An Art Gallery for Gerbils: Two Quarantined Londoners Create a Mini Museum Complete with Gerbil-Themed Art

Lon­don-based cou­ple Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na’s self-iso­la­tion project calls to mind artist (and muse­um cura­tor) Bill Scan­ga’s At the Met, exhib­it­ed near­ly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Child­hood and Con­tem­po­rary Art at P.S.1 Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (now known as MoMA PS1).

Scan­ga’s instal­la­tion involved hang­ing mini-repli­cas of works from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um’s Amer­i­can col­lec­tion on extreme­ly long wires that trav­eled from under-ceil­ing pic­ture rail to the base­board, where a col­lec­tion of art-lov­ing taxi­der­mied mice wait­ed expec­tant­ly. One rest­ed on a famil­iar-look­ing, black vinyl uphol­stered bench, a tiny blue shop­ping bag from the Met’s gift store parked near its dain­ty, shoe­less feet.

Fil­ip­po and Marianna’s art-lov­ing rodents are ger­bils, and unlike Scanga’s art­ful­ly stuffed mod­els, theirs—9‑month-old broth­ers Pan­doro and Tiramisù—are very much alive, as Tiramisù proved when he gnawed the unseen gallery assistant’s painstak­ing­ly assem­bled card­board stool to bits under the watch­ful eye of the tiny Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring fac­sim­i­le Mar­i­an­na craft­ed for his cul­tur­al enrich­ment.

A video the cou­ple pub­lished on Red­dit, above, shows the fur­ry muse­um goers scam­per­ing under the bench­es to the tune of “The Blue Danube” and plac­ing their paws on the art­work, includ­ing an expert, ger­bil-themed forgery of Gus­tav Klimt’s gold-flecked Sym­bol­ist mas­ter­piece, The Kiss.

Not to be vul­gar, but if this muse­um has a restroom, Pan­doro and Tiramisù seem to have giv­en it a miss, an impro­pri­ety sur­pass­ing any waged by the tit­u­lar char­ac­ters of Beat­rix Potter’s Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na accept­ed the destruc­tion of their exquis­ite­ly staged set with a cheer that sug­gests they’re not shut up for the dura­tion with a small child… just ger­bils, who can be deposit­ed back into their Habi­trail when the fun’s over.

The atten­tion to detail—the gallery tags! The lam­i­nat­ed cards in mul­ti­ple lan­guages in a wall-mount­ed holder!—captured the imag­i­na­tion of Red­dit. Users jumped Marianna’s orig­i­nal post—(Quar­an­tine, day 14. Me and my boyfriend spent the whole day set­ting up an art gallery for our ger­bil)—with sug­ges­tions of oth­er famous works to recre­ate in minia­ture and add to the col­lec­tion. Rest assured no groan-wor­thy, pun-based, ger­bil-cen­tric title was left unex­pressed.

With cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions tem­porar­i­ly shut­tered for the good of pub­lic health, many view­ers also shared their yearn­ing to get back inside favorite muse­ums. (Mar­i­an­na reports that Fil­ip­po is a muse­um work­er.)

For now, we must be patient, and live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through ger­bils ’til the long wait is over.


Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Musicians Around the World Play “Lean on Me,” the Uplifting Song by Bill Withers (RIP)

A few weeks back (but what seems like a dif­fer­ent world now) we told you about the Play­ing for Change project, which fea­tures cov­ers of well loved pop songs played by a group of inter­na­tion­al musicians…the gim­mick being that each musi­cian is record­ed in their own coun­try and only come togeth­er in the mix.

Sud­den­ly, it seems that Play­ing for Change was ahead of the curve, because this is the way the entire world is liv­ing right now. Peo­ple are mak­ing art in quar­an­tine, join­ing togeth­er only through the mag­ic of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy.

But in hon­or of the pass­ing of Bill With­ers, who left us last week at 81 (not, we should men­tion, because of COVID-19), here’s Play­ing for Change with their ver­sion of “Lean on Me.” With­ers’ mes­sage of love and com­mu­ni­ty is exact­ly what we need right now.

In a 2015 Rolling Stone pro­file Quest­love called him “the last African-Amer­i­can Everyman…Jordan’s ver­ti­cal jump has to be high­er than every­one. Michael Jack­son has to defy grav­i­ty. On the oth­er side of the coin, we’re often viewed as prim­i­tive ani­mals. We rarely land in the mid­dle. Bill With­ers is the clos­est thing black peo­ple have to a Bruce Spring­steen.”

That arti­cle adds that With­ers was so long out of the spot­light that many already thought he was dead. And now he’s passed dur­ing a grim time, it seemed like there was one full day to mourn him before the next round of mor­tal coil shuf­flings. (We’re here to cel­e­brate him for a lit­tle bit longer).

This cov­er fea­tures Renard Poché (New Orleans) on gui­tar, Rober­to Luvi (Livorno, Italy) on slide, Grand­pa Eliot (New Orleans), Clarence Bekker (Ams­ter­dam), Sar­i­tah (Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia), and Titi Tsira (Gugulethu, South Africa) on vocals, aid­ed by Keiko Koma­ki (Kagoshi­ma, Japan) on key­boards, Toby Williams (Chica­go) on drums, One eat One (Livorno, Italy) on elec­tron­ics, Mari­achi group Las Rosas Angeli­nas (Los Ange­les) on strings, Alan­na Vicente (Los Ange­les) on trom­bone, and the chil­dren of Tin­tale Vil­lage in Nepal on har­mo­ni­um.

The track was orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion for The Art of Sav­ing a Life, which aims to tell the sto­ry of vac­cines and their impor­tance to chil­dren over the world. (I would hope that we under­stand the urgency of vac­cines right about now.)

Bill With­ers was an acci­den­tal hit­mak­er, a nat­ur­al tune­smith, who didn’t enter the busi­ness until his 30s and then dropped out of it less than ten years lat­er. No come­back tour, no duets with an up-and-com­ing star. (Though Quest­love was deter­mined to pro­duce one final album). What he has left is time­less, and his music is still there to get us through these trou­bling times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

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

365 Free Movies Streaming on YouTube

The wail resounds in every cor­ner of the house, you can­not stop it—the books have all been read, the new releas­es streamed, every video game played to the end mul­ti­ple times. I’m bored… You gave up quar­an­tine home­school weeks ago. Just who did you think you were? Here’s an idea, par­ent at your wit’s end: sit the kids in front of Lone Wolf McQuade or Over the Top.

Tell them how every­thing used to look like that when you were young. No sec­ond or third screen to turn to when you lost inter­est. You’d catch a free movie on a Sun­day afternoon—streaming in real time, as it were—on one of four or five chan­nels. No pause, rewind, or save for lat­er. (Play it up—maybe you didn’t live this, they don’t know that.)

Oh, and there were com­mer­cials every ten min­utes or so—lots and lots and lots of ads. This is a les­son in media history—you’re an edu­ca­tor! They’ll read­i­ly admit how much bet­ter they have it as they watch Chuck Nor­ris and Stal­lone rack up the kills on YouTube, free to stream (and pause, rewind, and save for lat­er), with many few­er ad inter­rup­tions than in your day, and with 363 oth­er films to watch and more to come.

But say you find this con­tent objec­tion­able, or… well, bad. You could cer­tain­ly do much worse, believe me, as you’ll see in a cur­so­ry look at the many fea­ture enter­tain­ments avail­able to stream free with ads on YouTube. But, in all seri­ous­ness, you care about your children’s edu­ca­tion, and with some care­ful dig­ging, you’ll find quite a lot to give them a real cul­tur­al les­son, and to enlight­en the grown-ups, too.

Learn, for exam­ple, about the Wreck­ing Crew, in a doc­u­men­tary of the same name, the famous cohort of stu­dio musi­cians who played on hun­dreds of the best pop, rock, soul, etc. records in the 60s. As the Funk Broth­ers were to Motown, Book­er T. & the MGs to Stax, so were the Wreck­ing Crew to the West Coast Sound (and the sound of Elvis, The Beach Boys, Frank Sina­tra, Nat King Cole, the Mamas and the Papas, Son­ny & Cher, Simon & Gar­funkel, and so on).

And as the Wreck­ing Crew were to the West Coast so was Mus­cle Shoals to the deep South. The tiny Alaba­ma town and its FAME Stu­dios fea­tured some of the great­est R&B, soul, and coun­try rhythm play­ers in the world, major con­trib­u­tors to records by Dylan, the Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Wil­son Pick­ett, and so many more. There’s a film about them too. (We can’t embed the full movies here, but you’ll find them in the links below.)

There are many oth­er qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ments about pop music his­to­ry, like the Dave Grohl-direct­ed Sound City. You’ll also find doc­u­men­taries like Super Size Me, Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry, and Freako­nom­ics. (An eco­nom­ics course!) Many oth­er plat­forms have intro­duced free stream­ing movies with ads. In YouTube’s case, as AdAge notes, the move to stream­ing free films comes as a way to recoup adver­tis­ers who increas­ing­ly found their ads run­ning “inside offen­sive videos, some with ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da and hate speech.”

The com­pa­ny is clean­ing up its image, and in the process becom­ing some­thing like the TV chan­nels of old, only with all the dig­i­tal ease that makes stream­ing so con­ve­nient. “They are now a TV net­work,” says an exec­u­tive for one video ad tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, mov­ing away from low-qual­i­ty, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and toward high dol­lar series and the gold­mine of old movies. Adver­tis­ing is every­thing, so, there’s anoth­er les­son for you—even in the new media busi­ness, his­to­ry repeats.

See a list of rec­om­mend­ed films avail­able to stream free on YouTube, with ads, below. Enter the gen­er­al col­lec­tion here. And feel free to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Super Size Me

The Wreck­ing Crew

Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry

Fred­die Mer­cury: The King of Queen

Mus­cle Shoals

Freako­nom­ics

Bob Mar­ley: The Roots of Man

Sound City

All Things Must Pass (Doc­u­men­tary on Tow­er Records)

The Bird Cage

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Cour­tesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al & More

60 Free Film Noir Movies 

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

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

How Can Boccaccio’s 14th Century Decameron Help Us Live Through COVID-19?

I remem­ber read­ing selec­tions of Gio­van­ni Boccaccio’s Decameron in my ear­ly high school years—and I remem­ber read­ing them as light, bawdy tales about aris­to­crats in gar­dens. We were briefly intro­duced to the frame nar­ra­tive, set amidst the 1348 out­break of plague in Flo­rence, which killed off half the city’s pop­u­la­tion. But the Black Death seemed almost mytho­log­i­cal in scope—a phan­tom on the periph­ery. As Albert Camus writes in The Plague, a book also appear­ing on best­seller and rec­om­mend­ed read­ing lists every­where: “a dead man has no sub­stance unless one has actu­al­ly seen him dead, a hun­dred mil­lion corpses broad­cast through his­to­ry are no more than a puff of smoke.”

I don’t recall read­ing how Flo­ren­tines “dropped dead in open streets, both by day and by night, whilst a great many oth­ers, though dying in their own hous­es, drew their neigh­bors’ atten­tion to the fact more by the smell of their rot­ting corpses.” The pic­ture Boc­cac­cio paints is so incred­i­bly bleak, one is amazed we’ve come to “see the Decameron as a col­lec­tion of enter­tain­ing sto­ries to keep next to your bed,” as Andre Spicer writes at New States­man. “This scourge had implant­ed so great a ter­ror in the hearts of men and women that broth­ers aban­doned broth­ers,” Boc­cac­cio writes, “uncles their nephews, sis­ters their broth­ers… fathers and moth­ers refused to nurse and assist their chil­dren.”

This is unimag­in­able, or so we thought, hav­ing nev­er lived through any kind of plague our­selves. Made up of tales swapped by ten friends who escape Flo­rence for a coun­try vil­la to wait out the epi­dem­ic, telling 100 sto­ries between them to pass the time in quar­an­tine, the Decameron, if it has left schools since my time, will sure­ly return with sig­nif­i­cant empha­sis on what was pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en as back­ground. Of course, Ital­ians are revis­it­ing with much renewed inter­est these tales “of life lessons and fol­ly, of tragedy and hap­pi­ness, of virtue and vice,” as the blog Tus­can Trends notes.

Read by actors from the Ora­nona The­atre, with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, a live pro­duc­tion of the sto­ries has been going on for a decade. But only now does it con­sti­tute a trend, offered as “enter­tain­ment for Ital­ians who are con­fined to their homes escap­ing a plague sev­en cen­turies after Boc­cac­cio wrote his mas­ter­piece of ear­ly Ital­ian prose.” (Hear these per­for­mances in Ital­ian at the Ora­nona Face­book page here.) What does this sto­ry cycle com­mu­ni­cate across 700 years?

“Over the cen­turies, dur­ing oth­er out­breaks of epi­dem­ic ill­ness,” says Pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Marafi­oti in the video above, “the work has become rel­e­vant, over and over and over again.” The book offers what Marafi­oti calls “nar­ra­tive pro­phy­lax­is,” a med­i­cine pre­scribed by Ital­ian the­olo­gian Nico­las of Bur­go, anoth­er of the many lit­er­ary voic­es in Italy’s “canon of con­ta­gion.” In a plague advice book, Bur­go warns against “fear, anger, sad­ness, exces­sive anguish, heavy thoughts and sim­i­lar things. And equal­ly one should take care to be joy­ful, to be hap­py, to lis­ten to lul­la­bies, sto­ries and melodies.”

This advice may be well and good for those who can decamp to well-pro­vi­sioned hous­es for two weeks (or months). As Mas­si­mo Riva, chair of Brown University’s Ital­ian Stud­ies Depart­ment, says in a recent inter­view, in answer to a ques­tion about Boccaccio’s rel­e­vance:

I would point to the eth­i­cal dilem­ma the ten young pro­tag­o­nists face in their deci­sion to (tem­porar­i­ly) aban­don the city. This deci­sion can be inter­pret­ed in two dif­fer­ent and some­what oppo­site ways: as an escape from the com­mon des­tiny of those who can afford a lux­u­ri­ous shel­ter (sim­i­lar to the dooms­day bunkers that very rich peo­ple build for them­selves today); and as the utopi­an desire to rebuild togeth­er a bet­ter, more eth­i­cal and har­mo­nious­ly nat­ur­al way of life, out of the ruins of the old world.

These two options need not be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but they might very well rebuild the old exclu­sions in the new world. More pos­i­tive­ly, Spicer writes, in some TED-like lan­guage that might seem anachro­nis­tic in dis­cus­sions of a 14th cen­tu­ry text: Boc­cac­cio “under­stood the impor­tance of what we now call ‘well­be­ing’”; he had “faith in the cura­tive pow­er of sto­ries,” a fact “sup­port­ed by dozens of stud­ies”; and he “under­stood the cru­cial role of what we now call social net­works in pub­lic health crises.”

I don’t remem­ber any of that in the Boc­cac­cio I read in high school. But I’m start­ing to see some of it now as I revis­it these 700-year-old sto­ries, dip­ping in and out as time allows and find­ing in them what Spicer calls the crit­i­cal “impor­tance of con­nec­tion when we are social­ly iso­lat­ed,” whether in com­fort­able vaca­tion homes, cramped city apart­ments, or even more con­fin­ing cir­cum­stances. We need sto­ries to help us fig­ure who we are when every­thing comes apart. And we need peo­ple who will lis­ten to us tell ours. Read and down­load the full text of the Decameron here.

via New States­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Clas­sic Works of Plague Fic­tion: From Daniel Defoe & Mary Shel­ley, to Edgar Allan Poe

Pan­dem­ic Lit­er­a­ture: A Meta-List of the Books You Should Read in Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

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

A Free Shakespeare Coloring Book: While Away the Hours Coloring in Illustrations of 35 Classic Plays

From the peo­ple who brought you the Vic­to­ri­an Illus­trat­ed Shake­speare Archive comes an Illus­trat­ed Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book–a col­or­ing book fea­tur­ing illus­tra­tions of 35 dif­fer­ent Shake­speare plays. (All illus­tra­tions come from a nine­teenth edi­tion of The Plays of William Shake­speare.) The col­or­ing book’s cre­ator, Michael Good­man, tell us: “It’s obvi­ous­ly free to use and I hope in these days of home school­ing par­ents might find it a sim­ple way to engage their kids with Shake­speare.” Access the col­or­ing book here.

You can find more free col­or­ing books in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Down­load Free Col­or­ing Books from 113 Muse­ums

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: Down­load & Col­or Hun­dreds of Free Images

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

While Away the Hours with a Free H.P. Love­craft Call of Cthul­hu Col­or­ing Book

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Remembering American Songwriting Legend John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tradition”

“A friend called our new world ‘a ghost ship,’” wrote Nick Cave in a recent install­ment of his Red Hand Files blog. “She has recent­ly lost some­one dear to her and rec­og­nizes acute­ly the pre­mon­i­to­ry feel­ing of a world about to be shat­tered.” The expe­ri­ence has become dis­tress­ing­ly com­mon. We have all begun to lose peo­ple dear, if not near, to us—artists tak­en by the dis­ease before their time like Bill With­ers, whose “Lean on Me” is now more poignant than ever. What­ev­er else we’re faced with as the glob­al epi­dem­ic pro­gress­es, we are enter­ing a peri­od of deep mourn­ing that Cave encour­ages his fans to treat with seri­ous respect.

To the list of those we mourn, we now must add leg­endary singer and song­writer John Prine, who died from COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day. Prine was an artist who didn’t so much achieve fame as an almost indis­pens­able pres­ence in Amer­i­can cul­ture that runs much deep­er and will last longer. He wrote songs so good, Kris Kristof­fer­son once joked “we’ll have to break his thumbs.” (Kristof­fer­son dis­cov­ered him play­ing in the Chica­go folk scene in 1971. Their meet­ing was, said Prine in 2019, “a Cin­derel­la sto­ry.”) Prine could count him­self among Bob Dylan’s favorite song­writ­ers, and was some­times called “the next Dylan.” (In his Twit­ter trib­ute, Bruce Spring­steen writes, “John and I were ‘New Dylans’ togeth­er in the ear­ly 70s.)

Prine wrote with more folksy good humor than Dylan, how­ev­er, a much cheerier the­o­log­i­cal bent, and with more con­cern for telling sto­ries with straight­for­ward emo­tion­al impact, with­out veer­ing into sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But like Dylan, every song­writer in folk, blue­grass, and coun­try has paid homage to him as a muse and cov­ered his songs. Bon­nie Raitt made his “Angel in Mont­gomery” famous and called him “a true folk singer in the best folk tra­di­tion, cut­ting right to the heart of things, as pure and sim­ple as rain.”

As has many great folk singers, Prine paid ample trib­ute to his fore­bears: A.P. Carter, Hank Williams, “Cow­boy” Jack Clement, Tex Rit­ter.… build­ing a bridge between them and con­tem­po­rary song­writ­ers like the Avett Broth­ers, Bon Iver, Justin Townes Ear­le, and Jason Isbell, who have all cov­ered Prine songs. (See him with Sturgill Simp­son at the top.) He was indie before indie—breaking from the major labels in 1981 and estab­lish­ing his own label, Oh Boy Records. And he was gen­uine­ly “Amer­i­cana” in that he wrote of rur­al work­ing-class issues in a work­ing-class voice, inspired to pen his first major song “Par­adise” by the destruc­tion strip min­ing wrought upon his father’s Ken­tucky home­town.

“Par­adise” plays out like a John Sayles film, with local Green Riv­er ref­er­ences and images of shoot­ing pis­tols at snakes and pop bot­tles at “the aban­doned old prison down by Air­drie Hill.” The song’s third verse depicts the mind­less vio­lence of strip min­ing: “they tor­tured the tim­ber and stripped all the land,” he sings, “then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.” It was the first song he record­ed for his self-titled 1971 debut and estab­lished a long tra­di­tion of protest music both wist­ful and wit­ty, like the peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heav­en Any­more,” which tells flag-wav­ing chau­vin­ists, “They’re already over­crowd­ed from your dirty lit­tle war.” He tells the sto­ry of writ­ing the song all the way back in 1968 in the live per­for­mance from 2010’s In Per­son & On Stage below.

Prine also wrote from the per­spec­tive of a vet­er­an (he served in the army in the 60s), whose coun­try had let him down in the Viet­nam deba­cle and sub­se­quent bloody mis­ad­ven­tures. In “The Great Com­pro­mise,” he used the alle­go­ry of a jilt­ed lover to express great dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

Many times I’d fought to pro­tect her
But this time she was goin’ too far
Now some folks they call me a cow­ard
Cause I left her at the dri­ve-in that night
But I’d druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain’t right

I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glo­ry
And awake in the dawn’s ear­ly light
But much to my sur­prise
When I opened my eyes
I was a vic­tim of the great com­pro­mise

The song’s title and refrain ref­er­ence the 1787 Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, sug­gest­ing that part of his awak­en­ing to the country’s flaws includes a recog­ni­tion that they had been built in from the start. “Sam Stone,” his por­trait of a Viet­nam vet dying slow from hero­in addic­tion, a song once cov­ered by John­ny Cash, per­fects the direct­ness and sim­ple lyri­cism of coun­try bal­lads to dev­as­tat­ing effect: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the mon­ey goes/Jesus Christ died for noth­in I sup­pose.”

Songs like “Sam Smith” and “Par­adise” grab hold with images and obser­va­tions that crys­tal­ize the kind of down-and-out Amer­i­can suf­fer­ing that fea­tures all the time in best­selling non­fic­tion books and long­form arti­cles, but nev­er gets addressed in any mean­ing­ful way. But Prine could also light­en up—a lot—with com­ic-roman­tic gems like “In Spite of Our­selves,” writ­ten for a film in which he starred as Bil­ly Bob Thornton’s broth­er. He record­ed the song as a duet with Iris DeMent, the title track for an album of cov­ers with oth­er famous women coun­try singers like Emmy­lou Har­ris, Lucin­da Williams, and Pat­ty Love­less.

Full of pro­fane, down­home humor (“he’s got more balls than a big brass mon­key”), the tune is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of one of Prine’s many song­writ­ing per­son­ae in a career impos­si­ble to sum up in a neat and tidy way. Suf­fice it to say that Prine’s death from COVID-19 at age 73—after his many decades cel­e­brat­ing and lament­ing the strug­gles of ordi­nary peo­ple and lam­bast­ing the greed and bel­liger­ence of the U.S. gov­ern­ment and corporations—underlines the plain truths of his songs with trag­ic irony. Prine sur­vived can­cer surgery in 1998 and the removal of a lung in 2013, yet he con­tin­ued to per­form into his final years, releas­ing a fol­low-up to In Spite of Our­selves in 2016 and his final album, The Tree of For­give­ness, in 2018, a “trunk­ful of supreme­ly gen­er­ous Amer­i­can music,” wrote Ian Crouch in a New York­er review. See his NPR Tiny Desk per­for­mance from 2018 below.

Anoth­er writer who had seen and doc­u­ment­ed what Prine had over the years might have grown bit­ter. But we can mourn his death know­ing that he seems to have had lit­tle unfin­ished busi­ness with his god or his fel­low human beings. “When I get to heav­en,” he speak-sings in the intro to one of his final record­ings, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more bless­ings than one man can stand/Then I’m gonna get a guitar/And start a rock ‘n’ roll band/Check into a swell hotel/Ain’t the after­life grand?” We can hope, at least, if we’re so inclined, that it’s at least a kinder place than the world Prine left behind. And we can be grate­ful he left a lega­cy of time­less music that always seems to speak to the sad­ness, dis­ap­point­ment, anger, and raw, in-spite-of-it-all tragi­com­e­dy of the Amer­i­can predica­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine      

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

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

One of the Earliest Known Uses of the “F‑word” Discovered: It Appears in a 1568 Anthology Compiled During a Plague

“Wan fukkit fun­ling”: as an insult, these words would today land a minor blow at most. Not so in Scot­land of the ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, in which William Dun­bar and Wal­ter Kennedy, two of the land’s well-known poets, faced off before the court of King James IV in a con­test of rhyme. The event is memo­ri­al­ized in the poem “The Fly­t­ing of Dun­bar and Kennedie,” one of 400 anthol­o­gized in what’s known as the Ban­natyne Man­u­script. Com­piled in 1568 by an Edin­burgh mer­chant named George Ban­natyne, stuck at home while a plague swept his city — a con­di­tion many can relate to these days — it now enjoys pride of place at the Nation­al Library of Scot­land as a cul­tur­al trea­sure, not least because it con­tains what may be the old­est record­ed use of the F‑word.

The Ban­natyne Man­u­script and “wan fukkit fun­ling” (whose appear­ance you can see in the image at the top of the post, in the sixth line from the bot­tom) play an impor­tant part in the new BBC Scot­land doc­u­men­tary Scot­land – Con­tains Strong Lan­guage. The hour-long pro­gram, writes The Scots­man’s Bri­an Fer­gu­son, “sees actress, singer and the­atre-mak­er Cora Bis­sett trace the nation’s long love affair with swear­ing and insults, despite the long-stand­ing efforts of reli­gious lead­ers to con­demn it as a sin.” Fer­gu­son quotes Bis­sett describ­ing the impor­tance of this par­tic­u­lar “fly­t­ing” (“the 16th cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of a rap bat­tle”) as fol­lows: “When Kennedy address­es Dun­bar, there is the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing record of the word ‘f***’ in the world.”

“In the poem, Dun­bar makes fun of Kennedy’s High­land dialect, for instance, as well as his per­son­al appear­ance, and he sug­gests his oppo­nent enjoys sex­u­al inter­course with hors­es,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette. “Kennedy retal­i­ates with attacks on Dun­bar’s diminu­tive stature and lack of bow­el con­trol, sug­gest­ing his rival gets his inspi­ra­tion from drink­ing ‘frogspawn’ from the waters of a rur­al pond.” All high­ly amus­ing, to be sure, but giv­en how few of us Eng­lish-speak­ers will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize in “wan fukkit fun­ling” the curse with which we’ve grown so inti­mate­ly famil­iar, does this real­ly count as an exam­ple of usage in Eng­lish?

‘To me, that looks more like Scots than Mid­dle Eng­lish,” writes Boing Boing’s Thom Dunn, “although both lan­guages were derived from Olde Eng­lish.” (He also reminds us not to con­fuse Scots with the sep­a­rate lan­guage of Scot­tish Gael­ic.) Medieval his­to­ri­an Kristin Uscin­s­ki writes in to Ars Tech­ni­ca to point out a cer­tain “Roger F$#%-by-the-Navel who appears in some court records from 1310–11” — pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured, of course, here on Open Cul­ture. His­to­ri­ans and lin­guists will sure­ly con­tin­ue doing their own kind of bat­tle to deter­mine what counts as the first true F‑word, mak­ing more dis­cov­er­ies about the Eng­lish lan­guage’s her­itage of swear­ing along the way. One thing is cer­tain: if any nation has made a rich use of that her­itage, it’s Scot­land.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ear­li­est Known Appear­ance of the F‑Word, in a Bizarre Court Record Entry from 1310

The Very First Writ­ten Use of the F Word in Eng­lish (1528)

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

Read A Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Vul­gar Tongue, a Hilar­i­ous & Infor­ma­tive Col­lec­tion of Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish Slang (1785)

A Lec­ture About the His­to­ry of the Scots Lan­guage … in Scots: How Much Can You Com­pre­hend?

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.

The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

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.

Bill Murray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

Judg­ing by the out­pour­ing of affec­tion in online com­ment sec­tions, Chica­go folk musi­cian John Prine (may he rest in peace) has helped a great many of his fans through tough times with his human­ist, oft-humor­ous lyrics.

Add fun­ny man Bill Mur­ray to the list.

Tap­ing a video in sup­port of The Tree of For­give­ness, Prine’s first album of new mate­r­i­al in over a decade, Mur­ray recalled a grim peri­od in which a deep funk robbed him of all enjoy­ment. Though he care­ful­ly stip­u­lates that this “bum­mer” could not be diag­nosed as clin­i­cal depres­sion, noth­ing lift­ed his spir­its, until Gonzo jour­nal­ist Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son—whom Mur­ray embod­ied in the 1980 film, Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam—sug­gest­ed that he turn to Prine for his sense of humor.

Mur­ray took Thompson’s advice, and gave his fel­low Illi­nois­ian’s dou­ble great­est hits album, Great Days, a lis­ten.

This could have back­fired, giv­en that Great Days con­tains some of Prine’s most melancholy—and memorable—songs, from “Hel­lo in There” and “Angel from Mont­gomery” to “Sam Stone,” vot­ed the 8th sad­dest song of all time in a Rolling Stone read­ers’ poll.

But the song that left the deep­est impres­sion on Mur­ray is a sil­ly coun­try-swing num­ber “Lin­da Goes to Mars,” in which a clue­less hus­band assumes his wife’s vacant expres­sion is proof of inter­plan­e­tary trav­el rather than dis­in­ter­est.

To hear Mur­ray tell it, as he thumbs through a copy of John Prine Beyond Words, the moment was not one of gut-bust­ing hilar­i­ty, but rather one of self-aware­ness and relief, a sig­nal that the dark clouds that had been hang­ing over him would dis­perse.

A grate­ful Murray’s admi­ra­tion runs deep. As he told The Wash­ing­ton Post, when he was award­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Mark Twain Prize for Amer­i­can Humor, he lobbied—unsuccessfully—to get Prine flown in for the cer­e­mo­ny:

I thought it would have been a nice deal because John Prine can make you laugh like no else can make you laugh.

Dit­to Prine’s dear friend, the late, great folk musi­cian, Steve Good­man, the author of “The Veg­etable Song,” “The Lin­coln Park Pirates” (about a leg­endary Chica­go tow­ing com­pa­ny), and “Go, Cubs, Go,” which Mur­ray trilled on Sat­ur­day Night Live with play­ers Dex­ter Fowler, Antho­ny Riz­zo, and David Ross short­ly before the Cub­bies won the 2016 World Series.

I just found out yes­ter­day that Lin­da goes to Mars

Every time I sit and look at pic­tures of used cars

She’ll turn on her radio and sit down in her chair

And look at me across the room as if I was­n’t there

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Some­thing, some­where, some­how took my Lin­da by the hand

And secret­ly decod­ed our sacred wed­ding band

For when the moon shines down upon our hap­py hum­ble home

Her inner space gets tor­tured by some out­er space unknown

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Now I ain’t seen no saucers ‘cept the ones upon the shelf

And if I ever seen one I’d keep it to myself

For if there’s life out there some­where beyond this life on earth

Then Lin­da must have gone out there and got her mon­ey’s worth

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Yeah, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Lis­ten to a Great Days Spo­ti­fy playlist here, though nei­ther Open Cul­ture, nor Bill Mur­ray can be held account­able if you find your­self blink­ing back tears.

Bonus: Below, watch Prine and Mur­ray “swap songs and sto­ries about the ear­ly days in Chica­go cross­ing paths with the likes of John Belushi, Steve Good­man and Kris Kristof­fer­son.” Plus more.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Dyson Creates 44 Free Engineering & Science Challenges for Kids Quarantined During COVID-19

A heads up: Dyson has “cre­at­ed 44 engi­neer­ing and sci­ence activ­i­ties for chil­dren to try out while at home dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, from mak­ing a bal­loon-pow­ered car to build­ing a bridge from spaghet­ti,” writes the Dezeen web­site. They go on to add: “Com­prised of 22 sci­ence tasks and 22 engi­neer­ing activ­i­ties, the Chal­lenge Cards can be com­plet­ed by chil­dren using com­mon house­hold items such as eggs, string and bal­loons.” You can also find a relat­ed playlist of videos on YouTube, one of which appears above.

This engineering/science activ­i­ties have been added to our refreshed col­lec­tion, 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More. If you know of any great K‑12 resources, espe­cial­ly ones that are always free, please add them in the com­ments below, and we will try to add them to the list.

via Dezeen

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

How Fin­land Cre­at­ed One of the Best Edu­ca­tion­al Sys­tems in the World (by Doing the Oppo­site of U.S.)

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

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Meet Notorious Art Forger Han Van Meegeren, Who Fooled the Nazis with His Counterfeit Vermeers

Peo­ple love sto­ries of suc­cess­ful crim­i­nals. They must pos­sess some admirable qual­i­ties, we assume, some great dar­ing or cun­ning or keen insight. Myths sup­plant real­i­ty, and we for­get about the net­works of enablers that help ruth­less but not espe­cial­ly bright peo­ple suc­ceed. But suc­cess­ful art forg­ers present us with anoth­er case entire­ly. “Forg­ers, by nature, pre­fer anonymi­ty,” notes the site Essen­tial Ver­meer 3.0, “and there­fore are rarely remem­bered.” Yet the evi­dence of their mas­tery lies incon­tro­vert­ibly before us, fool­ing col­lec­tors, cura­tors, and even art his­to­ri­ans. Fakes, may be “the great art of our age.”

Or so claims the sub­ti­tle of 2013 book Forged, in which philoso­pher and con­cep­tu­al artist Jonathon Keats sur­veys the careers of six noto­ri­ous forg­ers, includ­ing Dutch artist Han van Meegeren, who “tricked the world—and the Nazis—with his coun­ter­feit Ver­meer paint­ings,” the TED-Ed les­son above tells us.

Van Meegeren’s biog­ra­phy seems almost script­ed. Hav­ing failed to inter­est crit­ics in his work as a young man, he became embit­tered and decid­ed to revenge him­self upon the art world with fakes. His choice of Ver­meer was “ambi­tious” to say the least, giv­en the Baroque painter’s rep­u­ta­tion for a unique tech­ni­cal bril­liance.

He worked for six years to re-cre­ate Vermeer’s mate­ri­als and tech­niques and per­fect an aging process for his can­vas­es. The foren­sic sci­ence that would today detect such meth­ods was not suf­fi­cient­ly advanced at the time. Yet “even today,” the les­son notes, authen­tic­i­ty is a mat­ter of the “sub­jec­tive judg­ment of spe­cial­ists.” Van Meegeren used such depen­dence on author­i­ty against the experts by cre­at­ing a work he knew would fill in a his­tor­i­cal gap, an ear­ly reli­gious peri­od of Vermeer’s from which no works sur­vived; also, con­ve­nient­ly, a peri­od when the artist’s tal­ents were less devel­oped.

“In 1937,” Essen­tial Ver­meer writes, “Abra­ham Bredius… one of the most author­i­ta­tive art his­to­ri­ans,” who had “ded­i­cat­ed a great part of his life to the study of Ver­meer” pro­nounced van Meegeren’s fake Ver­meer, Christ and the Dis­ci­ples at Emmaus (detail above), “a hith­er­to unknown paint­ing by a great mas­ter, untouched, on the orig­i­nal can­vas, and with­out any restora­tion, just as it left the painter’s stu­dio.” His praise was so effu­sive it allowed no room for doubt. This was “the mas­ter­piece of Johannes Ver­meer of Delft… every inch a Ver­meer.”

Van Meegeren coun­ter­feit­ed works by sev­er­al oth­er Dutch mas­ters and “was so good,” says the nar­ra­tor of a Sotheby’s pro­file, above, “that he duped art experts, muse­ums, and even Hitler’s right-hand man Her­mann Göring.” And here, the usu­al admi­ra­tion for art forgers—who can seem like hero­ic trick­sters next to their greedy, over­con­fi­dent marks—takes a patri­ot­ic turn. Tried for col­lab­o­ra­tion, the forg­er argued he was in fact a nation­al hero for trad­ing anoth­er coun­ter­feit Ver­meer, Christ with the Woman Tak­en in Adul­tery (below), to Göring for 200 works of loot­ed Dutch art.

Van Meegeren’s defense depend­ed on him con­vinc­ing the court that he had made the paint­ing. This took some doing. He had even for­gone using mod­els so there would be no wit­ness­es. As Sotheby’s Direc­tor of Sci­en­tif­ic Research James Mar­tin and art his­to­ri­an Jonathan Lopez show us, van Meegeren’s work real­ly was that con­vinc­ing, its flaws near­ly unde­tectable. He did serve two years for forgery and fraud, but in the end achieved his ear­ly desire for artis­tic fame and his lat­er wish to be regard­ed as an out­law hero. Per­haps more than most art world forg­ers, he is deserv­ing of both rep­u­ta­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edi­tion of Galileo’s Sci­en­tif­ic Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

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


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