Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Painting Free Online: 403 Episodes Spanning 31 Seasons

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Life, Television | January 3rd, 2018

Whether your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion involves tak­ing up paint­ing, man­ag­ing stress, cul­ti­vat­ing a more pos­i­tive out­look, or build­ing a busi­ness empire, the late tele­vi­sion artist Bob Ross can help you stick it out.

Like Fred Rogers’ Mr Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, Ross’ long-run­ning PBS show, The Joy of Paint­ing, did not dis­ap­pear from view fol­low­ing its creator’s demise. For over twen­ty years, new fans have con­tin­ued to seek out the half-hour long instruc­tion­al videos, along with its mes­mer­iz­ing­ly mel­low, eas­i­ly spoofed host.

Now all 403 episodes have been made avail­able for free on Ross’ offi­cial Youtube chan­nel. That cov­ers all 31 sea­sons.

It’s said that 90% of the reg­u­lar view­ers tun­ing in to watch Ross crank out his sig­na­ture “wet-on-wet” land­scapes nev­er took up a brush, despite his belief that, with a bit of encour­age­ment, any­one can paint.

Per­haps they pre­ferred sad clowns or big-eyed chil­dren to scenic land­scapes of the sort that would not have looked out of place in a 1970’s motel.… Or per­haps Ross, him­self, was the big draw.

Like Mis­ter Rogers, Ross spoke soft­ly, using direct address to cre­ate an impres­sion of inti­ma­cy between him­self and the view­er. Twen­ty years in the mil­i­tary had soured him on barked-out, rigid instruc­tions. Instead, Ross reas­sured less expe­ri­enced painters that the 16th-cen­tu­ry ”Alla Pri­ma” tech­nique he brought to the mass­es could nev­er result in mis­takes, only “hap­py acci­dents.” He was patient and kind and he did­n’t take his own abil­i­ties too seri­ous­ly, though he seemed like he would cer­tain­ly have tak­en plea­sure in yours.

Ross’ Land of Make Believe was a char­ac­ter-free nat­ur­al world, in which many of the same ele­ments appear over and over.  Accord­ing to Five Thir­ty Eight cul­ture edi­tor Walt Hickey’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, trees reigned supreme. The real life land­scapes he observed as first sergeant of the U.S. Air Force Clin­ic at Eiel­son Air Force Base in Alas­ka became his life­long sub­ject, and by exten­sion, that of untold num­bers of home view­ers.

His devo­tees may be con­tent just see­ing “hap­py lit­tle trees” and “pret­ty lit­tle moun­tains” bloom on can­vas, but in an inter­view with NPR, Ross’ busi­ness part­ner, Annette Kowal­s­ki, sug­gests that he would not have been.

The gen­tle, for­est-and-cloud-lov­ing host was also an ambi­tious and high­ly focused busi­ness­man, who used TV as the medi­um for his suc­cess. Every folksy com­ment was rehearsed before film­ing and he stuck with the permed hair­do he loathed, rather than scrap­ping what had become a high­ly visu­al brand iden­ti­fi­er.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Watch all 31 sea­sons of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing here, or right here on this page. Offi­cial Bob Ross paint­ing kits are wide­ly avail­able online, or source your own using a cob­bled togeth­er sup­ply list.

Sea­son Three

Sea­son Four

Sea­son Five

Sea­son Six

We will con­tin­u­ing adding sea­sons to this list as they become avail­able.

Sea­son Sev­en

Sea­son Eight

Sea­son Nine

Sea­son Ten

Sea­son 11

Sea­son 12

Sea­son 13

Sea­son 14

Sea­son 15

Sea­son 16

Sea­son 17

Sea­son 18

Sea­son 19

Sea­son 20

Sea­son 21

Sea­son 22

Sea­son 23

Sea­son 24

Sea­son 25

Sea­son 26

Sea­son 27

Sea­son 28

Sea­son 29

Sea­son 30

Sea­son 31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing, Sea­sons 1–3, Free Online

Mr. Rogers Goes to Con­gress and Saves PBS: Heart­warm­ing Video from 1969

Stream 23 Free Doc­u­men­taries from PBS’ Award-Win­ning Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her res­o­lu­tion is to spend less time online, but you can still fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Invisible Cities Illustrated: Artist Illustrates Each and Every City in Italo Calvino’s Classic Novel

in Art, Books | December 28th, 2017

If you want to read a book about cities, you still can’t do much bet­ter than a slim, plot­less work of fic­tion by Ita­lo Calvi­no where­in the explor­er Mar­co Polo tells the emper­or Kublai Khan of what he’s seen in his trav­els across the world. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Ital­ian in 1972, Invis­i­ble Cities has inspired gen­er­a­tions of read­ers, hail­ing from all across the world them­selves, to think in entire­ly new ways not just about cities but about trav­el, place, per­cep­tion, real­i­ty, myth, and lit­er­a­ture itself. Though very much a work con­cerned with what’s seen only in the imag­i­na­tion, the book has also inspired artists to try their hand at ren­der­ing the 55 fic­ti­tious cities Polo describes with­in.

A few years ago we fea­tured “See­ing Calvi­no,” a joint effort by artists Matt Kish, Leighton Con­nor, Joe Kuth to illus­trate, among oth­er ele­ments of the Calvi­no canon, each and every one of Invis­i­ble Cities’ fan­tas­ti­cal, often impos­si­ble col­lec­tions of struc­tures, lives, and, ideas. More recent­ly, the Peru-based archi­tect and artist Kari­na Puente has, with her Invis­i­ble Cities Project, put her­self to work on a sim­i­lar endeav­or. Each of Puente’s intri­cate ren­der­ings takes about a week to pro­duce, and as she tells Arch­dai­ly, “they are not only drawn – I use dif­fer­ent types of paper and draw on each one before cut­ting them out with exac­to knives. All the draw­ings are com­posed of lay­ers of paper which are cut out and glued.”

At the top we have Puente’s city of Dorotea where, bear­ing in mind the rules of its infra­struc­tur­al divi­sion by gates, draw­bridges, and canals and those of the mar­riages between the trad­ing fam­i­lies that reside there, “you can then work from these facts until you learn every­thing you wish about the city in the past, present, and future.” In the mid­dle is Isaura, a city built on a deep sub­ter­ranean lake whose gods, “accord­ing to some peo­ple, live in the depths,” and to oth­ers live in the asso­ci­at­ed buck­ets, pump han­dles, wind­mill blades, pipes, and every oth­er built ele­ment of this “city that moves entire­ly upward.”

Just above you can see Zobei­de, laid out accord­ing to a series of dreams of “a woman run­ning at night through an unknown city,” pur­sued but nev­er found, altered to con­form to each dream until new arrivals “could not under­stand what drew these peo­ple to Zobei­de, this ugly city, this trap.” While at first Polo’s descrip­tions of the cities all across Khan’s empire may strike read­ers as com­plete­ly fan­tas­ti­cal, they’ll soon hear echoes of the places they live in in these metaphor­i­cal metrop­o­lis­es. And if they take a look at Puente’s illus­tra­tions as they read, they’ll see them as well.

Vis­it Puente’s Invis­i­ble Cities Project here.

via Arch­dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Invis­i­ble Cities Illus­trat­ed: Three Artists Paint Every City in Ita­lo Calvino’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Two Ita­lo Calvi­no Sto­ries: “The False Grand­moth­er” and “The Dis­tance from the Moon”

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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 ) |

Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes: Discover the Postmodern MTV Variety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Television Age (1985–87)

in Art, Television | December 27th, 2017

“In the future, every­one will be world-famous for 15 min­utes,” said Andy Warhol. Actu­al­ly, no, he didn’t. But Warhol sug­gest­ed to pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nat Finkel­stein that every­one want­ed to be famous, to which Finkel­stein added, “yeah, for 15 min­utes.” It’s a slight­ly dif­fer­ent mean­ing. (The idea first appeared in its well-known form in a 1968 pro­gram for a Warhol exhi­bi­tion in Swe­den.)

Is it true that every­one wants to be famous? It’s cer­tain­ly true that Andy Warhol want­ed to, and for much longer than 15 min­utes. Like the hard­est-work­ing YouTube celebri­ty today, he didn’t wait to be dis­cov­ered but set about mak­ing it hap­pen him­self.

But while he achieved pop art star­dom in the 60s, Warhol tru­ly longed to be on TV, a dream that took a lit­tle longer to mate­ri­al­ize. His first pro­gram, a New York pub­lic-access inter­view show, debuted in 1979, then a sec­ond ver­sion in 1980 (see Richard Berlin inter­view Frank Zap­pa on Andy Warhol’s T.V. in 1983). Over a peri­od of four years, he brought on a host of major celebri­ties, but attract­ed a nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed audi­ence.

In ’81, Warhol final­ly got a main­stream TV break when he “made his way to NBC,” notes Alexxa Got­thardt, “with a series of spots for Sat­ur­day Night Live…. Warhol’s for­ay into tele­vi­sion allowed him to become even more of a celebri­ty him­self.” His per­sis­tent efforts paid div­i­dends when he joined the nascent 1985 MTV line­up with one of its first non-music-video shows, Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes.

As you can see in the pro­mo at the top of the post, the show promised a “ride down­town” and a “ride to the wild side.” It did not dis­ap­point. A sort of post­mod­ern vari­ety show, the pro­gram “put every­body togeth­er,” explains Andy Warhol Muse­um cura­tor Ger­a­lyn Hux­ley, “The high and the low. The rich and the famous. The strug­gling artists and the ris­ing stars.” Just above, you can see Ian McK­ellen recite Shake­speare while garage rock­ers the Flesh­tones play some psy­che­del­ic grooves behind him.

Above, see Deb­bie Har­ry inter­view Court­ney Love, “a flam­boy­ant ris­ing star,” just come from the suc­cess of Sid and Nan­cy.  Fur­ther down, the Ramones bitch about the state of rock and roll in 1987, then play “Bon­zo Goes to Bit­burg,” a scathing response to Ronald Reagan’s dis­turb­ing vis­it to Ger­many on the 40th anniver­sary of V‑E Day. (The song con­tains the line, “You’re a politi­cian don’t become one of Hitler’s chil­dren.”) These are but a tiny sam­pling of the many hun­dreds of artists who traipsed through the sound­stage of Warhol’s show: dozens of peo­ple appeared in a sin­gle episode—as many as 30 guests in some of the lat­er shows.

Run­ning for two years, until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes intro­duced mil­lions of peo­ple to the artist in just the way he’d always want­ed. “More and more kids were watch­ing MTV,” says his pro­duc­er Vin­cent Fre­mont. “I don’t know if they knew that Andy was a famous artist, but to them he was cer­tain­ly a tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty.” And on TV, Warhol wrote in 1975, a per­son “has all the space any­one could ever want, right there in the tele­vi­sion box.” If you’re Andy Warhol, you also have all the celebri­ty guests any­one could ever want.

See a com­plete list of the five episodes that aired between 1985 and 1987—full of stars, ris­ing stars, and scores of fas­ci­nat­ing unknowns—at Warholstars.org.

via Art­sy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Andy Warhol’s Brief Moment of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure, Complete with Detachable Ear

in Art, Random | December 20th, 2017

If you liked Mr. Pota­to Head, you may love the Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, which raised $142,000 on Kick­starter this sum­mer and can now be pur­chased for $35 over at the Today is Art Day web site. Made of PVC and stand­ing 5 inch­es high, the action fig­ure comes with:

  • 2 remov­able ears (Van Gogh cut his left ear)
  • 1 ban­daged ear
  • 1 paint­brush
  • 5 mas­ter­pieces and 1 card­board easel
  • 10 fun facts about the artist on the box

Oth­er fig­ures includ­ed in the col­lec­tion include Fri­da Kahlo and soon Ver­meer, da Vin­ci, Magritte and Rem­brandt. Enjoy.

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:

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

Famous Philoso­phers Imag­ined as Action Fig­ures: Plun­der­ous Pla­to, Dan­ger­ous Descartes & More

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, How to Learn for Free | December 19th, 2017

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

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 ) |

The Not Yorker: A Collection of Rejected & Late Cover Submissions to The New Yorker

in Art, Magazines | December 18th, 2017

What’s hap­pened to the thou­sands of cov­er designs that have been sub­mit­ted to The New York­er? And then been reject­ed, either sum­mar­i­ly or with much con­sid­er­a­tion? Prob­a­bly most have fad­ed into obliv­ion. But at least some are now see­ing the light of day over at The Not York­er, a web site that col­lects “declined or late cov­er sub­mis­sions” to the sto­ried mag­a­zine. See a gallery of declined illus­tra­tions here.

The cre­ators of the new site encour­age illus­tra­tors to sub­mit their reject­ed cov­ers here. And lest there be any doubt, The Not York­er is not offi­cial­ly affil­i­at­ed with The New York­er.

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!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The New York­er’s “Com­ma Queen” Mer­ci­ful­ly Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Who/Whom, Lay/Lie, Less/Fewer & Beyond

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Will You Really Achieve Happiness If You Finally Win the Rat Race? Don’t Answer the Question Until You’ve Watched Steve Cutts’ New Animation

in Animation, Art, Economics, Life, Media | December 15th, 2017

Illus­tra­tor Steve Cutts sets his lat­est ani­ma­tion, “Hap­pi­ness,” in a teem­ing urban envi­ron­ment, with hun­dreds of near iden­ti­cal car­toon rats stand­ing in for human drudges in an unful­fill­ing, and not unfa­mil­iar race.

Packed sub­way cars, a bom­bard­ment of adver­tis­ing, soul-dead­en­ing office jobs, and Black Fri­day sales are just a few of the indig­ni­ties Cutts’ rodents are sub­ject­ed to, to the tune of Bizet’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.”

Ram­pant over-consumption—a major pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for this artist—offers illu­so­ry relief, and a great deal of fun for view­ers with the time to hit pause, to bet­ter savor the grim details.

The max­i­mal­ist frames read like a grat­i­fy­ing per­ver­sion of Richard Scarry’s relent­less­ly sun­ny Busy­town. As with Cutts’ 80s-throw­back Simpson’s couch gag: pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences and visu­al input whip by at sub­lim­i­nal warp speed. 

They may also serve as an anti­dote to the sort of mes­sag­ing we’re con­stant­ly on the receiv­ing end of, whether we live in city, coun­try or some­where in-between. Check out the scene as Cutts pans up from the sub­way plat­form, 52 sec­onds in:

The panty-clad female mod­el for Blah cologne’s fash­ion­ably black and white ad is ema­ci­at­ed near­ly to the point of death.

“You’re bet­ter than laces” flat­ters the lat­est (lace­less) shoe from a swoosh-bedecked footwear man­u­fac­tur­er, while a radi­a­tor-col­ored bev­er­age floats above the mot­to “Just drink it, morons.”

Krispo Flakes fight depres­sion with “the bits oth­er cere­als don’t want.”

Heav­en help us all, there’s even a poster for TRUMP The Musi­cal.

This freeze-frame scruti­ny could make an excel­lent activ­i­ty for any class where mid­dle and high school­ers are encour­aged to think crit­i­cal­ly about their role as con­sumers.

As Cutts, a one-time employ­ee of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, Iso­bar, who con­tributed to cam­paigns for such glob­al giants as Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, and Toy­ota, told Reverb Press in 2015:

These are things that affect us all on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el so nat­u­ral­ly they’re a main focus for a lot of my work. Human­i­ty has the pow­er to be great in so many ways and yet at the same time we are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed. I think it’s the con­flict between these two that fas­ci­nates me the most. As a race of beings we’ve made incred­i­ble achieve­ments in such a short space, but at the same time we seem so over­whelm­ing­ly intent on destroy­ing our­selves and every­thing around us. It would be very inter­est­ing to see where we’ll be in a hun­dred years. The term insan­i­ty is intrigu­ing – it’s almost like we’re encour­aged to act in a way that seems gen­uine­ly insane when you look at it objec­tive­ly, but it’s often accept­ed as nor­mal right now. I think we will have to evolve beyond our cur­rent think­ing and way of doing things if we want to sur­vive.

See more of Cutts’ ani­mat­ed work here. And while he doesn’t go out of his way to hype his online store, a gallery qual­i­ty print of The Rat Trap would make a fan­tas­tic gift from your cubi­cle mate’s Secret San­ta. (HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

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

in Art, History, Magazines | December 14th, 2017

Select­ing cer­tain fea­tures, sim­pli­fy­ing them, exag­ger­at­ing them, and using them to pro­vide a deep insight, at a glance, into the sub­ject as a whole: such is the art of the car­i­ca­tur­ist, one that Miguel Covar­ru­bias ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el in the ear­ly- to mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Those skills, com­bined with his knowl­edge as an art his­to­ri­an, also served him well when he drew “The Tree of Mod­ern Art.” This aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing dia­gram first appeared in Van­i­ty Fair in May of 1933, a time when many read­ers of such mag­a­zines would have felt a great curios­i­ty about how, exact­ly, all these new paint­ings and sculp­tures and such — many of which did­n’t seem to look much like the paint­ings and sculp­tures they knew at all — relat­ed to one anoth­er.

“Because it stops in 1940, the tree fails to account for abstract expres­sion­ism and oth­er post–World War II move­ments,” writes Vox’s Phil Edwards, in a piece that includes a ver­sion of the Covar­ru­bias’ 1940 “Tree of Mod­ern Art” revi­sion with click­able exam­ples of rel­e­vant art­work.

But “the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture alone reveals a sur­pris­ing­ly large amount about the way art has evolved,” includ­ing how it “becomes broad­er and more inclu­sive over time,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a “glob­al affair”; how “artis­tic schools have become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly diverse”; how “the canon evolved quick­ly”; and how “all art is inter­twined,” cre­at­ed as it has so long been by artists who “work togeth­er, bor­row from each oth­er, and grow in tan­dem.”

You can also find the “Tree of Mod­ern Art” at the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, a hold­ing that illus­trates, as it were, just how wide a swath of infor­ma­tion design the term “map” can encom­pass. “The date is esti­mat­ed based on the ver­so of the paper being a blue lined base map of the Nation­al Park Ser­vice dat­ed 12/28/39,” says the col­lec­tion’s site. “This draw­ing was found in the papers of B. Ash­bur­ton Tripp” — also a map­mak­er in the col­lec­tion — “and we assume that Covar­ru­bias and Tripp were friends (ver­i­fied by Trip­p’s descen­dants) and that the blue line base map was some­thing Tripp was work­ing on in his land­scape archi­tec­ture busi­ness.”

The leg­end describes the tree as hav­ing been “plant­ed 60 years ago,” a num­ber that has now passed 130. Many more leaves have grown off those branch­es of impres­sion­ism, expres­sion­ism, post-impres­sion­ism, sur­re­al­ism, cubism, and futur­ism in the years since Covar­ru­bias drew the tree, but for some­one to go back and aug­ment such a ful­ly-real­ized cre­ation would­n’t do at all — as with any work of art, mod­ern or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

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 ( 3 ) |

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