Watch Animations Showing How Humans Migrated Across the World Over the Past 60,000 Years

in History | May 8th, 2024

Ex Africa sem­per aliq­uid novi. Attrib­uted to var­i­ous lumi­nar­ies of antiq­ui­ty, that say­ing (the prob­a­ble inspi­ra­tion for Isak Dine­sen’s poem “Ex Africa,” itself the prob­a­ble inspi­ra­tion for her mem­oir Out of Africa, which in turn was loose­ly adapt­ed into Syd­ney Pol­lack­’s Oscar-lav­ished film) trans­lates to “Out of Africa, always some­thing new.” But it’s per­haps more notable that out of Africa came some­thing quite old indeed: humankind itself, which over the past 60,000 years has been spread­ing ever far­ther across the world. You can see how it hap­pened in the Insid­er Sci­ence video above, which ani­mates those 60 mil­len­nia of glob­al migra­tion in less than two and a half min­utes.

For more detail, con­sid­er sup­ple­ment­ing that video with this one from GeoNo­mad, which tracks the out­ward expan­sion of human­i­ty through DNA research. “Sci­en­tif­ic research has shown that the 7.5 bil­lion peo­ple who occu­py the earth today are the descen­dants of a woman who lived 200,000 years ago,” explains its nar­ra­tion.

“Sci­en­tists call her Mito­chon­dr­i­al Eve,” in ref­er­ence to the DNA locat­ed in mito­chon­dria, a type of ener­gy-pro­duc­ing organelle known as “the pow­er­house of the cell.” Both male and female humans pos­sess mito­chon­dr­i­al DNA, of course, but only female mito­chon­dr­i­al DNA pass­es down to off­spring; hence our not talk­ing about a Mito­chon­dr­i­al Adam.

DNA map­ping has allowed us to trace the genet­ic and geo­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of the Mito­chon­dr­i­al Eve’s descen­dants. Some left for oth­er parts of Africa, and oth­ers for what we now know as the Mid­dle East and India. Whether by wan­der­lust or neces­si­ty — and giv­en the har­row­ing con­di­tions implied by their low sur­vival rate, the lat­ter prob­a­bly had more to do with it — cer­tain groups con­tin­ued on to mod­ern-day south­east Asia and Aus­tralia. It was through west­ern Asia that the first humans entered nean­derthal-pop­u­lat­ed Europe as ear­ly as 56,800 years ago. There, some 546 cen­turies lat­er, Ter­ence would write, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”: a dec­la­ra­tion per­haps made in the sus­pi­cion that, when you go back far enough, we’re all one big fam­i­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Study Finds That Humans Are 33,000 Years Old­er Than We Thought

How Humans Migrat­ed Across The Globe Over 200,000 Years: An Ani­mat­ed Look

Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in Six Min­utes

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

Hear What the Lan­guage Spo­ken by Our Ances­tors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sound­ed Like: A Recon­struc­tion of the Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean Lan­guage

Cats Migrat­ed to Europe 7,000 Years Ear­li­er Than Once Thought

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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A Bicycle Trip: Watch an Animation of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

in Film, History | May 7th, 2024

On August 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hof­mann was syn­the­siz­ing a new com­pound called lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide-25 when he got a cou­ple of drops on his fin­ger. The chem­i­cal, lat­er known world­wide as LSD, absorbed into his sys­tem, and, soon after, he expe­ri­enced an intense state of altered con­scious­ness. In oth­er words, he tripped.

Intrigued by the expe­ri­ence, Hof­mann dosed him­self with 250 micro­grams of LSD and then biked his way home through the streets of Basel, mak­ing him the first per­son ever to inten­tion­al­ly drop acid. The event was lat­er com­mem­o­rat­ed by psy­cho­nauts and LSD enthu­si­asts as “Bicy­cle Day.”

Ital­ian ani­ma­tors Loren­zo Veraci­ni, Nan­di­ni Nam­biar and Mar­co Avo­let­ta imag­ine what Hof­mann might have seen dur­ing his his­toric jour­ney in their 2008 short A Bicy­cle Trip.

The film shows Hof­mann rid­ing through the Swiss medieval town as he sees visions like a trail of flow­ers com­ing off a woman in red, cob­ble­stones com­ing alive and scur­ry­ing away, and a whole for­est becom­ing trans­par­ent before the mar­veling scientist’s eyes. The film also shows Hof­mann slam­ming into a fence, illus­trat­ing why it’s nev­er a good idea to dri­ve under the influ­ence of hal­lu­cino­gens.

After his ear­ly exper­i­ments, Albert Hof­mann became con­vinced that LSD is not only a pow­er­ful poten­tial treat­ment for the men­tal­ly ill but also a valu­able bridge between the spir­i­tu­al and the sci­en­tif­ic. He called the sub­stance “med­i­cine for the soul.”

If you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the tur­bu­lent his­to­ry of the drug, check out below the 2002 doc­u­men­tary Hofmann’s Potion, by Cana­di­an film­mak­er Con­nie Lit­tle­field, which traces Hofmann’s inven­tion from being a promis­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ment, to coun­ter­cul­ture sym­bol, to banned sub­stance. The 56-minute doc fea­tures footage and inter­views with such psy­che­del­ic lumi­nar­ies as Aldous Hux­ley, Stanislav Grof, Richard Alpert (AKA Ram Dass) along with Hof­mann him­self.

Hof­mann was always uncom­fort­able with the casu­al way the ‘60s coun­ter­cul­ture used his inven­tion. “[LSD] is not just fun,” he says in Littlefield’s movie.  “It is a very seri­ous exper­i­ment.”

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her at @jonccrow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

Take a Trip to the LSD Muse­um, the Largest Col­lec­tion of “Blot­ter Art” in the World

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Download 131,000 Historic Maps from the Huge David Rumsey Map Collection

in Archives, History, Maps | May 7th, 2024

The world has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the past 500 years, albeit not quite as dra­mat­i­cal­ly as how we see the world. That’s just what’s on dis­play at the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, whose more than 131,000 his­tor­i­cal maps and relat­ed images are avail­able to browse (or down­load) free online. Since we last fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture, the col­lec­tion has added at least 40,000 items to its dig­i­tal hold­ings, mak­ing it an even more valu­able resource for not just under­stand­ing how human­i­ty has viewed the world through­out the ages, but how we’ve imag­ined it — and, for that mat­ter, how we’ve imag­ined oth­er worlds from Mars to Nar­nia to Kryp­ton.

“Imag­i­nary maps” is just one of the cat­e­gories through which you can explore the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion. There are also tags for news­pa­per maps, time­lines, city maps, celes­tial maps, data visu­al­iza­tions, chil­dren’s maps, and more vari­eties besides.

If you’d pre­fer a more tra­di­tion­al form of orga­ni­za­tion, you can search for maps of spe­cif­ic geo­graph­i­cal regions: North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia, Africa, Aus­tralia, Antarc­ti­ca, the Pacif­ic, the Arc­tic, and of course, the world. If it’s the last item you’re inter­est­ed in, apart from the con­sid­er­able two-dimen­sion­al hold­ings, the inter­ac­tive globes con­sti­tute a gallery of their own, and there you can view ones made between the mid-six­teenth cen­tu­ry and just last year from every pos­si­ble angle.

Among the site’s new fea­tures is a “search by text-on-maps” fea­ture, which you can acti­vate by click­ing the “by Text on Maps” but­ton next to the search win­dow at the top of the page. This lets you com­pare and con­trast the ways par­tic­u­lar places have been labeled on the vari­ety of maps in the col­lec­tion: not just prop­er names like Cairo, Madrid, and Yosemite, but also more gen­er­al terms like “gold mine,” “light­house” or “drag­ons.” Arguably, we look at maps more often here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry than we ever did before, though sel­dom if ever do we depart from whichev­er map­ping app we hap­pen to keep on our phones. It’s worth step­ping back in car­to­graph­i­cal time to remem­ber that there were once as many ways of under­stand­ing the world as there were depic­tions of it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Oculi Mun­di: A Beau­ti­ful Online Archive of 130 Ancient Maps, Atlases & Globes

40,000 Ear­ly Mod­ern Maps Are Now Freely Avail­able Online (Cour­tesy of the British Library)

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

An Archive of 800+ Imag­i­na­tive Pro­pa­gan­da Maps Designed to Shape Opin­ions & Beliefs: Enter Cornell’s Per­sua­sive Maps Col­lec­tion

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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High-Tech Analysis of Ancient Scroll Reveals Plato’s Burial Site and Final Hours

in History, Philosophy, Technology | May 3rd, 2024

Even if you can name only one ancient Greek, you can name Pla­to. You can also prob­a­bly say at least a lit­tle about him, if only some of the things human­i­ty has known since antiq­ui­ty. Until recent­ly, of course, that qual­i­fi­ca­tion would have been redun­dant. But now, thanks to an ongo­ing high-tech push to read hereto­fore inac­ces­si­ble ancient doc­u­ments, we’re wit­ness­ing the emer­gence of new knowl­edge about that most famous of all Greek philoso­phers — or at least one of the most famous Greek philoso­phers, matched in renown only by his teacher Socrates and his stu­dent Aris­to­tle.

Up until now, we’ve only had a gen­er­al idea of where Pla­to was interred after his death in 348 BC. But “thanks to an ancient text and spe­cial­ized scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Son­ja Ander­son, “researchers say they have solved the mys­tery of Plato’s bur­ial place: The Greek philoso­pher was interred in the gar­den of his Athens acad­e­my, where he once tutored a young Aris­to­tle.” This loca­tion was record­ed about two mil­len­nia ago “on a papyrus scroll housed in the Roman city of Her­cu­la­neum,” which was entombed along with Pom­peii by the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD.

Like much else in those cities, this scroll was pre­served for cen­turies under lay­ers of ash. It was just one of many scrolls dis­cov­ered in a vil­la, which may have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, back in 1750. But for long there­after, those scrolls were more or less unread­able, hav­ing been so thor­ough­ly charred by the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius that they crum­bled to dust at any attempt to unroll them. But “recent break­throughs have allowed researchers to read the frag­ile texts with­out touch­ing them”: wit­ness the projects involv­ing par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tors and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

The research project that has deci­phered part of this scroll, a text by the philoso­pher Philode­mus called the His­to­ry of the Acad­e­my — that is, Pla­to’s acad­e­my in Athens — is led by Uni­ver­si­ty of Pisa pro­fes­sor of papy­rol­o­gy Graziano Ranoc­chia. Using a “bion­ic eye” tech­nique involv­ing infrared and X‑ray scan­ners, he and his team have also dis­cov­ered evi­dence that Pla­to did­n’t much like the music played at his deathbed by a Thra­cian slave girl. “Despite bat­tling a fever and being on the brink of death,” writes the Guardian’s Loren­zo Ton­do, he “retained enough lucid­i­ty to cri­tique the musi­cian for her lack of rhythm.” Even if you know lit­tle about Pla­to, you’re prob­a­bly not sur­prised to hear that he was point­ing out the dif­fer­ence between the real and the ide­al up until the very end.

via Smith­son­ian Mag

Relat­ed con­tent:

Researchers Use AI to Decode the First Word on an Ancient Scroll Burned by Vesu­vius

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Par­ti­cle Accel­er­a­tors, 3D Mod­el­ing & Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

2,000-Year-Old Man­u­script of the Ten Com­mand­ments Gets Dig­i­tized: See/Download “Nash Papyrus” in High Res­o­lu­tion

Orson Welles Nar­rates an Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

Plato’s Dia­logue Gor­gias Gets Adapt­ed into a Short Avant-Garde Film

How 99% of Ancient Lit­er­a­ture Was Lost

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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A 5‑Hour Journey Through North Korean Entertainment: Propaganda Films, Kids’ Cartoons, Sketch Comedy & More

in Film, History | May 1st, 2024

Over the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, South Korea became rich, and in the first decades of the twen­ty-first, it’s become a glob­al cul­tur­al super­pow­er. The same can’t be said for North Korea: after a rel­a­tive­ly strong start in the nine­teen-fifties and six­ties, its econ­o­my foundered, and in the famine-strick­en mid-nineties it prac­ti­cal­ly col­lapsed. For that and oth­er rea­sons, the coun­try has nev­er been in a posi­tion to send forth its own BTS, Squid Game, Par­a­site, or “Gang­nam Style.” But what­ev­er the dif­fi­cul­ties at home, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Korea has always man­aged to pro­duce enter­tain­ment for con­sump­tion by its own peo­ple: movies, ani­ma­tion, tele­vi­sion shows, music, and more besides.

Then again, “enter­tain­ment” may be too strong a word. A few years ago, attend­ing a North-South cul­tur­al exchange group in Seoul, where I live, I had the chance to watch a recent movie called 우리집 이야기, or The Sto­ry of Our Home. It told its sim­ple tale of a fam­i­ly of orphans try­ing to sur­vive on their own with sur­pris­ing tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence — at least com­pared to what I’d expect­ed — albeit with what I remem­ber as occa­sion­al jar­ring laps­es into flat pro­pa­gan­da shots, stern nation­al anthem, flap­ping red-starred flag and all. Accord­ing to “Enter­tain­ment Made By North Korea,” the new five-and-a-half-hour analy­sis from Youtu­ber Paper Will, that sort of thing is par for the course.

In order to put North Kore­an enter­tain­ment in its prop­er con­text, the video begins before there was a North Korea, describ­ing the films made on the Japan­ese-occu­pied Kore­an penin­su­la between 1910 and the end of the Sec­ond World War. Though the expul­sion of the defeat­ed Japan end­ed colo­nial rule in Korea, many more hard­ships would vis­it both sides of the new­ly divid­ed coun­try. But even dur­ing their strug­gles to devel­op, the rulers of both the devel­op­ing North and South Korea under­stood the poten­tial of cin­e­ma to influ­ence their peo­ples’ atti­tudes and per­cep­tions. Watched today, these pic­tures reveal a great deal about the coun­tries’ pri­or­i­ties. For the DPRK, those pri­or­i­ties includ­ed the encour­age­ment of unstint­ing hard work and alle­giance to the state, embod­ied by its founder Kim Il Sung.

Lat­er, in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, came some diver­si­fi­ca­tion of both media and mes­sage, as ser­i­al dra­mas and chil­dren’s car­toons, some of them craft­ed with gen­uine skill and charm, dis­cour­aged indi­vid­u­al­is­tic atti­tudes, sym­pa­thy for for­eign­ers, and thoughts of defec­tion. Under Kim Il Sung’s movie-lov­ing Kim Jong Il, North Kore­an films became more watch­able, thanks in large part to his kid­nap­ping and forcibly employ­ing South Kore­an direc­tor Shin Sang-ok. Under his son Kim Jong Un, the coun­try’s pop­u­lar cul­ture has flirt­ed with the very out­er reach­es of cool, assem­bling the likes of instru­ment-play­ing girl-group Moran­bong. Nev­er­the­less, in North Korea, enter­tain­ment con­tin­ues first and fore­most to enforce the pre­ferred ide­ol­o­gy of the rul­ing class, some­thing that — per­ish the thought — could sure­ly nev­er hap­pen in the West.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read Dic­ta­tor Kim Jong-il’s Writ­ings on Cin­e­ma, Art & Opera: Cour­tesy of North Korea’s Free E‑Library

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Per­formed by North Kore­an Kids with Accor­dions

How to Defeat the US with Math: An Ani­mat­ed North Kore­an Pro­pa­gan­da Film for Kids

North Korea’s Cin­e­ma of Dreams

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

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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André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto Turns 100 This Year

in Art, History | April 30th, 2024

Peo­ple don’t seem to write a lot of man­i­festos these days. Or if they do write man­i­festos, they don’t make the impact that they would have a cen­tu­ry ago. In fact, this year marks the hun­dredth anniver­sary of the Man­i­feste du sur­réal­isme, or Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo, one of the most famous such doc­u­ments. Or rather, it was two of the most famous such doc­u­ments, each of them writ­ten by a dif­fer­ent poet. On Octo­ber 1, 1924, Yvan Goll pub­lished a man­i­festo in the name of the sur­re­al­ist artists who looked to him as a leader (includ­ing Dada Man­i­festo author Tris­tan Tzara). Two weeks lat­er, André Bre­ton pub­lished a man­i­festo — the first of three — rep­re­sent­ing his own, dis­tinct, group of sur­re­al­ists with the very same title.

Though Goll may have beat­en him to the punch, we can safe­ly say, at a dis­tance of one hun­dred years, that Bre­ton wrote the more endur­ing man­i­festo. You can read it online in the orig­i­nal French as well as in Eng­lish trans­la­tion, but before you do, con­sid­er watch­ing this short France 24 Eng­lish doc­u­men­tary on its impor­tance, as well as that of the sur­re­al­ist art move­ment that it set off.

“There’s day-to-day real­i­ty, and then there’s supe­ri­or real­i­ty,” says its nar­ra­tor. “That’s what André Bre­ton’s Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo was aim­ing for: an artis­tic and spir­i­tu­al rev­o­lu­tion” dri­ven by the rejec­tion of “rea­son, log­ic, and even lan­guage, all of which its acolytes believed obscured deep­er, more mys­ti­cal truths.”

“The real­is­tic atti­tude, inspired by pos­i­tivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Ana­tole France, clear­ly seems to me to be hos­tile to any intel­lec­tu­al or moral advance­ment,” the trained doc­tor Bre­ton declares in the man­i­festo. “I loathe it, for it is made up of medi­oc­rity, hate, and dull con­ceit. It is this atti­tude which today gives birth to these ridicu­lous books, these insult­ing plays.” He might well have also seen it as giv­ing rise to events like the First World War, whose grind­ing sense­less­ness he wit­nessed work­ing in a neu­ro­log­i­cal ward and car­ry­ing stretch­ers off the bat­tle­field. It was these expe­ri­ences that direct­ly or indi­rect­ly inspired a wave of avant-garde twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry art, more than a few pieces of which star­tle us even today — which is say­ing some­thing, giv­en our dai­ly diet of absur­di­ties in twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Europe After the Rain: Watch the Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary on the Two Great Art Move­ments, Dada & Sur­re­al­ism (1978)

A Brief, Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sur­re­al­ism: A Primer by Doc­tor Who Star Peter Capal­di

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

Read and Hear Tris­tan Tzara’s “Dada Man­i­festo,” the Avant-Garde Doc­u­ment Pub­lished 100 Years Ago (March 23, 1918)

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 Édouard Manet Became “the Father of Impressionism” with the Scandalous Panting, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863)

in Art, History | April 29th, 2024

Édouard Manet’s Le Déje­uner sur l’herbe (1863) caused quite a stir when it made its pub­lic debut in 1863. Today, we might assume that the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the paint­ing had to do with its con­tain­ing a nude woman. But, in fact, it does not con­tain a nude woman — at least accord­ing to the analy­sis pre­sent­ed by gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne in his new Great Art Explained video above. “The woman in this paint­ing is not nude,” he explains. “She is naked.” Where­as “the nude is posed, per­fect, ide­al­ized, the naked is just some­one with no clothes on,” and, in this par­tic­u­lar work, her faint­ly accusato­ry expres­sion seems to be ask­ing us, “What are you look­ing at?”

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Manet’s even more scan­dalous Olympia, which was first exhib­it­ed in 1865. In both that paint­ing and Déje­uner, the woman is based on the same real per­son: Vic­torine Meurent, whom Manet used more fre­quent­ly than any oth­er mod­el.

“A respect­ed artist in her own right,” Meurent also “exhib­it­ed at the Paris Salon six times, and was induct­ed into the pres­ti­gious Société des Artistes Français in 1903.” That she got on that path after a work­ing-class upbring­ing “shows a for­ti­tude of mind and a strength of char­ac­ter that Manet need­ed for Déje­uner.” But what­ev­er per­son­al­i­ty she exud­ed, her non-ide­al­ized nudi­ty, or rather naked­ness, could­n’t have changed art by itself.

Manet gave Meuren­t’s exposed body an artis­tic con­text, and a max­i­mal­ly provoca­tive one at that, by putting it on a large can­vas “nor­mal­ly reserved for his­tor­i­cal, reli­gious, and mytho­log­i­cal sub­jects” and mak­ing choic­es — the vis­i­ble brush­strokes, the stage-like back­ground, the obvi­ous clas­si­cal allu­sions in a clear­ly mod­ern set­ting — that delib­er­ate­ly empha­size “the arti­fi­cial con­struc­tion of the paint­ing, and paint­ing in gen­er­al.” What under­scores all this, of course, is that the men sit­ting with her all have their high­ly eigh­teen-six­ties-look­ing clothes on. Manet may have changed the rules, open­ing the door for Impres­sion­ism, but he still reminds us how much of art’s pow­er, what­ev­er the peri­od or move­ment, comes from sheer con­trast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

A Quick Six Minute Jour­ney Through Mod­ern Art: How You Get from Manet’s 1862 Paint­ing The Lun­cheon on the Grass to Jack­son Pol­lock­’s 1950s Drip Paint­ings

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 90,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

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

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

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A Guided Tour of the Largest Handmade Model of Imperial Rome: Discover the 20x20 Meter Model Created During the 1930s

in Architecture, History | April 23rd, 2024

At the moment, you can’t see the largest, most detailed hand­made mod­el of Impe­r­i­al Rome for your­self. That’s because the Museo del­la Civiltà Romana, the insti­tu­tion that hous­es it, has been closed for ren­o­va­tions since 2014. But you can get a guid­ed tour of “Il Plas­ti­co,” as this grand Rome-in-minia­ture is known, through the new Ancient Rome Live video above. “The archae­ol­o­gist and archi­tect Ita­lo Gis­mon­di cre­at­ed this amaz­ing mod­el,” explains host Dar­ius Arya, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his tour of Pom­peii. Work­ing at a 1:250 scale, Gis­mon­di built most of Il Plas­ti­co between 1933 and 1937, with lat­er expan­sions after its instal­la­tion in the Museo del­la Civiltà Romana.

Archae­ol­o­gists and oth­er schol­ars have, of course, learned more about the Eter­nal City over the past nine decades, knowl­edge reflect­ed in reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed dig­i­tal mod­els like Rome Reborn. But none have showed Gis­mondi’s ded­i­ca­tion to painstak­ing man­u­al labor, which allowed him to craft prac­ti­cal­ly every then-known archi­tec­tur­al and infra­struc­tur­al fea­ture with­in the walls of Rome in the Con­stan­tin­ian age, from 306 to 337 AD.

Arya points out rec­og­niz­able land­marks like the Colos­se­um, the Forum, and the Pyra­mid of Ces­tius as well as bridges, riv­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions, aque­ducts, and even land­scap­ing details down to the lev­el of indi­vid­ual trees.

Even when the cam­era zooms way in, Gis­mondi’s Rome looks prac­ti­cal­ly hab­it­able (and indeed, it may appeal to some view­ers more than do the mod­ern Euro­pean cities that are its descen­dants). It’s no won­der that Rid­ley Scott, a direc­tor famous­ly sen­si­tive to visu­al impact, would use the mod­el in Glad­i­a­tor. And while a video tour like Arya’s pro­vides a clos­er-up view of many sec­tions of Il Plas­ti­co than one can get in per­son, the only way to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the sheer scale of the achieve­ment is to behold its phys­i­cal real­i­ty. Luck­i­ly, you should be able to do just that next year, when the Museo del­la Civiltà Romana is sched­uled to reopen at long last. But then, no more could Rome be built in a day than its muse­um could be ren­o­vat­ed in a mere decade.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Huge Scale Mod­el Show­ing Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

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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