Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Portrait

in Art | March 31st, 2014

borges self portrait blind

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), one of the great writ­ers to come out of Argenti­na, went blind when he was  only 55 years old. As unset­tling as it must have been, it was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly a sur­prise. He once told The New York Times, “I knew I would go blind, because my father, my pater­nal grand­moth­er, my great-grand­fa­ther, they had all gone blind.”

In the years fol­low­ing that life-chang­ing moment, Borges nev­er learned braille and could no longer read. But he did con­tin­ue to write; he served as the direc­tor of Argenti­na’s Nation­al Library; he trav­eled and deliv­ered an impor­tant series of lec­tures at Har­vard on poet­ry (click to lis­ten); and he even took a stab at draw­ing — some­thing he did fair­ly well ear­li­er in life. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions.)

Above, you can see a self por­trait that Borges drew in the base­ment of the famous Strand Book­store in New York City. Accord­ing to the Times, he did this “using one fin­ger to guide the pen he was hold­ing with his oth­er hand.” After mak­ing the sketch, Borges entered the main part of the book­store and start­ed “lis­ten­ing to the room, the stacks, the books,” and made the remark­able obser­va­tion “You have as many books as we have in our nation­al library.”

If you’ve ever been to The Strand, you know how many books it holds. Indeed, the store boasts of being “New York City’s leg­endary home of 18 Miles of new, used and rare books.” My guess is that Argenti­na’s nation­al library might have a few more vol­umes than that. But who is real­ly count­ing?

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:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges Chats with William F. Buck­ley on Fir­ing Line (1977)

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Big Bang Big Boom: Graffiti Stop-Motion Animation Creatively Depicts the Evolution of Life

in Animation, Art, Biology, Science | March 27th, 2014

There’s a rapa­cious, run-amok ener­gy to Ital­ian street artist Blu’s stop motion ani­ma­tion, “BIG BANG BIG BOOM.” How­ev­er long it took him, assist­ed by a slew of local artists, to ren­der a host of paint­ed large-scale char­ac­ters across a pri­mar­i­ly indus­tri­al land­scape in Argenti­na and Uruguay, it takes less than ten, glo­ri­ous­ly grit­ty min­utes for his just-dawned world to destroy itself.

This is evo­lu­tion at its most apoc­ryphal (and least sci­en­tif­ic). Crus­taceans and giant lizards who mere decades ago would have ter­ror­ized the streets of Tokyo are here no match for man. In fact, man is no match for man, rapid­ly engi­neer­ing his own demise as he chas­es about an appro­pri­ate­ly cir­cu­lar, aban­doned-look­ing silo.

The nec­es­sary demise of his murals—animation frames, if you like—serves as a nifty reminder of the evo­lu­tion­ary fate of most street art. A Banksy care­ful­ly pre­served beneath Plexi is the excep­tion, and even that is no guar­an­tee of per­ma­nence. Case in point, New York City’s leg­endary “insti­tute of high­er burn­ing,” 5 Pointz, whose 200,000-square-feet were recent­ly white­washed into noth­ing­ness overnight.

Boom indeed.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Artists Paint Paris, Berlin and Lon­don with High-Tech Video Graf­fi­ti

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

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1923 Photo of Claude Monet Colorized: See the Painter in the Same Color as His Paintings

in Art, Photography | March 20th, 2014

monet in color

On the His­to­ry in Col­or Face­book page, artist Dana Keller presents a series of col­orized his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs, help­ing to “remove that bar­ri­er between the past and our mod­ern eyes, draw­ing us a lit­tle bit clos­er to the real­i­ty in which the pho­to was tak­en.” In the exam­ple above, we see impres­sion­ist painter Claude Mon­et stand­ing next to paint­ings from his famous Water Lilies series. Giv­en what he did with col­or in his paint­ings, it seems only fit­ting that we should see the man him­self in col­or.

If you care to see Mon­et paint­ing in his gar­den in Giverny (cir­ca 1915) in some impres­sive grainy black and white video, click this link and take a lit­tle his­tor­i­cal jour­ney with us. More col­orized his­tor­i­cal pho­tos can be viewed here: Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Striking French, Russian & Polish Posters for the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

in Art, Film | March 20th, 2014

Stalker_France_MPOTW

Near­ly thir­ty years after his death, Andrei Tarkovsky (many of whose films you can watch free online) con­tin­ues to win devot­ed fans by what some describe as his still-unpar­al­leled mas­tery of aes­thet­ics. Not only do all his pic­tures — and espe­cial­ly his lat­er works like Solaris, Mir­ror, and Stalk­er — present images of the deep­est rich­ness in a man­ner of the high­est refine­ment, but in so doing they come out look­ing and feel­ing like no oth­er films cre­at­ed before or since. So many cinephiles claim that one can iden­ti­fy their favorite direc­tor’s work by only a sin­gle shot, but for Tarkovsky this boast actu­al­ly seems to hold true (espe­cial­ly in the case of the nine-minute can­dle-car­ry­ing shot from Nos­tal­ghia). When we talk about Tarkovsky, we talk about aes­thet­ics, whether we talk about his films, his Polaroid pho­tos, or his posters.

Sacrifice_Russia_MPOTW

Not that Tarkovsky’s per­fec­tion­ism had him exer­cis­ing total con­trol over the one-sheets that adver­tise his films, nor did he actu­al­ly com­mand every visu­al detail of every frame of the films them­selves. I would sub­mit, how­ev­er, that all who worked in the orbit of a Tarkovsky pro­duc­tion, from cin­e­matog­ra­phers to set builders, right down to the graph­ic design­ers, entered his thor­ough­ly real­ized and affect­ing aes­thet­ic real­i­ty. “Tarkovsky is one film­mak­er for whom I’d glad­ly have posters that sim­ply fea­ture gor­geous images from his films (of which there are an unlim­it­ed sup­ply)” writes Adri­an Cur­ry at MUBI, “but there are so many ter­rif­ic illus­trat­ed posters that I thought I’d just fea­ture my favorite for each film.” His selec­tions include the French one for Stalk­er, the Pol­ish one for Mir­ror (because you can nev­er ignore Pol­ish movie poster design), and the Russ­ian one for The Sac­ri­fice. It pays Tarkovsky one of the high­est pos­si­ble com­pli­ments: he cre­at­ed not only beau­ty, but works that inspire oth­ers to cre­ate beau­ty.

Mirror_Poland_MPOTW

A col­lec­tion of the inter­na­tion­al movie posters for each of Tarkovsky’s major films can be found at Nostalghia.com.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Soviet-Era Illustrations Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1976)

in Art, Literature | March 11th, 2014

Hobbit1

Until I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, my favorite book grow­ing up was, by far, The Hob­bit. Grow­ing up in Rus­sia, how­ev­er, meant that instead of Tolkien’s Eng­lish ver­sion, my par­ents read me a Russ­ian trans­la­tion. To me, the trans­la­tion eas­i­ly matched the pace and won­der of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal. Look­ing back, The Hob­bit prob­a­bly made such an indeli­ble impres­sion on me because Tolkien’s tale was alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent than the Russ­ian fairy tales and children’s sto­ries that I had pre­vi­ous­ly been exposed to. There were no child­ish hijinks, no young pro­tag­o­nists, no par­ents to res­cue you when you got into trou­ble. I con­sid­ered it an epic in the truest lit­er­ary sense.

As with many Russ­ian trans­la­tions dur­ing the Cold War, the book came with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of illus­tra­tions. Mine, I remem­ber regret­ting slight­ly, lacked pic­tures alto­geth­er. A friend’s edi­tion, how­ev­er, was illus­trat­ed in the typ­i­cal Russ­ian style: much more tra­di­tion­al­ly styl­ized than Tolkien’s own draw­ings, they were more angu­lar, friend­lier, almost car­toon­ish. In this post, we include a num­ber of these images from the 1976 print­ing. The cov­er, above, depicts a grin­ning Bil­bo Bag­gins hold­ing a gem. Below, Gan­dalf, an osten­si­bly harm­less soul, pays Bil­bo a vis­it.

2

Next, we have the three trolls, argu­ing about their var­i­ous eat­ing arrange­ments, with Bil­bo hid­ing to the side.

3

Here, Gol­lum, née Smeagol, pad­dles his raft in the depths of the moun­tains.

4

Final­ly, here’s Bil­bo, ful­fill­ing his role as a bur­glar in Smaug’s lair.

5

For more of the Sovi­et illus­tra­tions of The Hob­bit, head on over to Retro­naut.

For anoth­er Sovi­et take on The Hob­bit, watch this 1985 TV adap­ta­tion.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Down­load a Free Course on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

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The Only Drawing from Maurice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illustrate The Hobbit

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2014

SendakHobbit1

I envy nobody the clear­ly tor­tur­ous task of inter­pret­ing the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, from Peter Jack­son on down. With his three Lord of the Rings films in the ear­ly 2000s, New Zealand’s cin­e­mat­ic native son actu­al­ly did an admirable job of deflect­ing much of the inevitable wrath of Tolkien’s enor­mous, high­ly detail-ori­ent­ed, eas­i­ly angered inter­na­tion­al fan base. One sens­es, how­ev­er, that he stands on slight­ly less firm ground with his new­er adap­ta­tion, and indeed expan­sion, of The Hob­bit. The nov­el, which Tolkien wrote for chil­dren in 1937 and whose suc­cess led him to go the full dis­tance with the Lord of the Rings books, now finds itself turn­ing into its own trio of film spec­ta­cles, each install­ment of which gets the strongest pos­si­ble mar­ket­ing push (up to and includ­ing Mid­dle-Earth-themed dish­es at Den­ny’s) upon its the­atri­cal release. It can seem an awful­ly grand treat­ment for a hum­ble (if endur­ing­ly adven­tur­ous) book. To grant The Hob­bit a sep­a­rate visu­al dimen­sion, then, would­n’t we want a tal­ent which, though for­mi­da­ble, tend­ed toward sub­tle­ty and under­state­ment — and, lest we for­get the nov­el­’s tar­get audi­ence, one who under­stands chil­dren?

CA.0322.tolkein-sendak.

We near­ly had one in Mau­rice Sendak, he of Where the Wild Things Are, who in the mid-1960s cre­at­ed sam­ple art­work for The Hob­bit’s pro­posed 30th-anniver­sary deluxe illus­trat­ed edi­tion. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, from Sendak’s reluc­tance to Tolkien’s crank­i­ness to a label­ing sna­fu by the pub­lish­er to a heart attack that took Sendak out of com­mis­sion for a while, the promis­ing con­cept nev­er came to fruition. Specifics of the accounts con­flict, though you can find one from Tony DiTer­l­izzi at the Los Ange­les Times and anoth­er, propos­ing cor­rec­tions to the for­mer, at Too Many Books and Nev­er Enough. What­ev­er the ulti­mate obsta­cle, Sendak com­plet­ed just two draw­ings for the book; the only one that sur­vives appears at the top of this post, show­ing us how he envi­sioned the hob­bit hero Bil­bo Bag­gins and the wiz­ard Gan­dalf.  Just above, we have Tolkien’s own draw­ing of Bil­bo at home, prov­ing him none too shab­by an illus­tra­tor in his own right, and one who by def­i­n­i­tion gets the details right. Still, I grieve for nev­er hav­ing seen the direc­tions in which Sendak could have tak­en this bit of mate­r­i­al from the beloved Tolkien canon — and, bet­ter yet, what minor here­sies the irrev­er­ent artist could have sly­ly inflict­ed upon it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Listen to Tree Rings Getting Played on a Turntable and Turned into Music

in Art, Music | March 6th, 2014

There’s some­thing odd­ly sooth­ing about lis­ten­ing to music on vinyl. Regard­less of what dig­i­tal music lovers say, and irre­spec­tive of the fact that the same sound may be pro­duced dig­i­tal­ly, die-hard vinyl fans will tell you that noth­ing com­pares to the warm scratch­i­ness of a nee­dle on a record. I don’t have a horse in the race, but hav­ing grown up with a record play­er in my bed­room, I can’t help but slip into a brief rever­ie when­ev­er I hear an old Satch­mo record spin­ning on a turntable.

In an ele­gant twist on the digital/analog bat­tle, Ger­man-born Bartholomäus Traubeck has cre­at­ed Years, a “record play­er that plays slices of wood,” using a process that trans­lates the data from the tree’s year rings into music. This process is, how­ev­er, com­plete­ly dig­i­tal. Instead of using a nee­dle to pick up the sound from the record’s grooves, Traubeck used a tiny cam­era to cap­ture the image of the wood, and dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed this data into piano tones. More than mere­ly a clever con­trap­tion, how­ev­er, Years is also an intrigu­ing inter­ac­tion between the phys­i­cal and the tem­po­ral. As Traubeck notes,

 “On reg­u­lar vinyl, there is this groove that rep­re­sents how­ev­er long the track is. There’s a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the length of the audio track that’s imprint­ed on the record. The year rings are very sim­i­lar because it takes a very long time to actu­al­ly grow this struc­ture because it depends on which record you put on of those I made. It’s usu­al­ly 30 to 60 or 70 years in that amount of space. It was real­ly inter­est­ing for me to have this visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of time and then trans­late it back into a song which it wouldn’t orig­i­nal­ly be.”

A lit­tle con­vo­lut­ed? Don’t wor­ry. Play the video above, and enjoy the eerie melody.

via Live­Science

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956 (That’s Rel­e­vant in 2014)

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

 

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

in Art, Film | March 4th, 2014

the-matrix ghana

A cot­tage indus­try quick­ly sprang up in the ear­ly 80s when the first video­cas­settes made their way to the West African nation of Ghana. Armed with a TV, a VCR and a portable gen­er­a­tor, mobile cin­e­ma oper­a­tors set up shop in city neigh­bor­hoods and in rur­al berg and began to screen Hong Kong action flicks, Bol­ly­wood musi­cals, Niger­ian movies and Hol­ly­wood block­busters.

In order to pack their mobile the­aters, pro­mot­ers hired artists to design movies posters — usu­al­ly the sole means of adver­tise­ment for a screen­ing. As with a lot of adver­tise­ments in Sub-Saha­ran Africa, the posters were hand paint­ed on large pieces of can­vas or used flour bags. The artists – many of whom seem to have only a ten­u­ous grasp on per­spec­tive and human anato­my — were often­times com­mis­sioned to design a poster with­out hav­ing seen the movie or even real­ly know­ing what a giv­en movie star looks like.

catwoman ghana

The result­ing work is gar­ish, lurid and won­der­ful­ly strange. In an age when the posters com­ing out of Hol­ly­wood are bland and for­get­table, the rough-hewn style of these posters is a real joy — movie art with a pulse. The ver­sion of Cat­woman as adver­tised in the Ghana­ian poster above looks way more inter­est­ing than the actu­al movie.

ghana-movie-poster-spy

The gold­en age of the mobile movie the­aters start­ed to decline in the 90s when more and more peo­ple were able to buy their own equip­ment. About that same time, West­ern col­lec­tors start­ed to buy and col­lect the posters.

terminator-ghana-poster

Jeaurs Oka Afu­tu, a vet­er­an poster design­er who got his start when he was a teenag­er, reflects on his work. “Action and war works a lot … and women too: both actu­al­ly,” he said in an inter­view with CNN. “It all depends on what the audi­ence prefers.”

alien ghana

On this page, you’ll also find posters for The Matrix, The Ter­mi­na­tor, The Spy Who Love Me [sic] and Alien. Find more of these remark­able posters at Twist­ed Sifter.

via CNN

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

See Ottoman-Style Posters of Star Wars, The God­fa­ther, Scar­face and Oth­er Clas­sic Movies

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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