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 hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject’s displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case… But instead I am lanky, big-boned, wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows… A cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile… aging ape eyes… Humbert’s face might twitch with neuralgia.

In a rather brilliant move, Brian Joseph Davis has run these descriptions through law enforcement composite sketch software and brought Humbert Humbert almost to life. (See above.) And he has done the same for a cast of other literary characters on his Tumblr, called The Composites. Other characters getting the perp treatment include Emma Bovary (Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary), Edward Rochester (Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre), and Keith Talent (Martin Amis’ London Fields), among others. Find them all here. h/t Metafilter

Related Content:

Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita: Just Another Great Love Story?

Vladimir Nabokov Marvels Over Different “Lolita” Book Covers

Nabokov Reads Lolita, Names the Great Books of the 20th Century

Famous Literary Characters Visualized with Police Composite Sketch Software is a post from: Open Culture

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 Street. A strange detour for an influential composer? Not really. Not when you consider that Glass came out of a 1960s tradition that made modern music more playful and approachable.

And speaking of approachable, don’t miss Philip Glass getting interviewed by his friendly cousin Ira Glass. You know Ira as the host of This American Life. The interview took place in 1999, and NPR finally brought it back yesterday, at least for a limited time. You can listen here.

Related Content:

Ira Glass on the Art of Storytelling

A Minimal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occupy Lincoln Center: An Artful View

Philip Glass Composes for Sesame Street (1979) is a post from: Open Culture

Along the Costa Brava in northern Spain, in the little seaside vilage of Portlligat, sits the house that became Salvador Dalí’s main residence in 1930. It started off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalí went to work on the structure, renovating it little by little over the next 40 years, creating a living, breathing, labyrinthine home that reflects the artist’s one-of-a-kind aesthetic. Writing about the house, the author Joseph Pla once said:

The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.

For many, it’s a long trip to Portlligat, and only eight people can visit the house at a time. So today we’re featuring a video tour of Dalí’s Spanish home. The interior shots begin around the 1:30 mark. If you love taxidermy, you won’t be wasting your time. H/T @MatthiasRascher

Related Content:

Destino: The Salvador Dalí – Disney Collaboration 57 Years in the Making

Salvador Dalí Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitchcock Recalls Working with Salvador Dalí on Spellbound

Un Chien Andalou: Revisiting Buñuel and Dalí’s Surrealist Film

A Tour Inside Salvador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Spanish Home is a post from: Open Culture

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 the building of Fallingwater take place right before your eyes, and then take a tour of the house. It’s all done in computer graphics and runs 4+ minutes. And, as one reader tells us, the “video is as real as it gets.” You can learn more about the film and the house at this web site.

For more Frank Lloyd Wright, you’ll also want to visit the R.W. Lindholm Service Station, a gas station designed by the famous architect in the 1930s. We’ll take you on a virtual tour right here.

Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations, Animated is a post from: Open Culture

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 symbols are Christian, the story progression is essentially Buddhist.

“The Monk and the Fish is not a story about the solution of a conflict,” Dudok de Wit explained to Sarah Molinoff in a 2009 interview for the Oxonian Review. “It’s more about the rise above the conflict, the rise above duality.” The monk doesn’t catch the fish; he and the fish are united. Dudok de Wit took his inspiration from the Ten Ox Herding Pictures, a series of Zen poems and images from 12th Century China, which illustrate the journey to enlightenment through the story of an oxherd’s struggle with a wayward bull. He said:

The genesis of the film was the ending. It was that sequence I wanted to create, where there is a serene union between the monk and the fish. The ending by itself would be flat, too abstract, to pull the audience in, so I clearly needed to have a build-up, to establish and feel empathy with the character. In contrast to the ending, in the beginning the monk is obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, but in the ending he arrives at a resolution. In a quiet way, not with a big act.

The London-based artist hand-painted each frame in ink and watercolor. Like the story, the visual style was inspired by the Far East. “The Japanese in particular, and also the Chinese and Koreans,” said Dudok de Wit, “have a way of using negative space, of not filling the picture, which is very typical of the Far East and very untypical of the West. We can be inspired by it, but it’s profoundly in their culture–in their genes maybe, and not so much in ours. It’s not just about the brush line, it’s also the space around the line that is inspiring.”

For the music, Dudok de Wit chose a classic from the Western canon, La Folia, a traditional theme that was often adapted or quoted by composers like Bach, Vivaldi, Corelli, Handel and Liszt. The filmmaker selected a few of his favorite variations–mainly from Corelli and Vivaldi–and asked composer Serge Besset to listen to them and create a new version to fit the film.

The Monk and the Fish took six months to create, and was nominated for Best Short Animated Film at both the Academy Awards and the British Academy Film Awards. You will find it listed in our collection of 450 Free Movies Online, along with another moving short by Dudock de Wit, Father and Daughter. They appear in the Animation Section.

Related Content:

Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree: The Animated Movie

The Monk and the Fish, the Classic Animation by Michael Dudok de Wit is a post from: Open Culture

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 What Madeline Did.” Wired writer Steve Silberman (aka @SteveSilberman) found the video unexpectedly charming, and we have to agree. “All My Friends,” by LCD Soundsystem, serves as the soundtrack for this endearing little film.

Madeline 365: A Year in the Life is a post from: Open Culture

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 Herscher’s pet hamster, Chester, makes a cameo appearance. Enjoy…

The Page Turner: A Fabulous Rube Goldberg Machine for Readers is a post from: Open Culture

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 to the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandinsky. Plus there are other texts (e.g., Masterpieces of Modern Art and Abstract Expressionists Imagists) that tackle meta movements and themes.

Now let me give you a few handy instructions to get you started. 1.) Select a text from the collection. 2.) Click the “Read Catalogue Online” button. 3.) Start reading the book in the pop-up browser, and use the controls at the very bottom of the pop-up browser to move through the book. 4.) If you have any problems accessing these texts, you can find alternate versions on Archive.org, which lets you download books in multiple formats – ePUB, PDF and the rest.

For more good reads, don’t miss our collection of Free eBooks.

Related Content:

MoMA Puts Pollock, Rothko & de Kooning on Your iPad

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paintings & Museums to You

Jackson Pollock: Lights, Camera, Paint! (1951)

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing: The TV Series

Free: The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online is a post from: Open Culture

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 that old music.”

As one of the pioneers of the underground comix movement in the late 1960s, Crumb’s work often related in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’” comic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Brother & the Holding Company, asked Crumb to design the cover of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.

Since then, Crumb has designed hundreds of album covers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, brings together all the covers and many related works. The book contains portraits of famous artists like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, along with works featuring obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also covers and posters made for Crumb’s own band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders.

Crumb is a banjo and mandolin player. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East River String Band. This video was directed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appearances by himself and his partner Eden Brower. The video features the following songs:

1. “Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
2. “Some of these Days” by Cab Calloway (1930)
3. “Lindberg Hop” by the Memphis Jug Band (1928)
4. “Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Family (1930)
5. “Chasin’ Rainbows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1976)
6. “Singing in the Bathtub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1978)
7. “So Sorry Dear” by Eden & John’s East River String Band, featuring R. Crumb

Record Cover Art by Underground Cartoonist Robert Crumb is a post from: Open Culture

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,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Burton’s slim volume exquisitely conveys the pain of an adolescent outsider. Like his movies, the work manages to be both childlike and sophisticated, blending the innocent with the macabre.”

One of those adolescent outsiders is Stain Boy, a strange kind of superhero:

He can’t fly around tall buildings,
or outrun a speeding train,
the only talent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Sometimes I know it bothers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one ability,
his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.

In 2000, Burton extended Stain Boy’s adventures (and compressed his name into one word) with The World of Stainboy, a series of short animations commissioned for the Internet by Shockwave.com. “For some stories you have to wait for the right medium,” Burton said at the time. “I think (the Internet’s) the perfect forum to tell a sad little story like this one. Stainboy is a character that doesn’t do much. He’s just perfect for four-minute animations.”

Burton created a series of sketches, watercolors and pastel-accented gray-on-gray washes and brought them, along with a script and storyboards, to Flinch Studio for translation into Macromedia Flash animation. Twenty-six episodes were planned, but only six were completed. “Stainboy was an experiment in developing revenue streams for the Web,” writes Alison McMahan in The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood, “but it did not succeed, at least not financially.”

The Stainboy character was resurrected briefly in late 2010, when Burton invited fans to compose a new Stainboy adventure in brief installments via Twitter. Burton pieced together a story using the best tweets. (You can read the final result here.) Meanwhile, the original Web animations have continued to attract a following. You can watch the complete six-part series below in HD. As you will see, some episodes introduce new characters — Stare Girl, Toxic Boy, Bowling Ball Head and the rest:

Episode 1: Stare Girl

Episode 2: Toxic Boy

Episode 3: Bowling Ball Head

Episode 4: Robot Boy

Episode 5: Matchstick Girl

Episode 6: The Origin of Stainboy

Related Content:

Vincent: Tim Burton’s Early Animated Film

Tim Burton: A Look Inside His Visual Imagination

Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series is a post from: Open Culture