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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Photographer Creates Stunning Realistic Portraits That Recreate Surreal Scenes from Hieronymus Bosch Paintings

in Art, Photography | January 19th, 2017

All images cour­tesy of Lori Pond

It is not often not­ed that the sur­re­al­ist move­ment in the 1920s orig­i­nat­ed with poets like Paul Élu­ard and André Bre­ton, him­self a trained psy­chol­o­gist, who drew explic­it­ly from the work of Sig­mund Freud, “the pri­vate world of the mind,” as the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art puts it. And yet we cer­tain­ly see the influ­ence of Freudi­an poet­ry in the work of Gior­gio de Chiri­co, Mar­cel Duchamp, Sal­vador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray. We also see it, inex­plic­a­bly, in the work of Hierony­mus Bosch, that 15th cen­tu­ry Dutch painter of bizarre works like The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, a trip­tych that becomes expo­nen­tial­ly more night­mar­ish as one scans across it from left to right. (Take a vir­tu­al tour of the paint­ing here), and from which pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lori Pond draws in the aston­ish­ing pho­tographs you see here.

How does such a far­away fig­ure as Bosch, whom we know so lit­tle about, seem to com­mu­ni­cate so close­ly with our epoch’s artis­tic move­ments? The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, writes Stephen Hold­en at the New York Times, “out­strips in bold­ness many of the extreme dig­i­tal fan­tasies in Hol­ly­wood hor­ror films.” Bosch’s incred­i­bly detailed paint­ings “feel star­tling­ly con­tem­po­rary.… Repro­duc­tions of his paint­ings have adorned rock album cov­ers, been par­o­died on The Simp­sons and print­ed on silk bodices designed by Alexan­der McQueen.” And he was, in fact, named “Trendi­est Apoc­a­lyp­tic Medieval Painter of 2014.”

We might well won­der what Bosch would have done with the same tech­nolo­gies as those who now pay him trib­ute. Per­haps some­thing very much like Pond has with her Bosch Redux series, a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of very close-up details in sev­er­al of Bosch’s paint­ings, fea­tur­ing one or two char­ac­ters. To make these pho­tos, writes Alyssa Cop­pel­man at Adobe’s Cre­ate blog, Pond “bought props online, in antique stores, and at swap meets, and friends donat­ed her old Hal­loween cos­tumes.” She hired a pros­thet­ics design­er and her “taxi­dermy teacher.” For pho­tos like that above from the cen­tral pan­el of the trip­tych, Pond even hired a set builder to cre­ate a life-sized boat that could fit the two real-life mod­els.

Many of these effects might have been accom­plished by ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry sur­re­al­ists, and indeed, when these details from Bosch’s work are ampli­fied they resem­ble noth­ing so much as those psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic mod­ernists. But Pond admits, “I ful­ly abide by the max­im, ‘A pho­to­graph isn’t a pho­to­graph until it goes through Pho­to­shop.’” She makes the usu­al adjust­ments, adds fil­ters and effects, then employs “tex­tures, back­grounds, and oth­er small details from the orig­i­nal paint­ings,” mak­ing Bosch a col­lab­o­ra­tor in these close-up remix­es, which come from The Last Judg­ment, The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antho­ny, and The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, of course—the paint­ing that first gave her the inspi­ra­tion when Pond saw it at the Pra­do in Madrid. You can see many more exam­ples of the series at Pond’s web­site, six­teen sur­re­al­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic visions in all.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion 

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

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Bauhaus Artist László Moholy-Nagy Designs an Avant-Garde Map to Help People Get Over the Fear of Flying (1936)

in Art, Maps | January 17th, 2017

Though he’s hard­ly a house­hold name like Kandin­sky or Klee, Hun­gar­i­an painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy was just as influ­en­tial as those mem­bers of Wal­ter Gropius’ Bauhaus dur­ing the 1920s. As a teacher and one of the collective’s “lead­ing fig­ures,” Fiona Mac­Carthy argues, he may have indeed been, “the most inven­tive and engag­ing of all the Bauhaus artists.” Where all of the school’s mem­bers embraced, and some­times cri­tiqued, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, mate­ri­als, and modes of pro­duc­tion, per­haps none did so with such con­vic­tion as Moholy-Nagy.

“Every­one is equal before the machine,” he once wrote, “I can use it; so can you. It can crush me; the same can hap­pen to you.” His cool “grasp of new tech­nolo­gies,” writes Mac­Carthy, “was prophet­ic.… Entranced by the mech­a­nized pro­duc­tion of art­works,” he ridiculed “the artists’ tra­di­tion­al stance as indi­vid­ual cre­ator.” Many mod­ern artists shunned adver­tis­ing work, but in Moholy-Nagy’s case, the tran­si­tion seems per­fect­ly nat­ur­al and con­sis­tent with his the­o­ry. He also need­ed the mon­ey. Hav­ing fled the Nazis and set­tled in Lon­don in 1935, the artist found him­self, notes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “look­ing to pick up some work to sup­port his dis­placed life.”

He found it in 1936 through the UK’s Impe­r­i­al Air­ways, who com­mis­sioned him to apply “his con­struc­tivist style” to a map (view it in a larg­er for­mat here) intend­ed to reas­sure ner­vous poten­tial cus­tomers of the safe­ty of air trav­el, a still new and fright­en­ing prospect for most trav­el­ers. He did so in a way that “makes air trav­el seem as approach­able as step­ping on the sub­way,” with his offi­cious­ly col­or-cod­ed “Map of Empire & Euro­pean Air Routes.” The map, accord­ing to Rum­sey, “draws on the pio­neer­ing infor­ma­tion design work of Har­ry Beck and his Lon­don sub­way maps,” made in 1933 and “orig­i­nal­ly con­sid­ered too rad­i­cal.”

In addi­tion to this busi­nesslike pre­sen­ta­tion of order­ly and pre­dictable flight pat­terns, Moholy-Nagy cre­at­ed a brochure for the British air­line (see the cov­er above and more pages here). Incor­po­rat­ing the so-called “Speed­bird sym­bol,” these designs, writes Paul Jarvis, made “the point that Impe­r­i­al spanned the empire and in time would span the world.” Not every­one was impressed. British tran­sit exec­u­tive Frank Pick, who presided over the visu­al iden­ti­ty of the Lon­don Under­ground, called Mohagy-Nagy “a gen­tle­man with a mod­ernistic ten­den­cy… of a sur­re­al­is­tic type, and I am not at all clear why we should fall for this.” His com­ments under­score MacCarthy’s argu­ment that the Hun­gar­i­an artist’s rep­u­ta­tion suf­fered in Eng­land because of nation­al­ist hos­til­i­ties.

Mohagy-Nagy’s art “is inter­na­tion­al,” said Pick, “or at least con­ti­nen­tal. Let us leave the con­ti­nent to pur­sue their own tricks.” The state­ment now seems a bit uncan­ny, though of course Pick could have had noth­ing like Brex­it in mind. As far as Impe­r­i­al Air­lines was con­cerned, Mohagy-Nagy’s “con­ti­nen­tal” avant-gardism was exact­ly what the com­pa­ny need­ed to entice wary, yet adven­tur­ous pas­sen­gers. You can down­load free high res­o­lu­tion scans of the map, or buy a print, at the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion (an orig­i­nal vin­tage poster will cost you between four and six thou­sand dol­lars). And see some of Mohagy-Nagy’s less com­mer­cial work at this down­load­able col­lec­tion of Bauhaus books and jour­nals.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí in Clas­sic 1968 Bran­iff Com­mer­cials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

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

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Mesmerizing GIFs Illustrate the Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery — All Done Without Screws, Nails, or Glue

in Animation, Architecture, Art | January 12th, 2017

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try, whether used to build a din­ner table or the entire house con­tain­ing it, does­n’t use screws, nails, adhe­sives, or any oth­er kind of non-wood­en fas­ten­er. So how do its con­struc­tions hold togeth­er? How have all those thou­sands of wood­en hous­es, tables, and count­less oth­er objects and struc­tures stood up for dozens and even hun­dreds of years, and so solid­ly at that? The secret lies in the art of join­ery and its elab­o­rate cut­ting tech­niques refined, since its ori­gin in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry, through gen­er­a­tions and gen­er­a­tions of steadi­ly increas­ing mas­tery — albeit by a steadi­ly dwin­dling num­ber of mas­ters.

“Even until recent times when car­pen­try books began to be pub­lished, mas­tery of these wood­work­ing tech­niques remained the fierce­ly guard­ed secret of fam­i­ly car­pen­try guilds,” writes Spoon & Tam­ago’s John­ny Strat­e­gy. If you find it dif­fi­cult to grasp how sim­ply cut­ting two pieces of wood in a cer­tain way could unite them as if they’d grown togeth­er in the first place, have a look at a Twit­ter feed called The Join­ery, run by a young enthu­si­ast who has col­lect­ed a great many of these car­pen­try books. He’s used them, in com­bi­na­tion with mechan­i­cal design soft­ware skills pre­sum­ably honed in his career in the auto indus­try, to cre­ate ele­gant­ly ani­mat­ed visu­al expla­na­tions of Japan­ese car­pen­try’s tried-and-true join­ery meth­ods.

Arch­dai­ly points to the work of archi­tect Shigeru Ban as one exam­ple of how this “unique­ly Japan­ese wood aes­thet­ic” has sur­vived into the mod­ern day, but the man behind The Join­ery imag­ines even more ambi­tious pos­si­bil­i­ties: “3D print­ing and wood­work­ing machin­ery has enabled us to cre­ate com­pli­cat­ed forms fair­ly eas­i­ly,” he tells Spoon & Tam­a­go. “I want to orga­nize all the join­ery tech­niques and cre­ate a cat­a­log of them all,” so that any­one with the tools might poten­tial­ly make use of their beau­ty and stur­di­ness in hith­er­to unimag­ined new con­texts. And so anoth­er tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese craft that has looked doomed to out­mod­ed obliv­ion, what with all the more advanced and effi­cient fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion tech­niques devel­oped over the past 1400 years, may well thrive in the future. To learn more about the art of join­ery, you’ll want to explore this 1995 book, The Com­plete Japan­ese Join­ery.

via Arch­Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

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

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

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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How The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cover Design Forever

in Art, Music | January 10th, 2017

I am old­er than Evan Puschak, The Nerd­writer, one of a hand­ful who have mas­tered the online video essay. But I still find myself agree­ing with his take on the music video as most­ly unnec­es­sary and dis­tract­ing. At least at first. Then I get nos­tal­gic and remem­ber some of the videos of my youth, like, say The Cure’s “Pic­tures of You” or Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Good­bye to Yes­ter­day”—both bit­ter­sweet tracks about nostalgia—and I feel dif­fer­ent­ly. The video can have a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al pull on us. But its pow­er to sell music has per­haps nev­er matched that of the album cov­er, even after the death of the record store. Puschak makes the case that The Bea­t­les for­ev­er changed the form, mak­ing it into the “almost lim­it­less” art we know today.

Anoth­er crit­ic besides Puschak—one who remem­bers buy­ing a first press­ing of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band—might be alleged to have fall­en vic­tim to a rever­ie. But there is nos­tal­gia and there are qual­i­ta­tive his­tor­i­cal argu­ments, and Puschak, a con­sum­mate­ly care­ful, if exceed­ing­ly con­cise, essay­ist, makes the lat­ter. In times past, he informs us, dur­ing the first few decades of the indus­try, record cov­ers were more or less util­i­tar­i­an brown paper bags, with some excep­tions. Then came Colum­bia Records design­er Alexan­der Stein­weiss in 1938 to rev­o­lu­tion­ize album art, ini­ti­at­ing a “huge boom in sales.” The mar­ket fol­lowed suit and record shops bloomed with col­or as album cov­ers became lit­tle bill­boards for their con­tents.

“Since music has no spa­tial dimen­sion,” and we can’t hold it in our hands, “the album cov­er emerged as the stand-in for the com­mod­i­ty to be pur­chased. This explains the so-called “per­son­al­i­ty cov­er” fea­tur­ing promi­nent band pho­tos that look like por­traits of actors’ troupes. It’s a con­ven­tion The Bea­t­les duti­ful­ly observed on their first few sleeves in the ear­ly six­ties. As their stature increased, how­ev­er, the band “seemed to become dark­ly aware of their sta­tus as com­modi­ties.” (Thus the glum looks on the cov­er of their unsub­tly titled 1964 Bea­t­les for Sale.)

Their evo­lu­tion from the teen­pop “per­son­al­i­ty cov­er” to the broody and sur­re­al is self-evi­dent, from Rub­ber Soul’s groovy band shot and psy­che­del­ic let­ter­ing to Revolver’s take on Aubrey Beard­s­ley, cour­tesy of Klaus Vor­mann, “The Bea­t­les were lead­ers in expand­ing an album cover’s func­tion from a mar­ket­ing tool to a work of art in its own right.” Then we come to Sgt. Pepper’s, and the shift is cement­ed. The album cover’s design­er, Peter Blake, explic­it­ly thought of the cov­er as “a piece of art rather than an album cov­er. It was almost a piece of the­ater design.” And the band them­selves had a direct hand in its cre­ation. “We all chose our own colours and our own mate­ri­als,” not­ed McCart­ney.

They also chose most of the peo­ple on the cov­er (out of many who turned them down or didn’t make the final cut). By “jux­ta­pos­ing high­brow artists and thinkers with pop icons,” says Puschak, “The Bea­t­les sig­nal the break­down and mix­ing of high and low cul­ture that they them­selves exem­pli­fied.” What’s bril­liant about the cov­er is that it taps into the band and the record buyer’s nos­tal­gia with an open acknowl­edge­ment of the music as com­merce. “We liked the idea of reach­ing out to the record-buy­er,” McCart­ney recalled, “because our mem­o­ries of spend­ing our own hard-earned cash and real­ly lov­ing any­one who gave us val­ue for mon­ey.”

But, as Puschak points out, the Sgt. Pepper’s cov­er also serves as its own cri­tique. “By stag­ing the scene as a per­for­mance and an audi­ence,” he says, “the band chal­lenges us to deal with the func­tion of both.” That this mes­sage coin­cides with their deci­sion to stop tour­ing sug­gests that the band was using the album cov­er as they were using their music to draw the audi­ence clos­er and give them the pri­vate emo­tion­al and aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences so many invit­ing album cov­ers now rou­tine­ly promise. Design­er Blake and the band encour­aged lis­ten­ers to have an intel­lec­tu­al rela­tion­ship with the record from the very start, with the cryp­tic who’s‑who puz­zle pho­tomon­tage of famous peo­ple and the lyrics print­ed direct­ly on the back. In so doing, they announced that although record­ed music was inescapably a com­mod­i­ty, it was also, insep­a­ra­bly, a mod­ern art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Rock Album Cov­ers Designed by Icon­ic Artists: Warhol, Rauschen­berg, Dalí, Richter, Map­plethor­pe & More

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

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

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The Corkscrew: The 700-Pound Mechanical Sculpture That Opens a Wine Bottle & Pours the Wine

in Art, Food & Drink, Technology | January 10th, 2017

We’ve shown you a very sim­ple way to open a bot­tle of wine, with noth­ing but a wall and a shoe. (Try it at your own risk.) Now comes the most art­ful­ly com­plex.

Above, watch Rob Hig­gs demo his mechan­i­cal sculp­ture, “The Corkscrew.” Cre­at­ed with found objects from scrap­yards and farm­steads, the sculp­ture has 382 mov­ing parts and weighs 700+ pounds, reports the BBC. Designed to pull a cork from a bot­tle and pour the wine, the steam­punk sculp­ture is not just beau­ti­ful. It actu­al­ly works.

Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Mail, you could buy “The Corkscrew” for some­where bew­teen $90,000 and $120,000.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

Jane Austen Writes a Let­ter to Her Sis­ter While Hung Over: “I Believe I Drank Too Much Wine Last Night”

Christo­pher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drink­ing & Writ­ing, Names the “Best Scotch in the His­to­ry of the World”

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Vin­tage Wine in our Col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es

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A Joan Miró-Inspired Animation of Federico García Lorca’s Poem, “Romance Sonámbulo”

in Animation, Art, Poetry | January 9th, 2017

What tod­dler is trans­fixed by a poem of trag­i­cal­ly thwart­ed desire?

Thou­sands of them, thanks to “The Sleep­walk­er,” ani­ma­tor Theodore Ushev’s cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca’s poem, “Romance Sonám­bu­lo.”

Ushev starts by scrap­ping the words, in favor of a pure­ly visu­al lan­guage that draws heav­i­ly on the work of Lorca’s con­tem­po­rary, sur­re­al­ist painter Joan Miró.

Would Lor­ca have approved?

Pos­si­bly. He had great admi­ra­tion for Miró, whose paint­ings he declared “the purest of all images” in a pub­lic lec­ture on mod­ern art at Grenada’s Athenaeum:

They come from dream, from the cen­ter of the soul, there where love is made flesh and incred­i­ble breezes of dis­tant sounds blow.

Ani­ma­tor Ushev is anoth­er who’s put a lot of stock in dreams:

I want­ed to cre­ate a joy­ful film, that makes the pub­lic hap­py – inex­plic­a­bly hap­py. The sur­re­al­ist move­ment was a play, a game itself. I often start my mas­ter­class­es with the quo­ta­tion, “The life is a dream (and every­thing is a game).” It is a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the roman­tic belief of anoth­er Span­ish writer – Pedro Calderón de la Bar­ca. This lit­tle film can be seen as such – an alle­go­ry over the joy and mys­tery of life.

His take may con­fuse those who’ve been debat­ing the orig­i­nal poem’s far-from-joy­ful mean­ing.

There are rec­og­niz­able forms … Lorca’s “gyp­sy girl,” for instance.

What’s going on?

Ask a tod­dler what’s he or she sees.

A wound­ed con­tra­band run­ner drag­ging him­self back to his for­bid­den lady love?

A grief-strick­en Juli­et throw­ing her­self in a cis­tern?

More like­ly, danc­ing, and lots of it, thanks to the irre­sistible score — Bul­gar­i­an musi­cian Kot­tarashky’s “Opa Hey.”

(Ushev made a con­scious deci­sion to expand the gyp­sy theme beyond Lorca’s native Andalucía to the Balkan region.)

“Romance Sonám­bu­lo”

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind. Green branch­es.

The ship out on the sea

and the horse on the moun­tain. 

With the shade around her waist 

she dreams on her bal­cony, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Under the gyp­sy moon, 

all things are watch­ing her 

and she can­not see them.

Green, how I want you green. 

Big hoar­frost stars 

come with the fish of shad­ow 

that opens the road of dawn. 

The fig tree rubs its wind 

with the sand­pa­per of its branch­es, 

and the for­est, cun­ning cat, 

bris­tles its brit­tle fibers. 

But who will come? And from where? 

She is still on her bal­cony 

green flesh, her hair green, 

dream­ing in the bit­ter sea.

—My friend, I want to trade 

my horse for her house, 

my sad­dle for her mir­ror, 

my knife for her blan­ket. 

My friend, I come bleed­ing 

from the gates of Cabra.

—If it were pos­si­ble, my boy, 

I’d help you fix that trade. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—My friend, I want to die

decent­ly in my bed. 

Of iron, if that’s pos­si­ble, 

with blan­kets of fine cham­bray. 

Don’t you see the wound I have 

from my chest up to my throat?

—Your white shirt has grown 

thirsty dark brown ros­es. 

Your blood oozes and flees a

round the cor­ners of your sash. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—Let me climb up, at least, 

up to the high bal­conies; 

Let me climb up! Let me, 

up to the green bal­conies. 

Rail­ings of the moon 

through which the water rum­bles.

Now the two friends climb up, 

up to the high bal­conies.

Leav­ing a trail of blood. 

Leav­ing a trail of teardrops. 

Tin bell vines

were trem­bling on the roofs.

A thou­sand crys­tal tam­bourines 

struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green, 

green wind, green branch­es. 

The two friends climbed up. 

The stiff wind left 

in their mouths, a strange taste 

of bile, of mint, and of basil 

My friend, where is she—tell me—

where is your bit­ter girl?

How many times she wait­ed for you! 

How many times would she wait for you, 

cool face, black hair, 

on this green bal­cony! 

Over the mouth of the cis­tern

the gyp­sy girl was swing­ing, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

An ici­cle of moon

holds her up above the water. 

The night became inti­mate 

like a lit­tle plaza.

Drunk­en “Guardias Civiles”

were pound­ing on the door. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Green wind. Green branch­es. 

The ship out on the sea. 

And the horse on the moun­tain.

Read “Romance Sonám­bu­lo” in the orig­i­nal Span­ish here

Read an inter­view with ani­ma­tor Ushev here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reads Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz” in New York City

Hear Jorge Luis Borges Read 30 of His Poems (in the Orig­i­nal Span­ish)

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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