A Virtual Time-Lapse Recreation of the Building of Notre Dame (1160)

in Architecture, Art, Current Affairs | April 16th, 2019

Hun­dreds of goth­ic cathe­drals dot­ted all over Europe have faced dec­i­ma­tion and destruc­tion, whether through sack­ings, rev­o­lu­tions, nat­ur­al decay, or bomb­ing raids. But since World War II, at least, the most extra­or­di­nary exam­ples that remain have seen restora­tion and con­stant upkeep, and none of them is as well-known and as cul­tur­al­ly and archi­tec­tural­ly sig­nif­i­cant as Paris’s Notre Dame. One can­not imag­ine the city with­out it, which made the scenes of Parisians watch­ing the cathe­dral burn yes­ter­day as poignant as the scenes of the fire itself.

The flames claimed the rib-vault­ed roof and the “spine-tin­gling, soul-lift­ing spire,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post, who quote cathe­dral spoke­man Andre Finot’s assess­ment of the dam­age as “colos­sal.” The exte­ri­or stone tow­ers, famed stained-glass win­dows, and icon­ic arch­es and fly­ing but­tress­es with­stood the dis­as­ter, but the wood­en inte­ri­or, “a mar­vel,” writes the Post, “that has inspired awe and won­der for the mil­lions who have vis­it­ed over the centuries—has been gut­ted.” Noth­ing of the frame, says Finot, “will remain.”

The sad irony is that the fire report­ed­ly result­ed from an acci­dent dur­ing the medieval church’s ren­o­va­tion, one of many such projects that have pre­served this almost 900-year-old archi­tec­ture. The French gov­ern­ment has vowed to rebuild. Will it mat­ter to pos­ter­i­ty that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the Cathe­dral dates from hun­dreds of years after its orig­i­nal con­struc­tion? Will Notre Dame lose its ancient aura, and what does this mean for Parisians and the world?

It’s too soon to answer ques­tions like these and too soon to ask them. Now is a time to reck­on with cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal loss, and to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of what was saved. At the top of the post, you can watch a vir­tu­al time-lapse recre­ation of the con­struc­tion of Notre Dame, begun in 1160 and most­ly com­plet­ed one hun­dred years lat­er, though build­ing con­tin­ued into the 14th century—a jaw-drop­ping time scale in an era when tow­er­ing new build­ings go up in a mat­ter of weeks.

After tak­ing more than the human lifes­pan to com­plete, until yes­ter­day the cathe­dral stood the test of time, as the brief France in Focus tour of its eight cen­turies of art and archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry above explains. “The most vis­it­ed mon­u­ment in the French Cap­i­tal” may be a rel­ic of a very dif­fer­ent, pre-mod­ern, pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary, France. But its impos­ing cen­tral set­ting in the city, and in mod­ern works from Vic­tor Hugo’s Hunch­back of Notre Dame to Walt Disney’s Hunch­back of Notre Dame—not to men­tion the tourists, reli­gious pil­grims, schol­ars, and art stu­dents who pour into Paris to see it—mark Notre Dame as a very con­tem­po­rary land­mark. Learn more about how it became so above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

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

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How Andy Warhol and Tintin Creator Hergé Mutually Admired and Influenced One Another

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | April 16th, 2019

Com­ic-book sto­ries of a boy reporter and his dog (lat­er accom­pa­nied by a foul­mouthed sea cap­tain) fea­tur­ing rock­et­ships and sub­marines, boo­by-traps and buried trea­sure, gang­sters and abom­inable snow­men, smug­glers and super-weapons, all told with bright col­ors, clear lines, and prac­ti­cal­ly no girls in sight: no won­der The Adven­tures of Tintin at first looks tai­lor-made for ram­bunc­tious young­sters. But now, eighty years after Tintin’s debut in the chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment of a Bel­gian Catholic news­pa­per, his ever-grow­ing fan base sure­ly includes more grown-ups than it does kids, and grown-ups pre­pared to regard his adven­tures as seri­ous works of mod­ern art at that.

The field of Tintin enthu­si­asts (in their most ded­i­cat­ed form, “Tinti­nol­o­gists”) includes some of the best-known mod­ern artists in his­to­ry. Roy Licht­en­stein, he of the zoomed-in com­ic-book aes­thet­ic, once made Tintin his sub­ject, and Tintin’s cre­ator Hergé, who cul­ti­vat­ed a love for mod­ern art from the 1960s onward, hung a suite of Licht­en­stein prints in his office. As Andy Warhol once put it, “Hergé has influ­enced my work in the same way as Walt Dis­ney. For me, Hergé was more than a com­ic strip artist.” And for Hergé, Warhol seems to have been more than a fash­ion­able Amer­i­can painter: in 1979, Hergé com­mis­sioned Warhol to paint his por­trait, and Warhol came up with a series of four images in a style rem­i­nis­cent of the one he’d used to paint Jack­ie Onas­sis and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Hergé and Warhol had first met in 1972, when Hergé paid a vis­it to Warhol’s “Fac­to­ry” in New York — the kind of set­ting in which one imag­ines the straight-laced, six­tysome­thing Bel­gian set­ting foot only with dif­fi­cul­ty. But the two had more in com­mon as artists than it may seem: both got their start in com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion, and both soon found their careers defined by par­tic­u­lar works that explod­ed into cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na. (Warhol may also have felt an affin­i­ty with Tintin in their shared rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty by hair­style alone.) The Inde­pen­dent’s John Lich­field writes that Hergé, who had by that point learned to paint a few mod­ern abstract pieces of his own, “asked Warhol, mod­est­ly, whether the father of Tintin should also con­sid­er him­self a ‘Pop Artist.’ Warhol, although a great fan of Hergé, sim­ply stared back at him and did not reply.”

Warhol may not have known what to say forty years ago, but in that time Hergé has unques­tion­ably ascend­ed into the insti­tu­tion­al pan­theon of West­ern art: Lich­field­’s arti­cle is a review of a 2006 Hergé ret­ro­spec­tive at the Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, and the years since have seen the open­ing of the Musée Hergé south of Brus­sels as well as increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate exhi­bi­tions on Tintin and his cre­ator all around the world. (I myself attend­ed such an exhi­bi­tion in Seoul, where I live, just last month.) The French artist Jean-Pierre Ray­naud express­es a now-com­mon kind of sen­ti­ment when he cred­its Hergé with “a pre­ci­sion of the kind I love in Mon­dri­an” and “the artis­tic econ­o­my that you find in Matisse.” Warhol, who prob­a­bly would­n’t have phrased his appre­ci­a­tion in quite that way, makes a more tonal­ly char­ac­ter­is­tic response in the clip above when Hergé tells him about Tintin’s lat­ter-day switch from his sig­na­ture plus fours to jeans: “Oh, great!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

When Steve Jobs Taught Andy Warhol to Make Art on the Very First Mac­in­tosh (1984)

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

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

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing For Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead

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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“Kubrick/Tarkovsky”: A Video Essay Explores the Visual Similarities Between the Two “Cinematic Giants”

in Film | April 16th, 2019

Who are your favorite film­mak­ers? Respons­es to that ques­tion includ­ing the names Stan­ley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky have been heard so often, for so long, that they’ve passed into the realm of cinephile cliché. How, then, to redis­cov­er what about their films makes Kubrick and Tarkovsky syn­ony­mous with the very con­cept of the bril­liant auteur? In “Kubrick/Tarkovsky” above, cin­e­mat­ic video essay­ist Vugar Efen­di sheds light on the essence of these two “cin­e­mat­ic giants” by putting their work side by side: Eyes Wide Shut next to Ivan’s Child­hood, A Clock­work Orange next to Stalk­er, Paths of Glo­ry next to Andrei Rublev. (You may remem­ber a sim­i­lar com­par­i­son, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, between Kubrick and Wes Ander­son.)

For­tu­nate­ly, “Kubrick/Tarkovsky” sheds only four and a half min­utes of light, pro­longed expo­sure to so many mas­ter­works at once poten­tial­ly being too much for many cinephiles to bear. For direc­tors with such strong visions of their own, it might also come as a sur­prise to see such strong res­o­nances between their images, such as Jack­’s walk into the Over­look Hotel’s sud­den­ly pop­u­lat­ed (and returned to the Jazz Age) ball­room from The Shin­ing along­side Domeni­co’s can­dle-bear­ing walk across the emp­ty pool with a can­dle from Nos­tal­ghia and 2001: A Space Odyssey’s jour­ney through the “star gate” along­side Solaris’ dri­ve through Tokyo-as-human­i­ty’s-urban-future.

Kubrick appre­ci­at­ed Solaris enough for it to make a list of 93 films he real­ly liked, but Tarkovsky did­n’t feel the same way about 2001. “A detailed ‘exam­i­na­tion’ of the tech­no­log­i­cal process­es of the future trans­forms the emo­tion­al foun­da­tion of a film, as a work of art, into a life­less schema with only pre­ten­sions to truth,” he said in an inter­view before he made Solaris, describ­ing what he would get right that Kubrick had got wrong. From just the brief clips of those pic­tures includ­ed in “Kubrick/Tarkovsky,” even view­ers who have nev­er seen either direc­tor’s films can tell how dif­fer­ent­ly they real­ized their visions of human­i­ty’s space-voy­ag­ing future. Through­out the rest of the essay as well, each empha­sis on a visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ty comes with an empha­sis on deep­er dif­fer­ence; as one of the video’s com­menters astute­ly puts it, “Tarkovsky is dreams, Kubrick is night­mares.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

“Auteur in Space”: A Video Essay on How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Tran­scends Sci­ence Fic­tion

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

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 Leonardo da Vinci Drew an Accurate Satellite Map of an Italian City (1502)

in Art, History, Maps, Math | April 16th, 2019

When I look at maps from cen­turies ago, I won­der how they could have been of any use. Not only were they filled with mytho­log­i­cal mon­sters and mytho­log­i­cal places, but the per­spec­tives most­ly served an aes­thet­ic design rather than a prac­ti­cal one. Of course, accu­ra­cy was hard to come by with­out the many map­ping tools we take for granted—some of them just in their infan­cy dur­ing the Renais­sance, and many more that would have seemed like out­landish mag­ic to near­ly every­one in 15th cen­tu­ry Europe.

Every­one, it some­times seems, but Leonar­do da Vin­ci, who antic­i­pat­ed and some­times steered the direc­tion of futur­is­tic pub­lic works tech­nol­o­gy. None of his fly­ing machines worked, and he could hard­ly have seen images tak­en from out­er space. But he clear­ly saw the prob­lem with con­tem­po­rary maps. The neces­si­ty of fix­ing them led to a 1502 aer­i­al image of Imo­la, Italy, drawn almost as accu­rate­ly as if he had been peer­ing at the city through a Google satel­lite cam­era.

“Leonar­do,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Vox video above, “need­ed to show Imo­la as an ichno­graph­ic map,” a term coined by ancient Roman engi­neer Vit­ru­vius to describe ground plan-style car­tog­ra­phy. No streets or build­ings are obscured, as they are in the maps drawn from the oblique per­spec­tive of a hill­top or moun­tain. Leonar­do under­took the project while employed as Cesare Borgia’s mil­i­tary engi­neer. “He was charged with help­ing Bor­gia become more aware of the town’s lay­out.” For this visu­al aid turned car­to­graph­ic mar­vel, he drew from the same source that inspired the ele­gant Vit­ru­vian Man.

While the vision­ary Roman builder could imag­ine a god’s eye view, it took some­one with Leonardo’s extra­or­di­nary per­spi­cac­i­ty and skill to actu­al­ly draw one, in a star­tling­ly accu­rate way. Did he do it with grit and mox­ie? Did he astral project thou­sands of miles above the city? Was he in con­tact with ancient aliens? No, he used geom­e­try, and a com­pass, the same means and instru­ments that allowed ancient sci­en­tists like Eratos­thenes to cal­cu­late the cir­cum­fer­ence of the earth, to with­in 200 miles, over 2000 years ago.

Leonar­do prob­a­bly also used an instru­ment called a bus­so­la, a device that mea­sures degrees inside a circle—like the one that sur­rounds his city map. Painstak­ing­ly record­ing the angles of each turn and inter­sec­tion in the town and mea­sur­ing their dis­tance from each oth­er would have giv­en him the data he need­ed to recre­ate the city as seen from above, using the bus­so­la to main­tain prop­er scale. Oth­er meth­ods would have been involved, all of them com­mon­ly avail­able to sur­vey­ors, builders, city plan­ners, and car­tog­ra­phers at the time. Leonar­do trust­ed the math, even though he could nev­er ver­i­fy it, but like the best map­mak­ers, he also want­ed to make some­thing beau­ti­ful.

It may be dif­fi­cult for his­to­ri­ans to deter­mine which inac­cu­ra­cies are due to mis­cal­cu­la­tion and which to delib­er­ate dis­tor­tion for some artis­tic pur­pose. But license or mis­takes aside, Leonardo’s map remains an aston­ish­ing feat, mark­ing a seis­mic shift from the geog­ra­phy of “myth and per­cep­tion” to one of “infor­ma­tion, drawn plain­ly.” There’s no telling if the arche­typ­al Renais­sance man would have liked where this path led, but if he lived in the 21st cen­tu­ry, he’d already have his mind trained on ideas that antic­i­pate tech­nol­o­gy hun­dreds of years in our future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Rea­son and Math, Fig­ured Out the Earth Isn’t Flat, Over 2,000 Years Ago

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

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Saw the World Dif­fer­ent­ly… Thanks to an Eye Dis­or­der, Says a New Sci­en­tif­ic Study

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

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

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Notre Dame Captured in an Early Photograph, 1838

in Architecture, History | April 15th, 2019

Accord­ing to Le Monde, the fire that rav­aged Notre Dame is now mer­ci­ful­ly under con­trol. Two thirds of the roof–and that beau­ti­ful spire–have been bad­ly dam­aged. The same like­ly goes for some pre­cious stained glass. But the two tow­ers still stand tall. And the struc­ture of the cathe­dral has been “saved and pre­served over­all,” reports the com­man­der of Paris’ fire­fight­ing brigade.

The pho­to above, tak­en by Louis Daguerre in 1838, helps pay visu­al trib­ute to Emmanuel Macron’s words tonight, “This his­to­ry is ours… I say to you very solemn­ly, this cathe­dral, we will rebuild it.” God­speed.

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The Charlie Chaplin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Photos & Documents from the Life of the Iconic Film Star

in Film, History | April 15th, 2019

Char­lie Chap­lin knew his movies were pop­u­lar, but could he have imag­ined that we’d still be watch­ing them now, as the 130th anniver­sary of his birth approach­es? And even if he could, he sure­ly would­n’t have guessed that even the mate­ri­als of his long work­ing life would draw great fas­ci­na­tion in the 21st cen­tu­ry — much less that they would be made instan­ta­neous­ly avail­able to the entire world on a site like the Char­lie Chap­lin Archive. A project of the Fon­dazione Cinete­ca di Bologna, which has pre­vi­ous­ly worked to restore and pre­serve Chap­lin’s fil­mog­ra­phy itself, it con­sti­tutes the dig­i­ti­za­tion of Chap­lin’s “very own and painstak­ing­ly pre­served pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al archives, from his ear­ly career on the Eng­lish stage to his final days in Switzer­land.”

This online archive includes every­thing from “the first hand­writ­ten notes of a sto­ry line to the shoot­ing of the film itself, stage by stage doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of the devel­op­ment of a film, or a project that nev­er even became a film,” as well as mate­ri­als not direct­ly relat­ed to the movies: “poems, lyrics, draw­ings, pro­grammes, con­tracts, let­ters, mag­a­zines, trav­el sou­venirs, com­ic books, car­toon strips, praise and crit­i­cism.”

The vast major­i­ty of these items have nev­er before been made pub­licly avail­able, and all of them enrich our pic­ture of the mak­er of clas­sic come­dies like Mod­ern Times, City Lights, and The Great Dic­ta­tor as well as the high­ly event­ful peri­ods of his­to­ry through which he lived.‘

You can explore the Char­lie Chap­lin Archive by plung­ing straight into its col­lec­tion of more than 4,000 images and near­ly 25,000 doc­u­ments, or you can enter through its curat­ed top­ic sec­tions: one on Chap­lin’s ear­ly career offers a glimpse into the hum­ble launch of a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that would go on to tran­scend cul­tures and eras; anoth­er on music shows Chap­lin, who grew up in a musi­cal fam­i­ly with musi­cal ambi­tions of his own, con­duct­ing orches­tras; and a sec­tion on trav­el presents clip­pings and pho­tos relat­ed to his jour­neys to places like Bali and Japan, from which he returned on the same boat as Jean Cocteau. “Cocteau could not speak a word of Eng­lish,” Chap­lin wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the voy­age home. “Nei­ther could I speak French, but his sec­re­tary spoke a lit­tle Eng­lish, though not too well, and he act­ed as inter­preter for us.”

“That night we sat up into the small hours, dis­cussing our the­o­ries of life and art,” Chap­lin con­tin­ues, quot­ing Cocteau’s sec­re­tary thus: “Mr Cocteau… he say… you are a poet… of zer sun­shine… and he is a poet of zer night.” These words, in turn, appear quot­ed (along­side the sketch of Chap­lin by Cocteau above) on the Char­lie Chap­lin Archive’s “Chap­lin and Jean Cocteau” page, one of its con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ed sto­ries. Oth­ers col­lect mate­r­i­al relat­ed to Chap­lin’s lux­u­ry-item pur­chas­es, Chap­lin as direc­tor, and Chap­lin’s final speech deliv­ered as the title char­ac­ter of The Great Dic­ta­tor, which a recent announce­ment about the archive calls “one of the most licensed ele­ments of Chaplin’s work in the 21st cen­tu­ry” — a time whose sur­re­al­i­ty Cocteau might well rec­og­nize, and whose absur­di­ty Chap­lin cer­tain­ly would.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin Films a Scene Inside a Lion’s Cage in 200 Takes

Watch Char­lie Chap­lin Demand 342 Takes of One Scene from City Lights

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

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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Should Literature Be Political? A Glimpse into Sartre by The Partially Examined Life

in Literature, Philosophy, Podcasts | April 15th, 2019

Image by Solomon Gundry

Jean-Paul Sartre pro­duced plays and nov­els like The Respect­ful Pros­ti­tute (1946), which explored racism in the Amer­i­can South. These works were crit­i­cized as too polem­i­cal to count as good lit­er­a­ture. What might in the present day cul­mi­nate only in a Twit­ter fight led Sartre to pub­lish a whole book defend­ing his prac­tices, called What Is Lit­er­a­ture? (1946).

In the clip below, Mark Lin­sen­may­er from the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast explains Sartre’s view, out­lin­ing both how strange it is and why you might want to take it seri­ous­ly any­way. In short, Sartre sees the act of writ­ing fic­tion as an eth­i­cal appeal to his read­er’s free­dom. The read­er is chal­lenged to hear the truths the work express­es, to under­stand and take action on them. More direct­ly, the read­er is chal­lenged to read the work, which involves a demand on the read­er’s atten­tion and imag­i­na­tion to “flesh out” the sit­u­a­tions the book describes. The read­er takes an active role in com­plet­ing the work, and this role can be aban­doned freely at any time. If a writer cre­ates an escapist fan­ta­sy, the read­er is invit­ed to escape. If the writer pro­duces a piece of lying pro­pa­gan­da, then the read­er is being invit­ed to col­lab­o­rate in that fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt work.

So if writ­ing is always an eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal act, then Sartre should­n’t be blamed for pro­duc­ing overt­ly polit­i­cal work. In fact, writ­ers who deny that their work is polit­i­cal are dodg­ing their own respon­si­bil­i­ty for play­ing hap­haz­ard­ly with this poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous tool. Their work will pro­duce polit­i­cal effects whether they like it or not.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life episode 212 (Sartre on Lit­er­a­ture) is a two-part treat­ment of the first two chap­ters of this text, weigh­ing Sartre’s words to try to under­stand them and deter­mine whether they ulti­mate­ly make sense. Lis­ten to the full episode below or go sub­scribe to The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is the host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life and Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­casts. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Exis­ten­tial­ist Phi­los­o­phy of Jean-Paul Sartre… and How It Can Open Our Eyes to Life’s Pos­si­bil­i­ties

A Crash Course in Exis­ten­tial­ism: A Short Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Paul Sartre & Find­ing Mean­ing in a Mean­ing­less World

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Con­cepts of Free­dom & “Exis­ten­tial Choice” Explained in an Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

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Salvador Dalí’s Illustrations for The Bible (1963)

in Art, Books | April 15th, 2019

Some might have tak­en offense when Sal­vador Dalí began illus­trat­ing the Bible in 1963. The noto­ri­ous Sur­re­al­ist “went to jail for his art­works as a young man,” writes Jack­son Arn writes at Art­sy, but he “lived long enough to lend his leg­endary panache to Hol­ly­wood movies and Alka-Seltzer com­mer­cials.” Along the way, he gained a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing a rather vicious char­ac­ter. George Orwell, review­ing Dalí’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, described him as “dis­gust­ing” for his fanat­i­cal harass­ment and abuse of oth­er peo­ple. But, Orwell went on, “Dalí is a draughts­man of very excep­tion­al gifts. He is also, to judge by the minute­ness and the sure­ness of his draw­ings, a very hard work­er…. He has fifty times more tal­ent than most of the peo­ple who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paint­ings.”

Dalí hard­ly need­ed the defense of his morals or his paint­ings, nor might he have want­ed it. That was the wrong sort of atten­tion. But maybe he him­self was sur­prised by a lat­er career turn as an illus­tra­tor of respectable “Great Books”—including not only Judeo-Chris­t­ian scrip­ture, but also Don Quixote, Mac­beth, The Divine Com­e­dy, Alice in Won­der­land, and much more.

The artist who seemed to have noth­ing but con­tempt for tra­di­tion­al canons approached these projects with the skill and pro­fes­sion­al­ism Orwell couldn’t help but admire, as well as sub­tleties and under­stat­ed tonal shifts we might not have asso­ci­at­ed with his work.

These are not his first reli­gious sub­jects; he had always ref­er­enced big scenes and broad themes in Catholi­cism. But the illus­tra­tions rep­re­sent a deep­er engage­ment with the pri­ma­ry text—105 paint­ings in all, each based on select pas­sages from the Latin Vul­gate Bible. Pub­lished by Riz­zoli in 1969, Bib­lia Sacra (The Sacred Bible) was com­mis­sioned by Dalí’s friend, Dr. Guiseppe Albare­to, a devout Catholic whose inten­tion “for this mas­sive under­tak­ing,” writes the Lock­port St. Gallery, “was to bring the artist back to his reli­gious roots.” What­ev­er effect that might have had, Dalí approach­es the project with the same dili­gence evi­dent in his oth­er illustrations—he takes artis­tic risks while mak­ing a sin­cere effort to stay close to the spir­it of the text. If he did this work for the mon­ey, he earned it.

Dalí’s illus­tra­tions “aren’t some kind of sub­ver­sive prank,” writes Arn. “The lumi­nous water­col­ors he pro­duced for the Bible are, in the main, earnest ren­der­ings of their sacred sub­jects.” Per­haps the book illus­tra­tions have attract­ed so lit­tle atten­tion from art his­to­ri­ans because they lack the sen­sa­tion­al­ism and out­rage Dalí aggres­sive­ly cul­ti­vat­ed in his pub­lic per­sona. Maybe these paint­ings, as Ger­man gal­lerist Hol­ger Kemp­kens puts it, show “some­thing of a spir­i­tu­al side of Dalí.” Or maybe they just add to a big­ger pic­ture that shows what he could do with nar­ra­tives not of his own mak­ing, but which he clear­ly respect­ed and found chal­leng­ing and stim­u­lat­ing. These qual­i­ties apply to many parts of the Bible as well as to great lit­er­ary epics, includ­ing those based on the Bible, like John Milton’s Par­adise Lost, which Dalí illus­trat­ed in a series of sur­pris­ing­ly spare, ele­gant etch­ings.

You can buy an orig­i­nal set of Dalí’s illus­trat­ed Bible in five vol­umes from The Lock­port Street Gallery (email for a price and con­di­tion report); buy a more afford­able book online that fea­tures and explores Dalí’s illus­tra­tions; or see all 105 of Dalí’s Bib­li­cal illus­tra­tions (and pur­chase some 1967 prints) at Art­sy.

via Art­sy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued

Sal­vador Dalí’s Haunt­ing 1975 Illus­tra­tions for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juli­et

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

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