Discovered: The Only Known Picture of Vincent Van Gogh as an Adult Artist? (Maybe, Maybe Not)

in Art, History, Museums, Photography | June 22nd, 2015

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Close your eyes for a moment and pic­ture the artist Vin­cent Van Gogh. What do you see?

Prob­a­bly one of the pro­lif­ic post-Impressionist’s self-por­traits. That’s all well and good, but who else did you see?

Kirk Dou­glas?

Indie dar­ling (and Incred­i­ble Hulk adver­sary) Tim Roth?

Direc­tor Mar­tin Scors­ese?

Thanks to the recent­ly dis­cov­ered pho­to­graph at the top of this arti­cle, we may soon have the option of pic­tur­ing the actu­al Vin­cent Van Gogh as an adult artist. As Petapix­el tells us, he sat for por­traits at age 13, and again as a 19-year-old gallery appren­tice (below), but beyond that no pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence of the cam­era-shy artist was known to exist.

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Excit­ing!

That’s Paul Gau­guin on the far right. Oth­ers at the table include Emile Bernard and Arnold Kon­ing, politi­cian Felix Duval and actor-direc­tor André Antoine. But who is the beard­ed man smok­ing the pipe?

Van Gogh?

So thought the two col­lec­tors who pur­chased the small 1887 pho­to at a house sale a cou­ple of years ago. Serge Plan­tureux, an anti­quar­i­an book­seller and pho­tog­ra­phy expert who exam­ined their find was opti­mistic enough to help them with fur­ther research, as he not­ed in the French mag­a­zine, L’Oeil de la Pho­togra­phie:

I didn’t want to start doing what Amer­i­cans call “wish­ful think­ing,” that trap into which col­lec­tors and researchers fall, where their rea­son­ing is gov­erned only by what they want to see.

Don’t ditch Dou­glas, Roth, and Scors­ese just yet, how­ev­er. Experts at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Muse­um say the beard­ed fel­low can­not be the artist. Accord­ing to them, there’s not even much of a resem­blance. He wasn’t so much cam­era shy, as dead­ly opposed to the pho­to­graph­ic medi­um. His refusal to be pho­tographed was an act of resis­tance.

That kind of puts a damper on things…

So.. no go Van Gogh? Oh well…vive la pho­to nou­velle­ment décou­verte de Paul Gau­guin (and friends)!

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Re-Cre­at­ed by Astronomer with 100 Hub­ble Space Tele­scope Images

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

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The Psychology of Messiness & Creativity: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Creative Work Go Hand in Hand

in Art, Creativity, Life | June 19th, 2015

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You may have come into con­tact at some point with Tracey Emin’s My Bed, an art instal­la­tion that repro­duces her pri­vate space dur­ing a time when she spent four days as a shut-in in 1998, “heart­bro­ken”: the bed’s unmade, the bed­side strewn with cig­a­rettes, moc­casins, a bot­tle of booze, food, and “what appears to be a six­teen year old con­dom”…. If you were savvy enough to be Tracey Emin in 1998—and none of us were—you would have sold that messy room for over four mil­lion dol­lars last year at a Christie’s auc­tion. I doubt anoth­er buy­er of that cal­iber will come along for a knock-off, but this doesn’t mean the mess­es we make while slob­bing around our own homes are with­out their own, intan­gi­ble, val­ue.

Those mess­es, in fact, may be seedbeds of cre­ativ­i­ty, con­firm­ing a cliché as per­sis­tent as the one about doc­tors’ hand­writ­ing, and per­haps as accu­rate. It seems a messy desk, room, or stu­dio may gen­uine­ly be a mark of genius at work. Albert Ein­stein for exam­ple, writes Elite Dai­ly, had a desk that “looked like a spite­ful ex-girl­friend had a mis­sion to destroy his work­space.” Ein­stein respond­ed to crit­i­cism of his work habits by ask­ing, “If a clut­tered desk is a sign of a clut­tered mind, then what are we to think of an emp­ty desk?”

Mark Twain also had a messy desk, “per­haps even more clut­tered than that of Albert Ein­stein.” To find out whether the messi­ness trait’s rela­tion to cre­ativ­i­ty is sim­ply an “urban leg­end” or not, Kath­leen Vohs (a researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta’s Carl­son School of Man­age­ment) and her col­leagues con­duct­ed a series of exper­i­ments in both tidy and unruly spaces with 188 adults giv­en tasks to choose from.

Vohs describes her find­ings in the New York Times, con­clud­ing that messi­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty are at least very strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed, and that “while clean­ing up cer­tain­ly has its ben­e­fits, clean spaces might be too con­ven­tion­al to let inspi­ra­tion flow.” But there are trade-offs. Read about them in Vohs’ paper—“Phys­i­cal Order Pro­duces Healthy Choic­es, Gen­eros­i­ty, and Con­ven­tion­al­i­ty, Where­as Dis­or­der Pro­duces Cre­ativ­i­ty.” And just above, see Vohs’ co-author Joe Red­den, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Mar­ket­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota’s Carl­son School of Man­age­ment, dis­cuss the team’s fas­ci­nat­ing results. If con­duct­ing such an exper­i­ment on your­self, it might be best to do so in a space that’s all your own, though, like the rest of us, you’re too late to cre­ative­ly turn the mess you make into lucra­tive con­cep­tu­al art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

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

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Metropolis II: Discover the Amazing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture by Chris Burden

in Art | June 18th, 2015

Recent­ly deceased artist Chris Bur­den had a long his­to­ry of work­ing with auto­mo­biles in his art. In his ear­ly days he cru­ci­fied him­self to the top of a VW Bee­tle (a piece called Trans Fixed). He set about design­ing and build­ing a 100 mph and 100 mpg auto­mo­bile based on intu­ition called the B‑Car. In Big Wheel he used a motor­cy­cle to power…a big wheel. And in Porsche with Mete­orite he sus­pend­ed the two objects above the muse­um floor on each end of a gigan­tic scale.

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But his mas­sive kinet­ic sculp­ture Metrop­o­lis II is some­thing else: a child’s fever dream of a Hot Wheels-scale city, with 1,100 cars dri­ving end­less­ly on 18 road­ways, with two ramps that are 12 feet high and three con­vey­or sys­tems that feed the cars back into the loop. The met­al and the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to run the sculp­ture means that the thing is not just a sight to behold, but it’s stag­ger­ing­ly loud.

The title of the kinet­ic sculp­ture gives away its ref­er­ence, that of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metrop­o­lis (watch it online) and its imag­i­nary city scapes of ele­vat­ed free­ways and train tracks and peo­ple movers and planes that fly in between:

Burden’s work has its own struc­tures too, some of which are made from build­ing blocks, Lego, and Lin­coln Logs, turned into hous­es and sky­scrap­ers. Don’t expect sen­si­ble urban plan­ning in this city: seen from above, Metrop­o­lis II is a chaos of roads, and closed sys­tems from which there is no escape.

There was a tri­al run of the sculp­ture called Metrop­o­lis I, a small­er ver­sion that was soon sold to a Japan­ese col­lec­tor and tak­en out of the pub­lic view.

For the sequel, Bur­den went big­ger, enlist­ing eight peo­ple full time for five and a half years to build the piece. Said the artist:

“We want­ed to expand it and make it tru­ly over­whelm­ing — the noise and lev­el of activ­i­ty are both mes­mer­iz­ing and anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing.”

But instead of a night­mare com­men­tary, Bur­den want­ed the piece to be utopi­an. The cars are mov­ing at 240 mph, accord­ing to scale, and there’s no grid­lock. He was look­ing ahead to a future of dri­ver­less cars, as he shared a hatred like many Ange­lenos of end­less traf­fic jams.

The 30 foot wide sculp­ture was bought for an undis­closed sum by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Nicholas Berggre­un, who also sits on LACMA’s board. He’s loaned it to the muse­um until 2022 and it is cur­rent­ly now sit­u­at­ed in a spe­cial wing where vis­i­tors can see it both at ground lev­el and from above. It takes one assis­tant to keep it free of hic­cups and it only runs for a few hours at a time, and only on week­ends.

How­ev­er, LACMA’s entry­way is also home to a Bur­den piece one can see 24/7, the icon­ic Urban Light.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Chris Bur­den Get Shot for the Sake of Art (1971)

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

Chris Bur­den (R.I.P.) Turns Late-Night TV Com­mer­cials Into Con­cep­tu­al 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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Ralph Steadman’s Warped Illustrations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on the Story’s 150th Anniversary

in Art, Literature | June 17th, 2015

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This year, read­ers world­wide cel­e­brate the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. (Click to see the orig­i­nal man­u­script, hand­writ­ten & illus­trat­ed by Lewis Car­roll.) Car­rol­l’s fan­tas­ti­cal, unex­pect­ed­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al chil­dren’s tale has inspired writ­ers, artists, and oth­er cre­ators of all ages since it first came out in 1865. New edi­tions and adap­ta­tions have kept appear­ing, each reflect­ing the spir­it of their own time through the askew prism of Alice’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. And which liv­ing illus­tra­tor could pro­vide more askew imagery than Ralph Stead­man?

A Mad Tea Party

We all know that Alice’s dream­like jour­ney begins in earnest when she drinks from a bot­tle labeled “DRINK ME” and eats a cake labeled “EAT ME.” See what metaphors you will, but to my mind, this alone makes the sto­ry obvi­ous Stead­man mate­r­i­al: many of us dis­cov­er his art through its appear­ance in Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a col­lab­o­ra­tion that qual­i­fies Stead­man as no stranger at all to visu­al­iz­ing unre­al cir­cum­stances height­ened, or induced, by one ingest­ed sub­stance or anoth­er.

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas appeared in book form in 1972; Alice in Won­der­land Illus­trat­ed by Ralph Stead­man appeared the next year, and went on to win the Fran­cis Williams Book Illus­tra­tion Award.

His ver­sion, writes io9’s Cyr­i­aque Lamar, “has gone through var­i­ous print runs through­out the decades, and he mod­eled sev­er­al of the char­ac­ters on decid­ed­ly mod­ern per­son­al­i­ties. For exam­ple, the Cheshire Cat is a tele­vi­sion talk­ing head, the Cater­pil­lar is a grass-smok­ing pedant, the Mad Hat­ter is a bark­ing quiz­mas­ter, and the King and Queen of Hearts are a melt­ing mass of polit­i­cal author­i­ty.”

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See more of Stead­man’s pieces by pick­ing up your own copy of the book, or vis­it Brain Pick­ings, where Maria Popo­va describes them as bring­ing “to Carroll’s clas­sic the per­fect kind of semi-sen­si­cal visu­al genius, blend­ing the irrev­er­ent with the sub­lime.” Though by all avail­able evi­dence thor­ough­ly sane him­self, Stead­man’s illus­tra­tions have, over his fifty-year career, lent just the right notes of Eng­lish insan­i­ty to a vari­ety of sub­jects, from wine to dogs to psy­cho­geog­ra­phy. Only nat­ur­al, then, to see them accom­pa­ny the insan­i­ty — which, sen­tence by sen­tence and page by page, comes to seem like san­i­ty by oth­er means — of a clas­sic Eng­lish tale like Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

When Aldous Hux­ley Wrote a Script for Disney’s Alice in Won­der­land

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 Sketchbook Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketchbooks, Created by Artists from 135 Countries

in Archives, Art, Life | June 12th, 2015

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Artist: Helen Sander­son

If you love some­thing give it away.

If it doesn’t come back to you, it was nev­er real­ly yours…

Or, it’s a labor of love you cre­at­ed under the aus­pices of the Brook­lyn Art Library, with the full knowl­edge that giv­ing it away is a cost of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Every year, thou­sands of artists, from the expe­ri­enced to the fledg­ling, pay a nom­i­nal fee to fill a 5x7 sketch­book with a cus­tom bar­code. Upon com­ple­tion, the books are to be mailed back to the one room Art Library, to become part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion, cur­rent­ly over 34,000 vol­umes strong (24,000 of which appear online). Vis­i­tors receive free library cards that allow them to view as many vol­umes as they like in-house, three at a time.

Artists will­ing to cough up a slight­ly more sub­stan­tial fee can have their book dig­i­tized for online view­ing at The Sketch­book Project.

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Artist: Tim Oliveira

In their vir­gin state, the sketch­books are uni­form. From there, any­thing goes, pro­vid­ed they retain their orig­i­nal height and width, and swell to no more than an inch thick. (Messy, gooey books might face rejec­tion, in part because they threat­en to con­t­a­m­i­nate the herd.)

Dip in at ran­dom and you will find an aston­ish­ing array of fin­ished work: messy, metic­u­lous, inti­mate, inscrutable, self-mock­ing, sin­cere, abstract, nar­ra­tive, care­ful­ly plot­ted, utter­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al, accom­plished, ama­teur — ren­dered in a wide vari­ety of media, includ­ing ball point pen and col­lage.

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Artist: Estel­la Yu

My favorite way to browse the col­lec­tion, whether in per­son or online, is by select­ing a theme, just as the artists do when sign­ing up for the annu­al project. 2016’s themes include  “sand­wich,” “great hopes and mas­sive fail­ures,” and “Ahhh! Mon­ster!”

(“I’ll choose my own theme” is a peren­ni­al menu offer­ing.)

The theme that guid­ed the artists whose work is pub­lished here­in is “Things Found on Restau­rant Nap­kins.” Would you have guessed?

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Artist: Christo­pher Mof­fitt

You can also search on spe­cif­ic words or medi­ums, artists’ names, and geo­graph­ic loca­tions. To date, The Sketch­book Project has received sketch­books by cre­ative peo­ple from 135+ coun­tries.

Those ready to take the Brook­lyn Art Library’s Sketch­book Project plunge can enlist here. Don’t fret about your qualifications—co-founders Steven Peter­man and Shane Zuck­er have made things demo­c­ra­t­ic, which is to say uncu­rat­ed, by design.

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Artist: Bet­ty Esper­an­za

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 422 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her 2011 sketch­book, “I’m a Scav­enger” is housed in the Brook­lyn Art Library. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Smithsonian Digitizes & Lets You Download 40,000 Works of Asian and American Art

in Art | June 11th, 2015

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Art lovers who vis­it my home­town of Wash­ing­ton, DC have an almost embar­rass­ing wealth of oppor­tu­ni­ties to view art col­lec­tions clas­si­cal, Baroque, Renais­sance, mod­ern, post­mod­ern, and oth­er­wise through the Smith­son­ian’s net­work of muse­ums. From the East and West Wings of the Nation­al Gallery, to the Hir­sh­horn, with its won­drous sculp­ture gar­den, to the Amer­i­can Art Muse­um and Ren­wick Gallery—I’ll admit, it can be a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, and far too much to take in dur­ing a week­end jaunt, espe­cial­ly if you’ve got rest­less fam­i­ly in tow. (One can’t, after all, miss the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry or Air and Space Muse­ums… or, you know… those mon­u­ments.)

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In all the bus­tle of a DC vaca­tion, how­ev­er, one col­lec­tion tends to get over­looked, and it is one of my per­son­al favorites—the Freer and Sack­ler Gal­leries, which house the Smithsonian’s unique col­lec­tion of Asian art, includ­ing the James McNeill Whistler-dec­o­rat­ed Pea­cock Room. (See his “Har­mo­ny in Blue and Gold” above.)

Stand­ing in this re-cre­ation of muse­um founder Charles Freer’s per­son­al 19th cen­tu­ry gallery—which he had relo­cat­ed from Lon­don to his Detroit man­sion in 1904—is an aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence like no oth­er. And like most such expe­ri­ences, there real­ly is no vir­tu­al equiv­a­lent. Nonethe­less, should you have to hus­tle past the Freer and Sack­ler col­lec­tions on your DC vaca­tion, or should you be unable to vis­it the nation’s cap­i­tal at all, you can still get a taste of the beau­ti­ful works of art these build­ings con­tain.

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Like many major muse­ums all over the world—including the Nation­al Gallery, the Rijksmu­se­um, The British Library, and over 200 oth­ers—the Freer/Sackler has made its col­lec­tion, all of it, avail­able to view online. You can also down­load much of it.

See del­i­cate 16th cen­tu­ry Iran­ian water­col­ors like “Woman with a spray of flow­ers” (top), pow­er­ful Edo peri­od Japan­ese ink on paper draw­ings like “Thun­der god” (above), and aston­ish­ing­ly intri­cate 15th cen­tu­ry Tibetan designs like the “Four Man­dala Vajravali Thang­ka” (below). And so, so much more.

As Freer/Sackler direc­tor Julian Raby describes the ini­tia­tive, “We strive to pro­mote the love and study of Asian art, and the best way we can do so is to free our unmatched resources for inspi­ra­tion, appre­ci­a­tion, aca­d­e­m­ic study, and artis­tic cre­ation.” There are, writes the gal­leries’ web­site, Ben­to, “thou­sands of works now ready for you to down­load, mod­i­fy, and share for non­com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.” More than 40,000, to be fair­ly pre­cise.

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You can browse the col­lec­tion to your heart’s con­tent by “object type,” top­ic, name, place, date, or “on view.” Or you can con­duct tar­get­ed search­es for spe­cif­ic items. In addi­tion to cen­turies of art from all over the far and near East, the col­lec­tion includes a good deal of 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can art, like the sketch of Whistler’s moth­er, below, per­haps a prepara­to­ry draw­ing for his most famous paint­ing. Though I do rec­om­mend that you vis­it these exquis­ite gal­leries in per­son if you can, you must at least take in their col­lec­tions via this gen­er­ous online col­lec­tion and its boun­ty of inter­na­tion­al artis­tic trea­sures. Get start­ed today.

Whistler 1

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

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

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The Tree of Languages Illustrated in a Big, Beautiful Infographic

in Art, Language Lessons | June 9th, 2015

Language Infographic

Click image, then click again, to enlarge

Call it coun­ter­in­tu­itive click­bait if you must, but Forbes’ Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry made an intrigu­ing argu­ment when he grant­ed the title of “Lan­guage of the Future” to French, of all tongues. “French isn’t most­ly spo­ken by French peo­ple and hasn’t been for a long time now,” he admits,” but “the lan­guage is grow­ing fast, and grow­ing in the fastest-grow­ing areas of the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly sub-Saha­ran Africa. The lat­est pro­jec­tion is that French will be spo­ken by 750 mil­lion peo­ple by 2050. One study “even sug­gests that by that time, French could be the most-spo­ken lan­guage in the world, ahead of Eng­lish and even Man­darin.”

I don’t know about you, but I can nev­er believe in any wave of the future with­out a trace­able past. But the French lan­guage has one, of course, and a long and sto­ried one at that. You see it visu­al­ized in the infor­ma­tion graph­ic above (also avail­able in suit­able-for-fram­ing prints!) cre­at­ed by Min­na Sund­berg, author of the web­com­ic Stand Still. Stay Silent. 

“When lin­guists talk about the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between lan­guages, they use a tree metaphor,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Ari­ka Okrent. “An ancient source (say, Indo-Euro­pean) has var­i­ous branch­es (e.g., Romance, Ger­man­ic), which them­selves have branch­es (West Ger­man­ic, North Ger­man­ic), which feed into spe­cif­ic lan­guages (Swedish, Dan­ish, Nor­we­gian).”

Sund­berg takes this tree metaphor to a delight­ful­ly lav­ish extreme, trac­ing, say, how Indo-Euro­pean lin­guis­tic roots sprout­ed a vari­ety of mod­ern-day liv­ing lan­guages includ­ing Hin­di, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Ital­ian — and, of course, our Lan­guage of the Future. The size of the branch­es and bunch­es of leaves rep­re­sent the num­ber of speak­ers of each lan­guage at dif­fer­ent times: the likes of Eng­lish and Span­ish have sprout­ed into mighty veg­e­ta­tive clus­ters, while oth­ers, like, Swedish, Dutch, and Pun­jabi, assert a more local dom­i­nance over their own, sep­a­rate­ly grown region­al branch­es. Will French’s now-mod­est leaves one day cast a shad­ow over the whole tree? Per­haps — but I’m not can­cel­ing my plans to attend Span­ish prac­tice group tonight.

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!

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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 Case for Andy Warhol in Three Minutes

in Art | June 8th, 2015

Ear­li­er this year, Col­in Mar­shall intro­duced you to The Art Assign­ment, a week­ly web series that cel­e­brates the cre­ative process and “today’s most inno­v­a­tive artis­tic minds.” The series typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures the hosts, John Green and Sarah Urist Green, “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you [the audi­ence] an art assign­ment.” But some­times they take a break from their trav­els and look back at influ­en­tial artists who shaped the mod­ern art scene — like Andy Warhol.

Above, you can watch “The Case for Andy Warhol,” a three minute video that puts Warhol’s life and work in artis­tic per­spec­tive, explain­ing why his work, some­times dis­missed as a pass­ing fad, is real­ly worth your time and con­sid­er­a­tion.

When you’re done with the clip, you can head over to this Smart His­to­ry clip where Steven Zuck­er and Sal Khan break down the artis­tic mer­its of Warhol’s famous soup cans. This one runs sev­en min­utes.

And stay tuned, The Art Assign­ment will be back soon with a primer on Mark Rothko.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange

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