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.

Getty3

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.

vermeer-ladyatvirginalswithgentleman

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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1922 Photo: Claude Monet Stands on the Japanese Footbridge He Painted Through the Years

in Art | August 7th, 2013

Monet_on-bridge_New_York_Times_1922

The late-1800’s Euro­pean fas­ci­na­tion with things Japan­ese some­times bor­dered on the col­lec­tion of Ori­en­tal­ist kitsch. At the height of French impres­sion­ism, so called Japon­isme was every­where, but rarely were Far East designs inte­grat­ed into West­ern land­scapes with such skill and sen­si­tiv­i­ty as in the work of Claude Mon­et. Next to his water lilies and haystacks, one of the most rec­og­niz­able fea­tures in the painter’s work is a Japan­ese-style foot­bridge, which, like the lilies, was part of his gar­den at Giverny (see the aged Mon­et on the bridge in the 1922 New York Times pho­to above).

Moma-Monet_Footbridge

We’re famil­iar with the bridge as it appears in an 1899 paint­ing Waterlily pond, green har­mo­ny, a sym­met­ri­cal gray struc­ture hov­er­ing in a lush, reflec­tive sea of greens, laven­ders, and pinks. As Monet’s eye­sight fur­ther failed him, his paint­ings became hard­er to parse, turn­ing to deep, Van Gogh-like swirls of col­or that are beau­ti­ful but some­times com­plete­ly abstract. Try and make out the bridge, for instance, in The Japan­ese Foot­bridge (above), paint­ed between 1920 and 1922.  Monet’s fas­ci­na­tion with the bridge is par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant when we con­sid­er that, as Australia’s Nation­al Gallery of Art says of Waterlily Pond, “not only did Mon­et cre­ate this paint­ing, he made every­thing depict­ed in it,” mean­ing that Mon­et curat­ed the land­scape and super­vised the footbridge’s con­struc­tion.

Monet's bridge-evening-may.2011

Mon­et had it built in 1893, delib­er­ate­ly choos­ing a Japan­ese style, but employ­ing local crafts­man in the con­struc­tion. And while the bridge had to be rebuilt in 1970, as you can see from French Impres­sion­ist trav­el guide Thomas Dowson’s 2011 pho­to of Monet’s real Nor­mandy land­scape (above), the painter’s gar­dens seem lit­tle changed from their nine­teenth cen­tu­ry char­ac­ter as a care­ful­ly bal­anced syn­the­sis of East and West aes­thet­ics.

A spe­cial thanks goes to @stevesilberman for shar­ing this with us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Film: Claude Mon­et at Work in His Famous Gar­den at Giverny, 1915

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

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

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

in Art, Film | August 6th, 2013

Just the oth­er day, I had a chat with a well-known poet who laid out for me his the­o­ry that Andy Warhol invent­ed our con­cep­tion of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. When we think about this coun­try, the poet explained, we think about this coun­try broad­ly in the way that Warhol (and thus his dis­ci­ples) envi­sioned it. We here at Open Cul­ture have cov­ered sev­er­al of the forms in which the artist pro­mul­gat­ed his dis­tinc­tive brand of Amer­i­cana, and today, for the 85th anniver­sary of his birth, we’ve round­ed up a few of his famous “screen tests,” the short films he made between 1963 and 1968 that offer por­traits of hun­dreds of fig­ures, famous and oth­er­wise, who hap­pened to pass through his studio/social club/subcultural hot zone, The Fac­to­ry. Just above, you can watch Warhol’s screen test with Nico, the Ger­man singer who would become an inte­gral part of the Fac­to­ry-formed band the Vel­vet Under­ground.

Lit­tle-heard at the time but ulti­mate­ly high­ly influ­en­tial, the Vel­vet Under­ground’s sound shaped much Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music — and giv­en pop­u­lar music’s cen­tral­i­ty back then, much of Amer­i­can cul­ture to come. You may not nec­es­sar­i­ly buy that argu­ment, but sure­ly you can’t argue against the influ­ence of a cer­tain singer-song­writer by the name of Bob Dylan, Warhol’s screen test with whom appears just above.

Com­ing from a Pol­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly, and seem­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the cul­ti­va­tion of his own out­sider sta­tus his entire life, Warhol under­stood the impor­tance of for­eign­ers to the vital­i­ty of Amer­i­can cul­ture. Nat­u­ral­ly, he did­n’t miss his chance to shoot a screen test with Sal­vador Dalí, below, when the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist came to the Fac­to­ry.

See also our pre­vi­ous post on Warhol’s screen tests with Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Edie Sedg­wick, and oth­ers. When you’ve watched them all, con­sid­er con­tin­u­ing your cel­e­bra­tion of life in Andy Warhol’s 85th birth­day with the Earth­Cam and The Warhol Muse­um’s col­lab­o­ra­tion Fig­ment. It offers live cam­era feeds of not only his grave but the church where he was bap­tized. Com­par­isons to the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Empire are encour­aged.

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:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The film Andy Warhol: A Mir­ror of the Six­ties has been added to our list of 550 Free Movies 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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Free: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

in Art, Museums | August 5th, 2013

art of illumination

If you like read­ing about visu­al art but don’t like spend­ing the con­sid­er­able sums required to build your own library of vin­tage exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues, feel free to bor­row from anoth­er col­lec­tor. Or rather, feel free to bor­row from two col­lec­tors, both based in New York, both of some repute: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um. Ear­ly last year, we announced that the Guggen­heim had made 65 art cat­a­logues [now increased to 99] avail­able for free online, offer­ing “an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al intro­duc­tion to the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky” as well as ” oth­er texts (e.g., Mas­ter­pieces of Mod­ern Art and Abstract Expres­sion­ists Imag­ists) that tack­le meta move­ments and themes.” (That same post includes instruc­tions on how to use the Guggen­heim’s archive.)

klee-gugg

Late last year, we also announced the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s launch of Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, which will “even­tu­al­ly offer access to near­ly all books, Bul­letins, and Jour­nals” pub­lished by the Met since 1870. The col­lec­tion now fea­tures a whop­ping 375 free art books and cat­a­logues over­all. Tak­en togeth­er, these col­lec­tions exam­ine in detail art from all eras of human his­to­ry and all parts of the world. At the top of the post, you will see the cov­er for the Met’s The Art of Illu­mi­na­tion. (Who does­n’t love illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval man­u­scripts?) Below appears Six­ty Years of Liv­ing Archi­tec­ture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright, avail­able from the Guggen­heim. Giv­en the pres­ence of these and the oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing cat­a­logues we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly high­light­ed, word of these two muse­ums’ online libraries cer­tain­ly should­n’t stay buried in our archives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Down­load 375 Free eBooks

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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Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Portrait Morphs Into a Photograph

in Art, Photography, Technology | August 2nd, 2013

It’s a real­i­ty of big city liv­ing that one occa­sion­al­ly stum­bles upon some famous per­son behav­ing like a mere civil­ian, out walk­ing the dog, buy­ing a lat­te, or tak­ing the kids to some child-cen­tric event. I’m bad at rec­og­niz­ing these lumi­nar­ies out of con­text, which may be why I’m great at mis­tak­en­ly believ­ing some ran­dom cit­i­zen stand­ing beside me at an inter­sec­tion is in fact a not­ed author or beloved char­ac­ter actor. I have thus far nev­er labored under the delu­sion that the guy across the aisle on the F train to Brook­lyn is a one-eared Dutch post-Impres­sion­ist who died over a hun­dred years ago, but that could change.

van gogh portrait photo

Or not. Accord­ing to Lithuan­ian archi­tect and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tadao Cern, the friend who served as the mod­el for his dig­i­tal recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s icon­ic self-por­trait does­n’t resem­ble the painter all that much beyond his gin­ger hair and beard. After tak­ing his pic­ture, Cern devot­ed a day to adjust­ing col­ors and expo­sure in Light­room and fine tun­ing a host of details in Pho­to­shop. Sud­den­ly, the sim­i­lar­i­ties were uncan­ny.

vg Self-PortraitAnd since every Franken­stein needs a bride, Cern has cob­bled togeth­er a Mona Lisa to keep Van Gogh com­pa­ny.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mor­ph­ing Van Gogh Por­traits

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is post­ing from the wilds of Cape Cod, where she once spot­ted John Waters rid­ing his bicy­cle to Safe­way in a yel­low slick­er and match­ing all-weath­er pants. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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