A Quay Brothers Animation Explains Anamorphosis, the Renaissance Illusion That Hides Pictures within Pictures

in Animation, Art, Religion, Science | November 2nd, 2020

First appear­ances can be deceiv­ing.

Take physi­cist Emmanuel Maig­nan’s 1642 fres­co in a cor­ri­dor of Rome’s Trinità dei Mon­ti monastery.

Viewed head on, it appears to be a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al land­scape in which one of the few remain­ing branch­es of a muti­lat­ed tree spreads over a city, far in the dis­tance. Streaky clouds sug­gest heavy weath­er is brew­ing.

Stroll to the end of the cor­ri­dor and take anoth­er look. You’ll find that the tree has con­tract­ed, and the clouds have recon­fig­ured them­selves into a por­trait of Saint Francesco of Pao­la, pray­ing beneath its boughs.

It’s a prime exam­ple of oblique anamor­pho­sis, an image that has been delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed by an artist well versed in per­spec­tive, with the end result that the image’s true nature will only be revealed to those view­ing the work from an uncon­ven­tion­al point.

The Quay Broth­ers’ doc­u­men­tary short, above, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with art his­to­ri­an Roger Car­di­nal, uses a com­bi­na­tion of their delight­ful­ly creepy sig­na­ture pup­pet stop motion, as well as ani­mat­ed 3‑D cut outs, to lift the cur­tains on how the human eye can be manip­u­lat­ed, using prin­ci­ples of per­spec­tive.

Anamor­pho­sis may not seem like such a feat in an age when a num­ber of soft­ware pro­grams can pro­vide a major assist, but why would Renais­sance artists put them­selves to so much extra trou­ble?

The Quay Broth­ers delve into this too.

Per­haps the artist was inject­ing a bit of social crit­i­cism, like Hans Hol­bein the Younger, whose 1533 por­trait, The Ambas­sadors, includes a secret anamor­phic skull. This could be tak­en as a jab at the excess­es of the wealthy young diplo­mats who pro­vide the painting’s sub­ject, except that the one who com­mis­sioned the work, Jean de Din­teville, prized the mot­to “Memen­to mori.”

Maybe he know­ing­ly ordered up the naked death’s head to go along with his ermine and bling, an exam­ple of hav­ing one’s cake and eat­ing it too, and yet anoth­er dizzy­ing head trip for those view­ing the paint­ing from the intend­ed angle.

(Betcha didn’t have to work too hard to guess the skull’s loca­tion, though…)

Or an artist might choose to employ anamor­pho­sis as a brown paper wrap­per of sorts, as in the case of Erhard Schön’s erot­ic wood­block prints.

Else­where, the goal was to empha­size patience, reflec­tion, and cleav­ing to a pious path by reward­ing those who craned their necks toward a spir­i­tu­al peep­hole with an appro­pri­ate­ly reli­gious view.

(Pity the poor pil­grim who stepped up expect­ing Erhard Schön…)

For a 21st-cen­tu­ry take on anamor­phic art, have a look at the work of the graf­fi­ti col­lec­tive TRULY | Urban Artists here.

The Quay Broth­ers’ short film, “De Arti­fi­ciali Per­spec­ti­va, or Anamor­pho­sis,” has been made avail­able on The Met Muse­um’s YouTube chan­nel.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Despised by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

Watch Mar­cel Duchamp’s Hyp­not­ic Rotore­liefs: Spin­ning Discs Cre­at­ing Opti­cal Illu­sions on a Turntable (1935)

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

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

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When Louis Armstrong Stopped a Civil War in The Congo (1960)

in History, Music, Politics | November 2nd, 2020

When Louis Arm­strong appeared in his home­town of New Orleans for the first time in nine years in 1965, it was, Ben Schwarz writes, “a low point for his crit­i­cal esti­ma­tion.” A younger gen­er­a­tion saw his refusal to march on the front lines of the civ­il rights move­ment, risk­ing life and limb, as a “racial cop-out,” as jour­nal­ist Andrew Kop­kind wrote at the time. Arm­strong was seen as “a breezy enter­tain­er with all the grav­i­tas of a Jim­my Durante or Dean Mar­tin.”

The crit­i­cism was unfair. Arm­strong only played New Orleans in 1965 after the pas­sage of the Civ­il Rights Act, hav­ing boy­cotted the city in 1956 when it banned inte­grat­ed bands. In 1957 after events in Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas, Arm­strong refused a State Depart­ment-spon­sored tour of the Sovi­et Union over Eisenhower’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion. He spoke out force­ful­ly, used words you can’t repeat on NPR, called gov­er­nor Orval Faubus an “igno­rant plow­boy” and the pres­i­dent “two-faced.”

But he pre­ferred tour­ing and mak­ing mon­ey to march­ing, and was hap­py to play for the State Depart­ment and Pep­si­Co on a 1960 tour of the African con­ti­nent to pro­mote, osten­si­bly, the open­ing of five new bot­tling plants. When he arrived in Leopoldville, cap­i­tal city of the Con­go, in late Octo­ber, he even stopped a civ­il war, man­ag­ing “to call a brief inter­mis­sion in a coun­try that had been unsta­ble before his arrival,” Jayson Over­by writes at the West End Blog.

Unsta­ble is an under­state­ment. The new­ly-inde­pen­dent country’s first elect­ed pres­i­dent, Patrice Lumum­ba, had just been deposed in a coup by anti-com­mu­nist Joseph Mobu­tu, sur­vived a “bizarre” assas­si­na­tion attempt by the C.I.A., and would soon be on his way to tor­ture and exe­cu­tion after the UN turned its back on him. The coun­try was com­ing apart when Arm­strong arrived. Then, it stopped. As he put it in a lat­er inter­view, “Man, they even declared peace in The Con­go fight­ing the day I showed up in Leopoldville.”

“Just for that day,” writes Over­by, “he blew his horn and played with his band the sweet sound of jazz for a large crowd. But no soon­er after Louis depart­ed, the war resumed.” This being a joint state/commerce oper­a­tion dur­ing the Cold War, there is of course much more to the sto­ry, some which lends cre­dence to crit­i­cism of Arm­strong as a gov­ern­ment pawn used dur­ing “good­will” tours to test out var­i­ous forms of cul­tur­al war­fare. That was, at least, the offi­cial stance of Moscow, accord­ing to the AP news­reel at the top of the post.

The Sovi­ets “blast­ed Armstrong’s vis­it as a diver­sion­ary tac­tic,” and it was. Ricky Ric­car­di at the Louis Arm­strong House Muse­um cov­ers the event in great detail, includ­ing high­light­ing sev­er­al declas­si­fied State Depart­ment mem­os that show the plan­ning. In one, from Octo­ber 14th, the first U.S. ambas­sador to the coun­try, Clare Hayes Tim­ber­lake, argues that “coop­er­a­tion with pri­vate firm might soft­en pro­pa­gan­da impli­ca­tions.”

After the Octo­ber 27th per­for­mance, Tim­ber­lake judged the appear­ance “high­ly suc­cess­ful from stand­point over-all psy­cho­log­i­cal impact on this trou­bled city.” Clear­ly, the 10,000 Con­golese who showed up to see Satch­mo play need­ed the break. But the diplo­mats mis­read the audi­ence reac­tion, think­ing they didn’t like the music when they start­ed to leave at dusk. “Giv­en the cli­mate in Leopoldville,” Ric­car­di writes, “one can’t blame the locals for not want­i­ng to stay out longer than they had to.” But it was, nonethe­less, the State Depart­ment declared, the “first hap­py event” in the city since the coun­try’s inde­pen­dence.

via @ArmstrongHouse

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Only Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong in a Record­ing Stu­dio: Watch the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered Film (1959)

Louis Arm­strong Remem­bers How He Sur­vived the 1918 Flu Epi­dem­ic in New Orleans

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

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

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Before Creating the Moomins, Tove Jansson Drew Satirical Art Mocking Hitler & Stalin

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, History, Magazines | November 2nd, 2020

Much of the world has only recent­ly dis­cov­ered the Moomins, those lov­able hip­popota­mus-like fig­ures — giv­en, it must be said, to moments of star­tling brusque­ness and com­plex­i­ty — cre­at­ed in the 1940s by Finnish artist Tove Jans­son. In forms rang­ing from dolls and school sup­plies to neck pil­lows and cell­phone cas­es, they’ve late­ly become a full-blown craze in South Korea, where I live. Like any mas­sive­ly suc­cess­ful (and high­ly mer­chan­dis­able) char­ac­ters, the Moomins over­shad­ow the rest of Jansson’s oeu­vre. Hence exhi­bi­tions like Tove Jans­son (1914–2001) at Lon­don’s Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery, which “aims to rec­ti­fy the fact that less atten­tion has gen­er­al­ly been paid to her range as a visu­al artist.”

That descrip­tion comes from Simon Willis’ review of the show in the New York Review of Books. “In Octo­ber 1944, Tove Jans­son drew a cov­er for Garm, a Finnish satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, show­ing a brigade of Adolf Hitlers as pudgy lit­tle thieves,” Willis writes. These draw­er-rifling, house-burn­ing car­i­ca­tures “were not unusu­al for Jans­son, who had been belit­tling Stal­in and Hitler in the mag­a­zine since the ear­ly days of World War II.” But “peek­ing out at the chaos from behind the magazine’s title,” there was also a “tiny pale fig­ure with a long nose”: a pro­to-Moomin mak­ing an appear­ance the year before the pub­li­ca­tion of the first Moomin book. (And even he was forged in mock­ery, hav­ing first been drawn by Jans­son, so the sto­ry goes, as a car­i­ca­ture of Immanuel Kant.)

Hav­ing start­ed con­tribut­ing to Garm, accord­ing to the offi­cial Moomin web site, “in 1929 at the young age of 15 (her moth­er Signe Ham­marsten-Jans­son had worked for the pub­li­ca­tion since it start­ed),” she kept on doing so until the mag­a­zine fold­ed in 1953.

“Dur­ing that peri­od she drew more than 500 car­i­ca­tures, a hun­dred cov­er images and count­less oth­er illus­tra­tions for the mag­a­zine.” In them, writes Glas­stire’s Caleb Math­ern, “angels appear on bat­tle­fields. Rein­deer pre­pare to rain TNT. An effete, under­sized Hitler cries instead of eat­ing slices of cake. Jans­son even impugns Stalin’s man­hood with an over­sized scabbard/undersized sword joke.” To the young Jans­son, the best part was the chance, as she lat­er put it, “to be beast­ly to Stal­in and Hitler.”

Even after the suc­cess of the Moomins, Jans­son con­tin­ued to draw on the imagery and emo­tions of war: “The first time we meet young Moom­introll and his Moom­in­mam­ma in The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), they are refugees, cross­ing a strange and threat­en­ing land­scape in search of shel­ter. Moom­in­pap­pa, mean­while, is absent, as fathers often were dur­ing the war,” writes Aeon’s Richard W. Orange. In the next book “the world is threat­ened by a comet that sucks the water out of the sea, leav­ing an apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scape in its wake.” With the Cold War heat­ing up, the alle­go­ry would hard­ly have gone unno­ticed. Like all mas­ter satirists, Jans­son went on to tran­scend the sole­ly top­i­cal — and indeed, so the increas­ing­ly Moomin-crazed world has demon­strat­ed, the bound­aries of time and cul­ture.

via Aeon/Moomin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Pro­pa­gan­da Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Don­ald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

The Sub­lime Alice in Won­der­land Illus­tra­tions of Tove Jans­son, Cre­ator of the Glob­al­ly-Beloved Moomins (1966)

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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Why Masks Work: A Slow Motion Demonstration (Plus a Guest Appearance by Dr. Fauci)

in Science | November 1st, 2020

The Slo Mo Guys spe­cial­ize in tak­ing every­day occur­rences and slow­ing them down … way down, so that we can see them in a new way. In this clip, they let you see what hap­pens when you talk with­out a mask, and then with a mask–all in order to demon­strate why a mask helps pre­vent the trans­mis­sion of COVID-19, a dis­ease that’s main­ly spread when peo­ple are exposed to res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets car­ry­ing infec­tious virus. Around the 4 minute mark, the host is joined by Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, who offers com­men­tary on the footage.

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:

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

Bill Nye Shows How Face Masks Actu­al­ly Pro­tect You–and Why You Should Wear Them

Dr. Fau­ci Reads an Undergrad’s Entire The­sis, Then Fol­lows Up with an Encour­ag­ing Let­ter

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Sean Connery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Ithaca,” Set to the Music of Vangelis

in Film, Music, Poetry | October 31st, 2020

This video com­bines three things that make me hap­py: the voice of Sean Con­nery (who passed away today), the music of Van­ge­lis (Blade Run­ner, Char­i­ots of Fire), and the poet­ry of C.P. Cavafy. Put them all togeth­er and you get a bliss­ful sound­scape of rolling synth lines, rolling Scot­tish R’s, and a suc­ces­sion of Home­r­ic images and anaphor­ic lines. And the video’s quite nice as well.

Cavafy, whose work, I’m told, is real­ly untrans­lat­able from the orig­i­nal Greek, always seems to come out pret­ty well to me in Eng­lish. “Itha­ca,” one of his most pop­u­lar poems, express­es what in less­er hands might be a banal sen­ti­ment akin to “it’s the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion.” But in Cavafy’s poem, the jour­ney is both Odysseus’s and ours; it’s epic where our lives seem small, and it trans­lates our minor wan­der­ings to the realm of myth­ic his­to­ry.

Any­way, it seems rude to say much more and drown the poem in com­men­tary. So, fol­low along with Sean Con­nery.

Find the text of the poem after the jump. (more…)

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The Official Trailer for the New Frank Zappa Documentary Is Now Online

in Film, Music | October 30th, 2020

Mark it on your cal­en­dars. Alex Win­ter’s new Zap­pa doc­u­men­tary will be released on Novem­ber 23. To whet your appetite, here’s the offi­cial trail­er for the film: “With unfet­tered access to the Zap­pa fam­i­ly trust and all archival footage, ZAPPA explores the pri­vate life behind the mam­moth musi­cal career that nev­er shied away from the polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence of its time. Alex Winter’s assem­bly fea­tures appear­ances by Frank’s wid­ow Gail Zap­pa and sev­er­al of Frank’s musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing Mike Keneal­ly, Ian Under­wood, Steve Vai, Pamela Des Bar­res, Bunk Gard­ner, David Har­ring­ton, Scott Thunes, Ruth Under­wood, Ray White and oth­ers.”

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:

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

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The Legend of How Bluesman Robert Johnson Sold His Soul to the Devil at the Crossroads

in History, Music | October 30th, 2020

We remem­ber the blues­man Robert John­son as the Jimi Hen­drix of the 1930s, a gui­tarist of stag­ger­ing skill who died before age thir­ty. Both found main­stream suc­cess, but John­son’s came posthu­mous­ly: in fact, his music and Hen­drix’s first music hit it big in the same decade, the 1960s. King of the Delta Blues Singers, an album of John­son’s songs released by Colum­bia Records in 1961, had a great influ­ence on the likes of Bob Dylan, Kei­th Richards, Robert Plant, and Eric Clap­ton, who calls John­son “the most impor­tant blues singer that ever lived.” How did this poor young Mis­sis­sip­pi­an come by his for­mi­da­ble abil­i­ties? Why, he sold his soul to the dev­il at the cross­roads, of course.

Or at least that’s what we all seem to have heard. And indeed, does­n’t the leg­end make the open­ing line of “Cross Road Blues,” King of the Delta Blues’ open­ing num­ber, that much more evoca­tive? “I went down to the cross­roads,” he sings. “Fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above for mer­cy, ‘Take me, if you please.’ ” Well, it could’ve been the Lord, or it could have been the oth­er one. But in fact we have pre­cious lit­tle record of John­son’s life, and no direct ref­er­ences at all to his bar­gain with Beelze­bub (ani­ma­tions of which we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Why has the leg­end stuck? Music Youtube series Poly­phon­ic address­es that ques­tion in the video essay above.

An ear­li­er episode cov­ered deals with the dev­il through­out the his­to­ry of music. This time, the sub­ject is the cross­roads itself, the set­ting of John­son­ian lore no one ever fails to men­tion. “Of all the marks that humans make on the earth, cross­roads are among the sim­plest and most endur­ing,” says nar­ra­tor Noah Lefevre. “As long as humans orga­nize our­selves in towns and cities, cross­roads will remain, and so will the leg­ends of their dark pow­ers and of the strange spir­its who occu­py them.” The mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads goes back at least to the Greek god­dess Hecate, who rules over “lim­i­nal space, the tran­si­tion from the known to the great unknown beyond.” In the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta, the mythol­o­gy of the cross­roads inter­sects, as it were, with the realm of Hait­ian voodoo.

“A reli­gion that mix­es Roman Catholic influ­ences with West African spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions” — and the one that gave us zom­bies — voodoo has “one all-pow­er­ful god, but you can only speak to him through spir­its known as loa.” And to talk to loa, you’ve got to go through Papa Leg­ba, the loa of the cross­roads. From the late 18th cen­tu­ry, voodoo began mak­ing its way through the Amer­i­can South, the cra­dle of the blues. Out of this rich set­ting came John­son’s pre­de­ces­sor Tom­my John­son (no rela­tion), a singer and gui­tarist who based his per­sona on the claim of hav­ing sold his own soul to the dev­il. Even Robert John­son’s men­tor Ike Zim­mer­man was said to have prac­ticed gui­tar in grave­yards at mid­night.

“John­son is seen today as the grand­fa­ther of rock-and-roll,” says Lefevre. “That comes not just from his vir­tu­oso play­ing, but also from his mythol­o­gy.” (Con­sid­er this lega­cy in light of how often rock-and-roll was in decades past called “the dev­il’s music.”) Today, in songs like “Hell­hound on My Trail,” we can hear both ref­er­ences to voodoo-inspired rit­u­als and oth­er forms of the occult as well as con­di­tions of life in a South removed only a gen­er­a­tion or two from slav­ery. This Poly­phon­ic episode may con­vince you that “the myth of John­son and the cross­roads may have been birthed out of sheer acci­dent,” but that’s no rea­son not to give King of the Delta Blues Singers a spin this Hal­loween — or any oth­er day besides.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in the New York Times 81 Years After His Death

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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The Sublime Alice in Wonderland Illustrations of Tove Jansson, Creator of the Globally-Beloved Moomins (1966)

in Art, Literature | October 30th, 2020

Some­times describ­ing a clas­sic work of lit­er­a­ture as “time­less” draws atten­tion, when we revis­it it, to how much it is bound up with the con­ven­tions of its time. Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land emerged from a very spe­cif­ic time and place, the bank of the Thames in 1862 where Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son first com­posed the tale for Alice Lid­dell and her sis­ter. The future Lewis Carroll’s future best­seller became one of the most wide­ly adapt­ed and adopt­ed works of lit­er­a­ture in his­to­ry. It nev­er needs to be revived—Alice is always con­tem­po­rary.

Those who have read the book to chil­dren know that Carroll’s non­sense sto­ry, though filled with archa­ic terms and out­dat­ed ideas about edu­ca­tion, requires lit­tle addi­tion­al expla­na­tion: indeed, it can­not be explained except by ref­er­ence to the strange leaps of log­ic, rapid changes in scale and direc­tion, and anthro­po­mor­phism famil­iar to every­one who has had a dream. Dodg­son was a pret­ty weird char­ac­ter, and prim Vic­to­ri­an Alice is not exact­ly an every­girl, but every read­er imag­ines them­selves tum­bling right down the rab­bit hole after her.

As far as illus­tra­tors of Carroll’s time­less clas­sic go, it’s hard to find one who is more uni­ver­sal­ly beloved, and more Alice-like, than Tove Jans­son, inven­tor of the Moomins, the Finnish series of children’s books and TV shows that is, in parts of the world, like a reli­gion. How are her Alice illus­tra­tions not bet­ter known? It’s hard to say. Jansson’s Bohemi­an biog­ra­phy is as endear­ing as her char­ac­ters, and she would make a won­der­ful sub­ject for a children’s sto­ry her­self. As James Williams tells it at Apol­lo Mag­a­zine:

The artist, Tove Jans­son (1914–2001), was a great colourist who lived a rich­ly plur­al life. Born into Finland’s Swedish-speak­ing minor­i­ty to a Swedish moth­er and a Finnish father, both artists, she grew up on both sides of the Baltic. Jans­son trained as a painter and illus­tra­tor in Stock­holm and Paris, and made an ear­ly liv­ing through com­mis­sions and piece­work. She was an acer­bic and wit­ty anti-fas­cist car­toon­ist dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, send­ing up Hitler and Stal­in in cov­ers for the Swedish-lan­guage peri­od­i­cal Garm. Descend­ed on the one hand from a famous preach­er, and on the oth­er from a pio­neer of the Girl Guide move­ment, she was raised on the Bible and on tales of adven­ture (Tarzan, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe). In her thir­ties she built a log cab­in on an island and was a capa­ble sailor. She lived vis­i­bly and coura­geous­ly with her part­ner, the Finnish artist Tuu­lik­ki Pietilä, at a time when les­bian rela­tion­ships did not enjoy pub­lic accep­tance. She con­sid­ered emi­grat­ing at var­i­ous times to Ton­ga and Moroc­co but, despite trav­el­ling wide­ly, remained root­ed in Fin­land where she became (dread acco­lade) a ‘nation­al trea­sure.’ She wrote a pic­ture book for chil­dren about the immi­nent end of the world and spare, ten­der fic­tion for adults about love and fam­i­ly. She nev­er stopped draw­ing and paint­ing. She was Big in Japan.

We’ll find dream log­ic woven into all of Jansson’s work, from her ear­ly Moomin-like crea­ture paint­ings from the 1930s to her illus­tra­tions for The Hob­bit and Alice decades lat­er. Her Alice, in Swedish, was first pub­lished in 1966, then released in an Amer­i­can edi­tion in 1977. Sad­ly, her illus­tra­tions “did not receive such a great recep­tion,” notes Moomin.com. “Read­ers already had their own imag­i­na­tions in their minds about these clas­sics.”

Blame Dis­ney, I sup­pose, but there is nev­er a bad time to re-imag­ine Alice’s jour­ney, and the artist has left us with an excel­lent way to do so, “craft­ing a sub­lime fan­ta­sy expe­ri­ence,” Maria Popo­va writes, “that fus­es Carroll’s Won­der­land with Jansson’s Moomin Val­ley.” See more of Jansson’s time­less­ly weird draw­ings at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Film Adap­ta­tion of Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

Behold Lewis Carroll’s Orig­i­nal Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script for Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (1864)

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued

Ralph Steadman’s Warped Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

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

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The Gruesome Dollhouse Death Scenes That Reinvented Murder Investigations

in Art, Education, Life, Psychology, Science | October 30th, 2020

Who can resist minia­tures?

Wee food, painstak­ing­ly ren­dered in felt­ed wool…

Match­book-sized books you can actu­al­ly read…

Clas­sic record albums shrunk down for mice…

The late Frances Gless­ner Lee (1878–1962) def­i­nite­ly loved minia­tures, and excelled at their cre­ation, knit­ting socks on pins, hand rolling real tobac­co into tiny cig­a­rettes, and mak­ing sure the vic­tims in her real­is­tic mur­der scene dio­ra­mas exhib­it­ed the prop­er degree of rig­or mor­tis and livid­i­ty.

Lee began work on her Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death at the age of 65, as part of a life­long inter­est in homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion.

Her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion began with the Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries she read as a girl.

In the 1930s, the wealthy divorcee used part of a siz­able inher­i­tance to endow Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty with enough mon­ey for the cre­ation of its Depart­ment of Legal Med­i­cine.

Its first chair­man was her friend, George Burgess Magrath, a med­ical exam­in­er who had shared his dis­tress that crim­i­nals were lit­er­al­ly get­ting away with mur­der because coro­ners and police inves­ti­ga­tors lacked appro­pri­ate train­ing for foren­sic analy­sis.

The library to which Lee donat­ed a thou­sand books on the top­ic was named in his hon­or.

The home­made dio­ra­mas offered a more vivid expe­ri­ence than could be found in any book.

Each Nut­shell Study required almost half a year’s work, and cost about the same as a house would have at the time. ($6000 in the 1940s.)

“Luck­i­ly, I was born with a sil­ver spoon in my mouth,” Lee remarked. “It gives me the time and mon­ey to fol­low my hob­by of sci­en­tif­ic crime detec­tion.”

Although Lee had been brought up in a lux­u­ri­ous 13 bed­room home (8 were for ser­vants’ use), the domes­tic set­tings of the Nut­shell Stud­ies are more mod­est, reflec­tive of the vic­tims’ cir­cum­stances.

She drew inspi­ra­tion from actu­al crimes, but had no inter­est in repli­cat­ing their actu­al scenes. The crimes she authored for her lit­tle rooms were com­pos­ites of the ones she had stud­ied, with invent­ed vic­tims and in rooms dec­o­rat­ed accord­ing to her imag­i­na­tion.

Her intent was to pro­vide inves­ti­ga­tors with vir­gin crime scenes to metic­u­lous­ly exam­ine, culling indi­rect evi­dence from the painstak­ing­ly detailed props she was a stick­ler for get­ting right.

Stu­dents were pro­vid­ed with a flash­light, a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, and wit­ness state­ments. Her atten­tion to detail ensured that they would use the full nine­ty min­utes they had been allot­ted ana­lyz­ing the scene. Their goal was not to crack the case but to care­ful­ly doc­u­ment obser­va­tions on which a case could be built.

The flaw­less­ness of her 1:12 scale ren­der­ings also speaks to her deter­mi­na­tion to be tak­en seri­ous­ly in what was then an exclu­sive­ly male world. (Women now dom­i­nate the field of foren­sic sci­ence.)

Noth­ing was over­looked.

As she wrote to Dr. Alan Moritz, the Depart­ment of Legal Medicine’s sec­ond chair, in a let­ter review­ing pro­posed changes to some ear­ly scenes:

I found myself con­stant­ly tempt­ed to add more clues and details and am afraid I may get them “gad­gety” in the process. I hope you will watch over this and stop me when I go too far. Since you and I have per­pe­trat­ed these crimes our­selves we are in the unique posi­tion of being able to give com­plete descrip­tions of them even if there were no witnesses—very much in the man­ner of the nov­el­ist who is able to tell the inmost thoughts of his char­ac­ters.

It’s no acci­dent that many of the Nut­shell Stud­ies’ lit­tle corpses are female.

Lee did not want offi­cers to treat vic­tims dis­mis­sive­ly because of gen­der-relat­ed assump­tions, whether the sce­nario involved a pros­ti­tute whose throat has been cut, or a house­wife dead on the floor of her kitchen, the burn­ers of her stove all switched to the on posi­tion.

Would you like to test your pow­ers of obser­va­tion?

Above are the remains of Mag­gie Wil­son, dis­cov­ered in the Dark Bath­room’s tub by a fel­low board­er, Lizzie Miller, who gave the fol­low­ing state­ment:

I roomed in the same house as Mag­gie Wil­son, but knew her only from we met in the hall. I think she had ‘fits’ [seizures]. A cou­ple of male friends came to see her fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly. On Sun­day night, the men were there and there was a lot of drink­ing going on. Some time after the men left, I heard the water run­ning in the bath­room. I opened the door and found her as you see her.

Grim, eh?

Not near­ly as grim as what you’ll find in the Par­son­age or the Three-Room Dwelling belong­ing to shoe fac­to­ry fore­man Robert Jud­son, his wife, Kate, and their baby, Lin­da Mae.

The peri­od-accu­rate mini fur­nish­ings and fash­ions may cre­ate a false impres­sion that the Moth­er of Foren­sic Sci­ence’s Nut­shell Stud­ies should be rel­e­gat­ed to a muse­um.

In truth, their abun­dance of detail remains so effec­tive that the Office of the Chief Med­ical Exam­in­er in Bal­ti­more con­tin­ues to use 18 of them in train­ing sem­i­nars to help homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tors “con­vict the guilty, clear the inno­cent, and find the truth in a nut­shell.”

Explore 5 Nut­shell Studies—Woodman’s Shack, Attic, Liv­ing Room, Garage, and Par­son­age Parlor—in 360º com­pli­ments of The Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Muse­um Ren­wick Gallery’s exhib­it Mur­der Is Her Hob­by: Frances Gless­ner Lee and The Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Swe­den, Fea­tur­ing Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dol­ly Pars­ley & More

“20 Rules For Writ­ing Detec­tive Sto­ries” By S.S. Van Dine, One of T.S. Eliot’s Favorite Genre Authors (1928)

Lucy Law­less Joins Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #5 on True Crime

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

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What Scares Us, and How Does this Manifest in Film? A Halloween Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#66)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 30th, 2020

Why do peo­ple enjoy being scared by films? How does what counts as fright­en­ing in a film actu­al­ly con­nect with what scares us in real life, and how does this in turn relate to child­hood fears? What’s the deal with “hor­ror” movies that are good but not scary or that are ter­ri­ble yet still scary in some way? Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by actor/special effects-guy Nathan Shel­ton (who runs the Fright­mare The­atre Pod­cast) for a Hal­loween con­ver­sa­tion where no one gets a rock.

We present our picks for what scared us as kids: Tril­o­gy of Ter­ror, Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers (1978), Dark Night of the Scare­crow, and Copy­cat, and go on about Arachno­pho­bia, The Blair Witch Project, Hal­loween, Fri­day the 13th, The Thing, and Night­mare on Elm Street. We also dis­cus­sion hor­ror aimed at women, body hor­ror, tropopho­bia, hor­ror movie music, and Stephen King. Final­ly, we con­sid­er the revival in art hor­ror by the likes of Mike Flana­gan (Dr. Sleep, Haunt­ing of Bly Manor), Ari Aster (Mid­som­mar, Hered­i­tary), and Robert Eggers (The Witch).

We drew on a break-down on the var­i­ous ele­ments that make up the hor­ror genre from Matt Glas­by, in an arti­cle called “The Scari­est Films Ever Made and How They Fright­en Us.”

For a lengthy aca­d­e­m­ic look at the top­ic, try “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empir­i­cal Research on Psy­cho­log­i­cal Respons­es to Hor­ror Films” (2019) by G. Neil Mar­tin.

If you don’t mind a key scene from The Thing (1982) being spoiled, check out this land­mark grody spe­cial effect scene.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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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When Edward Gorey Created Set Designs & Tony Award-Winning Costumes for a Broadway Production of Dracula (1977)

in Theatre | October 29th, 2020

Edward Gorey and Hal­loween go togeth­er as well as Drac­u­la and Hal­loween. Bring the three togeth­er (well, it’s almost Hal­loween), and you’ve got a tri­umvi­rate of clas­sic, wicked, scary fun. The align­ment of these dark stars first occurred, Olivia Rutigliano writes at CrimeReads, when a Gorey-designed pro­duc­tion of Drac­u­la “pre­miered on Broad­way at the Mar­tin Beck The­ater on Octo­ber 20th, 1977, just in time for Hal­loween.” Star­ring Frank Lan­gel­la in the title role, “the pro­duc­tion was a smash,” and Gorey, who designed the sets, cos­tumes, posters, play­bills, and mer­chan­dise, won a Tony the fol­low­ing year.

To hear Gorey tell it, in Episode 4 of “Goreytelling,” an ani­mat­ed series of pre­vi­ous­ly unheard record­ed inter­views with the reclu­sive writer/illustrator, he was “only too con­scious of not being a real set design­er or a real cos­tume design­er or a real any­thing…. I designed it the only way I could.” His seem­ing pain over the whole thing extends to the play itself. “I don’t know what any­body saw in it, exact­ly,” he says, “but it was a big hit.”

The play was first staged in 1973, and for years, Gorey says, each time a the­ater com­pa­ny decid­ed to put it on, he was called up to con­sult. He duti­ful­ly turned up each time, scowl­ing glum­ly and won­der­ing why. When it final­ly hit Broad­way, he saw two-thirds of a rehearsal and left “jaun­diced.” The final prod­uct left an even more sour taste. It was, he says, “absurd,” but very lucra­tive. As for the Tony, he says iron­i­cal­ly, the award turned out to be “the cross I had to bear,” an embar­rass­ing acco­lade for cos­tumes he deemed unwor­thy of the hon­or.

Rutigliano deems the set designs “gor­geous… three giant tableaux, in his famil­iar inky, metic­u­lous style” and fea­tures a few pho­tographs from a pro­duc­tion in Hous­ton. We would not expect oth­er­wise from Gorey, who was always him­self and always a pro­fes­sion­al. The sets have lived on in photos—some fea­tur­ing Lan­gel­la, some his suc­ces­sor, Raul Julia—in minia­ture mod­els, and in the brief but sort-of com­pelling pro­duc­tion of “Drac­u­la: Star­ring Edward Gorey’s Toy The­atre,” just below. Gorey also cre­at­ed an illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Drac­u­la in 1996.

“It should be not­ed,” Goreyana writes, “that all the sets for Drac­u­la were hand paint­ed by tal­ent­ed scene shop artists. Every cross hatched line on the walls, fur­ni­ture, and floor had to be recre­at­ed to size by hand.” This is indeed impres­sive, and Gorey is prob­a­bly right: the sets, which he also seemed to loathe, were prob­a­bly more deserv­ing of the Tony than the cos­tumes. “The over­all aes­thet­ic,” says Rutigliano, “match­es the peri­od of the orig­i­nal Broad­way run, the 1920s.” (The pro­duc­tion won anoth­er Tony for Most Inno­v­a­tive Revival.)

The orig­i­nal the­ater adap­ta­tion was com­mis­sioned by Bram Stoker’s wid­ow, Flo­rence, “as part of her copy­right cru­sade against F.W. Murnau’s Nos­fer­atu.” It debuted in Eng­land in 1924, then pre­miered on Broad­way in 1927 with a then-unknown Bela Lugosi. “This pro­duc­tion would be adapt­ed, in turn, by the direc­tor Tod Brown­ing into the famous 1931 Drac­u­la film.” Gorey him­self may have hat­ed it, but the play he so metic­u­lous­ly brought back to life in the 70s descend­ed, in a way, in a long, ven­er­a­ble, undead line, from the orig­i­nal Drac­u­la him­self.

via CrimeReads

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

When Edward Gorey Designed Book Cov­ers for Clas­sic Nov­els: See His Iron­ic-Goth­ic Take on Dick­ens, Con­rad, Poe & More

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

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

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