Vintage Footage of Picasso and Jackson Pollock Painting … Through Glass

in Art | March 7th, 2012

We occasionally like to connect the dots around here. So today we’re showcasing two videos that feature Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock at work — both painting through glass. We start with Picasso at his atelier in Vallauris, France, painting abstractions on a glass pane while a camera rolls on the other side. This striking scene comes from Visite à Picasso, a 1950 film by Belgian filmmaker Paul Haesaerts, which can be viewed in its entirety online.

Next we shift geographies. We head from France to the United States. But the year pretty much remains the same. In 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jackson Pollock and asked the painter if he could photograph him working with his “drip” technique of painting. A photo shoot followed, but Namuth wasn’t satisfied that he had captured the essence of Pollock’s work. He wanted to capture Pollock in motion and in color. Above, you can watch Namuth’s second effort, a ten-minute film, simply called Jackson Pollock 51. We start you at the 5:48 mark, when Pollock starts putting his brush to glass.…

Both films mentioned above appear in our collection of Free Movies Online.

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing: The TV Series

Dear Monsieur Picasso: A Free eBook

Previously Unpublished Photos of Jackson Pollock

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Five Free Courses from Stanford Start This Month

in Online Courses, Stanford | March 6th, 2012

Stanford’s big open course initiative keeps rolling along. On March 12, three new courses will get underway:

Then, starting on March 19, two more will take flight:

The courses generally feature interactive video clips; short quizzes that provide instant feedback; the ability to pose high value questions to Stanford instructors; feedback on your overall performance in the class; and a statement of accomplishment at the end of the course.

And, yes, the courses are free and now open for enrollment.

As always, don’t miss our big list of 425 Free Online Courses. It may just be the single most awesome page on the web.

Story via Stanford University News. Algorithm image courtesy of BigStock.

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Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

in Music | March 6th, 2012

The venue isn’t as large. The head of hair isn’t as full. The beat doesn’t drive as hard. But the song remains the same. Above, Mick Jones revisits a Clash classic, “Train in Vain,” at the opening of The Rock and Roll Public Library in 2009. Below, we head back to the band’s heyday when The Clash played the same tune at the US Festival in San Bernardino CA (circa May 1982). Other charming songs played that day include:

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Stay Free

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‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation Speech (2005)

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | March 6th, 2012

Last month, on the occasion of the author’s 50th birthday, we posted a large collection of free essays and stories by David Foster Wallace. But we missed a rare item: the complete audio recording of the commencement address Wallace gave at Kenyon College, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life. The text of the speech has been published on the Internet and as a book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, but the complete audio version has been hard to find.

In the speech, Wallace talks about the challenge of moving beyond the superficial kind of freedom that can be acquired through power and wealth, toward a truer liberation that arises only when we become more fully conscious of the world outside our “tiny skull-sized kingdoms.” He says:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race”–the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

You can listen to the first half of the speech above. And to delve deeper into Wallace’s worldview, be sure to watch the fascinating 84-minute interview he gave in 2003 to a German television station. H/T Avi Burstein.

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!

The 321 Books in David Foster Wallace’s Personal Library: From Blood Meridian to Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder

David Foster Wallace on What’s Wrong with Postmodernism: A Video Essay

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16th-Century Amsterdam Stunningly Visualized with 3D Animation

in Art, History | March 5th, 2012

The Amsterdam Museum teamed up with the Dutch creative agency PlusOne to create a series of videos for the new Amsterdam DNA exhibition — an exhibition that offers a three-dimensional 45-minute journey through Amsterdam’s history. PlusOne created seven videos in total. The clip above comes from the second film called Revolt Against King and Church, and it obviously brings you back to Amsterdam in the 16th century. The clip below offers an aesthetic introduction to the exhibition itself. h/t The Atlantic

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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Neil deGrasse Tyson Remembers His First Meeting with Carl Sagan

in Astronomy, Physics, Science, Television | March 5th, 2012

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His eloquence, his passion for explaining science to a wider public, made him a major cultural figure in late 20th century America. Now a new voice is emerging. Neil deGrasse Tyson, like Sagan, is an astronomer and physicist with a remarkable gift for speaking about the beauty and importance of science. Like Sagan, he hosts a PBS television program (NOVA ScienceNOW) and appears frequently on talk shows. The passing of the torch will become obvious next year, when Tyson hosts the sequel to Sagan’s ground-breaking 1980 TV series, Cosmos. Tyson’s connection to Sagan actually began at a very young age. In the video clip above, Tyson tells Ted Simons of the regional PBS show Arizona Horizon the story of a remarkable act of generosity by Sagan when Tyson was only a teenager. If it whets your appetite, be sure to watch the complete 25-minute interview below. And don’t miss our very popular related post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read.

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Did Shakespeare Write Pulp Fiction? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This)

in Film, Poetry | March 5th, 2012

Imagine a high school class on the Great Works of Western Civilization, circa 2400. The teacher shows the students a selection of films by Quentin Tarantino, that exalted late-20th- and early-21st-century dramatist who worked in the medium then known as film. The series culminates in Pulp Fiction, perhaps, for modern audiences, the most enduring and accessible example of the master’s art. Yet most of the kids in the room falter on the edge of comprehension, and one eventually explodes in frustration. “Why do they all dress like that?” the student demands, in whatever the English language has evolved into. “And seriously, why do they talk that way? Why do we even have to watch this, anyway?” Then the teacher, returning to his drying well of patience, his face settling into the creases worn by decades of stoically borne disappointment, explains to his despondent charge that Tarantino’s all about the language. “He used English in ways nobody had before,” he says, for nothing close to the first nor last time, “and if you put in just a little more study time, you’d understand that.”

Her Majesty’s Secret Players do seem to understand that, bring as they will a production called Pulp Shakespeare (or, A Slurry Tale) to its West Coast premiere at this summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival. To view the clip of the show above is to feel at least two senses of odd familiarity at once: don’t I know this scene and these characters from somewhere, and don’t I know these words from somewhere? Were you to watch it without context, you’d probably guess that the dialogue sounded Shakespearean, and in the first few minutes, that guess might even take you as far as wondering which of the lesser-known plays this might be. But Pulp Shakespeare offers not Shakespeare’s words but a pastiche of Shakespeare through which to watch Pulp Fiction, effectively bringing that 25th-century classroom scenario into the present. Rendering Tarantino’s dialogue in Shakespearean dramatic poetry both familiarizes Shakespeare’s style and de-familiarizes Tarantino’s, giving strong hints to anyone looking to understand Shakespeare’s appeal in his day, how history might treat Tarantino, and how the two have more in common than we’d have assumed.

(Note to 21st-century teachers: we nonetheless do not suggest you introduce Shakespeare as “sort of the Quentin Tarantino of his day.”)

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

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Slavoj Žižek & Pres. Obama Give Their Take on The Wire (and More Culture Around the Web)

in Philosophy, Television | March 5th, 2012

Although HBO’s critically-acclaimed series, The Wire, ended its run in 2008, the show keeps getting back into the headlines. Just last week President Obama, an acknowledged fan of The Wire, was asked during an audio interview with ESPN to name his favorite character on the show, to which he replied “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbelievable, right?” And then this other piece of audio surfaced online — Slavoj Žižek, your favorite Slovenian philosopher/cultural critic, presented a talk at The University of London (2/24/2012) called The Wire or The Clash of Civilisations in One Country. And it takes the show seriously as a work of tragic, realist art. Listen here.