Renaissance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades & Now You Can Hear the Songs Performed by Modern Singers

in History, Music | November 9th, 2023

Image cour­tesy of The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um

On any giv­en week­end, in any part of the state where I live, you can find your­self stand­ing in a hall full of knives, if that’s the kind of thing you like to do. It is a very niche kind of expe­ri­ence. Not so in some oth­er weapons expos—like the Arms and Armor gal­leries at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, where every­one, from the most war­like to the staunchest of paci­fists, stands in awe at the intri­cate orna­men­ta­tion and incred­i­bly deft crafts­man­ship on dis­play in the suits of armor, lances, shields, and lots and lots of knives.

We must acknowl­edge in such a space that the worlds of art and of killing for fame and prof­it were nev­er very far apart dur­ing Europe’s late Medieval and Renais­sance peri­ods. Yet we encounter many sim­i­lar arti­sanal instru­ments from the time, just as fine­ly tuned, but made for far less bel­liger­ent pur­pos­es.

As Maya Cor­ry of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge—an insti­tu­tion with its own impres­sive arms and armor col­lec­tion—com­ments in the video above (at 2:30), one unusu­al kind of 16th cen­tu­ry knife meant for the table, not the bat­tle­field, offers “insight into that har­mo­nious, audi­ble aspect of fam­i­ly devo­tions,” prayer and song.

From the col­lec­tion of the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, in Cam­bridge. (Johan Oost­er­man )

These knives, which have musi­cal scores engraved in their blades, brought a table togeth­er in singing their prayers, and may have been used to carve the lamb or beef in their “strik­ing bal­ance of dec­o­ra­tive and util­i­tar­i­an func­tion.” At least his­to­ri­ans think such “nota­tion knives,” which date from the ear­ly 1500s, were used at ban­quets. “The sharp, wide steel would have been ide­al for cut­ting and serv­ing meat,” writes Eliza Grace Mar­tin at the WQXR blog, “and the accen­tu­at­ed tip would have made for a per­fect skew­er.” But as Kris­ten Kalber, cura­tor at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, which hous­es the knives at the top of the post, tells us “din­ers in very grand feasts didn’t cut their own meat.” It’s unlike­ly they would have sung from the bloody knives held by their ser­vants.

The knives’ true pur­pose “remains a mys­tery,” Mar­tin remarks, like many “rit­u­als of the Renais­sance table.”  Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tor Kirstin Kennedy admits in the video above that “we are not entire­ly sure” what the “splen­did knife” she holds was used for. But we do know that each knife had a dif­fer­ent piece of music on each side, and that a set of them togeth­er con­tained dif­fer­ent har­mo­ny parts in order to turn a room­ful of din­ers into a cho­rus. One set of blades had the grace on one side, with the inscrip­tion, “the bless­ing of the table. May the three-in-one bless that which we are about to eat.” The oth­er side holds the bene­dic­tion, to be sung after the din­ner: “The say­ing of grace. We give thanks to you God for your gen­eros­i­ty.”

Com­mon enough ver­biage for any house­hold in Renais­sance Europe, but when sung, at least by a cho­rus from the Roy­al Col­lege of Music, who recre­at­ed the music and made the record­ings here, the prayers are superbly grace­ful. Above, hear one ver­sion of the Grace and Bene­dic­tion from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um knives; below, hear a sec­ond ver­sion. You can hear a cap­ti­vat­ing set of choral prayers from the Fitzwilliam Muse­um knives at WQXR’s site, record­ed for the Fitzwilliam’s “Madon­nas & Mir­a­cles” exhib­it. We are as unlike­ly now to encounter singing kitchen knives as we are to run into a horse and rid­er bear­ing 100 pounds of fine­ly-wrought wear­able steel sculp­ture. Such strange arti­facts seem to speak of a strange peo­ple who val­ued beau­ty whether carv­ing up the main course or cut­ting down their ene­mies.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

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

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Why People Hate Brutalist Buildings on American College Campuses

in Architecture, History | November 8th, 2023

Many Amer­i­cans receive their intro­duc­tion to the style known as Bru­tal­ism in col­lege. This owes less to cours­es in twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry archi­tec­ture than to uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es them­selves, which tend to have been expand­ed or even whol­ly con­struct­ed in the decades imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Sec­ond World War. As Vox’s Dean Peter­son explains in the new video above, its vet­er­ans returned home eager to receive the ter­tiary edu­ca­tion to which the G.I. Bill enti­tled them, which “neces­si­tat­ed that uni­ver­si­ties build new facil­i­ties to han­dle bal­loon­ing admis­sions. And with so many new build­ings being need­ed, what did archi­tects of the day turn to? Bru­tal­ism.”

“Not just a style of archi­tec­ture but an entire aes­thet­ic ethos,” Bru­tal­ism had devel­oped through inspi­ra­tion from the work of Charles-Édouard Jean­neret, bet­ter known as Le Cor­busier. While oth­er archi­tects had employed con­crete before him, he was the one to make the bold choice of leav­ing it exposed on the sur­face in its raw form: béton brut, to use the term that gave the move­ment its name.

To qual­i­fy under the rubric of this “new Bru­tal­ism,” as archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham (lat­er to become famous for his ultra-mod­ern view of Los Ange­les) referred to it, a struc­ture should demon­strate “mem­o­ra­bil­i­ty as an image,” “clear exhi­bi­tion of struc­ture,” and “val­u­a­tion of mate­ri­als ‘as found’ ” — in con­trast to the nine­teen-fifties’ pro­lif­er­a­tion of seem­ing­ly fea­ture­less glass-sheathed sky­scrap­ers designed by mod­ernists like Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe and his many imi­ta­tors.

“Bru­tal­ist build­ings strove for hon­esty in their mate­ri­als and struc­ture,” says Peter­son. “They showed you how they were con­struct­ed.” Though acclaimed in their day as built state­ments of a break from the staid past into a whol­ly reimag­ined future, many cam­pus Bru­tal­ist build­ings in the Unit­ed States sub­se­quent­ly fell into dis­re­pair, owing to the eco­nom­ic down­turn of the sev­en­ties and the resul­tant laps­es into “deferred main­te­nance” — which, deferred long enough, shades into planned demo­li­tion. Such has been the case with Evans Hall, the sta­tis­tics, eco­nom­ics, and math­e­mat­ics build­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, which, since its con­struc­tion in 1971, played an impor­tant part in the his­to­ry of com­put­er sci­ence, not least as the node through which the whole of the west coast con­nect­ed to ARPANET, the mil­i­tary-built pre­cur­sor to the inter­net.

Today, objec­tions to Evans Hal­l’s Bru­tal­ist aes­thet­ics, as well as to its loca­tion in front of the San Fran­cis­co Bay and its poor earth­quake-safe­ty rat­ing (that last being fair­ly com­mon among UC Berke­ley’s struc­tures), have led to its being emp­tied out with an eye toward replace­ment. Though it may be too late for Evans Hall, much of Amer­i­ca’s Bru­tal­ist her­itage can still be reha­bil­i­tat­ed. “Be patient,” says archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Rohan (author of a study of Amer­i­can Bru­tal­ist Paul Rudolph). “Just because you find some­thing unfash­ion­able at the moment does­n’t mean you should erad­i­cate it.” This is not, per­haps, advice par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to col­lege stu­dents, but giv­en the like­li­hood of their expo­sure to Bru­tal­ism not just on cam­pus but also on Insta­gram, they may turn out to be its best hope yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

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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How Rocky Horror Became a Cult Phenomenon

in Film, Gender, Theatre | November 8th, 2023

Call us old fash­ioned but invok­ing pump­kin spice and The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show in the same breath feels trans­gres­sive to the point of sac­ri­lege.

The cre­ator of the Poly­phon­ic video, above, is on much firmer foot­ing tying the film to queer lib­er­a­tion.

Pri­or to its now famous cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion, The Rocky Hor­ror Show was a low bud­get the­atri­cal suc­cess, with near­ly 3,000 per­for­mances and the 1973 Evening Stan­dard The­atre Award for Best Musi­cal to its name.

Review­er Michael Billing­ton laud­ed Tim Cur­ry’s “gar­ish­ly Bowiesque per­for­mance” as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the self-pro­claimed Sweet Trans­ves­tite from Trans­sex­u­al, Tran­syl­va­nia, but also acknowl­edged some drab­ber pea­cocks defy­ing gen­der expec­ta­tions in that pro­duc­tion:

…for me the actor of the evening was Jonathan Adams as the Nar­ra­tor: a bulky, heavy-jowled Kissinger-like fig­ure who enters into the rock num­bers with the state­ly aplomb of a dowa­ger duchess doing a strip.

Play­wright Richard O’Brien, who dou­bled as Frank-N-Furter’s sepul­chral but­ler, Riff Raff, con­ceived of the show as a spoof on campy sci fi and goth­ic hor­ror films in the Ham­mer Pro­duc­tions vein. He also owed a debt to glam rock, which “allowed me to be myself more.”

(Hats off, here, to Poly­phon­ic for one of the best nut­shell descrip­tions of glam rock we’ve ever encoun­tered:

Glam rock was a queer led move­ment that was built on the back of gen­der non-con­for­mi­ty. Visu­al­ly it was a hodge­podge of style from ear­ly Hol­ly­wood glam­our to 50s pin­ups and cabaret the­ater aug­ment­ed by touch­es of ancient civ­i­liza­tions sci-fi and and the occult.)

“The ele­ment of trans­vestism was­n’t intend­ed as a major theme,” O’Brien told inter­view­er Patri­cia Mor­ris­roe, “although it turned out to be one:”

I’ve always thought of Frank as a cross between Ivan the Ter­ri­ble and Cruel­la de Ville of Walt Dis­ney’s 101 Dal­ma­tions. It’s that sort of evil beau­ty that’s attrac­tive. I found Brad and Janet very appeal­ing too, espe­cial­ly the whole fifties image of boy-girl rela­tion­ships. In the end, you see that Janet is not the weak lit­tle thing that soci­ety demands her to be and Brad is not the pil­lar of strength.

Audi­ences and crit­ics may have loved the orig­i­nal show, but the film ver­sion did not find imme­di­ate favor. Review­er Roger Ebert reflect­ed that “it would be more fun, I sus­pect, if it weren’t a pic­ture show:

It belongs on a stage, with the per­form­ers and audi­ence join­ing in a col­lec­tive send-up…The chore­og­ra­phy, the com­po­si­tions and even the atti­tudes of the cast imply a stage ambiance. And it invites the kind of laugh­ter and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion that makes sense only if the per­form­ers are there on the stage, cre­at­ing mutu­al kar­ma.

A prophet­ic state­ment, as it turns out…

Once the pro­duc­ers began mar­ket­ing the film as a mid­night movie, repeat cus­tomers start­ed com­ing up with the snarky call­backs that have become a de rigueur part of the expe­ri­ence.

“All the char­ac­ters appear to be sophis­ti­cat­ed, knowl­edge­able peo­ple but they’re real­ly not,” O’Brien observed:

That allows peo­ple of a sim­i­lar ado­les­cent nature to feel they could be part of the whole thing. And now, in fact, they are.

Shad­ow casts posi­tioned them­selves in front of the screen, mim­ic­k­ing the action in cob­bled togeth­er ver­sions of design­er Sue Blane’s cos­tumes.

Audi­ences also afford­ed them­selves the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dress out­side the norm, cre­at­ing a safe space where atten­dees could mess around with their gen­der expres­sions. The film may not end hap­pi­ly but that final scene is a great excuse for any­one who wants to take a lap in a corset and fish­nets.

Rocky Horror’s flam­boy­ance, humor, and defi­ance of the main­stream made it a nat­ur­al fit with the queer com­mu­ni­ty, with folks cos­tumed as Frank-N-Furter, Riff Raff, Magen­ta and Colum­bia reg­u­lar­ly turn­ing up at fundrais­ers and pride events.

The film also deserves some activist street cred for sav­ing a num­ber of small indie movie the­aters by fat­ten­ing mid­night box office receipts, a trend that con­tin­ues near­ly 50 years after the orig­i­nal release.

Admit­ted­ly, cer­tain aspects of the script haven’t aged well.

“Vir­gins” attend­ing their first live screen­ing may be more shocked at the dearth of con­sent than the spec­ta­cle of Frank-n-Furter mur­der­ing Columbia’s rock­er boyfriend Eddy with a pick­axe, then serv­ing his remains for din­ner.

Will they also recoil from Frank as an embod­i­ment of tox­ic mas­culi­ty in the queer space?

Quoth Colum­bia:

My God! I can’t stand any more of this! First you spurn me for Eddie, and then you throw him like an old over­coat for Rocky! You chew peo­ple up and then you spit them out again… I loved you… do you hear me? I loved you! And what did it get me? Yeah, I’ll tell you: a big noth­ing. You’re like a sponge. You take, take, take, and drain oth­ers of their love and emo­tion.

We’re hop­ing Frank, prob­lem­at­ic though he may now seem, won’t ulti­mate­ly be con­signed to the dust bin of his­to­ry.

For con­text, O’Brien recent­ly told The Hol­ly­wood Reporter that the char­ac­ter was informed by his own expe­ri­ences of cross-dress­ing as he tried to get a grip on his gen­der iden­ti­ty in the ear­ly 70s:

I used to beat myself up about the hand I was dealt. I don’t know how it works. I have no idea. I’ve read many tomes about the sub­ject of the trans­ves­tic nature. It’s the cards you’re dealt. In a bina­ry world it’s a bit of curse, real­ly. Espe­cial­ly in those days when homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a crime. It’s just one of those things that west­ern soci­ety wasn’t very keen on.

Real Con­tent

1978 News Report on the Rocky Hor­ror Craze Cap­tures a Teenage Michael Stipe in Drag

Rare Inter­view: Tim Cur­ry Dis­cuss­es The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, Dur­ing the Week of Its Release (1975)

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

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A Secret Room with Drawings Attributed to Michelangelo Opens to Visitors in Florence

in Art, History, Museums | November 7th, 2023

Images on this page come cour­tesy of the Musei del Bargel­lo

In the year 1530, Michelan­ge­lo was sen­tenced to death by Pope Clement VII — who, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, was born Giulio de’ Medici. That famous dynasty, which once seemed to hold absolute eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er in Flo­rence, had just seen off a vio­lent chal­lenge to its rule by repub­li­can-mind­ed Flo­ren­tines who, embold­ened by the sack of Rome in 1527, took their city from the House of Medici that same year. Alas, that par­tic­u­lar Repub­lic of Flo­rence proved short-lived, thanks to the pope and Emper­or Charles V’s agree­ment agreed to use mil­i­tary pow­er to return it to Medici hands.

Dur­ing the strug­gles against the Medici, the Flo­rence-born Michelan­ge­lo had come to the aid of his home­town by work­ing on its for­ti­fi­ca­tions. It seems to have been his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the revolt that drew the ire of the Medici, despite their court’s on-and-off patron­age of his work for the pre­ced­ing four decades.

Mer­ci­ful­ly, they nev­er actu­al­ly exe­cut­ed Michelan­ge­lo, and indeed par­doned him before long–not least so he could fin­ish his work on the Sis­tine Chapel and the Medici fam­i­ly tomb. But how did he occu­py him­self while still liv­ing under the death sen­tence?

As one the­o­ry has it, he sim­ply hid out — and in a cor­ner of what’s now the Medici Chapels Muse­um at that. In a “tiny cham­ber beneath the Medici Chapels in the Basil­i­ca of San Loren­zo in 1530,” writes the Guardian’s Angela Giuf­fri­da, Michelan­ge­lo spent a cou­ple months “mak­ing dozens of draw­ings that are rem­i­nis­cent of his pre­vi­ous works, includ­ing a draw­ing of Leda and the Swan, a paint­ing pro­duced dur­ing the same year that was lat­er lost.” All of these he drew direct­ly on the walls, and their exis­tence “remained unknown until 1975 when Pao­lo Dal Pogget­to, then the direc­tor of the Medici Chapels, one of five muse­ums that make up the Bargel­lo Muse­ums, was search­ing for a suit­able space to cre­ate a new exit for the muse­um.”

“Oth­ers doubt that Michelan­ge­lo, already in his 50s and an acclaimed artist with pow­er­ful patrons, would have spent time in such a dingy hide out,” writes the New York Times’ Jason Horowitz. “But many schol­ars believe that the sketch­es show his hand”: the “impos­ing nude near the entrance” that evokes The Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ; the sketch­es that “resem­ble the cen­tral fig­ure of his The Fall of Phaeton. Some even think a flexed and dis­em­bod­ied arm on the wall evokes his David stat­ue.” And start­ing next week, vis­i­tors will be able to judge these very draw­ings for them­selves.

Not that you can just waltz into this stan­za seg­re­ta: “Vis­its will be kept to groups of four and lim­it­ed to 15 min­utes, with 45 minute lights-out peri­ods in between to pro­tect the draw­ings,” Horowitz writes. ‘Tick­ets, each con­nect­ed to a spe­cif­ic per­son whose I.D. will be checked to pre­vent tour oper­a­tors from gob­bling them up, will cost 32 euros (about $34), and include access to the Medici tombs.” Dur­ing your own fif­teen min­utes in this cramped, obscure room turned taste­ful­ly-lit gallery, you may or may not feel the pres­ence of Michelan­ge­lo, but you’ll sure­ly find your­self remind­ed that a true artist nev­er stops cre­at­ing, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances in which he finds him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Painstak­ing and Nerve-Rack­ing Process of Restor­ing a Draw­ing by Michelan­ge­lo

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

School Prin­ci­pal, Forced to Resign After Stu­dents Learn About Michelangelo’s David, Vis­its the Renais­sance Stat­ue in Flo­rence

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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Watch David Bowie Perform “Starman” on Top of the Pops: Voted the Greatest Music Performance Ever on the BBC (1972)

in Music, Television | November 7th, 2023

The Bea­t­les were made for black-and-white tele­vi­sion, as evi­denced by the imme­di­a­cy with which their 1964 per­for­mance on The Ed Sul­li­van Show launched them into per­ma­nent inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom. Though only a few years younger than the Fab Four, their coun­try­man David Bowie arose in a dif­fer­ent era: that of col­or tele­vi­sion, with its vast­ly expand­ed aes­thet­ic range. Bowie is known to have car­ried him­self as if his own inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom was guar­an­teed, even dur­ing his ear­ly years of strug­gle. But it was only when he took full, lurid advan­tage of the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-expand­ed son­ic and visu­al palettes avail­able to him that he tru­ly became an icon.

“It’s decep­tive­ly easy to for­get that in the sum­mer of 1972 David Bowie was still yesterday’s news to the aver­age Top of the Pops view­er, a one-hit won­der who’d had a nov­el­ty sin­gle about an astro­naut at the end of the pre­vi­ous decade,” writes Nicholas Pegg in The Com­plete David Bowie. But his tak­ing the stage of that BBC pop-musi­cal insti­tu­tion “in a rain­bow jump­suit and shock­ing red hair put paid to that for­ev­er. Hav­ing made no com­mer­cial impact in the two months since its release, ‘Star­man’ stormed up the chart.” As with “Space Odd­i­ty,” “the sub­text is all: this is less a sci­ence-fic­tion sto­ry than a self-aggran­diz­ing announce­ment that there’s a new star in town.”

“It is hard to recon­struct the drab­ness, the visu­al deple­tion of Britain in 1972, which fil­tered into the music papers to form the grey and grub­by back­drop to Bowie’s phys­i­cal and sar­to­r­i­al splen­dor,” writes Simon Reynolds in Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Lega­cy, from the Sev­en­ties to the Twen­ty-first Cen­tu­ry. But to under­stand the impact and mean­ing of Bowie — and in par­tic­u­lar, Bowie of the Zig­gy Star­dust era that had only just begun — we must imag­ine the sheer exhil­a­ra­tion of new pos­si­bil­i­ty a young, artis­ti­cal­ly inclined Top of the Pops view­er must have felt as Bowie-as-Zig­gy and the Spi­ders from Mars over­took their tele­vi­sion sets for “Star­man“ ‘s three min­utes and 55 sec­onds.

“No mat­ter how weird and alien you felt, you couldn’t have been as weird and alien as David Bowie and his band­mates looked,” writes the Guardian’s Alex­is Petridis. The occa­sion is that paper’s new list of the 100 great­est BBC music per­for­mances, whose range includes Bob Dylan, Prince, the Pix­ies, Talk­ing Heads, Pat­ti Smith, and Dizzy Gille­spie. But the top spot goes to Bowie’s 1972 Top of the Pops gig, due not least to the fact that “umpteen view­ers have tes­ti­fied to the life-chang­ing, he’s‑talking-to-me effect of the moment when Bowie points down the cam­era as he sings the line ‘I had to phone some­one so I picked on you.’ ” CNN’s Todd Leopold likens the Bea­t­les to “aliens dropped into the Unit­ed States of 1964,” but as Bowie would vivid­ly demon­strate eight years lat­er, the real inva­sion from out­er space was yet to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Zig­gy Star­dust Turns 50: Cel­e­brate David Bowie’s Sig­na­ture Char­ac­ter with a New­ly Released Ver­sion of “Star­man”

8 Hours of David Bowie’s His­toric 1980 Floor Show: Com­plete & Uncut Footage

How David Bowie Turned His “Ade­quate” Voice into a Pow­er­ful Instru­ment: Hear Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks from “Life on Mars,” “Star­man,” “Mod­ern Love” “Under Pres­sure” & More

What Hap­pens When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Images to Match the Lyrics of Icon­ic Songs: David Bowie’s “Star­man,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en”, ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” & 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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Dorothea Tanning: The Artist Who Pushed the Boundaries of Surrealism

in Art, Creativity, Gender | November 6th, 2023

As Great Art Explained’s James Payne notes in the above pro­file of Sur­re­al­ist Dorothea Tan­ning, the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty of her work invites inter­pre­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to one of best known paint­ings, 1943’s Eine Kleine Nacht­musik.

Its doors, young girls (femme-enfants, if you pre­fer) and sun­flower were recur­rent themes for her.

What’s it mean?

Tan­ning main­tained the paint­ing is about “con­fronta­tion:”

Every­one believes he/she is his/her dra­ma. While they don’t always have giant sun­flow­ers (most aggres­sive of flow­ers) to con­tend with, there are always stair­ways, hall­ways, even very pri­vate the­aters where the suf­fo­ca­tions and the final­i­ties are being played out, the blood red car­pet or cru­el yel­lows, the attack­er, the delight­ed vic­tim….

Art his­to­ri­an Whit­ney Chad­wick, author of Women Artists and the Sur­re­al­ist Move­ment, dared to com­pare Eine Kleine Nacht­musik to Pierre Roy’s 1927 work Dan­ger on the Stairs, which Tan­ning may have encoun­tered dur­ing her life chang­ing vis­it to the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s ground break­ing 1936 exhib­it Fan­tas­tic Art, Dada, Sur­re­al­ism.

Both paint­ings unfold on nar­row, win­dow­less land­ings. Roy’s fea­tures a snake, that har­bin­ger of “Freudi­an sym­bol­ic con­tent”, slith­er­ing down a stair­case; Tanning’s two long-haired girls in Vic­to­ri­an desha­bille and a “torn and writhing sun­flower, an image strong­ly iden­ti­fied with Tanning’s Mid­west­ern ori­gins, close to nature and capa­ble of con­vey­ing impres­sions of both fecun­di­ty and men­ace.”

Tan­ning bri­dled at the temer­i­ty of Chadwick’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion:

To com­pare my vision with the per­fect­ly pro­por­tioned and very pho­to­graph­ic depic­tion of a snake (ana­con­da) on a stair, neat­ly paint­ed, some­what in the man­ner of Magritte, is sim­ple-mind­ed. The scene, though infre­quent, is pos­si­ble in the nat­ur­al out­side world. Mine is not.

Could it be that the sun­flower is a trap set for experts unable to resist the pull of pub­licly inter­pret­ing a Sur­re­al­ist scene?

Tan­ning died in 2012 at the age of 101, but Eine Kleine Nacht­musik’s sun­flower con­tin­ues to exert its siren pull.

Art his­to­ri­an, Catri­ona McAra, author of A Sur­re­al­ist Stratig­ra­phy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm sees it as a sym­bol of “deflo­ration, men­stru­a­tion and erot­ic noc­tur­nal knowl­edge”, while art his­to­ri­an Selin Genc pegs it as “the unknown the child sens­es with­in her­self: a source of con­cern and fas­ci­na­tion.”

Far be it from us to haz­ard a guess in the pub­lic forum, though we’d be keen to get an ado­les­cent girl’s unof­fi­cial take on it, par­tic­u­lar­ly if she shares Tanning’s fas­ci­na­tion for Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and is as yet unac­quaint­ed with the Sur­re­al­ists, female or oth­er­wise.

Giv­en that many young teens under­stand gen­der to be a non-bina­ry propo­si­tion, our hypo­thet­i­cal inter­vie­wee might appre­ci­ate Tanning’s staunch rejec­tion of the label ‘woman artist’, insist­ing that “there is no such thing or per­son” and it is “just as much a con­tra­dic­tion in terms as ‘man artist’ or ‘ele­phant artist’.”

21st-cen­tu­ry artists of all ages, gen­ders and gen­res could ben­e­fit from her advice to “keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars.”

That, friends, is how you make Eine Kleine Nacht­musik.

In a 2001 arti­cle in ART­news titled The Old­est Liv­ing Sur­re­al­ist Tells (Almost) All, Tan­ning, then 91 and “still alive in every way” spelled it out:

(Art) should make us feel good about life, or at least make us think about the big ques­tions, the things that peo­ple don’t want to ask them­selves any­more.”

Here’s some more of Dorothea Tanning’s work to get you start­ed on those ques­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Fan­tas­tic Women Of Sur­re­al­ism: An Intro­duc­tion

An Intro­duc­tion to Sur­re­al­ism: The Big Aes­thet­ic Ideas Pre­sent­ed in Three Videos

Dis­cov­er Leono­ra Car­ring­ton, Britain’s Lost Sur­re­al­ist Painter

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

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

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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Historical Primers That Help Explain the Century-Long Conflict

in History | November 6th, 2023

On Octo­ber 7th, Hamas invad­ed Israel and bru­tal­ly mas­sa­cred 1,400 Israelis, most­ly civil­ians. On a per capi­ta basis, the attack amount­ed to twelve 9/11s (per The Econ­o­mist). It also marked the sin­gle blood­i­est attack on Jews since the Holo­caust. Faced with an exis­ten­tial threat, Israel has launched its own dev­as­tat­ing inva­sion of Gaza, with the goal of destroy­ing Hamas lead­er­ship. Already, the assault has left 9,000 civil­ians dead and tipped the pop­u­la­tion into a human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Bar­ring a cease­fire, the casu­al­ties will almost cer­tain­ly mount from here.

This explo­sion of vio­lence rep­re­sents the lat­est chap­ter in a cen­tu­ry-long strug­gle between Jews and Arabs in the region. For those who have a ten­u­ous grasp of the his­to­ry of this con­flict (it’s admit­ted­ly long and com­pli­cat­ed), we’ve pulled togeth­er some help­ful resources that explain key turn­ing points in the strug­gle. Over­all, these resources strive to offer a bal­anced account of the con­flict, mean­ing they try to rec­og­nize the per­spec­tive of both sides and avoid offer­ing a naked­ly par­ti­san account. While not per­fect or com­pre­hen­sive, the resources offer a start­ing point for putting today’s events in his­tor­i­cal con­text.

To start, the Vox primer above traces the arc of the con­flict, start­ing with the rise of nation­al­ism and Zion­ism in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, and the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion (1917) that announced sup­port for the estab­lish­ment of a “nation­al home for the Jew­ish peo­ple” in Pales­tine. From there, the video cov­ers the ris­ing ten­sion between Jews and Arabs dur­ing the 1930s, then the Holo­caust and the Unit­ed Nations’ plan (1947) to divide the con­test­ed ter­ri­to­ry into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews accept­ed the plan. The Arabs did­n’t and launched an attack on the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, start­ing the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Israel won, achieved state­hood, seized lands orig­i­nal­ly del­e­gat­ed to the Pales­tini­ans and expelled res­i­dents, some­times vio­lent­ly, from their homes. Next comes the Six-Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kip­pur War (odd­ly not men­tioned by Vox). Then, we have the rise of the PLO and lat­er Hamas (two orga­ni­za­tions that have denied Israel’s right to exist); the vex­ing Israeli set­tler move­ment; the start of the first Intifa­da in 1987; attempts to make peace cul­mi­nat­ing in the Oslo Accords in 1993; and final­ly the break­down of those peace efforts, thanks to extrem­ists on both sides. Vox ends the nar­ra­tive in about 2015, won­der­ing about the future–the future we’re expe­ri­enc­ing right now.

Imme­di­ate­ly above, you can lis­ten to a recent pod­cast host­ed by The Atlantic’s Derek Thomp­son. Fea­tur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with two his­to­ri­ans (Ben­ny Mor­ris and Zachary Fos­ter), the pod­cast walks us through “the ori­gins of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, from antiq­ui­ty to Octo­ber 7”–reinforcing and elab­o­rat­ing on points made in the Vox video. Even­tu­al­ly, the host and his­to­ri­ans also “share their thoughts on Israel’s mil­i­tary response, the future of the con­flict, and the ‘miss­ing mod­er­ate mid­dle’ on both sides.”

We come next to a New York Times inter­view with David K. Shipler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book, Arab and Jew: Wound­ed Spir­its in a Promised Land. Here, the con­ver­sa­tion focus­es on the piv­otal events of 1948, and how the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have devel­oped their own nar­ra­tives of the events that took place that year. As Shipler explains, these nar­ra­tives have shaped the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian strug­gle ever since, and they con­tin­ue to shape the events on the ground in Gaza today. To under­stand the nar­ra­tives is to under­stand why the con­flict has endured for so long.

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Final­ly, we’re adding a video designed for a younger audi­ence from John Green’s World His­to­ry Crash Course. Com­plet­ed in 2015, the video does­n’t cov­er the cur­rent cri­sis. But it pro­vides anoth­er overview of the deep­er his­tor­i­cal con­flict, while touch­ing on the same nar­ra­tives that Shipler out­lines above.

We’ll try to post more resources as we find them…

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.

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The Beatles Release Their Final Song, “Now and Then”: Hear the Song & Watch the Music Video Directed by Peter Jackson

in Music | November 3rd, 2023

The aver­age music fan of the nine­teen-six­ties would sure­ly have found it hard to believe that the Rolling Stones would put out a new album in 2023, let alone an album includ­ing a per­for­mance by Paul McCart­ney. Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, of course, we’ve long since known that the “rival­ry” between the young Stones and Bea­t­les was ginned up by music media. Still, not to be out­done more than half a cen­tu­ry after their breakup, the lat­ter have put out the new­ly com­plet­ed “Now and Then,” the last song fea­tur­ing all the Fab Four that will ever be released.

“Now and Then,” or at least its title, will ring a bell in the minds of seri­ous Bea­t­les enthu­si­asts. For decades, it has been known as one of sev­er­al promis­ing songs John Lennon record­ed with­out fin­ish­ing. Oth­ers include “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son, and Ringo Starr built upon in the stu­dio and released in the mid-nineties to accom­pa­ny the doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les Anthol­o­gy. At that time, Lennon’s home demo of “Now and Then” proved trick­i­er to work with: “the piano was a lit­tle hard to hear,” says McCart­ney in its short mak­ing-of film, “and in those days, of course, we did­n’t have the tech­nol­o­gy to do the sep­a­ra­tion” of one instru­ment or voice from the oth­ers.

Enter Peter Jack­son, a Beat­le­ma­ni­ac pos­sessed of uncom­mon resources and tech­no­log­i­cal know-how. It turns out that the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based sys­tem devel­oped to sep­a­rate out the audio tracks for the Get Back doc­u­men­tary project, which he direct­ed, could also be used to sal­vage the mud­dy “Now and Then.” At last, McCart­ney says, “we could mix it and make a prop­er record of it,” a task that also includ­ed his lay­ing down a new bass part and Starr doing the same for the drums. Each ele­ment led to anoth­er: “I’d been vague­ly think­ing, ‘Strings might be a good thing.’ The Bea­t­les did lots of strings, you know?” This was a job for none oth­er than Giles Mar­tin, son of George. (See the mak­ing-of video below.)

As luck would have it, Har­ri­son, who died in 2001, also record­ed a gui­tar part back in 1995, which inspired McCart­ney to add a slide gui­tar solo in the same style. The New York Times Jon Par­e­les also notes “back­ing vocals from ‘Here, There and Every­where,’ ‘Eleanor Rig­by’ and ‘Because’: ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ in har­mo­ny.” The result is a gen­uine Bea­t­les song as well as a gen­uine Bea­t­les record­ing, not just in per­son­nel but also in spir­it. No soon­er did the band get famous, remem­ber, than they began incor­po­rat­ing into their work every advanced stu­dio device and tech­nique at their com­mand. If high tech­nol­o­gy was a vital fac­tor in their music then, it’s even more of one now.

Note: The offi­cial music video above was direct­ed by Peter Jack­son.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

How Peter Jack­son Used Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Restore the Video & Audio Fea­tured in The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

A Sneak Peek of Peter Jackson’s New Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary Get Back: Watch the New Trail­er

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & 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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