David Bowie’s Fashionable Mug Shot From His 1976 Marijuana Bust

in Music | September 30th, 2024


David Bowie always man­aged to look cool, even when he was being booked for a felony.

In ear­ly 1976, Bowie was on his “Iso­lar” tour, per­form­ing as the Thin White Duke, a per­sona he would describe as “a very Aryan fas­cist type — a would-be roman­tic with no emo­tions at all.” Bowie invit­ed his friend and some­time cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tor Iggy Pop to trav­el with him.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of March 21, after a con­cert at the Com­mu­ni­ty War Memo­r­i­al are­na in Rochester, New York, four local vice squad detec­tives and a state police inves­ti­ga­tor searched Bowie’s three-room suite at the Amer­i­cana Rochester Hotel. Accord­ing to reports in the Rochester Demo­c­rat and Chron­i­cle, the cops found 182 grams (a lit­tle over 6.4 ounces) of mar­i­jua­na there. Bowie and three oth­ers — Pop, a body­guard named Dwain Voughns, and a young Rochester woman named Chi­wah Soo — were charged with fifth-degree crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, a class C felony, pun­ish­able by up to 15 years in prison.

Bowie and Pop were booked under their real names, David Jones and James Oster­berg Jr. The group spent the rest of the night in the Mon­roe Coun­ty Jail and were released at about 7 a.m. on $2,000 bond each. They were sup­posed to be arraigned the next day, but Bowie left town to go to his next con­cert in Spring­field, Mass­a­chu­setts. His lawyer appeared and asked for the court’s indul­gence, explain­ing the heavy penal­ties for break­ing con­cert engage­ments. He promised the judge that Bowie would appear the fol­low­ing morn­ing, March 23.

Bowie showed up for his arraign­ment look­ing dap­per in his Thin White Duke cloth­ing. It was then that his mug shot was tak­en — so we’ll nev­er actu­al­ly know what Bowie looked like when he was unex­pect­ed­ly dragged into jail at 3 a.m. The police escort­ed the rock star in and out of the court­room most­ly through back cor­ri­dors, shield­ing him from a crowd of fans who showed up at the cour­t­house. Reporter John Stew­art describes the scene in the next day’s Demo­c­rat and Chron­i­cle:

Bowie and his group ignored reporters’ shout­ed ques­tions and fans’ yells as he walked in — except for one teenag­er who got his auto­graph as he stepped off the esca­la­tor.

His biggest greet­ing was the screams of about a half-dozen sus­pect­ed pros­ti­tutes await­ing arraign­ment in the rear of the cor­ri­dor out­side the court­room.

Asked for a plea by City Court Judge Alphonse Cas­set­ti to the charge of fifth-degree crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance, Bowie said, “not guilty, sir.” The court used his real name — David Jones.

He stood demure­ly in front of the bench with his attor­neys. He wore a gray three-piece leisure suit and a pale brown shirt. He was hold­ing a match­ing hat. His two com­pan­ions were arraigned on the same charge.

The defense lawyer told the judge that Bowie and the oth­ers had nev­er been arrest­ed before. The judge allowed them to remain free on bond until a grand jury con­vened. Bowie and his entourage went on with their tour, and the grand jury even­tu­al­ly decid­ed not to indict any­one. The inci­dent was large­ly for­got­ten until an auc­tion house employ­ee named Gary Hess stum­bled on Bowie’s mug shot while sort­ing through the estate of a retired Rochester police offi­cer. Hess res­cued the pho­to from the trash bin, accord­ing to an arti­cle in Rochester Sub­way, and in late 2007 his broth­er sold it on eBay for $2,700.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good & Bad of the Inter­net in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

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How Kodak Invented the Snapshot in the 1800s, Making It Possible for Everyone to Be a Photographer

in History, Photography | September 27th, 2024

We still occa­sion­al­ly speak of “Kodak moments,” mak­ing con­scious or uncon­scious ref­er­ence to the slo­gan of the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny in the nine­teen-eight­ies. Even by that time, Kodak had already been a going con­cern for near­ly a cen­tu­ry, fur­nish­ing pho­tog­ra­phers around the world with the film they need­ed to cap­ture images. Its very first slo­gan, unveiled in 1888, was “You Press the But­ton, We Do the Rest,” and it her­ald­ed the arrival of a new era: one in which, thanks to the com­pa­ny’s No. 1 box cam­era (loaded with the new medi­um of roll film), pho­tographs could be “tak­en by peo­ple with lit­tle or no pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

So says Vox’s Cole­man Lown­des in the new video above, which explains how this inven­tion changed the nature of pho­tog­ra­phy itself. Peo­ple began using Kodak cam­eras “to doc­u­ment their trav­els and their dai­ly lives at home”; they “took por­traits of each oth­er, but also can­did street scenes.” Such was the nov­el­ty of tak­ing a pic­ture so quick­ly and eas­i­ly — and well out­side a stu­dio — that it demand­ed a new word, or rather, the adop­tion of a word from anoth­er domain: snap­shot, which up until then had referred to “a quick shot with a gun, with­out aim, at a fast-mov­ing tar­get.” Before Kodak, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er sim­ply had no way to cap­ture the moment.

But it was only with the intro­duc­tion of the inex­pen­sive Brown­ie, “a sim­ple box cam­era made of card­board encased in faux leather,” that every­one — even a child — could become a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. “Take a Kodak with You,” sug­gest­ed anoth­er of the com­pa­ny’s slo­gans in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and mil­lions took heed. Its posi­tion as both a cor­po­rate and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion was­n’t seri­ous­ly threat­ened until the end of that cen­tu­ry, when Japan’s Fuji­film “had begun to eat away at the Amer­i­can pho­to giant’s mar­ket share,” and then dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy destroyed wide swaths of the film busi­ness at a stroke.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the first dig­i­tal cam­era was invent­ed in 1975 by a Kodak engi­neer, “but the com­pa­ny, which from the begin­ning had built itself on sell­ing and pro­cess­ing film rather than man­u­fac­tur­ing cam­eras, did­n’t make the change soon enough.” After final­ly enter­ing bank­rupt­cy in 2012, Kodak reor­ga­nized to “focus on dig­i­tal print­ing ser­vices rather than film devel­op­ment,” which has by now become “a some­what niche mar­ket of ded­i­cat­ed hob­by­ists.” Also doing its part to keep the com­pa­ny afloat is its line of logo-embla­zoned appar­el, which holds out a retro appeal all across the world — even to young­sters quick enough on the draw with their cam­era phones that every moment might as well be a Kodak moment.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

How Film Was Made in 1958: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

The Very Con­cise Sui­cide Note by Kodak Founder George East­man: “My Work is Done. Why Wait?” (1932)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

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

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How Filmmakers Make Cameras Disappear: Mirrors in Movies

in Film, Television | September 26th, 2024

If you’ve nev­er tried your hand at film­mak­ing, you might assume that its hard­est visu­al chal­lenges are the cre­ation of effects-laden spec­ta­cles: star­ships duk­ing it out in space, mon­sters stomp­ing through major cities, ani­mals speak­ing and danc­ing like Broad­way stars, that sort of thing. But con­sid­er the chal­lenge posed by sim­ply cap­tur­ing a scene set in a bath­room. Almost all such spaces include a large mir­ror, mean­ing that most angles from which you could shoot will vio­late an impor­tant rule cit­ed by Youtu­ber Paul E.T. in the video above: “Don’t show the cam­era in the shot.”

Yet we’ve all seen major motion pic­tures and tele­vi­sion series with scenes not just in bath­rooms but oth­er mir­ror-equipped spaces, from rooms used for inter­ro­gat­ing sus­pects to rooms used for prepar­ing to come out on stage. What’s more, the cam­era often pass­es blithe­ly before these mir­rors with a vam­pire-like lack of a reflec­tion. The tech­niques used to achieve such shots are now mature enough that we may not even notice that what we’re see­ing does­n’t make visu­al sense. How they work is the sub­ject of Paul E.T.‘s inves­ti­ga­tion, begin­ning with an episode of Crim­i­nal: Unit­ed King­dom in which a cam­era some­how floats around a room with a one-way mir­ror, nev­er appear­ing in that mir­ror.

Anoth­er more famil­iar exam­ple comes from Con­tact, direct­ed by the visu­al-effects maven Robert Zemeck­is. In its ear­ly flash­back sequence, an ado­les­cent ver­sion of its astronomer pro­tag­o­nist runs toward the back­ward-track­ing cam­era and reach­es out to open what turns out to be a bath­room med­i­cine cab­i­net, into whose mir­ror we must have — yet can­not pos­si­bly have — been look­ing into the whole time. What we’re see­ing is actu­al­ly a seam­less fusion of two shots, with the “emp­ty” (that is, blue-screen-filled) frame of the cab­i­net mir­ror super­im­posed on the end of the shot of the young actress run­ning toward it. While not tech­ni­cal­ly easy, it’s at least con­cep­tu­al­ly straight­for­ward.

Paul E.T. finds anoth­er, more com­pli­cat­ed mir­ror shot in no less a mas­ter­work of cin­e­ma than Zack Snider’s Suck­er Punch, which tracks all the way around from one side of a set of dress­ing-room mir­rors to the oth­er. “What you’re actu­al­ly see­ing when the cam­era moves is the tran­si­tion­ing from one side of a dupli­cat­ed set to the oth­er,” he explains, “with an invis­i­ble cut spliced in there” — which involves looka­like actress­es lit­er­al­ly try­ing to mir­ror each oth­er’s move­ments. No such elab­o­rate trick­ery for Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, which shoots straight-on into a bath­room mir­ror by build­ing the cam­era into the wall, then dig­i­tal­ly eras­ing it in post-pro­duc­tion.

While we do live in an age of “fix it in post” (an instinct with an arguably regret­table effect on cin­e­ma), mir­ror shots, on the whole, still require some degree of fore­sight and inven­tive­ness. Such was the case with that scene from Crim­i­nal: Unit­ed King­dom, which Paul E.T. sim­ply could­n’t fig­ure out on his own. His search for answers led him to e‑mail the episode’s B‑camera oper­a­tor, who explained that the pro­duc­tion involved nei­ther a blue screen nor dou­bles, but “a com­bi­na­tion of well-chore­o­graphed cam­era work and VFX.” The result: a shot that may look unre­mark­able at first, but on clos­er inspec­tion, attests to the sub­tle pow­er of movie mag­ic — or TV mag­ic, at any rate.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

This Is What The Matrix Looks Like With­out CGI: A Spe­cial Effects Break­down

How Film­mak­ers Tell Their Sto­ries: Three Insight­ful Video Essays Demys­ti­fy the Craft of Edit­ing, Com­po­si­tion & Col­or

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

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The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized and Available Online

in Art, Books, History | September 25th, 2024

If you know noth­ing else about medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, you sure­ly know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s great­est cul­tur­al trea­sures” com­ments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart from oth­er man­u­scripts of the same peri­od by the qual­i­ty of its art­work and the sheer num­ber of illus­tra­tions that run through­out the 680 pages of the book.” The work not only attracts schol­ars, but almost a mil­lion vis­i­tors to Dublin every year. “You sim­ply can’t trav­el to the cap­i­tal of Ire­land,” writes Book Riot’s Eri­ka Har­litz-Kern, “with­out the Book of Kells being men­tioned. And right­ful­ly so.”

The ancient mas­ter­piece is a stun­ning exam­ple of Hiber­no-Sax­on style, thought to have been com­posed on the Scot­tish island of Iona in 806, then trans­ferred to the monastery of Kells in Coun­ty Meath after a Viking raid (a sto­ry told in the mar­velous ani­mat­ed film The Secret of Kells). Con­sist­ing main­ly of copies of the four gospels, as well as index­es called “canon tables,” the man­u­script is believed to have been made pri­mar­i­ly for dis­play, not read­ing aloud, which is why “the images are elab­o­rate and detailed while the text is care­less­ly copied with entire words miss­ing or long pas­sages being repeat­ed.”

Its exquis­ite illu­mi­na­tions mark it as a cer­e­mo­ni­al object, and its “intri­ca­cies,” argue Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin pro­fes­sors Rachel Moss and Fáinche Ryan, “lead the mind along path­ways of the imag­i­na­tion…. You haven’t been to Ire­land unless you’ve seen the Book of Kells.” This may be so, but thank­ful­ly, in our dig­i­tal age, you need not go to Dublin to see this fab­u­lous his­tor­i­cal arti­fact, or a dig­i­ti­za­tion of it at least, entire­ly view­able at the online col­lec­tions of the Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library. (When you click on the pre­vi­ous link, make sure you scroll down the page.) The pages, orig­i­nal­ly cap­tured in 1990, “have recent­ly been res­canned,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library writes, using state-of-the-art imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy. These new dig­i­tal images offer the most accu­rate high-res­o­lu­tion images to date, pro­vid­ing an expe­ri­ence sec­ond only to view­ing the book in per­son.”

What makes the Book of Kells so spe­cial, repro­duced “in such var­ied places as Irish nation­al coinage and tat­toos?” asks Pro­fes­sors Moss and Ryan. “There is no one answer to these ques­tions.” In their free online course on the man­u­script, these two schol­ars of art his­to­ry and the­ol­o­gy, respec­tive­ly, do not attempt to “pro­vide defin­i­tive answers to the many ques­tions that sur­round it.” Instead, they illu­mi­nate its his­to­ry and many mean­ings to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple, includ­ing, of course, the peo­ple of Ire­land. “For Irish peo­ple,” they explain in the course trail­er above, “it rep­re­sents a sense of pride, a tan­gi­ble link to a pos­i­tive time in Ireland’s past, reflect­ed through its unique art.”

But while the Book of Kells is still a mod­ern “sym­bol of Irish­ness,” it was made with mate­ri­als and tech­niques that fell out of use sev­er­al hun­dred years ago, and that were once spread far and wide across Europe, the Mid­dle East, and North Africa. In the video above, Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library con­ser­va­tor John Gillis shows us how the man­u­script was made using meth­ods that date back to the “devel­op­ment of the codex, or the book form.” This includes the use of parch­ment, in this case calf skin, a mate­r­i­al that remem­bers the anatom­i­cal fea­tures of the ani­mals from which it came, with mark­ings where tails, spines, and legs used to be.

The Book of Kells has weath­ered the cen­turies fair­ly well, thanks to care­ful preser­va­tion, but it’s also had per­haps five rebind­ings in its life­time. “In its orig­i­nal form,” notes Har­litz-Kern, the man­u­script “was both thick­er and larg­er. Thir­ty folios of the orig­i­nal man­u­script have been lost through the cen­turies and the edges of the exist­ing man­u­script were severe­ly trimmed dur­ing a rebind­ing in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.” It remains, nonethe­less, one of the most impres­sive arti­facts to come from the age of the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script, “described by some,” says Moss and Ryan, “as the most famous man­u­script in the world.” Find out why by see­ing it (vir­tu­al­ly) for your­self and learn­ing about it from the experts above.

For any­one inter­est­ed in get­ting a copy of The Book of Kells in a nice print for­mat, see The Book of Kells: Repro­duc­tions from the man­u­script in Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Online Course on the Great Medieval Man­u­script, the Book of Kells

Dis­cov­er the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Les Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” (1416)

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

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

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Watch the First Performance of a Mozart Composition That Had Been Lost for Centuries

in History, Music | September 25th, 2024

For most musi­cians, a long-lost song writ­ten in their teenage years would be of inter­est only to seri­ous fans — and even then, prob­a­bly more for bio­graph­i­cal rea­sons than as a stand­alone piece of work. But that’s hard­ly the case for Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, who was com­pos­ing advanced music at the age of five, and indeed com­plet­ed the first act of his short life by ado­les­cence. Hence the guar­an­teed appre­cia­tive audi­ence for Ser­e­nade in C, a hith­er­to unknown piece recent­ly dis­cov­ered in the hold­ings of Germany’s Leipzig Munic­i­pal Libraries and first per­formed for the pub­lic just last week.

“Library researchers were com­pil­ing an edi­tion of the Köchel cat­a­log, a com­pre­hen­sive archive of Mozart’s work, when they stum­bled across a mys­te­ri­ous bound man­u­script con­tain­ing a hand­writ­ten com­po­si­tion in brown ink,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Son­ja Ander­son.

Com­posed in the mid-to-late 1760s, Ser­e­nade in C “con­sists of sev­en minia­ture move­ments for a string trio (two vio­lins and a bass).” Accord­ing to researchers, it “fits styl­is­ti­cal­ly” the work of that peri­od, “when Mozart was between the ages of 10 and 13”; a few years lat­er, he’d out­grown (or tran­scend­ed) this style of cham­ber music entire­ly.

You can see and hear Ser­e­nade in C in the video at the top of the post, per­formed ear­li­er this month, not long after its pre­miere, on the steps of the Leipzig Opera by Vin­cent Geer, David Geer, and Elis­a­beth Zim­mer­mann of the Leipzig School of Music’s youth sym­pho­ny orches­tra. Renamed Ganz kleine Nacht­musik, this “new” Mozart piece has been includ­ed in the lat­est Köchel cat­a­log with the num­ber K. 648. If you lis­ten to it in the con­text of Mozart’s artis­tic evo­lu­tion, you’ll also notice the ways in which it stands out in a peri­od when he wrote main­ly arias, sym­phonies, and piano music. As for the extent to which it pre­fig­ures things to come, it’s ear­ly enough that we should prob­a­bly leave that ques­tion to the Mozartol­o­gists.

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Mozart’s Music, Com­posed from Ages 5 to 35

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

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

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Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

in Audio Books, Literature | September 24th, 2024

moby dick big read

Image of Moby Dick by David Austen.

In 2013, Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promis­ing a full audio­book of Her­man Melville’s influ­en­tial nov­el, with famous (and not so famous) voic­es tak­ing on a chap­ter each. When we first wrote about it here, only six chap­ters had been unveiled, but boast­ed actors like Til­da Swin­ton (read­ing chap­ter one below), author Nigel Williams, and poet and jour­nal­ist Musa Okwon­ga.

We’re glad to say the project reached its suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. And they cer­tain­ly called on an impres­sive ros­ter of celebri­ty read­ers: Stephen Fry, Neil Ten­nant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Chi­na Miéville, Tony Kush­n­er, John Waters, Simon Cal­low, Sir David Atten­bor­ough, even for­mer Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron. Pulitzer Prize win­ning poet Mary Oliv­er fin­ish­es off the whole project, read­ing the Epi­logue.

All 135 chap­ters are avail­able to be lis­tened to in your brows­er, down­loaded on iTunes, or streamed on Sound­Cloud. How­ev­er, do check them out online, as each chap­ter comes with a work of art each cre­at­ed by 135 con­tem­po­rary artists such as Matthew Bar­ney, Oliv­er Clegg, and Matthew Bene­dict. (See David Austen’s work above.) The project is a mam­moth under­tak­ing befit­ting such a mon­u­men­tal book, and if you’ve nev­er read it this just might be the way to go.

Copies of Moby Dick can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Mean­while, this big read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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:

Why Should We Read Melville’s Moby-Dick? A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

How to Mem­o­rize an Entire Chap­ter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Orson Welles Reads From Moby-Dick: The Great Amer­i­can Direc­tor Takes on the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

in Art, History | September 24th, 2024

George Clooney may be bet­ter regard­ed as an actor than as a direc­tor, but his occa­sion­al work in the lat­ter capac­i­ty reveals an admirable inter­est in less­er-dra­ma­tized chap­ters of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. His films have found their mate­r­i­al in every­thing from the ear­ly years of the NFL to the racial strife in Levit­town to even The Gong Show cre­ator Chuck Bar­ris’ dubi­ous past as a CIA assas­sin. A decade ago, he direct­ed The Mon­u­ments Men, whose ensem­ble cast – includ­ing Matt Damon, Bill Mur­ray, John Good­man, and Clooney him­self — play Allied sol­diers tasked with recov­er­ing the many works of art stolen by the Nazis dur­ing World War II.

The Mon­u­ments Men is based, if loose­ly, on real events; hence the inclu­sion of a few of its clips in the new Great Art Explained video above. In it, gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne gets into the sub­ject of how the Nazis plun­dered Europe’s cul­tur­al trea­sures through one paint­ing in par­tic­u­lar: one of dar­ing Expres­sion­ist Egon Schiele’s Boats Mir­rored in the Water series, whose where­abouts remain unknown.

Before the war, it had been in the art col­lec­tion of the Vien­na cabaret star Franz Friedrich “Fritz” Grün­baum. Unlike Schiele’s por­traits, none of the Boats Mir­rored in the Water were suf­fi­cient­ly offen­sive to be labeled “degen­er­ate art.” They were nonethe­less sub­ject to the orga­nized theft that the regime called “Aryaniza­tion.”

In 1956, long after the Nazis had sent Grün­baum and his wife to their deaths, 80 per­cent of their col­lec­tion came up for auc­tion in Switzer­land. How it got there, we don’t know, though it end­ed up dis­persed far and wide, to both insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als. The Boats Mir­rored in the Water in ques­tion was record­ed as hav­ing been sold again, in 1990, to an uniden­ti­fied pri­vate col­lec­tor, and it has­n’t been seen since. That may not be a Hol­ly­wood end­ing, but the art-repa­tri­at­ing work of the real Mon­u­ments Men con­tin­ues today; not so long ago, a Ger­man court even award­ed a once-Aryanized por­trait by Schiele’s idol Gus­tav Klimt to the son of its orig­i­nal own­er. It’s not impos­si­ble that the miss­ing boat Schiele paint­ed in Tri­este over a cen­tu­ry ago will see the light of day once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Dig­i­tal Archive Will Fea­ture the Com­plete Works of Egon Schiele: Start with 419 Paint­ings, Draw­ings & Sculp­tures

How Jan van Eyck’s Mas­ter­piece, the Ghent Altar­piece, Became the Most Stolen Work of Art in His­to­ry

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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

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Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the Art of Gustave Doré

in Film, Literature | September 23rd, 2024

Around here we sub­scribe to the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years past, we gave you Welles nar­rat­ing Pla­to’s Cave Alle­go­ry and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” and, before that, the Welles-nar­rat­ed para­ble Free­dom Riv­er, and the list goes on.

Now, we present The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a 1977 exper­i­men­tal film cre­at­ed by Lar­ry Jor­dan, an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er who tried to mar­ry “the clas­sic engrav­ings of Gus­tave Doré to the clas­sic poem by Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge through a clas­sic nar­ra­tor: Orson Welles.” As Jor­dan describes it, the film is “a long opi­um dream of the old Mariner (Welles) who wan­ton­ly killed the alba­tross and suf­fered the pains of the damned for it.” You can watch above.

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:

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Para­bles of the Human Con­di­tion

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Orson Welles Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Para­ble About How Xeno­pho­bia & Greed Will Put Amer­i­ca Into Decline (1971)

Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a Doc­u­men­tary Ask­ing Whether There’s Extrater­res­tri­al Life in the Uni­verse (1975)

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Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Urging High-School Students to Create Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Art, Education, Letters | September 23rd, 2024

As cul­tur­al fig­ures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Von­negut would seem to have had lit­tle in com­mon, but each could eas­i­ly be rec­og­nized by his voice. Jones’ will come to mind as soon as you think of Darth Vad­er, Sim­ba’s father, or “This is CNN.” Von­negut’s dis­tinc­tion was the voice evi­dent on any giv­en page of nov­els like Cat’s Cra­dle, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, and of course Slaugh­ter­house-Five — a voice many of us have known since ado­les­cence. They come togeth­er in the Let­ters Live video above with Jones read­ing a Von­negut let­ter to the stu­dents of Ms. Lock­wood’s Eng­lish class at New York’s Xavier High School in 2006.

Von­negut was writ­ing in response to five such stu­dents, who’d cho­sen him when assigned to write to their favorite author. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his let­ter here on Open Cul­ture as read aloud by Sir Ian McK­ellen, but its mes­sage bears repeat­ing by any­one who will speak it, beloved actor or oth­er­wise. “Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly,” he writes. The idea is “not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

The cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ist even hands down an assign­ment to his teenage fans: “Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood.” After thor­ough­ly dis­pos­ing of this entire­ly pri­vate piece of art, know that “you have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”

None of this con­flicts with the stan­dard advice about writ­ing, which tends to empha­size just get­ting start­ed, work­ing under restric­tions, and not mak­ing an undue rush to pub­li­ca­tion. But they make a dif­fer­ent kind of impact when rec­om­mend­ed by Von­negut in what would turn out to be the last year of life, and with his char­ac­ter­is­tic ten­den­cy to reach for the heav­ens while nev­er depart­ing from the mun­dane, even sil­ly things of this earth. “Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on,” he sug­gests. “Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.” There writes a grand old man of Amer­i­can let­ters who knew how com­mu­ni­cate across a dis­tance of gen­er­a­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White House Poet­ry Jam

Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Mean­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” Read by James Earl Jones

Darth Vader’s Voice: The Orig­i­nal Voice Ver­sus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Sir Ian McK­ellen Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter to High School Stu­dents: Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

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

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David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books

in Uncategorized | September 23rd, 2024

Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2013, the cura­tors of the tour­ing muse­um exhib­it “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, pro­vid­ing us with deep­er insights into his lit­er­ary tastes. Cov­er­ing fic­tion and non-fic­tion, the list spans six decades, mov­ing from Richard Wright’s mem­oir Black Boy (1945) to Susan Jacoby’s The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son (2008). As we once not­ed in anoth­er post, “his list shows a lot of love to Amer­i­can writ­ers, from … Tru­man Capote to … Hubert Sel­by, Jr., Saul Bel­low, Junot Díaz, Jack Ker­ouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fel­low Brits George Orwell, Ian McE­wan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishi­ma and Bul­gakov.”  You can read the full list below, and, if you choose, also explore a relat­ed book from 2019–Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life.

  1. Inter­views With Fran­cis Bacon by David Sylvester
  2. Bil­ly Liar by Kei­th Water­house
  3. Room At The Top by John Braine
  4. On Hav­ing No Head by Dou­glass Hard­ing
  5. Kaf­ka Was The Rage by Ana­tole Bro­yard
  6. A Clock­work Orange by Antho­ny Burgess
  7. City Of Night by John Rechy
  8. The Brief Won­drous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  9. Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert
  10. Ili­ad by Homer
  11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkn­er
  12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
  13. Berlin Alexan­der­platz by Alfred Döblin
  14. Inside The Whale And Oth­er Essays by George Orwell
  15. Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
  16. Halls Dic­tio­nary Of Sub­jects And Sym­bols In Art by James A. Hall
  17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
  18. Blast by Wyn­d­ham Lewis
  19. Pass­ing by Nel­la Lar­son
  20. Beyond The Bril­lo Box by Arthur C. Dan­to
  21. The Ori­gin Of Con­scious­ness In The Break­down Of The Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes
  22. In Bluebeard’s Cas­tle by George Stein­er
  23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd
  24. The Divid­ed Self by R. D. Laing
  25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  26. Infants Of The Spring by Wal­lace Thur­man
  27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
  28. The Song­lines by Bruce Chatwin
  29. Nights At The Cir­cus by Angela Carter
  30. The Mas­ter And Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
  31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
  32. Loli­ta by Vladimir Nabokov
  33. Her­zog by Saul Bel­low
  34. Puck­oon by Spike Mil­li­gan
  35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
  36. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishi­ma
  38. Dark­ness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
  39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
  40. McTeague by Frank Nor­ris
  41. Mon­ey by Mar­tin Amis
  42. The Out­sider by Col­in Wil­son
  43. Strange Peo­ple by Frank Edwards
  44. Eng­lish Jour­ney by J.B. Priest­ley
  45. A Con­fed­er­a­cy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
  47. 1984 by George Orwell
  48. The Life And Times Of Lit­tle Richard by Charles White
  49. Awop­bopaloobop Alop­bam­boom: The Gold­en Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
  50. Mys­tery Train by Greil Mar­cus
  51. Beano (com­ic, ’50s)
  52. Raw (com­ic, ’80s)
  53. White Noise by Don DeLil­lo
  54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The South­ern Dream Of Free­dom by Peter Gural­nick
  55. Silence: Lec­tures And Writ­ing by John Cage
  56. Writ­ers At Work: The Paris Review Inter­views edit­ed by Mal­colm Cow­ley
  57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Char­lie Gillette
  58. Octo­bri­ana And The Russ­ian Under­ground by Peter Sadecky
  59. The Street by Ann Petry
  60. Won­der Boys by Michael Chabon
  61. Last Exit To Brook­lyn By Hubert Sel­by, Jr.
  62. A People’s His­to­ry Of The Unit­ed States by Howard Zinn
  63. The Age Of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jaco­by
  64. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life by Fran Lebowitz
  65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stop­pard
  66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
  67. All The Emperor’s Hors­es by David Kidd
  68. Fin­ger­smith by Sarah Waters
  69. Earth­ly Pow­ers by Antho­ny Burgess
  70. The 42nd Par­al­lel by John Dos Pas­sos
  71. Tales Of Beat­nik Glo­ry by Ed Saun­ders
  72. The Bird Artist by Howard Nor­man
  73. Nowhere To Run The Sto­ry Of Soul Music by Ger­ri Hir­shey
  74. Before The Del­uge by Otto Friedrich
  75. Sex­u­al Per­son­ae: Art And Deca­dence From Nefer­ti­ti To Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Camille Paglia
  76. The Amer­i­can Way Of Death by Jes­si­ca Mit­ford
  77. In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote
  78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  79. Teenage by Jon Sav­age
  80. Vile Bod­ies by Eve­lyn Waugh
  81. The Hid­den Per­suaders by Vance Packard
  82. The Fire Next Time by James Bald­win
  83. Viz (com­ic, ear­ly ’80s)
  84. Pri­vate Eye (satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, ’60s – ’80s)
  85. Select­ed Poems by Frank O’Hara
  86. The Tri­al Of Hen­ry Kissinger by Christo­pher Hitchens
  87. Flaubert’s Par­rot by Julian Barnes
  88. Mal­doror by Comte de Lautréa­mont
  89. On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac
  90. Mr. Wilson’s Cab­i­net of Won­der by Lawrence Weschler
  91. Zanoni by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton
  92. Tran­scen­den­tal Mag­ic, Its Doc­trine and Rit­u­al by Eliphas Lévi
  93. The Gnos­tic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
  94. The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Di Lampe­dusa
  95. Infer­no by Dante Alighieri
  96. A Grave For A Dol­phin by Alber­to Den­ti di Pira­jno
  97. The Insult by Rupert Thom­son
  98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McE­wan
  99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlan­do Figes
  100. Jour­ney Into The Whirl­wind by Euge­nia Ginzburg

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:

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Hayao Miyaza­ki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

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Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

in Animation, Art, History | September 19th, 2024

In pre­vi­ous cen­turies, unless you were a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty, a wealthy reli­gious order, or a mer­chant guild, your chances of spend­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time with a Medieval tapes­try were slim. Though “much pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly coarse, intend­ed for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the tapes­try still com­mand­ed high prices, just as it com­mand­ed respect for its own­er. And as oth­er dec­o­ra­tive arts of the time pre­served his­tor­i­cal memory—or cer­tain polit­i­cal ver­sions of it, at least—tapestry designs might embody “cel­e­bra­to­ry or pro­pa­gan­dis­tic themes” in their weft and warp.

“Enriched with silk and gilt metal­lic thread,” writes the Met, “such tapes­tries were a cen­tral com­po­nent of the osten­ta­tious mag­nif­i­cence used by pow­er­ful sec­u­lar and reli­gious rulers to broad­cast their wealth and might.” Such is one of the most famous of these works, the Bayeux Tapes­try, which com­mem­o­rates the 1066 vic­to­ry of William the Con­queror at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The famous wall hang­ing, housed at the Bayeux Muse­um in Nor­mandy, was “prob­a­bly com­mis­sioned in the 1070s” by Bish­op Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-broth­er, mak­ing it a very ear­ly exam­ple of the form. So the site of a Vic­to­ri­an-era repli­ca writes, and yet “noth­ing known is cer­tain about the tapestry’s ori­gins.” (The first writ­ten record of it dates from 1476.)

While the Bayeux Tapes­try may have been inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple for how­ev­er many cen­turies it has exist­ed, you can now stand before it in its home of Bayeux, or see the very con­vinc­ing repli­ca at Britain’s Read­ing Muse­um. (You’ll note in both cas­es that the Bayeux tapes­try is not, in fact, a tapes­try, woven on a loom, but a painstak­ing, hand-stitched embroi­dery.) Or, rather than trav­el­ing, you can watch the video above, an ani­mat­ed ren­di­tion of the tapestry’s sto­ry by film­mak­er David New­ton and sound design­er Marc Syl­van.

Dur­ing the years 1064 to the fate­ful 1066, a fierce rival­ry took shape as the ail­ing King Edward the Con­fes­sor’s advi­sor Harold God­win­son and William the Con­queror vied for the crown. Once Edward died in 1066, Harold seized the throne, prompt­ing William to invade and defeat him at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The Tapes­try gives us a graph­ic his­to­ry of this bloody con­test, “a sto­ry,” writes the Bayeux Muse­um, “broad­ly in keep­ing with the accounts of authors of the 11th cen­tu­ry.” “The Tapes­try’s depic­tion of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings,” his­to­ri­an Robert Bartlett tells us, “is the fullest pic­to­r­i­al record of a medieval bat­tle in existence”—and the ani­ma­tion above makes it come alive with sound and move­ment.

Note: The Ani­mat­ed Bayeux Tapes­try above was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a stu­dent project. David New­ton pro­vid­ed the ani­ma­tion, and Marc Syl­van cre­at­ed the orig­i­nal music and sound effects. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

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

 

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