Watch Samuel Beckett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

in Film, Literature | April 17th, 2020

Samuel Beck­ett long had a fond­ness for Berlin, from his first trip in the late 1920s–when he fell in love with his cousin while vis­it­ing his uncle on his mom’s side–to his long­time rela­tion­ship with his Ger­man trans­la­tor Eri­ka Tophoven and with the Schiller The­ater, which pro­duced many of his plays.

The above footage shows the 63-year old Beck­ett walk­ing the streets of Berlin, ask­ing for direc­tions, or read­ing the dai­ly paper at a cafe. At one point he is seen walk­ing with a woman (pos­si­bly Tophoven?).

Why was this film shot? It has the feel­ing of sur­veil­lance footage, but the more log­i­cal expla­na­tion is that it was b‑roll for some news fea­ture. Beck­ett was award­ed the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1969, so that might be the rea­son.

How­ev­er, the illog­i­cal but *best* rea­son is that Beck­ett was film­ing the title sequence for his detec­tive show pilot, named, of course, Beck­ett. YouTube user oobleck­boy cre­at­ed this hilar­i­ous rework a few years ago, which we told you about then. But it’s worth anoth­er look, sure­ly.

On a more seri­ous note, Beck­et­t’s main tour of Berlin came long before his jour­ney as a play­wright. Self-taught in the lan­guage and inter­est­ed in the cul­ture, he trav­eled to Berlin right after the 1936 Olympic Games and stayed through 1937. He had lost his job in Dublin, and he had fall­en out with James Joyce, so he was avoid­ing Paris. So Beck­ett trav­eled to Berlin to devour the arts. He knew the dan­gers of the ris­ing Nazi threat and took it seri­ous­ly. Instead he want­ed to see the cul­ture before it dis­ap­peared. (And it would, on one hand through the Nazis and their cam­paign against “degen­er­ate art.” On the oth­er, from the Allies bomb­ing dur­ing the war.) Beck­ett spent count­less hours in muse­ums. He attend­ed operas. He got so flu­ent in the lan­guage he could read Schopen­hauer (for the style, not the con­tent, appar­ent­ly).

But it was such a pri­vate trip that his Ger­man friends from the ‘60s nev­er knew of it. He did not men­tion it to them. The only rea­son we know is because in 1989, his nephew dis­cov­ered his diary from that time–the only diary Beck­ett ever kept–and after years of it being avail­able only to researchers, it was pub­lished in 2011. (Or rather, selec­tions of the 120,000 word jour­nal, were pub­lished.)

Last­ly, it was on one of those Berlin muse­um trips where he saw the paint­ing Two Men Con­tem­plat­ing the Moon by Cas­par David Friedrich. The image would stick in his mind until many years lat­er when it would influ­ence the set design for his most famous play, Wait­ing for Godot. (A coun­try road. A tree. Evening.) You can see the paint­ing here.

via Ubu Web

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

When Robin Williams & Steve Mar­tin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing For Godot (1988)

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How to Paint Water Lilies Like Monet in 14 Minutes

in Art, Travel | April 17th, 2020

Some of us are using this peri­od of self-iso­la­tion to make sour­dough.

Oth­ers are learn­ing to play an instru­ment or ini­ti­at­ing a dai­ly yoga prac­tice.

For those con­sid­er­ing tak­ing up paint­ing, David Dun­lop’s Emmy-Award win­ning PBS series Land­scapes Through Time offers an excel­lent alter­na­tive (or sup­ple­ment) to the well-estab­lished joys of cult fig­ure Bob Ross, the eter­nal king of tele­vi­sion art instruc­tion.

Like Ross, Dun­lop has a mel­low onscreen tem­pera­ment that pairs beau­ti­ful­ly with the enchant­i­ng set­ting of Claude Monet’s famous water gar­den, above.

(Those who’ve vis­it­ed Monet’s house and gar­den at Giverny will envy him his tourist-free access to the site. Even those with no inten­tion of pick­ing up a brush should find it restora­tive to spend time gaz­ing at the same love­ly view that Dun­lop, like Mon­et before him, looks at through a delib­er­ate­ly Impres­sion­is­tic squint.)

He packs a lot of art appre­ci­a­tion into 14 eas­i­ly digest­ed min­utes, touch­ing on art his­to­ry, brush tech­nique, com­po­si­tion, use of light, and, in par­tic­u­lar, col­or the­o­ry.

When the muse­ums reopen, you may find this crash course has enhanced your enjoy­ment, espe­cial­ly as per­tains to can­vas­es by Mon­et and his fel­low Impres­sion­ists.

For those pur­su­ing the hands-on oil paint­ing expe­ri­ence, Dun­lop pro­vides a sup­ply list of col­ors, all read­i­ly avail­able:

Cobalt Blue

Cad­mi­um Yel­low

Alizarin Crim­son

Ultra­ma­rine

Bril­liant Rose

Emer­ald Green

Hooker’s Green

Tita­ni­um White

His brush­es and paper appear to be gar­den vari­ety, and his approach, like Ross’, is fast and loose.

Those who favor a less brazen approach may feel more at home with his water­col­or paint­ing demon­stra­tion in Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Vic­toire in Provence, France, below.

There are more excerpts and instruc­tion on Dunlop’s YouTube chan­nel. For those wish­ing to take it to the next lev­el, Dun­lop is teach­ing a series of inter­ac­tive stu­dio demon­stra­tion class­es via Zoom. Reg­is­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare 1915 Film Shows Claude Mon­et at Work in His Famous Gar­den at Giverny

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Bob Ross’ Christ­mas Spe­cial: Cel­e­brate, Relax, Nod Off

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her art in iso­la­tion has tak­en the form of a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Experience the Van Gogh Museum in 4K Resolution: A Video Tour in Seven Parts

in Art, Technology | April 16th, 2020

When we think of the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inclined artists of all time, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think of Vin­cent van Gogh. Though he wrote of his deter­mi­na­tion to cre­ate “the art of the future,” when he got down to paint­ing he did so with tra­di­tion­al tools. What­ev­er Van Gogh’s own feel­ings about tech­nol­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy cer­tain­ly seems to like him: take, for exam­ple, 2017’s Lov­ing Vin­cent, a fea­ture film about him ani­mat­ed with 65,000 paint­ings; the dig­i­tal exhi­bi­tion of his work that took place in Paris last year; his paint­ings brought to life with 3D ani­ma­tion and visu­al map­ping; and a vir­tu­al-real­i­ty ver­sion of The Night Cafe, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — not to men­tion the 1,400 paint­ings and draw­ings by van Gogh made avail­able online by the Van Gogh Muse­um.

How­ev­er for­ward-look­ing its full-fea­tured online pres­ence made the Van Gogh Muse­um seem before, this par­tic­u­lar moment has made it look like an even more pre­scient insti­tu­tion. With it and so many oth­er brick-and-mor­tar muse­ums tem­porar­i­ly closed due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, online is the only way any of us can enjoy them.

In addi­tion to its exist­ing resources on the web, the Van Gogh Muse­um has over the past month been upload­ing a pri­vate tour, all shot in 4K video. Much like the five-hour iPhone ad shot in the Her­mitage about which we post­ed last month, this series pro­vides a drift­ing, float­ing view of the muse­um’s gal­leries and the works they proud­ly dis­play, all quite unlike any expe­ri­ence one could ever have had there in per­son.

In the six parts of the series that have gone up so far, with a sev­enth and final install­ment to come next, not a sin­gle oth­er per­son appears to get between you and Van Gogh’s por­traits, Van Gogh’s still lifes, Van Gogh’s scenes urban and rur­al. But you do get some accom­pa­ni­ment in the form of a full musi­cal score, an ele­ment that has become quite impor­tant for this now-emerg­ing form of cin­e­mat­ic, high-res­o­lu­tion muse­um tour video.

Though brief, this Van Gogh Muse­um tour in 4K cov­ers a wide swath of the artist’s work, and will sure­ly only whet the appetite of view­ers who’ve been mean­ing to make the trip to Ams­ter­dam them­selves. Until then, we can take in Van Gogh’s “art of the future” using the tech­nol­o­gy of the present — the likes of which would­n’t have appeared in even his wildest visions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore 1400 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh–and Much More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Col­lec­tion

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

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

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

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

See Web Cams of Surreally Empty City Streets in Venice, New York, London & Beyond

in Current Affairs, Travel | April 16th, 2020

The lack of human pres­ence in major­ly pol­lut­ed cities these past cou­ple months has had some peo­ple see­ing utopias as the skies begin to clear. But emp­ty cities seem a lit­tle more dystopi­an to me. Dystopias are “a kind of sur­re­al­ism,” writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son. They unearth the dream­like dread beneath the veneer of the nor­mal. No mat­ter when they’re set, dystopias don’t depict the future so much as “the feel­ing of the present… height­ened by exag­ger­a­tion to a kind of dream or night­mare.” The events in dystopi­an fic­tion approach the truth of someone’s sit­u­a­tion some­where in the world and make vis­i­ble what has been hid­den.

We know ghost cities exist as ancient dis­as­ters like Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum and mod­ern ones like Pripy­at, Ukraine, out­side Cher­nobyl. But there are more of them than many of us know. Gleam­ing cities like Ash­ga­bat, Turk­menistan, which broke ground in 1991 and con­tains the largest num­ber of mar­ble build­ings in the world.

The 4.5 mil­lion square meter metrop­o­lis has almost no inhab­i­tants, an enor­mous gov­ern­ment fol­ly. Towns and cities around the world have been aban­doned for for all sorts of rea­sons, and they con­tin­ue to as sea lev­els rise. Which is what makes view­ing live cam­era footage of some of the world’s most icon­ic streets—almost com­plete­ly emp­tied by the pan­dem­ic at the height of tourist season—so… sur­re­al.

It’s true that peo­ple haven’t fled these cities, but made cozy bunkers of their apart­ments. Yet see­ing the vacant streets live on cam­era, in Venice, Lon­don, New York, and else­where in the world,  I get the uncan­ny feel­ing of look­ing at pro­to-sur­re­al­ist painter Gior­gio de Chirico’s The Enig­ma of a Day, a depic­tion of a shad­owy, unin­hab­it­ed street through which we expect the Ital­ian ver­sion of a tum­ble­weed to roll. Sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy has inad­ver­tent­ly become a medi­um of mod­ernist art.

There is so much beau­ty in the live view at the top of the Ponte delle Guglie in Venice from the Hotel Filù Venezia, and there is also such lone­ly melan­choly, depend­ing on the time of day and where the shad­ows fall. See a live view of Times Square, above, and anoth­er Times Square view at Earth­Cam, where you can also catch a feed of a most­ly emp­ty Abbey Road (some times of day emp­ti­er than oth­ers, as in the ear­ly-morn­ing screen­shot below). Sky­line Web­cams hosts even more live cam­era views of Venice, includ­ing feeds from the Rial­to Bridge and the Piaz­za San Mar­co, as well as live feeds from sev­er­al sites in Pad­ua and oth­er places in Italy.

These real-time visions are trans­port­ing in their strange­ness. Are we liv­ing in the present or the future? In a dystopi­an world, there isn’t any dif­fer­ence. All futures are fore­closed by cat­a­stro­phe, “all dis­tances in time and space are shrink­ing,” wrote Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, a thinker who under­stood dis­as­ter, and who fell in line behind it. In that same essay, “The Thing” (as trans­lat­ed by Albert Hof­s­tad­er), the Ger­man philoso­pher made his famous com­ment, “the ter­ri­ble has already hap­pened.”

The ter­ri­ble that has hap­pened to us is not only a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The virus is not like­ly to dis­ap­pear on its own; who knows how long this will go on? But not far behind the cur­rent cri­sis are more cli­mate events that threat­en to emp­ty streets. If we emp­ty cities not only as indica­tive of tem­porar­i­ly social dis­tanc­ing, but as images of the pos­si­ble near-future, maybe we’ll be far less inclined to come out of this sur­re­al expe­ri­ence and get right back to busi­ness-as-usu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Take a Long Virtual Tour of the Louvre in Three High-Definition Videos

in Art | April 16th, 2020

So, you’ve had to put off a trip to Paris, and a long-await­ed vis­it to the Lou­vre, which “will remain closed until fur­ther notice,” has been pushed into the indef­i­nite hori­zon. It could be worse, but the loss of engag­ing up close with cul­tur­al trea­sures is some­thing we should all grieve in lock­down. Art is so impor­tant to human well-being that UK Sec­re­tary of Health Matt Han­cock argued all doc­tors in the NHS should pre­scribe gallery vis­its and oth­er art activ­i­ties for every­thing from men­tal issues to lung dis­eases.

As you know from plan­ning your trip (ide­al­ly sev­er­al trips) to the famous museum—first opened to the pub­lic in 1793 on the first anniver­sary of Louis XVI’s imprisonment—you can lux­u­ri­ate in art for days on end once there, pro­vid­ed you can evade the mas­sive crowds.

The Lou­vre is immense, with 60,500 square meters of floor space and around 35,000 paint­ings, sculp­tures, and oth­er arti­facts. But with rough­ly 10 mil­lion vis­i­tors per year, who make it the world’s most vis­it­ed muse­um, it isn’t easy to find space for con­tem­pla­tion.

Video vis­its are no sub­sti­tute, but these days they’re the best we’ve got. If you’re eager to see what you’re missing—or what you could nev­er get to in per­son even with­out a pandemic—take a look at the 4K vir­tu­al tours here from Wan­der­lust Trav­el Videos. Yes, you’ll see the hero­ic mas­ter­works of Jacques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, and Théodore Géri­cault. You’ll see the famous glass pyra­mid, the trea­sures of Napoleon’s Apart­ments, and, yes, the Mona Lisa.

But you’ll also see hun­dreds and hun­dreds of works that don’t get the same kind of press, each one named in a time­stamped list on the YouTube pages. The expe­ri­ence is admit­ted­ly like vis­it­ing the muse­um in per­son, rush­ing through each gallery, peer­ing over and around the backs of heads to get a glimpse of the Fra Fil­ip­po Lip­pis, Cimabues, and Man­teg­nas. But you can mute the con­stant back­ground chat­ter and pause and rewind as much as you like.

After tour­ing a good bit of the muse­um, stroll around the Car­rousel Arc de Tri­om­phe, Jardin de l’infante, and the Pont Neuf, above. Judg­ing by the com­ments, these videos are prov­ing a balm to the psy­ches of home­bound art lovers around the world, whether they’ve been to the Lou­vre before, just scrapped their trav­el plans, or know they’ll prob­a­bly nev­er get the chance to vis­it.

The vir­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to tour this mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion, or part of it, may refresh our exhaust­ed imag­i­na­tions. It may also soothe the part of us that real­ly miss­es huge crowds of peo­ple all talk­ing at once. Some­thing about the expe­ri­ence, even on the screen, feels so strange­ly com­pelling right now you might find your­self hop­ing if and when you final­ly get to the Lou­vre, it’s sim­ply mobbed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mona Lisa Self­ie: A Mon­tage of Social Media Pho­tos Tak­en at the Lou­vre and Put on Insta­gram

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Vis­it The Muse­um of Online Muse­ums (MoOM): A Mega Col­lec­tion of 220 Online Exhi­bi­tions

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Louis Armstrong Remembers How He Survived the 1918 Flu Epidemic in New Orleans

in History, Music | April 15th, 2020

Born into pover­ty in New Orleans in 1901, and grow­ing up dur­ing some of the most bru­tal years of seg­re­ga­tion in the South, Louis Arm­strong first lived with his grand­moth­er, next in a “Col­ored Waif’s Home” after drop­ping out of school at age 11, then with his moth­er and sis­ter in a home so small they had to sleep in the same bed. After already liv­ing through the first World War, he would go on to wit­ness the Span­ish Flu epi­dem­ic, the Great Depres­sion, World War II, the Cold War, and the tur­bu­lent 1960s and the Viet­nam con­flict.

That’s a lot for one life­time, though for much of it, Arm­strong was a star and liv­ing leg­end who beat the odds and rose above his ori­gins with will and tal­ent. Even so, he suf­fered some severe ups and downs dur­ing the hard times, tour­ing so much to cov­er his debts in the lean 1930s, for exam­ple, that he injured his lips and fin­gers, and final­ly mov­ing to Europe when the mob came after him.

Armstrong’s descrip­tions of his expe­ri­ence of the 1918 influen­za pandemic—as he remem­bers it in his 1954 mem­oir Satch­mo: My Life in New Orleans—are almost jaun­ty, as you can part­ly see in the type­script page above from the Louis Arm­strong House. But he remem­bered it from the per­spec­tive of a 17-year-old musi­cian in robust health—who seemed to have some kind of resis­tance to the flu.

He devotes no more than two para­graphs to the flu, which hit the city hard in Octo­ber of that year. Accord­ing to the Influen­za Ency­clo­pe­dia, an online project doc­u­ment­ing the flu in the U.S. between 1918–1919, New Orleans city author­i­ties “act­ed imme­di­ate­ly,” once they dis­cov­ered the out­break, arrived by car­go ship the month before.

On Octo­ber 9th, the New Orleans Super­in­ten­dent of Health, “with May­or Mar­tine Behrman’s con­sent and the bless­ing of state author­i­ties… ordered closed all schools (pub­lic, pri­vate, and parochial, as well as com­mer­cial col­leges), church­es, the­aters, movie hous­es, and oth­er places of amuse­ment, and [pro­hib­it­ed] pub­lic gath­er­ings such as sport­ing events and pub­lic funer­als and wed­dings.”

For a strug­gling young musi­cian mak­ing a liv­ing play­ing clubs and river­boats, the clo­sure of “oth­er places of amuse­ment” took a seri­ous toll. The loss of liveli­hood is what seems to have hurt Arm­strong the most when he returned to the city from tour­ing, still unsure if the Great War would end.

When I came back from Houma things were much tougher. The Kaiser’s mon­key busi­ness was get­ting worse, and, what is more, a seri­ous flu epi­dem­ic had hit New Orleans. Every­body was down with it, except me. That was because I was physic-mind­ed. I nev­er missed a week with­out a physic, and that kept all kinds of sick­ness out of me.

What­ev­er “physic” helped Armstrong’s avoid infec­tion, it wasn’t for lack of expo­sure. In lieu of play­ing the trum­pet he began car­ing for the sick, since all of the hos­pi­tals, even those that would take black patients, were com­plete­ly over­crowd­ed.

Just when the gov­ern­ment was about to let crowds of peo­ple con­gre­gate again so that we could play our horns once more the lid was clamped down tighter than ever. That forced me to take any odd jobs I could get. With every­body suf­fer­ing from the flu, I had to work and play the doc­tor to every­one in my fam­i­ly as well as all my friends in the neigh­bor­hood. If I do say so, I did a good job cur­ing them.

We might imag­ine some of those “odd jobs” were what we now call “essential”—i.e. low paid and high risk under the cir­cum­stances. He per­se­vered and final­ly got a gig play­ing a “honky-tonk” that avoid­ed a shut-down because it was “third rate,” and he “could play a lot of blues for cheap pros­ti­tutes and hus­tlers.” Few things could get Satch­mo down, it seemed, not even a flu pan­dem­ic, but he was one of the lucky ones—luckily for the future of jazz. Only, we don’t have to imag­ine how hard this must have been for him. We just have to take a look around.

Learn more about the 1918 influen­za epi­dem­ic in the U.S. at the Influen­za Ency­clo­pe­dia and read the rest of Armstrong’s account of his for­ma­tive years at the Inter­net Archive.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

What Hap­pened to U.S. Cities That Practiced–and Didn’t Practice–Social Dis­tanc­ing Dur­ing 1918’s “Span­ish Flu”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

A Playlist of Songs to Get You Through Hard Times: Stream 20 Tracks from the Alan Lomax Collection

in Life, Music | April 15th, 2020

There’s an argu­ment to be made that folk music is always polit­i­cal, in a broad sense. It is music made by ordi­nary peo­ple strug­gling against over­whelm­ing forces: nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, oppres­sive gov­ern­ments, cor­rupt boss­es, job loss, the pains of mar­riage and illic­it rela­tion­ships… and epi­dem­ic infec­tious dis­eases. It’s music of con­so­la­tion and resilience. Folk music helps us navigate—as the title of a 20-song col­lec­tion of Alan Lomax’s record­ings new­ly released on Band­camp puts it—“hard times: up, over and through.”

At least,  the fact that we know of and can hear so much folk music from around the world has a good deal to do with polit­i­cal deci­sions made, for exam­ple, in the U.S., where Lomax began work­ing with his folk­lorist father John, col­lect­ing music and inter­views for the Library of Congress’s Archive of Amer­i­can Folk Song. This work was fund­ed on the premise that con­serv­ing the voice of the peo­ple had val­ue inde­pen­dent of its prof­itabil­i­ty.

But prof­itable it was: first cre­ative­ly, as Lomax’s record­ings inspired the Amer­i­can and British folk revivals of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry: then finan­cial­ly, as folk and folk-rock artists sold mil­lions of records. Giv­en the tenor of those times, it’s no won­der folk became main­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Civ­il Rights, labor, and anti-war move­ments. Yet as folk­lorists like Lomax showed, even after the Con­gres­sion­al fund­ing end­ed, folk songs from around the world have sto­ries to tell that we may nev­er have heard oth­er­wise.

A 20-track selec­tion of those songs, dat­ing between 1936 and 1982, can hard­ly be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the mas­sive trove of record­ings Lomax col­lect­ed. It does show, a press release notes, “an enor­mous range of geo­graph­i­cal and styl­is­tic diver­si­ty across 50 years,” with artists rang­ing from “leg­ends of Amer­i­can ver­nac­u­lar music—Bessie Jones, Skip James, and Dock Bog­gs among them—to rur­al Ital­ian, Span­ish, and Scot­tish singers.” This music offers, “in these try­ing times, com­fort diver­sion, and his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive.”

Such per­spec­tive is crit­i­cal when the world seems to be falling apart. The strug­gles of “folk”—wherever they may be in the world—are inter­con­nect­ed and ongo­ing. Hear­ing how peo­ple respond­ed to dis­as­ter, both per­son­al and col­lec­tive, in decades past pro­vides a sense of con­ti­nu­ity. Things have been very bad before, and peo­ple have had rea­son to lament. To declare that “Mon­ey is King,” as a track by The Growl­ing Tiger tells us. To won­der plain­tive­ly, as Har­ry Cox does, “What will become of England/if things go on this way?”

But folk singers have also had rea­sons for joy, in the best and the bleak­est of times, and joy is also a kind of pol­i­tics, a show of strength in the face of what Rev. Pearly Brown plain­ly calls “A Mean Old World.” Stream the col­lec­tion, which includes six pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased tracks, above, and buy indi­vid­ual tracks or the full dig­i­tal album for $5 at Band­camp.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

Hear 17,000+ Tra­di­tion­al Folk & Blues Songs Curat­ed by the Great Musi­col­o­gist Alan Lomax

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Vintage Advertising Film Intelligently Satirizes the Selling of the American Dream: Watch The Your Name Here Story (1960)

in Film, History | April 15th, 2020

When did the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca attain peak earnest­ness? It had to have hap­pened some­time in the long 1950s, begin­ning with vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War and end­ing with the cul­tur­al shifts of the ear­ly 60s. Though indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans back then might express dis­con­tent and even cyn­i­cism about the nation, U.S. mass cul­ture kept the dial set to tri­umphant opti­mism. And in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca there was no cul­tur­al force quite as mass as adver­tis­ing, which broad­cast its mes­sages in not just the media of print, radio, tele­vi­sion, and bill­board, but film as well. This gold­en age of Amer­i­can earnest­ness coin­cides with the gold­en age of the Calvin Com­pa­ny, once the coun­try’s dom­i­nant mak­er of adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, and indus­tri­al films.

Found­ed in Kansas City in 1931, the Calvin Com­pa­ny cap­i­tal­ized ear­ly on the adver­tis­ing poten­tial of 16-mil­lime­ter film. At first con­sid­ered suit­able only for “home movies,” the for­mat turned out to be ide­al for sales pitch­es, cor­po­rate train­ing ses­sions, and class­room screen­ings. Calv­in’s client list soon grew to include Gen­er­al Mills, Goodyear, Mon­san­to, West­ing­house, and Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, as well as the Navy, the Air Force, and the Office of Edu­ca­tion.

That we can still watch some of the com­pa­ny’s many pro­duc­tions today we owe to the efforts of Rick Prelinger, whose epony­mous film archives we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. At the Inter­net Archive you can watch such Calvin clas­sics as Cof­fee Break, Forty Bil­lion Ene­mies, Fifty Years of Pow­ered Flight, The Bright Young New­com­er, and Enforc­ing Rules and Pro­ce­dures.

None have the rep­u­ta­tion of The Your Name Here Sto­ry, pro­duced by Calvin in 1960 as “the first tru­ly all-pur­pose film.” While pre­vi­ous jobs were made to order, painstak­ing­ly tai­lored by an ever-expand­ing staff of film­mak­ers to the needs the com­mis­sion­ing clients, The Your Name Here Sto­ry is com­plete­ly gener­ic. “From the dawn of human his­to­ry, a bet­ter way of life has been man’s dream,” booms its nar­ra­tor, launch­ing into an open­ing whose epic form will be famil­iar to any­one who’s put off writ­ing a term paper until the night before. After telling the sto­ry of civ­i­liza­tion — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion — in a brisk two min­utes, the film arrives in high-tech moder­ni­ty. Alas, “despite the world’s high­est liv­ing stan­dards, the aver­age Amer­i­can remained vague­ly dis­con­tent, aware that his goal of a bet­ter way of life had still not been ful­ly real­ized. There was some­thing miss­ing.”

“Gad, it’s iron­ic,” says a pro­to­typ­i­cal Amer­i­can hus­band of the day, lying awake along­side his wife, both of them sleep­less with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. “With all our tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al know-how, we still don’t have the one thing that could give us a bet­ter way of life.” That “one thing” is any­thing the com­pa­ny that licens­es The Your Name Here Sto­ry hap­pens to make, footage of which they can eas­i­ly insert into the var­i­ous spaces pro­vid­ed through­out the film. “In count­less ways, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, YOUR PRODUCT HERE serves the nation and its cit­i­zens,” says the nar­ra­tor, cred­it­ing what­ev­er it may be with play­ing a vital role in help­ing them to “achieve suc­cess,” “enjoy health­ful recre­ation,” “grow big­ger crops,” “strength­en our nation­al defense,” and of course “get real smok­ing sat­is­fac­tion.”

Some may now watch most of The Your Name Here Sto­ry before catch­ing on to the film’s satir­i­cal intent. That owes to the fact that the Calvin Com­pa­ny itself defined the look and feel of the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of the 1950s, at least as it remains in cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a bit of fun for the “Calvin Work­shop,” the com­pa­ny’s annu­al gath­er­ing of indus­tri­al film pro­duc­ers and tech­ni­cians, the film’s spoofs of what Sapi­ens author Yuval Noah Harari has termed the “mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-sci­en­tif­ic com­plex” almost feel made for audi­ences of the future. Among the Calvin Com­pa­ny’s sur­viv­ing films we also find 1956’s A Mag­ic Bond, direct­ed by no less notable a son of Kansas City than Robert Alt­man. Know­ing what we now do of its self-aware cor­po­rate cul­ture, does it comes as a sur­prise that Calvin would have been the train­ing ground for Hol­ly­wood’s pre-emi­nent smart-aleck?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

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

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.