Salvador Dalí Figurines Let You Bring the Artist’s Surreal Paintings Into Your Home

in Art | April 20th, 2017

Whether at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, a dorm-room wall, or any­where in between, we’ve all seen Sal­vador Dalí’s 1931 can­vas The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, and who among us would­n’t want to own one of the “melt­ing watch­es” it famous­ly depicts? Alas, tech­nol­o­gy has­n’t quite caught up to that flam­boy­ant Span­ish sur­re­al­ist’s vivid imag­i­na­tion: though clocks now come as flat as you like, no artis­ti­cal­ly mind­ed entre­pre­neur has yet put such a Camem­ber­tish­ly mal­leable one into pro­duc­tion. But that does­n’t mean you can’t sur­round your­self with the oth­er stuff of Dalí’s paint­ings, thanks to this set of col­lec­table fig­urines.

Just like the Hierony­mus Bosch fig­urines we fea­tured last month, these come from the UK man­u­fac­tur­er Para­s­tone, and you can browse the selec­tion on their Dalí page on Ama­zon. At the top of the post we have one of the tigers leap­ing from the mouth of a fish orig­i­nal­ly paint­ed in 1944’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pome­gran­ate a Sec­ond Before Awak­en­ing (anoth­er dorm-room favorite, inci­den­tal­ly). The folks at Para­s­tone describe it as “a Freudi­an image based on a dream from Gala, Dalí’s wife.” Their fig­urine drawn from the pre­vi­ous year’s Geopoliti­cus Child Watch­ing the Birth of the New Man, how­ev­er, bears a mes­sage: “The new human must free itself from its oppres­sive entwine­ment with the past.”

Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to add not just a touch of Dalí to your home, but a touch of Dalí depict­ing Dalí. In that case you might con­sid­er Para­s­tone’s three-dimen­sion­al ver­sion of his 1941 Soft Self-Por­trait with Grilled Bacon. Salvador-Dali.org describes the image as “a spec­tre full of irony, where an amor­phous, soft face appears, sup­port­ed by crutch­es” — the face of Dalí him­self — “with a pedestal that bears the inscrip­tion of the title of the work and, above, a slice of fried bacon, a sym­bol of organ­ic mat­ter and of the every­day nature of his break­fasts in New York’s Saint Reg­is Hotel.” Not only does the fig­urine thus fea­ture a vogue meat of the ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry, it ren­ders it in a man­ner that per­haps even Dalí, also a not­ed cook­book author, would con­sid­er good enough to eat. See the full fig­urine col­lec­tion here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

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

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Children’s Book Whom Should I Be?: A Classic from the “Golden Age” in Soviet Children’s Literature

in Art, Books, History, K-12 | April 18th, 2017

In the first decade or so of the Sovi­et Union’s exis­tence, “avant-garde exper­i­menters emerged from obscu­ri­ty to ben­e­fit from actu­al state spon­sor­ship,” writes Har­vard pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture Ains­ley Morse. Their  “aes­thet­ic rad­i­cal­ism jibed nice­ly with polit­i­cal tur­moil.” Among these artists were Futur­ists and For­mal­ists, poets, painters, actors, direc­tors, and many who fit into all of these cat­e­gories. Most famous among them—the rak­ish roman­tic poet, writer, artist, actor, play­wright, and film­mak­er Vladimir Mayakovsky—had already achieved a great deal of noto­ri­ety by 1917. After the Rev­o­lu­tion, he threw him­self, “whole­heart­ed­ly” into cre­at­ing play­ful, opti­mistic agit­prop for the Par­ty and “became a foghorn for social­ism.”

At least at first. “In hind­sight,” Morse laments, it’s hard to see the careers of these ear­ly Sovi­et artists “with­out winc­ing: all of these artists and writ­ers get­ting cozy with the state machine that would short­ly bring about their men­tal and phys­i­cal destruc­tion: impris­on­ment, exile, star­va­tion, and sui­cide.” Sad­ly, the last of these was to be Mayakovsky’s fate; he killed him­self in 1930, as Stalin’s para­noid total­i­tar­i­an­ism began to gain strength. Yet through­out the 1920s, Mayakovsky was “dri­ven by ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ment,” as well as “finan­cial exi­gency,” writes Robert Bird at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s “Adven­tures in the Sovi­et Imag­i­nary.” The wild­ly imag­i­na­tive and ide­al­is­tic poet “trans­formed the pop­u­lar media land­scape of Rus­sia” under Lenin.

Though he was harsh­ly crit­i­cized by oth­er artists for his work as a pro­pa­gan­dist, “under his pen Russ­ian poet­ry began to speak with a more flex­i­ble and expres­sive (even anar­chic) play of sound and rhythm.” Maykovsky applied his tal­ents not only to posters and poet­ry for adults, but to works for chil­dren as well. “The ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union were a gold­en age for children’s lit­er­a­ture,” notes the New York Review of Books in their descrip­tion of The Fire Horse, an ear­ly exam­ple of Sovi­et ped­a­gogy from Mayakovsky and fel­low poets Osip Man­del­stam and Dani­il Kharms. The pages you see here come from the first edi­tion of anoth­er clas­sic Mayakovsky children’s work—a long poem called Whom Shall I Be?, first pub­lished, with illus­tra­tions by Nis­son Shifrin, in 1932, two years after the author’s death.

In these vers­es, Mayakovsky exhorts his read­ers to choose their own path, “cre­ate their own iden­ti­ties,” even as the book chan­nels their desires “into spe­cif­ic exist­ing roles” pre­de­ter­mined by a seem­ing­ly very lim­it­ed num­ber of pro­fes­sion­al choic­es (all for men). Nev­er­the­less, in final lines of Whom Shall I Be? Mayakovsky writes, “All jobs are fine for you: / Choose / for your own taste!” The book illus­trates what Ruxi Zhang calls the “inef­fec­tive­ness of Sovi­et ped­a­gogy” in its ear­li­est stages. Lenin and his even more iron-fist­ed suc­ces­sor desired a “gen­er­a­tion of faith­ful work­ers.” Instead, children’s books like Mayakovsky’s “over­played Sovi­et fan­ta­sy,” often advo­cat­ing for “free­dom that fun­da­men­tal­ly coun­tered Sovi­et expec­ta­tions for chil­dren to fol­low direc­tions from the regime with­out ques­tion­ing or inter­pret­ing them.”

In Mayakovsky’s ear­li­er children’s sto­ry, The Fire Horse, sev­er­al crafts­men get togeth­er to make a beau­ti­ful toy horse—which can­not be bought at the store—for a young boy who dreams of being a cav­al­ry­man. The book, writes Morse, is “trans­par­ent­ly didac­tic,” explain­ing “in detail how the horse is made, and at the cost of whose labor.” Nonethe­less, its sto­ry sounds less like an exem­plar from the state’s idea of a worker’s par­adise and more like a vignette from anar­chist, aris­to­crat, and nat­u­ral­ist Peter Kropotkin’s soci­ety of “mutu­al aid.” It’s only nat­ur­al that Mayakovsky and his com­rades’ children’s books would reflect their styl­is­tic dar­ing, indi­vid­u­al­ism, and wit. “It wasn’t much of a leap” for Futur­ist artists whose “main­stay” had been artist’s books with “inter­de­pen­dent text and illus­tra­tions.” Even­tu­al­ly, how­ev­er, avant-garde artists like Mayakovsky were purged or “tamed” by the new regime.

Bird demon­strates this with the pages below from a 1947 edi­tion of Whom Should I Be? These cor­re­spond to the pages above from 1932, show­ing an engi­neer. In addi­tion to the replac­ing of an enthu­si­as­tic adult work­er with an obe­di­ent, duti­ful child, “the abstract depic­tions of con­struc­tivist build­ings are replaced by real­is­tic ren­der­ings of neo-clas­si­cal edi­fices.” In 1932, Social­ist Real­ism had only just become the offi­cial style of the Sovi­et Union. By 1947, its absolute author­i­ty was most­ly unques­tion­able. Browse (and read, if you read Russ­ian) all of Mayakovsky’s Whom Should I Be? at the Inter­net Archive, or at the top of this post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Russ­ian Futur­ist Vladimir Mayakovsky Read His Strange & Vis­cer­al Poet­ry

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

Watch Russ­ian Futur­ist Vladimir Mayakovsky Star in His Only Sur­viv­ing Film, The Lady and the Hooli­gan (1918)

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

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Behold the Masterpiece by Japan’s Last Great Woodblock Artist: View Online Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

in Art | April 17th, 2017

Uruguayan-French poet Jules Laforgue, one of the young T.S. Eliot’s favorites, pub­lished his major work, The Imi­ta­tion of Our Lady the Moon, in 1886, two years before his untime­ly death at 27 from tuber­cu­lo­sis. It is “a book of poems,” notes Wuther­ing Expec­ta­tions, “about clowns who live on the moon… wear black silk skull­caps and use dan­de­lions as bou­tonieres.” The Pier­rots in his poems, Laforgue once wrote in a let­ter, “seem to me to have arrived at true wis­dom” as they con­tem­plate them­selves and their con­flicts in the light of the moon’s many faces.

I can­not help but think of Laforgue when I think of anoth­er artist who, around the same time, began on the oth­er side of the world what is often con­sid­ered the great­est work of his career. The artist, Japan­ese print­mak­er Tsukio­ka Yoshi­toshi, also stood astride an old world and a rapid­ly mod­ern­iz­ing new one. And his visu­al rumi­na­tions, though lack­ing Laforgue’s arch com­e­dy, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trate the same kind of dreamy con­tem­pla­tion, lone­li­ness, melan­choly, and weary res­ig­na­tion. The moon, as Laforgue wrote—a “Cat’s‑eye of bright / Redeem­ing light”—both com­forts and taunts us: “It comes with the force of a body blow / That the Moon is a place one can­not go.”

Yoshitoshi’s prints fea­ture a fix­a­tion on the moon’s mys­ter­ies, and a the­atri­cal device to aid in the con­tem­pla­tion of its mean­ings: char­ac­ters from Chi­nese and Japan­ese folk­lore and heroes from nov­els and plays, all of them staged just after key moments in their sto­ries, in sta­t­ic pos­tures and in silent dia­logue with the night. Heav­i­ly invest­ed with lit­er­ary allu­sions and deeply laden with sym­bol­ism, the 100 prints, writes the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, “con­jure a refined poet­ry to give a new twist to tra­di­tion­al sub­jects.”

The por­traits, most­ly soli­tary, wist­ful, and brood­ing, “pen­e­trat­ed deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of his sub­jects” than pre­vi­ous work in Yoshi­toshi’s Ukiyo‑e style, one soon to be altered per­ma­nent­ly by West­ern influ­ences flood­ing in between the Edo and Mei­ji peri­ods. Yoshi­toshi both incor­po­rat­ed and resist­ed this influ­ence, using fig­ures from Kabu­ki and Noh the­ater to rep­re­sent tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese arts, yet intro­duc­ing tech­niques “nev­er seen before in Japan­ese wood­block prints,” writes J. Noel Chi­ap­pa, break­ing con­ven­tion by “show[ing] peo­ple freely, from all angles,” rather than only in three-quar­ter view, and by using increased real­ism and West­ern per­spec­tives.

Yoshi­toshi began pub­lish­ing these prints in 1885, and they proved huge­ly pop­u­lar. Peo­ple lined up for new addi­tions to the series, which ran until 1892, when the artist died after a long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness. In these last years, he pro­duced his great­est work, which also includes a kabu­ki-style series based on Japan­ese and Chi­nese ghost sto­ries, New Forms of 36 Ghost Sto­ries. “In a Japan that was turn­ing away from its own past,” Chi­ap­pa writes, Yoshi­toshi, “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly man­aged to push the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood­block print to a new lev­el, before it effec­tive­ly died with him.

His tumul­tuous career, after very suc­cess­ful begin­nings, had fall­en into dis­re­pair and he had been pub­lish­ing illus­tra­tions for sen­sa­tion­al­ist news­pa­pers, an erot­ic por­trait series of famous cour­te­sans, and macabre prints of vio­lence and cru­el­ty. These pre­oc­cu­pa­tions become com­plete­ly styl­ized and psy­chol­o­gized in his final works, espe­cial­ly in One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon, an extra­or­di­nary series of prints. View them all, with short descrip­tions of each sub­ject, here, or at the Ronin Gallery, who pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the size and con­di­tion of each of its prints and allow view­ers to zoom in on every detail. The images have also been pub­lishished in a 2003 book, One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon: Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Yoshi­toshi.

While it cer­tain­ly helps to under­stand the lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al con­text of each print in the series, it is not nec­es­sary for an appre­ci­a­tion of their exquis­ite visu­al poet­ry. Per­haps the artist’s memo­r­i­al poem after his death at age 53 pro­vides us with a mas­ter key for view­ing his One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon.

hold­ing back the night
with increas­ing bril­liance
the sum­mer moon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

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

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Patti Smith, Umberto Eco & Richard Ford Give Advice to Young Artists in a Rollicking Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Creativity, Life | April 17th, 2017


Note: There are a cou­ple brief not-safe-for-work moments in this film.

Patron­iz­ing, pon­der­ous, well-mean­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, inco­her­ent… young artists are sub­ject­ed to a lot of unso­licit­ed advice, and not just from their par­ents.

But what hap­pens when a young artist active­ly seeks it out?

Daniel­la Shuh­man turned to the Louisiana Channel’s series, “Advice to the Young,” feast­ing on the col­lect­ed wis­dom of such heavy hit­ters as per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramovic, author Umber­to Eco, artist Ola­fur Elias­son, and the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed God­moth­er of Punk, Pat­ti Smith in prepa­ra­tion for her final project at Jerusalem’s Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design.

Her resul­tant short film, above, appears to be the work of a deliri­ous­ly aggro inner child, one with a keen bull­shit meter and an anar­chic sense of humor.

“The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun,” coun­sels nov­el­ist Jonathan Franzen—a man who alleged­ly wrote The Cor­rec­tions while wear­ing earplugs, ear­muffs, and a blind­fold, then bust­ed on Oprah Win­frey when she chose it for for her Book Club.

Cue great spurts of ani­mat­ed arte­r­i­al blood.

At least Franzen both­ers to sound encour­ag­ing… much more so than Abramovic, or fel­low nov­el­ist Richard “Talk Your­self Out of It If You Pos­si­bly Can Because You’re Prob­a­bly Not Going to Be Very Good At It” Ford.

(Par­ents strug­gling to come up with tuition may be relieved to learn that Ford’s on leave from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty this term.)

Mean­while, Shuh­man breaks for NSFW ter­ri­to­ry to visu­al­ize artist Eliasson’s advice, a move that would sure­ly please anoth­er Louisiana Chan­nel per­son­al­i­ty, car­toon­ist David Shrigley. Per­haps it can be his con­so­la­tion prize for not mak­ing the cut.

The pul­sat­ing repro­duc­tive organs aren’t entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. Lis­ten to Eliasson’s full inter­view to hear him equate mak­ing art with mak­ing the world. Now that’s the sort of advice that will put a young artist to work!

Some of the more gen­er­ous advice:

Build a good name, keep your name clean, don’t make com­pro­mis­es, don’t wor­ry about mak­ing a bunch of mon­ey or being suc­cess­ful.

Don’t be embar­rassed about what excites you.

If you are doing some­thing weird that every­body hates, that might be some­thing worth look­ing into and worth inves­ti­gat­ing.

Make your own way in the world. Wrap up warm. Eat prop­er­ly, sen­si­bly. Don’t smoke and phone your mom.

We love imag­in­ing the sort of unfet­tered advice Shuh­man will one day be in a posi­tion to dis­pense.

You can see some of her post grad­u­a­tion illus­tra­tion work on her Flickr page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

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

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“Primitive Potter” Travels into the Backcountry for 10 Days with Only a Knife & Buckskin and Makes Anasazi Pottery

in Art | April 13th, 2017

From film­mak­er Steve Olpin comes a short doc­u­men­tary (a “doc­u­men­tary poem”) called Earth and Fire, about artist and prim­i­tive pot­ter Kel­ly Magle­by. The film fol­lows Kel­ly as she trav­els into “the back­coun­try of South­ern Utah with a knife and a buck­skin for 10 days to try to learn about Anasazi pot­tery by doing it the way the Anasazi did it.” On her web­site, Kel­ly writes “My desire to make Anasazi pot­tery start­ed with my inter­est in prim­i­tive and sur­vival skills. I love the fact that you can go into the wild with noth­ing and get all you need to sur­vive and even flour­ish from the earth. The idea that you can go out and dig up some ‘dirt’, shape it, paint it and fire it all using only mate­ri­als found in nature is amaz­ing to me.” On her site, she details her method for mak­ing the pot­tery. Find more info about the Anasazi and their pot­tery here and here.

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!

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Artificial Neural Network Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting on LSD

in Art | April 12th, 2017

Any­one who watched Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing from 1983 to 1994 knows the show had a bit of a sur­re­al qual­i­ty to it. With that soft voice, reduced often to a whis­per, Ross slapped some paint onto the can­vas, smeared it around, and even­tu­al­ly some­thing mag­i­cal appeared–a moun­tain, a stream, a for­est, what­ev­er.  Nowa­days, the show has expe­ri­enced some­thing of a renais­sance and achieved cult sta­tus. 30 sea­sons of The Joy of Paint­ing live on YouTube (legit­i­mate­ly, it seems), and they’ve become fod­der for cre­ative projects that take Bob Ross to new sur­re­al heights. Exhib­it 1, “Deeply Arti­fi­cial Trees,” appears above.

This art­work rep­re­sents what it would be like for an AI to watch Bob Ross on LSD (once some­one invents dig­i­tal drugs). It shows some of the unrea­son­able effec­tive­ness and strange inner work­ings of deep learn­ing sys­tems. The unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of the human voice are learned and gen­er­at­ed as well as hal­lu­ci­na­tions of a sys­tem try­ing to find images which are not there.

For a lit­tle on the sci­ence of arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works, see this relat­ed item in our archive: What Hap­pens When Blade Run­ner & A Scan­ner Dark­ly Get Remade with an Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work.

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:

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing Free Online: The First 27 Sea­sons

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Ren­dered in the Style of Picas­so; Blade Run­ner in the Style of Van Gogh

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course

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Graphic Designer Redesigns a Movie Poster Every Day, for One Year: Scarface, Mulholland Dr., The Graduate, Vertigo, The Life Aquatic and 360 More

in Art, Film | April 5th, 2017

No scene in a movie counts for as much as its open­ing, but even before its first frame pass­es through the pro­jec­tor, its poster has already made the real first impres­sion. This remains basi­cal­ly as true in the era of dig­i­tal cin­e­ma as it was when film actu­al­ly passed through pro­jec­tors. But while film­mak­ers only occa­sion­al­ly go back and retool their past works — not that the expe­ri­ence of, say, George Lucas and the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy vouch­es for the prac­tice — film posters can eas­i­ly under­go any num­ber of revi­sions through the decades. What cinephile graph­ic design­er would­n’t want to take a shot at cre­at­ing a new face for a favorite movie?

Last year, the Syd­ney-based design­er Peter Majarich took shots at 365 of them, cre­at­ing one new poster for an exist­ing movie each and every day. “The feat is a huge under­tak­ing,” writes the Cre­ators Pro­jec­t’s Diana Shi, “but Majarich’s final prod­ucts nev­er give the impres­sion of last-minute cre­ations; instead, they show off an acute atten­tion to detail and a bold, dig­i­tal-influ­enced style. The inven­tive­ness of each poster reveals how much of a cinephile Majarich real­ly is.” His selec­tions include “a pool of zeit­geist direc­tors, Oscar win­ners, and art-house films with cult fol­low­ings.

A ren­der­ing of De Palma’s Scar­face is a sub­tle assem­bly of white pow­der to stark­ly draw out Al Pacino’s pro­file. While what looks like a body of com­plex cod­ing lan­guage forms the blank-star­ing face of Ali­cia Vikander’s lead in Ex Machi­na.” You can browse all these at A Movie Poster a Day, see them dis­played in sequence in the video above, and buy them on his design com­pa­ny’s site.

Their simul­ta­ne­ous aes­thet­ic and cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences will please design- and film-lovers alike (groups hard­ly sep­a­rate on the Venn dia­gram any­way), and while many con­sti­tute good visu­al gags, the best pro­vide new per­spec­tives on even much-watched favorite movies.

For Wes Ander­son­’s The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, Majarich depicts the emo­tion­al sub­mer­sion of its sea­far­ing pro­tag­o­nist; for Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go he works only with the title itself imbu­ing the type with the com­bi­na­tion of shock and dread on dis­play in the film; for David Lynch’s Mul­hol­land Dri­ve he uses a pink-skied land­scape of the tit­u­lar Los Ange­les road lead­ing off, as Lynch’s work often does, to who knows where. After you’ve seen the first 286, you’ll come upon a selec­tion that will hard­ly sur­prise you: Gary Hus­twit’s Hel­veti­ca.

via Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­er Reimag­ines Icon­ic Movie Posters With Min­i­mal­ist Designs: Reser­voir Dogs, The Matrix & More

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

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

A Look Inside Mar­tin Scorsese’s Vin­tage Movie Poster Col­lec­tion

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The M.C. Escher Mirror Puzzle: Test Your Imagination & Concentration with an Artistic Brain Teaser

in Art, Games | March 31st, 2017

The art of M.C. Esch­er appar­ent­ly makes for some good puz­zles. Head over to Ama­zon and you’ll find a num­ber of ornate Esch­er works of art turned into tra­di­tion­al 1,000-piece puz­zles. They’ll keep you busy for hours on end. But will they chal­lenge you as much as the M.C. Esch­er Mir­ror Puz­zle fea­tured above? This puz­zle takes things to anoth­er lev­el. The direc­tions read like this: “Use the slant­ed mir­ror inside each cube to reflect the image on the side of an adja­cent cube. Once you place all nine cubes in the right pat­tern, a com­plete Esch­er image will appear.” Fin­ish the first puz­zle, and then start on the next one. There are five puz­zles in this set.

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:

M.C. Esch­er Cov­er Art for Great Books by Ita­lo Calvi­no, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

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