Richard Feynman: The New Graphic Novel

in Art, Books, Physics | August 24th, 2011


Last week, we high­light­ed The Last Jour­ney Of A Genius, a doc­u­men­tary that record­ed the final days of the great physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and his obses­sion with trav­el­ing to Tan­nu Tuva, a state out­side of out­er Mon­go­lia.

Now here is what next week will bring — a new “sub­stan­tial graph­ic nov­el biog­ra­phy” that “presents the larg­er-than-life exploits of the Nobel-win­ning quan­tum physi­cist, adven­tur­er, musi­cian and world-class racon­teur.” The book writ­ten by Jim Otta­viani and illus­trat­ed by Leland Myrick runs a fair­ly hefty 272 pages. The video clip on Youtube will give you a good feel for the art­work that tells Feyn­man’s per­son­al tale.

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:

Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures Online

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out

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Jackson Pollock 51: Short Film Captures the Painter Creating Abstract Expressionist Art

in Art, Film | August 24th, 2011

In the sum­mer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jack­son Pol­lock and asked the abstract expres­sion­ist painter if he could pho­to­graph him in his stu­dio, work­ing with his “drip” tech­nique of paint­ing. When Namuth arrived, he found:

A drip­ping wet can­vas cov­ered the entire floor. Blind­ing shafts of sun­light hit the wet can­vas, mak­ing its sur­face hard to see. There was com­plete silence.… Pol­lock looked at the paint­ing. Then unex­pect­ed­ly, he picked up can and paint­brush and start­ed to move around the can­vas. It was as if he sud­den­ly real­ized the paint­ing was not fin­ished. His move­ments, slow at first, grad­u­al­ly became faster and more dance­like as he flung black, white and rust-col­ored paint onto the can­vas.

The images from this shoot “helped trans­form Pol­lock from a tal­ent­ed, cranky lon­er into the first media-dri­ven super­star of Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary art, the jeans-clad, chain-smok­ing poster boy of abstract expres­sion­ism,” one crit­ic lat­er wrote in The Wash­ing­ton Post.

But Namuth was­n’t sat­is­fied that he had real­ly cap­tured the essence of Pol­lock­’s work. He want­ed to cap­ture Pol­lock in motion and col­or, to focus on the painter and paint­ing alike.

Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s sec­ond effort. The ten-minute film, sim­ply called Jack­son Pol­lock 51 (the 51 being short for 1951), lets you see Pol­lock paint­ing from a unique angle — through glass. The film achieved Namuth’s aes­thet­ic goals, but it came at a price. Appar­ent­ly the film­ing taxed Pol­lock emo­tion­al­ly, and by the evening, the painter decid­ed to pour him­self some bour­bon, his first drink in two years. A blowout argu­ment fol­lowed; Pol­lock nev­er stopped drink­ing again; and it was down­hill from there…

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:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol

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Extreme Photography: Shooting Big Climbs at Yosemite

in Art | August 19th, 2011

When you think pho­tog­ra­phy and Yosemite Nation­al Park, you think of Ansel Adams shoot­ing “Moon and Half Dome” or “El Cap­i­tan.”

But today we’re think­ing about some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — about the ver­ti­go-induc­ing pho­tog­ra­phy of Renan Ozturk. Work­ing on behalf of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Ozturk heads to Yosemite to shoot a fea­ture sto­ry on the climb­ing cul­ture that thrives in this val­ley sur­round­ed by 3000-foot rock walls. The park fea­tures extreme A5 climbs that con­stant­ly push climbers to new lim­its, and nat­u­ral­ly it takes a spe­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er to record the action. How Renan does it? We’ll let him tell the rest of the sto­ry … H/T Curios­i­ty Counts

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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William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique

in Art, Books, Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2011

In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tris­tan Tzara wrote “dada man­i­festo on fee­ble love and bit­ter love,” which includ­ed a sec­tion called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instruc­tions:

Take a news­pa­per.
Take some scis­sors.
Choose from this paper an arti­cle of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the arti­cle.
Next care­ful­ly cut out each of the words that makes up this arti­cle and put them all in a bag.
Shake gen­tly.
Next take out each cut­ting one after the oth­er.
Copy con­sci­en­tious­ly in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resem­ble you.
And there you are — an infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.

Decades lat­er, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs took this basic con­cept and put his own twist on it. Between 1961 and 1964, Bur­roughs pub­lished The Nova Tril­o­gy, a series of three exper­i­men­tal nov­els fash­ioned with his own cut-up method. Often con­sid­ered his defin­i­tive work of cut-up writ­ing, The Soft Machine, the first nov­el in the tril­o­gy, stitched togeth­er pages from a series of man­u­scripts that Bur­roughs him­self wrote between 1953 and 1958.

You can watch Bur­roughs demon­strat­ing his cut-up tech­nique above, and for­ev­er find this clip in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons, which lets you see great writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and thinkers talk­ing in their own words.

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:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

 

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Young Terry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Animation

in Animation, Art, Comedy, Film | August 12th, 2011

Put aside 14 min­utes and Ter­ry Gilliam, the leg­endary Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor, will show you how to make your own cutout ani­ma­tions. Gilliam start­ed out his career as an ani­ma­tor, then moved to Eng­land and joined up with Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. For years, he worked as the group’s ani­ma­tor, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es.

If you’ve nev­er tak­en a good look at his work, you will want to spend some time with The Mir­a­cle of Flight from 1974, or this ani­mat­ed sequence, Sto­ry Time, from 1968.

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:

John Cleese on the Ori­gin on Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed

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Crater Lake Under the Stars

in Art | August 11th, 2011

Ben Canales took a trip to Crater Lake to shoot the stars, sac­ri­fic­ing mon­ey and per­son­al rela­tion­ships along the way. But he’s not com­plain­ing. The results are just painful­ly pret­ty…

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The Adoration of the Mona Lisa Begins with Theft

in Art | August 4th, 2011

Every year, five mil­lion vis­i­tors stream into the Lou­vre in Paris, mak­ing it the most vis­it­ed muse­um in the world. And, more than any oth­er paint­ing, vis­i­tors head to see Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa, paint­ed cir­ca 1503 — 1519.

It’s tempt­ing to attribute the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Mona Lisa to the endur­ing genius of da Vin­ci. But, as NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered recounts, there was a time when the paint­ing hard­ly attract­ed pub­lic atten­tion, and what turned the paint­ing into an object of pub­lic ado­ra­tion was some­thing baser than genius itself: brazen theft. Click here and NPR will tell you the sto­ry of the great Mona Lisa heist that went down on August 21, 1911, almost 100 years ago…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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The Tarantino Mixtape (NSFW)

in Art, Film, Music | July 29th, 2011

Take Quentin Taran­ti­no’s movies, then let Eclec­tic Method decon­struct and recon­struct the scenes, leav­ing you with The Taran­ti­no Mix­tape, which is a lit­tle Not Safe for Work.

Based in Lon­don, the mem­bers of Eclec­tic Method have been exper­i­ment­ing with audio-visu­al mix­ing of sounds and images for a good decade. 60+ of their videos appear online, includ­ing their lat­est release — a Star Wars remix called Dark Wars. H/T Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What if Taran­ti­no Direct­ed the Super Bowl Broad­cast?

“Tarantino’s Mind,” Award Win­ning Short Film

Tarantino’s Favorite Films Since ’92

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