The Extraordinary Life and Art of Henri Cartier-Bresson Revealed in 1998 Documentary

in Art, Photography | June 14th, 2013

The cam­era, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son once said, is an instru­ment of intu­ition and spon­tane­ity — “the mas­ter of the instant which, in visu­al terms, ques­tions and decides simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.” Like a Zen archer, Carti­er-Bres­son viewed his méti­er as a way of being in the world. Pho­tog­ra­phy for him was an “art­less art,” best approached by for­get­ting tech­nique and open­ing one­self to the uncon­scious. “To take pho­tographs,” he said, “means to recognize–simultaneously and with­in a frac­tion of a second–both the fact itself and the rig­or­ous orga­ni­za­tion of visu­al­ly per­ceived forms that give it mean­ing. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.”

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son: Pen, Brush and Cam­era (above) is an excel­lent overview of the great pho­tog­ra­pher’s life and work. Direct­ed and nar­rat­ed by Patri­cia Wheat­ley, the film was pro­duced for the BBC in 1998, the year four major exhi­bi­tions were held in Lon­don to cel­e­brate Carti­er-Bres­son’s 90th birth­day. The film traces the pho­tog­ra­pher’s extra­or­di­nary life, from his ear­ly train­ing as a painter and his infat­u­a­tion with Sur­re­al­ism to his lat­er work as a globe-trot­ting pho­to­jour­nal­ist and his deci­sion, after 40 years of work in the medi­um, to give up pho­tog­ra­phy and ded­i­cate the last decades of his life to draw­ing. The film includes rare footage of Carti­er-Bres­son at work, along with inter­views by Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eve Arnold and oth­ers. Best of all, Wheat­ley was able to film exten­sive inter­views with the noto­ri­ous­ly shy pho­tog­ra­ph­er, both in Lon­don and in his apart­ment over­look­ing the Tui­leries Gar­dens in Paris.

To learn more about Carti­er-Bres­son and to see a won­der­ful slide show of his pho­tog­ra­phy nar­rat­ed by the man him­self, please see our ear­li­er piece, “Hen­ri Carti­er Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cre­ative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

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

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

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

in Art, Museums, Technology | June 12th, 2013

stripedshirt

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured the Nation­al Gallery of Art’s site NGA Images, where you can down­load 25,000 high-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal images of that muse­um’s works of art. Today, why not have a look at Google Art Project? Though we’ve post­ed about it before, you’ll want to check out its slick new redesign — not to men­tion its expand­ed col­lec­tion, which now includes more than 250,000 works of art from over 250 muse­ums. TechCrunch’s Fred­er­ic Lar­de­nois writes that the lat­est iter­a­tion of Google Art Pro­jec­t’s “improved search tools now make it sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er to fil­ter any list of art­works by artist, place, data and relat­ed events. [ … ] Some of the most impor­tant art­works are also avail­able as gigapix­el images. Many muse­ums also allow you to browse their gal­leries using Google Street View.”

The col­lec­tions new­ly added to Google Art Project come from insti­tu­tions as far- and wide-rang­ing as Kuwait­’s al Sabah Col­lec­tion, Japan’s Kawabara Memo­r­i­al DIC Muse­um of Art, Den­mark’s Statens Muse­um for Kun­st, and Aus­trali­a’s Art Gallery of New South Wales. At the top, we have an image of Sunkwan Kwon’s “A Man in Stripe Shirt Who is Drop­ping His Head for a Long Time After Phone Call,” made avail­able in the Kore­an Art Muse­um Asso­ci­a­tion col­lec­tion. But don’t look at the image in this post; look at the piece’s entry in Google Art Project, which lets you scroll and zoom as you please. And you will want to zoom, since Kwon’s very large-for­mat pho­tog­ra­phy demands close atten­tion to detail. At such a high res­o­lu­tion, you can pay that atten­tion, look­ing right into the win­dows and observ­ing the peo­ple behind them. View­ers, as the work’s descrip­tion says, “should keep hav­ing tena­cious ques­tions that ask who the char­ac­ters are, why they show tense expres­sions on their face and what their sit­u­a­tions are.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern 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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The National Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Artwork Freely Available Online

in Art, Music, Technology | June 11th, 2013

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No sur­prise that in “Mas­ter­works for One and All,” an arti­cle about how muse­ums have begun to offer free, high-qual­i­ty down­load­able images of works from their col­lec­tions, the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal brings up Wal­ter Ben­jamin. The pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the philoso­pher behind “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” may seem more rel­e­vant than ever in these days of not just mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, but uni­ver­sal, devel­oped-world own­er­ship of the means of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion — and near­ly instan­ta­neous, effort­less mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion at that. Many rights-hold­ers, includ­ing cer­tain muse­ums, have effec­tive­ly decid­ed that if you can’t beat the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­ers, join ’em. “With the Inter­net, it’s so dif­fi­cult to con­trol your copy­right or use of images,” Sie­gal quotes the Rijksmu­se­um’s direc­tor of col­lec­tions as say­ing. “We decid­ed we’d rather peo­ple use a very good high-res­o­lu­tion image of [Ver­meer’s] ‘Milk­maid’ from the Rijksmu­se­um rather than using a very bad repro­duc­tion.” (See our pre­vi­ous post: The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art.)

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Sie­gal goes on to men­tion the efforts of Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, which has so far made super high-res­o­lu­tion images of 25,000 works freely avail­able on NGA Images, a site that describes itself as “designed to facil­i­tate learn­ing, enrich­ment, enjoy­ment, and explo­ration.” You can browse the images by col­lec­tion — French gal­leries, self-por­traits, music — view the most recent addi­tions, or pull up the works of art most fre­quent­ly request­ed by oth­ers. Leonar­do’s por­trait of the Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat Ginevra de’ Ben­ci, seen up top, has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, as has Claude Mon­et’s The Japan­ese Foot­bridge just above. But does all this bear out Ben­jam­in’s con­cerns about mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion cheap­en­ing the orig­i­nal aura of a work? “I don’t think any­one thinks we’ve cheap­ened the image of the ‘Mona Lisa,’” an NGA spokes­woman said to Sie­gal. “Peo­ple have got­ten past that, and they still want to go to the Lou­vre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-cen­tu­ry way of respect­ing images.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern 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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World Records: New Photo Exhibit Pays Tribute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turntables

in Art, Music | June 11th, 2013

KindofBlue_MilesDavisJust yes­ter­day, The New York Times ran a piece declar­ing that vinyl is back. Once a casu­al­ty of the CD, vinyl records are now sell­ing at a steady clip, and not just to nos­tal­gic sex­a­ge­nar­i­ans. Younger music fans are embrac­ing old-school records, frankly because they deliv­er a bet­ter sound than com­pressed MP3s. When Daft Punk released its lat­est album Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries last month, 19,000 vinyl copies were sold, rep­re­sent­ing about 6% of over­all sales. And that may be a low­ball num­ber.

There is, of course, a nos­tal­gic com­po­nent to the vinyl revival. We fond­ly rem­i­nisce about the days when music had oth­er tan­gi­ble and aes­thet­ic dimen­sions. Remem­ber when you could feel the weight of the records, study the cov­er designs, rev­el in the lin­er notes, then slip the discs onto the turntable and watch them spin? Those mem­o­ries get cap­tured by a new pho­to exhib­it — “World Records” — being held at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Ange­les from June 8 to July 13. It fea­tures the work of Kai Schae­fer, who has pho­tographed over 100 clas­sic albums on an array of turnta­bles. Above, you’ll find a copy of Miles Davis’ jazz clas­sic, Kind of Blue, sit­ting on a Rekokut B‑12GH. Oth­er favorites of ours include Lon­don Call­ing by The Clash on a B&O Beogram 4004, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street on a Dual1010, and VU’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico on a Thorens TD 124II. You can vis­it a larg­er online gallery of pho­tos here.

via Slate and Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Neil Young Busts a Music Store for Sell­ing a Boot­leg CSNY Album (1971)

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Maurice Sendak Animated; James Gandolfini Reads from Sendak’s Story “In The Night Kitchen”

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, K-12 | June 10th, 2013

Mau­rice Sendak (1928–2012), the great writer and illus­tra­tor of chil­dren’s books, would have turned 85 today. To cel­e­brate his birth­day, Google has adorned its web site with a fan­tas­tic ani­mat­ed doo­dle (make sure you press the “play” but­ton) and Blank on Blank has released a video that ani­mates Sendak’s mus­ings about being a kid. Based on a pre­vi­ous­ly-unheard inter­view record­ed in 2009, Sendak speaks in the clip about his dif­fi­cult child­hood, which was sur­round­ed by tragedy. (He grew up in Brook­lyn, the child of Pol­ish Jew­ish immi­grants whose remain­ing fam­i­ly per­ished dur­ing the Holo­caust.) He also recalls how chil­dren all have prob­lems to work through — prob­lems that remained at the front of his mind when he start­ed writ­ing his clas­sic chil­dren’s books. It’s worth pair­ing the video above with anoth­er ani­mat­ed video of Sendak’s emo­tion­al last inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross. And, for a com­plete­ly ran­dom bonus, we’ve added below a clip of James Gan­dolfi­ni (aka Tony Sopra­no) read­ing from Sendak’s con­tro­ver­sial sto­ry book In The Night Kitchen. The read­ing took place on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2008 at the 92nd St Y in New York City, at a trib­ute held on the occa­sion of Sendak’s 80th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late James Gan­dolfi­ni, Star of The Sopra­nos, Appears on Inside the Actors Stu­dio (2004) 

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

 

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David Byrne’s Graduation Speech Offers Troubling and Encouraging Advice for Students in the Arts

in Art, Education, Graduation Speech, Music | June 10th, 2013


How could David Byrne nev­er have giv­en a com­mence­ment address before? As an expe­ri­enced pub­lic speak­er, a well-known cre­ator who has carved out his own cul­tur­al niche, an advo­cate of things (such as cycling) beloved among world-chang­ing young peo­ple, the founder of a band with a sur­pris­ing mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional appeal, and a man with no small com­mand of Pow­er­point, he’d seem to make an appeal­ing choice indeed. His first com­mence­ment address ever came this year at the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of the Arts, and, view­able from 1:17:00 in the video above, it has cer­tain­ly made an impact in the inter­net. The mes­sage some grads and fans have tak­en away? “If you chose a career in the arts,” as the New York­er’s Rachel Arons puts it, “you are, basi­cal­ly, screwed.”

“A pie chart, based on 2011 data, showed that only three per cent of film and the­atre grads, and five per cent of writ­ing and visu­al-arts grads, end up work­ing in their areas of con­cen­tra­tion,” she writes of the visu­al aids deliv­er­ing Byrne’s grim ini­tial mes­sage. “A sub­se­quent bar graph showed that, accord­ing to those stats, four­teen writ­ing and four­teen Colum­bia visu­al-arts grad­u­ates will go on to careers in their fields, and eight the­atre and eight film grads will go on to careers in theirs.” But first­hand reports from the cer­e­mo­ny don’t describe a too ter­ri­bly shak­en Colum­bia grad­u­at­ing class, and even Byrne took pains to empha­size, or at least emphat­i­cal­ly imply, that tru­ly worth­while careers — such as, I would say, his own — lay out­side, or in between, or at the inter­sec­tion of, defin­able fields. And why would you want to work in the same field you stud­ied, any­way? To para­phrase some­thing Byrne’s friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno said about tech­nol­o­gy, once a whole major has built up around a pur­suit, it’s prob­a­bly not the most inter­est­ing thing to be doing any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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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Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

in Art, Comedy | June 10th, 2013

In the 1990s, some­where on his long road to star­dom, Louis CK made an appear­ance on a satir­i­cal “Artu­men­tary” aired by MTV. In it, CK plays the role of David Cross, a would-be artist who spe­cial­izes in pho­tograph­ing toi­lets filled with ink — a not-so-sub­tle metaphor for the tripe that often gets passed off as avant-garde art. In case there’s any ambi­gu­i­ty about the under­ly­ing mes­sage, Cross add wry­ly, “Basi­cal­ly, see, MTV will show you a lot of crap, and they’ll tell you it’s art. But I show you crap, and it’s, like, art.”

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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Building Statues for Nikola Tesla and Bob Dylan: Two Kickstarter Campaigns

in Art, Music, Science | June 6th, 2013

In the mat­ter of a month, a group called North­ern Imag­i­na­tion raised $127,000 on Kick­starter, the amount need­ed to fund the build­ing of a stat­ue ded­i­cat­ed to the inven­tor Niko­la Tes­la in Sil­i­con Val­ley. It’s a way of pay­ing trib­ute to “the per­son who used his bril­liance to advance soci­ety” by mak­ing “hun­dreds of sig­nif­i­cant and ground­break­ing inven­tions in areas of wire­less ener­gy, wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mag­net­ism, radio, x‑rays, cos­mic rays, radar, robot­ics, engine-pow­ered air­craft and much more.” As cur­rent­ly planned, the stat­ue will sit on Cal­i­for­nia Ave in Palo Alto (right in my neck of the woods). Nat­u­ral­ly, it will host a free Wi-Fi hotspot and also a time cap­sule to be opened on Jan 7, 2043.

Mean­while, halfway across the coun­try, the “Dylan by Duluth” cam­paign is hop­ing to raise $159,000 (again on Kick­starter) to build a stat­ue hon­or­ing Duluth’s favorite son, the trou­ba­dour Bob Dylan. Once com­plete, the bronze stat­ue will stand approx­i­mate­ly 12 feet 6 inch­es tall and hope­ful­ly sit some­where near High­way 61. Three days in, the still-very-young cam­paign has received $5,089 from 40 back­ers. You can help make the Dylan mon­u­ment a real­i­ty right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest Daz­zles a TED Audi­ence with “The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la”

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

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