300 Rarely-Seen, Risqué Drawings by Andy Warhol Published in the New Book, Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire. Drawings (1950–1962)

in Art, Life | January 11th, 2021

It’s not the ingre­di­ents that sell the prod­uct. It’s how Warhol makes you feel about the prod­uct. 

—Young and Rubi­cam employ­ee, cir­ca ear­ly 1950s

It did not take Andy Warhol long to find the sta­tus he sought as a young man. Short­ly after mov­ing to New York City in 1949, he estab­lished him­self as one of the high­est paid free­lance illus­tra­tors of the peri­od.

His whim­si­cal, eye-catch­ing line draw­ings for var­i­ous lux­u­ry brands appeared in such high pro­file pub­li­ca­tions as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

The sense of pret­ti­ness and play that ani­mat­ed his pic­tures of shoes, cats, and per­fume bot­tles is evi­dent in the 1000-some homo­erot­ic draw­ings he pro­duced dur­ing the same time, but those proved to be a tougher sell.

In an era when sodomy was judged to be a felony in every state, full-frontal male nudi­ty was con­sid­ered obscene, and the art world was in the thrall of the macho Abstract Expres­sion­ists, Warhol had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing a gallery to show his gen­tle depic­tions of gay inti­ma­cy.

Final­ly, a per­son­al con­nec­tion at the Bod­ley Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side agreed to host a small exhi­bi­tion, open­ing Stud­ies for a Boy Book by Andy Warhol on Valentine’s Day 1956.

The draw­ings were rem­i­nis­cent of Warhol favorite Jean Cocteau’s sketch­es’ in both sub­ject mat­ter and clean­ly exe­cut­ed line. His mod­els were friends, lovers, assis­tants, and oth­er scene­mak­ers.

Warhol’s friend, Robert Fleis­ch­er, a sta­tionery buy­er at Bergdorf Goodman’s, recalled:

He used to come over to my apart­ment on 76th Street. He used to come quite often. He always want­ed to sketch me. At the same time, just about that time, I became a mod­el. I was pho­tographed a lot, and I was in retail­ing but earned part of my income by mod­el­ing and Andy used to sketch and sketch and sketch and sketch… He said he was going to do what he called his ‘Boy Book,’ and he want­ed all of us to pose nude, and we did. There was loads of us… Andy loved to sketch mod­els and very inti­mate sex­u­al acts. Real­ly! 

Warhol’s ambi­tion to pub­lish a mono­graph of A Boy Book went unre­al­ized dur­ing his life­time, but 300 of the draw­ings appear in Taschen’s just-released Andy Warhol. Love, Sex, and Desire. Draw­ings 1950–1962.

The col­lec­tion also fea­tures essays by biog­ra­ph­er Blake Gop­nik and crit­ic Drew Zei­ba, as well as poems by James Bald­win, Thom Gunn, Harold Norse, Allen Gins­berg, and Essex Hemphill.

Warhol’s first stu­dio assis­tant, anti­quar­i­an and illus­tra­tor Vito Gial­lo, remem­bered Warhol dur­ing this peri­od: “He nev­er con­sid­ered him­self a fine artist but he wished he could be. We often talked about that.”

As Michael Day­ton Her­mann, who edit­ed Andy Warhol. Love, Sex, and Desire. Draw­ings 1950–1962 observes:

Col­lec­tive­ly, the hun­dreds of draw­ings Warhol made from life dur­ing this peri­od pro­vide a touch­ing por­trait of the one per­son not depict­ed in any of them—Andy Warhol.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

When Andy Warhol & Edie Sedg­wick, the First Cou­ple of Pop Art, Made an Odd Appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin Show (1965)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Andy Warhol Exhi­bi­tion at the Tate Mod­ern

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Reflects on the Parallels Between Trumpism & Nazism, and How We Can Save Our Democracy

in Current Affairs | January 10th, 2021

He grew up in the ruins of World War II–the ruins cre­at­ed by the Nazism and its ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ment to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, vio­lence and white suprema­cy. Based on that for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence, the for­mer Repub­li­can gov­er­nor offers his take on this week’s coup attempt in Wash­ing­ton: “Being from Europe, I’ve seen how things can spin out of con­trol… We must be aware of the dire con­se­quences of self­ish­ness and cyn­i­cism. Pres­i­dent Trump sought to over­turn the results of an elec­tion, of a fair elec­tion. He sought a coup by mis­lead­ing peo­ple with lies. My father and our neigh­bors were also mis­led with lies, and I know where such lies lead.” To avoid a sim­i­lar fate, we must hold the con­spir­a­tors account­able, find pub­lic ser­vants who will serve high­er ideals, and, most impor­tant­ly, “look past our­selves, our par­ties and our dis­agree­ments, and put our democ­ra­cy first.” Amen Arnold.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism: A Time­ly List from Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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20 Lessons from the 20th Century About How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism: A Timely List from Yale Historian Timothy Snyder

in History | January 9th, 2021

Image by Rob Kall, via Flickr Com­mons

Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Housum Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, is one of the fore­most schol­ars in the U.S. and Europe on the rise and fall of total­i­tar­i­an­ism dur­ing the 1930s and 40s. Among his long list of appoint­ments and pub­li­ca­tions, he has won mul­ti­ple awards for his recent inter­na­tion­al best­sellers Blood­lands: Europe between Hitler and Stal­in and last year’s Black Earth: The Holo­caust as His­to­ry and Warn­ing. That book in part makes the argu­ment that Nazism wasn’t only a Ger­man nation­al­ist move­ment but had glob­al colo­nial­ist origins—in Rus­sia, Africa, and in the U.S., the nation that pio­neered so many meth­ods of human exter­mi­na­tion, racist dehu­man­iza­tion, and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly-jus­ti­fied land grabs.

The hyper-cap­i­tal­ism por­trayed in the U.S.—even dur­ing the Depression—Snyder writes, fueled Hitler’s imag­i­na­tion, such that he promised Ger­mans “a life com­pa­ra­ble to that of the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” whose “racial­ly pure and uncor­rupt­ed” Ger­man pop­u­la­tion he described as “world class.” Sny­der describes Hitler’s ide­ol­o­gy as a myth of racial­ist strug­gle in which “there are real­ly no val­ues in the world except for the stark real­i­ty that we are born in order to take things from oth­er peo­ple.” Or as we often hear these days, that act­ing in accor­dance with this prin­ci­ple is the “smart” thing to do. Like many far right fig­ures before and after, Hitler aimed to restore a state of nature that for him was a per­pet­u­al state of race war for impe­r­i­al dom­i­nance.

After the Novem­ber 2016 elec­tion, Sny­der wrote a pro­file of Hitler, a short piece that made no direct com­par­isons to any con­tem­po­rary fig­ure. But read­ing the facts of the his­tor­i­cal case alarmed most read­ers. A few days lat­er, the his­to­ri­an appeared on a Slate pod­cast to dis­cuss the arti­cle, say­ing that after he sub­mit­ted it, “I real­ized there was more.… there are an awful lot of echoes.” Sny­der admits that his­to­ry doesn’t actu­al­ly repeat itself. But we’re far too quick, he says, to dis­miss that idea as a cliché “and not think about his­to­ry at all. His­to­ry shows a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Sim­i­lar events occur across time under sim­i­lar kinds of con­di­tions. And it is, of course, pos­si­ble to learn from the past.

If you’ve heard oth­er informed analy­sis but haven’t read Snyder’s New York Review of Books columns on fas­cism in Putin’s Rus­sia or the for­mer Yanukovich’s Ukraine, or his long arti­cle “Hitler’s World May Not Be So Far Away,” you may have seen his wide­ly-shared Face­book post mak­ing the rounds. As he argued in The Guardian last Sep­tem­ber, today we may be “too cer­tain we are eth­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or to the Euro­peans of the 1940s.” On Novem­ber, 15, 2016 Sny­der wrote on Face­book that “Amer­i­cans are no wis­er than the Euro­peans who saw democ­ra­cy yield to fas­cism, Nazism, or com­mu­nism.” Sny­der has been crit­i­cized for con­flat­ing these regimes, and ris­ing “into the top rungs of pun­dit­dom,” but when it comes to body counts and lev­els of sup­pres­sive malig­nan­cy, it’s hard to argue that Stal­in­ist Rus­sia, any more than Tsarist Rus­sia, was anyone’s idea of a democ­ra­cy.

Rather than mak­ing a his­tor­i­cal case for view­ing the U.S. as exact­ly like one of the total­i­tar­i­an regimes of WWII Europe, Sny­der presents 20 lessons we might learn from those times and use cre­ative­ly in our own where they apply. In my view, fol­low­ing his sug­ges­tions would make us wis­er, more self-aware, proac­tive, respon­si­ble cit­i­zens, what­ev­er lies ahead. Read Snyder’s lessons from his Face­book post below and con­sid­er order­ing his lat­est book On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry:

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the pow­er of author­i­tar­i­an­ism is freely giv­en. In times like these, indi­vid­u­als think ahead about what a more repres­sive gov­ern­ment will want, and then start to do it with­out being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Antic­i­pa­to­ry obe­di­ence teach­es author­i­ties what is pos­si­ble and accel­er­ates unfree­dom.

2. Defend an insti­tu­tion. Fol­low the courts or the media, or a court or a news­pa­per. Do not speak of “our insti­tu­tions” unless you are mak­ing them yours by act­ing on their behalf. Insti­tu­tions don’t pro­tect them­selves. They go down like domi­noes unless each is defend­ed from the begin­ning.

3. Recall pro­fes­sion­al ethics. When the lead­ers of state set a neg­a­tive exam­ple, pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments to just prac­tice become much more impor­tant. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state with­out lawyers, and it is hard to have show tri­als with­out judges.

4. When lis­ten­ing to politi­cians, dis­tin­guish cer­tain words. Look out for the expan­sive use of “ter­ror­ism” and “extrem­ism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “excep­tion” and “emer­gency.” Be angry about the treach­er­ous use of patri­ot­ic vocab­u­lary.

5. Be calm when the unthink­able arrives. When the ter­ror­ist attack comes, remem­ber that all author­i­tar­i­ans at all times either await or plan such events in order to con­sol­i­date pow­er. Think of the Reich­stag fire. The sud­den dis­as­ter that requires the end of the bal­ance of pow­er, the end of oppo­si­tion par­ties, and so on, is the old­est trick in the Hit­ler­ian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our lan­guage. Avoid pro­nounc­ing the phras­es every­one else does. Think up your own way of speak­ing, even if only to con­vey that thing you think every­one is say­ing. (Don’t use the inter­net before bed. Charge your gad­gets away from your bed­room, and read.) What to read? Per­haps “The Pow­er of the Pow­er­less” by Václav Hav­el, 1984 by George Orwell, The Cap­tive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism by Han­nah Arendt, or Noth­ing is True and Every­thing is Pos­si­ble by Peter Pomer­ant­sev.

7. Stand out. Some­one has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to fol­low along. It can feel strange to do or say some­thing dif­fer­ent. But with­out that unease, there is no free­dom. And the moment you set an exam­ple, the spell of the sta­tus quo is bro­ken, and oth­ers will fol­low.

8. Believe in truth. To aban­don facts is to aban­don free­dom. If noth­ing is true, then no one can crit­i­cize pow­er, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If noth­ing is true, then all is spec­ta­cle. The biggest wal­let pays for the most blind­ing lights.

9. Inves­ti­gate. Fig­ure things out for your­self. Spend more time with long arti­cles. Sub­si­dize inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism by sub­scrib­ing to print media. Real­ize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that inves­ti­gate for­eign pro­pa­gan­da push­es.

10. Prac­tice cor­po­re­al pol­i­tics. Pow­er wants your body soft­en­ing in your chair and your emo­tions dis­si­pat­ing on the screen. Get out­side. Put your body in unfa­mil­iar places with unfa­mil­iar peo­ple. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye con­tact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your sur­round­ings, break down unnec­es­sary social bar­ri­ers, and come to under­stand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a cul­ture of denun­ci­a­tion, you will want to know the psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape of your dai­ly life.

12. Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the oth­er signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them your­self and set an exam­ple for oth­ers to do so.

13. Hin­der the one-par­ty state. The par­ties that took over states were once some­thing else. They exploit­ed a his­tor­i­cal moment to make polit­i­cal life impos­si­ble for their rivals. Vote in local and state elec­tions while you can.

14. Give reg­u­lar­ly to good caus­es, if you can. Pick a char­i­ty and set up auto­pay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is sup­port­ing civ­il soci­ety help­ing oth­ers doing some­thing good.

15. Estab­lish a pri­vate life. Nas­ti­er rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your com­put­er of mal­ware. Remem­ber that email is sky­writ­ing. Con­sid­er using alter­na­tive forms of the inter­net, or sim­ply using it less. Have per­son­al exchanges in per­son. For the same rea­son, resolve any legal trou­ble. Author­i­tar­i­an­ism works as a black­mail state, look­ing for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from oth­ers in oth­er coun­tries. Keep up your friend­ships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present dif­fi­cul­ties here are an ele­ment of a gen­er­al trend. And no coun­try is going to find a solu­tion by itself. Make sure you and your fam­i­ly have pass­ports.

17. Watch out for the para­mil­i­taries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the sys­tem start wear­ing uni­forms and march­ing around with torch­es and pic­tures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader para­mil­i­tary and the offi­cial police and mil­i­tary inter­min­gle, the game is over.

18. Be reflec­tive if you must be armed. If you car­ry a weapon in pub­lic ser­vice, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved police­men and sol­diers find­ing them­selves, one day, doing irreg­u­lar things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, con­tact the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um and ask about train­ing in pro­fes­sion­al ethics.)

19. Be as coura­geous as you can. If none of us is pre­pared to die for free­dom, then all of us will die in unfree­dom.

20. Be a patri­ot. The incom­ing pres­i­dent [Trump] is not. Set a good exam­ple of what Amer­i­ca means for the gen­er­a­tions to come. They will need it.

via Kot­tke

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 3 Essen­tial Fea­tures of Fas­cism: Invok­ing a Myth­ic Past, Sow­ing Divi­sion & Attack­ing Truth

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

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Behold an Interactive Online Edition of Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants (1868)

in Books, History, Science | January 8th, 2021

Of all the var­ied objects of cre­ation there is, prob­a­bly, no por­tion that affords so much grat­i­fi­ca­tion and delight to mankind as plants. —Eliz­a­beth Twin­ing

“Who owned nature in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry?” asks Lon­da Schiebinger in Plants and Empire, a study of what the Stan­ford his­to­ri­an of sci­ence calls “colo­nial bio­prospect­ing in the Atlantic World.” The ques­tion was large­ly decid­ed at the time by “hero­ic voy­ag­ing botanists” and “biopi­rates” who claimed the world’s nat­ur­al resources as their own. The mat­ter was set­tled in the next cou­ple cen­turies by mer­chants like Thomas Twin­ing and his descen­dants, pro­pri­etors of Twin­ings tea. Found­ed as Britain’s first known tea shop in 1706, the com­pa­ny went on to become one of the largest pur­vey­ors of teas grown in the British colonies.

One of Twining’s descen­dants, Eliz­a­beth Twin­ing, car­ried on the lega­cy as what Schiebinger calls one of many “arm­chair nat­u­ral­ists, who coor­di­nat­ed and syn­the­sized col­lect­ing from sinecures in Europe,” a role often tak­en on by women who could not trav­el the world. Twin­ing aimed, how­ev­er, not to cre­ate tax­onomies of the world’s plants but those of her own coun­try in a com­par­a­tive analy­sis.

Her 1868 Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, she wrote in her intro­duc­tion, was “the first work which has thus done due hon­our to our British plants by con­nect­ing with oth­ers, and plac­ing them when­ev­er pos­si­ble at the head of the Order to be illus­trat­ed.”

Twining’s reval­u­a­tion of local British plants was in keep­ing with the reformist spir­it of the age, and she her­self was such a reformer. “Apart from her artis­tic endeav­ors,” writes Nicholas Rougeaux, Twin­ing “was a notable phil­an­thropist,” estab­lish­ing almshous­es and tem­per­ance halls, found­ing “mother’s meet­ings” in Lon­don, and help­ing to found the Bed­ford Col­lege for Women. She was inspired by Curtis’s The Botan­i­cal Mag­a­zine and “she prac­ticed by mak­ing sketch­es from works in the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery, and toured famous muse­ums thanks to her father’s patron­age.”

Twin­ing authored and illus­trat­ed sev­er­al botan­i­cal books, “most notably,” Rougeux writes, “the two vol­ume Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, which includ­ed a total of 160 hand-col­ored lith­o­graphs, roy­al folio, report­ed­ly based on obser­va­tion at the Roy­al Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in Kew and at Lex­den Park in Colch­ester.” Rougeux has done for her work what the design­er pre­vi­ous­ly did for oth­er illus­trat­ed clas­sics of sci­ence and math (see the relat­ed links below): dig­i­tiz­ing the illus­tra­tions and translit­er­at­ing the text into a dig­i­tal for­mat, with hyper­links and shar­ing fea­tures.

Rougeux’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants offers itself as “a com­plete repro­duc­tion and restora­tion… enhanced with inter­ac­tive illus­tra­tions, descrip­tions, and posters fea­tur­ing the illus­tra­tions.” The first two vol­umes of the orig­i­nal book were pub­lished in 1849 and 1855. Rougeux’s online ver­sion of the text is based on the 1868 sec­ond edi­tion “with re-drawn illus­tra­tions based on her orig­i­nals.” (See pages from the text above and below.) Rougeux’s dig­i­tized text is thus two steps removed from Twining’s orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions, but we can see the care and atten­tion she put into clas­si­fy­ing the flo­ra of her native coun­try.

“Twin­ing chose to illus­trate plants using the clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem cre­at­ed by Augustin-Pyra­me de Can­dolle based on mul­ti­ple char­ac­ter­is­tics of plants—rather than the more wide­ly used sys­tem by Carl Lin­naeus which was focused on plants’ repro­duc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics,” notes Rougeux, “because the De Can­dolle sys­tem was new­er and she want­ed her read­ers to be up to date as clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems were evolv­ing.”

Although bio­log­i­cal tax­onomies have changed con­sid­er­ably since her time, Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants remains an intrigu­ing “snap­shot in time” that depicts not only the lat­est ideas about plant clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry but also the atti­tudes a promi­nent mem­ber of the British rul­ing class adopt­ed toward nature as a whole. See Rougeux’s online edi­tion of Twin­ing’s text here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of the Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed, 200-Year-Old British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy

A Beau­ti­ful­ly-Designed Edi­tion of Euclid’s Ele­ments from 1847 Gets Dig­i­tized: Explore the New Online, Inter­ac­tive Repro­duc­tion

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours, a 200-Year-Old Guide to the Col­ors of the Nat­ur­al World

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

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Flair Magazine: The Short-Lived, Highly-Influential Magazine That Still Inspires Designers Today (1950)

in Design, History, Magazines | January 8th, 2021

All mag­a­zines are their edi­tors, but Flair was more its edi­tor than any mag­a­zine had been before — or, for that mat­ter, than any mag­a­zine has been since. Though she came to the end of her long life in Eng­land, a coun­try to which she had expa­tri­at­ed with her fourth hus­band, a Briton, Fleur Cowles was as Amer­i­can a cul­tur­al fig­ure as they come. Born Flo­rence Frei­d­man in 1908, she had per­formed on her­self an unknow­able num­ber of Gats­byesque acts of rein­ven­tion by 1950, when she found her­self in a posi­tion to launch Flair. Her taste in hus­bands helped, mar­ried as she then was to Gard­ner “Mike” Cowles Jr., pub­lish­er of Look, a pop­u­lar pho­to jour­nal that Fleur had helped to lift from its low­brow ori­gins and make respectable among that all-pow­er­ful con­sumer demo­graph­ic, post­war Amer­i­can women.

The suc­cess of the rein­vent­ed Look “allowed Cowles to ask her hus­band for what she real­ly want­ed: the cap­i­tal to start her own pub­li­ca­tion, which she called ‘a class mag­a­zine,’ ” writes Eye on Design’s Rachel Syme. “She was tired of spreads about the best linoleum; she want­ed to do an entire issue on Paris, or hire Ernest Hem­ing­way to write a trav­el essay, or com­mis­sion Colette to gos­sip about her love affairs.”

Dur­ing Flair’s run she did all that and more, with a ros­ter of con­trib­u­tors also includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí, Simone de Beau­voir, W. H. Auden, Glo­ria Swan­son, Win­ston Churchill, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, and Jean Cocteau. In Flair’s debut issue, pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 1950, “an arti­cle on the 28-year-old Lucian Freud came lib­er­al­ly accom­pa­nied with repro­duc­tions of his art—the first ever to appear in Amer­i­ca.”

So writes Van­i­ty Fair’s Amy Fine Collins in a pro­file of Clowes. “Angus Wil­son and Ten­nessee Williams con­tributed short sto­ries, Wilson’s print­ed on paper tex­tured to resem­ble slubbed silk.” What’s more, “The Duke and Duchess of Wind­sor opened their home to Flair’s read­ers, treat­ing them to their recon­dite and enter­tain­ing tips. A more futur­is­tic approach to liv­ing was set forth in a two-page spread on Richard Kelly’s light­ing design for Philip Johnson’s glass house in Con­necti­cut.” Fea­ture though it may have the work of an aston­ish­ing­ly var­ied group of lumi­nar­ies — pulled in by Cowles’ vast and delib­er­ate­ly woven social net — Flair is even more respect­ed today for each issue’s lav­ish, elab­o­rate, and dis­tinc­tive design.

“If a fea­ture would be bet­ter in dimen­sion than on flat pages, why not fold half-pages inside dou­ble-page spreads?” asks Cowles in her mem­oirs, quot­ed in Print mag­a­zine. “Why not bind it as ‘a lit­tle book’ … giv­ing it a spe­cial focus? If a fea­ture was bet­ter ‘trans­lat­ed’ on tex­tured paper, why use shiny paper?” And “if a paint­ing was good enough to frame, why not print it on prop­er­ly heavy stock? Why not bind lit­tle accor­dion fold­ers into each issue to give the feel­ing of some­thing more per­son­al to the con­tent?” One rea­son is the $2.5 mil­lion (1950 dol­lars) that Mike Cowles esti­mat­ed Flair to have cost in the year it ran before he pulled its plug.

But then, by the ear­ly 1970s even the high­ly prof­itable Look had to fold — and of the two mag­a­zines, only one has become ever more sought-after, has books pub­lished in its trib­ute, and still inspires design­ers today. To take a clos­er look at the mag­a­zine, see The Best of Flair, a  com­pi­la­tion of the magazine’s best con­tent as cho­sen by Fleur Cowles her­self. (See a video pre­view of the book above.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of the 1960s Mag­a­zine Avant Garde: From John Lennon’s Erot­ic Lith­o­graphs to Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Last Pho­tos

How Mag­a­zine Pages Were Cre­at­ed Before Com­put­ers: A Vet­er­an of the Lon­don Review of Books Demon­strates the Metic­u­lous, Man­u­al Process

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

The Provoca­tive Art of Mod­ern Sketch, the Mag­a­zine That Cap­tured the Cul­tur­al Explo­sion of 1930s Shang­hai

Vogue Edi­tor-in-Chief Anna Win­tour Teach­es a Course on Cre­ativ­i­ty & Lead­er­ship

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Fonts in Use: Enter a Giant Archive of Typography, Featuring 12,618 Typefaces

in Archives, Art, Design | January 8th, 2021

Type selec­tion is an inten­sive process that requires inti­mate knowl­edge of a brand’s val­ues, audi­ence, com­pe­ti­tion, voice, and goals.

—Fonts in Use, FAQ

Fonts in Use is a typog­ra­phy nerd’s dream come true.

The 10-year-old inde­pen­dent archive of typog­ra­phy has col­lect­ed over 17,000 designs, each using at least one of over 12,000 type­face fam­i­lies from more than 3,500 type com­pa­nies. Each font is con­tex­tu­al­ized with images depict­ing them in the wild, on every­thing from wine labels and store­fronts to book cov­ers, record albums, movie posters and of course, adver­tis­ing of all shapes and sizes.

Fonts can cre­ate unlike­ly bed­fel­lows.

The Ramones’ icon­ic seal achieved its pres­i­den­tial look thanks to ITC Tiffany.

Oth­er mem­o­rable appear­ances include the first edi­tion cov­er of Ita­lo Calvino’s exper­i­men­tal nov­el If On a Winter’s Night a Trav­el­er and the titles for Ham­mer Film’s 1980 anthol­o­gy TV series, Ham­mer House of Hor­ror.

Fonts in Use’s man­ag­ing edi­tor, Flo­ri­an Hard­wig, describes ITC Tiffany as “Ed Ben­guiat’s 1974 revis­i­ta­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion of 19th-cen­tu­ry faces like West Old Style or Old Style Title,” not­ing such “Vic­to­ri­an details” as “large angled ser­ifs and sharply ter­mi­nat­ed diag­o­nals.”

The prin­ci­pal cast of Law & Order under­went sev­er­al changes over the show’s 20-year run, but Friz Quadra­ta remained a con­stant, sup­ply­ing titles and such nec­es­sary details as loca­tion, time, and date.

Friz Quadra­ta should be equal­ly famil­iar to Dun­geons & Drag­ons play­ers of a cer­tain age and fans of Gar­den Wafers, the pack­aged cook­ies from Hong Kong that are a sta­ple of state­side Asian mar­kets.

Artist Bar­bara Kruger’s dis­tinc­tive text-based work places overt com­men­tary in white ital­i­cized Futu­ra on red bands on top of black and white images.

Futu­ra was also the face of a tourist map to Berlin dur­ing the 1936 sum­mer Olympics and author David Rees’ tongue-in-cheek guide How to Sharp­en Pen­cils: A Prac­ti­cal & The­o­ret­i­cal Trea­tise on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing for Writ­ers, Artists, Con­trac­tors, Flange Turn­ers, Angle­smiths, & Civ­il Ser­vants.

Com­ic Sans may not get much love out in the real world, but it’s well rep­re­sent­ed in the archive’s user sub­mis­sions.

You’ll find grow­ing num­bers of fonts in Cyril­lic, as well as fonts famil­iar to read­ers of Chi­nese, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Ara­bic, Greek and Hebrew…

New­bie Net­flix Sans keeps com­pa­ny with 19th-cen­tu­ry sans Bureau Grot, a favorite of Vice Pres­i­dent-Elect Kamala Har­ris…

Fat Albert, Tin­toret­to, Ben­guiat Caslon, Scor­pio, Hoopla and Saphir are your tick­et back to a far groovi­er peri­od in the his­to­ry of graph­ic art.

Spend an hour or two rum­mag­ing through the col­lec­tion and we guar­an­tee you’ll feel an urgent need to upload typo­graph­ic exam­ples pulled from your shelves and cab­i­nets.

Fonts in Use wel­comes such sub­mis­sions, as long as type is clear­ly vis­i­ble in your uploaded image and is—or was—in use (as opposed to an exam­ple of let­ter­ing for lettering’s sake). They will also con­sid­er cus­tom type­faces which are his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant or oth­er­wise out­stand­ing, and those that are avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Please include a short descrip­tion in your com­men­tary, and when­ev­er pos­si­ble, cred­it any design­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers, or sources of your image.

Typog­ra­phy nerds are stand­ing by to help.

Begin your explo­rations of Fonts in Use here. If you’re feel­ing over­whelmed, the Staff Picks are a great place to start.

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Typog­ra­phy Told in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Why This Font Is Every­where: How Coop­er Black Became Pop Culture’s Favorite Font

Down­load Hel­l­veti­ca, a Font that Makes the Ele­gant Spac­ing of Hel­veti­ca Look as Ugly as Pos­si­ble

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Thelonious Monk’s List of 25 Tips for Musicians

in Music | January 7th, 2021


Let’s pro­vide the con­text, just like host Adam Neely and guest Bri­an Krock do in this video: in 1960 Steve Lacy, a young, white sopra­no sax play­er, briefly joined Thelo­nious Monk’s band. Two years pre­vi­ous, Lacy had  been the first jazz musi­cian to release an album of Monk’s com­po­si­tions oth­er than the man him­self. Even so, Lacy was young, excit­ed, and starstruck at play­ing along­side not just Monk but John Coltrane (who shared the bill on the 16 week tour), just absorb­ing every­thing.

At some point, Monk took Lacy aside and gave his some advice which Lacy wrote down, 25 pieces of advice to be exact.

In the video below, from Neely’s always inter­est­ing chan­nel (we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about him here), he and Krock go through the 25 points and com­ment on each one. For those who love to hear musi­cians (or any artist) talk shop, this is won­der­ful stuff.

Some of the advice is such as befits a live musician—“Pat your foot & sing the melody in your head, when you play”, “Don’t play the piano part, I’m play­ing that”, “When you’re swing­ing, swing some more!,” and “A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.”

Oth­ers are more cru­cial to the busi­ness, espe­cial­ly “Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.” That is: if you around the scene enough, and show your worth, you will get asked to play. But just cold ask­ing won’t get you any­where. Also, when asked what to wear to a gig, Monk advis­es: “Sharp as pos­si­ble!” which you could indeed say of Monk.

Oth­er advice is more mys­ti­cal: “You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?” “What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do.”

And the one that gets quot­ed the most, “A genius is the one most like him­self.” That’s true when it comes to Monk or any of the giants of jazz. To hear Monk, or Coltrane, or Miles Davis play is to hear the artist, the genius, and the per­son, not just the melody or the instru­ment. It reminds me of the great Har­ry Partch quote: “The cre­ative per­son shows him­self naked. And the more vig­or­ous his cre­ative act, the more naked he appears — some­times total­ly vul­ner­a­ble, yet always invul­ner­a­ble in the sense of his own integri­ty.”

And maybe that’s why we keep com­ing back to them, long after their phys­i­cal bod­ies have left this plane of exis­tence.

The full list is as fol­lows:

  1. Just because you’re not a drum­mer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
  2. Pat your foot & sing the melody in your head, when you play.
  3. Stop play­ing all that bull­shit, those weird notes, play the melody!
  4. Make the drum­mer sound good.
  5. Dis­crim­i­na­tion is impor­tant.
  6. You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
  7. All reet!
  8. Always know… (monk )
  9. It must be always night, oth­er­wise they wouldn’t need the lights.
  10. Let’s lift the band stand!!
  11. I want to avoid the heck­lers.
  12. Don’t play the piano part, I’m play­ing that.
  13.  Don’t lis­ten to me. I’m sup­posed to be accom­pa­ny­ing you!
  14. The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the out­side sound good.
  15. Don’t play every­thing (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imag­ined. What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do.
  16. Always leave them want­i­ng more.
  17. A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.
  18. Stay in shape! Some­times a musi­cian waits for a gig, & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
  19. When you’re swing­ing, swing some more!
  20. (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as pos­si­ble!
  21. Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.
  22. These pieces were writ­ten so as to have some­thing to play, & to get cats inter­est­ed enough to come to rehearsal.
  23. You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drum­mer who didn’t want to solo).
  24. What­ev­er you think can’t be done, some­body will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like him­self.
  25. They tried to get me to hate white peo­ple, but some­one would always come along & spoil it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk Bombs in Paris in 1954, Then Makes a Tri­umphant Return in 1969

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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An Animated Introduction to Baruch Spinoza: The “Philosopher’s Philosopher”

in Philosophy | January 7th, 2021

The so-called Enlight­en­ment peri­od encom­pass­es a sur­pris­ing­ly diverse col­lec­tion of thinkers, if not always in eth­nic or nation­al ori­gin, at least in intel­lec­tu­al dis­po­si­tion, includ­ing per­haps the age’s most influ­en­tial philoso­pher, the “philosopher’s philoso­pher,” writes Assad Mey­man­di. Baruch Spin­oza did not fit the image of the bewigged philoso­pher-gen­tle­man of means we tend to pop­u­lar­ly asso­ciate with Enlight­en­ment thought.

He was born to a fam­i­ly of Sephardic Por­tuguese Mar­ra­nos, Jews who were forced to con­vert to Catholi­cism but who reclaimed their Judaism when they relo­cat­ed to Calvin­ist Ams­ter­dam. Spin­oza him­self was “excom­mu­ni­cat­ed by Ams­ter­dam Jew­ry in 1656,” writes Harold Bloom in a review of Rebec­ca Goldstein’s Betray­ing Spin­oza: “The not deeply cha­grined 23-year-old Spin­oza did not become a Calvin­ist, and instead con­sort­ed with more lib­er­al Chris­tians, par­tic­u­lar­ly Men­non­ites.”

Spin­oza read “Hebrew, paleo-Hebrew, Aara­ma­ic, Greek, Latin, and to some degree Ara­bic,” writes Mey­man­di. “He was not a Mus­lim, but behaved like a Sufi in that he gave away all his pos­ses­sions to his step sis­ter. He was heav­i­ly influ­enced by Al Ghaz­a­li, Baba Taher Oryan, and Al Fara­bi.” He is also “usu­al­ly count­ed, along with Descartes and Leib­niz, as one of the three major Ratio­nal­ists,” Loy­ola pro­fes­sor Blake D. Dut­ton notes at the Inter­net Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, a thinker who “made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in vir­tu­al­ly every area of phi­los­o­phy.”

One might say with­out exag­ger­a­tion that it is impos­si­ble to under­stand Enlight­en­ment think­ing with­out read­ing this most het­ero­dox of thinkers, and in par­tic­u­lar read­ing his Ethics, which is itself no easy task. In this work, as Alain de Bot­ton puts it in his School of Life intro­duc­tion to Spin­oza above, the philoso­pher tried “to rein­vent reli­gion, mov­ing it away from some­thing based on super­sti­tion and direct divine inter­ven­tion to some­thing that is far more imper­son­al, qua­si-sci­en­tif­ic, and yet also, at times, serene­ly con­sol­ing.”

One might draw sev­er­al lines from Spin­oza to Sagan and also to Wittgen­stein and oth­er mod­ern skep­tics. His cri­tiques of such cher­ished con­cepts as prayer and a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with a deity did not qual­i­fy him as a reli­gious thinker in any ortho­dox sense, and he was derid­ed as an “athe­ist Jew” in his time. But he took reli­gion, and reli­gious awe, very seri­ous­ly, even if Spinoza’s God is indis­tin­guish­able from nature. To imag­ine that this great, mys­te­ri­ous enti­ty should bend the rules to suit our indi­vid­ual needs and desires con­sti­tutes a “deeply dis­tort­ed, infan­tile nar­cis­sism” in Spinoza’s esti­ma­tion, says de Bot­ton.

For Spin­oza, a mature ethics instead con­sists in find­ing out how the uni­verse works and accept­ing it, rather in the way of the Sto­ics or Nietzsche’s use of the Sto­ic idea of amor fati. It is with­in such accep­tance, what Bloom calls Spinoza’s “icy sub­lim­i­ty,” that true enlight­en­ment is found, accord­ing to Spin­oza. Or as the de Bot­ton video suc­cinct­ly puts it: “The free per­son is the one who is con­scious of the neces­si­ties that com­pel us all,” and who—instead of rail­ing against them—finds cre­ative ways to live with­in their lim­i­ta­tions peace­ful­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Voltaire: Enlight­en­ment Philoso­pher of Plu­ral­ism & Tol­er­ance

The Diderot Effect: Enlight­en­ment Philoso­pher Denis Diderot Explains the Psy­chol­o­gy of Con­sumerism & Our Waste­ful Spend­ing

How to Teach and Learn Phi­los­o­phy Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Col­lec­tion of 450+ Phi­los­o­phy Videos Free Online

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

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How to Draw the Buddha: Explore an Elegant Tibetan Manual from the 18th-Century

in Books, History, Religion | January 7th, 2021

Some reli­gions pro­hib­it the depic­tion of their sacred per­son­ages. Tibetan Bud­dhism isn’t quite so strict, but it does ask that, if you’re going to depict the Bud­dha, you do it right. Hence aids like the Tibetan Book of Pro­por­tions, which pro­vides “36 ink draw­ings show­ing pre­cise icono­met­ric guide­lines for depict­ing the Bud­dha and Bod­hisatt­va fig­ures.” That descrip­tion comes from the Pub­lic Domain Review, where you can behold many of those pages. Print­ed in the 18th cen­tu­ry, “the book is like­ly to have been pro­duced in Nepal for use in Tibet.” Now you’ll find it at the Get­ty Cen­ter in Los Ange­les, which had made the book free to read at its dig­i­tal col­lec­tions.

To read it prop­er­ly, of course, you’ll have to know your Newari script and Tibetan numer­als. But even with­out them, any­one can appre­ci­ate the ele­gance of not just the book’s rec­om­mend­ed pro­por­tions — all pre­sent­ed on a stan­dard­ized and notat­ed grid — but of the book itself as well.

By the time this vol­ume appeared, the print­ing used for texts relat­ed to Tibetan Bud­dhism had long since shown itself to be a cut above: take the 15th-cen­tu­ry col­lec­tion of recita­tion texts, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, print­ed forty years before the Guten­berg Bible. Only a print­ing cul­ture that had mas­tered this lev­el of detail could pro­duce a book like the Tibetan Book of Pro­por­tions, visu­al exac­ti­tude being its entire rai­son d’être.

“The con­cept of the ‘ide­al image’ of the Bud­dha emerged dur­ing the Gold­en Age of Gup­ta rule, from the 4th to 6th cen­tu­ry,” says the Pub­lic Domain Review. Dur­ing that Indi­an empire’s dom­i­nance, the impor­tance of such depic­tions extend­ed even beyond pro­por­tions to details like “num­ber of teeth, col­or of eyes, direc­tion of hairs.” Sure­ly when it comes to show­ing one who has attained nir­vana — or a bod­hisatt­va, the des­ig­na­tion for those on their way to nir­vana — one can’t be too care­ful. Nev­er­the­less, art­works in the form of the Bud­dha (of which the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um offer a small sam­pling on their web site) have tak­en dif­fer­ent shapes in dif­fer­ent times and places. No mat­ter how well-defined the ide­al, the earth­ly realm always finds a way to intro­duce some vari­ety.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ele­gant Math­e­mat­ics of Vit­ru­vian Man, Leonar­do da Vinci’s Most Famous Draw­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Breath­tak­ing­ly Detailed Tibetan Book Print­ed 40 Years Before the Guten­berg Bible

The World’s Largest Col­lec­tion of Tibetan Bud­dhist Lit­er­a­ture Now Online

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Tibetan Musi­cal Nota­tion Is Beau­ti­ful

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Wonder Woman 1984 in Context — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #76

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 7th, 2021

The hol­i­day film release sea­son has now passed, hav­ing issued only one real block­buster, which is the return of Won­der Woman. This week’s Pret­ty Much Pop like­wise offers a return­ing hero:  Our col­lege-going guest from ep. 33 on hero­ine jour­neys has now grown into a grad stu­dent in comics his­to­ry, and she brings her deep WW knowl­edge to con­sid­er with your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt.

Part of the rel­e­vant con­text is the 2017 biopic Pro­fes­sor Marston and the Won­der Women, which revealed the unortho­dox views of WW’s cre­ator, and so of course this shows up in how WW judges us: She’s not just a Cap­tain Amer­i­ca-style patri­ot, but a for­eign­er who in the new film com­pas­sion­ate­ly con­demns our 80s greed and dis­hon­esty. But do the themes actu­al­ly make sense? And what’s with hav­ing her love inter­est return from the dead, hijack­ing anoth­er man’s body with no acknowl­edg­ment that that’s very skeevy?

Also, how does the depic­tion of WW’s home­land com­pare to oth­er fem­i­nist utopias like Her­land and “Sul­tana’s Dream”? Does it mat­ter that WW was cre­at­ed by and ini­tial­ly aimed pri­mar­i­ly at males? We learn a lit­tle about the post-Marston WW (who could­n’t join the Jus­tice League, which was for boys only!) and talk about the ’70s TV show, the out­fits, the vil­lains, and WW in love.

Here are a few sup­ple­men­tary arti­cles:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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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The 25th Amendment: An Introduction

in Current Affairs | January 6th, 2021

Read along with the text of the 25th Amend­ment online here. And get some back­ground from the Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter here, and Vox’s explain­er here.

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