Rare Recordings of Burroughs, Bukowski, Ginsberg & More Now Available in a Digital Archive Created by the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

in Art, Internet Archive, Poetry | February 22nd, 2017

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Amer­i­cans can be quite igno­rant of the rich­ness of our coun­try’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Part of this igno­rance, I sus­pect, comes down to prej­u­dice. Inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can artists through­out his­to­ry have come from groups often demo­nized and mar­gin­al­ized by the wider soci­ety. The dom­i­nance of cor­po­rate com­merce also impov­er­ish­es the cul­tur­al land­scape. Poet­ry and exper­i­men­tal art don’t sell much, so some peo­ple think they have lit­tle val­ue.

Imag­ine if we were to invert these atti­tudes in pub­lic opin­ion: Amer­i­can poet­ry and art allow us to gain new per­spec­tives from peo­ple and parts of the coun­try we don’t know well; to enlarge and chal­lenge our reli­gious and polit­i­cal under­stand­ing; to expe­ri­ence a very dif­fer­ent kind of econ­o­my, built on aes­thet­ic inven­tion and free intel­lec­tu­al enter­prise rather than sup­ply, demand, and prof­it. Cre­ativ­i­ty and finance are not, of course, mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. But to con­sis­tent­ly favor one at the expense of the oth­er seems to me a great loss to every­one.

We find our­selves now in such a sit­u­a­tion, as pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, and the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing face severe cuts or pos­si­ble de-fund­ing.

Such a polit­i­cal move would dev­as­tate many of the insti­tu­tions that fos­ter and pre­serve the country’s art and cul­ture, and rel­e­gate the arts to the pri­vate sphere, where only sums of pri­vate mon­ey deter­mine whose voic­es get heard. We can, how­ev­er, be very appre­cia­tive of pri­vate insti­tu­tions who make their col­lec­tions pub­lic through open access libraries like the Inter­net Archive.

One such col­lec­tion comes from the Dig­i­tal Ini­tia­tives Unit of Deck­er Library at the Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art (MICA), one of the old­est art col­leges in the U.S., and one of the most high­ly regard­ed. They have dig­i­tal­ly donat­ed to Archive.org “a num­ber of rare and pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased audio record­ings,” they write in a press release, “span­ning the 1960s through the late 1990s” and con­sist­ing of “over 700 audio­cas­sette tapes” doc­u­ment­ing “lit­er­a­ture and poet­ry read­ings, fine art and design lec­tures, race and cul­ture dis­cus­sions” and col­lege events.

These include (enter the archive here) a two hour poet­ry read­ing from Allen Gins­berg in 1978, at the top, with sev­er­al oth­er read­ings and talks from Gins­berg in the archive, the read­ing below it from Eileen Myles in 1992, and read­ings and talks above and below from Amiri Bara­ka, Anne Wald­man, and William S. Bur­roughs. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents a “strong focus on lit­er­a­ture and poet­ry,” and fea­tures “a sym­po­sium on the Black Moun­tain poets.” Giv­en the school’s mis­sion, you’ll also find in the archive “a large selec­tion of talks and lec­tures by visu­al artists, such as Elaine de Koon­ing, Alice Neel, Gor­don Parks, Ad Rhine­hart and Ben Shahn.”

Col­lec­tions like this one from MICA and the Inter­net Archive allow any­one with inter­net access to expe­ri­ence in some part the breadth and range of Amer­i­can art and poet­ry, no mat­ter their lev­el of access to pri­vate insti­tu­tions and sources of wealth. But the inter­net can­not ful­ly replace or sup­plant the need for pub­licly fund­ed arts ini­tia­tives in com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An 18-Hour Playlist of Read­ings by the Beats: Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & Even Bukows­ki Too

13 Lec­tures from Allen Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” Course (1975)

Hear Allen Gins­berg Teach “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”: Audio Lec­tures from His 1977 & 1981 Naropa Cours­es

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

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New Animated Film About Vincent Van Gogh Will Be Made Out of 65,000 Van Gogh-Style Paintings: Watch the Trailer and Making-Of Video

in Art, Film | February 16th, 2017

One of Aki­ra Kurosawa’s last films, 1990’s Dreams, saw the Japan­ese mas­ter stretch­ing out into more per­son­al ter­ri­to­ry. A col­lec­tion of short pieces based on the director’s dreams, one of these episodes, “Crows,” shows us a young Kuro­sawa sur­ro­gate who wan­ders from a gallery of Van Gogh’s paint­ings and into the French coun­try­side Van Gogh paint­ed. The addi­tion of Mar­tin Scors­ese as a vol­u­ble, Brook­lyn-accent­ed Van Gogh adds a quirky touch, but there’s some­thing a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing about the move from the paint­ings to their ref­er­ent. When peo­ple ask, after all, “what must it have been like to have seen the world through Vin­cent van Gogh’s eyes?” they seem to assume the painter saw real­i­ty in same the swirling, writhing, riotous­ly-col­ored motion as his paint­ings.

It’s true the belea­guered Dutch artist had prob­lems with his vision, due to lead poi­son­ing and tem­po­ral lobe epilep­sy. But what we real­ly want to expe­ri­ence is see­ing the world not as Van Gogh saw it but as he paint­ed it. And as we shared last year, we’ll soon have a chance thanks to an incred­i­ble ani­mat­ed fea­ture film project called Lov­ing Vin­cent by Doro­ta Kobiela and High Welch­man. “Every frame of Lov­ing Vin­cent will be an oil paint­ing on can­vas, cre­at­ed with the same tech­niques Van Gogh used over a cen­tu­ry ago.” The film­mak­ers have since released an offi­cial trail­er for the film, which you can see at the top of the post, and a mak­ing-of short, which you can watch just above. The artists we see hard at work in stu­dios in Greece made a total of 65,000 indi­vid­ual oil paint­ings for the film, in col­or and black-and-white, many of which you can see—and purchase—at the Lov­ing Vin­cent web­site.

The painters drew their inspi­ra­tion from live action per­for­mances by actors like Dou­glas Booth, Saoirse Ronan, and Aidan Turn­er, which were then dig­i­tal­ly enhanced with com­put­er ani­mat­ed “ele­ments such as birds, hors­es, clouds and blow­ing leaves.” The 125 “paint­ing ani­ma­tors,” as the film’s site calls them, trans­formed “this ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al into Vin­cent van Gogh’s paint­ing style,” then re-cre­at­ed “the move­ment of the shot through ani­mat­ing each brush­stroke.” It’s a phe­nom­e­nal achieve­ment that painter Piotr Domini­ak above says gave him “goose­bumps” when he saw it. The hand­ful of painters inter­viewed above—from all over Europe—are pas­sion­ate about Van Gogh. Few of them are pro­fes­sion­al artists. Domini­ak worked as a cook before join­ing the project. Sarah Cam­pos worked as a Span­ish teacher, and Waldek Wesolows­ki restored old cars.

From start to fin­ish, Lov­ing Vin­cent has—like its subject’s body of work—been a labor of love (watch a behind-the-scenes short above). But this one came togeth­er on the inter­net. The film­mak­ers began fund­ing with a Kick­starter cam­paign sev­er­al years ago, and most of the artists were recruit­ed through their web­site. Giv­en the incred­i­ble results in what we’ve seen so far, we can expect to enter Van Gogh’s cre­ative vision in a way we could only dream about before. Learn much more about the project at the impres­sive Lov­ing Vin­cent web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Trail­er for a “Ful­ly Paint­ed” Van Gogh Film: Fea­tures 12 Oil Paint­ings Per Sec­ond by 100+ Painters

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

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

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Browse Every Art Exhibition Held at MoMA Since 1929 with the New “MoMA Exhibition Spelunker”

in Archives, Art | February 9th, 2017

More and more, muse­ums around the world are open­ing up their vast archives for free on the inter­net. We can browse broad col­lec­tions, or dig down deep into col­lec­tions and exam­ine indi­vid­ual works, or we can down­load hi-res­o­lu­tion jpgs of famous works and slap them on our new desk­top as wall­pa­per. (Dis­cus­sion: does this triv­i­al­ize a work or help us appre­ci­ate it?)

Indeed, Open­Cul­ture has linked to many of these and I’ve fol­lowed. And I’ve often returned over­whelmed or dis­ap­point­ed, not by the art, but by bad web design. Good inten­tions are one thing, but insti­tu­tions often turn to coders first, not design­ers. And there’s a dif­fer­ence.

Recent­ly we told you how the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has put most of its near­ly 90 years of exhi­bi­tions online. Our own Col­in Mar­shall said:

The archive offers, in the words of Chief of Archives Michelle Ellig­ott, “free and unprece­dent­ed access to The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s ever-evolv­ing exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry” in the form of “thou­sands of unique and vital mate­ri­als includ­ing instal­la­tion pho­tographs, out-of-print exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues, and more, begin­ning with MoMA’s very first exhi­bi­tion in 1929.”

Yet the inter­face is quite lack­ing, show­ing a blank search bar with no clue to how much lies beneath. Where to start, if you just want to browse?

Enter the data visu­al­iza­tion firm of Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle, who excel at pre­sent­ing archives in dif­fer­ent ways. Com­mis­sioned by MoMA to make some­thing from the data, the firm’s “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er” offers 60 years of exhi­bi­tion data that can then be searched by “cura­tors, arrangers, design­ers, artists, and oth­ers” with con­nec­tions avail­able at every lev­el.

For exam­ple, the sec­ond ever MoMA exhib­it, “Painters by 19 Liv­ing Amer­i­cans” (1929 — 1930), fea­tured Edward Hop­per. The offi­cial archive will show you the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log and press release. But go spelunk­ing and we dis­cov­er that up until 1989 (the end of the archive for now), Hop­per was fea­tured in 61 exhi­bi­tions, includ­ing 1943 where he was fea­tured in four exhibits in one year. What were those exhibits? Well, down the rab­bit hole you go.

Coder (and, full dis­clo­sure, friend since high school) Phil Gyford spoke about his work on the page:
A spe­lunk­er, accord­ing to Cham­bers, is “a per­son who explores caves as a hob­by” and we aimed to explore MoMA’s raw data and make it more vis­i­ble and pen­e­tra­ble by every­one else. It’s hard to get a decent sense of the shape of lists of data so we set off to explore.

Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle have worked on oth­er sleek and min­i­mal sites, includ­ing a Net­flix rec­om­men­da­tion engine, a small­er spe­lunk­er for the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um, and a larg­er one for the British Muse­um.

But if you’re inter­est­ed in explor­ing a cen­tu­ry of exhi­bi­tions at MoMA, then spend as much time as you like with the “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

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

Down­load 397 Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 65,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. 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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A Sonic Introduction to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Minutes of 20th Century Art Music, Including Modernism, Futurism, Dadaism & Beyond

in Art, Music | February 9th, 2017

Avant-garde com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry have left a vex­ing lega­cy, begin­ning per­haps with one of the cen­tu­ry’s first min­i­mal­ists, Erik Satie (1866 –1925), whose career illus­trates a cen­tral para­dox of exper­i­men­tal music: it can seem to most of us total­ly inac­ces­si­ble, alien, and frus­trat­ing, yet it is also a per­va­sive influ­ence on the sound of our every­day life.

For exam­ple, we are like­ly to nev­er encounter, much less could most of us endure, the full mea­sure of Satie’s 1893 Vex­a­tions, a short piece “melan­cholic yet dead­pan, eccle­si­as­ti­cal yet demon­ic, strange­ly lack­ing direc­tion,” and meant, writes Nick Shave at The Guardian, to be “repeat­ed 840 times.” Long thought an iron­ic joke, in 1963 John Cage took up the chal­lenge and with a “relay team of pianists, includ­ing John Cale,” staged a marathon per­for­mance at the end of which only one per­son remained in the audi­ence.

Then we have the Satie of Gymnopédie No.1, a mov­ing com­po­si­tion we’ve heard count­less times in films, tele­vi­sion shows, din­ner par­ties, restau­rants, etc. This piece and oth­ers like it, argues WFMU’s Ken­neth Gold­smith, mark the birth of Ambi­ent music, or what Satie puck­ish­ly called Fur­ni­ture Music. “Today,” Gold­smith writes, “Fur­ni­ture Music is unavoid­able,” and every­one from Bri­an Eno to Aphex Twin to “the entire Muzak phe­nom­e­non… owes a debt to The Vel­vet Gen­tle­man.”

Both the acces­si­ble and dif­fi­cult strains of the eccen­tric French com­pos­er have been equal­ly influ­en­tial, and “just about every rad­i­cal musi­cal move­ment” of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry “can trace its roots back to Satie.” As we move through the century—encountering the work of Dada artists, Futur­ists, sym­phon­ic mod­ernists, and musique con­crète and ear­ly elec­tron­ic pioneers—we find an enor­mous breadth of exper­i­men­ta­tion, both strange­ly intim­i­dat­ing and often strange­ly famil­iar, giv­en how per­va­sive its influ­ence on film and “fur­ni­ture” music as well as on con­tem­po­rary com­posers.

If you’re new to the dis­so­nant and play­ful inno­va­tions of artists like Satie, F.T. Marinet­ti, Kurt Schwit­ters, Arnold Schoen­berg, Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, Györ­gy Ligeti and oth­er provo­ca­teurs and rad­i­cals of the ear­ly decades of the last cen­tu­ry, you could hard­ly do worse by way of intro­duc­tion than the dou­ble com­pi­la­tion album above from LTM Record­ings. Titled A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde and con­sist­ing of 26 tracks in total, the com­pi­la­tion includes an excerpt of Igor Stravinsky’s scandalous—for the time—1913 The Rite of Spring, and John Cage’s per­plex­ing 1952 work of silence, 4’33” and begins with a mer­ci­ful­ly brief 3‑minute ren­di­tion of Satie’s Vex­a­tions. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. If you have any prob­lems play­ing the embed­ded playlist, please click on this link.)

We also have music from names we typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate with visu­al art (Mar­cel Duchamp, Fran­cis Picabia) and film (Jean Cocteau). And you will sure­ly rec­og­nize the final piece, Ligeti’s “Atmos­pheres,” from Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The col­lec­tion, writes The Tre­buchet in their review, “sub­tly hints at the fact that film sound­tracks are the clos­est thing we have to grand com­po­si­tions these days, and in fact the seeds for change were plant­ed long ago dur­ing the era when Con­ti­nen­tal artists and musi­cians took an inter­est in the emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of auto­mo­biles, planes, and film.”

Then, of course, there were emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of sound. A Young Person’s Guide (pur­chase a copy online here) ends with Ligeti in 1961, and only hints at the elec­tron­ic avant-garde to come with a 1953 com­po­si­tion from Stock­hausen. This is a shame, since the elec­tron­ic rev­o­lu­tion in music opened doors for so many female exper­i­men­tal­ists like Pauline Oliv­eros, Daphne Oram, and Eliane Radigue. As it stands, the col­lec­tion gives us an all-male line­up of artists—and one sure to pro­voke excla­ma­tions of “What about [insert name here]!”

It’s an under­stand­able reac­tion to an ambi­tious but lim­it­ed sur­vey. For the ama­teur or “young per­son” just dis­cov­er­ing this musi­cal his­to­ry, how­ev­er, A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde offers a rich, com­pelling, and fre­quent­ly con­found­ing selec­tion that can serve as a stur­dy spring­board for fur­ther study and explo­ration. Those so inspired to hear more can find it in the mas­sive archive of The Avant-Garde Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

The Women of the Avant-Garde: An Intro­duc­tion Fea­tur­ing Audio by Gertrude Stein, Kathy Ack­er, Pat­ti Smith & More

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Makes 375,000 Images of Fine Art Available Under a Creative Commons License: Download, Use & Remix

in Art | February 8th, 2017

What do you need to make art? Why, art, of course: the works that have come before pro­vide inspi­ra­tion, estab­lish a tra­di­tion to fol­low and expand, and now, in our dig­i­tal age, even pro­vide the very mate­ri­als to work with. The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has assured us that we should feel free to “use, remix, and share” their lat­est batch of 375,000 dig­i­tized art­works of a vari­ety of forms and from a vari­ety of eras in any which way we like. In part­ner­ship with Cre­ative Com­mons, they’ve released them all under the lat­ter’s CC0, or “no rights reserved” license, which places them “as com­plete­ly as pos­si­ble in the pub­lic domain, so that oth­ers may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any pur­pos­es with­out restric­tion under copy­right or data­base law.”

But fea­tur­ing these sorts of projects often here on Open Cul­ture, we know that a trove of art images, no mat­ter how open, is only as good as its search tools. A new search tool comes new­ly devel­oped by Cre­ative Com­mons, and in fact they still describe it as “in beta,” but it shows promise as a means to, as pro­mot­ed, “explore this beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion, cre­ate con­tent lists, share, col­lab­o­rate, and learn.” You can get start­ed using it here, but if you want to focus specif­i­cal­ly on the con­tents of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art col­lec­tion, make sure to uncheck the oth­er search options, which include the New York Pub­lic Library and the Rijksmu­se­um. Or you can first have a look at three curat­ed gal­leries, one of mas­ter­piece paint­ings, one of Impres­sion­ism and Post-Impres­sion­ism, and one “cabal of cats from the Met’s cab­i­nets, com­piled by the curi­ous cura­tors of the col­lec­tion.”

You can also assem­ble and share gal­leries of your own, in just the way you might on oth­er image-ori­ent­ed social-media sites such as Pin­ter­est, which, along with Wiki­me­dia, Art­stor, and the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca, also calls itself a part­ner in the Met’s broad­er Open Access Ini­tia­tive, and which offers its own users the abil­i­ty to search this dig­i­tal col­lec­tion. (The Met has also cre­at­ed a pub­lic GitHub repos­i­to­ry.) And giv­en the ever-expand­ing breadth of the art­works already dig­i­tized and made free, you’ll sure­ly find many you’re inter­est­ed in — but its real rev­o­lu­tion­ary appeal lies in what you’ll find, and what you’ll do with, the art you don’t know you’re inter­est­ed in yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

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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Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums: The Met, New York Public Library, Smithsonian & More

in Art, Coloring Books | February 7th, 2017

Call­ing all col­or­ing book lovers. You can now take part in #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions 2017–a cam­paign where muse­ums and libraries world­wide will make avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. When shar­ing, use the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Below you can find a col­lec­tion of free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load and con­tin­ue to enjoy. If you see any that we’re miss­ing, please let us know in the com­ments, and we’ll do our best to update the page. To see the free col­or­ing books that were offered up in 2016, click here.

Col­or Our Col­lec­tions is orga­nized by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library. So please give them thanks.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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How to Respond to the Challenges of Our Time?: Jazz Legends Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter Give 10 Pieces of Advice to Young Artists, and Everyone Else

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs, Jazz, Music | February 7th, 2017

Some moments in his­to­ry strike us as dra­mat­ic rup­tures. Cer­tain­ties are super­seded, thrown into chaos by a seis­mic event, and we find our­selves adrift and anx­ious. What are artists to do? Gripped by the same fears as every­one else, the same sense of urgency, writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, painters, etc. may find them­selves unable to “breathe with uncon­di­tion­al breath / the uncon­di­tioned air,” as Wen­dell Berry once described the cre­ative process.

We might remem­ber the rad­i­cal break with tra­di­tion when the shock­ing car­nage of World War I sent poets and painters into fright­en­ing places they had pre­vi­ous­ly left unex­plored. Vir­ginia Woolf summed up the sit­u­a­tion in her essay The Lean­ing Tow­er: “sud­den­ly like a chasm in a smooth road, the [Great] war came.” Shat­tered as they were, her gen­er­a­tion over­came their paral­y­sis. Mod­ernists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were able to speak to their bro­ken age in ways that con­tin­ue to speak to ours.

But we should tem­per our belief that bad times make good art by not­ing that the most vision­ary cre­ative minds are not sim­ply reac­tive, respond­ing to tragedy like reporters on a crime scene. As Wayne Short­er and Her­bie Han­cock— two of the 20th century’s most con­sis­tent­ly inno­v­a­tive musicians—suggest, artists at all times need a set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples. (See the two play “Mem­o­ry of Enchant­ment” above in 2002.) There is always a lot of per­son­al work to do. And in “tur­bu­lent and unpre­dictable times,” the two jazz greats advise, “the answer to peace is sim­ple; it begins with you.”

A plat­i­tude, per­haps, but one they illus­trat­ed near­ly a year ago in an open let­ter at Nest HQ with some pro­found, if chal­leng­ing, pre­scrip­tions for our present cul­tur­al ill­ness­es. Short­er and Hancock’s coun­sel is not a reac­tion to the rup­ture of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but a response to the events that pre­ced­ed it, “the hor­ror at the Bat­a­clan… the upheaval in Syr­ia and the sense­less blood­shed in San Bernardi­no.” Not pas­sive­ly wait­ing to find out where the past few years’ vio­lence and unrest would lead, the two have made eth­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions, pre­sent­ing their phi­los­o­phy and ethics through jazz, Bud­dhism, sci­ence, art, and lit­er­a­ture.

Below, you can read their ten pieces of advice “to the next gen­er­a­tion of artists,” or at least excerpts there­of. They begin with a reas­sur­ing pref­ace: “As an artist, cre­ator and dream­er of this world, we ask you not to be dis­cour­aged by what you see but to use your own lives, and by exten­sion your art, as vehi­cles for the con­struc­tion of peace…. You mat­ter, your actions mat­ter, your art mat­ters.” That said, they also want to assure read­ers that “these thoughts tran­scend pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries and apply to all peo­ple, regard­less of pro­fes­sion.”

First, awak­en to your human­i­ty

You can­not hide behind a pro­fes­sion or instru­ment; you have to be human. Focus your ener­gy on becom­ing the best human you can be. Focus on devel­op­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspi­ra­tion root­ed in the com­plex­i­ty and curios­i­ty of what it means to sim­ply exist on this plan­et.

Embrace and con­quer the road less trav­eled

Don’t allow your­self to be hijacked by com­mon rhetoric, or false beliefs and illu­sions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pio­neers.

Wel­come to the Unknown

Every rela­tion­ship, obsta­cle, inter­ac­tion, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adven­ture in life. Every­thing is con­nect­ed. Every­thing builds. Noth­ing is ever wast­ed. This type of think­ing requires courage. Be coura­geous and do not lose your sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and rev­er­ence for this won­der­ful world around you.

Under­stand the True Nature of Obsta­cles

We have this idea of fail­ure, but it’s not real; it’s an illu­sion. There is no such thing as fail­ure. What you per­ceive as fail­ure is real­ly a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, a new hand of cards, or a new can­vas to cre­ate upon.

Don’t Be Afraid to Inter­act with Those Who Are Dif­fer­ent from You

The world needs more one-on-one inter­ac­tion among peo­ple of diverse ori­gins with a greater empha­sis on art, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Our dif­fer­ences are what we have in com­mon…. We need to be con­nect­ing with one anoth­er, learn­ing about one anoth­er, and expe­ri­enc­ing life with one anoth­er. We can nev­er have peace if we can­not under­stand the pain in each other’s hearts.

Strive to Cre­ate Agen­da-Free Dia­logue

Art in any form is a medi­um for dia­logue, which is a pow­er­ful tool… we’re talk­ing about reflect­ing and chal­leng­ing the fears, which pre­vent us from dis­cov­er­ing our unlim­it­ed access to the courage inher­ent in us all.

Be Wary of Ego

Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not flow when only the ego is served.

Work Towards a Busi­ness with­out Bor­ders

The med­ical field has an orga­ni­za­tion called Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. This lofty effort can serve as a mod­el for tran­scend­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and strate­gies of old busi­ness for­mu­las which are designed to per­pet­u­ate old sys­tems in the guise of new ones.

Appre­ci­ate the Gen­er­a­tion that Walked Before You

Your elders can help you. They are a source of wealth in the form of wis­dom…. Don’t waste time repeat­ing their mis­takes.

Last­ly, We Hope that You Live in a State of Con­stant Won­der

As we accu­mu­late years, parts of our imag­i­na­tion tend to dull. Whether from sad­ness, pro­longed strug­gle, or social con­di­tion­ing, some­where along the way peo­ple for­get how to tap into the inher­ent mag­ic that exists with­in our minds. Don’t let that part of your imag­i­na­tion fade away.

Whether you’re a jazz fan, musi­cian, artist, writer, accoun­tant, cashier, truck­er, teacher, or what­ev­er, I can’t think of a wis­er set of guide­lines with which to con­front the suf­fo­cat­ing epi­dem­ic of cyn­i­cism, delu­sion­al think­ing, ram­pant big­otry, hatred, and self-absorp­tion of our time. Read Short­er and Hancock’s full open let­ter at Nest HQ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

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

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Download & Print Free Shepard Fairey Protest Posters

in Art, Politics | January 19th, 2017

Shep­ard Fairey prob­a­bly first crossed your radar when he drew the icon­ic “Hope” poster so asso­ci­at­ed with Barack Oba­ma’s 2008 cam­paign. Now, he returns with anoth­er set of posters to help protest the inau­gu­ra­tion of one Don­ald J. Trump. If you head over to the Ampli­fi­er Foun­da­tion web site, you can down­load and print a series of posters (shown above) by Fairey. The same applies to a num­ber of posters designed by oth­er artists, includ­ing Jes­si­ca Sabo­gal and Ernesto Yer­e­na.

The images cap­ture the “shared human­i­ty of our diverse Amer­i­ca” and con­demn the exclu­sion­ary poli­cies of the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion. And thanks to the $1.3 mil­lion raised through a suc­cess­ful Kick­starter cam­paign, these posters will fig­ure into a larg­er Inau­gu­ra­tion Day plan. Here’s how it will work:

Much of Wash­ing­ton will be locked down on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, and in some areas there will be severe restric­tions on signs and ban­ners.  But we’ve fig­ured out a hack.  It’s called the news­pa­per!  On Jan­u­ary 20th, if this cam­paign suc­ceeds, we’re going to take out full-page ads in the Wash­ing­ton Post with these images, so that peo­ple across the capi­tol and across the coun­try will be able to car­ry them into the streets, hang them in win­dows, or paste them on walls.

You’re wel­come to print and post these posters around your town–wherever it’s legal­ly per­mit­ted to do so. To down­load the posters, click 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

A Gallery of Visu­al­ly Arrest­ing Posters from the May 1968 Paris Upris­ing

Artist Shep­ard Fairey Curates His Favorite YouTube Videos

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

 

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