Scenes from Life in Paris During the 1920s, Colorized and Restored: Cafés, Notre Dame, Street Life & More

Few cities have been as roman­ti­cized as Paris, and few eras in Paris have been as roman­ti­cized as the nine­teen-twen­ties. This owes much to the famous expa­tri­ate artis­tic and lit­er­ary fig­ures resid­ing there in that decade: Ernest Hem­ing­way, Sal­vador Dalí, F. Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald, Pablo Picas­so, Gertrude Stein, and Man Ray, to name just a few of the fig­ures revived in Woody Allen’s Mid­night in Paris. It’s still dif­fi­cult, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, not to feel at least some curios­i­ty about the real Paris in the twen­ties, footage of which you can see col­orized and enhanced to play at a smooth 60 frames per sec­ond in the video above.

In some respects, Paris has­n’t changed much over the past hun­dred or so years. Notre-Dame, the bridges across the Seine, and the colonne Vendôme will be imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able to any­one who’s been there.

And though the attire of Parisians may be unrec­og­niz­able, their habits cer­tain­ly aren’t: then as now, they clear­ly spent con­sid­er­able amounts of time on les ter­rass­es of their cafés of choice. (And in some cas­es, they’re just the same cafés, as in the case of Le Dôme and Le Café de la Paix.) And though a few of them still read news­pa­pers there in the twen­ty-twen­ties, many more did in the nine­teen twen­ties, the inven­tion of the smart­phone lying about eighty years in the future.

For some of us, the absence of screens alone may feel like rea­son enough to time-trav­el back, as Owen Wilson’s dis­af­fect­ed Hol­ly­wood screen­writer does in Mid­night in Paris. If we con­sid­er the state of plumb­ing, heat­ing and den­tistry in the France after World War I, we may have sec­ond thoughts, and sure­ly our fore­knowl­edge of World War II would also put a damper on the expe­ri­ence. But romance is romance, and if we could suc­cess­ful­ly man­age to inte­grate our­selves into the urban life cap­tured by these film clips, we might just get used to it, and even want to stick around for a few more decades after Hem­ing­way, Picas­so, the Fitzger­alds, et al leave the scene. After all, les Trente Glo­rieuses were still to come.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago — at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Col­orized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931

Vis­it Great Cities in the 1920s in Restored Col­or Film: New York City, Lon­don, Berlin, Paris, Venice & More

Col­or Footage of the Lib­er­a­tion of Paris, Shot by Hol­ly­wood Direc­tor George Stevens (1944)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch a 1915 Film Adaptation of Alice in Wonderland Enhanced in 4K, with Costumes Based on Original Illustrations by Sir John Tenniel

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land pre­dates the inven­tion of cin­e­ma by a cou­ple of decades. Nev­er­the­less, much like the “Drink me” bot­tle and “Eat me” pre­sent­ed to its young pro­tag­o­nist, Lewis Car­rol­l’s fan­tas­ti­cal tale has called out the same mes­sage to gen­er­a­tions of film­mak­ers around the world: “Adapt me.” This cen­tu­ry, though not even a quar­ter of the way over, has already brought us full-length Alice movies (to say noth­ing of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions) from Europe, South Amer­i­ca, and of course the Unit­ed States. Those last include sep­a­rate adap­ta­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and its sequel Alice Through the Look­ing Glass by no less an auteur than Tim Bur­ton.

Both of those books were also tak­en on by a writer-direc­tor named W. W. Young more than a cen­tu­ry ago, though he sim­ply com­bined por­tions of both nov­els into a sin­gle fea­ture. You can watch this silent Alice in Won­der­land from 1915 above, in a ver­sion its uploader calls “by far the high­est qual­i­ty ver­sion of this film on the inter­net,” assem­bled “pri­mar­i­ly from two prints scanned by the Library of Con­gress, along with a few oth­er sources.

Enhanced with “scene-by-scene image sta­bi­liza­tion,” it also excis­es “many title cards which were not part of the orig­i­nal film” added to sub­se­quent ver­sions, “and which slowed down the film con­sid­er­ably.”

Run­ning just under an hour, this recon­struc­tion includes scenes with such wide­ly known char­ac­ters as the Cater­pil­lar, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Tur­tle and the Queen of Hearts. Young’s footage of such fig­ures as Twee­dledee and Twee­dle­dum and Hump­ty Dump­ty has, alas, been lost to time. Still, unusu­al­ly for a film adap­ta­tion, this ver­sion includes much of Car­rol­l’s par­o­d­ic poem “You Are Old, Father William” — more, even, than made it into Dis­ney’s beloved ani­mat­ed fea­ture of 1951. With its stiff cos­tumes (based on the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions by Sir John Ten­niel) and Long Island back­drops, Alice in Won­der­land may not boast quite the same pro­duc­tion val­ue, but watch­ing it now, long after the silent era, one can’t help but feel trans­port­ed to anoth­er real­i­ty alto­geth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First-Ever Film Ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Tale Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land Read by Sir John Giel­gud

When Aldous Hux­ley Wrote a Script for Disney’s Alice in Won­der­land

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

Curi­ous Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Won­der­land That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Web Site That Lets You Find Your Home Address on Pangea

A cool tool. Soft­ware engi­neer Ian Web­ster has cre­at­ed a web­site that lets you see how the land mass­es on plan­et Earth have changed over the course of 750 mil­lion years. And it has the added bonus of let­ting you plot mod­ern address­es on these ancient land for­ma­tions. Ergo, you can see where your home was locat­ed on the Big Blue Mar­ble some 20, 100, 500, or 750 mil­lion years ago. Web­ster’s project (access it here) is open source. Have fun.

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:

Map Show­ing Where Today’s Coun­tries Would Be Locat­ed on Pangea

A Bil­lion Years of Tec­ton­ic-Plate Move­ment in 40 Sec­onds: A Quick Glimpse of How Our World Took Shape

The Plate Tec­ton­ic Evo­lu­tion of the Earth Over 500 Mil­lion Years: Ani­mat­ed Video Takes You from Pangea, to 250 Mil­lion Years in the Future

The Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” Played on the Gayageum, a Korean Instrument That Emerged 1,400 Years Ago

We just had the chance to see the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers kick off a new tour, and so had to bring you this–Luna Lee per­form­ing RHCP’s “Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion” on the Gayageum, a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an stringed instru­ment dat­ing back to the 6th cen­tu­ry. Over the years, we’ve shown you her adap­ta­tions of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile;’ David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World;” Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah; and Pink Floy­d’s “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky.” Today, we’re keep­ing the tra­di­tion going. You can fol­low along with the orig­i­nal record­ing down below. Enjoy!

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 

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Won­der­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Per­formed by North Kore­an Kids with Accor­dions

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

The Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ Flea Presents a Bass Les­son, and Essen­tial Advice That Every Bass Play­er Should Know

AC/DC’s “Back in Black” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

Architect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Iconic New York City Museums: the Met, MoMA, Guggenheim & Frick

Con­text may not count for every­thing in art. But as under­scored by every­one from Mar­cel Duchamp (or Elsa von Frey­tag-Lor­ing­hoven) to the jour­nal­ists who occa­sion­al­ly con­vince vir­tu­oso musi­cians to busk in dingy pub­lic spaces, it cer­tain­ly counts for some­thing. Whether or not you believe that works of art retain the same essen­tial val­ue no mat­ter where they’re beheld, some envi­ron­ments are sure­ly more con­ducive to appre­ci­a­tion than oth­ers. The ques­tion of just which design ele­ments make the dif­fer­ence has occu­pied muse­um archi­tects for cen­turies, and in New York City alone, you can direct­ly expe­ri­ence more than 200 years of bold exer­cis­es and exper­i­ments in the form.

In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his exege­ses of New York’s apart­ments, bridges, and sub­way sta­tions, as well as Cen­tral Park and the Chrysler Build­ing) uses his expert knowl­edge to reveal the design choic­es that have gone into the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, and the Frick Col­lec­tion. No two of these famous art insti­tu­tions were con­ceived in quite the same peri­od, none look or feel quite the same as the oth­ers, and we can be rea­son­ably sure that no sin­gle piece of art would look quite the same if it were moved between any of them.

Occu­py­ing five blocks of Cen­tral Park, MoMA is less a build­ing than a col­lec­tion of build­ings — each added at a dif­fer­ent time, in a style of that time — and indeed, less a col­lec­tion of build­ings than “a city unto itself,” as Wyet­zn­er puts it.  (No won­der Clau­dia and Jamie Kin­caid could run away from home and go unno­ticed liv­ing in it.) The com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est MoMA has also grown addi­tion-by-addi­tion, begin­ning with a “stripped-down form of mod­ernism” that stood well out on the West 53rd street of the late thir­ties. It opened as the first of the many “clean white box­es” that would appear across the coun­try — and lat­er the world — to show the art of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies.

The orig­i­nal MoMA build­ing remains strik­ing today, but it’s now flanked by expan­sions from the hands of Philip John­son, Cesar Pel­li, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Jean Nou­v­el. Much less like­ly to have any­thing attached to it is the Guggen­heim, with its instant­ly rec­og­niz­able spi­ral design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Based on an idea by Le Cor­busier, its nar­row atri­um-wrap­ping gal­leries do present cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties for the prop­er dis­play of large-scale art­works. Wyet­zn­er also men­tions the oft-heard crit­i­cism of Wright’s hav­ing “cre­at­ed a mon­u­ment to him­self — but it’s one hell of a mon­u­ment.”

Last comes “the orig­i­nal build­ing for the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art, which lat­er became the Met Breuer, which now has become the Frick. Who knows what it’ll become next.” The sec­ond of its names refers to its archi­tect, the Bauhaus-trained Mar­cel Breuer (he of the Wass­i­ly chair), whose mus­cu­lar design “slices off” the muse­um from the brown­stone neigh­bor­hood that sur­rounds it. With its “open, loft-like spaces,” it pro­vides a con­text meant for the art of its time, much as the Met, MoMA, and the Guggen­heim do for the art of theirs. But all these insti­tu­tions have suc­ceed­ed just as much by carv­ing out con­texts of their own in the open-air muse­um of archi­tec­ture and urban­ism that is New York City.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

The 5 Inno­v­a­tive Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

How Cen­tral Park Was Cre­at­ed Entire­ly By Design & Not By Nature: An Archi­tect Breaks Down America’s Great­est Urban Park

An Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Sub­way Sta­tions, from the Old­est to Newest

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library — “Hid­den Details” and All

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Brian Eno’s Beautiful New Turntable Glows & Constantly Changes Colors as It Plays

When we think of Bri­an Eno’s work, we first think of his records. These include not just his own clas­sics of “ambi­ent music” — a term he pop­u­lar­ized — like Dis­creet Music and Music for Air­ports, but also the albums he’s pro­duced: Devo’s Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light, U2’s The Joshua Tree, David Bowie’s Out­side. Yet even before he got into music, Eno was paint­ing, and in some sense, he’s nev­er stopped. He was describ­ing his work with sound as the cre­ation of “imag­i­nary land­scapes” even in the nine­teen-eight­ies; in this cen­tu­ry, he’s con­tin­ued to put out records while cre­at­ing ever-more-high-pro­file works of a more visu­al nature, from instal­la­tions to apps.

A few years ago, Eno even got into the busi­ness of func­tion­al sculp­ture, design­ing a turntable that emanates LED light of var­i­ous, grad­u­al­ly shift­ing col­ors while it plays records. “The light from it was tan­gi­ble as if caught in a cloud of vapor,” said Eno about his ear­ly expe­ri­ence with the fin­ished prod­uct, quot­ed at design­boom upon the announce­ment of its lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion run in 2021.

“We sat watch­ing for ages, trans­fixed by this total­ly new expe­ri­ence of light as a phys­i­cal pres­ence.” Now comes the sequel, Eno’s Turntable II, which will be pro­duced in equal­ly restrict­ed num­bers.  “Those who can afford one of the 150 lim­it­ed units also receive the musician’s sig­na­ture and edi­tion num­ber engraved on the side of the neon turntable’s base,” says design­boom.

Eno’s turntable design recent­ly drew atten­tion as the inspi­ra­tion for U2’s stage set dur­ing their res­i­den­cy at Las Vegas’ brazen new venue The Sphere. In the home, it serves mul­ti­ple func­tions: “When it doesn’t have to do any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, like play a record, it is a sculp­ture,” Eno says, “and when it’s in action, it’s a gen­er­a­tive art­work. Sev­er­al over­lap­ping light cycles will keep pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent col­or bal­ances and blends — and dif­fer­ent shad­ow for­ma­tions that slow­ly evolve and nev­er exact­ly repeat.” Die-hard fans who know how long Eno has been fol­low­ing this artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al thread may con­sid­er Turntable II’s £20,000 (or more than $25,000 USD) price tag almost rea­son­able. And next to the $60,000 Linn Son­dek LP12 Jony Ive redesigned last year, it’s prac­ti­cal­ly a bar­gain.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Shares His Crit­i­cal Take on Art & NFTs: “I Main­ly See Hus­tlers Look­ing for Suck­ers”

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

Piz­za Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Mag­ic of Con­duc­tive Ink

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Punk Dulcimer: Hear The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” Played on the Dulcimer

Sam Edel­ston can rock the duclimer. On his YouTube chan­nel, he writes: “Dul­cimers are nat­ur­al rock instru­ments. In fact, I even say that dul­cimers are among the world’s coolest musi­cal instru­ments, and they deserve to be known by the gen­er­al pub­lic — the way that every­body knows gui­tars and ukule­les. Though usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with old folk songs and tunes, dul­cimers are great for a shock­ing vari­ety of mod­ern music, too. I do these videos to inspire more peo­ple to play and lis­ten to dul­cimer music, in diverse, non-tra­di­tion­al styles.” Above, watch him cov­er the Ramones’ 1978 clas­sic “I Wan­na Be Sedat­ed.” Find more cov­ers of  Zep­pelin, the Stones & Bea­t­les here. And yet more covers–including Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and Sab­bath’s “War Pigs”–on the Con­tem­po­rary Dul­cimer YouTube Chan­nel. Enjoy.

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:

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Tears for Fears Sings “Every­body Wants to Rule the World” with Musi­cian Who Cre­at­ed Divine Dul­cimer Ver­sion of Their Song

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

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A 3D Animation Shows the Evolution of New York City (1524 — 2023)

Near­ly two and a half cen­turies after its found­ing, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is still both cel­e­brat­ed and derid­ed as a young coun­try. Exam­ined on the whole, the US may or may not seem less mature than oth­er lands in any obvi­ous way, but the dif­fer­ence man­i­fests much more clear­ly on the lev­el of cities. For even among those found­ed before the inde­pen­dence of the coun­try itself, no Amer­i­can city has yet attained 500 offi­cial years of age. But in the case of New York City, we can trace its for­ma­tion through half a mil­len­ni­um of his­to­ry, as ren­dered in the 3D ani­mat­ed video from Info­Geek above.

The long ver­sion of New York’s sto­ry begins in 1524, the year Gio­van­ni da Ver­raz­zano com­mand­ed the French ship La Dauphine into what we now know as New York Har­bor. While he and his crew did not, of course, get the dra­mat­ic for­est-of-sky­scrap­ers view for which that approach would lat­er be cel­e­brat­ed, they would, per­haps, have seen an actu­al for­est, as well as oth­er ele­ments of a nat­ur­al land­scape that would have appeared sub­lime­ly untouched. A cen­tu­ry lat­er, the Dutch there found­ed the trad­ing out­post of New Ams­ter­dam, which com­menced the writ­ten his­to­ry of New York — as well as the aggres­sive devel­op­ment that would even­tu­al­ly come to char­ac­ter­ize the city and its cul­ture.

New Ams­ter­dam became New York in 1664, one of the many his­tor­i­cal events that scroll past in the win­dow at the video’s low­er-left cor­ner. At that point in time, the pop­u­la­tion had grown to about 3,600, a fig­ure count­ed at the bot­tom of the frame. Yet even as we see streets roll out, build­ings rise, and trees sprout rapid­ly around us over the next 150 or so years of our stroll, and even after New York becomes Amer­i­ca’s largest city in 1790, we must bear in mind that its cen­tu­ry has­n’t even begun. It’s some­thing of an irony that the huge­ly destruc­tive Great Fire of 1835 pre­cedes a devel­op­men­tal push that makes the city, even to our twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry eyes, look almost mod­ern.

Lat­er in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, we wit­ness the appear­ance of Cen­tral Park and the intro­duc­tion of motor­cars; by the turn of the twen­ti­eth, New York’s pop­u­la­tion approach­es three and a half mil­lion. Walk­ing down Wall Street (and into the Great Depres­sion), we pass just-mate­ri­al­iz­ing land­marks that remain icon­ic today, like the Chrysler Build­ing, the Empire State Build­ing and — after a some­what dra­mat­ic fast-for­ward in time — Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um and Minoru Yamasak­i’s ill-fat­ed World Trade Cen­ter. We’re now well into the New York of liv­ing mem­o­ry, and even when the ani­ma­tion has passed the cre­ative decrepi­tude of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies and arrives at the city as it was last year (pop­u­la­tion: 7,888,120), we sense that its evo­lu­tion has only just begun.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Scenes of New York City in 1945 Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

How Cen­tral Park Was Cre­at­ed Entire­ly By Design & Not By Nature: An Archi­tect Breaks Down America’s Great­est Urban Park

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Cover of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Censored with Wear & Tear

1984 before

In 2013, Pen­guin released in the UK a series of new cov­ers for five works by George Orwell, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bold cov­er design for Orwell’s best-known work, 1984. Accord­ing to Cre­ative Review, the design­er, David Pear­son, made it so that the book’s title and Orwell’s name were debossed, then almost com­plete­ly obscured by black foil­ing, leav­ing just “enough of a dent for the title to be deter­mined.” No doubt, the design plays on the whole idea of cen­sor­ship, “ref­er­enc­ing the rewrit­ing of his­to­ry car­ried out by the novel’s Min­istry of Truth.”

Years lat­er, you’ll have dif­fi­cul­ty buy­ing new copies of Pear­son­’s design. They’re in pret­ty short sup­ply. But any­one with a well-worn copy of the book might dis­cov­er what one Red­di­tor has also observed–that the cov­er design “becomes less cen­sored with wear.” Com­pare the “before” image above to the “after” image down below. Was this all part of Pear­son­’s long-range mas­ter plan? Or some­thing of a design flaw? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know. But if you’re look­ing for a book that gets bet­ter with age, then this is one to add to your list.

1984 after

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Free Down­load: A Knit­ting Pat­tern for a Sweater Depict­ing an Icon­ic Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

10 Biggest Threats to the World in 2024, Ranked by Ian Bremmer

At the start of each year, Ian Brem­mer, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and pres­i­dent of Eura­sia Group, cre­ates a list that ranks the great­est threats to our world. In 2024, Brem­mer puts his fin­ger on Ungoverned AI, a Par­ti­tioned Ukraine, a volatile Mid­dle East, and a sput­ter­ing Chi­nese econ­o­my. But the biggest threat? A divid­ed Unit­ed States where the right and left con­sid­er each oth­er an exis­ten­tial threat, where polit­i­cal can­di­dates threat­en their rivals, where pow­er does­n’t get tran­si­tioned peace­ful­ly, and where for­eign nations look to fur­ther sow the seeds of inter­nal divi­sion. You can read Brem­mer’s full report here.

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!

 

 

Black History in Two Minutes: Watch 93 Videos Written & Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

We’re near­ly halfway through Feb­ru­ary, which the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca also knows as Black His­to­ry Month. Per­haps there are rel­e­vant sub­jects on which you’ve been mean­ing to catch up, but you haven’t quite got around to it yet. If so, nev­er fear: in the next cou­ple of weeks, you’ll have plen­ty of time to binge-watch the Youtube series Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes. Writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by his­to­ri­an Hen­ry Louis Gates Jr., it has so far cov­ered every­thing from Har­ri­et Tub­man and Sojourn­er Truth to the Civ­il War and eman­ci­pa­tion to the civ­il rights move­ment and school inte­gra­tion.

Those of us who went to school in the US — and espe­cial­ly those of us who did so after the insti­tu­tion of Black His­to­ry Month, in 1970 — will remem­ber those sub­jects hav­ing been dis­cussed in the class­room. But even with­in the brief con­fines of two min­utes (some­times sprawl­ing out to three min­utes and change), Gates intro­duces facts most of us will nev­er have heard.

For instance, the very first under­ground rail­road in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry ran not from the south of the coun­try to the north, but the oth­er way around, Span­ish Flori­da hav­ing then been “a sanc­tu­ary for slaves who fled south from Eng­lish rule” — though the free­dom it offered did require con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism.

Also among the near­ly 100 videos Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes has so far pro­duced are a wealth of bite-sized treat­ments of move­ments and fig­ures impor­tant to not just black cul­ture but the whole of Amer­i­can cul­ture. These include Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Maya Angelou, the 1893 World’s Fair, the births of jazz and hip hop, and Negro league base­ball. The show also encom­pass­es episodes of his­to­ry well with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, such as the Los Ange­les riots and the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma — as well as the ear­li­er, pio­neer­ing pres­i­den­tial run of Jesse Jack­son. And in light of Jack­son’s cam­paign T‑shirts’ hav­ing made a fash­ion come­back in Korea, where I live, it now seems to say that the cul­ture that has arisen out of black his­to­ry isn’t just vital to the cul­ture of Amer­i­ca, but of the world.

You can watch the com­plete playlist of videos at the top, or vis­it the Black His­to­ry in Two Min­utes web­site here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take Free Online Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

30,000 Pho­tographs of Black His­to­ry & Cul­ture Are Avail­able Online in a New Get­ty Images Archive

How African-Amer­i­can Explor­er Matthew Hen­son Became the First Per­son to Reach the North Pole, Then Was For­got­ten for Almost 30 Years

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

W.E.B. Du Bois Cre­ates Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Artis­tic Data Visu­al­iza­tions Show­ing the Eco­nom­ic Plight of African-Amer­i­cans (1900)

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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