Sometimes the old ways work best. That assumption, or at least the assumption that the most centuries-tested techniques can still produce interesting results, underpins many of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Launchpad videos.

Every year, right before Labor Day, 50,000 people travel to Black Rock City, Nevada to take part in Burning Man — an experimental community dedicated to radical self reliance, radical self-expression and art.

How did Pablo Picasso do it? Art historians have spent much time and many words answering that question, but in the video above, you can watch the painter in the act of creation — or, rather, you can watch a series of his paintings as they come into being, evolving from spare but evocative collections of marker strokes into complete images, aliv

Dylan Thomas’s drinking was legendary. Stories of the debauched and disheveled Welsh poet’s epic drinking binges have had a tendency to drown out serious discussion of his poetry.
It’s a legend that Thomas helped promote, as this pencil sketch he made of himself attests.

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most admired and influential architects of the 20th century. He was a flamboyant, unabashedly arrogant man who viewed himself from an early age as a genius. Others tended to agree. In 1991, The American Institute of Architects named Wright the greatest American architect of all time.

Sylvia Plath’s poetic talent should go unquestioned, but as Plath fans will know, she first intended to become a visual artist, and some of her earliest work—illustrated childhood letters like the adorable dog below—remained hidden away in the family attic until 1996.

Four years ago, I experienced musical polymath, rock producer, “drifting clarifier,” and high-tech painter Brian Eno‘s generative-art installation 77 Million Paintings in Long Beach. I also saw him give an entertaining talk there on his observations of and ideas about sound, images, and culture.

What would a modern Marie Antoinette look like? Her hair would hang down; her once crooked teeth would be straightened; she’d continue to wear designer clothes; and, yes, she’d sadly have some surgical enhancements too. A far cry from how the more stately Queen Elizabeth I might look today.

Street artists: you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Or, to put it less bluntly, you either find ‘em innovative public iconographers or find ‘em puerile public nuisances.

In 1987, Compuserve begatteth Image Format 87A.
Image Format 87A begatteth Graphics Interchange Format or GIF (rhymes with a certain brand of peanut butter, the video history above helpfully points out).