Sketches of Artists by the Late New Media Designer Hillman Curtis

in Art, Film | May 21st, 2012

Hill­man Cur­tis began his career in the San Fran­cis­co new wave group Mrs. Green, served as Macro­me­di­a’s design direc­tor, found­ed the design firm hill­man­cur­tis, Inc., wrote man­u­als on new media, and shot short doc­u­men­taries. He accom­plished much of note across the design pro­fes­sions before his untime­ly pass­ing last month, and these projects reveal his great affin­i­ty for like-mind­ed­ly mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and aes­thet­i­cal­ly inclined cre­ators. He won a great deal of his inter­net fame exam­in­ing just such peo­ple in the Artist Series, a cycle of five-to-ten minute pro­files of, broad­ly speak­ing, his col­leagues. These include Mil­ton Glaser, the man behind the look of the immor­tal I Love New York cam­paign; David Car­son, art direc­tor of the nineties’ cultish­ly cov­et­ed rock mag­a­zine Ray Gun; and Mark Romanek, direc­tor of strik­ing com­mer­cials and fea­ture films like One Hour Pho­to.

At the top of this post, you’ll find Cur­tis’ Artist Series short on Daniel Libe­skind, the archi­tect over­see­ing the rebuild­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter. It exam­ines the archi­tec­t’s build­ings, his sketch­es, his meet­ings, and his ideas about the built envi­ron­ment as a tool for lib­er­a­tion rather than a “neu­tral world that con­firms all our ideas.” Ulti­mate­ly, Libe­skind asks this of his craft, his pro­fes­sion, and his world­view: “How will it car­ry peo­ple into a world that is good?” Direct­ly above is Cur­tis’ pro­file of graph­ic design­er Paula Sch­er, who talks about the speed with which she sketched the Citibank logo. The client seems to have balked at this, assum­ing that any­thing so quick­ly cre­at­ed could­n’t pos­si­bly war­rant the cost. Sch­er argues that, while it appeared to take her only a sec­ond, it real­ly took her “a sec­ond and 34 years,” “a sec­ond and every expe­ri­ence and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.” Nei­ther she nor any­one else in the Artist Series sees divi­sions between their work, their life, and the rest of human­i­ty. Hill­man Cur­tis, by all accounts, lived the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pow­ers of Ten: The 1968 Doc­u­men­tary by Leg­endary Design­ers Ray and Charles Eames

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

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

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A Brief History of John Baldessari, Narrated by Tom Waits

in Art, Film | May 17th, 2012

Tom Waits nar­rates this whim­si­cal, fast-mov­ing intro­duc­tion to the life and work of West-Coast con­cep­tu­al artist John Baldessari. The film was direct­ed by Hen­ry Joost and Ariel Schul­man, the cre­ative team behind Cat­fish and Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty 3. It was made for the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art’s inau­gur­al Art & Film Gala, held last Novem­ber in hon­or of Baldessari and Clint East­wood. Baldessari mix­es a vari­ety of media in his art, includ­ing sculp­ture, paint­ing, print­mak­ing and video. “His work,” writes Elis­a­beth Roark of Grove Art Online, “is char­ac­ter­ized by a con­scious­ness of lan­guage evi­dent in his use of puns, seman­tics based on the struc­tural­ism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and by the incor­po­ra­tion of mate­r­i­al drawn from pop­u­lar cul­ture.” When Joost and Schul­man ask Baldessari how he will be remem­bered 100 years hence, he says dry­ly, “I’m the guy who puts dots over peo­ple’s faces.”

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:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

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Duke Ellington Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

in Art, Music | May 10th, 2012

On a sun­ny July morn­ing in 1966, two of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s great­est artists–Duke Elling­ton and Joan Miró–met in the medieval vil­lage of St. Paul de Vence in the south of France.

The meet­ing was arranged by the leg­endary jazz impre­sario Nor­man Granz, who was pro­duc­ing a music fes­ti­val at Juan-le-Pins while at the same time con­tin­u­ing work on a doc­u­men­tary film project he had start­ed in 1950, called Impro­vi­sa­tion. Granz had the idea of bring­ing Elling­ton and his trio to play in the gar­den at the Fon­da­tion Maeght, where, as he explains in this excerpt from the film, by sheer luck Miró hap­pened to be work­ing. The two men could­n’t under­stand a word each oth­er said, but showed each oth­er their work. Miro took Elling­ton on a tour of his sculp­tures; Elling­ton and his trio played a cou­ple of num­bers for Miró.

We spoke this week with a mem­ber of Elling­ton’s trio, bassist John Lamb. Now 78, Lamb said he does­n’t remem­ber much about that day, except that the trip to St. Paul de Vence was at 10 or 11 in the morning–early for the musi­cians, who had been up late the night before. After per­form­ing at the fes­ti­val with musi­cians like Ella Fitzger­ald, Jean-Luc Pon­ty, Charles Lloyd and Kei­th Jar­rett, meet­ing Miró was no big deal for Lamb. “It did­n’t mean too much,” he said, “because we were in the lime­light all the time. It was just anoth­er thing.”

The song in the video is an E‑minor blues with a call-and-response form that Elling­ton would lat­er name “The Shep­herd (Who Watch­es Over His Flock)” in hon­or of Luther­an cler­gy­man John Gar­cia Gensel, who min­is­tered to the jazz com­mu­ni­ty in New York City. Although it’s true, as Granz says in the film, that Elling­ton first chart­ed the song for his full orches­tra at the fes­ti­val, “The Shep­herd” was not impro­vised on the spot. “The actu­al piece evolved over a peri­od of time on the road,” said Lamb.

In the film clip, drum­mer Sam Wood­yard keeps the beat with his back turned to the oth­ers while Lamb leans in to watch every move of Elling­ton’s hands. “There was a com­plete mar­riage between the piano and the bass,” said Lamb. “He did­n’t do any­thing to sur­prise me too much because I had worked with him awhile and I knew what he would do. I sort of antic­i­pat­ed. That’s what bass play­ers have to do–anticipate what the piano play­er is going to do. So I watched him in case he decid­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Lamb toured with Elling­ton for three years. At the time, he did­n’t ful­ly appre­ci­ate the elder musi­cian’s style. He was more into play­ers like Miles Davis and Red Gar­land. “I was very young and very cocky. I thought I knew more than Duke at that time,” Lamb said, laugh­ing at the mem­o­ry. “The music to me is much more impor­tant now than it was then. I need­ed a job then, I need­ed to work. I was hun­gry. I have more time today to reflect on the things that were accom­plished back then, and the places we trav­eled to and all the won­der­ful peo­ple that we met. So one has to be care­ful what one does in his young years, because if they’re for­tu­nate to live long, it all comes back.”

Note: You can learn more about bassist John Lam­b’s adven­tures with the Duke Elling­ton Trio at Jazz Back­sto­ry. And for more of the per­for­mance at the Fon­da­tion Maeght, along with scenes from the 1966 jazz fes­ti­val at Juan-le-Pins, watch Duke Elling­ton at the Côte d’Azur with Ella Fitzger­ald and Joan Miró, which comes on a two-disc DVD with the lat­er per­for­mance Duke: The Last Jam Ses­sion.

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

in Art, Film, Music | May 3rd, 2012

In Imag­i­nary Land­scapes, doc­u­men­tar­i­ans Dun­can Ward and Gabriel­la Car­daz­zo paint an impres­sion­is­tic video por­trait of Bri­an Eno: record pro­duc­er, visu­al artist, col­lab­o­ra­tor with the likes of U2 and David Bowie, ambi­ent music-invent­ing musi­cian, self-pro­claimed “syn­the­sist,” ear­ly mem­ber of Roxy Music, and co-cre­ator of the Oblique Strate­gies. Even if you’ve nev­er han­dled an actu­al deck of Oblique Strate­gies cards — and few have — you’ve sure­ly heard one or two of the Strate­gies them­selves in the air: “Hon­or thy error as a hid­den inten­tion.” “The most impor­tant thing is the most eas­i­ly for­got­ten.” “Do some­thing bor­ing.” The idea is to draw a card and fol­low its edict when­ev­er you hit a cre­ative block. This should, in the­o­ry, get you around the block, no mat­ter what you’re try­ing to cre­ate. Eno first pub­lished the Oblique Strate­gies with painter Peter Schmidt in 1975, and here in Imag­i­nary Land­scapes, four­teen years lat­er, you can hear him still excit­ed about the cards’ basic premise: if you fol­low arbi­trary rules and the­o­ret­i­cal posi­tions, they’ll lead you to cre­ative deci­sions you nev­er would have oth­er­wise made.

This short doc­u­men­tary com­bines inter­views of Eno with footage of him craft­ing sounds in his stu­dio, sim­u­lat­ing the echoes of a cave, say, then turn­ing that cave into a liq­uid. It weaves these seg­ments togeth­er with a trip through Amer­i­can cities like Los Ange­les, San Fran­cis­co, and New York, then back to the Wood­bridge, Suf­folk of Eno’s youth, then on to Venice, one of the world’s places that draws him irre­sistibly with its water­i­ness. Place itself emerges as one of Eno’s dri­ving con­cepts, not sim­ply as a source of inspi­ra­tion (though it seems to work that way for his video Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan), but as a form. When Eno talks about mak­ing albums, or images, or instal­la­tions, he talks about them as places for audi­ences to exist. In any phys­i­cal place, you’re pre­sent­ed with a cer­tain set of choic­es. You can’t always tell the delib­er­ate­ly designed ele­ments from the “nat­ur­al” ones, and hav­ing a rich expe­ri­ence demands that you active­ly use your own aware­ness. This, so Eno explains, guides how he builds “places” — imag­i­nary land­scapes, if you will — for lis­ten­ers, gallery­go­ers, record­ing artists, or him­self, try­ing to open up “the spaces between cat­e­gories” and “make use of the watcher’s brain as part of the process.” Look into his more recent projects, like his iPhone apps or his col­lab­o­ra­tions with bands like Cold­play or his tour­ing exhi­bi­tion 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings, and you’ll find him build­ing them still.

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

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The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci

in Art, History, Science | May 3rd, 2012

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the arche­type of the Renais­sance Man, received some for­mal train­ing in the anato­my of the human body. He reg­u­lar­ly dis­sect­ed human corpses and made very detailed draw­ings of mus­cles, ten­dons, the heart and vas­cu­lar sys­tem, inter­nal organs and the human skele­ton. A great num­ber of these draw­ings can now be seen in the largest exhi­bi­tion of Leonar­do da Vinci’s stud­ies of the human body, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Anatomist,” at The Queen’s Gallery in Buck­ing­ham Palace, Lon­don. In this video, Senior Cura­tor Mar­tin Clay­ton explores three of these draw­ings and shows that Leonar­do’s med­ical dis­cov­er­ies could have trans­formed the study of anato­my in Europe, had they not lan­guished unpub­lished for cen­turies. Clay­ton has also pub­lished his find­ings in “Nature”. And the BBC has looked into the ques­tion of just how accu­rate Leonar­do’s anatom­i­cal draw­ings real­ly were.

Bonus links:

  • The Guardian has a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry about Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s note­book, includ­ing his ‘to-do’ list.
  • Here’s a won­der­ful 360° panoram­ic view of San­ta Maria delle Grazia in Milan with Leonar­do’s “Last Sup­per”.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Q: Salvador Dalí, Are You a Crackpot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

in Art | May 2nd, 2012

By 1969, Sal­vador Dalí knew how to han­dle things. He had four decades of celebri­ty under his belt. He knew what his crit­ics had to say, and he had grown accus­tomed to deal­ing with a skep­ti­cal media. A decade ear­li­er, Mike Wal­lace opened his inter­view with Dalí (watch here) by ask­ing him:

Dali, first of all let me ask you this, you’re a remark­able painter and you’ve ded­i­cat­ed your life to art, in view of this, why do you behave the way that you do? For instance, you have been known to dri­ve in a car filled to the roof with cau­li­flow­ers. You lec­tured, as I men­tioned, once with your head enclosed in a div­ing hel­met and you almost suf­fo­cat­ed. You issue bizarre state­ments about your love for rhi­noc­er­os horns and so on. You’re a ded­i­cat­ed artist, why do you or why must you do these things?

By 1969, lit­tle had changed. In the vin­tage CBC clip, the inter­view­er begins the con­ver­sa­tion with a sim­i­lar ques­tion, only more blunt­ly phrased. “Peo­ple think you are crack­pot. Do you know what a crack­pot is? A crazy per­son.” Then Dalí, ever the sur­re­al­ist, gives his cryp­tic reply, refer­ring to him­self in the third per­son, and deflects the ques­tion rather per­fect­ly:

This is not absolute­ly exact. Because Dalí is almost crazy. But the only dif­fer­ence between crazy peo­ple and Dalí is Dalí is not crazy.

And so the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion goes.…

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:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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Why Man Creates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Winning Animated Look at Creativity (1968)

in Art, Film, History | April 27th, 2012

Maybe you already had a fas­ci­na­tion with Saul Bass’ cel­e­brat­ed movie title sequences, or maybe you gained one from yes­ter­day’s post about the cur­rent design­ers he’s inspired. Either way, you can round out your under­stand­ing of the man’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty by watch­ing Why Man Cre­ates, the ani­mat­ed film by Bass and his wife/collaborator Elaine which won the 1968 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. An eight-part med­i­ta­tion on the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty, the film mix­es ani­ma­tion and live action, using Bass’ advanced reper­toire of opti­cal tech­niques, to look at the issues sur­round­ing how and why humans have, through­out the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion, kept on mak­ing things. It begins with ear­ly hunters felling a beast and mak­ing a cave paint­ing out of it. From that cave ris­es a tow­er built out of every major phase of human civ­i­liza­tion: the wheel near the bot­tom, the pyra­mids some­what high­er up, the lit­er­al dark­ness of the Dark Ages as the cam­era ris­es high­er still, ulti­mate­ly capped by a heap of planes, trains, and auto­mo­biles. One won­ders how Bass might, in an update, have stacked his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the inter­net atop of all this, but the sequence’s dat­ed­ness costs it none of its vir­tu­os­i­ty.

Some of Why Man Cre­ates’ sub­se­quent chap­ters, in their bold late-six­ties “trip­pi­ness,” may strike you as more dat­ed than vir­tu­osic. But it would take a hard­ened view­er indeed not to crack a smile at Bass’ Pythonesque turn when a drawn hand flips open the tops of a series of unthink­ing par­ty­go­ers’ heads, reveal­ing the empti­ness inside. In its 29 short min­utes, the film also looks at the cre­ative strug­gle in terms of the coarse­ness of eval­u­a­tive crowds, the ten­den­cy of suc­cess­ful rad­i­cal ideas to become self-per­pet­u­at­ing insti­tu­tions, and how peo­ple just like things bet­ter when they have Amer­i­can flags on them. Its jour­ney ends in an unex­pect­ed set­ting, amid the toil of agri­cul­tur­al and med­ical sci­en­tists who may pur­sue an idea for years only to find that it has no appli­ca­tion. This note of frus­tra­tion leads into a mon­tage of sun, fire, stat­u­ary, the Sphinx, can­vass­es, and rock­ets. Assem­bled with Bass’ sig­na­ture sub­tle visu­al com­plex­i­ty, it takes us from antiq­ui­ty to moder­ni­ty in a way only he could.

Why Man Cre­ates has been added to our list of Free Oscar Films on the Web as well as our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

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

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The Art of Film and TV Title Design

in Art, Film, Television | April 26th, 2012

PBS’ web series Off Book talks to artists work­ing hard, whether they’re doing so in the street, in tat­too par­lors, on Etsy, or on film and tele­vi­sion title sequences. In the lat­est install­ment above, Karin Fong and Peter Frank­furt dis­cuss their now-icon­ic Mad Men title sequence, as well as their ear­li­er and more trou­bling open­ing cred­its for David Fincher’s Se7en. Ben Con­rad explains how his title work inte­grat­ed into the phys­i­cal world of Ruben Fleis­cher’s Zom­bieland, allow­ing zom­bies to ram­page right through float­ing let­ters announc­ing things like “Colum­bia Pic­tures” and “Pro­duced by Gavin Polone,” and spelling out the num­bered rules of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic sur­vival even as the pro­tag­o­nists observed, bent, and broke them. Jim Hel­ton tells the sto­ry of his back-and-forth with direc­tor Derek Cian­france in design­ing the titles for Blue Valen­tine, which take explod­ing-fire­work imagery and aes­thet­i­cal­ly uni­fy it with the scat­tered mem­o­ries that make up the movie. All of them face the chal­lenge of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly invit­ing audi­ences into a sto­ry, reflect­ing its sen­si­bil­i­ty, and on top of that, mak­ing an orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion as a whole.

Though the meet­ing of design, film, and tele­vi­sion has nev­er been more enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly exam­ined than in this era of inter­net video, this line of work has a rich his­to­ry. After this episode of Off Book’s end cred­its, the inter­vie­wees all give props to title design­er Saul Bass — “Saint Saul,” Frank­furt calls him — who, if you believe them, ele­vat­ed title sequences, cor­po­rate logos, and oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly plain and straight­for­ward means of visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion into art forms unto them­selves. Watch Bass’ cre­ations in North By North­west, The Man With the Gold­en Arm, and West Side Sto­ry, some of the ear­li­est title sequences to show­case the for­m’s capac­i­ty for impli­ca­tion and abstrac­tion, and you’ll under­stand his impor­tance to these mod­ern-day design­ers. Per­haps this brief visu­al intro­duc­tion to Bass’ designs, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture, will inspire you to get into the busi­ness your­self.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

For­get the Films, Watch the Titles

Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers

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

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