The First Known Photograph of People Having a Beer (1843)

in History, Photography | July 14th, 2023

It should go with­out say­ing that one should drink respon­si­bly, for rea­sons per­tain­ing to life and limb as well as rep­u­ta­tion. The ubiq­ui­ty of still and video cam­eras means poten­tial­ly embar­rass­ing moments can end up on mil­lions of screens in an instant, copied, down­loaded, and saved for pos­ter­i­ty. Not so dur­ing the infan­cy of pho­tog­ra­phy, when it was a painstak­ing process with min­utes-long expo­sure times and arcane chem­i­cal devel­op­ment meth­ods. Pho­tograph­ing peo­ple gen­er­al­ly meant keep­ing them as still as pos­si­ble for sev­er­al min­utes, a require­ment that ren­dered can­did shots next to impos­si­ble.

We know the results of these ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic por­trai­ture from many a famous Daguerreo­type, named for its French inven­tor, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. At the same time, dur­ing the 1830s and 40s, anoth­er process gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in Eng­land, called the Calo­type—or “Tal­bo­type,” for its inven­tor William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot. “Upon hear­ing of the advent of the Daguerreo­type in 1839,” writes Linz Welch at the Unit­ed Pho­to­graph­ic Artists Gallery site, Tal­bot “felt moved to action to ful­ly refine the process that he had begun work on. He was able to short­en his expo­sure times great­ly and start­ed using a sim­i­lar form of cam­era for expo­sure on to his pre­pared paper neg­a­tives.”

This last fea­ture made the Calo­type more ver­sa­tile and mechan­i­cal­ly repro­ducible. And the short­ened expo­sure times seemed to enable some greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in the kinds of pho­tographs one could take. In the 1843 pho­to above, we have what appears to be an entire­ly unplanned group­ing of rev­el­ers, caught in a moment of cheer at the pub. Cre­at­ed by Scot­tish painter-pho­tog­ra­phers Robert Adam­son and David Octavius Hill—who grins, half-stand­ing, on the right—the image looks like almost no oth­er por­trait from the time. Rather than sit­ting rigid­ly, the fig­ures slouch casu­al­ly; rather than look­ing grim and mourn­ful, they smile and smirk, appar­ent­ly shar­ing a joke. The pho­to­graph is believed to be the first image of alco­holic con­sump­tion, and it does its sub­ject jus­tice.

Though Tal­bot patent­ed his Calo­type process in Eng­land in 1841, the restric­tions did not apply in Scot­land. “In fact,” the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art writes, “Tal­bot encour­aged its use there.” He main­tained a cor­re­spon­dence with inter­est­ed sci­en­tists, includ­ing Adamson’s old­er broth­er John, a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry. But the Calo­type was more of an artists’ medi­um. Where Daguerreo­types pro­duced, Welch writes, “a star­tling resem­blance of real­i­ty,” with clean lines and even tones, the Calo­type, with its salt print, “tend­ed to have high con­trast between lights and darks…. Addi­tion­al­ly, because of the paper fibers, the image would present with a grain that would dif­fuse the details.” We see this espe­cial­ly in the cap­tur­ing of Octavius Hill, who appears both life­like in motion and ren­dered artis­ti­cal­ly with char­coal or brush.

The oth­er two figures—James Bal­lan­tine, writer, stained-glass artist, and son of an Edin­burgh brew­er, and Dr. George Bell, in the center—have the rak­ish air of char­ac­ters in a William Hog­a­rth scene. The Nation­al Gal­leries of Scot­land attrib­ut­es the nat­u­ral­ness of these pos­es to “Hill’s socia­bil­i­ty, humour and his capac­i­ty to gauge the sit­ters’ char­ac­ters.” Sure­ly the booze did its part in loos­en­ing every­one up. The three men are said to be drink­ing Edin­burgh Ale, “accord­ing to a con­tem­po­rary account… ‘a potent flu­id, which almost glued the lips of the drinker togeth­er.’ ” Such a side effect would, at least, make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to over-imbibe.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

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

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

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

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

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

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

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The Oldest Known Footage of London (1890–1920) Features the City’s Great Landmarks

in History, Television | July 14th, 2023

The City of Lon­don has explod­ed like Blade Run­ner in the last cou­ple of decades with glass and con­crete and shrines to glob­al cap­i­tal­ism like St. Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the Shard (aka the Shard). But has the view from the ground stayed the same? Accord­ing to this charm­ing then vs. now video assem­bled by a com­pa­ny called Yester­Vid, yes.

Trawl­ing through the old­est sur­viv­ing pub­lic domain footage from the ear­ly days of film (1890 — 1920), the video­g­ra­phers have placed old and mod­ern-day shots side by side, match­ing as close as they can cam­era place­ment and lens.

Miss­ing from today: the soot, the filth in the gut­ter, and the free-for-all in the streets as horse-drawn car­riages and ear­ly busses bat­tled it out with pedes­tri­ans. Streets are safer now, with rail­ings to pro­tect cit­i­zens, though the signs of increased secu­ri­ty are also appar­ent, and CCTV cam­eras are most prob­a­bly film­ing the director…somewhere!

St. Paul’s still needs room to breathe, and while the Empire The­atre may not show any more Lumiere Cin­e­matogra­phies, it’s still a cin­e­ma show­ing IMAX films. It didn’t suf­fer the fate of many cin­e­mas out­side of Lon­don after the ‘60s: being turned into bin­go halls or just torn down.

Also: the sea of red pop­pies seen at 4:28 dur­ing the shot of the Tow­er of London’s moat is an instal­la­tion work by artist Paul Cum­mins. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was installed between July and Novem­ber of 2014 and, accord­ing to Wikipedia, it con­sist­ed of 888,246 ceram­ic red pop­pies, each intend­ed to rep­re­sent one British or Colo­nial ser­vice­man killed in the Great War.

Final point: the old­est pub in Lon­don, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, still stands, and dur­ing the swel­ter­ing sum­mers pro­vides a cool respite, as most of its drink­ing rooms are under­ground. Cheers!

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:

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Fly Through 17th-Cen­tu­ry London’s Grit­ty Streets with Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tions

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

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George Bernard Shaw’s Famous Writing Hut, Which Could Be Rotated 360 Degrees to Catch the Sun All Day

in Architecture, History, Theatre, Writing | July 13th, 2023

Sev­en decades after his death, George Bernard Shaw is remem­bered for his prodi­gious body of work as a play­wright, but also — and at least as much — for his per­son­al eccen­tric­i­ties: the then-unfash­ion­able tee­to­tal­ing veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, the rejec­tion of vac­cines and even the germ the­o­ry of dis­ease, the all-wool wardrobe. Thus, even those casu­al­ly famil­iar with Shaw’s life and work may not be ter­ri­bly sur­prised to learn that he not only had an out­build­ing in which to do his work, but an out­build­ing that could be rotat­ed 360 degrees. “Shaw’s writ­ing refuge was a six-square-meter wood­en sum­mer­house, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for his wife Char­lotte,” writes Idler’s Alex John­son. “Built on a revolv­ing base that used cas­tors on a cir­cu­lar track,” it was “essen­tial­ly a shed on a lazy Susan.”

The hut became a part of Shaw’s for­mi­da­ble pub­lic image in a peri­od of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry “when there was a grow­ing appre­ci­a­tion of idyl­lic rur­al set­tings — a knock-on effect of which was that peo­ple had gar­den build­ings installed. Shaw made the most of this move­ment, pro­mot­ing him­self as a reclu­sive thinker toil­ing in his rus­tic shel­ter, away from the intru­sions of press and peo­ple alike, while at the same time invit­ing in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines and pos­ing for pho­tos.”

In 1929, “Shaw stood in front of his hut for a pho­to for Mod­ern Mechan­ics & Inven­tions mag­a­zine to pro­mote the idea of sun­light as a heal­ing agent.” Hence the impor­tance of rotat­ing to catch its rays all day long through win­dows made of Vita­glass, “a recent inven­tion that allowed UV rays to come through, let­ting, the mak­ers said, ‘health into the build­ing.’ ”

How­ev­er odd some of Shaw’s views and prac­tices, one can’t help but imag­ine that at least some of them con­tributed to his longevi­ty. The 1946 British Pathé news­reel above pays him a vis­it just a few years before his death at the age of 94, find­ing him still writ­ing (he still had the play Buoy­ant Bil­lions ahead of him, as well as sev­er­al oth­er mis­cel­la­neous works), and what’s more, doing so in his hut: “Like G. B. S. him­self,” says the nar­ra­tor, “it pre­tends to be strict­ly prac­ti­cal, with no non­sense about it.” Yet Shaw seems to have had a sense of humor about his the­o­ret­i­cal­ly hum­ble work­space, nam­ing it after the Eng­lish cap­i­tal so that unwant­ed vis­i­tors to his home in the vil­lage of Ayot St Lawrence could be told, not untruth­ful­ly, that he was in Lon­don. But one nat­u­ral­ly won­ders: when he rang up the main house with his in-hut tele­phone (anoth­er of its high­ly advanced fea­tures), did his house­keep­er say it was Lon­don call­ing?

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Roald Dahl Gives a Tour of the Small Back­yard Hut Where He Wrote All of His Beloved Children’s Books

The Cork-Lined Bed­room & Writ­ing Room of Mar­cel Proust, the Orig­i­nal Mas­ter of Social Dis­tanc­ing

Clas­sic Mon­ty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilar­i­ous Bat­tle of Wits

Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

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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Download Instructions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Internet Archive

in Internet Archive | July 13th, 2023

We’ve all come across a LEGO set from child­hood and felt the temp­ta­tion to try build­ing it one more time — mak­ing the gen­er­ous assump­tion, of course, that all the pieces are in the box, to say noth­ing of the instruc­tions. If you’re miss­ing a few bricks, you can always turn to the robust sec­ondary mar­ket in LEGO com­po­nents. If you’re miss­ing the man­u­al, there’s now one place you should look first: the LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive. There you’ll find dig­i­tized mate­ri­als for more than 6,800 dif­fer­ent sets, includ­ing such pop­u­lar releas­es as the LEGO Chevro­let Camaro Z28, the LEGO Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, and the LEGO cov­er pho­to of Meet the Bea­t­les.

Since they were first brought to mar­ket in the late nine­teen-fifties, LEGO’s sig­na­ture build­ing bricks have been pri­mar­i­ly con­sid­ered chil­dren’s toys. And of course, most of us got to know LEGO in child­hood; I myself have fond mem­o­ries of work­ing my way up to the Ice Plan­et 2002 series, with its still much-ref­er­enced trans­par­ent orange chain­saws.

But even after com­ing of age, the seri­ous enthu­si­ast need not leave LEGO behind: the com­pa­ny has put out such adult-ori­ent­ed mod­els as the Colos­se­um, Andy Warhol’s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, to name just a few whose instruc­tions are down­load­able from the Inter­net Archive.

The Metafil­ter dis­cus­sion of the Inter­net Archive’s LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion reveals not only that some are excit­ed indeed about the exis­tence of this resource, but also that oth­ers con­sid­er build­ing from instruc­tions to be a mis­use of the medi­um. It may be true that fol­low­ing spe­cif­ic doc­u­ment­ed steps for hours on end may encour­age a cer­tain slack­en­ing of the imag­i­na­tion. But then, it may also be true that phys­i­cal­ly work­ing one’s way through a com­plex assem­bly process can build dex­ter­i­ty and gen­er­ate ideas for lat­er freeform con­struc­tions. How­ev­er we approach LEGO, and what­ev­er age at which we approach it, we need only keep in mind the Dan­ish imper­a­tive that gave the com­pa­ny its name: leg godt — play well. Enter the col­lec­tion of instruc­tions here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hokusai’s Icon­ic Print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa Recre­at­ed with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

The Vin­cent van Gogh Star­ry Night LEGO Set Is Now Avail­able: It’s Cre­at­ed in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with MoMA

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest LEGO Set Ever

Ai Wei­wei Recre­ates Monet’s Water Lilies Trip­tych Using 650,000 Lego Bricks

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

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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How Olive Oil Was Made in Ancient Rome in the Middle Ages (Plus in Modern Times)

in Food & Drink, History, Travel | July 12th, 2023

If you think cannabis pos­sess­es a broad range of appli­ca­tions, olive oil is going to blow your mind!

Humans have been hip to this mir­a­cle elixir since approx­i­mate­ly 2500 BCE, when Mediter­ranean dwellers used it as lamp fuel and to anoint roy­al­ty, war­riors, and oth­er VIPs. (Not for noth­ing does “mes­si­ah” trans­late to “the anoint­ed one”…)

Its culi­nary appli­ca­tions entered the mix between the 5th and 4th cen­turies BCE.

Even amur­ca, the bit­ter tast­ing, foul smelling liq­uid byprod­uct of the oil press­ing process had numer­ous things to rec­om­mend it, as least as far as the ancient Romans were con­cerned. They used it as a fer­til­iz­er, a pes­ti­cide, a floor plas­ter, a sealant for jars, a fire accel­er­ant, moth repel­lent, axel grease, a sur­face var­nish, a nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ment for live­stock, and a rem­e­dy for skin dis­eases and infec­tions.

It’s also a seri­ous pol­lu­tant, so good on them for divert­ing it from the land­fill.

Meth­ods for extract­ing this prac­ti­cal, nutri­tion­al pow­er­house from the olive fruit have evolved over time.

Bronze Age fres­coes and ancient papyri doc­u­ment the ear­li­est approach.

The Romans and Greeks took things up a notch with mechan­i­cal press­es, such as the repli­ca at the Bib­li­cal His­to­ry Cen­ter, above.

In an episode of his Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Unchart­ed series, chef Gor­don Ram­say trav­eled to Moroc­co to take a turn at one of the man­u­al­ly-turned stone grind­ing wheels that were the Mid­dle Ages’ con­tri­bu­tion to the his­to­ry of olive oil, dis­cov­er­ing in the process that such “bloody hard work” is bet­ter accom­plished by an ass.

His labors were reward­ed with a taste of olive oil straight from the press - oh my lord, that is beau­ti­ful! I’ve heard of extra vir­gin but this is gonna be extra-extra vir­gin!

Insid­er Food tracks olive oil to the 21st cen­tu­ry, where pro­duc­tion is under­way at a mill in Monop­o­li in the south­ern Ital­ian region of Puglia, an area where olive trees out­num­ber humans, 15 to 1.

Puglia’s 1,000-plus mills sup­ply 40% of the country’s olive oil pro­duc­tion, and 12% world­wide.

Con­tem­po­rary olive oil mak­ers obtain a tra­di­tion­al qual­i­ty prod­uct by split­ting the dif­fer­ence between the ancient and the mod­ern, with con­vey­or belts fer­ry­ing the fruit to a vat where machine-dri­ven gran­ite wheels crush them to a pulp.

It’s less pic­turesque, but also more effi­cient and hygien­ic than pre-Indus­tri­al meth­ods, thanks, in part, to rub­ber gloves and stain­less steel.

Grad­ing oil accord­ing to its puri­ty is also a mod­ern inno­va­tion, pro­vid­ing con­sumers a han­dle qual­i­ty, taste and health attrib­ut­es.

Learn more about the his­to­ry of olive oil here, then get cookin’!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Vis­it Monte Tes­tac­cio, the Ancient Roman Hill Made of 50 Mil­lion Crushed Olive Oil Jugs

3,000-Year-Old Olive Tree on the Greek Island of Crete Still Pro­duces Olives Today

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

– 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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The Remarkable Story of a Black Holocaust Survivor, Told in a Short Documentary

in Film, History | July 12th, 2023

Among mil­lions and mil­lions impris­oned in the Holo­caust, one man in par­tic­u­lar stands out — and stood out even to his Nazi cap­tors. “At the Mau­thausen garage yard, a black point stood about amidst the dust-col­ored mul­ti­tude,” writes nov­el­ist Joaquim Amat-Piniel­la. “It’s a black boy from Barcelona, born in Span­ish Africa. The offi­cer who had spot­ted him from the bal­cony ordered that he be brought up to him. His robust and mus­cu­lar body sur­prised the Nazis,” as did his cul­ti­va­tion: that he respond­ed to their ques­tions in Ger­man may well have kept him from being sent imme­di­ate­ly to the gas cham­ber. His name was Car­los José Grey Molay, also known as Car­los Greykey, and his remark­able life sto­ry is the sub­ject of 5124.GREYKEY, Enric Ribes’ short doc­u­men­tary film above.

Nar­rat­ed by Greykey’s daugh­ter Muriel Grey Molay, “5124.GREYKEY uses retro tech­niques, recre­at­ed home movies and personal/archival pho­tog­ra­phy to visu­alise a daughter’s mem­o­ries of an enig­mat­ic father.” So writes Rob Mun­day at Short of the Week, going on to describe the film as “con­sist­ing of painstak­ing­ly recre­at­ed home movies (reshot on Super 8 and 16mm — as Muriel couldn’t retrieve them), pho­tos (both from Muriel’s archive and his­toric archives) and stop-motion (cre­at­ed by S/W alums I+G Stop Motion).”

Through these mate­ri­als, “much like how the daugh­ter builds a sol­id under­stand­ing of her Dad’s past, bit-by-bit, a pic­ture of Jose only starts to form after we are giv­en the pieces of the puz­zle to put togeth­er our­selves.”

The Barcelona-born son of par­ents from mod­ern-day Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea, Greykey was study­ing med­i­cine at uni­ver­si­ty when the Span­ish Civ­il War broke out. Con­script­ed, he fought against the rebels, and lat­er moved on to France, where he fought against the Ger­mans. It was the Nazi vic­to­ry there that put him in the Mau­thausen con­cen­tra­tion camp along with Amat-Piniel­la. Like every­one else interned there, he received a num­ber — the tit­u­lar 5124 — but his refine­ment and for­mi­da­ble lan­guage skills (in addi­tion to his native Span­ish, he com­mand­ed not just Ger­man, but also French, Eng­lish, and Catalán) secured him the spe­cial posi­tion of serv­ing at the table of the cam­p’s com­man­der. What­ev­er priv­i­leges attend­ed this posi­tion, Greykey’s wartime expe­ri­ence haunt­ed him for the rest of his life: a life swept up in enough cur­rents of his­to­ry to be more than over­due for a fea­ture film-treat­ment.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

How Alice Herz-Som­mer, the Old­est Holo­caust Sur­vivor, Sur­vived the Hor­rif­ic Ordeal with Music

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

100-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Helen Fagin Reads Her Let­ter About How Books Save Lives

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

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

in Film, History | July 11th, 2023

Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1977 film The Duel­lists stars Har­vey Kei­t­el and Kei­th Car­ra­dine as French­men in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Both of their char­ac­ters are mil­i­tary offi­cers, Keit­el’s a Bona­partist and Car­radine’s an anti-Bona­partist, and their rela­tion­ship plays out over a duel-punc­tu­at­ed six­teen-year peri­od dur­ing and just after the Napoleon­ic Wars. The Duel­lists is required view­ing for any stu­dent of Scott-as-auteur, not just due to its being his debut fea­ture, but also to its pre­sump­tive con­nec­tions to his lat­est work. Even work­ing on a low bud­get 45 years ago, Scott and his col­lab­o­ra­tors man­aged to per­form an acclaimed re-cre­ation of Napoleon’s France. What has he accom­plished on the far grander can­vas of Napoleon, which comes out on Novem­ber 22nd?

Napoleon, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, is also the title of the great­est movie Stan­ley Kubrick nev­er made. Judg­ing by its new­ly released trail­er, Rid­ley Scot­t’s film isn’t exact­ly a styl­is­tic homage to Kubrick, though one doubts that Kubrick­’s work was all too far from Scot­t’s mind dur­ing the project — as indeed it was­n’t in the mak­ing of The Duel­lists, which was heav­i­ly influ­enced by Bar­ry Lyn­don.

But as a his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, Napoleon seems to have more obvi­ous­ly in com­mon with Scot­t’s own swords-and-san­dals block­buster Glad­i­a­tor, which includ­ed a mem­o­rable per­for­mance by Joaquin Phoenix as Mar­cus Aure­lius’ pow­er-mad son Com­modus, who kills his father in order to make him­self emper­or.

Phoenix plays anoth­er impe­r­i­al role in Napoleon: that of the tit­u­lar mil­i­tary com­man­der who rose to rule the French Empire for more than a decade. Bring­ing Napoleon’s sto­ry to the screen afford­ed Scott the chance to stage no few­er than six bat­tle sequences — includ­ing, as Smithsonian.com’s Tere­sa Nowakows­ki notes, “the Bat­tle of Auster­litz, a mil­i­tary engage­ment that went down in his­to­ry as one of Napoleon’s great­est suc­cess­es. The trail­er depicts the piv­otal moment when Napoleon’s forces fired artillery into the ice on which ene­my troops were retreat­ing,” an episode well-suit­ed to Scot­t’s instinct for spec­ta­cle. How­ev­er much his par­tic­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ties may dif­fer from Kubrick­’s, it’s easy to under­stand why both direc­tors would be drawn to the sub­ject of Napoleon­ic ambi­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Napoleon’s Eng­lish Lessons: How the Mil­i­tary Leader Stud­ied Eng­lish to Escape the Bore­dom of Life in Exile

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

The Col­or That May Have Killed Napoleon: Scheele’s Green

Philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell Talks About the Time When His Grand­fa­ther Met Napoleon

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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Demystifying the Activist Graffiti Art of Keith Haring: A Video Essay

in Art, History | July 11th, 2023

The art of Kei­th Har­ing emerged in the high­ly spe­cif­ic place and time of ear­ly-eight­ies New York City. Four decades lat­er, it’s vis­i­ble all around the world, yet has­n’t lost its asso­ci­a­tions with its ori­gins. Just the oth­er day, I was walk­ing down a street in my neigh­bor­hood in Seoul and noticed that a bou­tique had put a T‑shirt embla­zoned with one of Har­ing’s artis­tic dec­la­ra­tions that “CRACK IS WACK!!” Drug abuse use was just one of the issues to which he attached his work: oth­ers includ­ed apartheid, nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment, and above all AIDS aware­ness. How, in con­trast to so much activist art, has the Har­ing oeu­vre achieved its endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty?

Gal­lerist and Youtu­ber James Payne address­es this ques­tion in his new Great Art Explained video on Har­ing’s life and work. As soon as pos­si­ble after a tele­vi­sion-sat­u­rat­ed sub­ur­ban baby-boomer upbring­ing that did its part to teach him to “sell dif­fi­cult pol­i­tics in the same way Madi­son Avenue sold vac­u­um clean­ers,” Har­ing moved to New York.

With­in its cul­tur­al free-for-all he devel­oped a sig­na­ture style by mak­ing chalk draw­ings on unused ad spaces: “he called the New York sub­way his ‘lab­o­ra­to­ry,’ exper­i­ment­ing with ideas and form,” and only occa­sion­al­ly get­ting into trou­ble for it. New York­ers “looked for­ward to see­ing what he drew next and where, and before long main­stream media noticed him too and almost overnight he became a star.”

As Har­ing’s fame grew, it became clear that “he tru­ly believed in the pow­er of art to change the world. This belief, com­bined with the imme­di­a­cy of his car­toon style, came togeth­er spec­tac­u­lar­ly in the nine­teen-eight­ies.” Indeed, as Kurt Ander­sen writes in the New York­er, Har­ing at his “man­ic, mon­eyed, fun, par­ty-dri­ven, celebri­ty-obsessed, shame­less” prime was a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of that decade. But even after his AIDS-relat­ed death in 1990, the sim­ple exu­ber­ance of his art style lived on, not least in the form of posters and oth­er prod­ucts. “It’s def­i­nite­ly art for the age of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion,” Har­ing once said of his own work, and its sheer com­mon­ness — as well as its out­ward cheer­ful­ness — make it easy to over­look the sources of its pow­er. As has been said of Walt Dis­ney, for whom he had dreamed of work­ing since child­hood, Har­ing did­n’t just give peo­ple what they want­ed; he want­ed what they want­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Biog­ra­phy of Kei­th Har­ing Told with Com­ic Book Illus­tra­tions & Music

Kei­th Haring’s Eclec­tic Jour­nal Entries Go Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

Behold the World’s First Mod­ern Art Amuse­ment Park, Fea­tur­ing Attrac­tions by Sal­vador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kei­th Har­ing, Roy Licht­en­stein & More (1987)

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Explore the Largest Online Archive Exploring the Genius of Leonard da Vinci

in Art, Computer Science, Design, Science, Technology | July 10th, 2023

We dare not spec­u­late as to what Leonar­do DaVin­ci would make of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

We are, how­ev­er, fair­ly con­fi­dent that he would love the Inter­net.

The Renais­sance-era genius applied his sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of the human body and the nat­ur­al world to oth­er types of sys­tems, includ­ing plans for civ­il engi­neer­ing projects, mil­i­tary pro­jec­tiles, and fly­ing machines.

Google Arts & Culture’s new ini­tia­tive Inside a Genius Mind offers an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence of the codices in which Da Vin­ci made his sketch­es, dia­grams, and notes.

It’s also a cura­to­r­i­al col­lab­o­ra­tion between a human — Oxford art his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Kemp  — and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Pro­fes­sor Kemp, author of Liv­ing with Leonar­do: Fifty Years of San­i­ty and Insan­i­ty in the Art World and Beyond, brings a life­time of rig­or­ous study and pas­sion for the sub­ject.

His non-human coun­ter­part used machine learn­ing to delve into the note­books’ con­tents, inves­ti­gat­ing some 1040 pages from 6 vol­umes and “draw­ing the­mat­ic con­nec­tions across time and sub­ject mat­ter to reflect Leonardo’s spir­it of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary imag­i­na­tion, inno­va­tion and the pro­found uni­ty at the heart of his appar­ent­ly diverse pur­suits.”

Upon launch­ing the exper­i­ment, you bush­whack your way through the indi­vid­ual codices by click­ing on the sketch­es float­ing toward you like ele­ments in a clas­sic space-themed video game, or choose to enjoy one of five curat­ed sto­ries.


We went with Earth as Body, which gath­ers sev­en pages from the UK’s Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust’s Codex Wind­sor, and one from the Codex Leices­ter, which inspired an ani­mat­ed mod­el that should sure­ly please its cur­rent own­er, Bill Gates.

 

Using a dis­creet and some­what fid­dly nav­i­ga­tion bar on the left side of the screen, we toured Leonardo’s ren­der­ings of the flayed mus­cles of the upper spine, the ves­sels and nerves of the neck and liv­er, the Arno val­ley with the route of a pro­posed canal that would run from Flo­rence to Pisa, a view of the Alps from Milan, the fall of light on a face, stud­ies of optics and men in action, and obser­va­tions of the moon and earth­shine.

How are these things relat­ed?

“Leonar­do believed that the human body rep­re­sent­ed the whole nat­ur­al world in minia­ture” and the selec­tions do offer food for thought that Leonardo’s pas­sion for the under­ly­ing laws of nature is the com­mon thread run­ning through his research and art.

Each image is accom­pa­nied a but­ton invit­ing you to “explore” the work fur­ther. Click it for infor­ma­tion about dimen­sions, prove­nance, and media, as well as some tan­ta­liz­ing bio­graph­i­cal tid­bits, such as this, adapt­ed from the cat­a­logue for the 2019 exhib­it Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A Life in Draw­ing:

Leonar­do had first stud­ied anato­my in the late 1480s. By the end of his life he claimed to have per­formed 30 human dis­sec­tions, intend­ing to pub­lish an illus­trat­ed trea­tise on the sub­ject, but this was nev­er com­plet­ed, and Leonardo’s work thus had no dis­cernible impact on the dis­ci­pline. His only doc­u­ment­ed dis­sec­tion was car­ried out in the win­ter of 1507–8, when he per­formed an autop­sy on an old man whose death he had wit­nessed in a hos­pi­tal in Flo­rence. The stud­ies on this page from Leonardo’s note­book are based on that dis­sec­tion: on the ver­so Leonar­do depicts the ves­sels of the liv­er; and in notes else­where in the note­book he gives the first known clin­i­cal descrip­tion of cir­rho­sis of the liv­er.

Per­haps you’d like to cir­cum­vent the machine learn­ing and use your own genius mind to make  con­nec­tions a la Da Vin­ci?

Try mess­ing around with the AI tags. See what you can cob­ble togeth­er to forge a cohe­sive alliance between such ele­ments as wing, horse, map, musi­cal instru­ments, and spi­ral.

Or cleanse your palate by putting a mash-up of two codex sketch­es on a dig­i­tal sticky with the help of Google AI, mind­ful that the mas­ter, who lived to the ripe old age of 67, was prob­a­bly a bit more inten­tion­al with his time…

Begin your explo­rations of Google Arts & Culture’s Inside a Genius Mind here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490)

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

– 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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Can Modern-Day Italians Understand Latin? A Youtuber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome

in Language | July 10th, 2023

Of all the Romance lan­guages, none is more Roman­tic than Ital­ian, at least in the sense that it has changed the least in its long descent from Latin to its cur­rent form. Whether the Ital­ian spo­ken in recent cen­turies has a par­tic­u­lar­ly close resem­blance to Latin is anoth­er ques­tion, and one Amer­i­can Youtu­ber Luke Ranieri inves­ti­gates on the streets of Rome itself in the video above. In order to find out whether mod­ern-day Ital­ians can under­stand ancient Latin, he approach­es unsus­pect­ing Romans and asks them for direc­tions in that lan­guage, speak­ing it flu­ent­ly and just as their ances­tors would have back in the first cen­tu­ry.

So, can Romans under­stand Latin? “Yes,” Ranieri con­cludes, “but they don’t always enjoy it.” Most of the indi­vid­u­als he address­es claim that they can’t under­stand him at first. But as the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues — in Latin on one side, Ital­ian on the oth­er — it becomes clear that they can indeed fig­ure out what he wants to know.

“Ital­ians are almost uni­ver­sal­ly exposed only to the tra­di­tion­al Ital­ian pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Latin (called the pro­nun­cia sco­las­ti­ca), oth­er­wise known as the Eccle­si­as­ti­cal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion,” Ranieri notes in a com­ment. But “in this video, I am using the Restored Clas­si­cal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Latin as it was pro­nounced in Rome two thou­sand years ago.”

He may have had bet­ter luck at the Vat­i­can and the Colos­se­um, but the Ital­ians he meets in Rome do rise to this chal­lenge, more or less, though few do it with­out hem­ming, haw­ing, and of course, attempt­ing to use Eng­lish. For the lan­guage of Eng­land has, one could argue, risen to play the same role in wide swaths of our world that Latin once played across the Roman Empire. This sit­u­a­tion has its advan­tages, but in the heart of many a lan­guage-lover it also inspires some regrets. Though full of Lati­nate vocab­u­lary, Eng­lish arguably falls short of the beau­ty of the gen­uine Romance lan­guages. And even the most obsti­nate Anglo­phone has to admit that, com­pared to Latin, Eng­lish lacks some­thing: a cer­tain grav­i­tas, let us say.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

What Ancient Latin Sound­ed Like, And How We Know It

Why Learn Latin?: 5 Videos Make a Com­pelling Case That the “Dead Lan­guage” Is an “Eter­nal Lan­guage”

Why French Sounds So Unlike Span­ish, Ital­ian & Oth­er Romance Lan­guages, Even Though They All Evolved from Latin

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became the Stan­dard For Type­set­ters Every­where

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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Hear the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ Sung in the Indigenous Mi’kmaq Language

in Language, Music | July 6th, 2023

To raise aware­ness of her native lan­guage, 16-year-old Emma Stevens sang a ver­sion of The Bea­t­les’ 1968 clas­sic “Black­bird” in the Mi’k­maq lan­guage, an East­ern Algo­nquian lan­guage spo­ken by near­ly 11,000 in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. A mem­ber of the Eska­soni First Nation, the Nova Sco­tia stu­dent sang lyrics that were painstak­ing­ly trans­lat­ed by Katani Julian, a teacher who works in lan­guage revi­tal­iza­tion. Julian told WBUR. “My lan­guage is very dif­fer­ent from oth­er ones.” “There’s a lot of syl­la­bles in ours. And there’s a lot of long words that trans­late into some­thing real­ly easy in Eng­lish.”

You can find the lyrics below and the song above.

Pu’tliskiej wap­in­in­toq
Kina’masi telayja’timk
tel pitawsin
eskimatimu’sipnek nike’ mnja’sin

Pu’tliskiej wap­in­in­toq
Ewlapin nike’ nmiteke
tel pkitawsin
eskimatimu’sipnek nike’ seya’sin

Pu’tliskiej…layja’si
ta’n wasatek poqnitpa’qiktuk

Pu’tliskiej…layja’si
ta’n wasatek poqnitpa’qiktuk

Pu’tliskiej wap­in­in­toq
Kina’masi telayja’timk
tel pitawsin

eskimatimu’sipnek nike’ mnja’sin
eskimatimu’sipnek nike’ mnja’sin
eskimatimu’sipnek nike’ mnja’sin

——————————————————–

Boo-dull-ees-kee-edge wob­bin-in-toq
Kee-na-ma-see dell-I-jaw-dimk
dell-bit-ow-sin
ess-gum-mud-dum-oo-sup-neg nike’ mn-jaw-sin

Boo-dull-ees-kee-edge wob­bin-in-toq
ew-la-bin nike’ num-mid-deh-geh
dell-bit-ow-sin
ess-gum-mud-dum-oo-sup-neg say-ya-sin

Boo-dull-ees-kee-edge, lie-jaw-see
don was­sa-deg poq-nit-ba’q‑ik-tuk

Boo-dull-ees-kee-edge, lie-jaw-see
don was­sa-deg poq-nit-ba’q‑ik-tuk

Boo-dull-ees-kee-edge wob­bin-in-toq
Kee-na-ma-see dell-I-jaw-dimk
dell-bit-ow-sin

ess-gum-mud-dum-oo-sup-neg nike’ mn-jaw-sin
ess-gum-mud-dum-oo-sup-neg nike’ mn-jaw-sin
ess-gum-mud-dum-oo-sup-neg nike’ mn-jaw-sin

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 

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

Paul McCart­ney Explains How Bach Influ­enced “Black­bird”

How The Bea­t­les Reviewed Songs Top­ping the Charts Dur­ing the 1960s: Hear Their Takes on the Beach Boys, Ray Charles, the Byrds, Joan Baez & More

Hear the Brazil­ian Met­al Band Singing in–and Try­ing to Save–Their Native Lan­guage of Tupi-Guarani

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