The Hand Puppets That Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee Made for His Young Son

in Art, K-12, Theatre | August 23rd, 2013

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My kids used to beg their dad to help out with their impromp­tu pup­pet shows. He com­plied by hav­ing our daugh­ter’s favorite baby doll deliv­er an inter­minable cur­tain speech, hec­tor­ing the audi­ence (me) to become sub­scribers and make dona­tions via the small enve­lope they’d find tucked in their pro­grams.

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Like my hus­band, artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) loomed large in his child’s ear­ly pup­pet work. To mark his son Felix’s ninth birth­day, Klee fash­ioned eight hand pup­pets based on stock char­ac­ters from Kasperl and Gretl — Ger­many’s answer to Punch and Judy. The boy took to them so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly that his dad kept going, cre­at­ing some­thing in the neigh­bor­hood of fifty pup­pets between 1916 and 1925. The cast soon expand­ed to include car­toon­ish polit­i­cal fig­ures, a self-por­trait, and less rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters with a decid­ed­ly Dada-ist bent. Klee also fixed Felix up with a flea mar­ket frame that served as the prosce­ni­um for the shows he put on in a door­way of the fam­i­ly’s tiny apart­ment.

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When Felix set out into the world at the age of eigh­teen, he packed his favorite child­hood pup­pets, while his dad hung onto the ones born of his years on the fac­ul­ty of the Bauhaus. Felix’s por­tion of the col­lec­tion was almost entire­ly destroyed dur­ing the bomb­ing of Wurzburg in World War II. Dr. Death was the only mem­ber of the orig­i­nal eight to escape unscathed.

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You can find a gallery of Klee’s pup­pets here, and a book ded­i­cat­ed to Klee’s pup­petry here.

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:

Tchaikovsky Pup­pet in Time­lapse Film

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Price­less Primer from 1969

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

 Ayun Hal­l­i­day is okay with pup­pets as long as she can hold them at arm’s length. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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“Notes from a Dirty Old Man”: Charles Bukowski’s Lost Cartoons from the 60s and 70s

in Art, Poetry | August 23rd, 2013

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The poet Charles Bukows­ki has appeared often on Open Cul­ture late­ly, and I have no objec­tion. Not only do I savor writ­ing about a lit­er­ary fig­ure thor­ough­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Los Ange­les, where I live, but about one who, even nine­teen years after his death, keeps pro­duc­ing inter­est­ing things. Or at least we keep find­ing them.

A case in point comes from this post by Stephen J. Gertz of Book­tryst about evi­dence redis­cov­ered ear­li­er this year of Bukowski’s efforts as a car­toon­ist: “Nine­teen long-lost orig­i­nal draw­ings by Charles Bukows­ki, Amer­i­ca’s poet lau­re­ate of the depths, sur­faced at the 46th Cal­i­for­nia Inter­na­tion­al Anti­quar­i­an Book Fair Feb­ru­ary 15–17, 2013, offered by ReadInk of Los Ange­les. Six­teen of them appeared as accom­pa­ni­ment to Bukowski’s clas­sic col­umn in the Los Ange­les Free Press (The Freep), ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’. The remain­ing three orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Sun­set Palms Hotel, Issue #4 (1974).”

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Less comics per se than drawn win­dows into Bukowski’s world­view, these pan­els show, in a shaky yet bold line, the poet­’s views on drink­ing, smok­ing, stay­ing in bed, and con­duct­ing rela­tions with the fair­er sex. “Until its ter­mi­na­tion in 1976,” Gertz con­tin­ues, “Bukowski’s ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ was prob­a­bly the sin­gle biggest con­tribut­ing fac­tor to both the spread of his lit­er­ary fame and his local noto­ri­ety as a hard-liv­ing, hard-drink­ing L.A. char­ac­ter.” The very idea of Bukows­ki as a reg­u­lar colum­nist may strike some famil­iar with his poet­ry as incon­gru­ous, but you can get an idea of how the gig formed his lit­er­ary per­sona by read­ing the 1969 col­lec­tion Notes of a Dirty Old Man and the 2011 More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncol­lect­ed Columns. Nei­ther, how­ev­er, con­tain Bukowski’s illus­tra­tions, but now you can appre­ci­ate them on the inter­net. They almost make you believe the man could have pub­lished a car­toon or two in the New York­er, but no — wrong coast. (And wrong sen­si­bil­i­ty, cer­tain­ly.)

BukowskiCartoon

via Book Tryst

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki, Tom Waits and Bono

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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

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John Baldessari’s “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art”: A 1971 Conceptual Art Piece/DIY Art Course

in Art | August 21st, 2013

There are any num­ber of ways to take artist John Baldessar­i’si 1971 piece I Will Not Make Any More Bor­ing Art, so why not a DIY MOOC? No reg­is­tra­tion required and no course cred­it. Stu­dents who watch the entire 13-minute video above will receive cer­tifi­cates of com­ple­tion, pro­vid­ed they’re will­ing to write them out them­selves on lined note­book paper. (It’s real­ly not that far fetched in an age where thou­sands of unof­fi­cial stu­dents recent­ly took advan­tage of car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry’s will­ing­ness to tweet her assign­ments for her Unthink­able Mind course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin.)

If you’re on the fence about the mer­its of Con­cep­tu­al Art, you may be swayed to learn the his­to­ry of the piece doc­u­ment­ed above. The year before its cre­ation, John Baldessari incin­er­at­ed his oeu­vre, an act he referred to as The Cre­ma­tion Project. Short­ly there­after, he respond­ed to Nova Sco­tia Col­lege of Art and Design’s invi­ta­tion to exhib­it with a let­ter instruct­ing stu­dents to be his sur­ro­gates in a pun­ish­ment piece:

The piece is this, from floor to ceil­ing should be writ­ten by one or more peo­ple, one sen­tence under anoth­er, the fol­low­ing state­ment: I will not make any more bad art. At least one col­umn of the sen­tence should be done floor to ceil­ing before the exhib­it opens and the writ­ing of the sen­tence should con­tin­ue every­day, if pos­si­ble, for the length of the exhib­it. I would appre­ci­ate it if you could tell me how many times the sen­tence has been writ­ten after the exhib­it clos­es. It should be hand writ­ten, clear­ly writ­ten with cor­rect spelling….

Once the stu­dents had pun­ished them­selves to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the artist per­mit­ted the school to pub­lish a fundrais­ing lith­o­graph, mod­eled on his hand­writ­ing.

boring art

It’s not a stretch to imag­ine that writ­ing this sen­tence over and over could have changed more than a few par­tic­i­pants’ lives, or at least rerout­ed the path their careers would take. What will hap­pen if you take 13 minutes—the length of the video above—to try it your­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Yoko Ono’s Make-Up Tips for Men

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will wade through the bor­ing in search of the good. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Real Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Herself in Vintage Documentary Clips

in Art | August 21st, 2013

It seems to me that Geor­gia O’Keeffe tends to get pegged as a region­al South­west­ern painter or as the woman who paint­ed close-ups of flow­ers that look sus­pi­cious­ly like female anato­my, or both—a casu­al­ty of mar­ket­ing for the dorm-room set. As in many a stereo­type, there’s some truth in both over-sim­pli­fi­ca­tions, but O’Keeffe was, of course, much more, as she was more than the pas­sion­ate younger wife and fre­quent sub­ject of Alfred Stieglitz, though that is also a true and love­ly sto­ry. Like any artist—like any human being, perhaps—Georgia O’Keeffe does not reduce into a sin­gle por­trait.

But amid all the sim­plis­tic pop­u­lar­iza­tions of O’Keeffe, it’s nice to encounter her afresh as just her­self, speak­ing direct­ly to the cam­era about her life and work. In the doc­u­men­tary clip at the top, we’re treat­ed to sev­er­al min­utes of vin­tage footage of O’Keeffe in her New Mex­i­co sur­round­ings, inter­cut with inter­views with the much old­er artist rem­i­nisc­ing. The inter­view was shot in 1977, when O’Keeffe was near­ly 90, and for some rea­son, this image of her—as an aged, white-haired woman—also seems inscribed in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. Per­haps this is because she only became famous some­what lat­er in life, and her fame only increased as she grew old­er.

In the clip above, see O’Keeffe dis­cuss anoth­er rarely-dis­cussed aspect of her career: her paint­ings of New York City, where she lived on and off for over two decades and where she fell in love with Stieglitz and joined his mod­ernist inner cir­cle. One rea­son that O’Keeffe’s New York paint­ings get neglect­ed is, per­haps, that the most rec­og­niz­able NYC scenes tend to look a bit dat­ed and gener­ic, while the best of them do what all of her best work does—simplify the sub­ject, elim­i­nate super­flu­ous detail, turn the moment into time­less form and col­or. Per­haps anoth­er rea­son O’Keeffe gets pigeon­holed as an artist of local col­or or veiled fem­i­nin­i­ty is one that she sug­gests her­self. She is said to have remarked, “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the full O’Keeffe doc­u­men­tary is not avail­able online, but these clips pro­vide ample insight into the reclu­sive artist’s mind and method. For more face-time with Geor­gia O’Keeffe, check out this short film of the 92-year-old artist show­ing off her beloved New Mex­i­co land­scapes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

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

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

in Art, Harvard, Science, Technology | August 20th, 2013

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Last week, I trav­eled to New York City to gaze into The Star­ry Night. Obvi­ous­ly I’m not talk­ing about the skies above Man­hat­tan, not when my hotel was based in Times Square. No, I’m talk­ing about Vin­cent van Gogh’s post-impres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece that hangs in the MoMA on 53rd Street. Although van Gogh seem­ing­ly felt ambiva­lent about his 1889 paint­ing, many now con­sid­er it one of the most impor­tant works of art pro­duced in the 19th cen­tu­ry. And like any oth­er great paint­ing, it has become a fetishized object, some­times in ways that we can find endear­ing. Take this lit­tle project for exam­ple. Last year, Alex Park­er, a post-doc­tor­al fel­low at the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for Astro­physics, cre­at­ed a mosa­ic of Star­ry Night using 100 Hub­ble pho­tos. He down­loaded the pho­tos from the Euro­pean Space Agency’s web­site, popped them into a free dig­i­tal art soft­ware pack­age called AndreaMo­sa­ic and, voila, pro­duced the image above. You can — and should — view it in a larg­er, high-res for­mat here.

H/T Robin and Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Sec­onds

 

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Discover Alexander Calder’s Circus, One of the Beloved Works at the Whitney Museum of American Art

in Art, Creativity | August 16th, 2013

Alexan­der Calder’s Calder’s Cir­cus, a toy the­ater piece the artist con­struct­ed between 1926 and 1931, and per­formed for decades, has the rag bag appeal of a much-repaired stuffed ani­mal who’s loved into a state of bald­ness. This charm pre­sent­ed con­ser­va­tors at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art with a unique set of chal­lenges. Not only were the cloth and wire struc­tures frag­ile with age, they’d tak­en a beat­ing dur­ing the peri­od when they were on active duty. Should the work be restored to its pris­tine state or should the artist’s clum­sy, on-the-fly patch jobs be pre­served as evi­dence of use?

calder circus whitney

As part of the restora­tion effort, the Whit­ney’s team  of con­ser­va­tors, archivists and his­to­ri­ans delved into cir­cus his­to­ry, learn­ing that Calder’s ring­mas­ter, tightrope dancer, bare­back rid­er, and lion tamer were all based on cir­cus stars of the peri­od.

They also leaned on two films depict­ing the work in motion, Jean Painleve’s Le Grand Cirque Calder 1927  and Le Cirque de Calder by Car­los Vilarde­bo. But with more than two hun­dred live per­for­mances, it seemed a good bet that the char­ac­ters could be manip­u­lat­ed in ways oth­er than the ones cap­tured on film. An acro­bat who was con­sult­ed agreed, but also con­clud­ed that some of the moves of which these lit­tle wire fig­ures were capa­ble would be impos­si­ble for human beings.

As archivist Ani­ta Duquette notes above, even in its restored state the Cir­cus will now be a sta­t­ic affair, part­ly from the ongo­ing effort to con­serve its del­i­cate mate­ri­als, but more because the mas­ter who appar­ent­ly took such plea­sure in bring­ing it to life is not avail­able for an encore per­for­mance.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day will take a cork-wire-and-fab­ric-scrap table­top cir­cus over a 3D CGI any old day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Getty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Public Domain (and There’s More to Come)

in Art, Museums | August 14th, 2013

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Not long ago, I went over to the Get­ty to see the J. Paul Get­ty Trust’s Pres­i­dent and CEO James Cuno in live con­ver­sa­tion with Pico Iyer, one of his favorite writ­ers as well as one of mine. Cuno, him­self the author of books like Whose Cul­ture?: The Promise of Muse­ums and the Debate over Antiq­ui­ties and Muse­ums Mat­ter: In Praise of the Ency­clo­pe­dic Muse­um, impressed me not only with his choice of inter­locu­tors but with the open, for­ward-think­ing nature he revealed dur­ing the talk. On Mon­day, he demon­strat­ed it again by pub­lish­ing anoth­er piece of writ­ing, very brief but unde­ni­ably impor­tant: his announce­ment of the Get­ty’s Open Con­tent Pro­gram, which has just made avail­able over 4600 high-res­o­lu­tion images of the muse­um’s col­lec­tion freely avail­able in the pub­lic domain. You can down­load them, mod­i­fy them, dis­trib­ute them — do what you please with them.

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“Why open con­tent? Why now?” Cuno writes. “The Get­ty was found­ed on the con­vic­tion that under­stand­ing art makes the world a bet­ter place, and shar­ing our dig­i­tal resources is the nat­ur­al exten­sion of that belief. This move is also an edu­ca­tion­al imper­a­tive. Artists, stu­dents, teach­ers, writ­ers, and count­less oth­ers rely on art­work images to learn, tell sto­ries, exchange ideas, and feed their own cre­ativ­i­ty.” If you enjoy engag­ing in any of these pur­suits — which, as an Open Cul­ture habitué‎, I assume you do — begin by brows­ing all the Open Con­tent Pro­gram’s cur­rent­ly avail­able images, or check for down­load links on indi­vid­ual Get­ty col­lec­tion pages. This post includes three images straight from the Get­ty: Rem­brandt’s The Abduc­tion of Europa, Walk­er Evans’ A Bench in the Bronx on Sun­day, and a hel­met of Chal­cid­i­an type cir­ca 350–300 B.C. Cuno promis­es many more images to come, and mate­r­i­al from oth­er sources like the Get­ty’s inter­na­tion­al field projects. He’s got my antic­i­pa­tion.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intel­li­gent Art Appre­ci­a­tion Guide

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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

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Master of Light: A Close Look at the Paintings of Johannes Vermeer Narrated by Meryl Streep

in Art, Film | August 8th, 2013

We all thrilled to Johannes Ver­meer paint­ing his best-known por­trait as dra­ma­tized in Peter Web­ber’s 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. But for every height­ened, scin­til­lat­ing fea­ture film built around a well-known artist, there exists — or should exist, any­way — a doc­u­men­tary that exam­ines the work itself in greater detail. For such a coun­ter­part to the afore­men­tioned Col­in Firth/Scarlett Johans­son vehi­cle, I nom­i­nate Joe Krako­ra’s 2001 Ver­meer: Mas­ter of Light, a rich look at the paint­ings of the well-known visu­al chron­i­cler of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry mid­dle-class Dutch life, whose use of col­or could reach pret­ty for­mi­da­ble heights of scin­til­la­tion itself. Pro­vid­ing its nar­ra­tion, we have a cer­tain Meryl Streep.

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Click each image for a larg­er ver­sion

Streep­’s words and those of the doc­u­men­tary’s expert inter­vie­wees must of neces­si­ty focus on Ver­meer’s actu­al paint­ings, since we know lit­tle of the painter’s life. And we don’t even have very many paint­ings to talk about: liv­ing from 1632 to 1672, Ver­meer turned out few­er than 40 can­vas­es. But what can­vas­es: Mas­ter of Light goes into detail on his par­tic­u­lar mas­tery not only of light and col­or, but of tex­tures, per­spec­tives, and seem­ing­ly minor but nonethe­less painstak­ing touch­es. We do, how­ev­er, offer a view­ing tip: unless you par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy shots of light through win­dows, you may want to begin the video at 5:22 or so. The analy­sis of Ver­meer takes its time com­ing, but when it begins, it offers a wealth of sur­pris­ing detail — just as do the paint­ings them­selves. But don’t believe me; find out for your­self by view­ing fif­teen of them up close at the Google Art Project, includ­ing Lady at the Vir­ginal with a Gen­tle­man just above, or, below, The Love Let­ter.

love-letter-jan-vermeer-van-delft

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Ver­meer with a BiC

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

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

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