The Mystery of Picasso: Landmark Film of a Legendary Artist at Work, by Henri-Georges Clouzot

in Art, Film | April 24th, 2012

Pablo Picas­so’s art emerges in front of our eyes in this remark­able 1956 film by the French mas­ter of sus­pense, Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot.

The Mys­tery of Picas­so (in French Le Mys­tère Picas­so) is a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between film­mak­er and painter. Pauline Kael called it “One of the most excit­ing and joy­ful movies ever made.” The film is not so much a doc­u­men­tary as a care­ful­ly con­trived cin­e­mat­ic depic­tion of Picas­so’s cre­ative process. While paint­ing is gen­er­al­ly expe­ri­enced as a fixed art form, in The Mys­tery of Picas­so we watch as it evolves over time.

In the first half of the 75-minute film, Picas­so uses col­or pens to make play­ful doo­dles on translu­cent screens. These sequences bear some resem­blance to a 1950 film by Bel­gian film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts called Vis­ite à Picas­so (A vis­it with Picas­so), which fea­tures Picas­so paint­ing on glass. As Clouzot’s film pro­gress­es, the art­works become more refined. Picas­so switch­es from ink pens to oil brush­es and paper col­lage. A work that took five hours to cre­ate unfolds in a ten-minute time-lapse. At the 54-minute mark Picas­so says “Give me a large can­vas,” and the film switch­es to Cin­e­maS­cope.

Indeed, in The Mys­tery of Picas­so, the film itself is the artist’s can­vas. Clouzot draws atten­tion to this fact through a series of con­trivances. At one point he high­lights the tem­po­ral con­straints of the medi­um by cre­at­ing an ele­ment of sus­pense. He asks  cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Claude Renoir (grand­son of the Impres­sion­ist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir) how much film is left, and then we watch as the film counter ticks away the time while the 76-year-old painter races to fin­ish a paint­ing. When the The Mys­tery of Picas­so ends, the artist “signs” the film by paint­ing his sig­na­ture on a can­vas large enough to fill the screen. As Clouzot lat­er wrote, “It is some­one else’s film, that of my friend Pablo Picas­so.”

The Mys­tery of Picas­so (now added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies) per­formed poor­ly at the box office but won the Spe­cial Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. In 1984 the French gov­ern­ment declared it a nation­al trea­sure. Picas­so’s paint­ings from the pro­duc­tion were report­ed­ly destroyed after­ward. They exist only in the film.

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The Art of the Book Cover Explained at TED

in Art, Books, TED Talks | April 19th, 2012

Give this one a minute to get going, to get beyond the schtick. And then you’ll enter the world of Chip Kidd, asso­ciate art direc­tor at Knopf, who has designed cov­ers for many famous books. As he will tell you, his job comes down to ask­ing: What do sto­ries look like, and how can he give them a face, if not write a short visu­al haiku for them? In the remain­ing min­utes of his TED Talk, Kidd takes you through his work, reveal­ing the aes­thet­ic choic­es that went into design­ing cov­ers for books by Michael Crich­ton, John Updike, David Sedaris, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, and oth­ers.

When you’re done, we rec­om­mend check­ing out these relat­ed items:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

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Art Critic Robert Hughes Demystifies Modern Art in The Shock of the New

in Art, Television | April 17th, 2012

With the aid of YouTube, you can watch an episode of Robert Hugh­es’ doc­u­men­tary series The Shock of the New each week, just as it first aired on the BBC and PBS in 1980. But I defy you to watch “The Mechan­i­cal Par­adise,” the first of its eight install­ments, and not plow through the rest in a day. Hugh­es, a pro­lif­ic art crit­ic who has writ­ten books on every­thing from Fran­cis­co Goya to America’s cul­ture of com­plaint to the city of Barcelona to the his­to­ry of his native Aus­tralia, has also host­ed tele­vi­sion pro­grams about every­thing from Car­avag­gio to Utopi­an archi­tec­ture to the Mona Lisa. The Shock of the New, a project which found expres­sion as a book as well as these broad­casts, takes on the ambi­tious task of trac­ing the progress of mod­ernism through visu­al art. But the roots of the move­ment run deep­er into his­to­ry, and so this first episode begins at the base of the Eif­fel Tow­er, a mon­u­ment to the accel­er­at­ing sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal progress of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry that would so dis­rupt the aes­thet­ics of the twen­ti­eth.

As a read­er of art crit­i­cism, I’ve long trust­ed Hugh­es’ writ­ing on these sub­jects more than I do any­one else’s. Clear, bold, con­crete, and always, in a blunt­ly stealthy way, more nuanced than it seems, Hugh­es’ tex­tu­al per­sona stands against what, in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, he calls the “airy-fairy, metaphor-rid­den kind of pseu­do-poet­ry” that he sees as hav­ing flood­ed the field. As a guide through the his­to­ry of artis­tic mod­ernism, he proves as no-non­sense yet dry­ly enter­tain­ing on film as he is on the page. Whether turn­ing our atten­tion toward spe­cial details of Braque and Picasso’s can­vass­es or zip­ping around in a 1900s road­ster, Hugh­es presents with the assur­ance of author­i­ty but not its intel­lec­tu­al over­reach, pulling you along to Fer­nand Léger, the Futur­ists, and Mar­cel Duchamp. And as a view­er of tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries, I’ve long trust­ed the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies as the form’s gold­en age. In this episode and beyond, The Shock of the New show­cas­es what the pro­duc­tions of that era did best: a moody elec­tron­ic score, archival clips cre­ative­ly used, and extend­ed sequences that give us time to real­ly look. (Voiceover work by Judi Dench and Mar­tin Jarvis doesn’t lose this chap­ter any points, either.)

The Shock of the New con­sists of the fol­low­ing episodes: “The Mechan­i­cal Par­adise,” “The Pow­ers That Be,” “The Land­scape of Plea­sure,” “Trou­ble in Utopia,” “The Thresh­old of Lib­er­ty,” “The View From the Edge,” “Cul­ture as Nature,” “The Future That Was”

You can watch them on YouTube.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Pow­er of Art: Renais­sance to Mod­ern

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

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

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Damien Hirst Takes Us Through His New Exhibition at Tate Modern

in Art | April 13th, 2012

From April 4 through Sep­tem­ber 9, the Tate Mod­ern will stage the first seri­ous UK exhi­bi­tion of major works by Damien Hirst, one of Britain’s most influ­en­tial, con­tro­ver­sial and wealthy artists. Many of his famous sculp­tures — includ­ing, of course, the famous/infamous shark sus­pend­ed in formalde­hyde — will be on dis­play. It’s our job to get you bet­ter acquaint­ed with the exhib­it. So let’s have Damien Hirst, the artist him­self, take you on a tour of the big affair. The pro­gram above, Damien Hirst — The First Look, orig­i­nal­ly aired on Chan­nel 4 in the UK. You can also watch Hirst wan­der through the exhi­bi­tion with cura­tor Ann Gal­lagher right here. Final­ly, you might want to spend a few min­utes with a review by Oliv­er Walling­ton, an artist who won­ders whether the emper­or of art “has no clothes.” Or scan the review at The Guardian, which qui­et­ly rais­es eye­brows of its own.

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Henri Matisse Illustrates 1935 Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Art, Books, Literature | April 10th, 2012

matisse ulysses front page

A cou­ple weeks back, we men­tioned that you can down­load a fine­ly-read audio ver­sion of James Joyce’s Ulysses for free. What that ver­sion does­n’t include — and could­n’t include — are etch­ings by Hen­ri Matisse. Back in the mid-1930s, George Macey, an Amer­i­can pub­lish­er, approached the cel­e­brat­ed painter and asked him how many etch­ings he could pro­vide for $5,000. Although it’s wide­ly believed that Matisse nev­er read Joyce’s sprawl­ing clas­sic (despite being giv­en a French trans­la­tion of the text), he did come back with 26 full-page illus­tra­tions, all of them based on six themes from Home­r’s Odyssey, the epic poem that Ulysses con­scious­ly plays upon. In 1935, an illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Ulysses was print­ed. Matisse signed 1500 copies; Joyce only 250. And today a copy signed by both artists will run you a cool $37k. Buy, hey, the ship­ping is only $6.

Odysseus Blind­ing Polyphe­mus

henri-matisse-ulysses1935

Odysseus and Nau­si­caa

ulysses matisse drawing

Odysseus’ Ship

Matisse_Ulysses_Barque

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Salvador Dali Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (RIP) in 1958

in Art, Media, Television | April 8th, 2012

This week­end, Mike Wal­lace died at the age of 93. As The New York Times observes in its obit, Wal­lace was “a pio­neer of Amer­i­can broad­cast­ing who con­front­ed lead­ers and liars for 60 Min­utes over four decades.” But before he became a fix­ture on 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own short-lived TV show in the late 1950s, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view, which let Amer­i­cans get an up-close and per­son­al view of some leg­endary fig­ures — Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand and Glo­ria Swan­son.

Above, we’re bring­ing back Mike Wal­lace’s mem­o­rable inter­view with Sal­vador Dali in 1958. For the bet­ter part of a half hour, Wal­lace tried to demys­ti­fy “the enig­ma that is Sal­vador Dali,” and it did­n’t go ter­ri­bly well. It turns out that sur­re­al­ist painters give sur­re­al answers to con­ven­tion­al inter­view ques­tions too. Pret­ty quick­ly, Wal­lace capit­u­lates and says, “I must con­fess, you lost me halfway through.” Hap­pi­ly for us, the video makes for some good view­ing more than 50 years lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sal­vador Dali Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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The Odd Couple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

in Art | April 6th, 2012

Dur­ing his short life­time, Jean-Michel Basquiat made a big impres­sion on the art world. As the teenage son of a Hait­ian father and Puer­to Rican-Amer­i­can moth­er, he began spray-paint­ing graf­fi­ti on walls in Low­er Man­hat­tan in the late 1970s, and with­in a few years he emerged as a lead­ing expo­nent of the Neo-Expres­sion­ism Move­ment that flour­ished in the 1980s.

When Basquiat was 19 he met the Pop artist Andy Warhol, and the two men formed a close con­nec­tion. In Vic­tor Bock­ris’s Warhol: A Biog­ra­phy, long-time Warhol assis­tant Ron­ny Cutrone describes the rela­tion­ship:

It was like some crazy art-world mar­riage and they were the odd cou­ple. The rela­tion­ship was sym­bi­ot­ic. Jean-Michel thought he need­ed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he need­ed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebel­lious image again.

In this scene from the British doc­u­men­tary series, State of the Art, we catch a glimpse of the two togeth­er in 1986, just a year before Warhol’s untime­ly death due to com­pli­ca­tions from surgery, and two year’s before Basqui­et died of an over­dose of hero­in. He was only 27 years old.

Note: If you have prob­lems hear­ing the sound, please turn your com­put­er speak­ers up, and make sure the vol­ume bar in the YouTube video (low­er left) is cranked up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

via @JesseBDylan

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Art for the One Percent: 60 Minutes on the Excess & Hubris of the International Art Market

in Art, Economics | April 4th, 2012

In 1993, CBS 60 Min­utes jour­nal­ist Mor­ley Safer ruf­fled a few feath­ers in the art world with a piece called “Yes…But is it Art?” The pro­gram fea­tured works made up of things like vac­u­um clean­ers, emp­ty canvases–even a can of human feces, which the artist had labeled “Mer­da d’artista.”

On Sun­day, Safer returned with a report on the excess and hubris of the inter­na­tion­al art mar­ket. The seg­ment (above) was taped in Decem­ber at Art Basel Mia­mi Beach, a gath­er­ing billed as “the most pres­ti­gious art show in the Amer­i­c­as,” where exhibitors pay $150,000 to show their wares to a clien­tele of mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires who fly in for the event on pri­vate jets.

Safer­’s report, “Art Mar­ket,” is more an exer­cise in social crit­i­cism than art crit­i­cism. Nat­u­ral­ly some peo­ple took it per­son­al­ly. “Now that Andy Rooney has gone up to that big grumpy­cham­ber in the sky,” wrote Stephanie Murg on the Media Bistro “UnBeige” blog, “Mor­ley Safer has tak­en over the role of iras­ci­ble clean-up hit­ter for the dod­der­ing team of Bad News Bears that is 60 Min­utes.”

In a piece on the “Arts Beat” blog head­lined “Safer Looks at Art but Only Hears the Cash Reg­is­ter,” crit­ic Rober­ta Smith called Safer­’s return vis­it to the art world “a rel­a­tive­ly tooth­less, if still quite clue­less, exer­cise”:

Mov­ing down the aisles he uttered some dis­mis­sive phras­es like “the cute, the kitsch and the clum­sy” while the cam­era passed often incon­se­quen­tial work that was left uniden­ti­fied. Men­tion was made of per­for­mance and video art. Occa­sion­al­ly he mus­tered fee­ble attempts to be recep­tive. There was a respect­ful pause in the asper­sions as the cam­era passed a can­vas by Helen Franken­thaler, although her name was not men­tioned. Kara Walk­er was referred to as a “tru­ly tal­ent­ed artist.” At the Metro Pic­tures booth it was hard to know whether he liked the work of Cindy Sher­man, but he not­ed that her pho­tographs sold for $4 mil­lion (gloss­ing over the fact that only one did).

At one point on Safer­’s stroll there is a chilly encounter with art deal­er Lar­ry Gagosian, who has gal­leries on three con­ti­nents.

“At least say hel­lo,” says Safer.

“Hey Mor­ley,” says Gagosian, with­out get­ting up from his chair or offer­ing the 80-year-old man a seat. “You always look so dap­per. I love that.”

Regard­less of whether you love the art Gagosian sells at his gal­leries in Bev­er­ly Hills, Paris, Gene­va and at least eight oth­er cities around the world, you have won­der at the eco­nom­ic real­i­ty Safer­’s report expos­es. At a time when unem­ploy­ment in Amer­i­ca is still well above 8 per­cent, when more than one in five mort­gage hold­ers have neg­a­tive equi­ty in their homes, when the top one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion is pock­et­ing 93 per­cent of the gains from a glacial eco­nom­ic recov­ery, Safer­’s piece does what a work of art should: it opens the eyes.

Safer­’s 1993 report:

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