The Story of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the Boozy Ballad That Became a Beloved Christmas Song

in Music | December 21st, 2023

Note: With the recent pass­ing of Shane Mac­gowan, we’re bring­ing back a post from 2018 and revis­it­ing The Pogues’ song “Fairy­tale of New York.” The off­beat Christ­mas clas­sic is cur­rent­ly #5 on the Bill­board Sin­gles Chart in the UK.

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good sto­ry about doomed, down-and-out lovers. What­ev­er emo­tion­al reser­voir they tap into, when writ­ten well and hon­est­ly, such sto­ries have broad cul­tur­al appeal. Which in part explains the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Pogues’ 1987 clas­sic “Fairy­tale of New York,” the kind of “anti-Christ­mas song,” writes Dori­an Lyn­sky at The Guardian, “that end­ed up being, for a gen­er­a­tion, the Christ­mas song.”

Many hol­i­day sto­ries cyn­i­cal­ly trade on the fact that, for a great many peo­ple, the hol­i­days are filled with pain and loss. But “Fairy­tale of New York” doesn’t play this for laughs, nor does it pull the old trick of cheap last-minute redemp­tion.

Sung as a duet by Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty Mac­Coll to the boozy tune of an Irish folk bal­lad, the song “is loved because it feels more emo­tion­al­ly ‘real’ than the home­sick sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of ‘White Christ­mas.’ ” Even if we can’t iden­ti­fy with the plight of a burned-out Irish dream­er spend­ing Christ­mas in a New York drunk tank, we can feel the ache of bro­ken dreams set in high relief against hol­i­day lights.

The song’s his­to­ry itself makes for a com­pelling tale, whether we believe the ori­gin sto­ry in accor­dion play­er James Fearnley’s mem­oir Here Comes Every­body: The Sto­ry of the Pogues or that told by Mac­Gowan, who main­tains that Elvis Costel­lo, the band’s pro­duc­er, bet the singer that he couldn’t write a Christ­mas duet. (Fearn­ley writes that they were try­ing to top The Band’s 1977 “Christ­mas Must Be Tonight.”)

Either way, a Christ­mas song was a good idea. “For a band like the Pogues, very strong­ly root­ed in all kinds of tra­di­tions rather than the present, it was a no-brain­er,” says ban­jo-play­er and co-writer Jem Fin­er. Not to men­tion the fact that Mac­Gowan was born on Christ­mas Day 1957.

Fin­er began the song as a tale about a sailor miss­ing his wife on Christ­mas, but after the ban­jo play­er’s wife called it “corny” he took her sug­ges­tion to adapt the “true sto­ry of some mutu­al friends liv­ing in New York.” Mac­Gowan took the title from J.P. Donleavy’s 1973 nov­el A Fairy Tale of New York, which hap­pened to be lying around the record­ing stu­dio. After a promis­ing start, the song then went through two years of revi­sions and re-record­ings before the band final­ly set­tled on the ver­sion mil­lions know and love, pro­duced by Steve Lil­ly­white and released on the 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace with God.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a duet between Mac­Gowan and bass play­er Cait O’Riordan, a ver­sion record­ed with her was “not quite there,” gui­tarist Philip Chevron has said. Soon after, O’Riordan left the band, and Mac­Gowan record­ed the song again at Abbey Road in 1987, singing both the male and female vocal parts him­self. Even­tu­al­ly Lil­ly­white took the track home to have his wife, Eng­lish singer Kirsty Mac­Coll, record a tem­po­rary guide vocal for the female parts. When Mac­Gowan heard it, he knew he had found the right foil for the char­ac­ter he plays in the song.

“Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it and she had a very strong char­ac­ter and it came across in a big way,” Mac­Gowan lat­er remarked in an inter­view. “In operas, if you have a dou­ble aria, it’s what the woman does that real­ly mat­ters. the man lies, the woman tells the truth.” As part of her character’s “vicious­ness”, she hurls the slur “f*ggot” at Mac­Gowan, who calls her a “slut.” The offen­sive words have been cen­sored on radio sta­tions, then uncen­sored, and good cas­es have been made for bleep­ing them out (most recent­ly by Irish DJ Eoghan McDer­mott on Twit­ter).

Mac­Gowan him­self has issued a state­ment defend­ing the lyrics as in keep­ing with the char­ac­ters. “Some­times char­ac­ters in songs and sto­ries have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the sto­ry effec­tive­ly,” he writes, adding, “If peo­ple don’t under­stand that I was try­ing to accu­rate­ly por­tray the char­ac­ter as authen­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble then I am absolute­ly fine with them bleep­ing the word but I don’t want to get into an argu­ment.” What­ev­er posi­tion one takes on this, it’s hard to deny that Mac­Gowan, co-writer Fin­er, and Mac­Coll total­ly hit the mark when it comes to authen­tic­i­ty.

The gen­uine emo­tions “Fairy­tale of New York” taps into has made it the most beloved Christ­mas song of all time in TV, radio, and mag­a­zine polls in the UK and Ire­land. It has become “far big­ger than the peo­ple who made it,” writes Lynskey. Or, as Fearn­ley puts it, “It’s like ‘Fairy­tale of New York’ went off and inhab­it­ed its own plan­et.” An artist can’t ask for more. See mak­ing-of videos by the BBC and Poly­phon­ic at the top. Watch the band slop­pi­ly mime the song with Mac­Coll on Top of the Pops fur­ther up (Mac­Gowan can­not actu­al­ly play the piano). And just above, see the offi­cial video, star­ring Drug­store Cow­boy’s Matt Dillon—filmed inside a real police sta­tion on the Low­er East Side dur­ing a freez­ing Thanks­giv­ing week in 1987, for max­i­mum hol­i­day vérité.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glen Hansard & Lisa O’Neill Per­form a Stir­ring Ver­sion of “Fairy­tale of New York” at Shane MacGowan’s Funer­al: Watch Their Send-Off

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

Shane Mac­Gowan & Sinéad O’Connor Duet Togeth­er, Per­form­ing a Mov­ing Ren­di­tion of “Haunt­ed” (RIP)

An Old-Time Radio Yule­tide: Hear 20+ Hours of Vin­tage Christ­mas Radio Shows (1938–1956)

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

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

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How Pantone Became the Global Authority on Color

in Design | December 21st, 2023

Pan­tone has declared “Peach Fuzz” the Col­or of the Year. This selec­tion, how­ev­er, rais­es the ques­tion: How did Pan­tone become the glob­al author­i­ty on col­or? Above, the Wall Street Jour­nal describes how Pan­tone began as a com­mer­cial print­ing com­pa­ny dur­ing the 1950s. Then, in the ear­ly 60s, it evolved into some­thing quite dif­fer­ent. Rec­og­niz­ing that its clients (and oth­er com­pa­nies) need to print mate­ri­als with con­sis­tent col­ors, Pan­tone cre­at­ed a uni­ver­sal col­or lan­guage, the Pan­tone Match­ing Sys­tem (PMS), where each col­or is assigned a spe­cif­ic num­ber. For instance, “Peach Fuzz” cor­re­sponds to #FFBE98. As Slate points out, this sys­tem ensured that “print­ers and clients would have a shared ref­er­ence when they talk to one another—an indus­try stan­dard, so that a col­or would mean the same thing all the way from a designer’s vision to the print­ed item.” Over the next 60 years, Pan­tone con­tin­ued to nur­ture the Pan­tone Match­ing Sys­tem, undoubt­ed­ly gen­er­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue along the way and, more impor­tant­ly, mak­ing itself the arbiter of col­or world­wide.

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete Dig­i­tal Scan

Prince Gets an Offi­cial Pur­ple Pan­tone Col­or

The Woman Who The­o­rized Col­or: An Intro­duc­tion to Mary Gartside’s New The­o­ry of Colours (1808)

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

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Hear the Haunting Aztec “Death Whistle,” the Instrument That Made Sounds Resembling a Human Scream

in History, Music | December 20th, 2023

The received image of the Aztecs, with their sav­age bat­tles and fre­quent acts of human sac­ri­fice, tends to imply a vio­lence-sat­u­rat­ed, death-obsessed cul­ture. Giv­en that, it will hard­ly come as a sur­prise to learn of an Aztec musi­cal instru­ment dis­cov­ered in the hands of a sac­ri­ficed human body, or that the instru­ment has come to be known as the “death whis­tle.” Not that it was an espe­cial­ly recent find: the exca­va­tion in ques­tion hap­pened in Mex­i­co City in the late nine­teen-nineties. But only over the past decade, with the cre­ation of repli­cas like the one played by the late Xavier Qui­jas Yxay­otl in the clip above, have lis­ten­ers around the world been able to hear the death whis­tle for them­selves.

“The sound of the death whis­tle is the most fright­en­ing thing we’ve ever heard,” writes Reuben West­maas at Discovery.com. “It lit­er­al­ly sounds like a screech­ing zom­bie. We can only imag­ine what it would be like to hear hun­dreds of whis­tles from an Aztec army on the march. We’re not entire­ly cer­tain what the whis­tles were used for, how­ev­er.”

What­ev­er its appli­ca­tion, the dis­tinc­tive sound of the death whis­tle is cre­at­ed by blown air inter­act­ing “with a well or ‘spring’ of air inside a round­ed inter­nal cham­ber, cre­at­ing dis­tor­tions,” as Dave Roos writes at How Stuff Works. In his analy­sis of the death whistle’s inner work­ings, mechan­i­cal engi­neer Rober­to Velázquez Cabr­era gives that com­po­nent the evoca­tive name “chaos cham­ber.”

That the death whis­tle would be used in war and human sac­ri­fice cer­tain­ly aligns with the rep­u­ta­tion of the Aztecs, but the instru­ment has also inspired oth­er his­tor­i­cal­ly informed spec­u­la­tions. In the video from Giz­mo­do just above, pro­fes­sor of Mesoamer­i­can and Lati­no stud­ies Jaime Arredon­do even sug­gests that it could have had its ther­a­peu­tic uses, as a tool to cre­ate a “hyp­not­ic, sort of sooth­ing atmos­phere.” It could well have been designed to imi­tate the sound of the wind, giv­en that the sac­ri­fi­cial vic­tim had been buried at the tem­ple of the wind god Ehe­catl. And though the death whis­tle may seem the least like­ly tool of relax­ation imag­in­able, put your mind to it and just hear it as sound­ing less like the screech of a zom­bie than like the fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of a white-noise machine.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

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

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Why Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoléon Is “the Most Creative Film Ever Made”

in Film, History | December 20th, 2023

Since it came out this past Novem­ber, Rid­ley Scot­t’s Napoleon has drawn a vari­ety of crit­i­cal reac­tions. What­ev­er else can be said about it, it cer­tain­ly takes a dif­fer­ent tack from past depic­tions of that par­tic­u­lar French Emper­or. It was, per­haps, Scot­t’s good luck not to have to go up against the Napoleon pic­ture that Stan­ley Kubrick dreamed of mak­ing, but even so, there are plen­ty of oth­er prece­dents dat­ing from through­out cin­e­ma his­to­ry. The most for­mi­da­ble must sure­ly be Napoléon, from 1927, also known as Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (Abel Gance being one of France’s fore­most silent-era auteurs), which depicts the pro­tag­o­nist’s ear­ly years over the course of, in at least one of its many ver­sions, five and a half hours.

Grant­ed that, almost a cen­tu­ry lat­er, a silent his­tor­i­cal epic as long as three aver­age movies may be con­sid­ered some­thing of a “hard sell.” But if you’re intrigued, con­sid­er start­ing with the half-hour-long intro­duc­tion to Napoléon above by The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy’s Lewis Bond, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his exe­ge­sis of every­thing from the rule-break­ing of the French New Wave to the poet­ry of Andrei Tarkovsky and the copy­cat-ism of Quentin Taran­ti­no to the aes­thet­ic of ani­me. We can thus rest assured that when Bond says that Napoléon, “with­out hyper­bole, is the most inven­tive cin­e­mat­ic endeav­or in the his­to­ry of the medi­um,” he does­n’t do so light­ly.

Like any good video essay­ist, Bond first pro­vides con­text, fram­ing Gance as a kind of ear­ly nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Roman­tic artist work­ing in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth, a descen­dant of Vic­tor Hugo work­ing in film rather than lit­er­a­ture. But what­ev­er this infor­ma­tion may do to enrich your view­ing expe­ri­ence, “many of the great works don’t hide their great­ness away,” and Napoléon is one of the works in which that great­ness is “vis­i­ble from the moment you set your eyes to it.” Even its very first sequence, in which a young Napoleon leads his mil­i­tary-school com­pa­tri­ots in a large-scale snow­ball fight, is exe­cut­ed with the kind of cam­era moves and image dis­solves that would only find their way into stan­dard cin­e­mat­ic gram­mar decades lat­er.

This tech­ni­cal and for­mal inge­nu­ity con­tin­ues through­out the film: “with the sheer breadth of tech­niques, and just how osten­ta­tious they are, it’s dif­fi­cult to pack every­thing Napoléon presents us into a cohe­sive pack­age.” This makes Gance, who always had “a pen­chant for dis­pleas­ing his pro­duc­ers due to his con­stant desire to dis­rupt film lan­guage,” look like a Nou­velle Vague film­mak­er avant la let­tre. It also reveals his under­stand­ing that cin­e­ma, far from the nov­el­ty enter­tain­ment some had dis­missed in his time, “was to be the medi­um in which our next great Home­r­ic epic will emerge.” With Napoléon, Gance and his col­lab­o­ra­tors cre­at­ed not just a movie but a “panora­ma of exis­tence, which would entrance the view­ers in an almost reli­gious delir­i­um” — an expe­ri­ence sure to be inten­si­fied, for those whose reli­gious lean­ings tend toward the cin­e­mat­ic, by the restored sev­en-hour cut sched­uled to debut next year.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the New­ly Released Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Napoleon, Star­ring Joaquin Phoenix

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Vin­tage Pho­tos of Vet­er­ans of the Napoleon­ic Wars, Tak­en Cir­ca 1858

Napoleon’s Dis­as­trous Inva­sion of Rus­sia Detailed in an 1869 Data Visu­al­iza­tion: It’s Been Called “the Best Sta­tis­ti­cal Graph­ic Ever Drawn”

Why Is Napoleon’s Hand Always in His Waist­coat?: The Ori­gins of This Dis­tinc­tive Pose Explained

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

 

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The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online

in History, Maps | December 19th, 2023

FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost –five vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they come to map it—through their per­cep­tions of how its ele­ments are con­nect­ed and of how they should move among them. This is pre­cise­ly what the series is attempt­ing by sit­u­at­ing the map at the heart of cul­tur­al life and reveal­ing its rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, sci­ence, and reli­gion…. It is try­ing to define a new set of rela­tion­ships between maps and the phys­i­cal world that involve more than geo­met­ric cor­re­spon­dence. It is in essence a new map of human attempts to chart the world.

If you head over to this page, you will see links (in the left mar­gin) to five vol­umes avail­able in a free PDF for­mat. The image above, appear­ing in Vol. 2, dates back to 1534. Cre­at­ed by Oronce Fine, the first chair of math­e­mat­ics in the Col­lège Roy­al (aka the Col­lège de France), the map fea­tures the world drawn in the shape of a heart. A pret­ty beau­ti­ful design. Below you can find links to the indi­vid­ual vol­umes avail­able online.

Vol­ume 1

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy: Car­tog­ra­phy in Pre­his­toric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediter­ranean

Vol­ume 2: Book 1

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic and South Asian Soci­eties

Vol­ume 2: Book 2

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al East and South­east Asian Soci­eties

Vol­ume 2: Part 3

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Tra­di­tion­al African, Amer­i­can, Arc­tic, Aus­tralian, and Pacif­ic Soci­eties

Vol­ume 3: 

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Renais­sance: Part 1

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Renais­sance, Part 2 

Vol­ume 4:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Euro­pean Enlight­en­ment

Vol­ume 5:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry, Forth­com­ing

Vol­ume 6:

Car­tog­ra­phy in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry

If you buy any of the print­ed ver­sions on Ama­zon, each edi­tion will cost you $400-$500. As beau­ti­ful as the book prob­a­bly is, you’ll like­ly appre­ci­ate this free dig­i­tal offer­ing.

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 91,000 His­toric Maps from the Mas­sive David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

40,000 Ear­ly Mod­ern Maps Are Now Freely Avail­able Online (Cour­tesy of the British Library)

Behold an Incred­i­bly Detailed, Hand­made Map Of Medieval Trade Routes

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

The World Map That Intro­duced Sci­en­tif­ic Map­mak­ing to the Medieval Islam­ic World (1154 AD)

 

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The History of the Earth (All 4.5 Billion Years) in 1 Hour: A Million Years Covered Every Second

in History, Science | December 19th, 2023

From Kurzge­sagt comes the his­to­ry of our plan­et in one hour. They write: “Earth is 4.5 bil­lion years old — which is approx­i­mate­ly the same amount of time it took us to cre­ate this video. We’ve scaled the com­plete time­line of our Earth’s life into our first ani­mat­ed movie! Every sec­ond shows about a mil­lion years of the planet’s evo­lu­tion. Hop on a musi­cal train ride and expe­ri­ence how long a bil­lion years real­ly is.” Below, you can find the time­stamps for the geo­log­ic peri­ods cov­ered in the video.

0:00 Intro
0:51 Hadean
8:04 Eoarchean
13:20 Pale­oarchean
18:35 Mesoarchean
23:51 Neoarchean
27:47 Sider­ian
30:24 Rhy­a­cian
33:42 Orosiri­an
36:58 Stather­ian
39:38 Calym­mi­an
42:15 Ectasian
44:52 Sten­ian
47:30 Ton­ian
51:12 Cryo­gen­ian
52:18 Edi­acaran
53:35 Cam­bri­an
54:17 Ordovi­cian
54:49 Sil­uri­an
55:08 Devon­ian
55:55 Car­bonif­er­ous
56:43 Per­mi­an
57:21 Tri­as­sic
58:02 Juras­sic
58:46 Cre­ta­ceous
59:48 Pale­o­gene
1:00:21 Neo­gene
1:00:38 Qua­ter­nary
1:00:45 End­ing

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

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

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Two Tiny Rembrandt Paintings Have Been Rediscovered & Put On Display in Amsterdam

in Art | December 18th, 2023

Many first-time vis­i­tors to the Lou­vre expe­ri­ence a let­down to dis­cov­er how small the Mona Lisa is -just 21” x 30”.

Mean­while, over in Ams­ter­dam, vis­i­tors have been flock­ing to the Rijksmu­se­um, eager to lay eyes on the two small­est for­mal works in the museum’s col­lec­tion.

Mea­sur­ing slight­ly less than 8” tall, they are about as tall as the aver­age retail banana as per US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture esti­mates.

It’s not just the match­ing oval por­traits’ size that’s pack­ing ’em in.

The recent­ly redis­cov­ered paint­ings have been iden­ti­fied as the work of Rem­brandt Har­men­szoon van Rijn, the lead­ing artist of the Dutch Gold­en Age.

Paint­ed in 1635, the por­traits fea­ture Jan Willem­sz van der Pluym, a wealthy 17th-cen­tu­ry plumber and his wife, Jaap­gen Caerls­dr, dressed in black with stiff white ruffs. The cou­ple owned the gar­den next to the painter’s moth­er, and he was dis­tant­ly relat­ed to them through a mar­riage on her side.

Their triple-great-grand­chil­dren put the por­traits up for auc­tion in 1760, after which they passed through sev­er­al pri­vate col­lec­tions, before drop­ping entire­ly from pub­lic view fol­low­ing an auc­tion in the sum­mer of 1824.

Near­ly two hun­dred years lat­er, Jan and Jaapgen’s por­traits weren’t mak­ing much of an impres­sion on that win­ning bidder’s descen­dants.

As Hen­ry Pet­tifer, an Old Mas­ter Paint­ings spe­cial­ist at Christies, which con­duct­ed both the 1824 auc­tion and the one last sum­mer, where the por­traits fetched 14.3 mil­lion dol­lars, told the Wash­ing­ton Post, “the fam­i­ly liked the pic­tures but were nev­er cer­tain that they were by Rem­brandt and nev­er real­ly looked into that:”

The pic­tures were com­plete­ly absent from the Rem­brandt lit­er­a­ture in the 19th and 20th cen­turies, which was extra­or­di­nary. They have inti­ma­cy about them, a dig­ni­ty. They’re extra­or­di­nary… They’re unlike some of his grand, for­mal com­mis­sioned por­traits, and they are some­thing much more spon­ta­neous and inti­mate. I think the rea­son for that is that the sit­ters were very close­ly con­nect­ed to Rem­brandt. They were very much from Rembrandt’s own inner cir­cle. We should regard them as per­son­al doc­u­ments rather than for­mal com­mis­sions.

The most recent win­ning bid­der is com­mit­ted to keep­ing the paint­ings in the pub­lic eye with a long term-loan to the Rijksmu­se­um, where exten­sive research using X‑radiography, infrared pho­tog­ra­phy, infrared reflec­tog­ra­phy, macro X‑ray flu­o­res­cence, stere­omi­croscopy and paint sam­ple analy­sis con­firmed their prove­nance.

Experts have also not­ed sim­i­lar­i­ties in com­po­si­tion, col­or, and paint­ing tech­nique between these works and larg­er por­traits Rem­brandt exe­cut­ed dur­ing the same peri­od.

Jonathan Bikker, the Rijksmuseum’s cura­tor of 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch paint­ing, describes the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of prove­nance as “mind­blow­ing:”

Total­ly unknown works hard­ly ever hap­pen. We real­ly want­ed to be able to show them.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Explore the New 717-Gigapix­el Scan of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, the Most Detailed Pho­to Ever Tak­en of a Work of Art

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

The Rem­brandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Func­tion­al Bracelet Fea­tur­ing 1400 Rem­brandt Draw­ings

Sci­en­tists Cre­ate a New Rem­brandt Paint­ing, Using a 3D Print­er & Data Analy­sis of Rembrandt’s Body of Work

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Threads Now Available in Europe & UK (Plus the US): Get Our Daily Culture Posts There at @OpenCulture

in Random | December 17th, 2023

Threads is on the rise. After get­ting released in over 100 coun­tries (includ­ing the US and UK) ear­li­er this year, Meta has just made Threads avail­able in the EU. And that’s where we’re now shar­ing our dai­ly posts, along with oth­er objects of cul­tur­al inter­est. If you sign up, please search for @openculture, and give us a fol­low. Or just click right here.

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

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

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The World Map That Introduced Scientific Mapmaking to the Medieval Islamic World (1154 AD)

in History, Maps | December 15th, 2023

Cast your mind, if you will, to the city of Ceu­ta. If you’ve nev­er heard of it, or can’t quite recall its loca­tion, you can eas­i­ly find out by search­ing for it on your map appli­ca­tion of choice. Back in the twelfth cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, you might have had to con­sult an image of the known world engraved on a 300-pound, six-and-a-half-foot wide sil­ver disk — but then, if you had access to that disk, you’d know full well where Ceu­ta was in the first place. For it belonged to King Roger II of Sici­ly, who’d com­mis­sioned it from the geo­g­ra­ph­er, trav­el­er, and schol­ar Abū Abdal­lāh Muham­mad ibn Muham­mad ibn Abdal­lāh ibn Idrīs al-sharif al-Idrīsī — more suc­cinct­ly known as Muham­mad al-Idrisi — per­haps Ceu­ta’s most accom­plished son.

“Al-Idrisi stud­ied in Cor­do­ba and trav­eled wide­ly as a young man, vis­it­ing Asia Minor, Hun­gary, the French Atlantic coast, and even as far north as York, Eng­land,” writes Big Think’s Frank Jacobs. In 1138, Roger II “invit­ed al-Idrisi to his court at Paler­mo, pos­si­bly to explore whether he could install the Mus­lim noble­man as a pup­pet ruler in the bits of North Africa under his domin­ion, or in Spain, which he hoped to con­quer.” The project that result­ed from this meet­ing, fif­teen years of work lat­er, was “a new and accu­rate map of the world.” In addi­tion to knowl­edge gained on his own exten­sive trav­els, Al-Isidiri con­sult­ed ancient sources like Ptolemy’s Geog­ra­phy and “inter­viewed ship’s crews and oth­er sea­soned trav­el­ers, but retained only those sto­ries on which all were in agree­ment,” leav­ing out the myth­i­cal tribes and fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures.

In addi­tion to the grand disk, Al-Idrisi cre­at­ed an atlas con­sist­ing of 70 detailed, anno­tat­ed maps called Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi’khtirāq āl-āfāq. That Ara­bic title has been var­i­ous­ly trans­lat­ed — “the book of pleas­ant jour­neys into far­away lands,” “the excur­sion of the one who yearns to pen­e­trate the hori­zons,” “the excur­sion of one who is eager to tra­verse the regions of the world” — but in Latin, the book was sim­ply called the Tab­u­la Roge­ri­ana. Alas, writes Jacobs, “the orig­i­nal Latin ver­sion of the atlas (and the sil­ver disk) were destroyed in 1160 in the chaos of a coup against William the Wicked, Roger’s unpop­u­lar son and suc­ces­sor.” Still, Al-Idrisi did man­age to bring the Ara­bic ver­sion back with him to North Africa, where it became an influ­en­tial exam­ple of sci­en­tif­ic car­tog­ra­phy for the Islam­ic world.

A glance at the Library of Con­gress’ Ger­man fac­sim­i­le from 1928 at the top of the post reveals that Al-Idrisi’s world map looks quite unlike the ones we know today. He put south, not north, at the top, the bet­ter for Islam­ic con­verts to ori­ent them­selves toward Mec­ca. “His Europe is sketchy, his Asia amor­phous, and his Africa man­ages to be both par­tial and over­sized,” Jacobs notes, but nev­er­the­less, he got a lot right, includ­ing such lit­tle-known regions as the king­dom of Sil­la (locat­ed in mod­ern-day Korea) and cal­cu­lat­ing — approx­i­mate­ly, but still impres­sive­ly — the cir­cum­fer­ence of the entire Earth. We might con­sid­er pay­ing trib­ute to Al-Idrisi’s achieve­ments by mak­ing a trip to his home­town (a Span­ish-held city, for the record, at the very tip of Africa north-east of Moroc­co), which seems like a pleas­ant place to spend a few weeks — and a promis­ing start­ing point from which to pen­e­trate a few hori­zons of our own.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

How Did Car­tog­ra­phers Cre­ate World Maps before Air­planes and Satel­lites? An Intro­duc­tion

The Evo­lu­tion of the World Map: An Inven­tive Info­graph­ic Shows How Our Pic­ture of the World Changed Over 1,800 Years

40,000 Ear­ly Mod­ern Maps Are Now Freely Avail­able Online (Cour­tesy of the British Library)

500+ Beau­ti­ful Man­u­scripts from the Islam­ic World Now Dig­i­tized & Free to Down­load

The Birth and Rapid Rise of Islam, Ani­mat­ed (622‑1453)

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

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burning His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 15th, 2023

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tle above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today.

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

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

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Björk Takes You on a Journey into the Vast Kingdom of Mushrooms with the New Documentary Fungi: Web of Life

in Film, Nature | December 14th, 2023

As far as nar­ra­tors of doc­u­men­taries that offer a hyp­not­i­cal­ly close view of nature, David Atten­bor­ough has long stood unop­posed. But just this year, a rel­a­tive­ly young chal­lenger has emerged: the Ice­landic musi­cian-actress Björk Guð­munds­dót­tir, much bet­ter known by her giv­en name alone. “The liv­ing world is con­nect­ed by a vast king­dom of life we are only just begin­ning to dis­cov­er,” she says, her dis­tinc­tive accent and cadence rec­og­niz­able at once, in the trail­er above for the doc­u­men­tary Fun­gi: Web of Life. And she empha­sizes that fun­gi — known or unknown, preva­lent or at risk of van­ish­ing alto­geth­er — are so much more than mush­rooms.”

Nature doc­u­men­taries exist in part to cor­rect just such care­less con­fla­tions, and oth­er mis­con­cep­tions besides. But Fun­gi: Web of Life has larg­er ambi­tions, fol­low­ing biol­o­gist Mer­lin Shel­drake “as he embarks on a jour­ney through the ancient Tarkine rain­for­est of Tas­ma­nia,” writes Colos­sal’s Kate Moth­es. “Time­lapse cin­e­matog­ra­phy reveals up-close details of rarely seen fun­gal phe­nom­e­na, from the dis­per­sion of spores to vast sub­ter­ranean net­works known fond­ly as the ‘wood wide web.’ ” Shel­drake “vis­its sci­en­tists and design­ers at the fore­front of their fields, dis­cov­er­ing nev­er-before-seen species and learn­ing from myceli­um to cre­ate new, sus­tain­able prod­ucts and envi­ron­men­tal solu­tions.”

The young, fun­gi-ded­i­cat­ed Shel­drake is the kind of pro­tag­o­nist for whom doc­u­men­tar­i­ans hope. And the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Björk in a project like this isn’t as much of a fluke as some may assume, giv­en the pres­ence of a stand­out track called “Fun­gal City” on her most recent album, Fos­so­ra. Its visu­als, writes Ryan Wad­doups at Sur­face, “paint a hyper-vivid por­trait of Björk ful­ly immersed in her mush­room era,” which began when “she returned to her home­town Reyk­javik to record dur­ing lock­down” in the time of COVID. “To dis­tract her­self, she watched nature doc­u­men­taries like Netflix’s Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi, becom­ing enam­ored with its mag­i­cal time lapse footage of mush­rooms slow­ly over­tak­ing their sur­round­ings” — not that she’s the first musi­cian with avant-garde asso­ci­a­tions to devel­op such inter­ests.

Björk’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in Fun­gi: Web of Life may also bring to mind that of Ste­vie Won­der in the now-obscure 1979 doc­u­men­tary The Secret Life of Plants. But Won­der pro­vid­ed only music to that film, not nar­ra­tion, while Björk seems to have done the oppo­site. It may be that her songs, which tend to have a cer­tain psy­che­del­ic effect in them­selves, would have dis­tract­ed from the won­ders of the fun­gal realm on dis­play. If you seek admis­sion to that realm, Moth­es notes that “Fun­gi: Web of Life is cur­rent­ly show­ing in five the­aters across North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing IMAX Vic­to­ria at the Roy­al B.C. Muse­um, with numer­ous releas­es sched­uled across the U.S. and the U.K. next year.” You can find a screen­ing at the film’s web site — and why not sched­ule a din­ner of champignons à la provençale there­after?

Bonus: Below you can watch biol­o­gist Mer­lin Shel­drake eat mush­rooms sprout­ing from his book, Entan­gled Life. Enjoy.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Mush­room Time-Laps­es Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pio­neer­ing Time-Lapse Cin­e­matog­ra­phy Behind the Net­flix Doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Death-Cap Mush­rooms are Ter­ri­fy­ing and Unstop­pable: A Wild Ani­ma­tion

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Record­ed Song (1976)

The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Atlas of Mush­rooms: Edi­ble, Sus­pect and Poi­so­nous (1827)

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christ­mas Nativ­i­ty Sto­ry on an Ice­landic TV Spe­cial (1976)

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

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