Igor Stravinsky Appears on American Network TV & Tells Stories About His Unconventional Musical Life (1957)

in Music, Television | June 21st, 2021

One evening in 1957, view­ers all across Amer­i­ca tuned in to see Stravin­sky. The broad­cast was­n’t a per­for­mance of Stravin­sky’s music, although those would con­tin­ue to draw tele­vi­sion audi­ences well into the fol­low­ing decade. It was a con­ver­sa­tion with the man him­self, Igor Fyo­dor­ovich Stravin­sky, who even when he was still alive had become an insti­tu­tion by virtue of his indus­try and inno­va­tion. “For half a cen­tu­ry, Stravin­sky’s musi­cal explo­rations have dom­i­nat­ed mod­ern music,” says the pro­gram’s nar­ra­tor. “His near­ly 100 works — bal­lets, sym­phonies, reli­gious music, even jazz — have often out­raged audi­ences at first hear­ing.”

The famous­ly “riotous” audi­ence reac­tion to the Paris debut of Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring had hap­pened 44 years ear­li­er, back when the Russ­ian-born com­pos­er was ris­ing to inter­na­tion­al fame. But by 1957 he’d been an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen for years, and it’s in his Hol­ly­wood home — and on the eve of his 75th birth­day — that NBC’s crew shot this episode of Wis­dom.

Hav­ing debuted just that year, Wis­dom would con­tin­ue to run until 1965, broad­cast­ing long-form inter­views with fig­ures like Mar­cel Duchamp, Pearl S. Buck, Robert Frost, Som­er­set Maugh­am, and Eleanor Roo­sevelt. Here Stravin­sky speaks with his young pro­tégé, the Amer­i­can con­duc­tor Robert Craft, who asks him to remem­ber var­i­ous chap­ters of his long musi­cal life, which includ­ed encoun­ters with the likes of Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov, Dylan Thomas, and Pablo Picas­so.

The sto­ry begins with Stravin­sky’s first impro­vi­sa­tions at the piano dur­ing his child­hood in Rus­sia (and his first lessons, taught by a woman of nine­teen: “for me that was an old maid, but of course I was in love with this old maid”). All through­out, we see flash­es of the inven­tion-above-con­ven­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty that made Stravin­sky more a Homo faber, as he liked to say, than a Homo sapi­ens. “Who invent­ed the scale?” he asks, rhetor­i­cal­ly. “Some­body invent­ed the scale. If some­body invent­ed the scale, I can change some­thing in the scale and invent some­thing else.” And why is it, Craft asks, that every new work of yours arous­es protests in the pub­lic? “Each time I have new prob­lems, and this new prob­lem requires a new approach,” Stravin­sky explains, and but for the pub­lic, “the idea of a new approach, of a new prob­lem, does­n’t come to their mind.” So you’re ahead of the pub­lic – includ­ing, implic­it­ly, the Amer­i­can pub­lic view­ing at home? “Inevitably.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Igor Stravin­sky Remem­bers the “Riotous” Pre­miere of His Rite of Spring in 1913: “They Were Very Shocked. They Were Naive and Stu­pid Peo­ple.”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Hear Igor Stravinsky’s Sym­phonies & Bal­lets in a Com­plete, 32-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Modernizing Table-Top Role-Playing Games — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #96

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | June 21st, 2021

What’s the cur­rent sta­tus of table-top role-play­ing games like Dun­geons and Drag­ons in pop cul­ture? Thanks to D&D’s recent depic­tion in Stranger Things and the enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty of fan­ta­sy prop­er­ties like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, inter­est in elves and mag­ic and such is no longer fod­der for Satan­ic pan­ic, but the idea of active­ly pre­tend­ing to be a char­ac­ter in this genre to engage in col­lab­o­ra­tive sto­ry-telling still seems for­eign to many.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Aman­da McLough­lin, the host of Join the Par­ty, a begin­ner-friend­ly, pur­pose­ful­ly inclu­sive D&D real-play pod­cast, to go over some D&D basics, the dynam­ics of play­ing vs. spec­tat­ing (by lis­ten­ing to her pod­cast, for instance), and the racism and impe­ri­al­ism built into the set­ting (adven­ture = going into a for­eign land to kill often intel­li­gent crea­tures and take their stuff). What is it to “act out your fan­ta­sy” in this way?

Some of the ways of wit­ness­ing oth­ers play­ing that we refer to include Crit­i­cal Role, The Adven­ture Zone, and Dimen­sion 20.

The Join the Par­ty game mas­ter Eric Sil­ver wrote the arti­cle “Dun­geons & Drag­ons Has an Anti­semitism Prob­lem.” You can also look at Wikipedi­a’s “Dun­geons and Drag­ons in Pop­u­lar Cul­ture” entry or get a fla­vor of the range of options by look­ing at Dice­break­er’s list of “10 Best Table­top Role­play­ing Games Out Right Now”, this list of “The 12 Best Actu­al Play Pod­casts,” or this video of “Top D&D Chan­nels that Aren’t Crit­i­cal Role.”

Fol­low Aman­da’s pod­cast @jointhepartypod on @MultitudeShows. She also hosts the Spir­its Pod­cast about folk­lore and urban leg­ends.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Umberto Eco’s 36 Rules for Writing Well (in English or Italian)

in Literature, Writing | June 18th, 2021

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the Nation­al Archives in Hol­land

Umber­to Eco knew a great many things. Indeed too many things, at least accord­ing to his crit­ics: “Eco knows every­thing there is to know and spews it in your face in the most blasé man­ner,” declared Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni, “as if you were lis­ten­ing to a robot.” That line appears quot­ed in Tim Parks’ review of Pape Satàn Aleppe, a posthu­mous col­lec­tion of essays from La Busti­na di Min­er­va, the mag­a­zine col­umn Eco had writ­ten since 1985. “This phrase means ‘Minerva’s Match­book,’ ” Parks explains. “Min­er­va is a brand of match­es, and, being a pipe smok­er, Eco used to jot down notes on the inside flap of their pack­ag­ing. His columns were to be equal­ly extem­po­ra­ne­ous, com­pul­sive and inci­sive, each as illu­mi­nat­ing and explo­sive as a struck match.”

At the same time, “the ref­er­ence to the Roman god­dess Min­er­va is impor­tant; it warns us that in the mod­ern world we may strug­gle to dis­tin­guish between divini­ties and bric-a-brac.” This was as true, and remains as true, in the realm of let­ters as in any oth­er. And of all the things Eco knew, he sure­ly knew best how to use words; hence his La Busti­na di Min­er­va col­umn lay­ing out 40 rules for speak­ing and writ­ing.

This meant, of course, speak­ing and writ­ing in Ital­ian, his native tongue and the lan­guage of which he spent his career demon­strat­ing com­plete mas­tery. But as trans­la­tor Gio Clair­val shows in her Eng­lish ren­di­tion of Eco’s rules, most of them apply just as well to this lan­guage.

“I’ve found online a series of instruc­tions on how to write well,” says Eco’s intro­duc­tion to the list. “I adopt them with a few vari­a­tions because I think they could be use­ful to writ­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who attend cre­ative writ­ing class­es.” A few exam­ples will suf­fice to give a sense of his guid­ance:

  • Avoid allit­er­a­tions, even if they’re man­na for morons.
  • Avoid clichés: they’re like death warmed over.
  • Nev­er gen­er­al­ize.
  • Hold those quotes. Emer­son apt­ly said, “I hate quotes. Tell me only what you know.”
  • Don’t write one-word sen­tences. Ever.
  • Rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between the semi­colon and the colon: even if it’s hard.
  • Do you real­ly need rhetor­i­cal ques­tions?
  • Be con­cise; try express­ing your thoughts with the least pos­si­ble num­ber of words, avoid­ing long sen­tences– or sen­tences inter­rupt­ed by inci­den­tal phras­es that always con­fuse the casu­al read­er– in order to avoid con­tribut­ing to the gen­er­al pol­lu­tion of infor­ma­tion, which is sure­ly (par­tic­u­lar­ly when it is use­less­ly ripe with unnec­es­sary expla­na­tions, or at least non indis­pens­able spec­i­fi­ca­tions) one of the tragedies of our media-dom­i­nat­ed time.
  • Don’t be emphat­ic! Be care­ful with excla­ma­tion marks!
  • No need to tell you how cloy­ing preteri­tions are.

Not only does each of Eco’s points offer a use­ful piece of writ­ing advice, it ele­gant­ly demon­strates just how your writ­ing will come off if you fail to fol­low it. In the event that “you can’t find the appro­pri­ate expres­sion,” he writes, “refrain from using colloquial/dialectal expres­sions.” To this he appends, of course, a col­lo­qui­al expres­sion, Peso el tacòn del buso: “The patch is worse than the hole.” How­ev­er clichéd it sounds in Ital­ian, all of us would do well to bear it in mind no mat­ter the lan­guage in which we write. (And if you write in Ital­ian, be sure to read Eco’s orig­i­nal col­umn, which con­tains addi­tion­al rules apply­ing only to that lan­guage: Non usare metafore incon­gru­en­ti anche se ti paiono “cantare,” for instance. Sono come un cig­no che deraglia.)

You can read all 36 of Eco’s Eng­lish-rel­e­vant writ­ing rules at Clair­val’s site. If you’d like to hear more of his writ­ing advice, watch the Louisiana Chan­nel inter­view clip we fea­tured after his death in 2016. And else­where in our archives, you can com­pare and con­trast Eco’s list of rules for writ­ing with those drawn up by the likes of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Steven Pinker, Stephen King, V.S. Naipaul, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Elmore Leonard, and George Orwell. Though Eco could, in his writ­ing, assume what Parks calls an “immea­sur­ably supe­ri­or” per­sona, he sure­ly would have agreed with the final, thor­ough­ly Eng­lish point on Orwell’s list: “Break any of these rules soon­er than say any­thing out­right bar­barous.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Umber­to Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

Umber­to Eco Explains Why We Make Lists

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

Free Ital­ian Lessons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Horrors of Bull Island, “the Worst Music Festival of All Time” (1972)

in Music | June 18th, 2021

It’s maybe a lit­tle unfair to com­pare 1972’s “Bull Island” Fes­ti­val to Fyre Fest, the music fes­ti­val scam so egre­gious it war­rant­ed duel­ing doc­u­men­taries on Hulu and Net­flix. But “Bull Island” — or what was orig­i­nal­ly called the Erie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val — was an epic cat­a­stro­phe, maybe the worst in music fes­ti­val his­to­ry, and well deserv­ing of its own media fran­chise. Still, its orga­niz­ers had every inten­tion of fol­low­ing through on the event. What hap­pened wasn’t entire­ly their fault, but part­ly the result of a cam­paign to route thou­sands of hip­pies out of the state of Indi­ana.

Pro­mot­ers Tom Dun­can and Bob Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly staged a suc­cess­ful fes­ti­val, the Bosse Field Free­dom Fest, in Evans­ville, an event fea­tur­ing Tina Turn­er, Edgar Win­ter, Dr. John, Howl­in’ Wolf, and John Lee Hook­er. Eager to top them­selves and bring a “bigger-than-Woodstock”-sized hap­pen­ing to the Mid­west, they booked “a block­buster col­lec­tion of artists” for their next event, writes Patrick Cham­ber­lain at Ever­fest, “includ­ing Black Sab­bath, The All­man Broth­ers, Fleet­wood Mac, Ravi Shankar, The Eagles, and even Cheech and Chong.”

Before secur­ing all the per­mits, they placed ads and start­ed sell­ing tick­ets. The two eager 20-some­thing orga­niz­ers both suf­fered from the trag­ic flaw of youth­ful over­con­fi­dence, which blind­ed them to the fact that there was no way their next fes­ti­val was going to hap­pen in Evans­ville, or any­where in Indi­ana, for that mat­ter. The error led to what may be, as Band­splain­ing explains above, the worst music fes­ti­val of all time. “The lack of pre­pared­ness, the law­less­ness, the des­per­a­tion of the crowd; it’s like the bad-acid trip ver­sion of Wood­stock where [spoil­er] every­thing burns down. [/spoiler].”

Although reports from locals most­ly char­ac­ter­ized the duo’s pre­vi­ous out­door fes­ti­val at Bosse Field as peace­ful, Evans­ville May­or Rus­sell Lloyd vowed it would nev­er hap­pen again. Yet Dun­can and Alexan­der plowed ahead with plan­ning the Eerie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val, as Sean Mcde­vitt writes at the Couri­er & Press:

Con­tracts were signed, heli­copters were rent­ed, and holes were being dug for some 500 portable toi­lets. More than 30 rock groups were booked, and tick­ets went on sale in sev­er­al cities around the coun­try.

Obliv­i­ous to their fate, the orga­niz­ers sold almost 9,000 tick­ets. “Just eight days after its announce­ment, a restrain­ing order was issued against the event,” fol­lowed by a string of sim­i­lar ordi­nances in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties as oth­er locales got wind of the pro­ject­ed 50,000 to 60,000 atten­dees expect­ed to show up. Soon, those num­bers swelled to the hun­dreds of thou­sands. Alexan­der and Dun­can went on TV and begged author­i­ties to let the show pro­ceed to pre­vent mass civ­il unrest.

Forced to move the fes­ti­val out of state, they set­tled on a place called Bull Island, “not in fact an island, but rather a col­lec­tion of swampy fields,” Cham­ber­lain notes, “under the legal juris­dic­tion of the town of Car­mi, Illi­nois, but only acces­si­ble through Indi­ana.” When 200,000 hip­pies arrived on Labor Day week­end, it caused a traf­fic jam 30 miles long, and they were forced to aban­don their cars and hike for miles on foot, resem­bling “a defeat­ed army,” NBC Night­ly News reporter Edwin New­man put it.

Some of the acts — includ­ing Ravi Shankar, Ted Nugen­t’s Amboy Dukes, and Black Oak Arkansas — did make it, chop­per­ing in to play a set, then swift­ly leav­ing. “Cheech and Chong were heli­coptered in, per­formed for fif­teen min­utes in a del­uge of rain, cut their set short,” and got out, sure­ly sens­ing bad vibes every­where, caused by strych­nine-laced acid. Big acts like Rod Stew­art and Black Sab­bath had already can­celed, leav­ing long stretch­es of silence between sets.

For most fes­ti­val atten­dees, the open-air drug mar­kets stood out most in their mem­o­ries. “The dope dis­trict looked like dou­ble rows of fish stands at the coun­ty fair!” one remem­bers. “It was eas­i­er to buy drugs than it was to buy water,” recalled anoth­er attendee. The police, vast­ly out­num­bered, left well enough alone and stayed out­side the fence. Jemayel Khawa­ja at Ozy paints the scene:

Inside, chaos was already in full swing. The stage was half con­struct­ed, and the camp­grounds — crammed with over four times as many peo­ple as expect­ed — were lined with open drug mar­kets. Hawk­ers set up stalls sell­ing mar­i­jua­na, mesca­line, LSD and hero­in. “I nev­er saw so many drugs in my life,” attendee Ray Kessler recalled to local news­pa­per The Mount Ver­non Demo­c­rat. With only six out­hous­es and half-dug wells to serve as san­i­ta­tion, thou­sands instead took to reliev­ing them­selves en masse in what became known as “The Turd Fields” and bathing in the Wabash Riv­er.

What hap­pened was sure­ly inevitable. Price goug­ing caused atten­dees, rabid with hunger and thirst, to attack ven­dors. Some caught pneu­mo­nia in the tor­ren­tial rains on the third day. One attendee drowned in the Wabash, anoth­er was run over by a truck but sur­vived, many were beat­en and robbed, one over­dosed, one gave birth. By that evening, “the crowd had endured enough,” Cham­ber­lain writes. “The last­ing image many have of the fes­ti­val is the crowd set­ting the stage on fire. It was a fit­ting end­ing. By this point, the pop­u­lous turned to mass exo­dus, dur­ing which com­mon themes were intox­i­ca­tion, break­downs, theft, long dri­ves, and come­downs.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten Online to Every Minute of the Orig­i­nal Wood­stock Fes­ti­val

Leg­endary Protest Songs from Wood­stock: Hen­drix, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Coun­try Joe & More Per­form Protest Songs Dur­ing the Music Fes­ti­val That Launched 50 Years Ago This Week

Revis­it the Infa­mous Rolling Stones Free Fes­ti­val at Alta­mont: The Ill-Fat­ed Con­cert Took Place 50 Years Ago

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

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Brian Eno Launches His Own Radio Station with Hundreds of Unreleased Tracks: Hear Two Programs

in Music | June 17th, 2021

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Back in 2013, Bri­an Eno gave a talk at the Red Bull Acad­e­my, the lec­ture series that has host­ed fel­low musi­cians like Tony Vis­con­ti, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Nile Rogers. Asked when he knew a piece of music was fin­ished, Eno let drop that he cur­rent­ly had 200,809 works of unre­leased music. (The actu­al answer though? “When there’s a dead­line”).

Usu­al­ly we have to wait for posthu­mous releas­es to hear such music, like what is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing now to Prince’s “vault” of music. Eno is not wait­ing. He got the dead­line.

Sonos Radio HD, the music divi­sion of the speak­er and audio sys­tem com­pa­ny, announced last week that Eno has curat­ed a radio sta­tion that will play noth­ing but unre­leased cuts from his five decades of mak­ing music. There’s so much mate­r­i­al, the chance of a lis­ten­er hear­ing a repeat is slim. (Still, the sta­tion promis­es hun­dreds of tracks, not hun­dreds of thou­sands.)

Now, this is not an adver­tise­ment for Sonos, but a heads up that in order to pro­mote “The Light­house,” as Eno has called the radio sta­tion, Sonos has dropped two Eno-led radio shows where he shares just a frac­tion of the unre­leased mate­r­i­al, with a promise of two more episodes to come. One fea­tures an inter­view­er, and the oth­er is just Eno talk­ing about the tracks. (And you *can* get one month free at Sonos if you sign up.)


“(A radio sta­tion) is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for years and years and years,” says Eno. “And it’s part­ly because I have far too much music in my life. I have so much stuff.”


The tracks have been purged of titles and have been instead giv­en the util­i­tar­i­an monikers of “Light­house Num­ber (X)”. Any­way, titles sug­gest too much thought. “Some are pret­ty crap titles,” he says. “The prob­lem with work­ing on com­put­ers is that you have to give things titles before you’ve actu­al­ly made them…Sometimes the pieces often quick­ly out­grow the titles.”

If you’re expect­ing noth­ing but ambi­ent wash­es and gen­er­a­tive music, you might be sur­prised at the vari­ety. In the first Eno-host­ed show, he plays a funky jam (“Light­house Num­ber 002”) co-com­posed by Peter Chil­vers and stuffed with r’n’b sam­ples; and an almost-com­plet­ed song fea­tur­ing the Eury­th­mics’ Dave Stew­art on gui­tar, called “All the Bloody Fight­ers,” aka “Light­house Num­ber 106”.

Why call it “The Light­house”? “I like the idea of a sort of bea­con call­ing you, telling you some­thing, warn­ing you per­haps, announc­ing some­thing.” He also cred­its a friend who told him his unre­leased music is like ships lost at sea. The light­house “is call­ing in some of those lost ships.”

As a bonus, lis­ten below to Eno’s recent inter­view with Rick Rubin, where they talk about the Sonos project and much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence a Video Paint­ing of Bri­an Eno’s Thurs­day After­noon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Mil­lions of Peo­ple

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Rarely-Heard Cov­er of the John­ny Cash Clas­sic, “Ring of Fire”

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

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.

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What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Painting?: An Explanation in 15 Minutes

in Art, History | June 17th, 2021

The Mona Lisa may be on dis­play at the Lou­vre, but best of luck appre­ci­at­ing it there. The first obsta­cle, quite lit­er­al­ly, is the crowd that’s always massed around it (or, in the time before social-dis­tanc­ing poli­cies, was always massed around it). Even if you maneu­ver your way to the front of the cam­era-phoned throng, the paint­ing itself hangs with­in a thick glass case — can’t have a repeat of the 1911 theft — and has dimen­sions in any event much small­er than peo­ple tend to imag­ine. After all, we come to know Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s most famous paint­ing through cul­tur­al ref­er­ence and par­o­dy, but also through large-scale repro­duc­tion, the bet­ter to under­stand the painstak­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic labor that makes the Mona Lisa worth flock­ing to in the first place.

Still, there are those who come away from the Mona Lisa — assum­ing they can man­age to get back out through the mass of human­i­ty — won­der­ing what all the fuss is about. It was for them, pre­sum­ably, that cura­tor James Payne chose that paint­ing as the first sub­ject of his Youtube series Great Art Explained.

As he would in his sub­se­quent episodes (such as his three-part series, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, about Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights), Payne casts off the accu­mu­lat­ed his­tor­i­cal spec­u­la­tion and oth­er var­i­ous forms of cul­tur­al bag­gage to find the work’s artis­tic core. In the case of the Mona Lisa, not just “the great­est psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait ever paint­ed” but “the end prod­uct of the great­est inquis­i­tive mind in his­to­ry,” that still leaves much to dis­cuss.

In under fif­teen min­utes, Payne explains a host of the tech­niques Leonar­do employed in paint­ing the Mona Lisa that no artist of his time and place had used before — and indeed, that in some cas­es no oth­er artists mas­tered until long there­after. These include work­ing on top of an under-lay­er of white paint that appears to be “light­ing Mona Lisa from with­in,” strip­ping his sub­ject of “all the usu­al high-sta­tus sym­bols” usu­al­ly seen in aris­to­crat­ic por­trai­ture, depict­ing her at three-quar­ters length rather than in full frame, mak­ing the back­ground fade into the dis­tance while also sug­gest­ing motion, and com­bin­ing the tech­niques of low-con­trast sfu­ma­to and high-con­trast chiaroscuro. And only a painter with Leonar­do’s anatom­i­cal knowl­edge could have exe­cut­ed that famous­ly sub­tle smile, which appears and van­ish­es again depend­ing on which part of the Mona Lisa we look at — no mat­ter whether we’re doing it at the Lou­vre or on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Mark Twain Skew­ers Great Works of Art: The Mona Lisa (“a Smoked Had­dock!”), The Last Sup­per (“a Mourn­ful Wreck”) & More

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Hear an Excerpt from the Newly-Released, First Unabridged Audiobook of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

in Audio Books, Literature | June 17th, 2021

Need one go so far in dig­ging out stra­ta of mean­ing? Only if one wish­es to; Finnegans Wake is a puz­zle, just as a dream is a puz­zle, but the puz­zle ele­ment is less impor­tant than the thrust of the nar­ra­tive and the shad­owy majesty of the char­ac­ters… and when our eyes grow bewil­dered with strange roots and incred­i­ble com­pounds, why, then we can switch on our ears. It is aston­ish­ing how much of the mean­ing is con­veyed through music: the art of dim-sight­ed Joyce is, like that of Mil­ton, main­ly audi­to­ry. — Antho­ny Burgess

Finnegans Wake is not typ­i­cal­ly one of those books peo­ple pre­tend they have read, and even when they have read James Joyce’s last nov­el, no one’s like­ly to bring it up at din­ner. It seems like mak­ing sense of Joyce’s poly­glot prose — full of pecu­liar coinages and port­man­teaus — takes spe­cial train­ing and the kind of ded­i­ca­tion and nat­ur­al poly­math­ic tal­ents few read­ers pos­sess. Crit­ic, com­pos­er, lin­guist, poet, screen­writer, play­wright, and nov­el­ist Antho­ny Burgess was one such read­er, spend­ing decades study­ing Joyce and pub­lish­ing his first book on the Irish writer, Here Comes Every­body, in 1965.

Burgess pub­lished two more Joyce books, edit­ed a short­er Finnegans Wake with his own crit­i­cal com­men­tary, and released doc­u­men­tary films about the nov­el, a book he made more approach­able with his plain-spo­ken sum­maries. From the start, in the intro­duc­tion to his first Joyce book — and against the evi­dence of most everyone’s expe­ri­ence with Finnegans Wake — Burgess insist­ed read­ing Joyce was not a rar­i­fied pur­suit. “If ever there was a writer for the peo­ple,” Burgess argued, “Joyce was that writer.”

What’s impor­tant to keep in mind, Burgess empha­sizes, even over and above con­sid­er­a­tions of mean­ing, is the music of Joyce’s lan­guage. One might go so far as to say, the book is noth­ing but lan­guage that must be read aloud, and, crit­i­cal­ly, sung. “[Joyce’s] writ­ing is not about some­thing,” wrote Samuel Beck­ett. “It is that some­thing itself… . When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep… When the sense is danc­ing the words dance.”

That quote comes from the lin­er notes of the very first unabridged com­mer­cial audio­book record­ing of Finnegans Wake, read by Irish actor Bar­ry McGov­ern (hand­picked by the Joyce estate), with Mar­cel­la Rior­dan. You can hear an excerpt fur­ther up, the first five para­graphs of the book, open­ing with the famous sen­tence frag­ment, “river­run, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a com­mod­ius vicus of recir­cu­la­tion back to Howth Cas­tle and Envi­rons.” Rolling Stone writes:

As it pro­gress­es, McGov­ern expert­ly nav­i­gates seem­ing­ly unpro­nounce­able words like “bababadal­gharagh­takam­mi­nar­ronnkonnbron­nton­nerronntuon­nthun­ntrovar­rhounawn­skawn­toohooho­or­de­nen­thur­nuk” (which con­tains 100 char­ac­ters) and he enun­ci­ates every con­so­nant in Joyce’s unusu­al word inven­tions like “duskt.”

Yes, in print, it’s daunt­ing stuff, but we should remem­ber that for all Finnegans Wake’s lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, its attempts to cap­ture all of human his­to­ry, its illus­tra­tions of the obscure the­o­ries of Giambat­tista Vico and Gior­dano Bruno and so forth, at its heart, wrote Burgess, is song, which gave the book its title.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is a New York Irish bal­lad which tells of the death of Tim Finnegan, a builder’s labour­er who, fond of the bot­tle, falls drunk from his lad­der… This bal­lad may be tak­en as demot­ic res­ur­rec­tion myth and one can see why, with its core of pro­fun­di­ty wrapped round with the lan­guage of ordi­nary peo­ple, it appealed so much to Joyce. 

Joyce, the singer and lover of song, heard it every­where he went, and it’s in every bewil­der­ing sen­tence and para­graph of Finnegans Wake. Hear the entire book, read unabridged for the first time, in the new record­ing, released on June 16th, Blooms­day, by Nax­os Audio­books. Free alter­na­tive ver­sions can be found below…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Gets Turned into an Inter­ac­tive Web Film, the Medi­um It Was Des­tined For

Hear a Read­ing of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Set to Music: Fea­tures 100+ Musi­cians and Read­ers from Across the World

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Dif­fer­ent Artists

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

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Download Great Works of Art from 40+ Museums Worldwide: Explore Artvee, the New Art Search Engine

in Art, Technology | June 16th, 2021

Dil­bert cre­ator Scott Adams once wrote of his ear­ly expe­ri­ences intro­duc­ing the World Wide Web to oth­ers. “In 1993, there were only a hand­ful of Web sites you could access, such as the Smith­so­ni­an’s exhib­it of gems. Those pages were slow to load and crashed as often as they worked.” But those who wit­nessed this tech­nol­o­gy in action would invari­ably “get out of their chairs their eyes like saucers, and they would approach the key­board. They had to touch it them­selves. There was some­thing about the inter­net that was like cat­nip.” In the inter­ven­ing decades, the tech­nol­o­gy pow­er­ing the inter­net has only improved, and we’ve all felt how great­ly that cat­nip-like effect has inten­si­fied. And the Smith­son­ian, as we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, is still there — now with much more online than gems.

Today, the Smith­so­ni­an’s impres­sive online col­lec­tions are acces­si­ble through Artvee, a new search engine for down­load­able high-res­o­lu­tion, pub­lic domain art­works. So are the col­lec­tions of more than 40 oth­er inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions, from the New York Pub­lic Library and the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go to the Rijksmu­se­um and Paris Musées, many of which had lit­tle or no online pres­ence back in the ear­ly 1990s.

In recent years, they’ve got­ten quite seri­ous indeed about dig­i­tiz­ing their hold­ings and mak­ing those dig­i­ti­za­tions freely avail­able to the world, upload­ing them by the thou­sand, even by the mil­lion. With so many art­works and arti­facts already up, and sure­ly much more to come, the ques­tion becomes how best to nav­i­gate not just one of these col­lec­tions, but all of them.

Artvee con­sti­tutes one answer to this ques­tion. Using its search engine, writes Denise Tem­pone at Domesti­ka, “you can fil­ter cat­e­gories such as abstract art, land­scape, mythol­o­gy, draw­ings, illus­tra­tions, botany, fash­ion, fig­u­ra­tive art, reli­gion, ani­mal, desserts, his­to­ry, Japan­ese art, and still life. The site also gives you the option to search by artist. You will find works by Rem­brandt van Rijn, Claude Mon­et, Raphael, and San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li in this amaz­ing gallery.” Oth­er col­lec­tions, cre­at­ed by Artvee itself as well as by its users, include “illus­tra­tions from fairy tales; cov­ers of pop­u­lar Amer­i­can songs; and some even more pecu­liar ones, such as adverts sell­ing bicy­cles that are over a hun­dred years old.”

The vari­ety of artists brows­able on Artvee also includes Alphonse Mucha, Edvard Munch, and Hilma af Kint; oth­er col­lec­tions offer the won­ders of polit­i­cal illus­tra­tions, book pro­mo posters, and NASA’s visions of the future. All of the items with­in, it bears repeat­ing, are in the pub­lic domain or dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, mean­ing you can use them not just as sources of inspi­ra­tion but as ingre­di­ents in your own work as well, a pos­si­bil­i­ty few us could have imag­ined at the dawn of the Web. Back then, you’ll recall, we all used a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent tools and por­tals to nav­i­gate the inter­net, accord­ing to per­son­al pref­er­ence. The emerg­ing field of art search engines, which includes not just Artvee but oth­er options like Museo, may remind us of those days — and how far the inter­net has come since.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Search Engine for Find­ing Free, Pub­lic Domain Images from World-Class Muse­ums

Vis­it 2+ Mil­lion Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Muse­ums Free Online

The Smith­son­ian Puts 2.8 Mil­lion High-Res Images Online and Into the Pub­lic Domain

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Cre­ative Com­mons Offi­cial­ly Launch­es a Search Engine That Index­es 300+ Mil­lion Pub­lic Domain Images

Flim: a New AI-Pow­ered Movie-Screen­shot Search Engine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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