New Study: Immersing Yourself in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflammation & Increase Life Expectancy

in Art, Health, Life, Philosophy, Psychology | August 7th, 2015

caspar-david-friedrich-wanderer

Of all the philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts Immanuel Kant is known for, the one I’ve had to strug­gle the least to grasp is his descrip­tion of the sub­lime, a state in which we are over­awed by the scale of some great work of man or nature. It’s an expe­ri­ence, in typ­i­cal Kant­ian fash­ion, that he explains as being not about the thing itself, but rather the idea of the thing. Yet the con­cept of the sub­lime isn’t his. Philoso­phers from the Greek teacher Long­i­nus in the 1st cen­tu­ry to Edmund Burke and oth­er Eng­lish Enlight­en­ment thinkers in Kan­t’s own 18th cen­tu­ry have had their take on it. For the clas­si­cal writ­ers, the sub­lime was rhetor­i­cal, for the Brits, it was empir­i­cal. But above all, the sub­lime is peak aesthetics—a supra-ratio­nal expe­ri­ence of art or nature one can­not get one’s head around. To be so ful­ly absorbed, so strick­en with awe, won­der, and, yes, even fear—all of these philoso­phers believed in some fashion—is to have an expe­ri­ence crit­i­cal to tran­scend­ing our lim­i­ta­tions.

We may not, in either com­mon speech or aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy, talk much about the sub­lime these days, but what­ev­er we call the feel­ing of being absorbed in art, music, or nature, it turns out to have phys­i­cal ben­e­fits as well as men­tal and emo­tion­al. “There seems to be some­thing about awe,” says pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy Dacher Kelt­ner. “It seems to have pro­nounced impact on mark­ers relat­ed to inflam­ma­tion.”

In oth­er words, immers­ing your­self in art or nature is good for the joints, and it could pos­si­bly pre­empt var­i­ous dis­eases trig­gered by inflam­ma­tion. Kelt­ner and his fel­low researchers at UC Berke­ley con­duct­ed a study which found that “awe, won­der and beau­ty pro­mote [low­er and over­all] health­i­er lev­els of cytokines”—pro­teins that “sig­nal the immune sys­tem to work hard­er.” He goes on to say that “the things we do to expe­ri­ence these emotions—a walk in nature, los­ing one­self in music, behold­ing art—has [sic] a direct influ­ence upon health and life expectan­cy.”

Nev­er mind that Kant and Burke thought of the sub­lime and the beau­ti­ful as two very dif­fer­ent things. Whether we become total­ly over­whelmed by, or just find deep appre­ci­a­tion in an aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence, the emo­tions pro­duced “might be just as salu­bri­ous as hit­ting the gym,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic. That may seem a crude way of think­ing about the spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al grandeur of the sub­lime, but it brings our phys­i­cal being into the dis­cus­sion in ways many philoso­phers have neglect­ed. Grant­ed, the researchers them­selves admit the causal link is uncer­tain: it might be bet­ter health that leads to more expe­ri­ences of awe, and not the oth­er way around. But cer­tain­ly no harm—and a great deal of good—can come from con­duct­ing the exper­i­ment on your­self. Read an abstract (or pur­chase a copy) of the Berke­ley team’s arti­cle here, and learn more about their work with the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter, which aims to “spon­sor ground­break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into social and emo­tion­al well-being.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

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

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Read Pablo Picasso’s Poetry: Modernist Meditations on Making Art, World War, Dogs & More

in Art, Poetry | August 6th, 2015

Picasso, annotated poem manuscript, December 24, 1935

What makes Pablo Picas­so such a rep­re­sen­ta­tive 20th-cen­tu­ry artist? Most of it has to do with his par­tic­u­lar achieve­ments, such as the visu­al ground he broke with his Cubist paint­ing, sure, but some of it also has to do with the fact that his inter­ests extend­ed so far beyond paint­ing. We think of cre­ators who could cre­ate across var­i­ous domains as “Renais­sance men,” but con­di­tions a few cen­turies on from the Renais­sance enabled such artists to exert their will across an even wider range of forms. Picas­so, for instance, worked in not just paint­ing but sculp­ture, print­mak­ing, ceram­ics, and let­ters.

That last even includes poet­ry, to which Picas­so announced his com­mit­ment in 1935, at the age of 53. At that point, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher, “he began writ­ing poems almost every day until the sum­mer of 1959,” begin­ning “by daub­ing col­ors for words in a note­book before mov­ing on to using words to sketch images,” ulti­mate­ly pro­duc­ing hun­dreds of poems com­posed pri­mar­i­ly of “stream of con­scious­ness, unpunc­tu­at­ed word asso­ci­a­tion with star­tling jux­ta­po­si­tion of images and at times an obses­sion with sex, death and excre­ment.”

If this sounds like your cup of tea, you can find plen­ty of Picas­so poet­ry over at Ubuweb, which offers A Picas­so Sam­pler: Excerpts from the Bur­ial of the Count of Orgaz & Oth­er Poems free for the view­ing. “Picas­so, like any poet of con­se­quence, is a man ful­ly into his time and into the ter­rors that his time presents,” writes the col­lec­tion’s edi­tor Jerome Rothen­berg. His words reflect “the state of things between the two world wars — the first one still fresh in mind and the rum­blings of the sec­ond start­ing up,” a time and place “where poet­ry becomes — for him as for us — the only lan­guage that makes sense.”

Before div­ing into that col­lec­tion, you can also get a sense of Picas­so’s poet­ry by hav­ing a look at some of his short­er poems col­lect­ed at the site of artist Jef Borgeau, such as “the artist & his mod­el”:

turn your back
but stay in view at the same time
(now look away,
any­thing else con­fus­es)

stand still with­out say­ing a word

you can’t see but this is how
i sep­a­rate day from night

and the star­less sky

from the emp­ty heart

“dogs”:

dogs eat at the night
buried in the yard
they chase the moon in a pack
the white of their teeth
com­pared to stars

the win­dows close against them
iron bars in trans­paren­cy

life clos­es against them

the morn­ing will crush them to dust
with only the wind left
to stir them up

And “the morn­ing of the world”:

i have a face cut from ice
a heart pierced in a thou­sand places
so to remem­ber
always the same voice
the same ges­tures
and my laugh­ter
heavy
as a wall
between you and me

the ones who are most alive
seem the most still

behind the milky way
a shad­ow dances

our gaze climbs toward the stars

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Pablo Picasso’s Two Favorite Recipes: Eel Stew & Omelette Tor­tilla Niçoise

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Art, Music, Poetry | August 5th, 2015

stein avant garde

The sto­ry of the avant-garde is nev­er just one sto­ry. But it tends to get told that way, and we tend to think we know how mod­ernist and post-mod­ern lit­er­a­ture and music have tak­en shape: through a series of great men who thwart­ed con­ven­tion and remade lan­guage and sound in ways their pre­de­ces­sors nev­er dreamed. Arthur Rim­baud, Claude Debussy, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Arnold Schoen­berg, John Cage… We could make many such lists, and we do, all the time, occa­sion­al­ly includ­ing the names of a few women—Yoko Ono, for exam­ple, Gertrude Stein, Vir­ginia Woolf….

But we might write it dif­fer­ent­ly, indeed, for the sim­ple rea­son that women have shaped the avant-garde just as much as men have, as promi­nent poets and com­posers, not sim­ply spous­es of famous men or guest stars in a most­ly male revue. You can hear one ver­sion of such a sto­ry here, thanks to Ubuweb, “the learned and vari­etous online repos­i­to­ry” of “all things avant-garde.” Their pod­cast Avant-Garde All the Time offers us two episodes called “The Women of the Avant-Garde,” host­ed by poet Ken­neth Gold­smith, who admits the sur­vey is a cor­rec­tive for the podcast’s own blind spots. Through a small but select num­ber of poets and musi­cians, Gold­smith aims “to show that there are dozens and dozens of great women artists on Ubuweb”—and every­where else art lives.

Instead of a his­to­ry, Gold­smith gives us some­thing of a con­stel­la­tion of artists, many of them clus­tered tight­ly togeth­er in time and space. New York poets, writ­ers, and musi­cians who came of age in the 70s and 80s—Kathy Ack­er, Lydia Lunch, Lau­rie Ander­son, Pat­ti Smith, Eileen Myles—all fea­ture in Goldsmith’s account. Theirs was a time and place the poet Myles has described as “a moment” that was “very uncen­sored and real­ly excit­ed and it just made you feel like there was room for more.”

It’s a moment that saw a revival in the 90s, when riot grrrl arose to chal­lenge the patri­ar­chal estab­lish­ment. Around this time, artists work­ing in a more aca­d­e­m­ic con­text direct­ly and indi­rect­ly engaged with lit­er­ary his­to­ry ancient and mod­ern. Schol­ar and poet Anne Car­son has twist­ed and trans­lat­ed the texts of Ovid, Aeschy­lus, Sopho­cles, and the writ­ers (and trans­la­tors) of the King James Bible. And Ger­man-Nor­we­gian-French exper­i­men­tal poet Car­o­line Bergvall, whom Gold­smith dis­cuss­es in episode one above, rewrote Chaucer and rearranged Dante.

In episode two, Gold­smith reach­es some­what fur­ther back—to Yoko Ono and Denise Lev­er­tov—and far­ther away from New York, with work from Iran­ian poet and film­mak­er Forugh Far­rokhzad. Promi­nent­ly fea­tured in this sec­ond part of the series, and for good rea­son, is fierce patroness of ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry avant-garde art and writ­ing, Gertrude Stein. Stein’s own poet­ry rad­i­cal­ly dis­rupt­ed the accept­ed, and accept­able, codes of speech and writing—setting a prece­dent for sev­er­al decades of fem­i­nist writ­ers and artists whose appear­ance in archives like Ubuweb, Gold­smith notes, increas­ing­ly come to match or out­weigh those of their male coun­ter­parts. Hear Stein read from her own work at anoth­er such archive, PennSound, and vis­it the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion to stream and down­load more episodes of Ubuweb’s Avant-Garde all the Time, includ­ing an episode devot­ed to Stein called “Almost Com­plete­ly Under­stand­ing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Yoko Ono Lets Audi­ence Cut Up Her Clothes in Con­cep­tu­al Art Per­for­mance (Carnegie Hall, 1965)

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

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Ralph Steadman’s Evolving Album Cover Designs: From Miles Davis & The Who, to Frank Zappa & Slash (1956–2010)

in Art, Design, Jazz, Music | August 4th, 2015

steadman02

Ralph Stead­man will always best be known—and for good reason—as the visu­al inter­preter of Hunter S. Thompson’s drug­gy gonzo vision of Amer­i­can excess and hubris. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on Stead­man and Thompson’s pow­er­ful col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship, it’s hard to imag­ine a more “suit­able visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment to the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly clear- and wild-eyed sen­si­bil­i­ty of Thomp­son­ian prose.” But the British artist has had a long and dis­tin­guished career, pre- and post-Thomp­son: illus­trat­ing Lewis Carroll’s sur­re­al­ist clas­sic Alice in Won­der­land; cre­at­ing lim­it­ed edi­tion DVD cov­ers for the dark cult hit TV show Break­ing Bad; mak­ing bul­let-rid­dled col­lage art with coun­ter­cul­ture hero William S. Bur­roughs…. To name just a few of his off­beat assign­ments over the years.

happy jack steadman

Today we bring you a less­er-known facet of Steadman’s work: design­ing album cov­ers. As artist and illus­tra­tor John Coulthart notes in a post on Steadman’s album designs, he’s been at it since the mid-fifties, when—for example—he illus­trat­ed a release of Con­cep­tion (top), “an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed mas­ter­piece of cere­bral cool jazz” fea­tur­ing the likes of Miles Davis, Stan Getz, and Son­ny Rollins. Stead­man’s abstract expres­sion­ist-inspired jazz cov­ers soon gave way to more Stead­manesque, though still rel­a­tive­ly tame, cov­ers like that above for The Who’s sin­gle “Hap­py Jack”/“I’ve Been Away” from 1966.

steadman07

It’s not until the 70s, however—after he’d begun his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Thompson—that his album cov­ers begin to take on the decid­ed­ly crazed look his work is known for, such as in the cov­er for Paul Bret­t’s Phoenix Future, above, from 1975.

steadman26

By 1997, Stead­man seems to have per­fect­ed his inim­itable riot of grotesque imagery, wild col­or palette, and unhinged black lines and let­ter­ing, as in the cov­er for Closed On Account Of Rabies: Poems And Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe, a com­pi­la­tion of Poe read­ings by stars like Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, Jeff Buck­ley, and Abel Fer­rara, which we’ve fea­tured on OC before. The artists rep­re­sent­ed here are—as in his work with Thomp­son and Burroughs—perfectly fit­ting for Stead­man’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. So, of course, is the clean-liv­ing but oth­er­wise total­ly bonkers Frank Zap­pa, whose 1997 Have I Offend­ed Some­one? received the Stead­man treat­ment, as you can see below.

zappa steadman

In the past few years, Stead­man has mel­lowed a bit, if you could call it that, and his work has tak­en on a slight­ly more refined char­ac­ter. His Break­ing Bad illus­tra­tions seem restrained by the stan­dards of his work with Thomp­son or Zap­pa. And in a 2010 cov­er for Slash’s first offi­cial sin­gle, “By the Sword,” below, he reigns in some of his wilder graph­ic impuls­es while retain­ing all of the styl­ist sig­na­tures he devel­oped over the decades.

slash steadman

Stead­man has always been a one-of-a-kind illus­tra­tor. In his album cov­er design, we can per­haps best watch his work evolve. As Coulthart writes, “the style of the ear­ly sleeves is marked­ly dif­fer­ent to the angry, splat­tery cre­ations that made his name, and with­out a sig­na­ture you’d be unlike­ly to recog­nise the artist.” See many more Stead­man album cov­ers over at Coulthart’s excel­lent blog.

via Feuil­leton

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

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

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Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Releases New Animated Video Inspired by Gustave Doré & Milton’s Paradise Lost

in Animation, Art, Literature, Music | August 3rd, 2015

Next month, David Gilmour will release his first solo album since 2006 and launch his first tour since ’08. But right now, in the dead of August, you can watch a new ani­mat­ed video for his upcom­ing track, “Rat­tle That Lock.”

Cre­at­ed under the lead­er­ship of Aubrey Pow­ell of Hipg­no­sis (the design group that pro­duced the icon­ic art­work for Dark Side of the Moon and oth­er Pink Floyd LPs), the ani­ma­tion pays homage to Gus­tave Doré, whose illus­tra­tions of Dante, Poe and Cer­vantes we’ve fea­tured here before. And the lyrics them­selves, they draw inspi­ra­tion from John Milton’s Par­adise Lost, reports Rolling Stone. Gilmour, Doré, Mil­ton — sure­ly a tri­fec­ta for many OC read­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

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Coffee Portraits of John Lennon, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe & Other Icons

in Art, Creativity | August 3rd, 2015

Coffee Lennon

Paint­ings by Maria A. Aris­ti­dou

As philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan wrote in Under­stand­ing Media, “the medi­um is the mes­sage.”

Artist Maria A. Aris­ti­dou’s medi­um is cof­fee, and late­ly, she’s been gar­ner­ing a lot of atten­tion for java-based por­traits of such cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Ein­stein, Darth Vad­er and The Bea­t­les.

The pro­lif­ic and high­ly-caf­feinat­ed artist found her niche when an acci­den­tal spill gave rise to a some­what sullen fac­sim­i­le of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring.

Girl-with-Pearl-Earring

She has since applied her espres­so blends toward the Mona Lisa and one of Baroque era painter Juan de Arel­lano’s flo­ral still lifes, but for the most part, she draws her sub­jects from the realm of pop cul­ture.

Dorm room faves like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Bob Mar­ley, and John Lennon are over­shad­owed by fic­tion­al super­stars like Frozen’s Queen Elsa, Nintendo’s Mario, and var­i­ous per­son­ages from Game of Thrones.

My favorite? Kyle MacLach­lan as Twin Peaks’ Agent Dale “Damn fine cup of cof­fee, Diane!” Coop­er. That’s not just medi­um. That’s meta!

Aris­ti­dou is not the only artist find­ing inspi­ra­tion in this non-tra­di­tion­al pig­ment. A recent NPR sto­ry on the trend cites cof­fee artists Angel Sarkela-Saur and Andy Saur and Giu­lia Bernardel­li.

Scroll back­wards to the mid-1800s and you’ll find author—and gift­ed drafts­man—Vic­tor Hugo exper­i­ment­ing with the stuff. Nor was his promis­cu­ous nib a stranger to the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of soot, coal dust, and blood.

Aris­ti­dou, who holds degrees in Fine Art Print­mak­ing and Arts Health, eschews the tra­di­tion­al artist’s web­site in favor of social media. Not only is she a mas­ter of the hash­tag, she also designs cakes. View her com­plete oeuvre—including sev­er­al car­tons of cor­po­rate logo East­er eggs and some recent fash­ion illus­tra­tions that com­bine water­col­or with java—on her Face­book or Insta­gram pages.

Above you can watch Aris­ti­dou paint por­traits of Ein­stein, the Bea­t­les and R2D2 in quick time-lapse motion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vic­tor Hugo’s Sur­pris­ing­ly Mod­ern Draw­ings Made with Coal, Dust & Cof­fee (1848–1851)

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Fine Art of Paint­ing Por­traits on Cof­fee Foam

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

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Endangered Species (Including Cecil the Lion) Projected Onto the Empire State Building

in Art | August 2nd, 2015

Any­one with a Face­book or Twit­ter account last week could­n’t avoid hear­ing about Wal­ter James Palmer, the Min­neso­ta den­tist who alleged­ly went tro­phy hunt­ing in Zim­bab­we and killed Cecil the Lion, a local favorite who had been ille­gal­ly lured away from a pro­tect­ed wildlife pre­serve. I won’t say any­thing more about it, oth­er than that you can sign a peti­tion to get Palmer extra­dit­ed to Zim­bab­we and let him defend his actions to local author­i­ties.

Mean­while, back in New York City, two artists Travis Threlkel and Louie Psi­hoyos were get­ting ready to turn The Empire State build­ing into a Noah’s Ark of Endan­gered Ani­mals. And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day night. Plac­ing “40 stacked, 20,000-lumen pro­jec­tors on the roof of a near­by build­ing,” Threlkel and Psi­hoyos pro­ject­ed an array of endan­gered ani­mals “onto a space 375 feet tall and 186 feet wide cov­er­ing 33 floors,” reports The New York Times. You can see pho­tos of the ani­mals over at the Rac­ing Extinc­tion Twit­ter stream. Touch­ing­ly, there was an homage to Cecil the Lion. A video from the Times appears above; anoth­er from The New York­er below.

To learn more about how Project Map­ping works, and to see oth­er exam­ples of Threlkel’s work, see the videos on this page.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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School Teachers Turn Old Lockers Into Literary Works of Art

in Art, Books | July 22nd, 2015

At Biloxi Junior High School, the teach­ers are spend­ing their sum­mer pret­ty pro­duc­tive­ly. They’re tak­ing an entire hall­way lined with dull green (cur­rent­ly unused) lock­ers and they’re repaint­ing each and every­one of them — 189 in total. By the time stu­dents return in the fall, each lock­er will look like the spine of a famous book, and the hall­way will be known as the “Avenue of Lit­er­a­ture.” One teacher told WLOX, “We want stu­dents to come back to school in August and … be absolute­ly amazed with what we’ve done and be curi­ous. We want that to be the spark for read­ing in our class­rooms… We’re hop­ing the stu­dents come and they become com­plete­ly immersed in a col­lec­tion” that con­tains every­thing from Water­ship Down and John­ny Tremain to books in the Twi­light series, reports Elec­tric Lit.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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