The Provocative Art of Modern Sketch, the Magazine That Captured the Cultural Explosion of 1930s Shanghai


“With its news­pa­pers in every lan­guage and scores of radio sta­tions, Shang­hai was a media city before its time, cel­e­brat­ed as the Paris of the Ori­ent and ‘the wickedest city in the world.’ ” So British writer J.G. Bal­lard remem­bers the Chi­nese metrop­o­lis in which he grew up in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Mir­a­cles of Life. “Shang­hai struck me as a mag­i­cal place, a self-gen­er­at­ing fan­ta­sy that left my own lit­tle mind far behind.” Born in 1930, Bal­lard caught Shang­hai at a par­tic­u­lar­ly stim­u­lat­ing time: “Devel­oped on the basis of ‘unequal treaties’ suc­ces­sive­ly insti­tut­ed after the First Opi­um War in 1842,” writes MIT’s John A. Crespi, Chi­nese port cities like Shang­hai “expe­ri­enced a wel­ter of tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic changes,” includ­ing auto­mo­biles, sky­scrap­ers, rolled cig­a­rettes, movie the­aters cof­fee­hous­es, and much else besides.

Such heady days also gave rise to media that reflect­ed and cri­tiqued them, and 1930s Shang­hai pro­duced no more com­pelling an exam­ple of such a pub­li­ca­tion than Mod­ern Sketch (时代漫画, Shídài Màn­huà).

Among its points of inter­est, writes Crespi, “one can point to Mod­ern Sketch’s longevi­ty, the qual­i­ty of its print­ing, the remark­able eclec­ti­cism of its con­tent, and its inclu­sion of work by young artists who went on to become lead­ers in China’s 20th-cen­tu­ry cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment. But from today’s per­spec­tive, most intrigu­ing is the sheer imag­is­tic force with which this mag­a­zine cap­tures the crises and con­tra­dic­tions that have defined China’s 20th cen­tu­ry as a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly mod­ern era.”

Pub­lished month­ly from Jan­u­ary 1934 through June 1937, the mag­a­zine first appeared on news­stands just over two decades after the col­lapse of China’s dynas­tic sys­tem.  The mod­ern­iza­tion-mind­ed May Fourth Move­ment, nation­al­ist North­ern Expe­di­tion, and purge of com­mu­nists by “Gen­er­alis­si­mo” Chi­ang Kai-shek were even more recent mem­o­ries.

But the rel­a­tive sta­bil­i­ty of the “Nan­jing Decade” had begun in 1927, and its zeit­geist turned out to be rich soil for a wild cul­tur­al flow­er­ing in Chi­na’s coastal cities, none wilder than in Shang­hai. To the read­ing pub­lic of this time Mod­ern Sketch offered treat­ments of mate­r­i­al like “eroti­cized women, for­eign aggres­sion — par­tic­u­lar­ly the rise of fas­cism in Europe and mil­i­ta­rized Japan — domes­tic pol­i­tics and exploita­tion, and moder­ni­ty-at-large,” writes Crespi.

The mag­a­zine’s atti­tude “could be inci­sive, bit­ter, shock­ing, and cyn­i­cal. At the very same time it could be ele­gant, sala­cious, and pre­pos­ter­ous. Its mes­sages might be as sim­ple as child’s play, or cryp­ti­cal­ly encod­ed for cul­tur­al sophis­ti­cates.”

Some­times it did­n’t encode its mes­sages cryp­ti­cal­ly enough: as a result of one unflat­ter­ing depic­tion of Xu Shiy­ing, Chi­na’s ambas­sador to Japan, the author­i­ties sus­pend­ed pub­li­ca­tion and detained edi­tor Lu Shaofei. Not that Lu did­n’t know what he was get­ting into with Mod­ern Sketch: “On all sides a tense era sur­rounds us,” he wrote in the mag­a­zine’s inau­gur­al issue. “As it is for the indi­vid­ual, so it is for our coun­try and the world.”

As for an answer to the ques­tion of whether the strange and tense but enor­mous­ly fruit­ful cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal moment in which Lu and his col­lab­o­ra­tors found them­selves wold last, “the more one fails to find it, the more that desire grows. Our stance, our sin­gle respon­si­bil­i­ty, then, is to strive!”

You can read more about what project entailed, and see in greater detail its tex­tu­al and visu­al results, in Crespi’s his­to­ry of this mag­a­zine that strove to cap­ture the every­day real­i­ty of life on dis­play in 1930s Shang­hai — “though I some­times won­der,” Bal­lard writes, “if every­day real­i­ty was the one ele­ment miss­ing from the city.”

via 50 Watts

Relat­ed con­tent:

China’s New Lumi­nous White Library: A Strik­ing Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

A Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Vin­tage Japan­ese Mag­a­zine Cov­ers (1913–46)

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Free Chi­nese Lessons

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 or on Face­book.

Werner Herzog Offers 24 Pieces of Filmmaking and Life Advice

Image by Erinc Salor via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There are few film­mak­ers alive today who have the mys­tique of Wern­er Her­zog. His fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries are bril­liant and messy, depict­ing both the ecstasies and the ago­nies of life in a chaot­ic and fun­da­men­tal­ly hos­tile uni­verse. And his movies seem very much to reflect his per­son­al­i­ty – uncom­pro­mis­ing, enig­mat­ic and quite pos­si­bly crazy. How else can you explain his will­ing­ness to risk life and limb to shoot in such for­bid­ding places as the Ama­zon­ian rain for­est or Antarc­ti­ca?

In per­haps his great­est film, Fitz­car­ral­do — which is about a dream­er who hatch­es a scheme to drag a river­boat over a moun­tain — Her­zog decides, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, to actu­al­ly drag a boat over a moun­tain. No spe­cial effects. No stu­dios. In the mid­dle of the Peru­vian jun­gle.

The pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most mis­er­able in the his­to­ry of film, is the sub­ject of the doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. After six pun­ish­ing months, a weary-look­ing Her­zog described his sur­round­ings:

I see it more full of obscen­i­ty. It’s just — Nature here is vile and base. I would­n’t see any­thing erot­i­cal here. I would see for­ni­ca­tion and asphyx­i­a­tion and chok­ing and fight­ing for sur­vival and… grow­ing and… just rot­ting away. Of course, there’s a lot of mis­ery. But it is the same mis­ery that is all around us. The trees here are in mis­ery, and the birds are in mis­ery. I don’t think they — they sing. They just screech in pain. […] But when I say this, I say this all full of admi­ra­tion for the jun­gle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my bet­ter judg­ment.

His world­view brims with a hero­ic pes­simism that is pulled straight out of the Ger­man Roman­tic poets. Nature is not some har­mo­nious anthro­po­mor­phized play­ground. It is instead noth­ing but “chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” For those sick of the cyn­i­cal dis­hon­esty of Hollywood’s cur­rent crop of Award-ready fare (hel­lo, The Imi­ta­tion Game), Her­zog comes as a brac­ing ton­ic. An icon of what inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma should be rather than what it has large­ly become.

Below is Herzog’s list of advice for film­mak­ers, found on the back of his lat­est book Wern­er Her­zog – A Guide for the Per­plexed. (Hat tip goes to Jason Kot­tke for bring­ing it to our atten­tion.) Some max­ims are pret­ty spe­cif­ic to the world of moviemak­ing – “That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.” Oth­er points are just plain good lessons for life — “Always take the ini­tia­tive,” “Learn to live with your mis­takes.” Read along and you can almost hear Herzog’s malev­o­lent Teu­ton­ic lilt.

1. Always take the ini­tia­tive.
2. There is noth­ing wrong with spend­ing a night in jail if it means get­ting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Nev­er wal­low in your trou­bles; despair must be kept pri­vate and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mis­takes.
6. Expand your knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of music and lit­er­a­ture, old and mod­ern.
7. That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.
8. There is nev­er an excuse not to fin­ish a film.
9. Car­ry bolt cut­ters every­where.
10. Thwart insti­tu­tion­al cow­ardice.
11. Ask for for­give­ness, not per­mis­sion.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a land­scape.
14. Ignite the fire with­in and explore unknown ter­ri­to­ry.
15. Walk straight ahead, nev­er detour.
16. Manoeu­vre and mis­lead, but always deliv­er.
17. Don’t be fear­ful of rejec­tion.
18. Devel­op your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of hon­or is to fail a film the­o­ry class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cin­e­ma.
22. Guer­ril­la tac­tics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Top Films

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936)


In 1936 — per­haps the dark­est year of his life — F. Scott Fitzger­ald was con­va­lesc­ing in a hotel in Asheville, North Car­oli­na, when he offered his nurse a list of 22 books he thought were essen­tial read­ing. The list, above, is writ­ten in the nurse’s hand.

Fitzger­ald had moved into Asheville’s Grove Park Inn that April after trans­fer­ring his wife Zel­da, a psy­chi­atric patient, to near­by High­land Hos­pi­tal. It was the same month that Esquire pub­lished his essay “The Crack Up”, in which he con­fessed to a grow­ing aware­ness that “my life had been a draw­ing on resources that I did not pos­sess, that I had been mort­gag­ing myself phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly up to the hilt.”

Fitzger­ald’s finan­cial and drink­ing prob­lems had reached a crit­i­cal stage. That sum­mer he frac­tured his shoul­der while div­ing into the hotel swim­ming pool, and some­time lat­er, accord­ing to Michael Cody at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, “he fired a revolver in a sui­cide threat, after which the hotel refused to let him stay with­out a nurse. He was attend­ed there­after by Dorothy Richard­son, whose chief duties were to pro­vide him com­pa­ny and try to keep him from drink­ing too much. In typ­i­cal Fitzger­ald fash­ion, he devel­oped a friend­ship with Miss Richard­son and attempt­ed to edu­cate her by pro­vid­ing her with a read­ing list.”

It’s a curi­ous list. Shake­speare is omit­ted. So is James Joyce. But Nor­man Dou­glas and Arnold Ben­nett make the cut. Fitzger­ald appears to have restrict­ed his selec­tions to books that were avail­able at that time in Mod­ern Library edi­tions. At the top of the page, Richard­son writes “These are books that Scott thought should be required read­ing.”

via The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Interactive Map That Catalogues the 700,000 Trees Shading the Streets of New York City

It may sound odd, but one of the things I miss most about liv­ing in New York City is the abil­i­ty to hop on a bus or train, or walk a few blocks from home, and end up loung­ing in a for­est, the cacoph­o­ny of traf­fic reduced to a dim hum, squir­rels bound­ing around, birds twit­ter­ing away above. Such urban respites are plen­ti­ful in NYC thanks to its 10,542 acres of forest­ed land, “about half as much as the Con­ga­ree Swamp in South Car­oli­na,” notes James Bar­ron at The New York Times, in one of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban areas in the coun­try.

“Most of the city’s for­est is deep in parks”—in Cen­tral Park, of course, and also Prospect Park and River­side, and dozens of small­er oases, and the lush Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in the Bronx. The city’s forests are sub­ject to the usu­al pres­sures oth­er wood­ed areas face: cli­mate change, inva­sive species, etc.

They are also depen­dent on a well-fund­ed Parks Depart­ment and non­prof­its like the Nat­ur­al Areas Con­ser­van­cy for the preser­va­tion and upkeep not only of the large parks but of the trees that shade city streets in all five bor­oughs.

Luck­i­ly, the city and non­prof­it groups have been work­ing togeth­er to plan for what the conservancy’s senior ecol­o­gist, Helen For­gione, calls “future forests,” using big data to map out the best paths for urban wood­land. The NYC Parks depart­ment has been busy com­pil­ing fig­ures, and you can find all of their tree stats at the New York City Street Tree Map, which “brings New York City’s urban for­est to your fin­ger­tips. For the first time,” the Parks depart­ment writes, “you have access to infor­ma­tion about every street tree in New York City.”

Large forest­ed parks on the inter­ac­tive map appear as flat green fields—the depart­ment has not count­ed each indi­vid­ual tree in Cen­tral Park. But the map gives us fine, gran­u­lar detail when it comes to street trees, allow­ing users to zoom in to every inter­sec­tion and click on col­ored dots that rep­re­sent each tree, for exam­ple lin­ing Avenue D in the East Vil­lage or Flat­bush Avenue in Brook­lyn. You can search spe­cif­ic loca­tions or comb through city­wide sta­tis­tics for the big pic­ture. At the time of this writ­ing, the project has mapped 694,249 trees, much of that work under­tak­en by vol­un­teers in the TreesCount! 2015 ini­tia­tive.

There are many more trees yet to map, and the department’s forestry team updates the site dai­ly. Out of 234 species iden­ti­fied, the most com­mon is the Lon­don Plan­e­tree, rep­re­sent­ing 12% of the trees on the map. Oth­er pop­u­lar species include the Lit­tle­leaf Lin­den, Nor­way Maple, Pin Oak, and Ginko. Some oth­er stats show the eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of urban trees, includ­ing the amount of ener­gy con­served (667,590,884 kWh, or $84,279,933.06) and amount of car­bon diox­ide reduced (612,100 tons).

Vis­it the New York City Street Tree Map for the full, vir­tu­al tour of the city’s trees, and marvel—if you haven’t expe­ri­enced the city’s vibrant tree life firsthand—at just how green the empire city’s streets real­ly are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

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

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

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

The Night When John Coltrane Soloed in a Bathroom and David Crosby, High as a Kite, Nearly Lost His Mind

David Cros­by is not only one of rock’s great song­writ­ers; he is also one of rock’s great raconteurs—always ready with a sto­ry, told as only he can tell it, about life in not just one, but two of the most influ­en­tial bands of the 1960s, the Byrds and Cros­by, Stills & Nash and some­times Young. Few peo­ple have lived a life as col­or­ful as his and lived to tell about it. Even few­er pos­sess Crosby’s wit and eye for detail.

He came by his wealth of anec­dotes at a sig­nif­i­cant cost, how­ev­er, to him­self and the peo­ple around him, as he read­i­ly admits in the new­ly released (on Blu-ray) Cameron Crowe-pro­duced doc­u­men­tary Remem­ber My Name. Now a wiz­ened 78-years-old and still pro­lif­ic and rais­ing hell (on Twit­ter, at least) Cros­by reached far back in the mem­o­ry vault to tell the tale of his life, from child­hood to his 60s hey­day to his stints in jail and rehab and through every sor­did stage of full blown addic­tion.

Drugs will seri­ous­ly mess up your life, says Cros­by, in no uncer­tain terms, but it’s also clear his life would have been much less event­ful, and less inter­est­ing, with­out them. Take the sto­ry he tells of run­ning into John Coltrane in the men’s room of the South Side Chica­go club called McKie’s in 1963. Incred­i­bly high, Cros­by finds him­self blown out of his seat and against the wall by Elvin Jones’ drum solo. He retreats to the bath­room and prompt­ly hits the floor. “I’ve got my head against this puke green tile,” he says in the clip above from Remem­ber My Name (see the trail­er below).

While Cros­by tried to pull him­self togeth­er, who should walk in but Coltrane, still play­ing:

He nev­er stopped solo­ing. He’s still solo­ing. And he’s like burn­ing in this bath­room. He doesn’t even know I’m there. He nev­er even saw me. I’m think­ing I’m gonna slide right down this tile. I’m think­ing my nose is gonna open and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor. It was so intense. I nev­er heard any­one be more intense with music than that in my life.

Cros­by gets into more detail in an inter­view with Jaz­zTimes. Coltrane, he says, “played in the [restroom] for a cou­ple of min­utes because the sound was good—it was echoey—and he was… as good as you think he was.” He also talks at length about his long rela­tion­ship with jazz, from his dis­cov­ery of late-50s records by Dave Brubeck, Chet Bak­er, and Bill Evans, to Miles Davis record­ing a ver­sion of his song “Guin­n­e­vere.” (Davis was appar­ent­ly instru­men­tal in get­ting the Byrds signed to Colum­bia Records.)

The influ­ence of Davis and Coltrane on Crosby’s song­writ­ing is per­haps less evi­dent than in, say, the work of Joni Mitchell, but Cros­by admits that his “phras­ing and melody choice” derived from “real­ly good horn play­ers.” It’s inter­est­ing to note just how much impact late-50s/ear­ly 60s jazz had on not only Cros­by and Mitchell, but also 60s icons like Grace Slick. Lis­ten­ing to these clas­sic rock sur­vivors describe how Miles and Coltrane helped shape their sound shows just how much the mid-cen­tu­ry jazz rev­o­lu­tion fueled the rock rev­o­lu­tion that fol­lowed.

Now that he’s sober, Crosby’s sto­ries don’t involve near­ly as much floor tile and brains slid­ing out of noses, but they’re still full of jazz encoun­ters, includ­ing his recent col­lab­o­ra­tions with Wyn­ton Marsalis and jazz col­lec­tive Snarky Pup­py. Read more about his recent projects and his­to­ry with jazz over at Jaz­zTimes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rab­bit”: The 1960s Clas­sic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Car­roll, Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain, and Hyp­o­crit­i­cal Par­ents

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

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

Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Opera-as-Pop-400-x-800.jpg

Opera used to be a cen­tral part of Euro­pean pop cul­ture, Pavarot­ti was as big a pop star as they come. But still, it’s now the quin­tes­sen­tial art-form of the wealthy and snob­bish. What gives?

Guest Sean Spyres from Spring­field Region­al Opera joins his sis­ter Eri­ca along with Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss oper­a’s place in cul­ture (includ­ing its film appear­ances), how it’s dif­fer­ent from music the­ater, the chal­lenges it faces and how it might become more rel­e­vant.

Some arti­cles:

Watch the Shaw­shank Redemp­tion opera scene or per­haps the Pret­ty Woman scene. What Is pop opera? Here’s Ranker’s list of artists. Paul Potts sings that famous song on Britain’s Got Tal­ent. Plus, check out albums from broth­er Michael Spyres. Yes, you can hear an opera-singer sing “Take Me Out to the Ball­game,” but you prob­a­bly should­n’t.

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 is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Found: A Long Lost Chapter from the World’s Oldest Novel, the 11th-Century Japanese Classic, The Tale of Genji

Hen­ry James’ dis­par­age­ment of Vic­to­ri­an nov­els has always struck me as odd. “What do such large loose bag­gy mon­sters,” as he called them, “with their queer ele­ments of the acci­den­tal and the arbi­trary, artis­ti­cal­ly mean?” The ques­tion might be asked of what has often been con­sid­ered the first mod­ern nov­el, Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote, a trag­ic-com­ic adven­ture whose first vol­ume ranges over 52 loose, episod­ic chap­ters and whose sec­ond appeared ten years lat­er to com­ment explic­it­ly on the first’s suc­cess.

And then, six-hun­dred years ear­li­er, there appeared what many con­sid­er to be the first nov­el ever writ­ten, The Tale of Gen­ji, which “cov­ers almost three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry,” notes trans­la­tor Edward Sei­den­stick­er in an intro­duc­tion to his 1976 edi­tion. “The first forty-one chap­ters have to do with the life and loves of the noble­man known as ‘the shin­ing Gen­ji,’” the son of an emper­or. We fol­low Gen­ji from birth to his 52nd year, then the final ten chap­ters relate the tale of Kaoru, “who pass­es in the world as Genji’s son but is real­ly the grand­son of his best friend.” (See a 12th-cen­tu­ry illus­tra­tion from the tale above.)

Writ­ten by a noble­woman and lady of the court in 11th cen­tu­ry Heian Japan, the book’s author is called Murasa­ki Shik­ibu, but her real name is unknown. Shik­ibu “des­ig­nates an office held by her father”; Murasa­ki prob­a­bly derives from the name of a main char­ac­ter in the nov­el. There is no “con­clu­sive evi­dence that the Gen­ji was either fin­ished or unfin­ished at the time, nor is there con­clu­sive evi­dence that it is fin­ished or unfin­ished today.” Some chap­ters have been thought spu­ri­ous, some deemed miss­ing. No orig­i­nal man­u­script exists, and only four of the novel’s 54 chap­ters have been authen­ti­cat­ed as tran­scrip­tions from the orig­i­nal text.

That is, until this month, when a “lost”—or pre­vi­ous­ly unknown—chapter sur­faced, and “is now the fifth con­firmed tran­scrip­tion of the his­tor­i­cal nov­el,” as Hakim Bishara writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic. “The new­ly dis­cov­ered chap­ter, titled ‘Waka­murasa­ki,’ depicts Genji’s encounter with Murasa­ki-no-ue, the young woman who lat­er becomes his wife.” It was dis­cov­ered by Moto­fuyu Okochi, The Japan Times reports, “a descen­dent of the for­mer feu­dal lord of the Mikawa-Yoshi­da Domain in Aichi Pre­fec­ture.”

The new Gen­ji mate­r­i­al appears “in one chap­ter of a five-chap­ter work called ‘Aobyoshi­bon’ (blue cov­er book), com­piled by poet Fuji­wara Tei­ka,” who is believed to have tran­scribed the old­est doc­u­ment­ed ver­sions of the nov­el dur­ing the Kamaku­ra Peri­od (1185–1333). There is as yet no crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of how this find might change the way schol­ars read the book, but as a loose bag­gy mon­ster, it can expand and con­tract, change its shape and com­po­si­tion, with­out los­ing its essen­tial char­ac­ter.

As Sei­den­stick­er writes, “Murasa­ki Shik­ibu was no Aris­totelian, plan­ning her begin­ning, mid­dle, and end before she set brush to paper. The Gen­ji is full of hes­i­ta­tions and wrong turns and retreats.” Full, in oth­er words, of the mean­der­ings of the mind. (You can read Seidensticker’s trans­la­tion of the Gen­ji online here.) Anoth­er West­ern admir­er of the nov­el, Jorge Luis Borges, writ­ing of an ear­li­er trans­la­tion, put it anoth­er way: “What inter­ests us is not the exoticism—the hor­ri­ble word—but rather the human pas­sions… Murasaki’s work is what one would quite pre­cise­ly call a psy­cho­log­i­cal nov­el.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of the Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

The Old­est Book Print­ed with Mov­able Type is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Teach­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

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

The First Faked Photograph (1840)

The pho­to­graph was invent­ed in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, but who invent­ed it? His­to­ries of pho­tog­ra­phy point to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent inven­tors, most of them French: Nicéphore Niépce, for exam­ple, who in 1826 made the first work rec­og­niz­able as a pho­to­graph, or more famous­ly Louis Daguerre, hon­ored for his inven­tion of the daguerreo­type pho­to­graph­ic process by the French Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1839. But what about Daguer­re’s con­tem­po­rary Hip­poly­te Bayard, who had also been devel­op­ing and refin­ing his own form of pho­tog­ra­phy? After going unac­knowl­edged by the Acad­e­my, he had only one option left: sui­cide.

The Vox Dark­room video above tells the sto­ry of Bayard’s 1840 Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man, which depicts exact­ly what its title sug­gests: Bayard’s corpse, retrieved from the water and propped up unclaimed at the morgue. “The Gov­ern­ment which has been only too gen­er­ous to Mon­sieur Daguerre, has said it can do noth­ing for Mon­sieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned him­self,” reads the note on the back of the pho­to­graph. “Oh the vagaries of human life.…!”

A sor­ry tale, to be sure, and of a kind not unknown in the his­to­ry of inven­tion. But wait: how could a dead man shoot a “self-por­trait”? And if indeed “no-one has rec­og­nized or claimed him,” as the note adds, who would have both­ered to write the note itself?

Bayard, still very much alive, made Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man as a kind of artis­tic stunt, the lat­est in a series of self-por­traits test­ing his pho­to­graph­ic process. The “morgue” shot con­tains some of the arti­facts in its pre­de­ces­sors, includ­ing a gar­den stat­ue, a flo­ral vase, and Bayard’s sig­na­ture broad straw hat. (Even the expres­sion of death was of a piece with his pre­vi­ous self-por­traits: the long expo­sure time meant he’d had to hold absolute­ly still with his eyes closed in all of them as well.) Until his death in 1887 — long after Daguerre had passed — Bayard con­tin­ued exper­i­ment­ing with pho­tog­ra­phy, cre­at­ing real­i­ty-depart­ing images includ­ing “dou­ble self por­traits.” If he could­n’t go down as the inven­tor of the pho­to­graph, at least he could go down as the inven­tor of the fake pho­to­graph — a still-rel­e­vant inven­tion, to say the least, giv­en our increas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the truth in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

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

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 or on Face­book.

The Story of Ziggy Stardust Gets Chronicled in a New Graphic Novel, Featuring a Foreword by Neil Gaiman

Film has always been a medi­um that seeks to enter­tain as well as edi­fy, fram­ing thrills and chills for prof­it, and fram­ing com­po­si­tions deserv­ing of the label of “art.” Very often it has done both at the same time. Every casu­al stu­dent of the medi­um will, at least, admit this much. But nev­er have the dif­fer­ences between movie art and enter­tain­ment seemed as mag­ni­fied and polar­ized as they are now, in the midst of debates about com­ic book fran­chis­es and the fine art we call cin­e­ma.

What­ev­er the rea­sons, film has not reached the détente between art and enter­tain­ment achieved by pop­u­lar music—another medi­um depen­dent on late-19th/20th cen­tu­ry record­ing tech­nolo­gies and born of a thor­ough­ly mod­ern com­mer­cial matrix. Of course, not all pop aspires to art. But the idea that music can be huge­ly entertaining—drawing on the “low” gen­res of fan­ta­sy, sci­ence fic­tion, and com­ic books—and also wor­thy of cul­tur­al immor­tal­i­ty has become uncon­tro­ver­sial in large part because of the career of one musi­cian.

David Bowie, rock and roll’s orig­i­nal space alien super­hero, used his bank­able per­son­ae through the decades to give cre­dence to the idea of “art rock,” to real­ize its glam pos­si­bil­i­ties, to turn the rock auteur into an actor. He learned from a host of exper­i­menters, both his direct influ­ences and his spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sors. And he inspired a legion of suc­ces­sors who weren’t afraid to play char­ac­ters in their work, to mix inter­ests in phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and the occult with the flam­boy­ant, campy styles of the comics. (A mix comics them­selves played with in both pop­u­lar and under­ground man­i­fes­ta­tions.)

Bowie embod­ied the future when he appeared on the scene as Zig­gy in 1972, after years of labor­ing in obscu­ri­ty and a few fleet­ing brush­es with fame. “The incar­na­tions of David Bowie were, in them­selves, sci­ence fic­tion­al, “writes Neil Gaiman in the for­ward to a new graph­ic nov­el, BOWIE: Star­dust, Ray­guns, & Moon­age Day­dreams, which tells the sto­ry of Bowie’s rise as Zig­gy. “All I was miss­ing was a Bowie com­ic,” says Gaiman of his own fan­dom. “And, miss­ing it, I would draw bad Bowie comics myself.” Zig­gy Star­dust espe­cial­ly called for such treat­ment.

Bowie wore the glam rock Mar­t­ian mask with such com­mit­ment no one doubt­ed that he meant it—only what, exact­ly, he meant by it. “He defied clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” notes Simon & Schus­ter, “with his psy­che­del­ic aes­thet­ics, his larg­er-than-life image, and his way of hov­er­ing on the bor­der of the sur­re­al.” Fit­ting­ly, the com­ic is drawn by an artist who real­ized a psy­che­del­ic, sur­re­al­ist cre­ative vision of Neil Gaiman’s: Michael Allred, who worked on the Sand­man series.

The sto­ry, “part biog­ra­phy and part imag­i­na­tion,” reports Rolling Stone, is writ­ten by Steve Hor­ton and col­ored by Lau­ra Allred. You can order a copy here.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

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

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

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

Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

Update: Vio­la Smith sad­ly passed away this past week. You can read her obit­u­ary at The Guardian.

She may be the most famous jazz drum­mer you’ve nev­er heard of.

Vio­la Smith played with the NBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, per­formed for Har­ry Truman’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 1949, and played in the Kit-Kat Band (see them below on I’ve Got a Secret), in the first Broad­way run of Cabaret from 1966–70. These mark only a hand­ful of her career high­lights. She’s still thriving—and still playing—at the age of 106. While a fall has forced her to rely on a walk­er, she “looks like a sev­en­ty-five-year-old in ter­rif­ic shape!” writes Dan Bar­rett at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times.

Born Vio­la Schmitz in Mount Cal­vary, Wis­con­sin in 1912, Smith start­ed play­ing in the 1920s with her fam­i­ly band, the Schmitz Sis­ters Fam­i­ly Orches­tra (lat­er the Smith Sis­ters Orches­tra). Con­sist­ing of Vio­la, sev­en of her sis­ters, and one of her two broth­ers, they played the vaude­ville and movie the­ater cir­cuit on week­ends. Their father man­aged, direct­ed, and booked the band. An appear­ance on America’s Got Tal­ent, “the 1930s radio ver­sion,” notes Bar­rett, gave Vio­la and her sis­ters the con­fi­dence to form the Coquettes, who gar­nered a con­sid­er­able amount of fame after their debut in 1938.

In 1942, Vio­la wrote an arti­cle for Down Beat mag­a­zine titled “Give Girl Musi­cians a Break!,” sug­gest­ing that bands who lost musi­cians to WWII should hire women. Lat­er that year, when Mil­dred, Viola’s last remain­ing sis­ter in the Coquettes, got mar­ried, Vio­la moved to New York, “where I always want­ed to be,” she tells Bar­rett. She earned a sum­mer schol­ar­ship to Jul­liard, Ben­ny Good­man asked her to join his band (she turned him down), and she played with Ella Fitzger­ald and many oth­er greats. She record­ed film music and played with the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. She appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show five times.

Though often com­pared to Gene Kru­pa, whom she con­sid­ers a “love­ly per­son” and an influ­ence, Smith had a very dis­tinc­tive style all her own, char­ac­ter­ized by a twelve-drum kit with two 16-inch toms mount­ed on either side of her head, as you can see in the clip at the top of the post, in a 1939 per­for­mance with the Coquettes. This was no mere gim­mick. Smith had stud­ied tym­pa­ni at Jul­liard and import­ed clas­si­cal train­ing into her big band sound. (She claims drum­mer Louis Bellson’s use of two bass drums was due to her influ­ence.)

Why isn’t Vio­la Smith bet­ter known? It may have some­thing to do with patron­iz­ing cov­er­age in the press, where she was described as “the girl Gene Kru­pa,” the “fastest girl drum­mer,” “the famous girl drum­mer” etc. Oth­er female instru­men­tal­ists were sim­i­lar­ly belit­tled as “girl” nov­el­ty acts, or ignored, even when they played with band­lead­ers like Ben­ny Good­man, whose orches­tra fea­tured trum­pet play­ers Bil­lie Rogers and Lau­rie Frink. (Smith her­self frowns on women play­ing brass instru­ments, for some odd  rea­son.) In her Down Beat arti­cle, Vio­la named a num­ber of oth­er top female play­ers of the day who deserved more work and recog­ni­tion.

She may for­get things here and here, but Smith still has a steel-trap mem­o­ry for a 106-year old who has lived such a rich life. Her inter­view with Bar­rett is full of detailed rem­i­nisces (she briefly dat­ed Frank Sina­tra, for exam­ple). She gives us a pic­ture of a musi­cian at the top of her game and in full com­mand of her career dur­ing the gold­en age of big band swing. We can cred­it Smith’s life­time as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian with much of this con­fi­dence. Like all of her sib­lings she learned to play piano and read music from a young age, and she honed her skills as part of a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly “pit band,” as she says. But she was also dri­ven to suc­ceed above all else, leav­ing behind the con­ven­tion­al life each of her sib­ling band­mates even­tu­al­ly chose.

Smith did it her way—reportedly turn­ing down offers to play in Sinatra’s band and refus­ing band­leader Woody Her­man in order keep play­ing with the Coquettes. She played for the radio show Hour of Charm until she was 63, and has played con­certs recent­ly in Cos­ta Mesa, Cal­i­for­nia, where she now lives, tend­ed to by the staff of a quilt­ing sup­ply shop called Piece­mak­ers. Smith talks eas­i­ly about the sources of her musi­cal longevity—her fam­i­ly band, edu­ca­tion, and the tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians who embraced her.

As for her phys­i­cal vig­or and sta­mi­na, this she chalks up to the rig­or of play­ing the drums, and to relax­ing with a drink or two on occasion—a life­time of activ­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion that has helped keep her sharp and healthy after all of her con­tem­po­raries have passed away. See Smith in inter­views at 100, fur­ther up, and 102, just above, and read her recent inter­view at 106 at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times here.

via McGill Media

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

The Women of the Blues: Hear a Playlist of Great Blues Singers, from Bessie Smith & Etta James, to Bil­lie Hol­i­day & Janis Joplin

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

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

The Best of the Edward Gorey Envelope Art Contest

What a delight it must have been to have been one of Edward Gorey’s cor­re­spon­dents, or even a postal work­er charged with han­dling his out­go­ing mail.

The late author and illus­tra­tor had a pen­chant for embell­ish­ing envelopes with the hairy beasts, pok­er-faced chil­dren, and cats who are the main­stays of his dark­ly humor­ous aes­thet­ic.

(A num­ber of these envelopes and some 60 post­cards and sketch­es are includ­ed in Float­ing Worlds: The Let­ters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumey­erwhich doc­u­ments the cor­re­spon­dence-based friend­ship between Gorey and the author with whom he col­lab­o­rat­ed on three children’s books, includ­ing the delight­ful­ly macabre Don­ald Has a Dif­fi­cul­ty.)

The Edward Gorey House, a beloved Cape Cod res­i­dence turned muse­um, has been keep­ing the tra­di­tion alive with its annu­al Hal­loween Enve­lope Art Con­test.

Com­peti­tors of all ages vie for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their win­ning (and run­ners up and “very-close-to-being-run­ners-up”) Gorey-inspired entries dis­played in the Gorey House and its dig­i­tal exten­sions.

2019’s theme is the high­ly evoca­tive “Uncom­fort­able Crea­tures” … and depend­ing on the speed with which you can exe­cute a bril­liant idea and deliv­er it to the post office, you may still have a shot—entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21, with win­ners to be announced on Hal­loween.

In addi­tion to Stef Kiihn Aschenbrenner’s win­ning enve­lope from the 2018 contest’s over-18 cat­e­go­ry (top), some of our favorites from past years are repro­duced here. Our inky-black hearts are espe­cial­ly warmed to see the spir­it of the mas­ter kin­dling the imag­i­na­tions of the youngest entrants—special shout out to Daniel Miley, aged 4.

View five years’ worth of notable Hal­loween Enve­lope Con­test entries on the Edward Gorey House web­site (20182017201620152014) or down­load the offi­cial entry form and race to the post office with your bid for 2019 glo­ry.

Entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21 and addressed to Edward Gorey House, 8 Straw­ber­ry Lane, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675 USA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lemo­ny Snick­et Reveals His Edward Gorey Obses­sion in an Upcom­ing Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

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

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.


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