Free: Download 10,000+ Master Drawings from The Morgan Library & Museum’s Online Collection

in Art, Law, Libraries, Museums, Opera | January 29th, 2018

It’s hard for the casu­al brows­er to know where to begin with a col­lec­tion as vast as the mas­ter draw­ings belong­ing to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um.

The Library’s Draw­ings Online pro­gram gives the pub­lic free access to over 10,000 down­load­able images, drawn pri­mar­i­ly from—and in—the fif­teenth through nine­teenth cen­turies. Many images are fleshed out with inscrip­tions, infor­ma­tion on prove­nance, bio­graph­i­cal sketch­es of the artist, and, in over 2000 instances, images of the ver­so, or flip side of the paper.

Researchers and sim­i­lar­ly informed seek­ers can browse by artist or school, but what if you don’t quite know what you want?

You could tour the high­lights, or bet­ter yet, bush­whack your way into the unknown by enter­ing a ran­dom word or phrase into the “search draw­ings” func­tion.

Know­ing that the inter­net is crazy for cats, I made that my first search term, but the results were skewed by an 18th-cen­tu­ry Dutch artist named Jacob Cats, whose work abounds with cows and sheep.

Car­i­ca­tur­ist Al Hirschfeld’s por­trait of Kath­leen Turn­er in the 1990 Broad­way revival of Ten­nessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  is unavail­able for view­ing due to copy­right restric­tions. (It’s eas­i­ly view­able else­where…)

And the Where’s Wal­do-esque excite­ment I felt upon an anony­mous artist’s Moun­tain Land­scape with Ital­ian-Style Clois­ter faux-Bruegel dis­si­pat­ed when I real­ized this return owed more to the abbre­vi­a­tion of “cat­a­logue” than any feline lurk­ing in the pen-and-ink trees.

Next I entered the word “babies.” I’m not sure why. There cer­tain­ly were a lot of them, almost as many as I encounter on Face­book.

Return­ing to the pre-select­ed high­lights page, I resolved to let the experts pick for me. I saw a charm­ing rab­bit fam­i­ly by John James Audubon and the old favorite by William Blake, top, but what real­ly grabbed me was the first page’s final selec­tion: Hon­oré Daumier’s Two Lawyers Con­vers­ing, cir­ca 1862.

Part of the Mor­gan’s recent­ly closed Drawn to Great­ness: Mas­ter Draw­ings from the Thaw Col­lec­tion exhib­it, the sub­jects’ dress may be archa­ic, but their expres­sions are both humor­ous and ever­green. Lawyer. I had my search term.

My favorite of the sev­en search results is illus­tra­tor Edmund J. Sul­li­van’s Soumin an’ Roumin from 1914. One of a dozen or so draw­ings Sul­li­van made for an updat­ed edi­tion of George Out­ram’s Legal and Oth­er Lyrics, it shows “an old woman in a farm­yard sur­round­ed by live­stock flee­ing three mon­strous lawyers wear­ing wigs and robes and armed with hideous talons instead of hands and feet. One … chas­es a cow with a scourge, the thongs of which end in scor­pi­ons.”

Down­load that one for all your lawyer friends or your lawyer spouse… upload it to a t‑shirt if you’re crafty.

Claud Lovat Fras­er’s set design for Per­gole­si’s short com­ic opera La Ser­va Padrona (or The Maid Turned Mis­tress) at the Lyric Ham­mer­smith doesn’t depict any lawyers, to the best of my knowl­edge, but he him­self was one—also a car­i­ca­tur­ist, lam­poon­ing the lit­er­ary and the­atri­cal lumi­nar­ies of his day, and a sol­dier whose life was cut short due to expo­sure to gas in World War I.

In addi­tion to the Morgan’s par­tic­u­lar­ly well-fleshed-out artist bio for this work, the ver­so is a treat in the form of a print­ed announce­ment for the Chelsea Arts Club Cos­tume Ball.

Browse the Mor­gan Library & Museum’s Draw­ings Online in its entire­ty here, or nar­row it down by artist, School of Art, or per­son­al whim.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her New York City  on Feb­ru­ary 8, when she hosts Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a vari­ety show born of a sin­gle musty vol­ume — this month: Mas­ter­pieces in Colour, Bas­ten-Lep­age. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take 7 Free Courses From the Museum of Modern Art (aka MoMA)

in Art, Education, MOOCs, Museums | January 22nd, 2018

If you would like to know more about mod­ern art, but have dif­fi­cul­ty wrap­ping your head around the Futur­ists, Neo-Impres­sion­ists, Abstract Expres­sion­ists, and the myr­i­ad oth­er ‑ists and ‑isms  of this vast sub­ject, per­haps you should unteth­er your­self from time­lines.

Mod­ern Art & Ideas, a free online course from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (aka MoMA), shifts the focus away from peri­od and move­ment, instead group­ing works accord­ing to four themes: Places & Spaces, Art & Iden­ti­ty, Trans­form­ing Every­day Objects, and Art & Soci­ety.

It’s an approach that’s worked well for MoMA’s Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment. (Anoth­er upcom­ing online class, Art & Ideas: Teach­ing with Themes, is rec­om­mend­ed for pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors look­ing to devel­op the ped­a­gog­i­cal skills the depart­ment employs to get vis­i­tors to engage with the art.)

The course, which begins today, is taught by Lisa Maz­zo­la, Assis­tant Direc­tor of the museum’s School and Teacher Pro­grams and a vet­er­an of their pre­vi­ous for­ays into Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es.

An ear­ly les­son on how artists cap­ture envi­ron­ments con­sid­ers three works: Vin­cent van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night (1889), Piet Mondrian’s Broad­way Boo­gie Woo­gie (1942–43), and Gor­don Matta-Clark’s Bin­go. Vin­tage pho­tos and footage con­spire with peri­od music to whisk stu­dents to the set­tings that inspired these works—a bucol­ic French men­tal hos­pi­tal, New York City’s bustling, WWII-era Times Square, and a derelict house in down on its luck Nia­gara Falls.

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Open Cul­ture are like­ly to have a han­dle on some of the ways art stars Fri­da Kahlo and Andy Warhol explored iden­ti­ty, the course’s third week theme, but what about Glenn Ligon, a liv­ing African Amer­i­can con­cep­tu­al artist?

Ligon may not have the renown or tote bag appeal of his lesson­mates, but his 1993 series, Run­aways, is pow­er­ful enough to hold its own against Kahlo’s Self-Por­trait with Cropped Hair and Warhol’s Gold Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

In fact, teach­ers look­ing to expand their Black His­to­ry Month cur­ricu­lum could spark some live­ly dis­cus­sions by show­ing stu­dents the extreme­ly accu­rate fac­sim­i­les of 19th-cen­tu­ry run­away slave ads fea­tur­ing phys­i­cal descrip­tions of Ligon, solicit­ed from friends who’d been told they were sup­ply­ing details for a hypo­thet­i­cal Miss­ing Per­son poster.

Ligon’s series is also a good start­ing place for dis­cussing con­cep­tu­al art with a friend who thinks  con­cep­tu­al art is best defined as White Cow in a Snow­storm.

Offered on Cours­era, the 5‑week course requires approx­i­mate­ly 2 hours of study and one quiz per week. Enroll here, or browse MoMAs oth­er cur­rent offer­ings also on Cours­era.

Note: To take the cours­es for free, selec­tion the Audit (as opposed to paid) option dur­ing the enroll­ment process.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 75,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

What to Say When You Don’t Under­stand Con­tem­po­rary Art? A New Short Film, “Mas­ter­piece,” Has Help­ful Sug­ges­tions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Celebrate the Women’s March with 24 Goddess GIFs Created by Animator Nina Paley: They’re Free to Download and Remix

in Animation, Art, Life, Religion | January 19th, 2018

As mil­lions of women, men, and friends beyond the bina­ry gear up for Wom­en’s March events around the world this week­end, we can’t help but draw strength from the Venus of Wil­len­dorf in Graph­ics Inter­change For­mat, above.

Like the pussy hats that became the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of last year’s march, there’s a strong ele­ment of humor at play here.

Also respect for the female form.

As Dr. Bryan Zyg­mont notes in his Khan Acad­e­my essay on the Venus of Wil­len­dorf, her exis­tence is evi­dence that “nomadic peo­ple liv­ing almost 25,000 years ago cared about mak­ing objects beau­ti­ful. And … that these Pale­olith­ic peo­ple had an aware­ness of the impor­tance of the women.”

Ani­ma­tor Nina Paley has tak­en up our Pale­olith­ic ances­tors’ baton by cre­at­ing two dozen ear­ly god­dess GIFs, includ­ing the Venus.

As fur­ther proof that sis­ter­hood is pow­er­ful, Paley is shar­ing her unashamed­ly boun­cy pan­theon with the pub­lic. Vis­it her blog to down­load all 24 indi­vid­ual god­dess GIFs. Dis­sem­i­nate them wide­ly. Use them for good! No per­mis­sion need­ed.

Paley is no stranger to god­dess­es, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly placed the divine hero­ine of the Ramayana front and cen­ter in her semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fea­ture length ani­ma­tion, Sita Sings the Blues.

She’s also incred­i­bly famil­iar with rights issues, fol­low­ing mas­sive com­pli­ca­tions with some vin­tage record­ings her Bet­ty Boop-ish Sita lip-synchs in the film. (She had pre­vi­ous­ly believed them to be in the pub­lic domain.) Unable to pay the huge sum the copy­right hold­ers demand­ed to license the tunes, Paley ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to relin­quish all legal claims to her own film, plac­ing Sita Sings the Blues in the pub­lic domain, to be freely shared, exhib­it­ed, or even remixed.

If Paley’s the poster child for copy­right issues she’s also a shin­ing exam­ple of deriv­ing pow­er from unlike­ly sources.

As she wrote on her web­site near­ly ten years ago:

My per­son­al expe­ri­ence con­firms audi­ences are gen­er­ous and want to sup­port artists. Sure­ly there’s a way for this to hap­pen with­out cen­tral­ly con­trol­ling every trans­ac­tion. The old busi­ness mod­el of coer­cion and extor­tion is fail­ing. New mod­els are emerg­ing, and I’m hap­py to be part of that. But we’re still mak­ing this up as we go along. You are free to make mon­ey with the free con­tent of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share mon­ey with me. Peo­ple have been mak­ing mon­ey in Free Soft­ware for years; it’s time for Free Cul­ture to fol­low. I look for­ward to your inno­va­tions.

As for Paley’s own plans for her god­dess­es, they’ll be a part of her upcom­ing ani­mat­ed musi­cal, Seder-Masochism, not­ing that “all ear­ly peo­ples con­ceived the divine as female.”

Down­load Nina Paley’s God­dess GIFs here. Watch Sita Sings the Blues here. March ever onward!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her on Feb­ru­ary 8 for Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, when a host of New York City-based per­form­ers and musi­cians will res­ur­rect  a long for­got­ten work from 1911 as a low bud­get, vari­ety show. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Smartify, a Shazam for Art, Lets You Use Your Phone to Scan, Identify & Learn About Major Works of Art

in Art, Data, Museums, Travel, Web/Tech | January 15th, 2018

Not so long ago, art muse­ums were known as tem­ples of qui­et con­tem­pla­tion, despite dai­ly inva­sions by rau­cous school groups.

Now, the onus is on the muse­ums to bring the moun­tain to Mohammed. Those kids have smart­phones. How long can a muse­um hope to stay relevant—nay, survive—without an app?

Many of the muse­ums who’ve already part­nered up with Smar­ti­fy—an app (Mac-Android) that lets you take a pic­ture of art­work with your phone and instant­ly access infor­ma­tion about them—have exist­ing apps of their own in place: the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, Amsterdam’s Rijksmu­se­um, to name a few.

These insti­tu­tion­al apps pro­vide vis­i­tors with an expand­ed view of the sort of infor­ma­tion one com­mon­ly finds on a muse­um card, in addi­tion to such prac­ti­cal­i­ties as gallery lay­outs and cal­en­dars of events. More often than not, there’s an option to “save” an art­work the vis­i­tor finds captivating—no word on what this fea­ture is doing to post­card sales in muse­um shops, so per­haps print isn’t dead yet.

Giv­en all the muse­um apps free for the down­load­ing, for whom is Smar­ti­fy, a “Shaz­am for art,” intend­ed?

Per­haps the glo­be­trot­ting muse­um hop­per eager to con­sol­i­date? Its devel­op­ers are adamant that it’s intend­ed to com­ple­ment, not replace, in-per­son vis­its to the insti­tu­tions where the works are housed, so arm­chair muse­um goers are advised to look else­where, like Google Arts & Cul­ture.

Per­haps the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be the small­er gal­leries and muse­ums ill equipped to launch free­stand­ing apps of their own. Smartify’s web­site states that it relies on “annu­al mem­ber­ship from muse­um part­ners, in-app trans­ac­tions, adver­tis­ing and data sales to rel­e­vant arts organ­i­sa­tions.”

Ear­ly adopters com­plained that while the app (Mac-Android) had no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing famous works of art, it came up emp­ty on the less­er-known pieces. That’s a pity as these are the works vis­i­tors are most like­ly to seek fur­ther infor­ma­tion on.

One of the devel­op­ers com­pared the Smar­ti­fy expe­ri­ence to vis­it­ing a muse­um in the com­pa­ny of “an enthu­si­as­tic and knowl­edge­able friend telling you more about a work of art.”

Maybe bet­ter to do just that, if the option exists? Such a friend would not be ham­pered by the copy­right laws that ham­per Smar­ti­fy with regard to cer­tain works. A friend might even stand you a hot choco­late or some pricey scone in the muse­um cafe.

At any rate, the app (Mac-Android) is now avail­able for vis­i­tors to take for a spin in 22 dif­fer­ent muse­ums and gal­leries in the UK, US, and Europe, with the promise of more to come.

Those whose knowl­edge of art his­to­ry is vast are like­ly to be under­whelmed, but it could be a way for those vis­it­ing with kids and teens to keep every­one engaged for the dura­tion. As one enthu­si­as­tic user wrote:

As a child­hood Poke­mon fan and avid art fan, this is a dream come true. This is like a Pokedex for art lol. If you ever watched the ani­me, Ash Ketchum would scan a Poke­mon with his Pokedex and get the details of its name, type, habits, etc. This app does that but instead of scan­ning mon­sters, it scans and ana­lyzes art work then gives you the load (sic) down about it.

Those with Inter­net pri­va­cy con­cerns may choose to heed, instead, the user who wrote:

Be aware, they want to gath­er as a “side effect” your pri­vate art col­lec­tion. I just want­ed to try it out with some of my art pieces (Gün­ther Förg, Richter, etc) but it does­n’t work if you don’t give them your loca­tion data. Be care­ful!

 

Muse­ums and Gal­leries Whose Images/Art Appear in Smar­ti­fy as of Jan­u­ary 2018

USA:

J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um

Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art (LACMA)

Lagu­na Art Muse­um

Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy

Freer | Sack­ler Gal­leri­es­The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Met Clois­ters

 

UK:

The Bowes Muse­um

Mid­dles­brough Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art

Ben Uri Gallery

The Wal­lace Col­lec­tion

Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts

Nation­al Gallery

Sculp­ture in the City

 

Europe:

Rijksmu­se­um

Rijksmu­se­um Twen­the

Lit­tle Beaux-Arts

Museo Cor­rer

Museo San Dona­to (MPSArt)

The State Her­mitage Muse­um

The Pushkin Muse­um of Fine Arts

 

Down­load Smar­ti­fy for Mac or Android.

via Dezeen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s Free App Ana­lyzes Your Self­ie and Then Finds Your Dop­pel­ganger in Muse­um Por­traits

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

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Google’s Free App Analyzes Your Selfie and Then Finds Your Doppelganger in Museum Portraits

in Art, Google, Museums, Photography, Technology, Web/Tech | January 12th, 2018

Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to vir­tu­al­ly explore the his­to­ry, back sto­ries, and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of art­works from over a thou­sand muse­ums gen­er­ates nowhere near the excite­ment as a fea­ture allow­ing users to upload self­ies in hopes of locat­ing an Insta­gram-wor­thy dop­pel­gänger some­where in this vast dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.

On the oth­er hand, if this low-brow inno­va­tion leads great hordes of mil­len­ni­als and iGen-ers to cross the thresh­olds of muse­ums in over 70 coun­tries, who are we to crit­i­cize?

So what if their pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion is snap­ping anoth­er self­ie with their Flem­ish Renais­sance twin? As long as one or two devel­op a pas­sion for art, or a par­tic­u­lar muse­um, artist, or peri­od, we’re good.

Alas, some dis­grun­tled users (prob­a­bly Gen X‑ers and Baby Boomers) are giv­ing the Google Arts & Cul­ture app (iPhone-Android) one-star reviews, based on their inabil­i­ty to find the only fea­ture for which they down­loaded it.

Allow us to walk you through.

After installing the app (iPhone-Android) on your phone or tablet, scroll down the home­page to the ques­tion “Is your por­trait in a muse­um?”

The sam­pling of art­works fram­ing this ques­tion sug­gest that the answer may be yes, regard­less of your race, though one need not be a Gueril­la Girl to won­der if Cau­casian users are draw­ing their match­es from a far larg­er pool than users of col­or…

Click “get start­ed.” (You’ll have to allow the app to access your device’s cam­era.)

Take a self­ie. (I sup­pose you could hedge your bets by switch­ing the cam­era to front-fac­ing ori­en­ta­tion and aim­ing it at a pleas­ing pre-exist­ing head­shot.)

The app will imme­di­ate­ly ana­lyze the self­ie, and with­in sec­onds, boom! Say hel­lo to your five clos­est match­es.

In the name of sci­ence, I sub­ject­ed myself to this process, grin­ning as if I was sit­ting for my fourth grade school pic­ture. I and received the fol­low­ing results, none of them high­er than 47%:

Vic­to­rio C. Edades’ Moth­er and Daugh­ter (flat­ter­ing­ly, I was pegged as the daugh­ter, though at 52, the resem­blance to the moth­er is a far truer match.)

Gus­tave Courbet’s Jo, la Belle Irlandaise (Say what? She’s got long red hair and skin like Snow White!)

Hen­ry Inman’s por­trait of Pres­i­dent Mar­tin Van Buren’s daugh­ter-in-law and defac­to White House host­ess, Angel­i­ca Sin­gle­ton Van Buren (Well, she looks ….con­ge­nial. I do enjoy par­ties…)

 and Sir Antho­ny van Dyck’s post-mortem paint­ing of Vene­tia, Lady Dig­by, on her Deathbed (Um…)

Hop­ing that a dif­fer­ent pose might yield a high­er match I chan­neled artist Nina Katchadouri­an, and adopt­ed a more painter­ly pose, unsmil­ing, head cocked, one hand lyri­cal­ly rest­ing on my breast­bone… for good mea­sure, I moved away from the win­dow. This time I got:

Joseph Stella’s Boy with a Bag­pipe (Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea with regard to my self-image?)

Cipri­ano Efsio Oppo Por­trait of Isabel­la (See above.)

Adolph Tidemand’s Por­trait of Guro Sil­vers­dat­ter Tra­ven­dal (Is this uni­verse telling me it’s Babush­ka Time?)

Johannes Chris­tiann Janson’s A Woman Cut­ting Bread (aka Renounce All Van­i­ty Time?)

and Anders Zorn’s Madon­na (This is where the mean cheer­leader leaps out of the bath­room stall and calls me the horse from Guer­ni­ca, right?)

Mer­ci­ful­ly, none of these results topped the 50% mark, nor did any of the exper­i­ments I con­duct­ed using self­ies of my teenage son (whose 4th clos­est match had a long white beard).

Per­haps there are still a few bugs to work out?

If you’re tempt­ed to give Google Arts and Culture’s exper­i­men­tal por­trait fea­ture a go, please let us know how it worked out by post­ing a com­ment below. Maybe we’re twins, I mean, triplets!

If such folderol is beneath you, please avail your­self of the app’s orig­i­nal fea­tures:

  • Zoom Views — Expe­ri­ence every detail of the world’s great­est trea­sures
  • Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty — Grab your Google Card­board view­er and immerse your­self in arts and cul­ture
  • Browse by time and col­or — Explore art­works by fil­ter­ing them by col­or or time peri­od
  • Vir­tu­al tours — Step inside the most famous muse­ums in the world and vis­it icon­ic land­marks
  • Per­son­al col­lec­tion — Save your favorite art­works and share your col­lec­tions with friends
  • Near­by — Find muse­ums and cul­tur­al events around you
  • Exhibits — Take guid­ed tours curat­ed by experts
  • Dai­ly digest — Learn some­thing new every time you open the app
  • Art Rec­og­niz­er — Learn more about art­works at select muse­ums by point­ing your device cam­era at them, even when offline
  • Noti­fi­ca­tions — sub­scribe to receive updates on the top arts & cul­ture sto­ries

Down­load Google Arts and Cul­ture or update to Ver­sion 6.0.17 here (for Mac) or here (for Android).

Note: We’re get­ting reports that the app does­n’t seem to be avail­able in every geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion. If it’s not avail­able where you live, we apol­o­gize in advance.

via Good House­keep­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde

in Art, Film | January 11th, 2018

To com­mem­o­rate the cen­ten­ni­al of Russia’s Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion (it seems like only yes­ter­day, com­rade!) Taschen has yet again deliv­ered an impres­sive tome of a book, enti­tled Film Posters of the Russ­ian Avant-Garde. Col­lec­tor Susan Pack has put togeth­er this selec­tion of 250 posters by 27 artists for films both well known and lost to his­to­ry.

The book first came out in 1995, but this new edi­tion is small­er and mul­ti­lin­gual, like many of their new releas­es.

The style still impress­es and influ­ences today, with its com­bi­na­tion of pho­to-real­ist faces and the jagged ener­gy of con­struc­tivism.

Many of the artists nev­er saw the films they were adver­tis­ing, but plain­ly not a bad thing here. Artists like Alek­san­dr Rod­chenko (who was also a design­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er) and the Sten­berg Broth­ers (sculp­tors and set design­ers) mixed pho­tos with lith­o­graphs, incor­po­rat­ed the film’s cred­its into the actu­al art, and wor­ried not about sell­ing the sto­ry beyond a basic excite­ment lev­el. This was art designed to get peo­ple in the door, regard­less of the film. And, if you think about it, it’s art that could not exist in this cur­rent era. Who would com­mis­sion a film poster blind­ly? Nobody, my friend.

Still, it was in no way ide­al for the artists. They often had less than a day to fin­ish some­thing, and the print­ing press­es were pre-rev­o­lu­tion vin­tage and in var­i­ous stages of repair. And very few, we can assume, thought their posters would be saved and col­lect­ed. Pack’s col­lec­tion often con­tains the only sur­viv­ing copies of a cer­tain work.

Stal­in stopped all this once he took pow­er and insist­ed that only social­ist real­ism be depict­ed in art. This style has its own col­lec­tors, for sure, but there’s always a tinge of kitsch to it all, because it reveals the lie that was the Stal­in era. Where­as the dynamism of these ear­ly posters still main­tain their aes­thet­ic hold, spring­ing from a time where hope, excite­ment, and rev­o­lu­tion were puls­ing through the coun­try and its pop­u­lace.

via Vice/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

Strik­ing French, Russ­ian & Pol­ish Posters for the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

Down­load 144 Beau­ti­ful Books of Russ­ian Futur­ism: Mayakovsky, Male­vich, Khleb­nikov & More (1910–30)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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

in Art | January 10th, 2018

The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence does­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly need an intro­duc­tion, see­ing that it’s one of the most wide­ly-vis­it­ed muse­ums in Italy, the home of great artis­tic works from the Renais­sance. If you pay the Uffizi a vis­it, you can see Bot­ti­cel­li’s The Birth of Venus, Dür­er’s Ado­ra­tion of the Magi, Car­avag­gio’s Bac­chus, Michelan­gelo’s The Holy Fam­i­ly, and Rem­brandt’s Self-Por­trait as a Young Man. Or you could do the same by dial­ing up the Uffiz­i’s Vir­tu­al Tour, embed­ded above, or avail­able here. It’s essen­tial­ly a Google Street View tour of the entire muse­um. It’s admit­ted­ly a lit­tle tedious. But if you have a lot of time and a handy floor plan, you can still immerse your­self in a col­lec­tion that’s been enchant­i­ng vis­i­tors since the 18th cen­tu­ry.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

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Watch Gyorgy Ligeti’s Electronic Masterpiece Artikulation Get Brought to Life by Rainer Wehinger’s Brilliant Visual Score

in Art, Music | January 9th, 2018

Even if you don’t know the name Györ­gy Ligeti, you prob­a­bly already asso­ciate his music with a set of mes­mer­iz­ing visions. The work of that Hun­gar­i­an com­pos­er of 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal music appealed might­i­ly to Stan­ley Kubrick, so much so that he used four of Ligeti’s pieces to score 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of them, 1962’s Aven­tures, plays over the final scenes in an elec­tron­i­cal­ly altered form, which drew a law­suit from the com­pos­er who’d been unaware of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion. But he did­n’t do it out of purism: though he wrote, over his long career, almost entire­ly for tra­di­tion­al instru­ments, he’d made a cou­ple for­ays into elec­tron­ic music him­self a decade ear­li­er.

Ligeti fled Hun­gary for Vien­na in 1956, soon after­ward mak­ing his way to Cologne, where he met the elec­tron­i­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive likes of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen and Got­tfried Michael Koenig and worked in West Ger­man Radio’s Stu­dio for Elec­tron­ic Music.

There he pro­duced 1957’s Glis­san­di and 1958’s Artiku­la­tion, the lat­ter of which lasts just under four min­utes, but, in the words of The Guardian’s Tom Ser­vice, “packs a lot of dra­ma in its diminu­tive elec­tron­ic frame.” Ligeti him­self “imag­ined the sounds of Artiku­la­tion con­jur­ing up images and ideas of labyrinths, texts, dia­logues, insects, cat­a­stro­phes, trans­for­ma­tions, dis­ap­pear­ances,” which you can see visu­al­ized in shape and col­or in the “lis­ten­ing score” in the video above.

Cre­at­ed in 1970 by graph­ic design­er Rain­er Wehinger of the State Uni­ver­si­ty of Music and Per­form­ing Arts Stuttgart, and approved by Ligeti him­self, the score’s “visu­als are beau­ti­ful to watch in tan­dem with Ligeti’s music; there’s an espe­cial­ly arrest­ing son­ic and visu­al pile-up, about 3 mins 15 secs into the piece. This isn’t elec­tron­ic music as post­war utopia, a la Stock­hausen, it’s elec­tron­ics as human, humor­ous dra­ma,” writes Ser­vice. Have a watch and a lis­ten, or a cou­ple of them, and you’ll get a feel for how Wehinger’s visu­al choic­es reflect the nature of Ligeti’s sounds. Just as 2001 still launch­es sci-fi buffs into an expe­ri­ence like noth­ing else in the genre, those sounds will still strike a fair few self-described elec­tron­ic music fans of the 21st cen­tu­ry as strange and new — espe­cial­ly when they can see them at the same time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch What Hap­pens When 100 Metronomes Per­form Györ­gy Ligeti’s Con­tro­ver­sial Poème Sym­phonique

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

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.

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