The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Art, Books, Literature | ≅ 2 Comments
In his 1955 classic, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov described the facial features of his scandalous protagonist, Humbert Humbert, in small bits. When taken together, here’s what you get: Gloomy good looks… Clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice… broad shoulders … I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark [...]
≡ Category: Art, Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Last night, Philip Glass celebrated his 75th birthday at Carnegie Hall, attending the US premiere of his Ninth Symphony. His long and illustrious career continues. But today we’re bringing you back to 1979, when Glass wrote a composition to accompany “Geometry of Circles,” a four-part series of animations that aired on the beloved children’s show Sesame [...]
Along the Costa Brava in northern Spain, in the little seaside vilage of Portlligat, sits the house that became Salvador DalÒs main residence in 1930. It started off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalà went to work on the structure, renovating it little by little over the next 40 years, creating a living, breathing, [...]
≡ Category: Animation, Art | ≅ 3 Comments
Fallingwater was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935. Construction began a year later and was eventually completed in 1939. Many consider Fallingwater one of Wright’s finest creations. Hence why Smithsonian Magazine counted it as one of the 28 Places to See Before You Die. Now, thanks to the mini movie above, you can watch [...]
≡ Category: Art, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
Editor’s note: The text below discusses the ending of the film. We recommend that you watch “The Monk and the Fish” before reading. In this charming and visually elegant film from 1994, the Dutch-born animator Michael Dudok de Wit tells the story of a single-minded monk and a very elusive fish. While the setting and [...]
≡ Category: Art, Life | ≅ Leave a Comment
Remember Jeff Harris? He’s the photographer who has documented every day of his life with a self-portrait since 1999. Now meet Madeline Schichtel, a young production assistant living in LA. She recorded her daily life in 2011 with a Canon Powershot, then edited each day down to a meaningful one-second shot, creating the video montage “This is [...]
≡ Category: Art | ≅ 3 Comments
Last week, The New York Times profiled Joseph Herscher, a 26-year-old kinetic artist who hails from New Zealand and now develops intentionally “absurd” and “useless” Rube Goldberg machines in his Brooklyn apartment. His latest contraption, called “The Page Turner,” just gets better as it rolls along. Perhaps the best part comes towards the end when [...]
≡ Category: Art, Books, e-books | ≅ 6 Comments
On January 19th, Apple apparently plans to roll into The Guggenheim in New York City and announce plans to disrupt the textbook market. Big news? Maybe. But let’s not lose sight of another Guggenheim digital initiative. In recent days, the museum has made 65 art catalogues available online, all free of charge. The catalogues offer an intellectual and visual introduction [...]
≡ Category: Art, Books, Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Music and comic book art are the two passions of Robert Crumb’s creative life. In this video from W.W. Norton, Crumb talks about his obsessive interest in the old-time blues, folk and country music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neurological,” he says. “Some quirky types of nervous systems are just attracted to [...]
≡ Category: Animation, Art, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
In his 1997 book of drawings and verse, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, Tim Burton imagines a bizarre menagerie of misfits with names like Toxic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cushion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes. “Inspired by such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” [...]
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