Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs: Browse Them or Own Them

in Art, Film | December 2nd, 2011

In 1945, a young Stan­ley Kubrick grad­u­at­ed from high school and almost imme­di­ate­ly start­ed work­ing for LOOK Mag­a­zine as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, becom­ing the youngest staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the magazine’s his­to­ry. It’s dur­ing this peri­od that Kubrick began to mas­ter his visu­al craft and pro­duced some stun­ning images. Now, more than 65 years lat­er, you can pur­chase … or sim­ply browse through … Kubrick­’s pho­to­graph­ic work for the first time.

Work­ing with cura­tors from the Muse­um of the City of New York, VandM.com has select­ed 25 images to show­case (out of a larg­er col­lec­tion of 10,000 images). Pho­tos include prize­fight­er Wal­ter Carti­er in the cor­ner between rounds; the ele­gant actress Bet­sy Von Fursten­berg read­ing in a win­dow; street scenes from New York City; and a young woman walk­ing down a steep set of stairs while car­ry­ing a pile of books, all rather pre­car­i­ous­ly.

You can browse the full col­lec­tion here, or vis­it anoth­er set of Kubrick images, all tak­en in Chica­go, here.

Relat­ed Kubrick Con­tent:

Mak­ing The Shin­ing

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange: Mal­colm McDow­ell Looks Back

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Post-Apocalyptic Cover Art Created in Amazing Time-Lapse Film

in Animation, Art | December 1st, 2011

Dei Gaztelu­men­di is a young Span­ish artist. He was com­mis­sioned recent­ly to cre­ate a cov­er illus­tra­tion for the com­ic book mag­a­zine Xabiroi, and decid­ed to make a time-lapse video of the process. The result is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the artist begins with a rough sketch on paper and then builds lay­er upon lay­er of detail using the Adobe Cre­ative Suite soft­ware. Thir­ty hours of work are com­pressed into 11 min­utes. “A lot of emo­tion went into this paint­ing,” Gaztelu­men­di said on his blog, “since I made it as a gift to one of my bud­dies, who trag­i­cal­ly lost a leg in a motor­bike acci­dent about a year ago.” Gaztelu­men­di was born in San Sebas­t­ian, Basque Coun­try, Spain in 1987, and began illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books as a teenag­er. He stud­ied ani­ma­tion at Sheri­dan Col­lege in Ontario, Cana­da, where his the­sis film was a whim­si­cal tale called Earlth & Moonch. Since grad­u­at­ing with high hon­ors last year, Gaztelu­men­di has been work­ing as a com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor, spe­cial­iz­ing in crea­ture and char­ac­ter art. You can see more of his work at Deisign.com.

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A Brief Visual Introduction to Saul Bass’ Celebrated Title Designs

in Art, Film | December 1st, 2011

Title sequences begin and end every movie. They can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery.” And they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way, says the web site For­get the Films, Watch the Titles.

When it comes to title design, no one did it bet­ter than Saul Bass (1920–1996). Dur­ing his long career in Hol­ly­wood, Bass designed sequences for Otto Pre­minger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (full movie here), Scors­ese’s Good­fel­las and Cape Fear, Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus, and sev­er­al films by Alfred Hitch­cock. And that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face.

Cre­at­ed by Ian Albinson, the mon­tage above offers a brief visu­al his­to­ry of Bass’s most cel­e­brat­ed work, stitch­ing togeth­er designs from 25 films. (Find the full film list here.)  If this whets your appetite, you’ll want to check out the new­ly-pub­lished book Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design and this web site ded­i­cat­ed to Bass’s title design. And don’t miss our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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.

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The World’s Highest Artificial Tornado

in Art, Technology | November 29th, 2011

The Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in Stuttgart, Ger­many, is a remark­able struc­ture. Designed by Ben van Berkel and Car­o­line Bos of the Dutch firm UN Stu­dio, the build­ing received rave reviews when it opened in May of 2006. Influ­enced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggen­heim Muse­um in New York, the build­ing was described as “jet-age baroque” by The Guardian archi­tec­ture crit­ic Jonathan Glancey. “It twists and turns with breath­tak­ing com­plex­i­ty,” Glancey wrote in 2006, “clever as a con­jur­ing trick.”

The archi­tects need­ed a bit of mag­ic to bring the muse­um’s open plan into com­pli­ance with fire codes. Like in the Guggen­heim, the inte­ri­or is one con­tin­u­ous­ly unfold­ing space that spi­rals around a cen­tral atri­um. As a con­se­quence there could be no fire doors to con­tain smoke if a blaze broke out in one sec­tion of the build­ing. To solve the prob­lem, UN Stu­dio hired the engi­neer­ing firm Imtech to design a sys­tem that would draw smoke away from all areas of the muse­um, allow­ing peo­ple to escape.

The result is the world’s largest man-made air vor­tex, a 112-foot-high tor­na­do that auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vates in the event of a fire, draw­ing smoke into the cen­ter of the atri­um and mov­ing it upward through an axi­al fan in the ceil­ing. An array of 144 out­lets in the sur­round­ing walls emit pow­er­ful jets of air to gen­er­ate a cen­tral region of low pres­sure, just like in a real tor­na­do. Imtech engi­neers per­fect­ed the design using com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ic (CDF) sim­u­la­tions and lab­o­ra­to­ry mod­els.  The firm has cre­at­ed sim­i­lar sys­tems for air­ports in sev­er­al Ger­man cities, includ­ing Düssel­dorf and Ham­burg. You can watch the tor­na­do at the Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in action above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The DIY Tor­na­do Machine

 

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A Day in Venezia

in Art, Life | November 29th, 2011

3,000,000 tourists move through Venice each year. The flood starts dur­ing the spring and peaks in sum­mer, then recedes dur­ing the cool­er months, giv­ing the local res­i­dents a lit­tle peace. True, the city, made up of 124 islands, 183 canals and 438 bridges, is radi­ant dur­ing the sum­mer. (Just watch below.) But the “Queen of the Adri­at­ic” takes on a dif­fer­ent beau­ty in the win­ter, some­thing that a tourist, who sim­ply goes by FKY, cap­tures in an art­ful video above. Enjoy, and if you want to know more about the archi­tec­tur­al won­ders of this 1500-year-old city, don’t miss How Venice Works.

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Mankind’s First Steps on the Moon: The Ultra High Res Photos

in Art, Astronomy, Video - Science | November 25th, 2011

In 1961, John F. Kennedy asked a lot of the U.S. space pro­gram when he declared: “I believe that this nation should com­mit itself to achiev­ing the goal, before this decade is out, of land­ing a man on the Moon and return­ing him safe­ly to the Earth.” NASA hit that ambi­tious tar­get with a few months to spare. On July 20, 1969, the Apol­lo 11 land­ed on the moon and Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin took their famous first steps on the des­o­late lunar sur­face. The orig­i­nal video is grainy, hard to see. But the pho­tos tak­en dur­ing the mis­sion are any­thing but. To cel­e­brate the 40th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing (back in 2009), the folks at Spac­eRip stitched togeth­er a col­lec­tion of high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos from the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion, then set the slideshow to Chopin’s Trois nou­velles études, 2nd in A flat major. You can find this clip housed in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moon Up Close, in HD

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

 

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Seeing Double: The Lake Twins Meet the Cholmondeley Ladies

in Art | November 24th, 2011

Phoebe and Lydia Lake are artists. They’re also iden­ti­cal twins, which means they know a thing or two about sym­me­try. So last year, when they were 20 years old, the Tate Britain decid­ed to film their first encounter with one of the muse­um’s most famous hold­ings, The Chol­monde­ley Ladies, paint­ed some­time around 1600–1610 by an unknown artist. An inscrip­tion describes the ladies as mem­bers of the Chol­monde­ley fam­i­ly (pro­nounced “Chum­ley”) who were born on the same day, mar­ried on the same day and “brought to bed” (gave birth) on the same day. The sharply defined, rigid­ly sym­met­ric com­po­si­tion depicts two very sim­i­lar but not iden­ti­cal women (per­haps fra­ter­nal twins) dressed in exquis­ite Jacobean fin­ery, hold­ing their babies. In his essay, “The Per­cep­tion of Sym­me­try,” arts writer Michael Bird describes his own first reac­tion to the paint­ing when he was a boy:

The two win­try revenants, propped elbow to elbow in bed with their glow­ing babies, made a deep impres­sion. The blanched gor­geous­ness of their out­fits, blood­ed by the hot roy­al red of the chris­ten­ing gowns, was part of it. So was the spooky incon­gruity of vivid faces look­ing out from the pic­ture’s steam-ironed one-dimen­sion­al­i­ty, as though two peo­ple were stand­ing behind it, stick­ing their heads through holes in the board. Main­ly, though, it was their dou­ble­ness.

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Striking Posters From Occupy Wall Street: Download Them for Free

in Art, Current Affairs | November 23rd, 2011

Occu­py Wall Street and the glob­al Occu­py Move­ment have inspired some strik­ing art­work. Graph­ic artists from around the world (includ­ing Shep­ard Fairey men­tioned here ear­li­er today) have con­tributed their tal­ents to the move­ment. Many of their posters are avail­able for free or at low cost, either direct­ly from the artist or through orga­ni­za­tions like Occuprint and Occu­py­To­geth­er. You can post them in your town.

New York­er cov­er artist and book illus­tra­tor Eric Drook­er has cre­at­ed sev­er­al beau­ti­ful posters, includ­ing the one above. You can down­load a high-res­o­lu­tion copy suit­able for print­ing at OccupyTogether.org.

The not­ed Los Ange­les graph­ic artist, car­toon­ist and radio per­son­al­i­ty Lalo Alcaraz cre­at­ed this par­o­dy of the top­pling of the Sad­dam Hus­sein stat­ue in Bagh­dad for Occu­py Los Ange­les. In a mes­sage on his web­site, Alcaraz invites peo­ple to dis­trib­ute the image.

Alexan­dra Clot­fel­ter is a stu­dent of adver­tis­ing design and illus­tra­tion at the Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design in Geor­gia. Since donat­ing her design, “The Begin­ning is Near,” to Occuprint.org, it has become one of the most pop­u­lar posters to emerge from the move­ment. In response to requests, Clot­fel­ter is offer­ing a high-qual­i­ty Giclee print for sale, with a por­tion of the prof­its going to sup­port Occuprint­’s project of dis­trib­ut­ing free posters world­wide.

In this poster, Zucot­ti Park is por­trayed as the “Tip of the Ice­berg.” Indeed, the Occu­py move­ment extends to places like Lawrence, Kansas, where mural­ist, print­mak­er and writer Dave Loewen­stein is based. Loewen­stein’s design is avail­able for free at Occuprint.org.

Poster artist Rich Black of Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia cre­at­ed this image for Occu­py Oak­land. It’s avail­able for free down­load at Occuprint.org.

To see a vari­ety of Occu­py posters by oth­er artists (and to down­load them for free) you can vis­it Occuprint.org and OccupyTogether.org.

And don’t miss our post ear­li­er today: Shep­ard Fairey Caves In, Revis­es Occu­py Wall Street Poster.

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