Braque in Bulk: Costco Gets Back into the Fine Art Market

in Art, Business | October 10th, 2012

In 2006, Louis Knicker­bock­er, a meat dis­trib­u­tor from New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, bought a Picas­so draw­ing online. The price looked too good to be true, $39,999.99. But why have con­cerns when the piece was being sold by the rep­utable art deal­er, Cost­co. That’s right, I said, Cost­co! Said Knicker­bock­er: “They just sell the top qual­i­ty — what­ev­er you buy at Cost­co, whether it’s a wash­ing machine or a vac­u­um clean­er.”

The Picas­so draw­ing end­ed up falling under sus­pi­cion, and Cost­co exit­ed the fine art mar­ket. But now, six years lat­er, they’re back. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Cost­co recent­ly opened a Fine Art sec­tion on its web site and start­ed sell­ing lith­o­graphs by Braque, Matisse, and Warhol, most­ly in the $1,500 range. Per­haps because of The New York Times pub­lic­i­ty, these objets d’art are now all sold out.

The next time you’re fill­ing your cart with 10 pounds of cof­fee and 1728 bot­tles of water (you need to hydrate after all of that caf­feine, you know?), pay anoth­er vis­it to the Fine Art sec­tion. They may have the deal of the cen­tu­ry wait­ing for you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Leonard Cohen Plays a Spellbinding Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival

in Film, Music | October 10th, 2012

Jimi Hen­drix was a tough act to fol­low under the best of cir­cum­stances. But to fol­low him onstage after mid­night in front of a crowd of more than half a mil­lion peo­ple that had been set­ting fires and throw­ing bot­tles at the stage seemed like an impos­si­ble task for a poet with an acoustic gui­tar and a gen­tle band of back­ing musi­cians. Yet Leonard Cohen turned the volatile sit­u­a­tion at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val into one of the most mag­i­cal per­for­mances of his career.

A lit­tle piece of land four miles off the south­ern coast of Eng­land, the Isle of Wight was host to three great music fes­ti­vals from 1968 to 1970. The last of these was some­thing of a cross between Wood­stock and Alta­mont: flower pow­er with an under­cur­rent of men­ace. Like the Wood­stock fes­ti­val the year before, the 1970 Isle of Wight fes­ti­val was crashed by thou­sands of unpay­ing fans.

Head­lin­ers for the five-day fes­ti­val includ­ed Hen­drix, Miles Davis, the Who and the Doors. By the time Cohen appeared–near the very end of the rainy final night–the atmos­phere had become dan­ger­ous. Dur­ing the Hen­dix per­for­mance, some­one threw a flare onto the top of the stage and set it on fire. Jour­nal­ist Sylvie Sim­mons describes the scene in her new book, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen:

Ten­sion had been ris­ing at the fes­ti­val for days. The pro­mot­ers had expect­ed a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand peo­ple but half a mil­lion more turned up, many with no inten­tion of pay­ing. Even after the pro­mot­ers were forced to declare it a free fes­ti­val, ill will remained. Dur­ing a set by Kris Kristof­fer­son, bot­tles were thrown and he was booed off­stage. “They were boo­ing every­body,” says Kristof­fer­son. “Except Leonard Cohen.”

As Cohen and his pro­duc­er and key­board play­er Bob John­ston stood watch­ing the may­hem dur­ing Hen­drix’s per­for­mance, Cohen stayed calm. “Leonard was­n’t wor­ried,” John­ston told Sim­mons. “Hen­drix did­n’t care and nei­ther did we. Leonard was always com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to any­thing like that. The only thing that upset him was when they told him that they did­n’t have a piano or an organ–I don’t know, some­one had set them on fire and pushed them off the stage–so I could­n’t play with him. Leonard said, ‘I’ll be in the trail­er tak­ing a nap; come and get me when you’ve found a piano and an organ.’ ”

Accord­ing to most accounts it was a lit­tle after two o’clock in the morn­ing when Cohen took the stage. His back­up band, or “Army,” includ­ed John­ston on key­boards, Char­lie Daniels on fid­dle and bass, Ron Cor­nelius on lead gui­tar and Elkin “Bub­ba” Fowler on ban­jo and bass, along with back­up singers Cor­lynn Han­ney, Susan Mus­man­no and Don­na Wash­burn. Cohen had a glazed-over look in his eyes through­out the per­for­mance, the result of his tak­ing the seda­tive Man­drax. “He was calm because of the Man­drax,” John­ston told Sim­mons. “That’s what saved the show and saved the fes­ti­val. It was the mid­dle of the night, all those peo­ple had been sit­ting out there in the rain, after they’d set fire to Hen­drix’s stage, and nobody had slept for days.”

The his­toric per­for­mance was cap­tured on film by Mur­ray Lern­er, who released it in 2009 as Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970. The film (above) includes the fol­low­ing songs from the show:

  1. Dia­monds in the Mine
  2. Famous Blue Rain­coat
  3. Bird on the Wire
  4. One of us Can­not be Wrong
  5. The Stranger Song
  6. Tonight Will be Fine
  7. Hey, That’s No Way to Say Good­bye
  8. Sing Anoth­er Song Boys
  9. Suzanne
  10. The Par­ti­san
  11. Seems So Long Ago, Nan­cy
  12. So Long, Mar­i­anne (dur­ing clos­ing cred­its)

Per­haps the most mov­ing moment in the film comes at the begin­ning, when Cohen brings the mas­sive crowd togeth­er by ask­ing a favor: “Can I ask each of you to light a match,” Cohen says, “so I can see where you all are?” As Sim­mons puts it, “Leonard talked to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple he could not see as if they were sit­ting togeth­er in a small dark room.” Or as film­mak­er Lern­er lat­er said, “He mes­mer­ized them. And I got mes­mer­ized also.” Sum­ming up the con­cert and the film, Sim­mons writes: “It was a bril­liant per­for­mance. Lern­er’s cam­eras cap­tured Cohen’s com­mand­ing pres­ence, hyp­no­tist’s charm, and an inti­ma­cy that would seem unfea­si­ble in such a vast, inhos­pitable space.”

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Hear Paul Auster Read the Entirety of The Red Notebook, an Early Collection of Stories

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2012

Nov­el­ist, screen­writer, poet, and trans­la­tor Paul Auster has carved out a place for him­self over the past sev­er­al decades as a decid­ed­ly writer’s writer, a Brook­lyn Borges of a sort, whose metafic­tion­al tales are often intri­cate­ly con­struct­ed sto­ries with­in sto­ries (with­in sto­ries). Auster is also known for writ­ing and co-direct­ing (with Wayne Wang) 1995 sleep­er indie hit Smoke, a film about the denizens of a Brook­lyn cig­ar shop. As with much of Auster’s fic­tion, a cen­tral char­ac­ter in Smoke is a bro­ken-heart­ed, soli­tary writer (played by William Hurt). Auster’s 2002 nov­el The Book of Illu­sions is cen­tered around a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter, a writer deep in mourn­ing. On April 11, 2001, Auster stopped by the Kel­ly Writ­ers House at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to give a read­ing from The Book of Illu­sions. Below, you can hear him read the first two pages of the nov­el:

The com­plete UPenn event, includ­ing intro­duc­tion and a lengthy read­ing from the sec­ond chap­ter is avail­able here.

Penn Sound, which hosts the above read­ing, also has audio of Auster read­ing the entire­ly of an ear­ly col­lec­tion of sto­ries, The Red Note­book: True Sto­ries, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo in April of 1995. Auster has argued that fic­tion is “mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less,” but valu­able nonethe­less for the joy it brings both writ­ers and read­ers. In The Red Note­book he nar­rates what he claims are true events from his life. The col­lec­tion is divid­ed into four short sec­tions: “The Red Note­book,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Acci­dent Report,” and, the final nar­ra­tive, “Why Write?” His answers to this final question–whether they’re real­ly “true” or just mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less inventions–show us sur­pris­ing coin­ci­dences and odd pat­terns in the seem­ing­ly ran­dom busi­ness of dai­ly life. Lis­ten to the first install­ment below. You can find the com­plete audio, with intro­duc­tion by Robert Cree­ley, here.

Penn Sound is a “cen­ter for pro­grams in con­tem­po­rary writ­ing” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and fea­tures a large archive of record­ed audio and video read­ings and dis­cus­sions on con­tem­po­rary poet­ry, fic­tion, and more.

The read­ing of The Red Note­book appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Samuel Beckett Directs His Absurdist Play Waiting for Godot (1985)

in Literature, Theatre | October 10th, 2012

Samuel Beck­et­t’s absur­dist play, Wait­ing for Godot, pre­miered in Paris in 1953, at the Théâtre de Baby­lone, under the direc­tion of French actor, Roger Blin. Many oth­er direc­tors staged the play in the years to come, each time inter­pret­ing it in their own way. All the while, Beck­ett com­plained that the play was being sub­ject­ed to “end­less mis­un­der­stand­ing.” How­ev­er, when an actor, Peter Woodthrope, once asked him to explain what Godot is all about, Beck­ett answered quixot­i­cal­ly: “It’s all sym­bio­sis, Peter; it’s sym­bio­sis.” Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Sam.

Beck­ett nev­er gave a clear expla­na­tion. But per­haps he offered up some­thing bet­ter. In 1985, Beck­ett direct­ed three of his plays — Wait­ing for Godot, Krap­p’s Last Tape and Endgame — as part of a pro­duc­tion called “Beck­ett Directs Beck­ett.” The plays per­formed by the San Quentin Play­ers toured Europe and Asia with much fan­fare, and with Beck­ett exert­ing direc­to­r­i­al con­trol. And do keep this in mind. Beck­ett paces things slow­ly. So you won’t hear your first sound until the 2:00 mark.

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The Quantum Physics of Harry Potter, Broken Down By a Physicist and a Magician

in Books, Science | October 10th, 2012

If you con­sid­er your­self a Har­ry Pot­ter fan, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly read read all sev­en of J.K. Rowl­ing’s nov­els and watched all eight of their film adap­ta­tions. The ques­tion of where to go from there has many pos­si­ble answers. Some true believ­ers plunge straight into, and often con­tribute to, the vast body of unof­fi­cial read­ing mate­r­i­al that is Har­ry Pot­ter fan fic­tion. Oth­ers turn to the schol­ar­ship sur­round­ing Pot­ter and his world, a field that includes such stud­ies of vary­ing seri­ous­ness as The Sci­ence of Har­ry Pot­ter, Har­ry Pot­ter and Phi­los­o­phy, The Values of Har­ry Pot­ter, Look­ing for God in Har­ry Pot­ter, and If Har­ry Pot­ter Ran Gen­er­al Elec­tric. In the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to lec­ture above, quan­tum physi­cist Kris­ter Shalm explains, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, the quan­tum physics of Har­ry Pot­ter.

Shalm thus faces two tasks: to explain the rel­e­vant facts of quan­tum physics in a man­ner under­stand­able to the lay­man, and the even more for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge of relat­ing the rel­e­vant facts of Har­ry pot­ter in a way that won’t com­plete­ly alien­ate the unini­ti­at­ed. But pulling this off in an enter­tain­ing fash­ion would seem to land right in the wheel­house of a man who bills him­self as “The Danc­ing Physi­cist” and states his mis­sion to “make some of the mind-bog­gling con­cepts in quan­tum mechan­ics more approach­able” by col­lab­o­rat­ing with “a magi­cian, musi­cians, and dancers.” That magi­cian, a cer­tain Dan Trom­mater, turns up in this lec­ture to com­ple­ment Shalm’s phys­i­cal angle with a mag­i­cal one. Togeth­er, they illus­trate for us how Dra­co Mal­foy’s tele­por­ta­tion tech­niques resem­ble what quan­tum physi­cists do in the lab on a reg­u­lar basis, and what rel­e­vance Schrödinger’s famous cat has to that fate­ful prophe­cy that either Har­ry Pot­ter or Lord Volde­mort would ulti­mate­ly die. (Luck­i­ly for me, Shalm does­n’t reveal which one; I haven’t read the books myself yet!)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Lennon’s Victorian Circus Poster Lovingly Remade by Artists and Engravers

in Art, Music | October 9th, 2012

This won­drous lit­tle video is, as they say, guar­an­teed to raise a smile. Accord­ing to Bea­t­les leg­end, John Lennon was shoot­ing a pro­mo­tion­al film for “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” in ear­ly 1967 when he passed by an antique shop and dis­cov­ered a poster from 1843 trum­pet­ing the arrival of Pablo Fan­que’s Cir­cus. The cir­cus, the poster pro­claimed, was to be “for the ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite.” Intrigued, Lennon bought the quirky Vic­to­ri­an poster, hung it on his wall at home, and then pro­ceed­ed to write “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite!,” the sev­enth track on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band.

Almost 45 years lat­er, Bea­t­les fans still can’t shake the poster from their minds. And, just recent­ly, Peter Dean and a team of artists decid­ed to recre­ate the poster using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of wood engrav­ing and let­ter­press print­ing. They share their expe­ri­ence in the ele­gant video above. Your can buy your own copy of the lim­it­ed edi­tion print here.

via Kot­tke

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

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

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

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Orson Welles Remembers his Stormy Friendship with Ernest Hemingway

in Film, Literature | October 9th, 2012

In this fas­ci­nat­ing clip from a 1974 inter­view by Michael Parkin­son of the BBC, Orson Welles describes his “very strange rela­tion­ship” with Ernest Hem­ing­way, cast­ing him­self in a sto­ry of their first meet­ing as a torero opposed to Hem­ing­way’s bull.

The two men met in New York in the ear­ly sum­mer of 1937, when Welles was asked to nar­rate The Span­ish Earth, a doc­u­men­tary orga­nized by Hem­ing­way and oth­er artists to pro­mote the Rebubli­can cause dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War. Welles was a great admir­er of Hem­ing­way, who was 16 years his senior. When he was 18 years old he went to Spain to study bull­fight­ing after read­ing Hem­ing­way’s Death in the After­noon. But despite some sim­i­lar­i­ties, the two men were poles apart, as Welles’ anec­dote of their first meet­ing sug­gests.

The brava­do in Welles’s sto­ry may have some­thing to do with a need to com­pen­sate for his own injured pride over the recep­tion of his nar­ra­tion for The Span­ish Earth.  Under pres­sure from Lil­lian Hell­man and oth­ers in the project, who com­plained that Welles’ per­for­mance was too the­atri­cal for the doc­u­men­tary, direc­tor Joris Ivens decid­ed to scrap it and asked Hem­ing­way to come back in to read his own words. Welles lat­er drew on the inci­dent in the pro­jec­tion room as inspi­ra­tion for his script “The Sacred Beasts,” about the rela­tion­ship between a young bull­fight­er and an old­er film direc­tor. The script was even­tu­al­ly devel­oped into The Oth­er Side of the Wind, an unfin­ished film star­ring John Hus­ton as the Hem­ing­way-inspired film­mak­er Jake Han­naford. Welles was work­ing on the project when the inter­view with Parkin­son took place. You can see the com­plete inter­view on YouTube, and read a tran­script at Wellesnet.

via 3 Quarks Dai­ly

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Span­ish Earth, Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ernest Hem­ing­way

Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death

Orson Welles’s Last Inter­view, Two Hours Before His Death

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A Short History of Romanian Computing: From 1961 to 1989

in History, Technology | October 9th, 2012

The “Politehni­ca” Uni­ver­si­ty of Timisoara, Roma­nia, an engi­neer­ing school estab­lished in 1920, takes its mot­to from Fer­di­nand I: “It’s not the walls that make a school, but the spir­it liv­ing inside.” While the walls of “Politehni­ca” are as state­ly as any­one could ask for, what’s inside, accord­ing to the short doc­u­men­tary above, is also pret­ty spiffy—the spir­it of com­put­ing his­to­ry, Roman­ian style. With a score that sounds a lit­tle like an out­take from Logan’s Run, this video gives us a tour of the university’s Muse­um of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, opened Novem­ber 16, 2001.

We meet a num­ber of ancient machines, many of which were respon­si­ble for design­ing build­ings and hydro­elec­tric dams and some of which still func­tion. There’s the Mecipt 1, a mas­sive 1961 main­frame sys­tem cov­ered in dials, switch­es, and rout­ing sys­tems and look­ing some­what more indus­tri­al than the machines built by Fairchild and IBM at the same time. Next comes Mecipt 2 in 1963, which was in oper­a­tion for six­teen years and did much of the build­ing design. The micro­com­put­ers TIMS and MS-100 resem­ble the orig­i­nal busi­ness machines made in the six­ties by com­pa­nies like Hewlett-Packard and Data Gen­er­al Corp. Over­all, the short doc takes us through the exper­i­men­tal course of Roman­ian com­put­ing from 1961 to 1989. The read­er who brought this to our atten­tion points out that there’s lit­tle mate­r­i­al out there on Roman­ian com­put­er engi­neer­ing. This short doc offers a rare look at a very lit­tle-known and fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry.

h/t Alin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intelligent Art Appreciation Guide

in Art, Technology | October 9th, 2012

Yes­ter­day saw the launch of what you’ll sure­ly find the most intrigu­ing use of Syr­i­a’s domain name exten­sion yet, espe­cial­ly if you fol­low the visu­al arts. It serves the pun­ning site Art.sy, to which you’ll soon point your brows­er when­ev­er you want to dis­cov­er new imagery that appeals to your aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. Thus holds the the­o­ry, in any case, behind this ser­vice cre­at­ed by the Art Genome Project. It aims to become to visu­al art what Pan­do­ra has become to music: a vir­tu­al mind that can take your tastes, turn right back around to rec­om­mend works that please those tastes, and — in the best of all pos­si­ble out­comes, lit­tle by lit­tle — broad­en those tastes as well. Tell Art.sy what has recent­ly cap­ti­vat­ed you in the muse­ums, and it will dig through pieces from Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery, the Los Ange­les Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, the Coop­er-Hewitt Nation­al Design Muse­um, the British Muse­um, and else­where, try­ing its best to find some­thing else that will do the same. In total, Art.sy hosts “17,000+ art­works by 3,000+ artists” from “300+ of the world’s lead­ing gal­leries, muse­ums, pri­vate col­lec­tions, foun­da­tions, and artist estates from New York to Lon­don, Paris to Shang­hai, Johan­nes­burg to São Paulo.”

Mele­na Ryzik in The New York Times describes Art.sy’s elab­o­rate sys­tem of code-based aes­thet­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion as devel­oped by “a dozen art his­to­ri­ans who decide what those codes are and how they should be applied,” in which “some labels (Art.sy calls them “genes” …) denote fair­ly objec­tive qual­i­ties, like the his­tor­i­cal peri­od and region the work comes from and whether it is fig­u­ra­tive or abstract, or belongs in an estab­lished cat­e­go­ry like Cubism, Flem­ish por­trai­ture or pho­tog­ra­phy,” while oth­ers “are high­ly sub­jec­tive, even quirky.” Ryzik lists the pos­si­ble codes for a Picas­so as includ­ing “Cubism,” “abstract paint­ing,” “Spain,” “France” and “love,” and those for a Jack­son Pol­lock as “abstract art,” “New York School,” “splattered/dripped,” “rep­e­ti­tion” and “process-ori­ent­ed.” Here we have yet anoth­er rea­son to main­tain a high artis­tic aware­ness in our high-tech time. Still, I can’t help but recall the wise coun­sel Stephen Fry offered in an inter­view we fea­tured back in August: a tru­ly life-enrich­ing rec­om­men­da­tion engine would­n’t give you the same art you’ve always enjoyed; it would give you the exact oppo­site.

You can learn more about the ins-and-outs of Art.sy here.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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What If Money Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Living from Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts

in Life, Philosophy | October 9th, 2012

Alan Watts came to San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the ear­ly 1950s, wrote his best­seller Way of Zen, and became one of the fore­most pop­u­lar­iz­ers of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Tao­ism and var­i­ous forms of East­ern phi­los­o­phy. His TV show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life (1960), intro­duced Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic con­cept of med­i­ta­tion (watch here). And his radio show and lec­tures forced lis­ten­ers to pause and look at their lives from a fresh per­spec­tive. Again and again, Watts chal­lenged the West­ern empha­sis on mon­ey-mak­ing to the exclu­sion of all else. We’ve heard Watts rail against this soul-crush­ing val­ue in a lec­ture ani­mat­ed by the cre­ators of South Park. (I’m not kid­ding you.) And, in the new­ly-pro­duced video above, he con­tin­ues along the same tra­jec­to­ry. So, as you drink your morn­ing cof­fee and pon­der your day, ask your­self: Are you putting mon­ey-mak­ing before hap­pi­ness itself? Or are you pur­su­ing the pas­sions that bring hap­pi­ness, achiev­ing excel­lence, and then let­ting the mon­ey fol­low? With that, I’ll let you con­tin­ue with your day.

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

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How Political Commitment Led Lucy Lawless (AKA Xena, the Warrior Princess) to Study Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Politics, Television | October 8th, 2012

It’s cer­tain­ly not uncom­mon for celebri­ties to take up polit­i­cal caus­es, though this does not usu­al­ly lead to them get­ting arrest­ed for hol­ing up in a high tow­er oil-drilling ship for four days. What’s less com­mon is for this inter­est to bur­geon into a full-on obses­sion with all things philo­soph­i­cal, but that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to Lucy Law­less (best known as Xena, the War­rior Princess).

“I went to the UN sum­mit on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment after get­ting involved in the whole… big oil protest… and I saw all of these peo­ple work­ing very hard but seem­ing­ly at cross-pur­pos­es about how do we cre­ate a just soci­ety.” On a full two-hour episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast (which she claims was large­ly respon­si­ble for turn­ing her on to phi­los­o­phy), she describes how this polit­i­cal inter­est drove her to look at the foun­da­tions and his­to­ries of the­o­ries of jus­tice, and even­tu­al­ly decide to go back to school to study phi­los­o­phy, which she’s now doing in New Zealand between flights to the states to film TV spots such as her recent appear­ance on NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life inter­view with Law­less is a five-per­son, round­table dis­cus­sion of Tom Payne’s 2010 book, Fame: What the Clas­sics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebri­ty. You can lis­ten here:

The the­sis of the book is that celebri­ties serve as an out­let for soci­ety’s aggres­sive instincts. Draw­ing on canon­i­cal texts about reli­gious anthro­pol­o­gy like James Fraz­er’s The Gold­en Bough, the author com­pares the treat­ment of mod­ern celebri­ties to ancient rites where young maid­ens were lav­ish­ly bestowed with finer­ies and then sac­ri­fied. Lucy thinks this well match­es her own expe­ri­ences, and talks about the exis­ten­tial weird­ness involved with being and deal­ing with the famous.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has also cov­ered relat­ed top­ics of Freud’s Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents and Niet­zsche’s Geneal­o­gy of Morals. You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast on iTunes.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. 

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