How to Spot a Communist by Using Literary Criticism: A 1955 Manual from the U.S. Military

in History, Literature | April 13th, 2023

In 1955, the Unit­ed States was enter­ing the final stages of McCarthy­ism or the Sec­ond Red Scare. Dur­ing this low point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, the US gov­ern­ment looked high and low for Com­mu­nist spies. Enter­tain­ers, edu­ca­tors, gov­ern­ment employ­ees and union mem­bers were often viewed with sus­pi­cion, and many careers and lives were destroyed by the flim­si­est of alle­ga­tions. Con­gress, the FBI, and the US mil­i­tary, they all fueled the 20th cen­tu­ry ver­sion of the Salem Witch tri­als, part­ly by encour­ag­ing Amer­i­cans to look for Com­mu­nists in unsus­pect­ing places.

In the short Armed Forces Infor­ma­tion Film above, you can see the dynam­ic at work. Some Com­mu­nists were out in the open; how­ev­er, oth­ers “worked more silent­ly.” So how to find those hid­den com­mu­nists?

Not to wor­ry, the US mil­i­tary had that cov­ered. In 1955, the U.S. First Army Head­quar­ters pre­pared a man­u­al called How to Spot a Com­mu­nist. Lat­er pub­lished in pop­u­lar Amer­i­can mag­a­zines, the pro­pa­gan­da piece warned read­ers, “there is no fool-proof sys­tem in spot­ting a Com­mu­nist.” “U.S. Com­mu­nists come from all walks of life, pro­fess all faiths, and exer­cise all trades and pro­fes­sions. In addi­tion, the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, USA, has made con­cert­ed efforts to go under­ground for the pur­pose of infil­tra­tion.” And yet the pam­phlet adds, let­ting read­ers breathe a sigh of relief, “there are, for­tu­nate­ly, indi­ca­tions that may give him away. These indi­ca­tions are often sub­tle but always present, for the Com­mu­nist, by rea­son of his “faith” must act and talk along cer­tain lines.” In short, you’ll know a Com­mu­nist not by how he walks, but how he talks. Ask­ing cit­i­zens to become lit­er­ary crit­ics for the sake of nation­al secu­ri­ty, the pub­li­ca­tion told read­ers to watch out for the fol­low­ing:

While a pref­er­ence for long sen­tences is com­mon to most Com­mu­nist writ­ing, a dis­tinct vocab­u­lary pro­vides the more eas­i­ly rec­og­nized fea­ture of the “Com­mu­nist Lan­guage.” Even a super­fi­cial read­ing of an arti­cle writ­ten by a Com­mu­nist or a con­ver­sa­tion with one will prob­a­bly reveal the use of some of the fol­low­ing expres­sions: inte­gra­tive think­ing, van­guard, com­rade, hoo­te­nan­ny, chau­vin­ism, book-burn­ing, syn­cretis­tic faith, bour­geois-nation­al­ism, jin­go­ism, colo­nial­ism, hooli­gan­ism, rul­ing class, pro­gres­sive, dem­a­gogy, dialec­ti­cal, witch-hunt, reac­tionary, exploita­tion, oppres­sive, mate­ri­al­ist.

This list, select­ed at ran­dom, could be extend­ed almost indef­i­nite­ly. While all of the above expres­sions are part of the Eng­lish lan­guage, their use by Com­mu­nists is infi­nite­ly more fre­quent than by the gen­er­al pub­lic…

Rather chill­ing­ly, the pam­phlet also warned that Com­mu­nists revealed them­selves if and when they talked about “McCarthy­ism,” “vio­la­tion of civ­il rights,” “racial or reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion” or “peace.” In oth­er words, they were guilty if they sug­gest­ed that the gov­ern­ment was over­step­ping its bounds.

Accord­ing to Corliss Lam­on­t’s book, Free­dom Is As Free­dom Does, the First Army with­drew the pam­phlet after Mur­ray Kemp­ton slammed it in The New York Post and The New York Times wrote its own scathing op-ed. In 1955, the press could take those risks. The year before, Joseph Welch had faced up to Joe McCarthy, ask­ing with his immor­tal words, “Have you no sense of decen­cy, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decen­cy?

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared our site in 2013.

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 and BlueSky.

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:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

 

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The History of Ancient Japan: The Story of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Witnessed It (297‑1274)

in History | April 13th, 2023

Here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, many of us around the world think of Japan as essen­tial­ly unchang­ing. We do so not with­out cause, giv­en how much of what goes on there, includ­ing the oper­a­tion of cer­tain busi­ness­es, has been going on for cen­turies and cen­turies. But the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, reli­gious, eco­nom­ic, and eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the civ­i­liza­tion we’ve long known as Japan has, in fact, trans­formed a great deal over the course of its exis­tence. Some of the most dra­mat­ic changes occurred between the third and thir­teenth cen­turies, the span of time cov­ered by the video above.

“How Japan Began” comes from Voic­es of the Past, a Youtube chan­nel pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its videos on a first-hand account of the destruc­tion of Pom­peii, an ancient Chi­nese his­to­ri­an’s descrip­tion of the Roman Empire, and how the first Japan­ese vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States and Europe saw life there.

In telling the sto­ry of how ancient Japan (though most­ly in a time span that falls with­in Europe’s Mid­dle Ages) assumed some­thing like its cur­rent form, the video adheres to its usu­al method of direct­ly incor­po­rat­ing as many pri­ma­ry or close-to-pri­ma­ry sources as pos­si­ble: the Chi­nese Records or His­to­ry of the Three King­doms, eighth-cen­tu­ry court edicts and nation­al his­to­ries, the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry émi­gré Chi­nese Bud­dhist monk Mugaku Sogen.

As for the rest of the nar­ra­tion, Voic­es of the Past cred­its Thomas Lock­ley, co-author of the book African Samu­rai: The True Sto­ry of Yasuke, a Leg­endary Black War­rior in Feu­dal Japan. Yasuke, whom we’ve also fea­tured before, arrived in Japan in 1579, three cen­turies after the events chron­i­cled in “How Japan Begin” — and thus quite deep indeed into the his­to­ry of a volatile land of reli­gious shifts, polit­i­cal ambi­tions, and (vol­un­tary or invol­un­tary) cul­tur­al exchanges, all amid an inter­nal state oscil­lat­ing between frag­men­ta­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion as well as an ever-chang­ing rela­tion­ship to the world at large. We can’t say what mix­ture of sta­bil­i­ty and insta­bil­i­ty will char­ac­ter­ize Japan’s next mil­len­ni­um, but we can hope its future chron­i­clers are up to the task.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

When a UFO Came to Japan in 1803: Dis­cov­er the Leg­end of Utsuro-bune

The 17th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

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 Smithsonian Puts 4.5 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Use

in Archives, History, Museums | April 12th, 2023

That vast repos­i­to­ry of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that is the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion evolved from an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed in 1816 called the Columbian Insti­tute for the Pro­mo­tion of Arts and Sci­ences. Its man­date, the col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of use­ful knowl­edge, now sounds very much of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry — but then, so does its name. Colum­bia, the god­dess-like sym­bol­ic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, is sel­dom direct­ly ref­er­enced today, hav­ing been super­seded by Lady Lib­er­ty. Traits of both fig­ures appear in the depic­tion on the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry fire­man’s hat above, about which you can learn more at Smith­son­ian Open Access, a dig­i­tal archive that now con­tains some 4.5 mil­lion images.

“Any­one can down­load, reuse, and remix these images at any time — for free under the Cre­ative Com­mons Zero (CC0) license,” write My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art and Madeleine Muz­dakis. “A dive into the 3D records shows every­thing from CAD mod­els of the Apol­lo 11 com­mand mod­ule to Hor­a­tio Gree­nough’s 1840 sculp­ture of George Wash­ing­ton.”

The 2D arti­facts of inter­est include “a por­trait of Poc­a­hon­tas in the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, an image of the 1903 Wright Fly­er from the Nation­al Air and Space Muse­um, and box­ing head­gear worn by Muham­mad Ali from the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture.”

The NMAAHC in par­tic­u­lar has pro­vid­ed a great many items rel­e­vant to twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture, like James Bald­win’s inkwell, Chuck Berry’s gui­tar May­bel­lene, Pub­lic Ene­my’s boom­box, and the poster for a 1968 Nina Simone con­cert. The more obscure object just above, a Native Amer­i­can kachi­na fig­ure with the head of Mick­ey Mouse, comes from the Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Muse­um. “When Dis­ney Stu­dios put a mouse hero on the sil­ver screen in the 1930s,” explain the accom­pa­ny­ing notes, “Hopi artists saw in Mick­ey Mouse a cel­e­bra­tion of Tusan Homichi, the leg­endary mouse war­rior who defeat­ed a chick­en-steal­ing hawk” — and were thus them­selves inspired, it seems, to sum up a wide swath of Amer­i­can his­to­ry in a sin­gle object.

More items are being added to Smith­son­ian Open Access all the time, each with its own sto­ry to tell — and all acces­si­ble not just to Amer­i­cans, but inter­net users the world over. In that sense it feels a bit like the Chica­go World’s Fair of 1893, bet­ter known as the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion, with its mis­sion of reveal­ing Amer­i­ca’s sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and artis­tic genius to the whole of human civ­i­liza­tion. You can see a great many pho­tos and oth­er arti­facts of this land­mark event at Smith­son­ian Open Access, or, if you pre­fer, you can click the “just brows­ing” link and behold all the his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and for­mal vari­ety avail­able in the Smith­so­ni­an’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, where the spir­it of Colum­bia lives on.

via Kot­tke/My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Launch­es the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, Putting Online Hun­dreds of His­toric Films

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

The Smith­son­ian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Pho­tos on a Crowd­sourced Web Site, and Now a New Book

Why 99% Of Smithsonian’s Spec­i­mens Are Hid­den In High Secu­ri­ty

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

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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16-Year-Old Dave Grohl Demonstrates His Emerging Drumming Talent, Playing in His Punk Band “Mission Impossible” (1985)

in Music | April 12th, 2023

Before Foo Fight­ers, before Nir­vana, before even Dain Bra­m­age, Scream and oth­er bands, Dave Grohl played in the Spring­field, Vir­ginia punk band Mis­sion Impos­si­ble. Above, we have footage of Grohl, only 16 years old, giv­ing us a pre­view of per­for­mances to come. The cam­era puts Grohl cen­ter stage around the 1:30 mark.

This July 1985 footage was cap­tured by Sohrab Habibion, who doc­u­ment­ed shows from the 1980s DC punk scene. His record­ings now reside at the Punk Archive at the DC Pub­lic Library. Like­wise, you can stream them on his YouTube chan­nel. Among oth­er things, you can watch vin­tage per­for­mances by Fugazi, GWAR, the Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (anoth­er Grohl band) & more. Stream them online.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

Dis­cov­er an Archive of Taped New York City-Area Punk & Indie Con­certs from the 80s and 90s: The Pix­ies, Son­ic Youth, The Replace­ments & Many More

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

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Al Jaffee, the Longest Working Cartoonist in History, Dies at 102: Discover How He Invented the Iconic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Magazine

in Comics/Cartoons, Life | April 11th, 2023

Note: Yes­ter­day, Mad Mag­a­zine leg­end Al Jaf­fee died at the age of 102. Below, we present our 2016 post fea­tur­ing Jaf­fee talk­ing about how he invent­ed the icon­ic Fold-ins for the satir­i­cal mag­a­zine.

Keep copy­ing those Sun­day fun­nies, kids, and one day you may beat Al Jaf­fee’s record to become the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry.

You’ll need to take extra good care of your health, giv­en that the Guin­ness Book of World Records noti­fied Jaf­fee, above, of his hon­orif­ic on his 95th birth­day.

Much of his leg­endary career has been spent at Mad Mag­a­zine, where he is best-known as the father of Fold-ins.

Con­ceived of as the satir­i­cal inverse of the expen­sive-to-pro­duce, 4‑color cen­ter­folds that were a sta­ple of glossier mags, the first Fold-In spoofed pub­lic per­cep­tion of actress Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor as a man-eater. Jaffe had fig­ured it as a one-issue gag, but edi­tor Al Feld­stein had oth­er ideas, demand­ing an imme­di­ate fol­low up for the June 1964 issue.

Jaffe oblig­ed with the Richard Nixon Fold-in, which set the tone for the oth­er 450 he has hand-ren­dered in sub­se­quent issues.

Al Jaffee Mad

For those who made it to adult­hood with­out the sin­gu­lar plea­sure of creas­ing Mad’s back cov­er, you can dig­i­tal­ly fold-in a few sam­ples using this nifty inter­ac­tive fea­ture, cour­tesy of The New York Times.

With all due respect, it’s not the same, just enough to give a feel for the thrill of draw­ing the out­er­most pan­el in to reveal the visu­al punch­line lurk­ing with­in the larg­er pic­ture. The print edi­tion demands pre­ci­sion fold­ing on the reader’s part, if one is to get a sat­is­fac­to­ry answer to the rhetor­i­cal text posed at the out­set.

Jaffe must be even more pre­cise in his cal­cu­la­tions. In an inter­view with Sean Edgar of Paste Mag­a­zine, he described how he turned a Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry stage shared by Nel­son Rock­e­feller and Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter into a sur­prise por­trait of the man who would become pres­i­dent five years hence:

The first thing I did was draw Richard Nixon’s face, not in great detail, just a very rough estab­lish­ment of where the eyes, nose and mouth would be, and the gen­er­al shape. I did an exag­ger­at­ed car­i­ca­ture of Nixon and then I cut it in half, and moved it apart. Once the face was cut in half, it didn’t have the integri­ty of a face any­more — it was sort of a half of face. Then I looked at what the eyes were like, and I said, ‘what can I make out of the eyes?’ He had these heavy eye­brows. I played around with many things, but I had to keep in mind all the time what the big pic­ture was. So there they (Gold­wa­ter and Rock­e­feller) were up on a stage some­where, doing a debate, and I thought, ‘What kind of stage prop can I put along­side these guys that would seem nat­ur­al there?’ I decid­ed that I could make eyes out of the lamps, and as far as the nose was con­cerned, that could come out of the fig­ures — their cloth­ing. Then I fig­ured the mouth; I could use some sort of table that could give me those two sides. That’s how it all came about. You have to have some kind of visu­al imag­i­na­tion to see the pos­si­bil­i­ties. I had to con­cen­trate on stuff that looked nat­ur­al on a stage.

Each Fold-In is a reflec­tion of the zeit­geist. Past pre­oc­cu­pa­tions have includ­ed Viet­nam, fem­i­nism, ille­gal drug use and, more recent­ly, the Jer­sey Shore.

via Gothamist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Mad Magazine’s Edgy, Nev­er-Aired TV Spe­cial (1974)

A Look Inside Char­lie Heb­do, Their Cre­ative Process & the Mak­ing of a Fate­ful Car­toon

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

Car­toon­ists Draw Their Famous Car­toon Char­ac­ters While Blind­fold­ed (1947)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Historical Italian Cooking: How to Make Ancient Roman & Medieval Italian Dishes

in Food & Drink, History | April 11th, 2023

Italy is wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed for hav­ing vig­i­lant­ly pre­served its food cul­ture, with the result that many dish­es there are still pre­pared in more or less the same way they have been for cen­turies. When you taste Ital­ian food at its best, you taste his­to­ry — to bor­row the name of a Youtube chan­nel whose suc­cess has revealed a sur­pris­ing­ly wide­spread enthu­si­asm for the cui­sine of bygone eras. But some of Italy’s most glob­al­ly beloved comestibles aren’t quite as deeply root­ed in the past as peo­ple tend to assume: there are no records of tiramisu, for instance, before the nine­teen-six­ties; cia­bat­ta, the Ital­ian answer to the baguette, was invent­ed in the ear­ly nine­teen-eight­ies.

Nei­ther of them appear any­where in His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing, a bilin­gual blog in Eng­lish and Ital­ian that teach­es how to par­take in far more ven­er­a­ble culi­nary tra­di­tions. A vari­ety of peri­ods are rep­re­sent­ed: the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry (Neapoli­tan cala­mari, tagli­atelle and beef stew), the Renais­sance (cros­ti­ni with guan­ciale and sage, elder­flow­ers frit­ters), the Mid­dle Ages (monk’s stuffed-egg soup, quails with sumac), and even the time of ancient Rome (cut­tle­fish cakes, Horace’s lagana and chick­peas).

You can also see these and oth­er dish­es pre­pared on His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing’s Youtube chan­nel, which offers playlists orga­nized by era, region, and chief ingre­di­ent: Medieval Tus­can recipes, ancient fish recipes, ear­ly medieval recipes at the court of the Franks.

His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing’s most pop­u­lar video shows every step involved in mak­ing “the most famous ancient Mediter­ranean sauce, garum.” The recipe comes straight from De Re Coquinar­ia, the old­est known cook­book in exis­tence, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. If you’d like to try your hand at mak­ing this bold condi­ment, make sure you’ve got the time: you’ll have to let the fish it’s made of it sit for at least a few days, stir­ring it three or four times per day, though some recipes sug­gest con­tin­u­ing this process for three or four months before the garum is ready to eat. If, on fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, you’d pre­fer to make a piz­za, His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing can help with that as well: just make sure you’ve got enough lard and quails.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Free Course from MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

When Ital­ian Futur­ists Declared War on Pas­ta (1930)

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

Ital­ian Advice on How to Live the Good Life: Cig­a­rettes, Toma­toes, and Oth­er Pic­turesque Small Plea­sures

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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Behold the World’s First Modern Art Amusement Park, Featuring Attractions by Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein & More (1987)

in Art, History | April 10th, 2023

Think of the names David Hock­ney, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Roy Licht­en­stein, and Kei­th Har­ing, and one time peri­od comes vivid­ly to mind: the nine­teen-eight­ies, the blast radius of whose explo­sion of shape, col­or, and motion encom­passed every­thing from main­stream pop cul­ture to the avant-garde. One could expe­ri­ence this through movies, clothes, paint­ings, graph­ic design, archi­tec­ture, and even fur­ni­ture. But did any­one real­ly know the aes­thet­ic of the eight­ies, in its full high-low span, who did not vis­it Luna Luna, the first and only mod­ern-art amuse­ment park?

Staged in the sum­mer of 1987 in Ham­burg, the largest city in then West Ger­many, Luna Luna was con­ceived by the Aus­tri­an artist André Heller. Inspired by the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of fair­grounds like Coney Island’s Luna Park and its many imi­ta­tors around the world, Heller made use of all his con­nec­tions to solic­it designs for attrac­tions from the super­star artists of the day.

“Vis­i­tors could get a lit­tle lost inside Sal­vador Dalí’s mir­rored fun house and spin around on a Kei­th Har­ing carousel,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Sarah Durn. “They could take in the view from atop a daz­zling Jean-Michel Basquiat Fer­ris wheel while lis­ten­ing to Miles Davis.”

Else­where on the grounds, writes Jes­si­ca Stew­art at My Mod­ern Met, “Roy Licht­en­stein took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to design a col­or­ful glass struc­ture called the Pavil­ion of the Glass Labyrinth. Fit­ting­ly, it was accom­pa­nied by music by Philip Glass.” One won­ders what John Cage would have con­tributed to Luna Luna’s sound­track, but the com­pos­er of “4’33”’ was the only artist to turn Heller down. So reports the New York Times’ Joe Coscarel­li, in a piece on the cur­rent project to restore the near­ly for­got­ten Luna Luna (whose com­po­nents have spent the inter­ven­ing decades lan­guish­ing in ware­hous­es) and take it on tour. With a bud­get near­ing $100-mil­lion, it’s becom­ing a real­i­ty thanks to the involve­ment of a sur­pris­ing par­ty: the rap super­star Drake, who knows full well the val­ue of embody­ing the zeit­geist.

To com­ple­ment the restora­tion of his project, André Heller pub­lished this year Luna Luna: The Art Amuse­ment Park, a new book that doc­u­ments in pho­tographs this one-of-a-kind amuse­ment park. You can pur­chase copies of the 300+ page book online.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Who Designed the 1980s Aes­thet­ic?: Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Design­ers Who Cre­at­ed the 80s Icon­ic Look

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

A Short Biog­ra­phy of Kei­th Har­ing Told with Com­ic Book Illus­tra­tions & Music

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

Watch David Hock­ney Paint with Light, Using the Quan­tel Paint­box Graph­ics Sys­tem (1986)

Inside the Creepy, “Aban­doned” Wiz­ard of Oz Theme Park: Scenes of Beau­ti­ful Decay

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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Discover Leonora Carrington, Britain’s Lost Surrealist Painter

in Art, Life | April 10th, 2023

I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse…I was too busy rebelling against my fam­i­ly and learn­ing to be an artist. — Leono­ra Car­ring­ton

In some ways, Sur­re­al­ist Leono­ra Car­ring­ton’s sto­ry is a famil­iar one, giv­en her gen­der and gen­er­a­tion.

A cre­ative young woman, sti­fled by her con­ven­tion­al upbring­ing, escapes to Paris, falls in love with an old­er male artist, gains a degree of recog­ni­tion des­tined always to be small­er than that of her cel­e­brat­ed lover’s, suf­fers hard­ships, con­tin­ues work­ing, lives a very long time and is the sub­ject of near­ly as many exhi­bi­tions in the decade and a half fol­low­ing her death as in the 70 years pre­ced­ing it.

Cer­tain­ly, Car­ring­ton, who died in 2011, would be deeply ran­kled by this, or any attempt to con­dense her nar­ra­tive into an eas­i­ly-grasped pack­age. Wit­ness the brusque way she rejects her younger cousin  Joan­na Moor­head’s invi­ta­tions, above, to describe the inspi­ra­tion behind var­i­ous can­vas­es:

You’re try­ing to intel­lec­tu­al­ize some­thing, des­per­ate­ly, and you’re wast­ing your time! That’s not a way of under­stand­ing to make …a sort of mini log­ic. You’ll nev­er under­stand by that road.

The sto­ry of how Moor­head con­nect­ed with her noto­ri­ous cousin is a fas­ci­nat­ing one.

Grow­ing up in Eng­land, Moor­head knew next to noth­ing about the fam­i­ly’s absent black sheep — who had tak­en up with the 46-year-old Max Ernst at the age of 20, hob­nobbed with Picas­so, Mar­cel Duchamp and Andre Bre­ton in Paris, and wound up in Mex­i­co City after WWII.

All she was told was that Car­ring­ton, known to the fam­i­ly as Prim, had “run off with an artist to become his mod­el.”

As Moor­head writes in The Sur­re­al Life of Leono­ra Car­ring­ton: 

…there were occa­sion­al snatch­es: a hushed phone call where the word ‘Mex­i­co’ was just audi­ble; a whis­pered con­ver­sa­tion on the sofa after Sun­day lunch between (great aunt) Mau­rie and (grand­moth­er) Miri­am. There were guf­fawas occa­sion­al­ly from (uncle) Ger­ard and my father: “And then she paint­ed a crea­ture with three breasts!”

In 2006, Moor­head was at a par­ty, mak­ing polite con­ver­sa­tion with anoth­er guest, an art his­to­ri­an who lived in Mex­i­co, “scrap(ing) togeth­er a few ques­tions about the only Mex­i­can artist I knew any­thing about — Fri­da Kahlo”, when she sud­den­ly remem­bered her bohemi­an and sel­dom spo­ken of rel­a­tive, who might even be dead by now for all she knew…

Her fel­low guest was amazed by both the blood con­nec­tion and Moor­head­’s igno­rance, describ­ing Car­ring­ton as Mexico’s most famous liv­ing artist, and a “nation­al trea­sure” who Mex­i­co hap­pi­ly claimed as one of its own.

Gob­s­macked, Moor­head Googled “Leono­ra Car­ring­ton”, dis­cov­er­ing a wealth of pho­tos from var­i­ous phas­es of life, as well as the prodi­gious out­put from her brush:

A strange, Hierony­mus Bosch-style world filed with horse-like crea­tures who float­ed, danced and curled their way across alien landscapes…Some of her pic­tures depict­ed unfa­mil­iar and sin­is­ter-look­ing worlds: one showed a coun­try with. Red sky and amber hills across which trapised a pro­ces­sion of peo­ple wear­ing white robes. More fig­ures, wear­ing black, hud­dled around a huge eunuch like crea­ture, while an out­size turquoise snake unfurled itself dra­mat­i­cal­ly in mid-air. There seemed to be var­i­ous ele­ments com­pet­ing to be the cen­tre of the action in that paint­ing: a globe, a God-like effi­gy and a cathe­dral all nes­tled below a rain­bow. And the sto­ry, what­ev­er it was, didn’t end there because (Car­ring­ton) had paint­ed an under­world in which more peo­ple (dead, pre­sum­ably) seemed to have been trans­formed into ani­mals with pointy, black heads. They were crawl­ing, or try­ing to crawl, and their efforts were being watched, omi­nous­ly, by a sharp-toothed, one-eyed tiger. 

Dri­ven to find out more, Moor­head trav­eled to Mex­i­co City, where Car­ring­ton had lived off and on since 1942. Her cousin was now in her late 80s, iso­lat­ed with an infirm sec­ond hus­band, but still paint­ing and cham­pi­oning Sur­re­al­ism as a visu­al expres­sion that couldn’t be cap­tured with words:

There was no soft­ness around the edges with Leono­ra; she had tak­en a hard path, suf­fered a great deal as a result, and she wore her tough­ness like a badge of hon­our she had earned from her­self. It is far more of an hon­our than the cer­tifi­cate Blu-Tacked to her cup­board door, the hon­our the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment had giv­en her; it was cer­tain­ly more of an hon­our than the OBE she had belat­ed­ly been award­ed by the British, receiv­ing it on a vis­it from Prince Charles on a vis­it he made to Mex­i­co in 2000. She was bemused by these late acco­lades, but nev­er impressed by them. Ear­ly on in her life, she had decid­ed there was only one thing she could ever rely on, and that was the stee­li­ness in her heart. Exter­nal events, the trap­pings of wealth and suc­cess, the opin­ions of oth­ers, all these were swept away, dis­missed, ignored. She was as uncon­cerned by the approval of oth­ers as by their dis­ap­proval.

See more of Leono­ra Carrington’s work here.

Lis­ten to Joan­na Moor­head inter­viewed about Leono­ra Car­ring­ton on the Great Women Artists Pod­cast (with the under­stand­ing that the sub­ject would have resist­ed that gen­der-based cat­e­go­riza­tion…). And read more about her at The New York­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The For­got­ten Women of Sur­re­al­ism: A Mag­i­cal, Short Ani­mat­ed Film

When The Sur­re­al­ists Expelled Sal­vador Dalí for “the Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian Fas­cism” (1934)

Three Female Artists Who Helped Cre­ate Abstract Expres­sion­ism: Lee Kras­ner, Elaine de Koon­ing & Helen Franken­thaler

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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