See 21 Historic Films by Lumière Brothers, Colorized and Enhanced with Machine Learning (1895–1902)

in Film, History | November 30th, 2022

Auguste and Louis Lumière thought that cin­e­ma did­n’t have a future. For­tu­nate­ly, they came to that con­clu­sion only after pro­duc­ing a body of work that com­pris­es some of the ear­li­est films ever made, as well as invalu­able glimpses of the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and the dawn of the twen­ti­eth, an era that has now passed out of liv­ing mem­o­ry. Using the motion-pho­tog­ra­phy sys­tem that they devel­oped them­selves, the Lumière broth­ers cap­tured life around them in not just their native France, but Switzer­land, Italy, Eng­land, the Unit­ed States, and even more exot­ic lands like Egypt, Turkey, and Japan — all of which you can see in the com­pi­la­tion video above.

The smooth col­or footage you see here is not, of course, what the Lumière broth­ers showed to their wide-eyed audi­ences well over a cen­tu­ry ago. It all comes spe­cial­ly pre­pared by Youtu­ber Denis Shi­rayev, who spe­cial­izes in enhanc­ing old film with cur­rent tech­nolo­gies, some of them dri­ven by machine learn­ing.

If this sounds famil­iar, it may be because we’ve fea­tured a good deal of Shi­rayev’s work here on Open Cul­ture before, includ­ing his restored ver­sions of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Belle Epoque Paris, New York City in 1911, Ams­ter­dam in 1922, Tokyo at the start of the Taishō era — and even the Lumière broth­ers’ famous movie of a train arriv­ing at La Cio­tat Sta­tion.

For this com­pi­la­tion video’s first four and half min­utes, Shi­rayev explains how he does it. But first, he offers a dis­claimer: “Some peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly think that the col­ors in this video are the orig­i­nal source col­ors, or that the source mate­r­i­al had audio, or that the enhanced faces are real.” All that was in fact added lat­er, and that’s where the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence comes in: even in the absence of direct his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, it can “guess” what the real details not cap­tured by the Lumière both­ers’ cam­era might have looked like. This is part of a process that also includes upscal­ing, sta­bi­liza­tion, and con­ver­sion to 60 frames per sec­ond — a form of motion smooth­ing, in recent years the sub­ject of a cin­e­mat­ic con­tro­ver­sy the Lumière broth­ers cer­tain­ly could­n’t have imag­ined.

After Shi­rayev’s remarks, you can start watch­ing 21 Lumière broth­ers films after the 4:30 mark.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Around the World in 1896: 40 Min­utes of Real Footage Lets You Vis­it Paris, New York, Venice, Rome, Budapest & More

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumière Broth­ers to Google Glass

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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Deep Fried Coffee: A Very Disturbing Discovery

in Food & Drink | November 30th, 2022

Deep fried cof­fee. Yes, it’s a thing, and cof­fee con­nois­seur James Hoff­mann decid­ed to give it a go. How did it turn out? We won’t spoil it for you–other than to say, don’t be sur­prised if deep fried cof­fee makes its way into a future edi­tion of Hoff­man­n’s book, The World Atlas of Cof­fee.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

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15-Year-Old Picasso Paints His First Masterpiece, “The First Communion”

in Art, Religion | November 29th, 2022

 

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a life­time to paint like a child. — Pablo Picas­so

We think it’s safe to say that most of us have a pre­con­ceived notion of Picas­so’s style, and The First Com­mu­nion, above, isn’t it.

Picas­so was just 15 when he com­plet­ed this large-scale oil, hav­ing lost his 7‑year-old sis­ter, Con­chi­ta, to diph­the­ria one year before.

The strick­en young artist had attempt­ed to bar­gain with God, vow­ing to give up paint­ing if she was spared. As Ari­an­na Huff­in­g­ton writes in the biog­ra­phy Picas­so: Cre­ator and Destroy­er:

…he was torn between want­i­ng her saved and want­i­ng her dead so that his gift would be saved. When she died, he decid­ed that God was evil and des­tiny an ene­my. At the same time, he was con­vinced that it was his ambiva­lence that had made it pos­si­ble for God to kill Con­chi­ta. His guilt was enormous—the oth­er side of his belief in his pow­ers to affect the world around him. And it was com­pound­ed by his almost mag­i­cal con­vic­tion that his lit­tle sis­ter’s death had released him to be a painter and fol­low the call of the pow­ers he had been giv­en, what­ev­er the con­se­quences.

If there’s evil at work in the “First Com­mu­nion,” he keeps it under wraps. All eyes are on the rapt young com­mu­ni­cant, embod­ied in his sur­viv­ing sis­ter, Lola, in a snowy veil and gown.

Their father, painter and draw­ing pro­fes­sor José Ruiz y Blas­co, assumes the part of the girl’s father or god­fa­ther, a solemn wit­ness to this rite of pas­sage.

Ruiz y Blas­co pro­vid­ed instruc­tion and cham­pi­oned his son’s gift. He encour­aged him to enter the “First Com­mu­nion,” and lat­er, “Sci­ence and Char­i­ty” (in which he appears as the doc­tor) in the Exposi­cion de Bel­las Artes, a com­pe­ti­tion and exhi­bi­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty for emerg­ing artists.

Picas­so lat­er remarked that “every time I draw a man, I think of my father.  To me, man is Don José, and will be all my life…”

Ruiz y Blas­co, con­vinced that Picasso’s tal­ent would bring suc­cess as a nat­u­ral­is­tic painter of clas­si­cal scenes and por­traits, was deeply dis­ap­point­ed when his teenaged son began blow­ing off class at Madrid’s pres­ti­gious Acad­e­mia Real de San Fer­nan­do. 

Just imag­ine how he react­ed to the scan­dalous Cubist vision of “Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon,” unveiled a mere eleven years after the “First Com­mu­nion.”

The rest is his­to­ry.

Just for fun, we invit­ed the free online AI image gen­er­a­tor Craiy­on (for­mer­ly known as DALL‑E Mini) to have a go using the prompt “Picas­so First Com­mu­nion”.

The results should sur­prise no one. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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8th Century Englishwoman Scribbled Her Name & Drew Funny Pictures in a Medieval Manuscript, According to New Cutting-Edge Technology

in Books, History | November 29th, 2022

Most of us have doo­dled in the mar­gins of our books at one time or anoth­er, and some of us have even dared to write our own names. But very of few us, pre­sum­ably, would have expect­ed our hand­i­work to be mar­veled at twelve cen­turies hence. Yet that’s just what has hap­pened to the mar­gin­a­lia left by a medieval Eng­lish­woman we know only as Ead­burg, who some time in the eighth cen­tu­ry com­mit­ted her name — as well as oth­er sym­bols and fig­ures — to the pages of a Latin copy of the Acts of the Apos­tles.

Ead­burg did this with such secre­cy that only advanced twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has allowed us to see it at all. That the read­ers in the Mid­dle Ages some­times jot­ted in their man­u­scripts isn’t unheard of.

But unlike most of them, Ead­burg seems to have favored a dry­point sty­lus — i.e., a tool with noth­ing on it to leave a clear mark — which would have made her writ­ing near­ly impos­si­ble to notice with the naked eye. To see all of them neces­si­tat­ed the use of a tech­nique called “pho­to­met­ric stereo,” which Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bodleian Library Senior Pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Bar­rett explains in this blog post.

The scan­ning process col­lects images that “map the direc­tion and height of the original’s sur­face, and are processed into ren­ders show­ing only the relief of the orig­i­nal with the tone and col­or removed.” Sub­se­quent steps of fil­ter­ing and enhance­ment result in a dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion of “the three-dimen­sion­al sur­face of the page,” which, with the prop­er enhance­ments, final­ly allows dry­point inscrip­tions to be seen. Ead­burg’s name, reports the Guardian’s Don­na Fer­gu­son, was found “pas­sion­ate­ly etched into the mar­gins of the man­u­script in five places, while abbre­vi­at­ed forms of the name appear a fur­ther ten times.”

Oth­er new dis­cov­er­ies in the man­u­scrip­t’s pages include “tiny, rough draw­ings of fig­ures — in one case, of a per­son with out­stretched arms, reach­ing for anoth­er per­son who is hold­ing up a hand to stop them.” What Ead­burg meant by it all remains a mat­ter of active inquiry, but then, so does her very iden­ti­ty. “Char­ter evi­dence sug­gests that a woman called Ead­burg was abbess of a female reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty at Min­ster-in-Thanet, in Kent from at least 733 until her death some­time between 748 and 761,” writes Bar­rett, but she was­n’t the only Ead­burg who could’ve pos­sessed the book. All this con­tains a les­son for today’s mar­gin­a­lia-mak­ers: if you’re going to sign your name, sign it in full.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Medieval Doo­dler Draws a “Rock­star Lady” in a Man­u­script of Boethius’ The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy (Cir­ca 1500)

When Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Recy­cled & Used to Make the First Print­ed Books

160,000+ Medieval Man­u­scripts Online: Where to Find Them

Dis­cov­er Nüshu, a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Chi­nese Writ­ing Sys­tem That Only Women Knew How to Write

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

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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Ancient Roman Coins Reveal the Existence of a Forgotten Roman Emperor

in History | November 28th, 2022

Image by Paul Pear­son, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don

You may think you know your Roman emper­ors, but do you rec­og­nize the face on the coin above? His name was Spon­sian, or Spon­sianus, and he lived in the mid­dle of the third cen­tu­ry. Or at least he did accord­ing to cer­tain the­o­ries: van­ish­ing­ly lit­tle is known about him, and in fact, this very gold piece (above) is the only evi­dence we have that he ever exist­ed. Giv­en that numis­ma­tists have long writ­ten the coin off as an eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry fake, it’s pos­si­ble that emper­or Spon­sian could be a whol­ly apoc­ryphal fig­ure — but it’s become a bit less like­ly since the coin went under the elec­tron micro­scope ear­li­er this year.

“Using mod­ern imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the researchers said they found ‘deep micro-abra­sion pat­terns’ that were ‘typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with coins that were in cir­cu­la­tion for an exten­sive peri­od of time,’ ” writes the New York Times’ April Rubin.

“In addi­tion, the researchers ana­lyzed earth­en deposits, find­ing what they called evi­dence that the coin had been buried for a long time before being exhumed.” In the details of their design, they’re also “unchar­ac­ter­is­tic” of forg­eries cre­at­ed in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. If this Spon­sian-head­ed mon­ey is fraud­u­lent, then, it’s at least authen­ti­cal­ly old, or at least much old­er than had long been assumed.

You can find the pub­lished research paper here, at the site of its jour­nal PLOS ONE. Sum­ma­riz­ing find­ings in the paper, a Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don site notes: “The coin … was among a hand­ful of coins of the same design unearthed in Tran­syl­va­nia, in present-day Roma­nia, in 1713. They have been regard­ed as fakes since the mid-19th-cen­tu­ry, due to their crude, strange design fea­tures and jum­bled inscrip­tions.” Accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Paul N. Pear­son, the lead author of the research paper: “Sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis of these ultra-rare coins res­cues the emper­or Spon­sian from obscu­ri­ty. Our evi­dence sug­gests he ruled Roman Dacia, an iso­lat­ed gold min­ing out­post, at a time when the empire was beset by civ­il wars and the bor­der­lands were over­run by plun­der­ing invaders.” Jes­per Eric­s­son, a cura­tor at The Hunter­ian at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow, adds: “we hope that this [research] encour­ages fur­ther debate about Spon­sian as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure” and sparks more research into “coins relat­ing to [Spon­sian] held in oth­er muse­ums across Europe.”

Keep tabs on the Spon­sianus Wikipedia page to learn more about this long-lost Roman emper­or.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every Roman Emper­or: A Video Time­line Mov­ing from Augus­tus to the Byzan­tine Empire’s Last Ruler, Con­stan­tine XI

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

What Did the Roman Emper­ors Look Like?: See Pho­to­re­al­is­tic Por­traits Cre­at­ed with Machine Learn­ing

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Econ­o­my — All 1,900 Years of It — Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

How the Ancient Mayans Used Choco­late as Mon­ey

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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Meet Honey Lantree, the Trailblazing 1960s Female Drummer

in Gender, History, Music | November 28th, 2022

Quick, who’s your favorite female drum­mer?

Hard­ly a strange ques­tion!

(Yes, you are allowed to pick more than one favorite.)

Things were decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent when drum­mer Hon­ey Lantree, the only female mem­ber of the 60s British Inva­sion group the Hon­ey­combs, took up the sticks.

Drums were not her orig­i­nal instru­ment. Her boyfriend, employ­er, and even­tu­al band­mate Mar­tin Mur­ray was giv­ing her a gui­tar les­son when she asked if she could take a whirl at his kit.

Mur­ray recalled his sur­prise when she start­ed whal­ing away like a vet:

She was just a born, nat­ur­al drum­mer; she hadn’t played before and just went for it. I was aghast, star­ing at her, and said, “All right, you’re our new drum­mer.”

Lantree’s gen­der helped the Hon­ey­combs secure press.

She snagged a celebri­ty endorse­ment for Carl­ton drums and turned 21 with a cake fes­tooned with marzi­pan bees, and, more impor­tant­ly, a #1 sin­gle, “Have I the Right.”

Of course, her gen­der also ensured that most of the cov­er­age would focus on her appear­ance, with scant, if any men­tion of her musi­cal tal­ent.

Lantree was not the only mem­ber of the Hon­ey­combs to find this galling.

As lead singer Denis D’Ell told the Record Mir­ror in 1965:

How can it be a gim­mick just because we have a girl, Hon­ey, on drums? Hon­ey plays with us pure­ly and sim­ply because she is the right drum­mer for the job. If she wasn’t any good, she wouldn’t hold down the job.

On tour, we don’t have any trou­bles by hav­ing a girl with us. We just oper­ate as a group. Per­haps it is that the nov­el­ty has worn off — we hope that fans soon will for­get all about this so-called gim­mick.

The fol­low­ing year, he quit, along with lead gui­tarist Alan Ward and Peter Pye, who had replaced Mur­ray on rhythm gui­tar. Lantree and her broth­er, Hon­ey­combs’ bassist John, sol­diered on with new per­son­nel until the 1967 death of pro­duc­er Joe Meek.

Still, for a brief peri­od, the Hon­ey­combs’ record­ings, tours, tele­vi­sion appear­ances, and yes, press cov­er­age made Lantree the most famous female drum­mer in the world.

Admit­ted­ly, the field was not par­tic­u­lar­ly crowd­ed. Just chal­leng­ing in ways that out­stripped the dis­pro­por­tion­ate focus on fig­ures, boyfriends, and beau­ty tips.

Male fans dragged Lantree off­stage dur­ing a con­cert in Corn­wall, lead­ing her to remark, “You expect this sort of thing but it’s still ter­ri­fy­ing.”

Around the same time, anoth­er British band, the all-female Liv­er­birds, were invit­ed to cross the pond for a cov­et­ed gig in Las Vegas…provided they’d play it top­less. “Can you imag­ine me on the drums play­ing top­less,” Sylvia Saun­ders, who short­ly there­after was forced to choose between the drums and a high risk preg­nan­cy, gasped.

Although she is said to have inspired a num­ber of young female musi­cians, includ­ing Karen Car­pen­ter, Lantree, who died in 2018 at the age of 75, rarely shows up on curat­ed lists of notable female drum­mers.

In a strange way, that spells progress — there are many more female drum­mers today than there were in the mid 60s, and mer­ci­ful­ly more oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as musi­cians.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent

Meet Vio­la Smith, the World’s Old­est Drum­mer: Her Career Start­ed in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

Meet the Liv­er­birds, Britain’s First Female (and Now For­got­ten) Rock Band

The Women of Rock: Dis­cov­er an Oral His­to­ry Project That Fea­tures Pio­neer­ing Women in Rock Music

Meet Fan­ny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colos­sal and Won­der­ful, and Nobody’s Ever Men­tioned Them”

The Woman Who Invent­ed Rock n’ Roll: An Intro­duc­tion to Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nosewise, Garlik, Havegoodday & More

in History | November 25th, 2022

The Rovers, Fidos, and Spots of the world have been regard­ed since time immemo­r­i­al as man’s best friends. But they haven’t always been named Rover, Fido, and Spot: ear­ly fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish dog own­ers pre­ferred to give their pets names like Nose­wise, Gar­lik, Pre­t­y­man, and Gay­larde. Or at least the author of a fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish man­u­script thought those names suit­able for dogs at the time, accord­ing to a thread post­ed just a few days ago by Twit­ter user WeirdMe­dieval. Oth­er canine monikers offi­cial­ly endorsed by the author (whose pre­cise iden­ti­ty remains unclear) include Filthe, Salmon, Have­g­ood­day, Horny­ball, and Argu­ment, none of which you’re like­ly to meet in the dog park today.

The com­plete list of 1,065 dog names is includ­ed in David Scott-Mac­n­ab’s aca­d­e­m­ic paper “The Names of All Man­ner of Hounds: A Unique Inven­to­ry in a Fif­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script” (or here on Imgur).

Meant to cov­er hunt­ing dogs includ­ing “run­ning hounds, ter­ri­ers and grey­hounds,” the com­pi­la­tion includes “numer­ous rec­og­niz­able prop­er names, includ­ing sev­er­al from his­to­ry, mythol­o­gy and Arthuri­an romance” like Absolon, Charlemayne, Nero, and Romu­lus. Some “have the qual­i­ty of bynames or sobri­quets. Some are descrip­tive, some are sim­ple nouns, and oth­ers are com­pounds of dif­fer­ent lex­i­cal ele­ments.”

Dog names in the Mid­dle Ages also came from the nat­ur­al world (Dol­fyn, Flowre, Fawkon), human pro­fes­sions (Hosewife, Tynker), and even the nation­al­i­ties of Europe (Duche­man, Ger­man). You can learn more about the vari­ety of pet names back then from this post at Medievalists.org. King Hen­ry VIII “had a dog named Purkoy, who got its name from the French ‘pourquoi’ because it was very inquis­i­tive.” In Switzer­land of 1504, the most pop­u­lar dog name was Furst (“Prince”). And as for cats, in medieval Eng­land they tend­ed to be “known as Gyb — the short form of Gilbert,” while in France “they were called Tibers or Tib­ert,” named for a char­ac­ter in the Rey­nard the Fox fables. All of these sound­ed nor­mal five or six cen­turies ago, but who among us is dar­ing enough to rein­tro­duce the likes of Syn­full, Cram­pette, and Snacke into the trend-sen­si­tive word of pet own­er­ship in the 2020s?

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

Here’s What Ancient Dogs Looked Like: A Foren­sic Recon­struc­tion of a Dog That Lived 4,500 Years Ago

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

Google App Uses Machine Learn­ing to Dis­cov­er Your Pet’s Look Alike in 10,000 Clas­sic Works of Art

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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When Salvador Dalí Dressed — and Angrily Demolished — a Department Store Window in New York City (1939)

in Art, History | November 25th, 2022

If you want to under­stand the his­to­ry of art in twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, you can’t over­look the cor­ner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York City. No, not Trump Tow­er, but the build­ing it replaced: Bon­wit Teller, the lux­u­ry depart­ment store that had stood on the site since 1929. Then as now, any shop on Fifth Avenue has to find a way to set itself apart, and by 1939 Bon­wit Teller had built a “rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing Man­hat­tan’s screwiest win­dow dis­plays.” So says Time mag­a­zine, cov­er­ing a minor deba­cle that year over one of the instal­la­tions by “the world’s No. 1 sur­re­al­ist, Sal­vador Dalí.”

Dalí had pre­vi­ous­ly dressed Bon­wit Teller’s win­dows with­out inci­dent in 1936, rid­ing high on the buzz from his first Amer­i­can exhi­bi­tion that same year. When invit­ed back by the store to cre­ate a new dis­play, writes Tim McNeese in Sal­vador Dalí, “he decid­ed to use the win­dows to depict the ‘Nar­cis­sus com­plex,’ ” divid­ed into day and night. “In the Day win­dow, Nar­cis­sus is per­son­i­fied,” says The Art Sto­ry. “Three wax hands hold­ing mir­rors reached out of a bath­tub lined with black lamb­skin and filled with water. A man­nequin entered the tub in a scant out­fit of green feath­ers. For the Night win­dow, the feet of a poster bed are replaced by buf­fa­lo legs and the canopy is topped by its pigeon-eat­ing head. A wax man­nequin sat near­by on a bed of coals.”

As for the pub­lic reac­tion, writes the New York Times’ Michael Pol­lak, “words were exchanged, not all of them com­pli­men­ta­ry, and the store’s staff made quick changes. The skin­ny-dip­per in ‘Day’ was quick­ly replaced by an attired man­nequin. Out went the sleep­er in ‘Night’; in went a stand­ing mod­el.” As soon as he caught sight of the unau­tho­rized mod­i­fi­ca­tions, Dalí took cor­rec­tive action. McNeese quotes the artist’s own mem­o­ry of the pro­ceed­ings: “I dashed into the win­dow to dis­arrange it, so that my name, signed in the win­dow, should not be dis­hon­ored. I was nev­er so sur­prised as when the bath­tub just shot through the win­dow when I pushed it and I was there­after most con­fused.”

Dalí was charged with dis­or­der­ly con­duct but issued a sus­pend­ed sen­tence since, as the judge put it, “These are some of the priv­i­leges that an artist with tem­pera­ment seems to enjoy.” Noth­ing like this hap­pened to Andy Warhol when he lat­er dressed Bon­wit Teller’s win­dows, writes i‑D’s Briony Wright, though “a com­mis­sion for the depart­ment store in 1961 brought what could be con­sid­ered his big break.” Those same win­dows also became oppor­tu­ni­ties for a host of oth­er artists includ­ing Sari Dienes, James Rosen­quist, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschen­berg, the last two of whom col­lab­o­rat­ed on a dis­play as Mas­ton Jones. They had their own rea­sons for the pseu­do­nym, but an artist of Dalí’s par­tic­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ty knows you don’t turn down a chance to get your name on Fifth Avenue.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch His Appear­ances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1958)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

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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