How Caravaggio Painted: A Re-Creation of the Great Master’s Process

in Art | July 7th, 2021

His dark, dra­mat­ic works incor­po­rate the kind of light­ing we asso­ciate with hor­ror films. Fig­ures, twist­ed and con­tort­ed in tor­tu­ous pos­es, emerge from deep, black shad­ows. Instead of beatif­ic smiles, his saints wear gri­maces and fur­rowed frowns, as in The Denial of St. Peter, one of the few Car­avag­gios in the U.S., and a can­vas depict­ing the weak­est moment in the life of the Gospel char­ac­ter whose name means “the rock.” Caravaggio’s work came to be called tene­brism after the Latin for “dark or obscure,” for both its style and its sub­stance.

There’s lit­tle evi­dence that Car­avag­gio (1571–1610) was a prac­ti­tion­er of the occult arts, but he was unafraid to look into the dark­est realms of the human psy­che, and to depict them on can­vas. He was also drawn to artist’s mod­els who looked weath­ered and worn down by life, and his hyper-real­is­tic Bib­li­cal scenes scan­dal­ized many peo­ple and thrilled more, and made him the most famous painter in Rome, for a time.

Car­avag­gio him­self was a scan­dalous char­ac­ter who brawled and for­ni­cat­ed his way through Rome, then in exile in Naples, where he died an ear­ly death at age 38, from either an unspec­i­fied fever or lead poi­son­ing. (A new film by Ital­ian actor and direc­tor Michele Placido imag­ines Car­avag­gio in 1600, “a bril­liant and sub­ver­sive artist who lives with the bur­den of a death sen­tence. The shad­ow of a mer­ci­less, occult pow­er is about to loom over him.”)

He left no writ­ing behind, the details of his life are sketchy at best, and he fell into obscu­ri­ty for many years after his death, but not before his paint­ings showed the way for­ward for Baroque painters who fol­lowed him as Car­avaggisti or tene­brosi (“shad­ow­ists”), includ­ing such great mas­ters as Peter Paul Rubins and Rem­brandt. So, how did he do it? How did Car­avag­gio invent mod­ern paint­ing, as some crit­ics have claimed?

“The tes­ti­monies of his con­tem­po­raries are scarce and impre­cise regard­ing the pro­ce­dure he adopt­ed to com­plete his work,” notes the Artenet video above, an explo­ration of Caravaggio’s tech­nique. We do know a few details: he worked from mod­els, who held the acro­bat­ic pos­es in his paint­ings while he worked; he had a stu­dio in which light streamed in from above; and he worked quick­ly — “He could paint up to three heads in a sin­gle day.”

The lack of unfin­ished work by Car­avag­gio has made it dif­fi­cult to trace his process back­ward, but some evi­dence remains. See Caravaggio’s “entire pic­to­r­i­al process” recre­at­ed, and learn how a painter called “the mas­ter of light” made his lumi­nous fig­ures by sur­round­ing them with dark­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

The Largest & Most Detailed Pho­to­graph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

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

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Hear Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Played on Original Baroque Instruments

in History, Music | July 7th, 2021

“Sub­tle and bril­liant at the same time, they are a micro­cosm of Baroque music, with an aston­ish­ing­ly vast sam­ple of that era’s emo­tion­al uni­verse.” — Ted Libbey 

The port­fo­lio, the demo, the head shot, the resume…. These are not mate­ri­als made for gen­er­al con­sump­tion, much less the praise and admi­ra­tion of pos­ter­i­ty. But not every appli­cant is Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, who wrote his six Bran­den­burg con­cer­tos, in essence, “because, like pret­ty much every­one through­out his­to­ry, Bach need­ed a job,” notes String Ova­tion. In 1721, he applied for a posi­tion with the Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, younger broth­er of King Fred­er­ick Wil­helm I of Prus­sia, by send­ing the music: “It’s one of the few man­u­scripts that Bach wrote out him­self, rather than give to a copy­ist…. At the time, Bach was the Kapellmeis­ter in the small town of Cöthen. Work­ing for His Roy­al High­ness would have been a seri­ous­ly upward move.”

He didn’t get the job. Indeed, it seems his appli­ca­tion was ignored, and near­ly lost sev­er­al times through­out his­to­ry. Now, Bach’s call­ing cards are some of the most vir­tu­oso com­po­si­tions of Baroque music we know. “Each con­cer­to is a con­cer­to grosso, a con­cer­to that’s a con­tin­u­ous inter­play of small groups of soloists and full orches­tra…. The range of instru­ments with solos through­out the six con­cer­tos was designed to give oppor­tu­ni­ties to show the poten­tial of near­ly every instru­ment in the orches­tra. Even the recorder got a solo.” The six togeth­er present them­selves as an anthol­o­gy of sorts, “a Baroque musi­cal trav­el­ogue mov­ing through ‘the court­ly ele­gance of the French suite, the exu­ber­ance of the Ital­ian solo con­cer­to and the grav­i­ty of Ger­man coun­ter­point.’”

These pieces do not only demon­strate Bach’s com­po­si­tion­al mas­tery; they also rep­re­sent his “ulti­mate view,” as the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety points out, “of the most impor­tant large-scale instru­men­tal genre of his day: the con­cer­to.” In the third of these works, for exam­ple, he makes the “sur­pris­ing” choice to com­pose for “three vio­lins, three vio­las, three cel­los and bas­so con­tin­uo. In oth­er words, 3x3, which is a ratio­nal choice you would expect from a mod­ernist like Pierre Boulez, rather than a Baroque com­pos­er like Bach.” In order to play these pieces the way Bach intend­ed them to be heard, Ted Libbey writes at NPR, they must be played on the orig­i­nal instru­ments for which he com­posed, some­thing a grow­ing num­ber of ensem­bles have been doing.

Voic­es of Music, one of the most promi­nent ensem­bles recov­er­ing the orig­i­nal sounds of Bach’s time, per­forms Con­cer­to Num­ber Three in G Major at the top and Con­cer­to Num­ber Six in B Flat just above, anoth­er sur­pris­ing arrange­ment for the time. The final Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to also upsets the musi­cal order of things again: “Vio­lins — usu­al­ly the gold­en boys of the orches­tra,” writes the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety, “are con­spic­u­ous by their absence! Instead, two vio­las play the lead­ing role. As the high­est parts, they ‘play first fid­dle’ as soloists, sup­port­ed by two vio­la da gam­bas, a cel­lo, dou­ble bass and harp­si­chord.” The Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, it seems had lit­tle time or inter­est, and nev­er had these pieces per­formed by his ensem­ble, which may have lacked the skill and instru­men­ta­tion. After hear­ing this music in its orig­i­nal glo­ry, we can be grate­ful Bach’s hand­writ­ten resume sur­vived the neglect.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear 10 of Bach’s Pieces Played on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

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

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Watch Artisans Make Hand-Carved Championship Chess Sets: Each Knight Takes Two Hours

in Games, History | July 7th, 2021

Whether because of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Net­flix’s The Queen’s Gam­bit or because of how much time indoors the past year and a half has entailed, chess has boomed late­ly. Luck­i­ly for those would-be chess­mas­ters who’ve had their inter­est piqued, every­thing they need to learn the game is avail­able free online. But the deep­er one gets into any giv­en pur­suit, the greater one’s desire for con­crete rep­re­sen­ta­tions of that inter­est. In the case of chess play­ers, how many, at any lev­el, have tran­scend­ed the desire for a nice board and pieces? And how many have nev­er dreamed of own­ing one of the finest chess sets mon­ey can buy?

Such a set appears in the Busi­ness Insid­er video above. “You can pick up a plas­tic set for $20 dol­lars, but a wood­en set cer­ti­fied for the World Chess Cham­pi­onship costs $500,” says its nar­ra­tor. “Much of the val­ue of a high-qual­i­ty of the set comes down to how well just one piece is made: the knight.”

Prop­er­ly carved by a mas­ter arti­san, each knight — with its horse’s head, the only real­is­tic piece in chess — takes about two hours. Very few are qual­i­fied for the job, and one knight carv­er appears in an inter­view to explain that it took him five or six years to learn it, as against the four or five months required to mas­ter carv­ing the oth­er pieces.

The work­shop intro­duced in this video is locat­ed in Amrit­sar (also home to the Gold­en Tem­ple and its enor­mous free kitchen, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here in Open Cul­ture). To those just start­ing to learn about chess, India may seem an unlike­ly place, but in fact no coun­try has a longer his­to­ry with the game. “Chess has been played for over 1,000 years, with some form of the game first appear­ing in India around the sixth cen­tu­ry,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. “Over the past two cen­turies, high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tions have drawn inter­na­tion­al inter­est.” For most of that peri­od, fluc­tu­a­tions in pub­lic enthu­si­asm for chess have result­ed in pro­por­tion­ate fluc­tu­a­tions in the demand for chess sets, much of which is sat­is­fied by large-scale indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. But the most expe­ri­enced play­ers pre­sum­ably feel sat­is­fac­tion only when han­dling a knight carved to arti­sanal per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Begin­ners, Inter­me­di­ate Play­ers & Beyond

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920–and It Now Gets Re-Issued

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

The Bauhaus Chess Set Where the Form of the Pieces Art­ful­ly Show Their Func­tion (1922)

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

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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Hiroshige, Master of Japanese Woodblock Prints, Creates a Guide to Making Shadow Puppets for Children (1842)

in Art, History | July 6th, 2021

Even if the name Uta­gawa Hiroshige does­n’t ring a bell, “Hiroshige” by itself prob­a­bly does. And on the off chance that you’ve nev­er heard so much as his mononym, you’ve still almost cer­tain­ly glimpsed one of his por­tray­als of Tokyo — or rather, one of his por­tray­als of Edo, as the Japan­ese cap­i­tal, his home­town, was known dur­ing his life­time. Hiroshige lived in the 19th cen­tu­ry, the end of the clas­si­cal peri­od of ukiyo‑e, the art of wood­block-print­ed “pic­tures of the float­ing world.” In that time he became one of the for­m’s last mas­ters, hav­ing cul­ti­vat­ed not just a high lev­el of artis­tic skill but a for­mi­da­ble pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In total, Hiroshige pro­duced more than 8,000 works. Some of those are account­ed for by his well-known series of prints like The Fifty-three Sta­tions of the Tōkaidō, The Six­ty-nine Sta­tions of the Kisokaidō, One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo. But his mas­tery encom­passed more than the urban and rur­al land­scapes of his home­land, as evi­denced by this much hum­bler project: a set of omocha‑e, or instruc­tion­al pic­tures for chil­dren, explain­ing how to make shad­ow pup­pets.

Hiroshige explains in clear and vivid images “how to twist your hands into a snail or rab­bit or grasp a mat to mim­ic a bird perched on a branch,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert. “Appear­ing behind a translu­cent sho­ji screen, the clever fig­ures range in dif­fi­cul­ty from sim­ple ani­mals to spar­ring war­riors and are com­plete with prop sug­ges­tions, writ­ten instruc­tions for mak­ing the crea­tures move — ‘open your fin­gers with­in your sleeve to move the owl’s wings’ or ‘draw up your knee for the fox’s back’ — and guides for full-body con­tor­tions.” The dif­fi­cul­ty curve does seem to rise rather sharply, begin­ning with pup­pets requir­ing lit­tle more than one’s hands and end­ing with full-body per­for­mances sure­ly intend­ed more for amuse­ment than imi­ta­tion.

But then, kids take their fun wher­ev­er they find it, whether in 2021 or in 1842, when these images were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished. Though it was a fair­ly late date in the life of Hiroshige, at that time mod­ern Japan had­n’t even begun to emerge. The chil­dren who enter­tained them­selves with his shad­ow pup­pets against the sho­ji screens of their homes would have come of age with the arrival of Unit­ed States Com­modore Matthew C. Per­ry’s “black ships,” which began the long-closed Japan’s process of re-open­ing itself to world trade — and set off a whirl­wind of civ­i­liza­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion that, well over a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, has yet to set­tle down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 1,000+ Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Mas­ter of the Japan­ese Wood­block Print Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

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 Finland & Denmark Are Happier Than the United States

in Life | July 6th, 2021

We may nev­er con­vince the greed­i­est among us that mon­ey won’t buy hap­pi­ness. But if we weren’t per­suad­ed before the pan­dem­ic, it seems more of us are now, since thou­sands of work­ers refuse to return to exploita­tive con­di­tions. “The Covid job mar­ket,” the Har­vard Busi­ness Review admits, “is not like 2008, nor real­ly like any­thing any­one has observed since the birth of mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism.” This obser­va­tion comes amidst a dis­cus­sion of the fac­tors influ­enc­ing hir­ing, but most econ­o­mist-speak avoids the emo­tion­al lan­guage we use to talk about our jobs.

The fact is, most of us are stressed out, unhap­py, over­worked, and under­paid, with lit­tle in terms of pub­lic pol­i­cy or cor­po­rate ben­e­fits to help reduce the bur­dens on the aver­age Amer­i­can work­er. It’s far worse for oth­er work­ers around the world. “The aver­age US work­week is 38.6 hours,” notes Busi­ness Insid­er. “That may feel like for­ev­er to some peo­ple, but it’s noth­ing com­pared to some coun­tries’ work­weeks.” Work­ers in Colom­bia, for exam­ple, spend an aver­age of 47.7 hours at work.

Much of that time could be spent car­ing for our­selves and our fam­i­lies, and lock­downs, quar­an­tines, shel­ter-in-place and work-from-home orders have giv­en us time to recon­sid­er how we’ve been liv­ing. As we do, we might look to Fin­land and Den­mark, where peo­ple pro­fess some of the high­est rates of hap­pi­ness in the world, accord­ing to the most recent World Hap­pi­ness Report, a series of mea­sures co-cre­at­ed by Jef­frey Sachs, Direc­tor of Colum­bia University’s Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment.

“In a lam­en­ta­ble year,” the report points out, “Fin­land again is the hap­pi­est coun­try in the world.” Den­mark isn’t far behind. What does this mean? “It’s not pri­mar­i­ly a mea­sure of whether one laughed or smiled yes­ter­day,” says Sachs, “but how one feels about the course of one’s life.” This feel­ing is mea­sured accord­ing to “six areas of life sat­is­fac­tion,” CNBC notes in an intro­duc­tion to the video above — a short doc­u­men­tary on Finnish and Dan­ish hap­pi­ness — includ­ing “income, healthy life expectan­cy, social sup­port, free­dom, trust and gen­eros­i­ty.”

“We need urgent­ly to learn from Covid-19,” says Sachs. “The pan­dem­ic reminds us of our glob­al envi­ron­men­tal threats, the urgent need to coop­er­ate, and the dif­fi­cul­ties of achiev­ing coop­er­a­tion in each coun­try and glob­al­ly. The World Hap­pi­ness Report 2021 reminds us that we must aim for well­be­ing rather than mere wealth, which will be fleet­ing indeed if we don’t do a much bet­ter job of address­ing the chal­lenges of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.” Learn what makes the Finns and Danes so hap­py in the video above (spoil­er: it isn’t exor­bi­tant salaries) and learn more about why peo­ple in the “hap­pi­est” coun­tries thrive at the World Hap­pi­ness Report.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

How Much Mon­ey Do You Need to Be Hap­py? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Fig­ures

The Keys to Hap­pi­ness: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence and the Upcom­ing MOOC by Raj Raghu­nathan

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

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The Intimacy of Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portraits: A Video Essay

in Art, History | July 6th, 2021

“Cul­ture has come to prize this qual­i­ty in cre­ative work: the abil­i­ty to grab peo­ple quick­ly,” and “above pret­ty much any­thing else” at that. So says Evan Puschak, who should know: as the Nerd­writer, he runs a pop­u­lar epony­mous chan­nel on Youtube, where every­thing depends on get­ting and hold­ing the view­er’s increas­ing­ly fleet­ing atten­tion. Even under such pres­sures, Puschak has man­aged to main­tain one of the most thought­ful cul­tur­al chan­nels around, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its video essays on every­thing from the films of Jean-Luc Godard to the paint­ings of Edward Hop­per to the music of Fleet­wood Mac.

But it is Fri­da Kahlo whom the Nerd­writer cred­its as a mas­ter manip­u­la­tor of audi­ence atten­tion. “Yes, there’s a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic obses­sion with the dra­ma of her life, but that would­n’t arouse near­ly as much inter­est if it weren’t for the dra­ma of her art — which is also sen­sa­tion­al, but in the good way.”

The sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic qual­i­ty of Kahlo’s paint­ings owes to the “inti­ma­cy of the images” they depict, espe­cial­ly when they com­mu­ni­cate “her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, her phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al pain, but also her defi­ance and self-con­fi­dence, and the pride she so clear­ly has in her cul­ture.” This comes through with spe­cial clar­i­ty in the self-por­traits she cre­at­ed quite pro­lif­i­cal­ly, and in so doing defined her­self as well as the new 20th-cen­tu­ry Mex­i­can cul­ture with which she came of age.

“I real­ly, real­ly hes­i­tate to bring up the word self­ie,” says Puschak, but “inso­much as her self-por­traits are always simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a record­ing and a per­for­mance of iden­ti­ty, they’re bound to be relat­able to mod­ern audi­ences.” In the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry dur­ing which Kahlo lived, paint­ing was a rel­a­tive­ly effi­cient way to pro­duce images of one­self. Today, many of us do it dozens of times a day, at the touch of a but­ton, mar­shal­ing few artis­tic resources in the process. But if self­ies lack the impact of Kahlo’s self-por­traits, it may owe to the iron­ic rea­son that the self­ies look too good. Kahlo’s paint­ing “has a bit of an ama­teur­ish qual­i­ty to it, in its flat­ten­ing of depth and skewed per­spec­tives and anato­my.” But she used that style on pur­pose, pay­ing homage to the folk art of her home­land and also mak­ing you feel as if “some­one you know” paint­ed these works. Puschak, who refers to her on a first-name basis, seem­ing­ly feels that way; but then, he’s far from the only Fri­da fan to do so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

What the Icon­ic Paint­ing The Two Fridas Actu­al­ly Tells Us About Fri­da Kahlo

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Fri­da Kahlo’s Blue House Free Online

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

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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Storytelling and Race in Captain America — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #98

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 6th, 2021

What is it for a super-hero to rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Though the char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by in 1941 may have been a way to cap­i­tal­ize on WWII patri­o­tism, it has since been used to ask ques­tions about what it real­ly means to be patri­ot­ic and how Amer­i­ca’s ideals and its real­i­ty may con­flict. We’re of course talk­ing about race, a theme explored by Sam Wil­son, for­mer­ly Cap’s side-kick, pick­ing up the shield in the comics and now on TV (and in the forth­com­ing film).

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by com­ic super-fan Antho­ny LeBlanc (return­ing from our ep.  56 on black nerds) to dis­cuss the recent com­ic runs by Ta-Nehishi Coates and Nick Spencer and espe­cial­ly Truth: Red, White and Black, Mar­vel’s 2003 comics mini-series by Robert Morales and Kyle Bak­er that tells the sto­ry of Amer­i­can super-sol­dier exper­i­ments on unknow­ing black men (rem­i­nis­cent of the real-life Tuskegee Syphilis Study). This was the source of the “first black Cap­tain Amer­i­ca” char­ac­ter Isa­iah Bradley fea­tured in The Fal­con and the Win­ter Sol­dier Dis­ney+ show, which we also dis­cuss.

Here are a few arti­cles that fed into our dis­cus­sion:

The final issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Cap­tain Amer­i­ca is com­ing July 7.

We rec­om­mend the Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Com­ic Book Fans pod­cast for more infor­ma­tion. Their recent inter­view with long­time edi­tor Tom Brevoort was illu­mi­nat­ing, and they spent eps.  33 and 34 walk­ing through Truth: Red, White & Black.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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How Ramen Became the Currency of Choice in Prison, Beating Out Cigarettes

in Finance, Food & Drink, Life | July 5th, 2021

The last decade ush­ered in a slew of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese-style ramen restau­rants — enough to jus­ti­fy ramen maps to New York City, Chica­go, and the Bay Area.

Yet most Amer­i­cans still con­ceive of ramen as the pack of sea­son­ing and dehy­drat­ed instant noo­dles that have long sus­tained broke artists and col­lege stu­dents.

Add incar­cer­at­ed per­sons to the list of pack­aged ramen’s most ardent con­sumers.

In the above episode of Vox’s series, The Goods, we learn how those ubiq­ui­tous cel­lo­phane pack­ages have out­stripped cig­a­rettes and postage stamps as the pre­ferred form of prison cur­ren­cy.

Ramen is durable, portable, pack­aged in stan­dard units, avail­able in the prison com­mis­sary, and high­ly prized by those with a deep need to pad their chow hall meals.

Ramen can be used to pay for cloth­ing and hygiene prod­ucts, or ser­vices like laun­dry, bunk clean­ing, dic­ta­tion, or cus­tom illus­tra­tion. Gam­blers can use it in lieu of chips.

Ramen’s sta­tus as the pre­ferred form of exchange also speaks to a sharp decline in the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of food in Amer­i­can penal insti­tu­tions.

Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Michael Gib­son-Light, who spent a year study­ing home­grown mon­e­tary prac­tices among incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tions, notes that slashed prison bud­gets have cre­at­ed a cul­ture of “puni­tive fru­gal­i­ty.”

Called upon to mod­el a demon­stra­bly tough on crime stance and cut back on expen­di­tures, the insti­tu­tions are unof­fi­cial­ly shunt­ing many of their tra­di­tion­al costs onto the pris­on­ers them­selves.

In response, those on the inside have piv­ot­ed to edi­ble cur­ren­cy:

What we are see­ing is a col­lec­tive response — across inmate pop­u­la­tions and secu­ri­ty lev­els, across prison cliques and racial groups, and even across states — to changes and cut­backs in prison food services…The form of mon­ey is not some­thing that changes often or eas­i­ly, even in the prison under­ground econ­o­my; it takes a major issue or shock to ini­ti­ate such a change. The use of cig­a­rettes as mon­ey in U.S. pris­ons hap­pened in Amer­i­can Civ­il War mil­i­tary pris­ons and like­ly far ear­li­er. The fact that this prac­tice has sud­den­ly changed has poten­tial­ly seri­ous impli­ca­tions.

Ramen may be a rel­a­tive­ly new devel­op­ment in the prison land­scape, but culi­nary exper­i­men­ta­tion behind bars is not. From Pruno prison wine to Martha Stewart’s prison grounds crabap­ple jel­ly, it’s a noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained type of deal. Work with what you’ve got.

Gus­ta­vo “Goose” Alvarez, who appears in Vox’s video, col­lect­ed a num­ber of the most adven­tur­ous recipes in his book, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Sto­ries from Behind Bars. Any­one can bring some vari­ety on the spur of the moment by sprin­kling some of your ramen’s sea­son­ing pack­et into your drink­ing water, but amass­ing the ingre­di­ents for an ambi­tious dish like Orange Porkies — chili ramen plus white rice plus ½ bag of pork skins plus orange-fla­vored punch — takes patience and per­se­ver­ance.

Alvarez’s Egg Ramen Sal­ad Sand­wich recipe earns praise from actor Shia LeBoeuf, whose time served is both mul­ti­ple and min­i­mal.

Some­one serv­ing a longer sen­tence has a more com­pelling rea­son to search for the ramen-cen­tered sense of har­mo­ny and well­be­ing on dis­play in Tam­popo, the first “ramen west­ern”:

Appre­ci­ate its gestalt. Savor the aro­mas.

Joe Guer­rero, host of YouTube’s After­Pris­on­Show, is not immune to the plea­sures of some of his ramen-based con­coc­tions, below, despite being on the out­side for sev­er­al years now.

You’re free to wrin­kle your nose at the thought of snack­ing on a crum­bled brick of uncooked ramen, but Guer­rero points out that some­one serv­ing a long sen­tence craves vari­ety in any form they can get. Expe­ri­enc­ing it can tap into the same sense of pride as self-gov­er­nance.

Guerrero’s recipes require a microwave (and a block of ramen).

Even if you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on eat­ing the fin­ished prod­uct, there’s a sci­ence project appeal to his Ramen Noo­dle Cook­ie. It calls for no addi­tion­al  ingre­di­ents, just ten min­utes cook­ing time, an out­ra­geous prospect in a com­mu­nal set­ting with only one microwave.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

What Goes Into Ramen Noo­dles, and What Hap­pens When Ramen Noo­dles Go Into You

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

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

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Quentin Tarantino Releases His First Novel: A Pulpy Novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

in Film | July 5th, 2021

There’s no busi­ness like show busi­ness. Or maybe — as Bart Simp­son once wrote on the black­board — “there are plen­ty of busi­ness­es like show busi­ness.”

Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, fol­lows aging TV star, Rick Dal­ton, being pushed into play­ing vil­lain­ous char­ac­ter roles. Drunk and depressed, Dal­ton and his side­kick­/hang­er-on/s­tunt dou­ble Cliff Booth watch reruns of his show and get into a series of increas­ing­ly seri­ous scrapes as the actor search­es for a role that will redeem him. The film’s outline–shorn of his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences that made crit­ics lion­ize it as “a love let­ter to old Hollywood”–sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like anoth­er media prop­er­ty in the mid­dle of its final sea­son that sum­mer.

Called a Mad Men replace­ment, Netflix’s satir­i­cal adult car­toon series Bojack Horse­man also fol­lows an aging for­mer TV star and his sidekicks/hanger(s)-on through their mis­ad­ven­tures in Hol­ly­wood (“Hol­ly­woo”). Along the way they con­front issues that fall under the rubric of “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty,” such as work­place harass­ment, emo­tion­al imma­tu­ri­ty, and the abuse of pow­er in an indus­try with wild­ly unequal pow­er dynam­ics. The show makes clear that nei­ther old, nor new, Hol­ly­wood deserves a love let­ter — no more than oth­er indus­tries that allow such behav­ior. (It also fea­tures a car­i­ca­ture of Taran­ti­no.)

Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, by con­trast, cel­e­brates the old star sys­tem and its priv­i­leges — or so Richard Brody argues at The New York­er — in an “obscene­ly regres­sive vision of the 60s” that scrubs the decade of its protests and bru­tal crack­downs. The premise under­ly­ing Tarantino’s alter­nate-his­to­ry dram­e­dy seems to be: “If only the old-line Hol­ly­wood peo­ple of the fifties and six­ties had main­tained their pride of place—if only the times hadn’t changed, if only the keys to the king­dom hadn’t been hand­ed over to the free­thinkers and deca­dents of the sixties—then both Hol­ly­wood and the world would be a bet­ter, safer, hap­pi­er place.”

Taran­ti­no sets up “hip­pies,” a favorite pejo­ra­tive of his char­ac­ters, as fall guys for the Man­son Fam­i­ly mur­ders, rather than Manson’s own white suprema­cist beliefs. As many crit­ics not­ed at the time, “the only sub­stan­tial char­ac­ter of col­or, Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), is played… as a haughty par­o­dy” who gets “dra­mat­i­cal­ly humil­i­at­ed” by Pitt’s swash­buck­ling stunt­man — who is rumored to have mur­dered his wife and who dis­patch­es the film’s female Man­son cult vil­lains with the sadis­tic glee of a true psy­chopath, a scene, Brody writes, “that only ham­mers [Tarantino’s] doc­trine home.”

Cel­e­bra­tion there may be in the film, but there is also mourn­ing. Christo­pher Hooten at Lit­tle White Lies scoffs at the “love let­ter” idea and sees the film instead as a lament for the end of cinema’s “free­thinkers”:

This is Tarantino’s pas­sion project – poten­tial­ly his last film – and it comes across as him try­ing to sneak out a movie with a ’70s sen­si­bil­i­ty and tone before it’s no longer pos­si­ble. Once the likes of Taran­ti­no and Mar­tin Scors­ese have bowed out, that might well be it for auteur-dri­ven film­mak­ing on a block­buster scale. We’ve reached a polar­i­sa­tion in the indus­try where a direc­tor either works as a hired (and fre­quent­ly fired) gun for a Dis­ney or a Warn­er Bros, or else goes cap in hand in the hope of scrap­ing togeth­er a few mil­lion dol­lars to make some­thing more per­son­al and unique.

The Taran­ti­nos of the world might be a dying breed, but Taran­ti­no isn’t leav­ing his art behind so much as turn­ing his hand to “more per­son­al and unique” projects – in this case a nov­el, and more specif­i­cal­ly, “the pulpi­est of pulp fic­tion — the nov­el­iza­tion,” writes Peter Brad­shaw at The Guardian. Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood: A Nov­el finds him “crank­ing up the back­sto­ries, mulching up real­i­ty and alt.reality pas­tiche, ladling in new episodes,” and flex­ing his for­mi­da­ble strengths as a writer of crack­ling dia­logue and action. The book also promis­es an end­ing view­ers of the film won’t see com­ing.

The nov­el explores the inner lives of its female char­ac­ters, includ­ing, of course, Sharon Tate “and the fic­tion­al child actor Tru­di Fras­er,” and adds an even dark­er edge to Cliff Booth, who is said to admire a cer­tain char­ac­ter despite or because he is “uncon­scious­ly racist, con­scious­ly misog­y­nis­tic.” This is Taran­ti­no, after all, none of whose char­ac­ters are ever shin­ing exam­ples of virtue. But in the post-auteur, post-Wein­stein future, he seems to sug­gest, maybe old-Hol­ly­wood anti-heroes like Cliff Booth and Leonar­do DiCaprio’s washed-up star Rick Dal­ton will only shine on stream­ing TV shows and in the pages of throw­back pulp nov­els, “pack­aged like those New Eng­lish Library paper­backs that used to be on carousel dis­plays in super­mar­kets and drug­stores.” You can pick up a copy of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood: A Nov­el here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

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

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Discover the 1820’s Color-Coded System for Memorizing Historical Events, Which Resembled Modern Art (1820)

in History | July 5th, 2021

On first encoun­ter­ing Antoni Jażwiński’s “Pol­ish Sys­tem,” I could­n’t help but think of Incan Quipu, the sys­tem that used knot­ted cords to keep offi­cial records. Like Quipu, Jażwiński’s sys­tem of col­ored squares relies on an extreme short­hand to tell com­plex sto­ries with mnemon­ic devices. But maybe that’s where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end. Jażwiński’s inven­tion (cir­ca (1820) does not so much resem­ble oth­er forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as it does the abstract art of the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry.

“Jażwiński’s Méth­ode polon­aise promis­es that the com­plex­i­ties of cen­turies can be refined into col­ors, lines, squares, and just a few marks,” writes Philip­pa Pitts at Sequitur. “Neat­ly arranged into a dia­gram that can be dili­gent­ly com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry, the twists and turns of bat­tles and rev­o­lu­tions are ren­dered as panes of pure gen­tle col­or, qui­et­ly plot­ted as coor­di­nates in a matrix, sub­sumed back into the order­ly progress of his­to­ry.”

His attempts to impose order on life may have come to lit­tle in the end, but as an arti­fact of visu­al cul­ture, the “Pol­ish Sys­tem” is sub­lime. Pitts goes on to write:

There is a won­der­ful res­o­nance between Jażwiński’s chrono­graphs and a wide range of artis­tic pro­duc­tion, despite the anachro­nism of such com­par­isons. They recall Piet Mondrian’s ear­ly checker­boards and Robert Delaunay’s simul­tane­ity. There is some­thing rem­i­nis­cent of process art here: They evoke the repet­i­tive, cat­a­logu­ing hand­work of Hanne Dar­boven or Agnes Mar­tin. There appears to be a com­mon calm, com­fort, cathar­sis, or sal­va­tion promised by the embrace of rule, order, and log­ic. 

Jażwińs­ki, a Pol­ish edu­ca­tor, invent­ed the sys­tem in the 1820s. It was “lat­er brought to pub­lic atten­tion in the 1830s and 1840s by Gen­er­al Józef Bem, a mil­i­tary engi­neer with a pen­chant for mnemon­ics,” notes the Pub­lic Domain Review. Such sys­tems cropped up every­where in 19th-cen­tu­ry edu­ca­tion, such as those pio­neered by Emma Willard, the first woman map­mak­er in the U.S. “Jażwiński’s con­tri­bu­tion (and its lat­er adap­ta­tions) proved one of the most pop­u­lar.”

He explained his sys­tem with long para­graphs of text (which you can read here, in French), lit­tle of which stu­dents were like­ly to remem­ber. What mat­tered was whether they could make sense of the col­or-cod­ing and sym­bols placed inside the grid sys­tem, with each grid stand­ing for an entire cen­tu­ry — 100 years of human his­to­ry reduced, for exam­ple, in the fig­ure above, to one name, Con­stan­tine the Great, and two sym­bols, a sword and cross. This was an exam­ple of a “chrono­log­i­cal con­stel­la­tion,” in which his­tor­i­cal events take par­tic­u­lar shapes, “some­times it’s a chair,” Jażwińs­ki wrote, “a sick­le, a boat, a let­ter of the alpha­bet, etc.”

Even the names neat­ly print­ed above the grids are redun­dant, Pitts sug­gests. In such sys­tems, called chrono­graphs, “deno­ta­tive text is of lim­it­ed use. It is con­no­ta­tive visu­al­i­ty which fur­ther con­dens­es the infor­ma­tion: Flags, shields, and insignia can serve as short­hand for nations and dynas­ties, while loom­ing storm clouds, bright sun­bursts, and invo­ca­tions of clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture add lay­ers of asso­ci­at­ed mean­ing.” The view of his­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed by such sys­tems is quaint, at best; their over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions erase more than they could ever com­mu­ni­cate. But their visu­al appeal is unde­ni­able as objects from a pre-Google past, when mem­o­riza­tion was the only way to reli­ably store and access knowl­edge out­side of books.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Emma Willard, the First Woman Map­mak­er in Amer­i­ca, Cre­ates Pio­neer­ing Maps of Time to Teach Stu­dents about Democ­ra­cy (Cir­ca 1851)

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Great His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Info­graph­ics Ever (1769)

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

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Moralities of Everyday Life: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Online Courses, Psychology | July 5th, 2021

How can we explain kind­ness and cru­el­ty? Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Why do peo­ple so often dis­agree about moral issues? This course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life, explores the psy­cho­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of our moral lives. Taught by psy­chol­o­gy & cog­ni­tive sci­ence pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom, the course focus­es on the ori­gins of moral­i­ty, com­pas­sion, how culture/religion influ­ence moral thought and moral action, and beyond. If you select the “Audit” option, you can take the course for free.

Moral­i­ties of Every­day Life will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

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