Dream, A Short Documentary on the Art and Culture of Burning Man

in Art | May 20th, 2013

Every year, right before Labor Day, 50,000 peo­ple trav­el to Black Rock City, Neva­da to take part in Burn­ing Man — an exper­i­men­tal com­mu­ni­ty ded­i­cat­ed to rad­i­cal self reliance, rad­i­cal self-expres­sion and art. As Burn­ing Man’s own web site will tell you, “Try­ing to explain what Burn­ing Man is to some­one who has nev­er been to the event is a bit like try­ing to explain what a par­tic­u­lar col­or looks like to some­one who is blind.” Nonethe­less, the Burn­ing Man orga­niz­ers offer a short, intro­duc­to­ry essay and a First-Timer’s Guide to get you start­ed, plus some pho­to gal­leries to help fill out the pic­ture. And then above, we have a new­ly-made short film that offers a glimpse into the art and cul­ture of the Burn­ing Man expe­ri­ence. It high­lights some won­drous artis­tic cre­ations and the artists, design­ers, builders and sundry minds behind them. The doc­u­men­tary, Dream: Art & Cul­ture of Burn­ing Man, pre­miered at the Sono­ma Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val.

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Watch Picasso Create Entire Paintings in Magnificent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

in Art, Film | May 20th, 2013

How did Pablo Picas­so do it? Art his­to­ri­ans have spent much time and many words answer­ing that ques­tion, but in the video above, you can watch the painter in the act of cre­ation — or, rather, you can watch a series of his paint­ings as they come into being, evolv­ing from spare but evoca­tive col­lec­tions of mark­er strokes into com­plete images, alive with col­or. We see Picas­so’s visu­al ideas emerge, and then we see him refine and revise them, some­times toward a sur­pris­ing result. All of this hap­pens in under two min­utes, since film­mak­er Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot shot the artist work­ing with time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, com­press­ing each cre­ative process into mere sec­onds.

This par­tic­u­lar sequence became the trail­er of Clouzot’s 1956 doc­u­men­tary The Mys­tery of Picas­so. The paint­ings in it, we read at the end, “can­not be seen any­where else. They were destroyed upon com­ple­tion of the film.” Though word on the street has it that one or two of them may actu­al­ly sur­vive some­where today, the idea of Picas­so paint­ings exist­ing only on film does cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion, and it moved the French gov­ern­ment to offi­cial­ly declare The Mys­tery of Picas­so a nation­al trea­sure. Picas­so had, of course, paint­ed on film before, as you might recall from see­ing us fea­ture Paul Hae­saerts’ 1950 Vis­ite à Picas­so.

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:

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

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

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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Dylan Thomas Sketches a Caricature of a Drunken Dylan Thomas

in Art, Poetry | May 15th, 2013

Dylan Thomas Self-Portrait

Dylan Thomas’s drink­ing was leg­endary. Sto­ries of the debauched and disheveled Welsh poet­’s epic drink­ing binges have had a ten­den­cy to drown out seri­ous dis­cus­sion of his poet­ry.

It’s a leg­end that Thomas helped pro­mote, as this pen­cil sketch he made of him­self attests. The undat­ed self-car­i­ca­ture was pub­lished in Don­ald Fried­man’s 2007 book, The Writer’s Brush: Paint­ings, Draw­ings, and Sculp­ture by Writ­ers. It depicts a tee­ter­ing, gog­gle-eyed fig­ure with tum­bler in hand, hap­pi­ly sur­round­ed by bot­tles.

Thomas would some­times tell his friends he had cir­rho­sis of the liv­er, but his autop­sy even­tu­al­ly dis­proved this. As leg­end has it, the poet lit­er­al­ly drank him­self to death on his Amer­i­can tour in the fall of 1953, when he was 39 years old. In fact, it appears Thomas may have been a vic­tim of med­ical mal­prac­tice. He went to his doc­tor com­plain­ing of dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing. The doc­tor was aware of the poet­’s rep­u­ta­tion as a drinker, and had been informed by Thomas’s com­pan­ion of his now-famous state­ment from the night before: “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.”

So the doc­tor treat­ed Thomas for alco­holism and did­n’t dis­cov­er he was suf­fer­ing from pneu­mo­nia. He gave Thomas three injec­tions of mor­phine, which can slow res­pi­ra­tion. Thomas’s face turned blue and he went into a coma. He died four days lat­er. When Thomas’s friends inves­ti­gat­ed, they deter­mined he had like­ly con­sumed, at most, eight whiskies. That’s still a large amount, but the poet­’s exag­ger­a­tion appears to have led his doc­tor astray. In a sense, then, Dylan Thomas was killed not by his drink­ing, but by the leg­end of his drink­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

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Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Creativity, Nature and Religion in Rare 1957 Audio

in Architecture, Art, Creativity, Religion | May 14th, 2013

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most admired and influ­en­tial archi­tects of the 20th cen­tu­ry. He was a flam­boy­ant, unabashed­ly arro­gant man who viewed him­self from an ear­ly age as a genius. Oth­ers tend­ed to agree. In 1991, The Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects named Wright the great­est Amer­i­can archi­tect of all time.

Wright believed that the adage “form fol­lows func­tion” was some­thing of a mis­state­ment. “Form and func­tion should be one,” he said, “joined in a spir­i­tu­al union.” A sense of spir­i­tu­al union ran all through Wright’s work. He iden­ti­fied God with Nature (which he spelled with a cap­i­tal “N”) and strove to design build­ings that were in har­mo­ny with their nat­ur­al sur­round­ings. “No house should ever be on a hill or on any­thing,” Wright wrote in his 1932 auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “It should be of the hill. Belong­ing to it. Hill and house should live togeth­er each the hap­pi­er for the oth­er.”

Wright spoke about life and the cre­ativ­i­ty of man in mys­ti­cal terms. In this rare record­ing from June 18, 1957, a 90-year-old Wright describes his phi­los­o­phy. “Man is a phase of Nature,” he says, “and only as he is relat­ed to Nature does he mat­ter, does he have any account what­ev­er above the dust.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Gas Sta­tion Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations, Ani­mat­ed

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The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters

in Art, Literature | May 14th, 2013

sylvia-plathself-portrait

Sylvia Plath’s poet­ic tal­ent should go unques­tioned, but as Plath fans will know, she first intend­ed to become a visu­al artist, and some of her ear­li­est work—illustrated child­hood let­ters like the adorable dog below—remained hid­den away in the fam­i­ly attic until 1996. Edi­tor Kath­leen Con­nors includ­ed this juve­nil­ia in a 2007 col­lec­tion of Plath’s work enti­tled Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visu­al, which also fea­tures sketch­es, pho­tographs, and portraits—such as the brood­ing 1951 self-por­trait above—that rep­re­sent Plath’s work while an art stu­dent at Smith Col­lege.

Plath-dog

Much of the art-school work is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Plath’s best. While she made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion at age 20 to aban­don aspi­ra­tions for an art career and focus on her writ­ing, Plath con­tin­ued to make visu­al art. For exam­ple, at 23, she pro­duced a con­fi­dent­ly-ren­dered series of pen-and-ink drawings—such as the fish­ing boats below—while she and Ted Hugh­es hon­ey­mooned in Paris and Spain.

sylviaplathdrawings1

The Tele­graph has a gallery of thir­ty of these draw­ings, which were on dis­play at London’s May­or Gallery between Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 2011. Plath’s writ­ing has always been remark­ably visu­al, her deft han­dling of some­times star­tling imagery giv­ing her work so much of its abil­i­ty to seduce, enthrall, and unset­tle. As in her poet­ry, the images of her­self seem to attract the most inter­est. There are oth­er pieces of Plath self-por­trai­ture, but none con­trasts so much with the youth­ful paint­ing above, I think, as the accom­plished pen­cil draw­ing below, with the poet’s fear­less side­long stare and bare shoul­ders express­ing both her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and con­sid­er­able per­son­al and cre­ative pow­er.

sylvia plath self portrait 2

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

Sylvia Plath Reads “Dad­dy”

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

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The Genius of Brian Eno On Display in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

in Art, Music | May 13th, 2013

Four years ago, I expe­ri­enced musi­cal poly­math, rock pro­duc­er, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and high-tech painter Bri­an Eno’s gen­er­a­tive-art instal­la­tion 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings in Long Beach. I also saw him give an enter­tain­ing talk there on his obser­va­tions of and ideas about sound, images, and cul­ture. This year, he brought the show to New York City, giv­ing it the largest stag­ing yet, and then sat down for an equal­ly enter­tain­ing 80-minute Q&A for the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my. Per­haps it sounds a lit­tle odd that a cre­ator who has based the past few decades of recent solo work on qui­etude, reflec­tion, and men­tal recep­tive­ness would appear at such length in a forum spon­sored by an ener­gy drink, but hey, we live in inter­est­ing times, and Eno has inter­est­ing thoughts, no mat­ter where he voic­es them.

Sit­ting back on a sofa (whose side table comes stocked with cans of Red Bull), Eno dis­cuss­es com­pos­ing music for hos­pi­tals after meet­ing a great many chil­dren born to his 1975 album Dis­creet Music; the ama­teur cho­rus he runs and with whom he some­times invites famous singer friends to sit in; “sce­nius,” or the spe­cial kind of genius that emerges when large num­bers of enthu­si­asts cohere into a scene; the DJ as cul­tur­al “lubri­cant”; his love of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian paint­ing; what makes pop­u­lar music, from Abba to Bey­on­cé, sound pop­u­lar; the impor­tance of dead­lines; and his new iPad app Scape, which, to his mind, should soon dis­place the tire­some con­ven­tions of Hol­ly­wood film scor­ing entire­ly. While this pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing intro­duc­tion to Eno the intel­lec­tu­al, long­time fans will want to catch up with his lat­est thoughts on sev­er­al favorite sub­jects, such as the val­ue of sur­ren­der in not just expe­ri­enc­ing but cre­at­ing art, and the coun­ter­in­tu­itive bursts of cre­ativ­i­ty that come when work­ing with few­er options, not more.

H/T goes to Heather

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

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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How Marie Antoinette, Shakespeare and Other Historical Figures Might Look Today

in Art, History | May 7th, 2013

historical figures todayWhat would a mod­ern Marie Antoinette look like? Her hair would hang down; her once crooked teeth would be straight­ened; she’d con­tin­ue to wear design­er clothes; and, yes, she’d sad­ly have some sur­gi­cal enhance­ments too. A far cry from how the more state­ly Queen Eliz­a­beth I might look today. These images come out of a Tele­graph gallery that gives his­tor­i­cal fig­ures a mod­ern makeover. Oth­er fig­ures re-imag­ined here include Shake­speare (who goes a lit­tle hip­ster doo­fus), Hen­ry VIII, and Admi­ral Lord Nel­son.

via Kot­tke

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

in Art, Film | May 1st, 2013

Street artists: you either love ’em or hate ’em. Or, to put it less blunt­ly, you either find ’em inno­v­a­tive pub­lic icono­g­ra­phers or find ’em puerile pub­lic nui­sances. I sure­ly don’t have to get into the con­tro­ver­sy of appraisal and reap­praisal that swirls end­less­ly around Eng­lish sten­cil-wield­ing satirist Banksy, but even the far less secre­tive and aggres­sive Shep­ard Fairey has detrac­tors as fer­vent as his admir­ers. Yes, I mean the Oba­ma “HOPE” fel­low, though he began launch­ing images into our zeit­geist well before any of us knew the name of the future Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. You can learn much more about his ear­ly, pre-HOPE work by watch­ing Obey the Giant, a brand new twen­ty-minute doc­u­men­tary free to watch online. Among the truths revealed: Fairey also cre­at­ed “Andre the Giant has a posse” stick­ers, those pil­lars of nineties under­ground cul­ture and results of an “exper­i­ment in phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy” that you’ve almost cer­tain­ly been spot­ting ever since.

Direct­ed by for­mer Fairey intern Julian Mar­shall, the short exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his cre­ation of this prank­ish yet sur­pris­ing­ly long-lived cam­paign. Why appro­pri­ate the image of such a well-known pro­fes­sion­al wrestler? Why cred­it him with a posse? Why start spread­ing the word on the streets of Prov­i­dence? To address these ques­tions, Obey the Giant goes back to Fairey’s years at the Rhode Island School of Design in the late eight­ies and ear­ly nineties, when he hung out with a tight-knit group of hip-hop-lov­ing skaters, known inter­nal­ly as “the Posse,” and need­ed a sam­ple image to try mak­ing a sten­cil out of. The doc­u­men­tary, which crowd­sourced its $65,000 bud­get through Kick­starter, fea­tures a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of Fairey por­trayed by an actor. The move seems faint­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Banksy’s real­i­ty-ambigu­ous 2012 film Exit Through the Gift Shop, though the real Fairey does­n’t con­ceal his iden­ti­ty. He even occa­sion­al­ly turns up, so I’ve heard, at the muse­um here in Los Ange­les where my lady works — in the gift shop, as it hap­pens.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Oba­ma “Hope” Poster & The New Copy­right Con­tro­ver­sy

Shep­ard Fairey Caves In, Revis­es Occu­py Wall Street Poster

Artist Shep­ard Fairey Curates His Favorite YouTube Videos

Strik­ing Posters From Occu­py Wall Street: Down­load Them for Free

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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