“The Long Tomorrow”: Discover Mœbius’ Hard-Boiled Detective Comic That Inspired Blade Runner (1975)

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Sci Fi | September 4th, 2018

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky may nev­er have made his film adap­ta­tion of Frank Her­bert’s Dune, but plen­ty came out of the attempt — includ­ing, one might well argue, Blade Run­ner. Mak­ing that still huge­ly influ­en­tial adap­ta­tion of Philip K. Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, Rid­ley Scott and his col­lab­o­ra­tors looked to a few key visu­al sources, one of them a two-part short sto­ry in com­ic form called “The Long Tomor­row.”

Illus­trat­ed by none oth­er than French artist Mœbius, one of the rich­est visu­al imag­i­na­tions of our time, it tells the futur­is­tic hard-boiled sto­ry of a pri­vate detec­tive in a dense, ver­ti­cal under­ground city filled with androids, row­dy bars, assas­sins, and fly­ing cars. “I’m a con­fi­den­tial nose,” says the pro­tag­o­nist by way of intro­duc­tion. “My office is on the 97th lev­el. Club’s the name, Pete Club.”

Then comes the fate­ful piece of nar­ra­tion that begins any detec­tive sto­ry worth its salt: “It start­ed out a day like any oth­er day.” But by the end of that day, Club has tak­en a job from a clas­sic dame in need, fend­ed off both a four-armed thug and a hired assas­sin, slain an alien mon­ster with whom he finds him­self in bed, and recov­ered the pres­i­den­t’s miss­ing brain.

The sto­ry was writ­ten writ­ten by Dan O’Ban­non, then known main­ly for the film Dark Star, a sci­ence-fic­tion com­e­dy he’d made with his Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia class­mate John Car­pen­ter. On the strength of that, Jodor­owsky had brought him onto Dune to work on its spe­cial effects, just as he’d brought Mœbius on to cre­ate its sto­ry­boards and con­cept art. With noth­ing to do before shoot­ing began — which it nev­er did — O’Ban­non first drew “The Long Tomor­row” him­self as a way of keep­ing busy. Mœbius took one look at it and imme­di­ate­ly saw its promise.

The French may have coined the term film noir, but this ear­ly work of future noir ben­e­fit­ed from hav­ing an Amer­i­can writer. “When Euro­peans try this kind of par­o­dy, it is nev­er entire­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry,” Mœbius writes in the intro­duc­tion to the book ver­sion of “The Long Tomor­row.” “The French are too French, the Ital­ians are too Ital­ian … so, under my nose was a pas­tiche that was more orig­i­nal than the orig­i­nals.” It also, with Mœbius’ art, laid the visu­al ground­work for gen­er­a­tions of sci-fi sto­ries to come.

“The way Neu­ro­mancer-the-nov­el ‘looks’ was influ­enced in large part by some of the art­work I saw in  Heavy Met­al,” said William Gib­son, refer­ring to the Eng­lish ver­sion of Métal hurlant, the mag­a­zine that pop­u­lar­ized Mœbius’ work. (O’Ban­non also worked on the ani­mat­ed Heavy Met­al anthol­o­gy film, released in 1981.) But per­haps Rid­ley Scott, who start­ed work­ing with the artist on 1979’s O’Ban­non-script­ed Alien, described the influ­ence of Mœbius’ art on our visions of the future best: “You see it every­where, it runs through so much you can’t get away from it.” In a cul­tur­al sense, all of us live in Pete Club’s city now.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Métal hurlant: The Huge­ly Influ­en­tial French Com­ic Mag­a­zine That Put Moe­bius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi For­ev­er

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

In Search of Mœbius: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to the Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Frida Kahlo’s Passionate Love Letters to Diego Rivera

in Art, Letters | September 4th, 2018

The truth young ide­al­is­tic lovers learn: rela­tion­ships are messy and complicated—filled with dis­ap­point­ments, mis­un­der­stand­ings, betray­als great and small. They fall apart and some­times can­not be put back togeth­er. It’s easy to grow cyn­i­cal and bit­ter. Yet, as James Bald­win famous­ly wrote, “you think your pain and your heart­break are unprece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of the world, but then you read.” You read, that is, the life sto­ries and let­ters of writ­ers and artists who have expe­ri­enced out­sized roman­tic bliss and tor­ment, and who some­how became more pas­sion­ate­ly alive the more they suf­fered.

When it comes to per­son­al suf­fer­ing, Fri­da Kahlo’s biog­ra­phy offers more than one per­son could seem to bear. Already dis­abled by polio at a young age, she found her life for­ev­er changed at 18 when a bus acci­dent sent an iron rod through her body, frac­tur­ing mul­ti­ple bones, includ­ing three ver­te­brae, pierc­ing her stom­ach and uterus. Recall­ing the old Gre­go­ri­an hymn, Kahlo’s friend Mex­i­can writer Andrés Hen­e­strosa remarked that she “lived dying”—in near con­stant pain, endur­ing surgery after surgery and fre­quent hos­pi­tal­iza­tions.

In the midst of this pain, she found love with her men­tor and hus­band Diego Rivera—and, it must be said, with many oth­ers. Kahlo, writes Alexxa Got­thardt at Art­sy, “was a pro­lif­ic lover: Her list of romances stretched across decades, con­ti­nents, and sex­es. She was said to have been inti­mate­ly involved with, among oth­ers, Marx­ist the­o­rist Leon Trot­sky, dancer Josephine Bak­er, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nick­o­las Muray. How­ev­er, it was her obses­sive, abid­ing rela­tion­ship with fel­low painter Diego Rivera—for whom she’d har­bored a pas­sion­ate crush since she laid eyes on him at age 15—that affect­ed Kahlo most pow­er­ful­ly.”

Her let­ters to Rivera—himself a pro­lif­ic extra-mar­i­tal lover—stretch “across the twen­ty-sev­en-year span of their rela­tion­ship,” writes Maria Popo­va; they “bespeak the pro­found and abid­ing con­nec­tion the two shared, brim­ming with the seething caul­dron of emo­tion with which all ful­ly inhab­it­ed love is filled: ela­tion, anguish, devo­tion, desire, long­ing, joy.”

Diego.
Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or lis­ten, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, out­side time and mag­ic, with­in your own fear, and your great anguish, and with­in the very beat­ing of your heart. All this mad­ness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only con­fu­sion. I ask you for vio­lence, in the non­sense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no col­ors, because there are so many, in my con­fu­sion, the tan­gi­ble form of my great love.

So begins the let­ter pic­tured at the top. In anoth­er, equal­ly pas­sion­ate and poet­ic let­ter, pic­tured fur­ther up, she writes:

Noth­ing com­pares to your hands, noth­ing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mir­ror of the night. the vio­lent flash of light­ning. the damp­ness of the earth. The hol­low of your armpits is my shel­ter. my fin­gers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-foun­tain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.

Kahlo and Rivera fell in love in 1928, when she asked him to look at her paint­ings. Over her mother’s objec­tions, they mar­ried the fol­low­ing year. After ten tumul­tuous years, they divorced in 1939, then remar­ried in 1940 and stayed part­nered until her death in 1954. Over these years, she poured out her emo­tions in let­ters, many, like those above, first writ­ten in her illus­trat­ed diary. Let­ters to and from her many lovers have also just emerged in a trove of per­son­al arti­facts, recent­ly lib­er­at­ed from a bath­room at Casa Azul where they had been kept under lock and key at River­a’s behest.

Both artists’ many affairs caused tremen­dous pain and “cre­at­ed rifts between them per­son­al­ly,” notes Katy Fal­lon at Broad­ly, although “their rela­tion­ship has been mythol­o­gized past recog­ni­tion,” in the way of so many oth­er famous cou­ples. In the most egre­gious betray­al, Rivera even slept with Kahlo’s younger sis­ter Cristi­na, his favorite mod­el, an act that inspired Frida’s 1937 paint­ing Mem­o­ry, the Heart, a self-por­trait in which she stands with a met­al rod pierc­ing her chest, her hands seem­ing­ly ampu­tat­ed, face expres­sion­less. We learn the wrong lessons from roman­ti­ciz­ing “every­thing” about Fri­da and Diego’s life, Pat­ti Smith sug­gests in her trib­ute to Kahlo’s love let­ters. But there is also dan­ger in pass­ing judg­ment.

“I don’t look at these two as mod­els of behav­ior,” Smith says, but “the most impor­tant les­son… isn’t their indis­cre­tions and love affairs but their devo­tion. Their iden­ti­ties were mag­ni­fied by the oth­er. They went through their ups and downs, part­ed, came back togeth­er, to the end of their lives.” In a 1935 let­ter to Rivera, read by pianist Mona Golabek above, Kahlo for­gives his affairs, call­ing them “only flir­ta­tions…. At bot­tom, you and I love each oth­er dear­ly, and thus go through adven­tures with­out num­bers, beat­ings on doors, impre­ca­tions, insults, inter­na­tion­al claims. Yet, we will always love each oth­er…. All the ranges I have gone through have served only to make me under­stand in the end that I love you more than my own skin.”

Read many more excerpts from Frida’s let­ters to Diego at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

Artists Fri­da Kahlo & Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co: Vin­tage Footage from 1938

Rare Pho­tos of Fri­da Kahlo, Age 13–23

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Leonardo da Vinci’s Earliest Notebooks Now Digitized and Made Free Online: Explore His Ingenious Drawings, Diagrams, Mirror Writing & More

in Art, History, Science | August 31st, 2018

Do a search on the word “poly­math” and you will see an image or ref­er­ence to Leonar­do da Vin­ci in near­ly every result. Many his­tor­i­cal figures—not all of them world famous, not all Euro­peans, men, or from the Ital­ian Renaissance—fit the descrip­tion. But few such record­ed indi­vid­u­als were as fever­ish­ly active, rest­less­ly inven­tive, and aston­ish­ing­ly pro­lif­ic as Leonar­do, who left rid­dles enough for schol­ars to solve for many life­times.

Leonar­do him­self, though world-renowned for his tal­ents in the fine arts, spent more of his time con­ceiv­ing sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies and engi­neer­ing projects. “When he wrote in the ear­ly 1480s to Ludovi­co Sforza, then ruler of Milan, to offer him his ser­vices,” remarks Cather­ine Yvard, Spe­cial Col­lec­tions cura­tor at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Nation­al Art Library, “he adver­tised him­self as a mil­i­tary engi­neer, only briefly men­tion­ing his artis­tic skills at the end of the list.”

But since so few of his projects were, or could be, real­ized in his life­time, we can only expe­ri­ence them through his most­ly inac­ces­si­ble, and gen­er­al­ly inde­ci­pher­able, note­books, which he began keep­ing after the Duke accept­ed his appli­ca­tion. “None of Leonardo’s pre­de­ces­sors, con­tem­po­raries or suc­ces­sors used paper quite like he did,” notes the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um site, “a sin­gle sheet con­tains an unpre­dictable pat­tern of ideas and inventions—the work­ings of both a design­er and a sci­en­tist.”

Part of the dif­fi­cul­ty of piec­ing his lega­cy togeth­er stems from the fact that his hun­dreds of pages of notes have been dis­trib­uted across sev­er­al insti­tu­tions and pri­vate col­lec­tions, not all of them acces­si­ble to researchers. But ambi­tious dig­i­ti­za­tion projects are eras­ing those bar­ri­ers. We recent­ly fea­tured one, a joint effort of the British Library and Microsoft that brought 570 pages from the Codex Arun­del col­lec­tion to the web. As The Art News­pa­per reports, the Vic­to­ria and Albert has now launched a sim­i­lar endeav­or, dig­i­tiz­ing the Codex Forster note­books, so named because they came from the pri­vate col­lec­tion of John Forster in 1876.

This col­lec­tion includes some of Leonardo’s ear­li­est note­books. Codex Forster I, now online, con­tains the ear­li­est note­book the V&A holds, dat­ing from about 1487, and the lat­est, from 1505. “Writ­ten in Leonardo’s famous ‘mir­ror-writ­ing,’” the V&A notes, “the sub­jects explored with­in range from hydraulic engi­neer­ing to a trea­tise on mea­sur­ing solids.” Forster II and III should come online soon. “We are plan­ning to make these two oth­er vol­umes also ful­ly acces­si­ble online in 2019 to cel­e­brate the 500th anniver­sary of Leonardo’s death,” says Yvard.

The most inno­v­a­tive aspect of this par­tic­u­lar project is the use of IIIF (Inter­na­tion­al Image Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty Frame­work), a tech­nol­o­gy that “has enabled us to present the codex in a new way,” remarks Kati Price, V&A’s head of dig­i­tal media. “We’ve used deep-zoom func­tion­al­i­ty… to present some of the most spec­tac­u­lar and detailed items in our col­lec­tion.” Schol­ars and laypeo­ple alike can take a very close-up look at the many schemat­ics and tech­ni­cal dia­grams in the note­books and see Leonardo’s mind and hand at work.

But while all of us can mar­vel at the sight of his engi­neer­ing genius, when it comes to read­ing his hand­writ­ing, we’ll have to rely on experts. Let’s hope the muse­um will some­day sup­ply trans­la­tions for non­spe­cial­ists. In the mean­time, explore the dig­i­tized man­u­scripts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Classic Video of Pablo Picasso Marking Art, Set to the Song, “Pablo Picasso,” by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

in Art, Music | August 31st, 2018

Before the Sex Pis­tols and the Ramones, there were the Mod­ern Lovers, the Boston pro­to-punk band helmed by lead singer Jonathan Rich­man. Their sound owed a lot to the Vel­vet Under­ground, a band the teenaged Rich­man idol­ized, fol­low­ing them to New York City and ingra­ti­at­ing him­self to such a degree that their man­ag­er allowed him to couch surf for a few weeks.

Their sole album, released two years after they broke up, was cob­bled togeth­er from two dif­fer­ent demo ses­sions, one of them pro­duced by the Vel­vets’ John Cale.

By the time it came out, Rich­man had already embraced the gen­tler, sun­nier per­sona and sound that’s made him a cel­e­brat­ed solo artist with fans of all ages. He famous­ly remarked that he didn’t want to make music that could hurt a baby’s ears. As for­mer band­mate, bassist Ernie Brooks told punk his­to­ri­an Legs McNeil:

Jonathan start­ed say­ing his old songs were too neg­a­tive and dark, and he start­ed writ­ing things like “Hey There Lit­tle Insect,” and maybe he was way ahead of us, but we couldn’t fol­low him—he want­ed us to go, “Buzz, buzz, buzz” on stage, but we were too cool!

Rich­man’s impulse was cor­rect. More than 40 years out from the Mod­ern Lovers, his solo career is going strong. (On lat­er record­ings attrib­uted to Jonathan Rich­man and the Mod­ern Lovers, he is the only holdover from the orig­i­nal line up.)

But that Mod­ern Lovers album has plen­ty of stay­ing pow­er, too.

Rolling Stone dubbed it both the 48th best debut album and the 381st great­est album of all time.

And while “Road­run­ner” may be its best known track, thanks to a long run­ning cam­paign to make it the offi­cial rock song of Mass­a­chu­setts (over Richman’s protes­ta­tions that it’s not good enough to deserve the hon­or), “Pablo Picas­so”‘s mem­o­rable cho­rus can­not be unheard:

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

(Fran­coise Gilot, Picasso’s mod­el, and moth­er of two of his chil­dren, might say oth­er­wise, accord­ing to sev­er­al YouTube com­ments elicit­ed by the unat­trib­uted short film above.)

In 1980, a writer for the zine Boston Groupie News tried to get Rich­man to reveal the song’s prove­nance. He had pur­sued art as a teenag­er, tak­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing class­es at Boston’s Muse­um of Fine Arts. He’d put his phone num­ber on the back of his can­vas­es, con­ceiv­ing of that as a way to con­nect with peo­ple. So, was Picas­so his favorite painter or…?

No, as it turns out:

I read about him when I was 18. I moved to New York and was intim­i­dat­ed by these girls who (I) thought were attrac­tive. I was afraid to approach them. I did­n’t have too high a self-image. I was self-con­scious and I thought “Well, Pablo Picas­so, he’s only 5 foot 3 but he did­n’t let things like that both­er him.” So I made up this song right after I saw those girls. You can pic­ture it; I had this sad lit­tle look on my face and I was think­ing ‘Why am I so scared to approach these girls?’ That was a song of courage for me.

Picas­so looks pret­ty chip­per in the well select­ed vin­tage footage, above. The expres­sion Rich­man cops to hav­ing cul­ti­vat­ed sounds gloomi­er, a delib­er­ate ploy to entice girls into think­ing he was a sad and like­ly soul­ful artist.

In oth­er words, irre­sistible. Like a rock star!

The Mod­ern Lovers’ pop­u­lar­i­ty let him drop the self-con­scious pose, but his inter­est in art remained.

He still paints, and recent­ly iden­ti­fied some of the artists who have inspired him in Art News’ Mus­es col­umn: 

Mon­et con­tributed to his appre­ci­a­tion of the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee.”

There’s a direct line between “Road­run­ner” and the lone­li­ness of Edward Hopper’s “Gas.”

And Picas­so? That ass­hole doesn’t even make the list.

 

Well some peo­ple try to pick up girls

And get called ass­holes

This nev­er hap­pened to Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare and

So Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called an ass­hole

Well the girls would turn the col­or

Of the avo­ca­do when he would dri­ve

Down their street in his El Dora­do

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

Not like you

Alright

Well he was only 5′3″

But girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

Not in New York

Oh well be not schmuck, be not obnox­ious

Be not bell­bot­tom bum­mer or ass­hole

Remem­ber the sto­ry of Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called an ass­hole

Alright this is it

Well

Some peo­ple try to pick up girls

And they get called an ass­hole

This nev­er hap­pened to Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare and so

Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called…

Want to hear it again? Try the ani­mat­ed take below, by the endear­ing­ly mod­est 7atenine22.

Read­ers, if you have any intel on the per­son respon­si­ble for the film at the top of the page, please let us know, so we can give cred­it where cred­it is due.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

Under­rat­ed Albums That You Want the World to Know About: What’s on Your List?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Free: Download 70,000+ High-Resolution Images of Chinese Art from Taipei’s National Palace Museum

in Art, History, Museums | August 21st, 2018

Dur­ing Chi­na’s Ming and Qing dynas­ties, which togeth­er spanned the years 1386 to 1912, few in the Mid­dle King­dom, let alone else­where, could hope for even a glimpse of the finest Chi­nese art­works of their time. But recent­ly one muse­um has made a trove of art and arti­facts from those dynas­ties and oth­ers dig­i­tal­ly acces­si­ble to the world, and a muse­um out­side main­land Chi­na at that. “Accord­ing to pop­u­lar news web­site The Paper,” writes the BBC’s Ker­ry Allen, “Taipei’s Nation­al Palace Muse­um has placed 70,000 high-qual­i­ty elec­tron­ic images in a free-to-down­load archive so that online users can enjoy its exhi­bi­tions” — and with­out the has­sles of “glass bar­ri­er and light­ing restric­tions.”

First estab­lished as the Palace Muse­um in 1925, after the expul­sion of Chi­na’s last emper­or Puyi, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um began its col­lec­tion with valu­ables belong­ing to the for­mer Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly. Now, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Claire Voon, it boasts “one of the largest troves of ancient Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts, from paint­ings to rare books to all sorts of objects made of jade, bronze, ceram­ic, and more.”

The dig­i­ti­za­tion and upload­ing project, called Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data, offers an Eng­lish ver­sion site, “although that is cur­rent­ly a rather lim­it­ed and incom­plete resource. The Chi­nese ver­sion fea­tures two por­tals to more effi­cient­ly comb through the museum’s relics. One is specif­i­cal­ly for paint­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy works; the oth­er, for every­thing else.”

Still, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um has been improv­ing its Eng­lish por­tal, which allows search­es not just by cat­e­go­ry of object but by dynasty, a list that now reach­es far beyond the Ming and Qing, all the way back to the Shang Dynasty of 1600 BC to 1046 BC. But even as the Eng­lish ver­sion catch­es up to the Chi­nese one — as of this writ­ing, it con­tains more than 4700 items — it will sure­ly take some time before Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data catch­es up with the com­plete hold­ings of the Nation­al Palace Muse­um, with its per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of about 700,000 Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts and art­works span­ning eight mil­len­nia. As with Chi­nese his­to­ry itself, a for­mi­da­ble sub­ject of study if ever there was one, it has to be tak­en one piece at a time.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Pre-Flight Safe­ty Demon­stra­tion Gets Per­formed as a Mod­ern Dance: A Cre­ative Video from a Tai­wanese Air­line

China’s New Lumi­nous White Library: A Strik­ing Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

French Illustrator Revives the Byzantine Empire with Magnificently Detailed Drawings of Its Monuments & Buildings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

in Architecture, Art, History | August 20th, 2018

The Byzan­tine Empire fell in the mid-15th cen­tu­ry, but some­thing of its spir­it still lives on. A great deal of it lives on in the work of the French illus­tra­tor Antoine Hel­bert. “This pas­sion was kin­dled by a birth­day gift from his moth­er,” writes a blog­ger named Herve Ris­son in a post about it. “This gift was a book about Byzan­tium. Hel­bert was 7 years old.” Like many an inter­est instilled ear­ly and deeply enough in child­hood, Hel­bert’s fas­ci­na­tion turned into an obses­sion — or any­way, what looks like it must be an obses­sion, since it has moti­vat­ed him to cre­ate such mag­nif­i­cent­ly detailed recre­ations of Byzan­tium in its hey­day.

“Attract­ed by the archi­tec­ture,” Ris­son writes of Hel­bert, “he has also a strong pas­sion for the his­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire, much maligned and despised, in com­par­i­son with the his­to­ry of the ‘real’ Roman Empire.”

That’s not to say that the Byzan­tine Empire, also known as the East­ern Roman Empire, has received no atten­tion, but undoubt­ed­ly it has received less than the West­ern Roman Empire it sur­vived in the fifth cen­tu­ry. Still, few his­tor­i­cal empires of any kind receive such an exquis­ite degree of atten­tion from any sin­gle liv­ing artist.

You can see some of Hel­bert’s work on his site, which is divid­ed into two sec­tions: one for scenes of Byzan­tium, and one for the archi­tec­ture of Byzan­tium. The lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, images from which you see here, includes such world-famous land­marks as Hagia Sophia, Boukoleon Palace, and the Great Palace of Con­stan­tino­ple — the city now known as Istan­bul, Turkey. The intact Hagia Sophia con­tin­ues to attract tourists in huge num­bers, but those who vis­it the Great Palace, or what remains of it, have to use their imag­i­na­tion to get a sense of what it must have looked like in the Byzan­tine Empire’s hey­day.

Hel­bert, who only made his first vis­it to Istan­bul at the age of 35, has put in that amount of imag­i­na­tive work and much more besides. “Since then,” writes Ris­son, Hel­bert “has tak­en great care to res­ur­rect the city of the emper­ors, with great atten­tion to details and to the sources avail­able. What he can’t find, he invents, but always with a great care for the his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy.” Indeed, many of Hel­bert’s illus­tra­tions don’t, at first glance, look like illus­tra­tions at all, but more like what you’d come up with if you trav­eled back to the Con­stan­tino­ple of fif­teen or so cen­turies ago with a cam­era. “The project has no lucra­tive goal,” Ris­son notes. “It’s a pas­sion. A byzan­tine pas­sion!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium Pod­cast Picks Up Where The His­to­ry of Rome Left Off

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

How an Art Conservator Completely Restores a Damaged Painting: A Short, Meditative Documentary

in Art, Science | August 20th, 2018

We here at Open Cul­ture take great plea­sure in soup to nuts doc­u­men­taries of mas­ter crafts­peo­ple at work, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the nar­ra­tion has been left out delib­er­ate­ly.

The med­i­ta­tive effect is more pow­er­ful that way, as is our won­der­ment.

We can always go rab­bit­ing after the tech­ni­cal specs of the trade being plied if we’re not entire­ly sure what we’re see­ing.

For instance, those tiny strands con­ser­va­tion­ist Julian Baum­gart­ner of Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restora­tion places ever so care­ful­ly across a tear in painter Emma Gag­giot­ti Richards’ unti­tled 38”x29” self por­trait?

A tech­nique known as bridg­ing, where­in a rip is sutured using indi­vid­ual strands of Bel­gian linen and reversible con­ser­va­tion adhe­sive.

(We found that out on Baumgartner’s Insta­gram…)

We also take geeky delight in still life-like pre­sen­ta­tions of tools both spe­cial­ized and shock­ing­ly ordi­nary.

Baumgartner’s include an over-the-counter iron and a pair of orange-han­dled scis­sors, labelled so that no one walks away with them…

And who couldn’t think of alter­na­tive uses for those giant Q‑tips, though watch­ing Richards’ skin tones go from dingy to dewy in just a few mea­sured swabs implies that art con­ser­va­tion is the rea­son they were put on earth.

The conservator’s own painter­ly skills are very much on dis­play as he recre­ates dam­aged areas with filler and con­ser­va­tion qual­i­ty oils.

As he has not­ed else­where:

Just as dif­fi­cult as faces but no less impor­tant is fab­ric. Get­ting the col­or and vol­ume just right is very reward­ing. 

The goal of con­ser­va­tion is that the dam­age no longer affects the image as a whole. So we’re not ter­ri­bly con­cerned with whether under a micro­scope or extreme­ly close exam­i­na­tion the restora­tion is vis­i­ble. If you look close enough all con­ser­va­tion is vis­i­ble. 

Our phi­los­o­phy is to alter the art­work as lit­tle as pos­si­ble with respect to the orig­i­nal inten­tion of the artist.

There is one ques­tion left unmet by film­mak­er Jack Brandt­man’s video por­trait, one that casu­al online research seems unlike­ly to sat­is­fy.

What kind of music does the con­ser­va­tor lis­ten to in the stu­dio? Not that soporif­ic instru­men­tal sound­track, we hope!

Per­haps North­west­ern University’s great lis­ten­er-sup­port­ed, stu­dent run sta­tion, WNUR?

WBEZ, the leg­endary pub­lic radio sta­tio?

Or CHIRP, the lat­est addi­tion to Chicago’s radio pedi­gree?

It’d be a pleas­ant sur­prise to find him pow­er­ing through his dai­ly tasks to the tune of the local rock fea­tured in Brantman’s oth­er Made in Chica­go series entries on forg­ing knives and mak­ing jeans.

We live to have our expec­ta­tions defied!

Fol­low Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restoration’s Insta­gram here.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hundreds of Classical Sculptures from the Uffizi Gallery Now Digitized & Put Online: Explore a Collection of 3D Interactive Scans

in Art, Technology | August 17th, 2018

As the mighty House of Medici amassed works of art between the 15th and 18th cen­turies, could its mem­bers have imag­ined that we would still be enjoy­ing their col­lec­tion in the 21st? Per­haps they did, giv­en the ten­den­cy — some­times fatal — of busi­ness and polit­i­cal dynas­ties to imag­ine them­selves as eter­nal. But the Medicis could scarce­ly have imag­ined how peo­ple all around the world have just gained access to the sculp­ture they col­lect­ed, now dis­played at Flo­rence’s Uffizi Gallery and else­where, through the Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty’s Vir­tu­al World Her­itage Lab­o­ra­to­ry, the Politec­ni­co di Milano, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flo­rence, the five-year project, which began in 2016, has as its goal the com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Greek and Roman sculp­ture in the Uffizi Gallery, Pit­ti Palace, and Boboli Gar­dens. Though not yet fin­ished, it has already man­aged to dig­i­tize more works of clas­si­cal sculp­ture than any oth­er effort by a sin­gle muse­um, and at its site you can take a look at every com­plete piece and frag­ment already dig­i­tized — and not just a look, as you’d get while pass­ing by on a walk through a muse­um, but a clos­er and more detailed look than you may ever have thought pos­si­ble.

“The gen­uine­ly easy-to-nav­i­gate web­site proves more inter­ac­tive than many com­put­er­ized muse­um archives,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Jas­mine Weber. “Users are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el inside tombs and inside every nook of the fig­ures’ con­struc­tion. The inter­face allows users to trav­el around and with­in the sculp­tures, get­ting clos­er than vis­i­tors often can in the muse­um space itself thanks to three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ing from every imag­in­able angle.” The col­lec­tion, notes the Uffizzi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Pro­jec­t’s about page, con­tains “works of excep­tion­al inter­est to stu­dents of Greek and Roman art, notably the Medici Venus, the Medici Faun, the Nio­bids, and the Ari­adne.”

The Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project has so far made more than 300 works avail­able to view as 3D mod­els, and you can find them by either search­ing the col­lec­tion or scrolling down to browse by cat­e­go­ry, a list that includes every­thing from altars and busts to stat­uettes and vas­es. And though no more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive col­lec­tion of vir­tu­al clas­si­cal sculp­ture may exist on the inter­net, after expe­ri­enc­ing it you might nev­er­the­less feel the need to see these pieces in an envi­ron­ment oth­er than the black dig­i­tal void. If so, have a look at the vir­tu­al tour of the Uffizi Gallery we fea­tured ear­li­er this year here on Open Cul­ture. But be pre­pared: from there you may want to book a tick­et to Flo­rence and see the sculp­ture col­lect­ed by the House of Medici in the very city where it rose to such vast eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al pow­er.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast