Vintage Film: Watch Henri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

in Art | September 3rd, 2012

In April of 1946, a cam­era crew record­ed the scene as the great French artist Hen­ri Matisse sat down at his easel to make a char­coal sketch of his grand­son, Ger­ard, at his his home and stu­dio in Nice. The brief clip above is from a 26-minute film by François Cam­paux which was com­mis­sioned by the French Depart­ment of Cul­tur­al Rela­tions. Alas, we’ve been unable to find the entire film online, but you can watch a 15-minute Ger­man ver­sion on YouTube, or you can vis­it a Web page at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go for a group of high­er qual­i­ty silent excerpts from the film, accom­pa­nied by explana­to­ry cap­tions. In the clip above, we hear Matisse speak­ing in French. Here is a trans­la­tion:

Me, I believe that paint­ing and draw­ing are the same thing. Draw­ing is a paint­ing done in a sim­pler way [or with “limited/reduced resources”]. On a white sur­face, a sheet of paper, with a plume [or “pen”] and some ink, one cre­ates a cer­tain con­trast with vol­umes; one can change the qual­i­ty of the paper giv­en sup­ple sur­faces, light [or clear] sur­faces, hard sur­faces with­out always adding shad­ow or light. For me, draw­ing is a paint­ing with lim­it­ed means/resources.

For anoth­er glimpse of Matisse at work, look below for a rare col­or clip (from an unknown source) of the artist at work cre­at­ing one of his dis­tinc­tive paper cut-outs.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre August Renoir

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

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

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Campbell’s to Sell Special Andy Warhol Soup Cans, and What Makes Those Cans Art Anyway

in Art, Business | August 31st, 2012

When Mad Men kicked off its fifth sea­son ear­li­er this year, we encoun­tered Don Drap­er and Peg­gy Olson brain­storm­ing an adver­tis­ing cam­paign for Heinz baked beans. The goal? To make this sta­ple of the Amer­i­can diet sex­i­er to a younger gen­er­a­tion. It’s a peren­ni­al prob­lem for many tra­di­tion­al brands, some­thing that real-world com­pa­nies con­tend with day in, day out. Take Camp­bel­l’s Soup for exam­ple. As part of a broad­er effort to make its prod­ucts “more eth­nic, more hip,”  the com­pa­ny found­ed in 1869 plans to sell 1.2 mil­lion cans with art­work inspired by Andy Warhol.

Of course, Warhol is the artist who famous­ly began pro­duc­ing silkscreens of Camp­bel­l’s soup cans back in 1962. When Andy first cre­at­ed these icon­ic pieces of pop art, Camp­bel­l’s was none too pleased. In fact, the com­pa­ny con­sid­ered hit­ting him with a law­suit. But, by 1964, they were send­ing him nice let­ters and free cas­es of soup, and they also com­mis­sioned him to make a paint­ing for the fir­m’s retir­ing chair­man. Now 50 years lat­er, they’re hop­ing that Warhol’s pop art can get their sag­ging sales going again.

The soup cans will go on sale at Tar­get, start­ing this Sun­day, for 75 cents a pop. In the mean­time, we’ll leave you with this — Sal Khan (Khan Acad­e­my) and Steven Zuck­er (Smarthis­to­ry) explain­ing what makes Warhol’s art, art. And, by the way, I spot­ted Sal at the local gro­cery store tonight. Should have said hi. It’s a small world.

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Dan Philips Presents Sustainable Housing with Wildly Creative Designs

in Art, Design, TED Talks | August 15th, 2012

“Unique” is an overused word, so much so that it appears in overqual­i­fied redun­dan­cies like “com­plete­ly” or “very unique.” But, what the hell, I’m going to go ahead and call Dan Philips very unique. Philips, who has worked in army intel­li­gence, and as a dance instruc­tor and antiques deal­er, seems to have final­ly found his call­ing at age 64: build­ing cus­tom hous­es out of up to 80 per­cent sal­vaged and recy­cled materials—from con­struc­tion castoffs like old doors and odd-shaped beams to cat­tle bones, wine bot­tles, and license plates. In the TED talk above, Philips, a very wit­ty and engag­ing speak­er with a slight build and bushy han­dle­bar mus­tache, walks an audi­ence through some of his idio­syn­crat­ic designs, remark­ing on details like eggshells as dec­o­ra­tive but­tons, sal­vaged vin­tage appli­ances, his own low-tech solu­tions for laun­dry chutes and bath­tubs, and a sur­pris­ing­ly taste­ful “Bud­weis­er House.”

If any of this sounds a bit quirk-for-quirk’s sake, it’s not (entire­ly). Philips is a man with a seri­ous pur­pose. As a New York Times pro­file put it, he is “fer­vent­ly com­mit­ted to his vision of build­ing for low-income peo­ple,” espe­cial­ly poor, sin­gle moth­ers (Philips’ father aban­doned his fam­i­ly when he was 17). A self-taught plumber, car­pen­ter, and elec­tri­cian, his vision—articulated through his Huntsville, TX com­pa­ny Phoenix Com­mo­tion—includes hous­ing that is not only struc­tural­ly sound, but also archi­tec­tural­ly beau­ti­ful. “I think mobile homes are a blight on the plan­et,” he says. “Attrac­tive, afford­able hous­ing is pos­si­ble and I’m out to prove it.” While many of his buy­ers default­ed on their mort­gages dur­ing the recent crises, and some of his hous­es have been “gentrified”—sold to upper mid­dle-class fam­i­lies attract­ed by the design fea­tures and ener­gy efficiency—Philips is still pleased that his con­struc­tion rep­re­sents the real­i­ty of sus­tain­able design with recy­cled mate­ri­als and a build­ing phi­los­o­phy that tran­scends the end­less vis­tas of bland nou­veau colo­nials, ranch homes, and shod­dy tract hous­ing that seems to stretch across every sub­ur­ban land­scape.

Click here for a slideshow of sev­er­al of Philips’ cre­ations.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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New Archive Showcases Dr. Seuss’s Early Work as an Advertising Illustrator and Political Cartoonist

in Art, History, Literature | August 9th, 2012

Most peo­ple know Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) as a writer and illus­tra­tor of some of the world’s most-beloved children’s books. And while it’s true that some of his char­ac­ters have not fared well since his death in 1991, his lega­cy as a play­ful moral­ist is secure with par­ents and teach­ers every­where. But few peo­ple know that Geisel got his start as a satirist and illus­tra­tor for adults, pub­lish­ing arti­cles and illus­tra­tions in Judge, Life, Van­i­ty Fair, and the Sat­ur­day Evening Post. He went on to promi­nence as an adver­tis­ing illus­tra­tor dur­ing the Depres­sion, most famous­ly with a 17-year cam­paign for a bug-repel­lant called Flit—made by Stan­dard Oil—whose slo­gan, “Quick, Hen­ry, the Flit!” became a pop­u­lar catch phrase in the 30s.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, has a spe­cial col­lec­tion of Geisel’s adver­tis­ing work from the 30s and 40s (such as the image above) for clients like Stan­dard, NBC, and Ford. The images show Geisel the illus­tra­tor devel­op­ing visu­al themes that char­ac­ter­ize his children’s books—the cir­cus imagery, ele­phants, daz­zling phys­i­cal stunts, wide-eyed, fur­ry crea­tures, com­plex Rube Gold­berg machines, and the sig­na­ture dis­em­bod­ied point­ing gloves. Dur­ing World War II, Geisel shift­ed his focus from adver­tis­ing to pol­i­tics and con­tributed week­ly car­toons to PM mag­a­zine, a lib­er­al pub­li­ca­tion. UCSD also has an online cat­a­log of Geisel’s polit­i­cal car­toons, such as the 1941 ad for U.S. Sav­ings Bonds below.

 

via Coudal

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Remembering Robert Hughes, the Art Critic Who Took No Prisoners

in Art | August 7th, 2012

“Some think that so much of today’s art mir­rors and thus crit­i­cizes deca­dence,” Robert Hugh­es once said; “not so. It’s just deca­dent, full stop. It serves no crit­i­cal func­tion. It is part of the prob­lem.”

Hugh­es died Mon­day at the age of 74. One of the tow­er­ing fig­ures of late 20th cen­tu­ry art crit­i­cism, the Aus­tralian writer is best known for The Shock of the New, his 1980 tele­vi­sion series on the rise and fall of mod­ernism, and the best­selling book of the same name. He wrote at least 15 oth­er wide-rang­ing books on art and his­to­ry. He was an elo­quent writer and a tough crit­ic. “It was decid­ed­ly not Mr. Hugh­es’s method to take pris­on­ers,” writes Randy Kennedy in the New York Times obit­u­ary. “He was as damn­ing about artists who fell short of his expec­ta­tions as he was ecsta­t­ic about those who met them, and his prose seemed to reach only lofti­er heights when he was angry.”

Per­haps noth­ing made Hugh­es more angry than the per­ni­cious influ­ence of mon­ey on art in the past few decades. In the scene above from the 2008 BBC doc­u­men­tary The Mona Lisa Curse, Hugh­es pays a vis­it to Alber­to Mugra­bi, whose wealthy fam­i­ly makes no secret of its efforts to manip­u­late the art mar­ket by buy­ing up large num­bers of works by cer­tain artists (often those whom Hugh­es despised, like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst) and stor­ing them in ware­hous­es. What fol­lows is less of an inter­view than a brow­beat­ing. When it’s over and Hugh­es has left the room, Mugra­bi says, “He’s a tough cook­ie.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art

 

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Salvador Dalí Goes Commercial: Three Strange Television Ads

in Art, Television | August 3rd, 2012

Some years ago, a writer for Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly said, “Sal­vador Dalí’s swan-dive from Sur­re­al­ist vision­ary to pathet­ic self-par­o­dy sure­ly con­sti­tutes one of this cen­tu­ry’s great case stud­ies in career sui­cide.”

Fair enough. But Sal­vador Dalí doing a swan dive is a fun thing to watch, as these three tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials from his lat­er years demon­strate. The artist appeared in TV ads for a num­ber of clients, includ­ing Lan­vin Choco­lates, Alka-Seltzer and Vet­er­a­no brandy.

In the 1968 Lan­vin com­mer­cial, the wild-eyed artist takes a bite of choco­late and it curls his mus­tache. He looks at the cam­era and says, “I’m crazy about Lan­vin Choco­lates,” with the empha­sis on “crazy.”

Of course, there was method in Dalí’s mad­ness. Accord­ing to his biog­ra­ph­er Meryle Secrest, Dalí’s min­i­mum price for a minute of film was $10,000. The artist’s love of mon­ey is leg­endary. In 1939 André Bre­ton, founder of the Sur­re­al­ist move­ment, gave Dalí the nick­name “Avi­da Dol­lars,” an ana­gram for “Sal­vador Dali” based on the French avide à dol­lars. It means “eager for dol­lars.”

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Relat­ed con­tent:

Sal­vador Dali Gets Sur­re­al with Mike Wal­lace (1958)

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

Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí in Clas­sic 1968 Bran­iff Com­mer­i­cals: ‘When You Got it, Flaunt it!’

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

 

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Too Big for Any Museum, AIDS Quilt Goes Digital Thanks to Microsoft

in Art, History, Life, Politics | August 3rd, 2012

Twen­ty-five years ago a group of friends gath­ered in a San Fran­cis­co apart­ment to memo­ri­al­ize com­pan­ions who had died of AIDS. They used one of the old­est tech­niques around to hon­or their loved ones: they made a quilt, the now-famous AIDS Memo­r­i­al Quilt, with unique pan­els for each per­son felled by the dis­ease. Now includ­ing some 48,000 pan­els, the quilt has grown into a mas­sive, pub­lic expres­sion of grief. Its pan­els come from around the world. It was even nom­i­nat­ed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. (Find more on the his­to­ry of the quilt here.)

Like any good archive—and the quilt is an archive of life and loss—the AIDS Memo­r­i­al Quilt serves as a his­tor­i­cal repos­i­to­ry, a store­house of sen­ti­men­tal infor­ma­tion for scores of peo­ple. But beyond that the quilt is a piece of polit­i­cal folk art. AIDS, after all, is a unique­ly polit­i­cal dis­ease, at least in the Unit­ed States. The idea for the quilt was con­ceived dur­ing a can­dle­light march for assas­si­nat­ed San Fran­cis­co May­or George Moscone and Super­vi­sor Har­vey Milk. Efforts to lift the stig­ma of AIDS are close­ly linked to gay rights activism.

While the quilt is on view in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. this sum­mer, Microsoft offers the world up close and per­son­al access. Even if the Mall is too small to hold the entire quilt, the Inter­net isn’t. All 48,000 pan­els are new­ly dig­i­tized through a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Microsoft and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the Names Quilt Foun­da­tion.

You can fly like a bird over the whole, beau­ti­ful piece. You can zoom in to read the thou­sands of names—some in block let­ters, oth­ers stitched in cur­sive. You can count the rain­bows, too.

You can also search the quilt by name or, if you know it, by the block num­ber of a par­tic­u­lar pan­el through the AIDS Quilt Touch inter­face. The site allows unique search­es for each time the quilt has been dis­played. This is impor­tant because the quilt is so mas­sive that the Mall in Wash­ing­ton can’t hold it all. It’s always dis­played in sec­tions, so if you want to know where a spe­cial pan­el has been on view, recent­ly, it’s now pos­si­ble to find out.

Kate Rix is a free­lance writer based in Oak­land. See more of her work at .

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Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei: A Short Documentary

in Art, Current Affairs, Film | July 30th, 2012

The work of dis­si­dent Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei is mon­u­men­tal, as is the man’s fear­less and out­spo­ken per­son­al­i­ty. Recent­ly, while stand­ing under the cir­cu­lar dis­play of mas­sive bronze ani­mal heads in Ai’s Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at Wash­ing­ton, DC’s Hir­sh­horn Muse­um, I found myself wish­ing I could meet him. The next best thing, I guess, is to see can­did footage of his life and work, which is what you find in Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei, the short doc­u­men­tary (above) from PBS’s Front­line.

Begun in 2008 by 24-year-old film­mak­er Ali­son Klay­man, Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei cap­tures the artist imme­di­ate­ly before his prin­ci­pled and cost­ly stand against the Bei­jing Olympics (which he helped to design) and the oppres­sive police state he claimed it rep­re­sent­ed. Klay­man fol­lowed Ai for two years and shot 200 hours of footage, some of which became the short film above. The rest has been edit­ed and released as a fea­ture-length film called Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sor­ry, which has picked up prizes at Sun­dance, the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the Human Rights Watch Film Fes­ti­val.

Ai is unique among his con­tem­po­raries in the art world for his will­ing­ness to con­front social issues not only through visu­al media but also through media com­men­tary. As Klay­man puts it, “Wei­wei the artist had become as provoca­tive with his key­board, typ­ing out a dai­ly dia­tribe against local cor­rup­tion and gov­ern­ment abus­es” on his blog. Ai claims his polit­i­cal involve­ment is “very per­son­al.” “If you don’t speak out,” he says above, “if you don’t clear your mind, then who are you?” He has writ­ten edi­to­ri­als for Eng­lish-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions on why he with­drew his sup­port from the Bei­jing Games and what he thought of last Friday’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don (he liked it). And, of course, he’s become a bit of a star on Twit­ter, using it to relent­less­ly cri­tique China’s deep eco­nom­ic divides and sup­pres­sion of free speech.

But for all his noto­ri­ety as an activist and his well-known inter­net per­sona, Ai’s sculp­ture and pho­tog­ra­phy speaks for itself. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to his arrest and impris­on­ment by Chi­nese author­i­ties in 2011, he was unable to attend the open­ing of Cir­cle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in LA, and he is still under con­stant sur­veil­lance and not per­mit­ted to leave the coun­try. But, true to form, none of these set­backs have kept him from speak­ing out, about his pol­i­tics and his art. In the short video below, he dis­cuss­es the sig­nif­i­cance of Zodi­ac Heads, his most recent mon­u­men­tal vision.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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