This short inter­net doc­u­men­tary from Etsy pro­files Jim Pow­er, a.k.a. “Mosa­ic Man,” an artist and local his­to­ri­an of sorts on Manhattan’s Low­er East Side who cre­ates tile por­traits of the city’s most sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple and places. Pow­er embod­ies all of the qual­i­ties that attract­ed me to the neigh­bor­hood in the ear­ly 2000’s—a hard-bit­ten do-it-your­self ethos and a ded­i­ca­tion to com­mu­nal val­ues. And he has with­stood the forces that drove me out: the often harsh impact of so-called “qual­i­ty of life” laws passed by May­ors Giu­liani and Bloomberg and the soar­ing rents occa­sioned by encroach­ing new devel­op­ments and ever-increas­ing demand for real-estate on the island. Dur­ing Giuliani’s tenure in the 90s much of the arts com­mu­ni­ty in low­er Man­hat­tan was swept away, includ­ing fifty light posts bear­ing Jim Power’s now-clas­sic mosaics.

But Pow­er is undaunt­ed and is work­ing to rebuild the “Mosa­ic Trail,” tile mosaics on a series of light poles and oth­er fix­tures rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al eras of Low­er East Side his­to­ry and cul­ture. Power’s mosaics have been a stal­wart fea­ture of the neighborhood’s idio­syn­crat­ic land­scape, as has the artist him­self. Home­less for near­ly thir­ty years, he is sus­tained by the gen­eros­i­ty of his neigh­bors, who have donat­ed stu­dio space and help­ing hands. But he con­tends with the harsh conditions—whether on the streets or in the city shelters—that all New York’s home­less must, as you can read on his web­site. Nonethe­less, Pow­er thrives, in part, because as the documentary’s direc­tor Tara Young writes on her Etsy blog, “Jim’s not out for fame. He makes his art for the com­mu­ni­ty that he loves and that loves him so dear­ly in return.”

In the past few days we’ve fea­tured a series of remark­able lit­tle films of French artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Mon­et and Edgar Degas. Today we wrap things up with just one more: a rare glimpse of the great sculp­tor Auguste Rodin.

The footage was tak­en in 1915, two years before Rod­in’s death. There are sev­er­al sequences. The first shows the artist at the columned entrance to an uniden­ti­fied struc­ture, fol­lowed by a brief shot of him pos­ing in a gar­den some­where. The rest of the film, begin­ning at the 53-sec­ond mark, was clear­ly shot at the pala­tial, but dilap­i­dat­ed, Hôtel Biron, which Rodin was using as a stu­dio and sec­ond home.

The man­sion was built as a pri­vate res­i­dence in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry, and served as a Catholic school for girls from 1820 until about 1904, when it became ille­gal for pub­lic mon­ey to be used for reli­gious edu­ca­tion. When the last of the nuns cleared out, the rooms of the Hôtel Biron were rent­ed out to a diverse group of peo­ple that includ­ed some notable artists: Jean Cocteau, Isado­ra Dun­can, Hen­ri Matisse and Rain­er Maria Rilke, who served for a time as Rod­in’s sec­re­tary. It was Rilke’s wife, the sculp­tor Clara West­hoff Rilke, who first told Rodin about the place in 1909.

Rodin first rent­ed four rooms on the main floor, but was alarmed when he learned of plans to sell the prop­er­ty off in pieces to devel­op­ers. So he made a deal with the gov­ern­ment: In exchange for bequeath­ing all his works to the French state, the sculp­tor was allowed to occu­py the man­sion for the rest of his life, and after he died, the estate would become the Musée Rodin.

By the time actor Sacha Gui­t­ry and his cam­era­man arrived to film this scene from Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land,” Rodin was the sole occu­pant of the Hôtel Biron. The film shows the 74-year-old artist walk­ing down the weed-cov­ered steps of the man­sion and work­ing inside, chip­ping away at a mar­ble stat­ue with a ham­mer and chis­el. When Rodin was asked once about how he cre­at­ed his stat­ues, he said, “I choose a block of mar­ble and chop off what­ev­er I don’t need.”

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Edgar Degas was near­ly blind when this film footage was tak­en in 1915. The great French Impres­sion­ist painter had begun to lose his eye­sight in his thir­ties, when he became extreme­ly sen­si­tive to bright light and expe­ri­enced a loss of vision in his right eye. Degas devel­oped blind spots in both eyes, and by the time he was in his for­ties he had lost a sig­nif­i­cant part of his cen­tral vision.

Paint­ing was a strug­gle. The unbear­able­ness of bright light forced Degas to work indoors, and even­tu­al­ly he had to ask his mod­els for help iden­ti­fy­ing col­ors. By the time he was 57 he could no longer read. “How awful it is not being able to see clear­ly any­more,” Degas said late in his life. “I have to give up draw­ing and paint­ing and for years now con­tent myself with sculp­ture.… But if my eye­sight con­tin­ues to dim I won’t even be able to mod­el any more. What will I do with my days then?”

In 1912 Degas had to give up art alto­geth­er, and he filled his days by tak­ing long walks around Paris. When the young actor Sacha Gui­t­ry approached the retired artist about appear­ing in his film Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land” (we fea­tured Gui­t­ry’s footage of a severe­ly arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Wednes­day and Claude Mon­et in his gar­den at Giverny yes­ter­day), Degas flat­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate. Unde­terred, Gui­t­ry became a sort of pio­neer­ing paparazzi: He set up his cam­era near Degas’s home on the Boule­vard de Clichy and wait­ed in ambush for the 81-year-old man to pass by on one of his reg­u­lar walks.

The result­ing film is brief, but fas­ci­nat­ing. The great painter strolls along with a female helper, a bowler hat on his head and a fold­ed over­coat under one arm, using an umbrel­la as a walk­ing stick. When he gets clos­er to the cam­era we can see that Degas is wear­ing the tint­ed glass­es he cus­tom­ar­i­ly used to shield what was left of his eye­sight from the harsh day­light. When the old man reach­es the edge of the frame, the wom­an’s hand takes hold of his arm, and then he’s gone.

By the late six­ties, the Amer­i­can Bell Tele­phone Com­pa­ny, col­lo­qui­al­ly known across Amer­i­ca as “Ma Bell,” need­ed some spiff­ing up. Per­haps a vast, long-estab­lished tele­phone ser­vice monop­oly does­n’t spring to mind as the ide­al design client, but Saul Bass, the artist behind the title sequences for films like The Man with the Gold­en Arm, Spar­ta­cus, and Psy­cho, thought dif­fer­ent­ly. If you rec­og­nize Bass’ name, you prob­a­bly know he cre­at­ed the Bell logo used by the com­pa­ny from 1969 to its Jus­tice Depart­ment-man­dat­ed divesti­ture in 1984. But the work cut out for Bass and his asso­ciates went well beyond fig­ur­ing out how best to stream­line and mod­ern­ize an old-timey bell-in-a-cir­cle graph­ic. As you can see above, they had to pro­duce an entire half-hour film pitch­ing their ideas for the cor­po­ra­tion’s com­plete aes­thet­ic redesign. They did­n’t just make a new logo; they prac­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ed a new world, encom­pass­ing signs, booths, vehi­cles, equip­ment, pub­li­ca­tions, uni­forms, and exec­u­tive cuf­flinks.

Bass pre­sent­ed all this to Bell in 1969, the year after Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001 offered a vision of a near-future sim­i­lar­ly uni­fied by con­sis­tent, mod­ern design. It marked the last era when you could pro­pose such a top-down aes­thet­ic pro­gram and not appear total­i­tar­i­an — and, con­sid­er­ing the earth-toned styl­is­tic excess­es the sev­en­ties would short­ly bring, it was the last era when you would have want­ed to. View­ers of cer­tain gen­er­a­tions will remem­ber vivid­ly the real-life ver­sions of Bass’ pro­posed phone book, van, and hard­hat designs. Oth­er pro­pos­als seem slight­ly out­landish and, from the per­spec­tive of 2012, more than a lit­tle retro. Observe, for instance, the unre­al­ized uni­form designs for women work­ing at Bel­l’s ser­vice cen­ters: “More flat­ter­ing than any­thing offered by the air­lines [ … ] Ma Bell has gone Mod!” But the stock of retro-futur­ism has reached an all-time high in recent years, and Bass’ design work, as goofy as cer­tain pieces of it may now seem, has retained a strik­ing qual­i­ty over the decades. He cer­tain­ly impressed the right peo­ple at Bell: after the breakup, the new AT&T hired him to make them a logo of their own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.