, saws and knives,” it pre­sent­ed quite an engi­neer­ing chal­lenge: its mate­ri­als, one needs hard­ly add, “could not splin­ter or cre­ate sharp edges that could injure users,” and “it had to seal tight­ly to not let any­thing seep in or poke out.” Upon see­ing an item like this, which com­mands so much atten­tion at the Spy Muse­um, one won­ders whether all the spy­ing that went on dur­ing Cold War was real­ly so glam­orous after all.

Has it crossed the mind of, say, John Le Car­ré, his writ­ing career a near­ly six­ty-year-long defla­tion of the pre­ten­sions of spy­craft, to write about the ins and outs of rec­tal tool kits? But then, per­son­al expe­ri­ence has grant­ed him much more knowl­edge about the tac­tics of British espi­onage than those of the Amer­i­can vari­ety. As sure­ly as he knows the MI5’s offi­cial mot­to, “Reg­num Defende,” he must also know the unof­fi­cial mot­to that pokes fun at the orga­ni­za­tion’s aggres­sive cul­ture of blame avoid­ance, “Rec­tum Defende” — words that, in light of the knowl­edge about just where the agents of Britain’s main ally were stor­ing their tools, take on a whole new mean­ing.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s For­mer Chief of Dis­guise Show How Spies Use Cos­tumes in Under­cov­er Oper­a­tions

How the CIA Helped Shape the Cre­ative Writ­ing Scene in Amer­i­ca

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less, Kafkaesque Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

19-Year-Old Stu­dent Uses Ear­ly Spy Cam­era to Take Can­did Street Pho­tos (Cir­ca 1895)

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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Leonard Bernstein Awkwardly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Carreras While Recording West Side Story (1984)

in Music, Opera, Theatre | March 15th, 2019

What have we here?

Evi­dence that the Mae­stro is a mon­ster?

Or a behind the scenes reminder that Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s wannabe actor Tobias Fünke is not too far off base when he says that to make it in “this busi­ness of show, you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide… of an ele­phant.”

Both? Nei­ther? Any way you slice it, the record­ing ses­sion above is not for your typ­i­cal cast album.

West Side Sto­ry, with a book by Arthur Lau­rents, music by Leonard Bern­stein, and lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, opened on Broad­way in 1957.

The film, star­ring Natal­ie Wood and Richard Beymer as star-crossed lovers Maria and Tony, came along four years lat­er.

After which it’s been an end­less round of com­mu­ni­ty, col­lege, and high school pro­duc­tions.

Are you a Jet or a Shark?

The cel­e­brat­ed tenor José Car­reras does not make a par­tic­u­lar­ly believ­able Jet.

While untold num­bers of white kids have attempt­ed Puer­to Rican accents to play Maria, Bernar­do, Ani­ta, and Chi­no, that knife has sel­dom cut the oth­er way.

Per­haps a dialect coach could have trans­formed Car­reras’ thick Span­ish accent into Tony’s New York street punk ver­nac­u­lar, but the prep time for these Sep­tem­ber 1984 record­ing ses­sions was min­i­mal, and not tied to any actu­al pro­duc­tion.

Car­reras was also, at 38, a bit long in the tooth to be tack­ling the part.

But what might have been deal break­ers for a Broad­way revival were per­mis­si­ble for this week­long spe­cial event in which world-cal­iber artists, “whose main rea­son for exist­ing,” accord­ing to Bern­stein, was their singing, would be lay­ing down the score in the stu­dio, backed by a full orches­tra.

As he told his asso­ciate and even­tu­al biog­ra­ph­er, clas­si­cal music tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Humphrey Bur­ton:

l’d always thought of West Side Sto­ry in terms of teenagers and there are no teenage opera singers, it’s just a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But this is a record­ing and peo­ple don’t have to look 16, they don’t have to be able to dance or act a rather dif­fi­cult play eight times a week. And there­fore we took this rather unortho­dox step of cast­ing num­ber-one world-class opera singers. I sup­pose the only fore­see­able prob­lem was that they might sound too old—but they don’t, they just sound mar­velous!

Bernstein’s approv­ing mood is nowhere in evi­dence in the above clip, in which he hec­tors Car­reras for screw­ing up the tem­po, as the instru­men­tal­ists and sound engi­neers squirm.

Car­reras’ dis­com­fort and cha­grin is so pal­pa­ble that you can find the sequence on YouTube under the title “Tenor Keeps Screw­ing Up while Bern­stein Con­ducts—Awk­ward Sequence,” as if he were some weedy upstart, still wet behind the ears, when in fact, he had just flown in from Verona, where he’d been appear­ing as Don José in Car­men.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Car­reras’ Maria, sup­plied a taste of what it was like to sing for the com­pos­er:

He’s a man of many emo­tions. You can see his moods, his frus­tra­tions, his hap­pi­ness, his want­i­ng to per­form to peo­ple. That’s the thing that makes the man inter­est­ing. One is con­stant­ly try­ing to read him, but he’s on anoth­er plan­et!

In the end, Bern­stein declared him­self pleased with what had been accom­plished, or at least with the endur­ing pow­er of the mate­r­i­al.

But read­ers with an anti-author­i­tar­i­an streak may not feel sat­is­fied until they’ve seen the clip below, in which a rogue BBC Orches­tra trum­pet isn’t quite so def­er­en­tial in the face of the Maestro’s crit­i­cism.

Lis­ten to the 1984 record­ing of West Side Sto­ry for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

Watch Leonard Bern­stein Con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Using Only His Eye­brows

Leonard Bern­stein Presents “The Great­est 5 Min­utes in Music Edu­ca­tion”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain in New York City this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Natalie Portman Teaches a MasterClass in Acting

in Film, Online Courses | March 14th, 2019

This week, Mas­ter­Class rolled out its lat­est course–Natal­ie Port­man teach­ing a 20-les­son class on act­ing. The upstart edu­ca­tion­al ven­ture writes:

One of her generation’s most ver­sa­tile per­form­ers, Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actor Natal­ie Port­man has been cap­ti­vat­ing audi­ences for decades. Since her on-screen debut at age 12, she’s worked with some of cinema’s most cel­e­brat­ed direc­tors and show­cased her skills through unfor­get­table roles in Black Swan, Jack­ie, and the Star Wars fran­chise.

Hav­ing nev­er tak­en an act­ing class, Natal­ie devel­oped her craft over 25 years of obser­va­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and count­less bold exper­i­ments. The con­sum­mate dra­mat­ic shapeshifter, she has worked across gen­res and his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, imbu­ing each per­for­mance with an authen­tic­i­ty she attrib­ut­es to intense research, prepa­ra­tion, and an eye for human behav­ior.

And now, in her first-ever act­ing class, she “shows how empa­thy is at the core of every great per­for­mance, how to bring real-life details into every role, and how to build your own cre­ative process.”

You can enroll in Port­man’s new class (which runs $90) here. You can also pay $180 to get an annu­al pass to the entire­ty of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es–a cat­a­log of about 50 cours­es, which includes oth­er act­ing class­es by Jodie Fos­ter, Samuel L. Jack­son and more.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

450+ Movie Scenes Where Actors Break the Fourth Wall, Pre­sent­ed in Two Big Super­cuts

What Made Robin Williams a Unique­ly Expres­sive Actor: A Video Essay Explores a Sub­tle Dimen­sion of His Com­ic Genius

Movie Accent Expert Ana­lyzes 31 Actors Play­ing Oth­er Famous Peo­ple: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Natal­ie Port­man as Jack­ie Kennedy, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, and More

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