How to Find Emotional Strength & Resilience During COVID-19: Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kornfield, Susan David & Other Experts

in Current Affairs, Health, Life, Psychology, TED Talks | April 23rd, 2020

There are many roads through the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. One is denial, which only makes things worse. Anoth­er is ser­vice and self-sac­ri­fice, a choice we hon­or in the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als putting their lives at risk every day. For most of us, how­ev­er, the best course of action is non-action—staying home and iso­lat­ing our­selves from oth­ers. Days bleed into weeks, weeks into months. It can seem like life has come to a com­plete halt. It hasn’t, of course. All sorts of things are hap­pen­ing inside us. We don’t know how long this will last; cur­rent cours­es of action don’t bode well. What do we do with the fear, anger, lone­li­ness, grief, and buzzing, ever-present anx­i­ety?

Maybe the first thing to do is to accept that we have those feel­ings and feel them, instead of stuff­ing them down, cov­er­ing them up, or push­ing them onto some­one else. Then we can rec­og­nize we aren’t by any means alone. That’s eas­i­er said than done in quar­an­tine, but psy­chol­o­gists and inspi­ra­tional writ­ers and speak­ers like Eliz­a­beth Gilbert have come togeth­er under the aus­pices of the TED Con­nect series, host­ed by the head of TED Chris Ander­son, to help.

TED, known for show­cas­ing “thinkers and doers [giv­ing] the talk of their lives in 18 min­utes (or less),” has wise­ly rec­og­nized the need to dig much deep­er. Ander­son and head of cura­tion Helen Wal­ters’ con­ver­sa­tion with Gilbert, above, runs a lit­tle over an hour.

As for that cease­less anx­i­ety, Gilbert sug­gests we should all give our­selves “a mea­sure of mer­cy and com­pas­sion.” We might feel like we need per­mis­sion to do so in soci­eties that demand we con­stant­ly jus­ti­fy our exis­tence. But admit­ting vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is the begin­ning of strength. Then we find con­struc­tive ways for­ward. The kind of resilience we can build in iso­la­tion is the kind that can out­last a cri­sis. Still, it is hard won. As Ander­son says above, in addi­tion to the exter­nal bat­tle we must fight with the virus and our own gov­ern­ments, “there’s this oth­er bat­tle as well, that is prob­a­bly equal­ly as con­se­quen­tial. It’s a bat­tle that’s going on right inside our minds.”

Rather than killing time wait­ing fit­ful­ly for some accept­able form of nor­mal to return, we can build what psy­chol­o­gist Susan David calls “emo­tion­al courage.” In con­ver­sa­tion with TED’s Whit­ney Pen­ning­ton Rogers, above, David reveals that she her­self has good rea­son to fear: her hus­band is a physi­cian. She also under­stands the con­se­quences of a col­lec­tive denial of suf­fer­ing and death. “The cir­cum­stance that we are in now is not some­thing that we asked for, but life is call­ing on every sin­gle one of us to move into the place of wis­dom in our­selves… into the space of wis­dom and for­ti­tude, sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, courage.” We move into that space by rec­og­niz­ing that “life’s beau­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from its fragili­ty.”

Themes of courage and con­nec­tion come up again and again in oth­er TED Con­nects inter­views, such as that above with Rab­bi Lord Jonathan Sacks and below with author Priya Park­er. Else­where on the inter­net, you’ll find sim­i­lar kinds of advice.

On the Tim Fer­ris show, you can hear inter­views with Jack Korn­field on find­ing peace in the pan­dem­ic, Esther Per­el on nav­i­gat­ing rela­tion­ships in quar­an­tine, and Ryan Hol­i­day on using Sto­icism to choose “alive time over dead time.”

Sto­icism has gath­ered a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich store of wis­dom about how to live in cri­sis. In his own med­i­ta­tion on iso­la­tion, Michel de Mon­taigne drew on the Sto­ics in advis­ing read­ers to “reserve a back­shop, whol­ly our own and entire­ly free, where­in to set­tle our true lib­er­ty, our prin­ci­ple soli­tude and retreat…. We have a mind pli­able in itself, that will be com­pa­ny; that has where­with­al to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this soli­tude to lan­guish under an uncom­fort­able vacu­ity.” In oth­er words, the road through iso­la­tion, though fraught with painful emo­tions and uncer­tain­ties, can be, if we choose, one of sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

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

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David Hockney on Vincent van Gogh & the Importance of Knowing How to Truly See the World

in Art | April 23rd, 2020

For a few months, David Hock­ney was the most expen­sive artist in the world, after his mas­ter­work Por­trait of an Artist (Pool with Two Fig­ures) sold at auc­tion for $90 mil­lion in Novem­ber 2018. (He was out­sold last May by Jeff Koons, who set the pre­vi­ous record in 2013.) The sale says all kinds of things about the state of the art mar­ket, but Hock­ney has always been dri­ven by a need to make things, not to prof­it, a com­pul­sion as relent­less as that of one of his heroes, Vin­cent van Gogh.

A Por­trait of an Artist’s cre­ation, told in the 1974 film A Big­ger Splash, is the sto­ry of a labor of love. Hock­ney paint­ed and repaint­ed and repaint­ed, giv­ing up once then start­ing over again, work­ing with a very van Gogh-like inten­si­ty. Oth­er­wise the influ­ence may not be obvi­ous from his most famous, and most expen­sive, can­vas. After his “L.A. swim­ming pool peri­od,” how­ev­er, Hock­ney moved on to oth­er sub­jects and oth­er media.

In the late 90s, he returned to the York­shire of his boy­hood when his moth­er became ill. He took up plein air land­scapes paint­ing in oils and water­col­ors. Hock­ney describes this tran­si­tion in a March 2019 inter­view above from the Van Gogh Muse­um. In part, he says, he want­ed to answer a chal­lenge. “I knew land­scape was seen as some­thing you couldn’t do today,” he says. “And I thought, ‘why?’ Because the landscape’s become so bor­ing? It’s not the land­scape that’s become bor­ing, it’s the depic­tions of it that have become bor­ing. You can’t be bored of nature, can you?”

You also can­not become bored of van Gogh. He knew, Hock­ney says, how to “real­ly look. He saw very clear­ly. I mean, very, very clear­ly.” Van Gogh expressed the clar­i­ty of his vision in lucid, lyri­cal prose. Hock­ney begins the short inter­view above with a quote from a Decem­ber 1882 van Gogh let­ter: “Some­times I long so much to do land­scape, just as one would go for a long walk to refresh one­self, and in all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expres­sion and a soul.” The pas­sage gets a know­ing nod from Hock­ney, who has had much more to say on this theme late­ly.

Both van Gogh and Hock­ney describe their expe­ri­ences with land­scape paint­ing as a kind of inten­sive art ther­a­py. Hock­ney, now sequestered in Nor­mandy while France is in lock­down, has sug­gest­ed that oth­ers should do the same dur­ing this time, as a way of reliev­ing stress and appre­ci­at­ing their place in nature. Peo­ple should put away their cam­eras (and, by def­i­n­i­tion, their phones). “I would sug­gest peo­ple could draw at this time,” he says, “Ques­tion every­thing and do not think about pho­tog­ra­phy. I would sug­gest they real­ly look hard at some­thing and think about what they are real­ly see­ing.”

Hock­ney has come away from his time paint­ing nature with some par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigu­ing insights. “In a way,” he says above, “nature doesn’t real­ly have per­spec­tive. I’ve noticed trees don’t fol­low the rules of per­spec­tive…. Per­spec­tive is a stran­gling, I think. It’s not real­ly mak­ing space, it’s stran­gling space.” It’s an obser­va­tion we can apply to rigid ways of see­ing at real­i­ty, none of which seem to make much sense any­more. We won’t all be as vision­ary or as dri­ven as van Gogh or David Hock­ney, but time spent learn­ing to “real­ly look” might be time well spent indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch as David Hock­ney Cre­ates ‘Late Novem­ber Tun­nel, 2006’

Down­load David Hockney’s Play­ful Draw­ings for the iPhone and iPad

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

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

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Benedict Cumberbatch, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Fry & Others Read Letters of Hope, Love & Support During COVID-19

in Letters | April 23rd, 2020

Though the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has put a stop to many for­mer­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties around the world, it’s hard­ly put a stop to glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In fact, it’s almost cer­tain­ly inten­si­fied glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, what with all the atten­tion the strug­gle against COVID-19 com­mands from 24-hour media pro­fes­sion­als — and all the time and ener­gy the rest of us have put into social media as a sub­sti­tute for social­iza­tion. But how would we have com­mu­ni­cat­ed amid a pan­dem­ic of this kind in an age before the inter­net? Assum­ing postal ser­vices remained in good work­ing order, we would, of course, have writ­ten let­ters to each oth­er.

We can still write let­ters to each oth­er in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but now we can also read them to each oth­er, wher­ev­er in the world we may be. This is the basis for the #ReadALet­ter cam­paign, which actor Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch intro­duces in the video at the top of the post. “I real­ly hope this let­ter finds you in good spir­its as we nav­i­gate our way through this tru­ly sur­re­al cri­sis, where upheaval and uncer­tain­ty are dai­ly real­i­ties,” he says, read­ing aloud a mis­sive com­posed at his home and meant for the world at large.

“But so, thank­ful­ly, is the total­ly inspir­ing self-sac­ri­fice, togeth­er­ness, courage, gen­eros­i­ty, and cama­raderie the peo­ple are exhibit­ing.” It is those hon­or­able qual­i­ties, Cum­ber­batch con­tin­ues, that “we at Let­ters Live are look­ing for a way to cel­e­brate through our favorite medi­um of the let­ter.”

You may remem­ber Let­ters Live, a series of events inspired by Let­ters of Note, from when we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Cum­ber­batch’s appear­ances there inter­pret­ing cor­re­spon­dence by the likes of Kurt Von­negut, Albert Camus, and Alan Tur­ing. The stars of Let­ters Live have hereto­fore been his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant let­ter-writ­ers and the skilled pro­fes­sion­al per­form­ers who read their words. But now, Cum­ber­batch says, “we want to hear you read let­ters. They can be let­ters to the heroes on the front line. They could be let­ters to rel­a­tives in need. They could be let­ters to strangers who have stepped up and made a dif­fer­ence. They could be let­ters to neigh­bor­ing fam­i­lies or streets or towns or coun­tries.” To par­tic­i­pate, you need only use a cam­era phone to record your­self read­ing a let­ter aloud, then post that video on Twit­ter or Insta­gram and send it to read@letterslive.com.

What you read on cam­era (or off it, if you pre­fer) could be “an impor­tant let­ter you have always want­ed to send, or a cher­ished let­ter you once received. It could be a favorite let­ter of yours that offers hope in our cur­rent cri­sis or a pre­scient warn­ing too impor­tant to be ignored.” Here we’ve includ­ed the #ReadALet­ter videos so far con­tributed by oth­er nota­bles includ­ing Mar­garet Atwood, Stephen Fry, and Grif­fin Dunne, who reads a let­ter his father Dominick Dunne wrote when he put him­self into iso­la­tion for cre­ative pur­pos­es in 1980. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants from all walks of life include a rab­bi, a col­lege stu­dent, an emer­gency depart­ment doc­tor, and even a cou­ple of nona­ge­nar­i­ans. If you need more inspi­ra­tion to #ReadALet­ter your­self, revis­it Cum­ber­batch’s Let­ters of Live per­for­mance of Sol Lewit­t’s 1965 let­ter to Eva Hesse, the one in which he deliv­ers invalu­able words of advice: “Stop It and Just DO.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

An Ani­mat­ed Mar­garet Atwood Explains How Sto­ries Change with Tech­nol­o­gy

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Vintage Book & Record Covers Brought to Life in a Mesmerizing Animated Video

in Art, Books, Design | April 22nd, 2020

The state of vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy has reached the thresh­old of a time in which VR meet­ings will be the norm. Apart from oth­er appli­ca­tions, this may soon allow con­sumers to stroll through vir­tu­al aisles rather than click­ing box­es on a screen, pick­ing up prod­ucts and view­ing them from every angle. Still, design­ers rec­og­nize that an essence of the human expe­ri­ence is lost with­out the sense of touch. There may even be a future in which we wear clothes with hap­tic feed­back sys­tems embed­ded in them, to feel the pages of a vir­tu­al book beneath our fin­gers…

Yet our slow tran­si­tion from the phys­i­cal to the vir­tu­al world leaves out intan­gi­bles. Some­thing is lost from both. Big box stores still devote sig­nif­i­cant floor space to books and records, for exam­ple. But I sub­mit that a glossi­ness pre­vails in print design, per­haps a con­se­quence of com­pet­ing with screens. There’s a wabi-sabi qual­i­ty to brows­ing a used book­store or record shop in per­son, thumb­ing through an old col­lec­tion of vin­tage paper­backs and LPs, that can­not be sim­u­lat­ed or enhanced in any way. On the inter­net, how­ev­er, where video is king, it can be made the sub­ject of some hyp­not­ic video art.

As the sen­si­ble major­i­ty of us are hope­ful­ly stay­ing put for the long haul (if we can), we may find our­selves curi­ous­ly edi­fied by the video art of Hen­ning M. Led­er­er. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Lederer’s ani­ma­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry min­i­mal­ist book cov­ers and vin­tage psy­chol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy books. He turns the abstract geo­met­ric pat­terns beloved by book and record com­pa­ny design­ers of the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry into mov­ing images that hint at how prop­er cov­er design can set the imag­i­na­tion whirring (even if it’s a cov­er design for Basic Account­ing).

If Lederer’s mes­mer­iz­ing videos sim­u­late any­thing, it’s the expe­ri­ence of wan­der­ing into a used book­store next to a lib­er­al arts college—full of pro­fes­sors’ fas­ci­nat­ing­ly out­dat­ed hand-me-downs—after hav­ing ingest­ed a small quan­ti­ty of LSD. Maybe you’ll have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent asso­ci­a­tion. But the point is that Lederer’s art sug­gests a sce­nario rather than attempt­ing to recre­ate one. His stud­ies of mod­ernist cov­er designs also recall Mar­cel Duchamp’s Rotore­liefs, con­cep­tu­al art pieces intend­ed for pop­u­lar use as opti­cal illu­sions.

Duchamp’s spin­ning disks became fea­tures of ear­ly Sur­re­al­ist cin­e­ma, icon­ic sym­bols of dreams on film. There is a mys­te­ri­ous opac­i­ty to his phys­i­cal objects onscreen, just as Lederer’s book and record cov­ers seem to have a weight of their own, a use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to high­light the strange unique­ness of phys­i­cal objects, rather than their end­less repro­ducibil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

36 Abstract Cov­ers of Vin­tage Psy­chol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­ma­tion

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

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

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

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Japanese Designer Creates Free Template for an Anti-Virus Face Shield: Download, and Then Use a Printer, Paper & Scissors

in Design, Health | April 22nd, 2020

A few years ago we fea­tured the Japan­ese art of chindōgu, or the inven­tion of amus­ing­ly “use­less” inven­tions. The chindōgu canon includes such simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sen­si­ble and non­sen­si­cal objects as minia­ture toe­cap umbrel­las (to keep one’s shoes dry in the rain) and chop­sticks fit­ted with minia­ture fans (to cool down ramen noo­dles before con­sump­tion). Today we present a Japan­ese inven­tion that may at first glance look chindōgu-like, but would nev­er qual­i­fy due to its sim­plic­i­ty and sheer use­ful­ness: an anti-virus face shield that any­one can make in three easy steps. After you’ve down­loaded the tem­plate, all you need is a print­er, paper, scis­sors, and some kind of clear plas­tic sheet.

“Health­care work­ers around the world are putting their lives on the line to fight COVID-19 but their bat­tle con­tin­ues to be fought uphill as a short­age of med­ical sup­plies threat­ens to dis­rupt an already over­whelmed sys­tem,” writes Spoon & Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. We’ve all read of the lack of neces­si­ties like face masks and ven­ti­la­tors in some of the most afflict­ed coun­tries, and in such places hav­ing access to face shields could make a real dif­fer­ence in the num­ber of lives saved.

“Face shields are typ­i­cal­ly made with mul­ti­ple parts and would be dif­fi­cult to cre­ate and assem­ble at home,” Wald­man notes. “But Toku­jin Yoshioka’s bril­liant idea sim­pli­fies the design great­ly, allow­ing it to be held in place with ordi­nary eye­wear.” Best known as an artist and design­er, Yosh­io­ka has made his name cre­at­ing strik­ing sculp­tures, instal­la­tions, works of archi­tec­ture, and many oth­er objects besides.

Yosh­io­ka even designed the torch for the 2020 Sum­mer Olympics in Tokyo, shaped like a Japan­ese cher­ry blos­som and made with the same alu­minum extru­sion tech­nol­o­gy used to man­u­fac­ture the coun­try’s equal­ly icon­ic bul­let trains. Clear­ly the coro­n­avirus-caused post­pone­ment of the games has­n’t got Yosh­io­ka too down to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing his call­ing. “I am grate­ful to the brave and ded­i­cat­ed health­care work­ers for fight­ing the con­ta­gious dis­ease,” he writes in the note accom­pa­ny­ing the video at the top of the post that shows you how to make and wear his face shield. As you can see, it’s made to be worn with glass­es, so the non-bespec­ta­cled will need to stick with oth­er forms of pro­tec­tion against the virus — or take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to order some fash­ion­able frames of the kind that all the best design­ers seem to be wear­ing these days.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Why Fight­ing the Coro­n­avirus Depends on You

The 10 Com­mand­ments of Chindōgu, the Japan­ese Art of Cre­at­ing Unusu­al­ly Use­less Inven­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

in Film | April 22nd, 2020

In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­ol­o­gist to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You watch can 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

  • Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
  • The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
  • Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
  • The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
  • Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. An alter­nate ver­sion can be found here. (1927)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
  • The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
  • Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
  • Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
  • M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Expres­sion­ist Dance Cos­tumes from the 1920s, and the Trag­ic Sto­ry of Lavinia Schulz & Wal­ter Holdt

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #40 on #MeToo Depictions in TV and Film

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 22nd, 2020


These sto­ries are all heav­i­ly watched, which means they’re enter­tain­ing: The 2019 film Bomb­shell (about the pre­da­tions of Roger Ailes), Apple TV’s The Morn­ing Show (about a dis­graced anchor), and Net­flix’s Unbe­liev­able (about report­ing rape) and 13 Rea­sons Why (about teen sui­cide result­ing from sex­u­al assault). But what’s “enter­tain­ing” about sex­u­al assault and harass­ment? What makes for a sen­si­tive as opposed to a sen­sa­tion­al­ized por­tray­al?

Eri­ca, Mark, and Bri­an con­sid­er which sto­ries work and why. How much diver­gence from true events is allow­able in Bomb­shell or Con­fir­ma­tion (about Ani­ta Hill)? By hav­ing char­ac­ters inter­pret their sit­u­a­tions (Eri­ca gives an exam­ple from the show Sex Edu­ca­tion), are writ­ers essen­tial­ly telling audi­ences how to feel about their own expe­ri­ences? Should cer­tain depic­tions be ruled out as poten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing, or is it good to “bring to light” what­ev­er ter­ri­ble things actu­al­ly hap­pen in the world? Should shows delve into the psy­chol­o­gy of the per­pe­tra­tor (maybe even treat­ing him as a pro­tag­o­nist), or must the mes­sage be whol­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly about the vic­tim? 

Art is about risk-tak­ing and cap­tur­ing dif­fi­cult ambi­gu­i­ties; this does­n’t sound much like a pub­lic ser­vice mes­sage. So what respon­si­bil­i­ty to do show cre­ators have to con­sult pro­fes­sion­als about how to present dif­fi­cult top­ics like this?

We drew on some arti­cles to help us look at these ques­tions:

Here’s that weird scene where Jen­nifer Anis­ton and Bil­ly Crudup sing on The Morn­ing Show.

If this top­ic is too depress­ing, check out our episode #39 from last week about what to watch on TV dur­ing quar­an­tine:

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 or start with the first episode.

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

in Art | April 21st, 2020

Not only did Andy Warhol miss out on the inter­net, but the inter­net missed out on Andy Warhol. Sure­ly, these days he would be pro­lif­i­cal­ly post­ing to his Insta­gram and YouTube from home, indulging mul­ti­ple celebri­ty and pop cul­ture obses­sions. Warhol’s Polaroid aes­thet­ic and pio­neer­ing of the self-as-brand helped cre­ate 21st cen­tu­ry online cul­ture. Maybe he was the orig­i­nal “influ­encer,” though Warhol was more of an insti­ga­tor. But he’s become too famil­iar for us to appre­ci­ate his unique­ness, sug­gest Gre­gor Muir and Fion­tán Moran, cura­tors of an exten­sive Tate Mod­ern Warhol exhib­it fea­tur­ing 100 works, which is now only acces­si­ble via the 7‑minute video tour above.

“Every­one owns Warhol” (though few own a Warhol), argue Muir and Moran. “He is one of those rare artists who tran­scends the art world, hav­ing become wide­ly known as one of America’s most famous artists, if not one of America’s most famous Amer­i­cans.

Over time, Warhol became—and still is—a big brand, which is just how he want­ed it.” Warhol showed how indi­vid­ual artists could cir­cum­vent the star-mak­ing sys­tem, cre­ate their own brand­ing, and com­man­deer the cul­ture with man­u­fac­tured fame. He “helped shape a century’s worth of pop cul­ture,” writes Luke Abra­hams at Harper’s Bazaar, “and helped launch the cult of celebri­ty.”

Whether that lega­cy deserves more praise or blame I leave to you to decide. In either case, our posthu­mous judg­ments can­not dimin­ish Warhol’s sin­gu­lar achieve­ments in graph­ic art or his rad­i­cal approach­es to film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and—through his pro­mo­tion of the Vel­vet Under­ground—music. Behind the aloof, eccen­tric per­sona is a per­son­al sto­ry the Tate exhib­it explores as well, through Warhol’s immi­grant and queer iden­ti­ty and his con­cerns with death and reli­gion. Archi­tec­tur­al Digest reports on the addi­tion­al resources the online exhib­it offers:

For vis­i­tors look­ing to dive deep­er into the exhi­bi­tion and the artist dur­ing the lock­down, there’s also the room-by-room exhi­bi­tion guide; arti­cles about Warhol, from an inves­ti­ga­tion into his rela­tion­ship with his moth­er to a per­son­al tale writ­ten by his friend Bob Colachel­lo; a pod­cast about per­sonas; and even how-to videos demon­strat­ing Warhol’s print­mak­ing process. 

Tate dig­i­tal direc­tor Hilary Knight knows there’s no sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal, which is maybe an iron­ic idea when it comes to Warhol. “We are not try­ing to repli­cate a muse­um vis­it,” Knight says, but “we can still offer a rich, deep, and inspir­ing expe­ri­ence of Tate online.” Though abbre­vi­at­ed and vir­tu­al, this deep­er dive into Warhol’s life and work does that indeed. Find more detailed on the exhi­bi­tion, and each room, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fied: Four Videos Explain His Ground­break­ing Art and Its Cul­tur­al Impact

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

Lou Reed’s Mix­tape for Andy Warhol Dis­cov­ered by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor: Fea­tures 12 Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Songs

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

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Watch 270+ Short Documentaries of Artists at Work, and Let Them Inspire Your Creative Process

in Art, Creativity | April 21st, 2020

Imag­ine if come­di­an Amy Sedaris were self-iso­lat­ing with artists Mar­cel Dza­ma and Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon.

Per­haps they’d bar­ri­cade them­selves into sep­a­rate rooms, hunched over their indi­vid­ual screens, curs­ing their room­mates for slow­ing down their livestreams, but we pre­fer to think they’d busy them­selves with projects such as Dzama’s short film, “Dance Floor Drac­u­la, Pre­lude in C‑Sharp Minor.”

Enjoy a glimpse into the friends’ col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­ative process, above, com­pli­ments of Art21’s Extend­ed Play, a short doc­u­men­tary series offer­ing back­stage access to liv­ing, work­ing artists, from estab­lished to emerg­ing.

Much of the con­tent seems ger­mane to the world we find our­selves in now, when the cre­ative play­ing field feels remark­ably open to our par­tic­i­pa­tion, thanks to crowd­sourced projects like the ongo­ing pho­to chal­lenge where­in ordi­nary cit­i­zens are using their phones and house­hold objects to recre­ate famous art­works at home.

Painter Tala Madani takes view­ers through her sketch­book and talks about its val­ue as a method of cap­tur­ing ideas and as the “most imme­di­ate record of the think­ing process.” The car­toon­ish qual­i­ty of her sketch­es may help those who’d let a lack of con­fi­dence in their artis­tic abil­i­ty stop them from attempt­ing to doc­u­ment their obser­va­tions of our changed real­i­ty visu­al­ly. A sketch­book is also a great place for the seeds of future projects to ger­mi­nate.

The prepa­ra­tions for Oakland’s Cre­ative Growth Art Center’s annu­al fash­ion show, Beyond Trend, could send you scut­tling to your clos­et or recy­cling bin, inspired by William Scott’s papi­er-mâché Franken­stein mask—a five day effort—or the patch­es Chris­tine Sze­to embroi­ders with titles of favorite Tay­lor Swift songs, then sews to her jeans in order­ly columns.

This sort of wear­able art does­n’t require advanced nee­dle skills or knowl­edge of how gar­ments are put togeth­er, mak­ing it per­fect­ly tai­lored to those open to explor­ing new sides of them­selves in iso­la­tion.

That said, we are sure the fea­tured design­ers are anx­ious­ly await­ing the reopen­ing of Cre­ative Growth, which serves artists with devel­op­men­tal, men­tal, and phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties.

Com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty are show­ing them­selves to be equal­ly essen­tial to our well­be­ing.

Watch all 270+ episodes of Art21’s Extend­ed Play here, or right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sev­en Road-Test­ed Habits of Effec­tive Artists

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists

Love the Art, Hate the Artist: How to Approach the Art of Dis­graced Artists

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

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Museum Curators Create a Contest to See Who Has the Creepiest Object: Ancient Body Parts, Cursed Toys, and More

in History, Museums, Twitter | April 21st, 2020

Muse­ums around the world have tem­porar­i­ly closed due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and each of these insti­tu­tions has used its down­time dif­fer­ent­ly. Some have pro­vid­ed online ver­sions of the expe­ri­ences pre­vi­ous­ly offered in their phys­i­cal gal­leries; oth­ers have start­ed pro­longed bat­tles on Twit­ter. No, not the kind of pro­longed bat­tle one nor­mal­ly asso­ciates with Twit­ter, but a friend­lier, more pro­duc­tive com­pe­ti­tion between pro­fes­sion­als. At times, how­ev­er, the #cura­tor­bat­tle, as it’s been hash­tagged, has looked just as repul­sive to the view­er as any Twit­ter con­flict: espe­cial­ly last week, when the York­shire Muse­um threw down the chal­lenge to pull the “creepi­est object” out of the archives and post it.

“Muse­um cura­tors are up to their ears in weird crap, some of which isn’t fit for dis­play,” writes Ruin My Week’s Ali­son Sul­li­van. “There are lots of niche muse­ums out there, too, who don’t get the kind of atten­tion the Smith­son­ian receives. They’re about local his­to­ry or spe­cif­ic inter­ests, and their col­lec­tions are the strangest of all.”

The York­shire Muse­um, which bills itself as offer­ing “Britain’s finest archae­o­log­i­cal trea­sures, and a walk through the Juras­sic land­scapes of York­shire,” is no dif­fer­ent: they start­ed off the chal­lenge of the week by post­ing a “3rd/4th cen­tu­ry hair bun from the bur­ial of a #Roman lady, still with the jet pins in place” — albeit ful­ly detached from the head it was buried on.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions saw the York­shire Muse­um’s hair bun and raised it a “sheep’s heart stuck with pins and nails, to be worn like a neck­lace for break­ing evil spells,” a P.T. Bar­num-style “mer­maid” con­struct­ed through taxi­dermy, a “CURSED CHILDREN’S TOY that we found inside the walls of a 155-year-old man­sion,” and small dio­ra­mas pop­u­lat­ed by gold-min­ers and card-play­ers made of crab’s legs and claws.

In the tweet post­ing that last, the York Cas­tle Muse­um describes the pieces’ cre­ators as typ­i­cal of Vic­to­ri­ans, who “loved weird/creepy stuff.” If your own such love isn’t sat­is­fied by the high­lights at Ruin My Week and The Guardian, have a look at the replies below the  York­shire Muse­um’s orig­i­nal tweet. You may not have asked to see a beaked 17th- or 18th-cen­tu­ry plague mask at this par­tic­u­lar moment, but try to take it in the spir­it of cul­tur­al exchange. View more creepy objects on Twit­ter here.

via Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Weird Objects” in the New York Pub­lic Library’s Col­lec­tions: Vir­ginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dick­ens’ Let­ter Open­er, Walt Whitman’s Hair & More

Inside the Creepy, “Aban­doned” Wiz­ard of Oz Theme Park: Scenes of Beau­ti­ful Decay

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

The Creepy 13th-Cen­tu­ry Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Intro­duc­tion to “Dies Irae”

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Mark Knopfler Plays a Poignant, Overdriven Version of “The Last Post,” Remembering the Many Lives Lost in World War I

in Music | April 21st, 2020

World War I sym­bol­ism gets lost on Amer­i­cans. Our his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ries are short and selec­tive, and the War has “large­ly van­ished from view,” as his­to­ri­an Geof­frey Wawro writes at Time mag­a­zine. But in Europe, of course, where some armies suf­fered ten times the casu­al­ties as U.S. troops, and where mil­lions of civil­ian died and towns were bombed into obliv­ion, the mem­o­ry of the Great War is very much alive.

In Ypres, Bel­gium, the War has been memo­ri­al­ized every day since 1928 (with the excep­tion of four years of Ger­man occu­pa­tion dur­ing WWII) by the Last Post Asso­ci­a­tion, a devot­ed com­pa­ny of buglers who play the mil­i­tary song at the Menin Gate memo­r­i­al every evening to com­mem­o­rate the British dead at the Bat­tle of Ypres. As of this writ­ing, they’ve held their 31,748th cer­e­mo­ny.

In Britain itself, and around the world, the tune has a long his­to­ry as a sym­bol, like the pop­py, of Remem­brance Day. Just like Taps in the U.S., the Last Post is “a bugle call,” writes the Last Post Asso­ci­a­tion, “played in the British Army (and in the armies of many oth­er lands) to mark the end of the day’s labours and the onset of the night’s rest…. It has come to rep­re­sent a final farewell to the fall­en at the end of their earth­ly labours and at the onset of their eter­nal rest.”

Robert Graves summed up the song’s asso­ci­a­tion with death in his 1918 poem, “The Last Post”:

The bugler sent a call of high romance—
“Lights out! Lights out!” to the desert­ed square.
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,
“God, if it’s this for me next time in France…
O spare the phan­tom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the oth­er bro­ken ones
Lying so stiff and still under the sky,
Jol­ly young Fusiliers too good to die.”

I imag­ine Mark Knopfler, a lover of poet­ry, might be famil­iar with Graves’ verse. In his own ren­di­tion of the Last Post, above, Knopfler com­mem­o­rates 17,000 Northum­ber­land Fusiliers killed in the War, who came from his home region and suf­fered more casu­al­ties than any oth­er reg­i­ment. Record­ed on Remem­brance Day, Novem­ber 8, 2018, the 100th anniver­sary of the War’s end, Knopfler’s ver­sion is both restrained and fierce­ly over­driv­en, recall­ing Hendrix’s “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” in some of its flashier moments of vibra­to. Rather than one of his usu­al icon­ic gui­tars, he plays a cus­tom instru­ment that howls like a keen­ing bugle.

The record­ing was part of a project in which musi­cians around the world played the cer­e­mo­ni­al call on a vari­ety of instru­ments. For com­par­i­son with Knopfler’s cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion, see a straight­for­ward ren­di­tion played above by a mem­ber of the Aus­tralian Roy­al Mil­i­tary Col­lege Band. The bugle call reminds us of the war dead we may have for­got­ten, and the mil­lions killed by star­va­tion and influen­za after the armistice. And per­haps it also reminds us of the impor­tance of col­lec­tive mourn­ing for the dead in our own extra­or­di­nary his­tor­i­cal moment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Mas­ter­class on His Favorite Gui­tars & Gui­tar Sounds

The Great War: Video Series Will Doc­u­ment How WWI Unfold­ed, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

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

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