The 500-Year-Old Chinese “Bagel” That Helped Win a War

in Food & Drink, History | September 20th, 2023

As a gen­er­al rule, you can gain a decent under­stand­ing of any part of the world by eat­ing its region­al spe­cial­ties. This holds espe­cial­ly true in a coun­try like Chi­na, with its great size and deep his­to­ry. Trav­el to the south­east­ern province of Fujian, for instance, and you’ve got to try guang bing or “shiny bis­cuit,” the Chi­nese equiv­a­lent of the bagel. “With flour, dietary alka­li and salt, the cake, no big­ger than a palm, can be sim­ply cooked, and sells for about 1 yuan ($0.14) on the streets,” says Chi­na Dai­ly. “Locals love it, not only because of the crispy and salty taste, but also because of a leg­endary sto­ry.”

The dis­tinc­tive dish­es of bor­der or coastal areas always seem to have par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigu­ing his­to­ries, and so it is with the one behind Fujian’s guang bing. “Dur­ing the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), Gen­er­al Qi Jiguang brought an army to fight Japan­ese invaders in Fujian. Because of con­tin­u­ous rain, they could not cook for the sol­diers, so Qi cre­at­ed a kind of cake with a small hole in the mid­dle. Sol­diers could string the cakes togeth­er and car­ry them while fight­ing the ene­my.”

The result looks — and pre­sum­ably tastes — like a neck­lace of bagels, the prepa­ra­tion of which could be accom­plished in under­ground ovens that did­n’t give away the sol­diers’ posi­tion as clear­ly as open camp­fires would.

You can learn more about this bagel-pow­ered vic­to­ry of five cen­turies ago from the Great Big Sto­ry video at the top of the post, and more about the con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tion and sale of guang bing by a few ded­i­cat­ed bak­ers in the Atlas Obscu­ra video just above. Though plen­ty of Fujianese take them straight, “some like to add pork, or dried shrimp and Chi­nese chives in it; some fry it with chit­ter­lings, duck­’s giz­zard or green been; and some break it into pieces and boil it with soup.” Writ­ten records of the bagel as West­ern­ers know it date back to ear­ly sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Poland, with appar­ent pre­de­ces­sors seen in that coun­try as ear­ly as the late four­teenth cen­tu­ry. It may nat­u­ral­ly occur to an Amer­i­can trav­el­er in Chi­na to unite these two long but dis­tant culi­nary tra­di­tions, in which case he’d do well to pack his own with lox and cream cheese.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

When Ital­ian Futur­ists Declared War on Pas­ta (1930)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Phi­los­o­phy Explained with Donuts

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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Why the Leaning Tower of Pisa Still Hasn’t Fallen Over, Even After 650 Years

in Architecture, History | September 19th, 2023

The Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa has stood, in its dis­tinc­tive fash­ion, for six and a half cen­turies now. But it has­n’t always leaned at the same angle: to get the most dra­mat­ic view, the best time to go see it was the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, when its tilt had reached a full 5.5 degrees. Grant­ed, at that point — when by some reck­on­ings, the tow­er should no longer have been stand­ing at all — it was closed to the pub­lic, pre­sum­ably due to fears that the sheer weight of tourism would push it over the tip­ping point. The 1989 col­lapse of Pavi­a’s eleventh-cen­tu­ry Civic Tow­er also had some­thing to do with it: could­n’t some­thing be done to spare Pisa’s world-famous land­mark from a sim­i­lar fate?

Attempts to shore up the Lean­ing Tow­er up to that point had a check­ered his­to­ry, to put it mild­ly. Built on soft soil, it start­ed to lean in back in the twelfth cen­tu­ry, before its con­struc­tion was even com­plete. The process of that con­struc­tion, in the event, took near­ly 200 years to com­plete; dur­ing one decades-long pause dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly embat­tled peri­od for the Repub­lic of Pisa, the tow­er actu­al­ly set­tled enough to pre­vent its lat­er col­lapse, though it remained aslant. In the late thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, the best solu­tion avail­able for this con­di­tion was sim­ply to build the rest of its floors in a curved shape in com­pen­sa­tion.

For cen­turies after, the sight of the Lean­ing Tow­er tempt­ed gen­er­a­tions of struc­tur­al engi­neers to straight­en it out. It even tempt­ed non-engi­neers like Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, who in 1934 ordered large amounts of con­crete pumped into its foun­da­tion. Like most such oper­a­tions, it only made the tow­er lean more; only in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry did the tech­nol­o­gy come along to ana­lyze its foun­da­tions and the soil in which they were embed­ded clear­ly enough to devise an effec­tive solu­tion. This end­ed up involv­ing the removal of soil with a slant­ed drill from under the tow­er’s high­er end, which even­tu­al­ly brought it back to lean about four degrees, as it did near­ly two cen­turies ago. After sub­se­quent sta­bi­liza­tion work, it was guar­an­teed to remain upright for at least anoth­er two cen­turies.

You can learn more about the con­struc­tion and re-engi­neer­ing of the Lean­ing Tow­er in the videos above from TED-Ed and Dis­cov­ery UK. But you may still ask, why was it nev­er brought down by an earth­quake? “It turns out that the squishy soil at the structure’s base that caused its fetch­ing infir­mi­ty – the tow­er was tilt­ing by the time its sec­ond sto­ry was built in 1178 – con­tains the secret to its struc­tur­al resilience,” writes Joe Quirke at Glob­al Con­struc­tion Review. This means that “the soft­ness of the foun­da­tion soil cush­ions the tow­er from vibra­tions in such a way that the tow­er does not res­onate with earth­quake ground motion.” The very ele­ment that caused the tow­er to lean kept it from falling over, an irony to match the fact that such a seem­ing­ly mis­be­got­ten build­ing project has become one of Italy’s proud­est tourist attrac­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See Galileo’s Famous Grav­i­ty Exper­i­ment Per­formed in the World’s Largest Vac­u­um Cham­ber, and on the Moon

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

Why Hiroshi­ma, Despite Being Hit with the Atom­ic Bomb, Isn’t a Nuclear Waste­land Today

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 Only Color Picture of Tolstoy, Taken by Photography Pioneer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

in History, Literature, Photography | September 18th, 2023

The pho­to above depicts Lev Niko­layevich Tol­stoy, bet­ter known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world as Leo Tol­stoy. It dates from 1908, when he had near­ly all his work behind him: the major nov­els War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na, of course, but also the acclaimed late book The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His own death, in fact, lay not much more than two years before him. (See footage of the final days of his life here.) This did­n’t offer much of a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to the chemist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who had recent­ly devel­oped a pho­tog­ra­phy process that could cap­ture the great man of let­ters in “true col­or” — and who under­stood that such a por­trait would score a pro­mo­tion­al coup for his inno­va­tion.

“After many years of work, I have now achieved excel­lent results in pro­duc­ing accu­rate col­ors,” Prokudin-Gorsky wrote to Tol­stoy ear­ly that same year. “My col­ored pro­jec­tions are known in both Europe and in Rus­sia. Now that my method of pho­tog­ra­phy requires no more than 1 to 3 sec­onds, I will allow myself to ask your per­mis­sion to vis­it for one or two days (keep­ing in mind the state of your health and weath­er) in order to take sev­er­al col­or pho­tographs of you and your spouse.” After receiv­ing that per­mis­sion, Prokudin-Gorsky spent two days at Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s fam­i­ly estate, where he took col­or pic­tures of not just the man him­self but his work­ing quar­ters and the sur­round­ing grounds.

“A few months lat­er, in its August 1908 issue, The Pro­ceed­ings of the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety ran the fol­low­ing announce­ment describ­ing ‘the first Russ­ian col­or pho­to­por­trait,’ a col­or pho­to­graph of L. N. Tol­stoy,” accord­ing to Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal. The result­ing fame drew Prokudin-Gorsky an invi­ta­tion to show his work to Tsar Nicholas II, who sub­se­quent­ly fur­nished him with the resources to spend ten years pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ing Rus­sia in col­or. “To this day, nobody knows exact­ly what cam­era Prokudin-Gorsky used,” writes Kai Bernau at Words that Work, “but it was like­ly a large wood­en cam­era with a spe­cial hold­er for a slid­ing glass neg­a­tive plate, tak­ing three sequen­tial mono­chrome pho­tographs, each through a dif­fer­ent col­ored fil­ter.” This appears to be a tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dant of the process devel­oped in the ear­ly eigh­teen-six­ties by Scot­tish physi­cist-poet James Clerk Maxwell, cre­ator of the first col­or pho­to­graph in his­to­ry.

To view that pho­to­graph, Maxwell “pro­ject­ed the three slides using three dif­fer­ent pro­jec­tors, each affixed with the same col­or fil­ter that had been used to pro­duce the slide.” Prokudin-Gorsky, too, had to project his pho­tos, though he did lat­er make col­or prints; “he also pub­lished it, in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers, as a col­lectible post­card,” says Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal, adding that the ver­sion seen here is a scan of one such post­card. “How accu­rate­ly a lith­o­graphed repro­duc­tion like the one above of Tol­stoy rep­re­sents the ‘real’ col­ors of Prokudin-Gorsky’s orig­i­nal pro­ject­ed image is debat­able”; the basic tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fer­ence between “sub­trac­tive” lith­o­g­ra­phy and “addi­tive’ pro­jec­tion means that we can’t be see­ing quite the same pic­ture of Tol­stoy that the Tsar did — but then, it’s a good a like­ness of him as we’re ever going to get.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

The Very Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

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 Fully Functional Replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, the First Analog Computer from Ancient Greece, Re-Created in LEGO

in Design, History, Technology | September 18th, 2023

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Dis­cov­ered amidst the wreck­age of a sunken ship off the coast of Greece in 1901, the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) is often con­sid­ered the world’s old­est known ana­log com­put­er. Dat­ing back to approx­i­mate­ly 150–100 BCE, the device has a com­plex arrange­ment of pre­cise­ly cut gears, all designed to track celes­tial move­ments, pre­dict lunar and solar eclipses, and chart the posi­tions of plan­ets. It’s a tes­ta­ment to Ancient Greek engi­neer­ing. Above, you can see a ful­ly func­tion­al repli­ca of the Antikythera Mech­a­nism re-cre­at­ed in LEGO, cour­tesy of the sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature. As one YouTu­ber put it, “The device is unbe­liev­ably cool, and the video is mas­ter­ful­ly done.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 

How the World’s Old­est Com­put­er Worked: Recon­struct­ing the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism

Down­load Instruc­tions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Inter­net Archive

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

 

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The Earliest Surviving Photos of Iran: Photos from 1850s-60s Capture Everything from Grand Palaces to the Ruins of Persepolis

in History, Photography | September 13th, 2023

The tech­nol­o­gy and art of pho­tog­ra­phy emerged in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe. And so, when a part of the world out­side Europe was well-pho­tographed in those days, it tend­ed to be a trav­el­ing Euro­pean behind the cam­era. Take John Thom­son, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, for his pho­tos of Chi­na in the eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. Even before that, an Ital­ian colonel and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Lui­gi Pesce was hard at work doc­u­ment­ing a land geo­graph­i­cal­ly clos­er to Europe, but hard­ly less exot­ic in the Euro­pean world­view of the time: Per­sia, or what we would today call Iran.

“Accord­ing to schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, the first pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Iran was Jules Richard, a French­man who, as stat­ed in his diaries, arrived in Tehran in 1844,” says the web site of the Nation­al Muse­um of Asian Art.

“He served as the French lan­guage tutor of the Gul­saz fam­i­ly and took daguerreo­types of Moham­mad Shah (reigned 1834–48) and his son, the crown prince, Nasir al-Din Mirza.” Alas, these pho­tographs seem to be lost, much like most oth­ers tak­en before Pesce’s arrival in the coun­try in 1848, “dur­ing the reign of Nas­er al-Din Shah Qajar, to train Iran­ian infantry units.”

Pesce’s pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects includ­ed Nas­er al-Din him­self, pic­tures of whom appear in the online col­lec­tion of Pesce’s work at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. It was the Met that received a copy of the pho­to col­lec­tion Pesce pro­duced of Iran’s ancient mon­u­ments — prob­a­bly the very same copy that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er had orig­i­nal­ly sent to Prince William I, King of Prus­sia.

In those days, even such exalt­ed fig­ures had a great deal of curios­i­ty about far-flung realms, and before pho­tog­ra­phy, they had no eas­i­er way of see­ing what those realms real­ly looked like than mak­ing the ardu­ous jour­ney them­selves.

The sites cap­tured in this col­lec­tion include Toghrol Tow­er, the Tomb of Seeh‑i Mumin, and the Mosque of Nass­er-eddin Shah — as well as Pasar­gadae, Naqsh‑e Rus­tam, and Perse­po­lis, the famed cer­e­mo­ni­al cap­i­tal com­plex of the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which Pesce was the first to pho­to­graph. Or at least he was the first to suc­ceed in doing so, Nas­er al-Din hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly sent Richard off to make some daguerreo­types of Perse­po­lis that nev­er came out.

But even Pesce’s pho­tographs, ful­ly exe­cut­ed using just about the height of the tech­nol­o­gy at the time, no longer have the imme­di­a­cy they would have when Prince William gazed upon them; more than a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, they have a pati­na of his­tor­i­cal dis­tance that shades into unre­al­i­ty, mak­ing them feel not unlike ruins them­selves. You can also view more pho­tos on Google Arts and Cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the World’s Old­est Ani­ma­tion Made on a Vase in Iran 5,200 Years Ago

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of Rome (1841–1871)

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Free Online

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

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 to Make Medieval Mead: A 13th Century Recipe

in Food & Drink, History | September 12th, 2023

Read a sto­ry set in the Mid­dle Ages, Beowulf or any­thing more recent­ly writ­ten, and you’re like­ly to run across a ref­er­ence to mead, which seems often to have been imbibed hearti­ly in halls ded­i­cat­ed to that very activ­i­ty. The same goes for medieval-themed plays, movies, and even video games. Take Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la, described by Max Miller, host of Youtube chan­nel Tast­ing His­to­ry, as “a his­to­ry-based game of, like, my favorite time peri­od — Sax­ons and Vikings, you know, fight­in’ it out — so I’m assum­ing that there’s going to be mead in there some­where.” He uploaded the video, below, in the fall of 2020, just before that game’s release, but accord­ing to the Assas­s­in’s Creed Wiki, he was right: there is, indeed, mead in there.

Per­haps throw­ing back a dig­i­tal horn of mead in a video game has its sat­is­fac­tions, but sure­ly it would only make us curi­ous to taste the real thing. Hence Miller’s episode project of “mak­ing medieval mead like a viking,” which requires only three basic ingre­di­ents: water, hon­ey, and ale dregs or dry ale yeast. (The set of required tools is a bit more com­plex, involv­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ves­sels and, ide­al­ly, a “bub­bler” to let out the car­bon­a­tion.)

In it he con­sults a thir­teenth- or four­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­u­script (above) called the Trac­ta­tus de Mag­ne­tate et Oper­a­tionibus eius, which includes not just a let­ter on the work­ings of mag­nets — and “a uni­ver­si­ty hand­book on the the­o­ry of num­bers, pro­por­tions, and har­mo­ny” and “the sev­en signs of bad breed­ing; the sev­en signs of ele­gance” — but also “one of the old­est known sur­viv­ing Eng­lish mead recipes.”

“When you think of Sax­ons and Vikings, yes, you think of mead,” Miller says, “but mead actu­al­ly got its start way before that,” evi­denced in the alco­hol-and-hon­ey residue found on Chi­nese pot­tery dat­ing to 7000 BC and a writ­ten men­tion in the Indi­an Rigve­da. “I have tast­ed the sweet drink of life, know­ing that it inspires good thoughts and joy­ous expan­sive­ness to the extreme, that all the gods and all mor­tals seek it togeth­er,” says that sacred text. Even if Miller’s mead does­n’t make you feel like a god, it does have the virtue of requir­ing only a few days’ fer­men­ta­tion, as opposed to the tra­di­tion­al peri­od of months. Toward the video’s end, he men­tions hav­ing set one bot­tle aside to ripen fur­ther, and pos­si­bly to fea­ture in a lat­er episode. That was near­ly three years ago; today, Tast­ing His­to­ry fans can only spec­u­late as to what alco­holic Val­hal­la that brew has so far ascend­ed.

You can find the text of the medieval recipe below:

//ffor to make mede. Tak .i. galoun of fyne hony and to
þat .4. galouns of water and hete þat water til it be as
lengh þanne dis­solue þe hony in þe water. thanne set hem
ouer þe fier & let hem boyle and ever scomme it as longe as
any filthe rysith þer on. and þanne tak it doun of þe fier
and let it kole in oþer ves­selle til it be as kold as melk
whan it komith from þe koow. than tak drestis
of þe fynest ale or elles berme and kast in to þe water
& þe hony. and stere al wel to gedre but ferst loke er
þu put þy berme in. that þe water with þe hony be put
in a fayr stonde & þanne put in þy berme or elles þi
drestis for þat is best & stere wel to gedre/ and ley straw
or elles cloth­is a bowte þe ves­sel & a boue gif þe wedir
be kolde and so let it stande .3. dayes & .3. nygth­is gif
þe wedir be kold And gif it be hoot wedir .i. day and
.1. nyght is a nogh at þe fulle But ever after .i. hour or
.2. at þe moste a say þer of and gif þu wilt have it swete
tak it þe sonere from þe drestis & gif þu wilt have it scharpe
let it stand þe lenger þer with. Thanne draw it from
þe drestis as cler as þu may in to an oþer ves­sel clene & let
it stonde .1. nyght or .2. & þanne draw it in to an
oþer clene ves­sel & serve it forth // And gif þu wilt
make mede eglyn. tak sauge .ysope. ros­maryne. Egre-
moyne./ sax­e­frage. betayne./ cen­to­rye. lunarie/ hert-
is tonge./ Tyme./ maru­bi­um album. herbe jon./ of eche of
an hand­ful gif þu make .12. galouns and gif þu mak lesse
tak þe less of her­bis. and to .4. galouns of þi mater .i. galoun of
drestis.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Make Ancient Mesopotami­an Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brew­ing Method Put to the Test

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Medieval Tav­erns: Learn the His­to­ry of These Rough-and-Tum­ble Ances­tors of the Mod­ern Pub

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

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

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When Salvador Dalí Gave a Lecture at the Sorbonne & Arrived in a Rolls Royce Full of Cauliflower (1955)

in Art, History, Television | September 11th, 2023

Sal­vador Dalí led a long and event­ful life, so much so that cer­tain of its chap­ters out­landish enough to define any­one else’s exis­tence have by now been almost for­got­ten. “You’ve done some very mys­te­ri­ous things,” Dick Cavett says to Dalí on the 1971 broad­cast of his show above. “I don’t know if you like to be asked what they mean, but there was an inci­dent once where you appeared for a lec­ture in Paris, at the Sor­bonne, and you arrived in a Rolls-Royce filled with cau­li­flow­ers.” At that, the artist wastes no time launch­ing into an elab­o­rate, semi-intel­li­gi­ble expla­na­tion involv­ing rhi­noc­er­os horns and the gold­en ratio.

The inci­dent in ques­tion had occurred six­teen years ear­li­er, in 1955. “With bed­lam in his mind and a quaint pro­fu­sion of fresh cau­li­flower in his Rolls-Royce lim­ou­sine, Span­ish-born Sur­re­al­ist Painter Sal­vador Dalí arrived at Paris’ Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty to unbur­den him­self of some gib­ber­ish,” says the con­tem­po­rary notice in Time. “His sub­ject: ‘Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal Aspects of the Crit­i­cal Para­noiac Method.’ Some 2,000 ecsta­t­ic lis­ten­ers were soon shar­ing Sal­vador’s Dalir­i­um.”

To them he announced his dis­cov­ery that “ ‘every­thing departs from the rhi­noc­er­os horn! Every­thing departs from [Dutch Mas­ter] Jan Ver­meer’s The Lace­mak­er! Every­thing ends up in the cau­li­flower!’ The rub, apol­o­gized Dali, is that cau­li­flow­ers are too small to prove this the­o­ry con­clu­sive­ly.”

Near­ly sev­en decades lat­er, Honi Soit’s Nicholas Osiowy takes these ideas rather more seri­ous­ly than did the sneer­ing cor­re­spon­dent from Time. “Beneath the sim­ple shock val­ue and easy sur­re­al­ism, it becomes clear Dalí was onto some­thing; the hum­ble cau­li­flower is con­sid­ered one of the best exam­ples of the leg­endary gold­en ratio,” Osiowy writes. “Cau­li­flow­ers, rhi­noc­er­os­es and anteaters’ tongues were to Dali essen­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions of a glo­ri­ous shape; deserv­ing of an explic­it depic­tion in his The Sacra­ment of the Last Sup­per,” paint­ed in the year of his Sor­bonne lec­ture. “Shape, the idea of geom­e­try itself, is the unsung mag­ic of not just art but our entire cul­tur­al con­scious­ness.” Not that Dalí him­self would have copped to com­mu­ni­cat­ing that: “I am against any kind of mes­sage,” he insists in response to a ques­tion from fel­low Dick Cavett Show guest, who hap­pened to be silent-film icon Lil­lian Gish. The sev­en­ties did­n’t need the sur­re­al; they were the sur­re­al.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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

Sal­vador Dalí Reveals the Secrets of His Trade­mark Mous­tache (1954)

Q: Sal­vador Dalí, Are You a Crack­pot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

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 Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)

in History, Photography | September 8th, 2023

In 1903, the Romanovs, Russia’s last and longest-reign­ing roy­al fam­i­ly, held a lav­ish cos­tume ball. It was to be their final blowout, and per­haps also the “last great roy­al ball” in Europe, writes the Vin­tage News. The par­ty took place at the Win­ter Palace in St. Peters­burg, 14 years before Czar Nicholas II’s abdi­ca­tion, on the 290th anniver­sary of Romanov rule. The Czar invit­ed 390 guests and the ball ranged over two days of fes­tiv­i­ties, with elab­o­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry boyar cos­tumes, includ­ing “38 orig­i­nal roy­al items of the 17th cen­tu­ry from the armory in Moscow.”

“The first day fea­tured feast­ing and danc­ing,” notes Rus­sia Beyond, “and a masked ball was held on the sec­ond. Every­thing was cap­tured in a pho­to album that con­tin­ues to inspire artists to this day.” The entire Romanov fam­i­ly gath­ered for a pho­to­graph on the stair­case of the Her­mitage the­ater, the last time they would all be pho­tographed togeth­er.

It is like see­ing two dif­fer­ent dead worlds super­im­posed on each other—the Romanovs’ play­act­ing their begin­ning while stand­ing on the thresh­old of their last days.

With the irony of hind­sight, we will always look upon these poised aris­to­crats as doomed to vio­lent death and exile. In a mor­bid turn of mind, I can’t help think­ing of the baroque goth­ic of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ry about a doomed aris­toc­ra­cy who seal them­selves inside a cos­tume ball while a con­ta­gion rav­ages the world out­side: “The exter­nal world could take care of itself,” Poe’s nar­ra­tor says. “In the mean­time it was fol­ly to grieve or to think. The prince had pro­vid­ed all the appli­ances of plea­sure…. It was a volup­tuous scene, that mas­quer­ade.”

Maybe in our imag­i­na­tion, the Romanovs and their friends seem haunt­ed by the weight of suf­fer­ing out­side their palace walls, in both their coun­try and around Europe as the old order fell apart. Or per­haps they just look haunt­ed the way every­one does in pho­tographs from over 100 years ago. Does the col­oriz­ing of these pho­tos by Russ­ian artist Klimbim—who has done sim­i­lar work with images of WW2 sol­diers and por­traits of Russ­ian poets and writ­ers—make them less ghost­ly?

It puts flesh on the pale mono­chro­mat­ic faces, and gives the lav­ish cos­tum­ing and fur­ni­ture tex­ture and dimen­sion. Some of the images almost look like art nou­veau illus­tra­tions (and resem­ble those of some of the finest illus­tra­tors of Poe’s work) and the work of con­tem­po­rary painters like Gus­tav Klimt. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that unease lingers in the eyes of some subjects—Empress Alexan­dra Fedorov­na among them—a cer­tain vague and trou­bled appre­hen­sion.

In their book A Life­long Pas­sion, authors Andrei May­lu­nas and Sergei Miro­nenko quote the Grand Duke Alexan­der Mikhailovitch who remem­bered the event as “the last spec­tac­u­lar ball in the his­to­ry of the empire.” The Grand Duke also recalled that “a new and hos­tile Rus­sia glared through the large win­dows of the palace… while we danced, the work­ers were strik­ing and the clouds in the Far East were hang­ing dan­ger­ous­ly low.” As Rus­sia Beyond notes, soon after this cel­e­bra­tion, “The glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis marked the begin­ning of the end for the Russ­ian Empire, and the court ceased to hold balls.”

In 1904, the Rus­so-Japan­ese War began, a war Rus­sia was to lose the fol­low­ing year. Then the aristocracy’s pow­er was fur­ther weak­ened by the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1905, which Lenin would lat­er call the “Great Dress Rehearsal” for the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary takeover of 1917. While the aris­toc­ra­cy cos­tumed itself in the trap­pings of past glo­ry, armies amassed to force their reck­on­ing with the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Who knows what thoughts went through the mind of the tzar, tza­ri­na, and their heirs dur­ing those two days, and the minds of the almost 400 noble­men and women dressed in cos­tumes spe­cial­ly designed by artist Sergey Solomko, who drew from the work of sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans to make accu­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry recre­ations, while Peter Carl Fabergé chose the jew­el­ry, includ­ing, writes the Vin­tage News, the tzarina’s “pearls topped by a dia­mond and emer­ald-stud­ded crown” and an “enor­mous emer­ald” on her bro­cad­ed dress?

If the Romanovs had any inkling their almost 300-year dynasty was com­ing to its end and would take all of the Russ­ian aris­toc­ra­cy with it, they were, at least, deter­mined to go out with the high­est style; the fam­i­ly with “almost cer­tain­ly… the most abso­lutist pow­ers” would spare no expense to live in their past, no mat­ter what the future held for them. See the orig­i­nal, black and white pho­tos, includ­ing that last fam­i­ly por­trait, at His­to­ry Dai­ly, and see sev­er­al more col­orized images at the Vin­tage News.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Dos­toyevsky Got a Reprieve from the Czar’s Fir­ing Squad and Then Saved Charles Bukowski’s Life

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

 

 

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