Salvador Dali Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (1958)

in Art, Television | September 29th, 2011

Before he became a fix­ture on 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own short-lived TV show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957–58), 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, Adlai Steven­son, Hen­ry Kissinger, and Glo­ria Swan­son.

Then let’s also add Sal­vador Dali to the list. In 1958, 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.

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Relat­ed Sal­vador Dali 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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Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

in Art, Film | September 22nd, 2011

We recent­ly told you the sto­ry. In the mid 60s, Andy Warhol quit paint­ing rather abrupt­ly and began some new adven­tures in mul­ti­me­dia. Tak­ing a quick detour into music, Warhol became the man­ag­er, “pro­duc­er” and over­all patron of the up-and-com­ing band, The Vel­vet Under­ground. But film is where he focused his cre­ative ener­gies.

Between 1964 and 1966, the pop artist shot close to 500 short movies — or what he called “screen tests” — of friends, celebri­ties and mod­els. (Find screen tests of Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedg­wick, and Den­nis Hop­per here.) And then he shot a series of longer films, or rather “anti-films,” that chal­lenged the con­ven­tions of film­mak­ing. No three act struc­tures here. Above, we start you off with his first film, Sleep (1963). Orig­i­nal­ly Warhol want­ed to make Brigitte Bar­dot the star, but he even­tu­al­ly set­tled for his friend John Giorno, and you get what the title promis­es. 40 silent min­utes of Giorno’s long slum­ber.


Next in the loose tril­o­gy comes Kiss, a 54 minute film built out of a series of short­er films. It’s all cou­ples kiss­ing. Men & women. Women & women. Men & men. And it’s all silent again.

Then we cap things off with Eat (1964), 40 min­utes of watch­ing the starv­ing pop artist Robert Indi­ana gnaw on a raw mush­room and noth­ing more. The tril­o­gy-ender was first screened at the Wash­ing­ton Square Gallery, along with anoth­er long-take film, Blow Job.…

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

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange

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Andy Warhol Quits Painting, Manages The Velvet Underground (1965)

in Art | September 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, Andy Warhol became an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty when he pro­duced his icon­ic Pop Art works — 32 Camp­bel­l’s Soup Cans, the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Dip­tych, Green Coca Cola Bot­tles and all of the rest. The provoca­tive artist had achieved more than 15 min­utes of fame — he coined that phrase too — and it was time for some­thing new.

In ’65, Warhol took a break from paint­ing, immersed him­self in film­mak­ing and mul­ti­me­dia projects, then threw his influ­ence behind the up-and-com­ing NYC band, The Vel­vet Under­ground. He became the band’s man­ag­er and “pro­duced” their first album, which meant design­ing the album cov­er and giv­ing the band mem­bers (Lou Reed, John Cale, Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, Mau­reen Tuck­er and Nico) the free­dom to make what­ev­er album they pleased. (Lou Reed has more on that here.) As Bri­an Eno lat­er put it, the album, The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico “only sold 10,000 copies, but every­one who bought it formed a band.” It was that influ­en­tial.

The clip above comes from the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters series, Andy Warhol — A Doc­u­men­tary Film and tells you more about Warhol’s patron­age of VU.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Andy Warhol Eats a Burg­er, and We Watch … and Watch

Sweet Jane: Then and Now

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The First 3D Digital Film Created by Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar (1970)

in Animation, Art | September 5th, 2011

Long before Ed Cat­mull became pres­i­dent of Walt Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios, he head­ed up the com­put­er graph­ics group at Lucas­film, which even­tu­al­ly spun into Pixar, the mak­er of so many cut­ting edge ani­mat­ed films. And before all of that, Cat­mull went to grad­u­ate school at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, where he cut his teeth on emerg­ing ani­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, and put him­self in a posi­tion to devel­op this — a very ear­ly (and appar­ent­ly the first) 3D dig­i­tal movie.

Work­ing with Fred Parke, Cat­mull shot A Com­put­er Ani­mat­ed Hand in 1970. The hand makes only a brief appear­ance — about 20 sec­onds — and the rest of the film shows you what went into mak­ing the hand (and oth­er ani­mat­ed body parts). Nerd­PlusAlert has more on the ani­mat­ed reel.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters
 

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Santiago de Compostela: A View From the Octocopter

in Art, Technology | September 2nd, 2011

Micro­copter­video is a Span­ish com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in shoot­ing videos using small remote-con­trol heli­copters called “octo­copters.” (You can see the one used in this video here; and if you want to build one your­self, you can find instruc­tions here.) Since these small heli­copters go places where nor­mal cam­eras can’t, these new­fan­gled cam­eras can offer views that are sim­ply out of this world.

The lat­est video gives you a tour of the medieval San­ti­a­go de Com­postela Cathe­dral locat­ed in north­ern Spain. It starts with beau­ti­ful views of the exte­ri­or, but the most impres­sive shots are saved for inside the cathe­dral, espe­cial­ly when the octo­copter soars high above the chamades of the organ, giv­ing us an incred­i­ble look at the choir.

Some of these views have been cap­tured as stills and can be seen at Flickr. And don’t for­get to enjoy some more of those won­der­ful octo­copter videos on this Vimeo page.

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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Paola Antonelli on Design as the Interface Between Progress and Humanity

in Art, Education, Video - Arts & Culture | September 1st, 2011

Pao­la Antonel­li — Senior Cura­tor of Archi­tec­ture and Design at the MoMA, long­time pro­po­nent of human­ized tech­nol­o­gy, self-described “curi­ous octo­pus” — has arguably done more for the main­stream infil­tra­tion of design lit­er­a­cy than any oth­er indi­vid­ual in con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. In her recent open­ing keynote at the unequiv­o­cal­ly titled media and ideas con­fer­ence The Con­fer­ence in Malmö, Swe­den, Antonel­li pulls the cur­tain on her cura­to­r­i­al process and, with her sig­na­ture on-stage charis­ma, takes a reveal­ing look at how her shows go about the incred­i­ble bal­anc­ing act of being both bea­cons of the bleed­ing edge of design and an approach­able edu­ca­tion plat­form for instill­ing in the gen­er­al pub­lic a basic under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of design — some­thing she describes as “push[ing] design down from the realm of art and up from the realm of dec­o­ra­tion and pret­ti­fi­ca­tion into real life.”

“What design­ers do is they take rev­o­lu­tions that hap­pen maybe in sci­ence or tech­nol­o­gy or pol­i­tics, and they trans­form them into objects that you and I can use, that you and I can feel some famil­iar­i­ty or at least some curios­i­ty about, so we can be drawn in and we can start a new life and a new behav­ioral pat­tern. And this idea of design­ers as the inter­face of progress, between progress and human­i­ty, is what I try to stay with.” ~ Pao­la Antonel­li

Antonel­li’s excel­lent new show, Talk to Me: Design and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Between Peo­ple and Objects, is on dis­play at the MoMA through Novem­ber 7.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Jerry’s Map: An Amazing Half Century Act of Imagination

in Art | August 30th, 2011

Way back in 1963, Jer­ry Gret­zinger began mak­ing a map of his imag­i­nary world. And now, almost 50 years lat­er, the Map weaves togeth­er more than 2,000 pan­els, and cov­ers more than 1,600 square feet of sur­face area (see pho­to here).

What start­ed as a sim­ple doo­dle took on an amaz­ing life of its own. Jer­ry tells the rest of this sto­ry in this short video shot by Greg Whit­more.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

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Anselm Kiefer at Work, Creating His “World of Ruination”

in Art | August 25th, 2011

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a newish film direct­ed by Sophie Fiennes, lets you sit back and watch the Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer at work, cre­at­ing his large-scale â€śworld of ruina­tion.” The film has no nar­ra­tion, only some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. And, more than any­thing, it gives you a direct, unem­bell­ished view of Kiefer’s “alchem­i­cal cre­ative process” that reg­u­lar­ly takes over his stu­dio in south­ern France. Above, Kiefer puts the fin­ish­ing touch­es on, then rais­es, one of his elab­o­rate cre­ations. The clip, along with oth­ers, appears in a larg­er, more com­pelling for­mat on the film’s offi­cial web site. H/T NYRB

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep dai­ly.

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