Dear Monsieur Picasso: A Free eBook

in Art, e-books, Life | December 1st, 2010

dear mr picasso

In the sum­mer of 1955, Fred­er­ick Bald­win, a col­lege stu­dent at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, set out on a pil­grim­age of sorts, hop­ing to meet Pablo Picas­so. Bald­win trav­eled first to Le Havre (pre­sum­ably by boat), then head­ed south, down to Val­lau­ris and Cannes, until he even­tu­al­ly reached Picas­so’s home on the Riv­iera, known as Vil­la la Cal­i­fornie. It took a lit­tle crafti­ness and mox­ie, but the young Amer­i­can gained entrance into Picas­so’s stu­dio. And there he was, the great painter him­self, wear­ing shorts, san­dals and not much else.

More than five decades lat­er, Bald­win has pro­duced an ele­gant e‑book (avail­able for free right here) that uses pho­tographs and text to pre­serve the mem­o­ry of this defin­ing moment. After meet­ing Picas­so, Bald­win became a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, work­ing for Audubon, LIFE, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, and The New York Times, among oth­er mag­a­zines. And, lat­er, he looked to “repli­cate the Picas­so expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ly,” always con­trol­ling his own agen­da, nev­er tak­ing a job where he was­n’t mak­ing his own deci­sions. You can down­load the 22 page e‑book, Dear Mon­sieur Picas­so, right here. Find more great texts in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

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Early Experiments in Color Film (1895–1935)

in Art, Film | November 30th, 2010

Hol­ly­wood did­n’t start pro­duc­ing col­or fea­ture films until the mid 1930s. (Becky Sharp, the first Tech­ni­col­or film from 1935, appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.) But exper­i­ments with col­or film­mak­ing start­ed long before that. Ear­li­er this year, Kodak unearthed a test of Kodachrome col­or film from 1922 (above). But then you can trav­el back to 1912, when a film­mak­er test­ed out a Chronochrome process on the beach­es of Nor­mandy. Or how about mov­ing all the way back to 1895? Here we have footage from Thomas Edis­on’s hand-paint­ed film Anabelle’s Dance, which was made for his Kine­to­scope view­ers. For more on the his­to­ry of col­or film, vis­it here.

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:

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

Col­or Film Was Designed to Take Pic­tures of White Peo­ple, Not Peo­ple of Col­or: The Unfor­tu­nate His­to­ry of Racial Bias in Pho­tog­ra­phy (1940–1990)

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

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45 Great Cultural Icons Revisited

in Art, Literature, Most Popular, Philosophy | November 21st, 2010

It’s no secret. We love to high­light vin­tage video of cul­tur­al icons. This week­end, we showed you the last days of Leo Tol­stoy to com­mem­o­rate the cen­ten­ni­al of the great writer’s death, and you expressed your appre­ci­a­tion. And it led us to think: why not dig through our archive, and revive some of the great trea­sures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture? And so here it goes: Below, you will find 45+ video & audio clips that record the words and actions of major fig­ures from a bygone era. Artists, archi­tects, film­mak­ers, actors, poets, nov­el­ists, com­posers, musi­cians, world-chang­ing lead­ers, and those not eas­i­ly cat­e­go­rized – they’re all here. So close, you can almost touch them. Enjoy the list, and if we’re miss­ing some good clips, don’t hes­i­tate to send them our way…

Video

  1. Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”
  2. Arthur Conan Doyle Recounts the Back­sto­ry to Sher­lock Holmes
  3. Orson Welles’ Final Moments
  4. William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare
  5. Borges: The Task of Art
  6. Jack Ker­ouac Meets William F. Buck­ley (1968)
  7. Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971
  8. Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass
  9. Leonard Bern­stein Breaks Down Beethoven
  10. Record Mak­ing With Duke Elling­ton (1937)
  11. Bertrand Rus­sell on God
  12. Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)
  13. A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach
  14. Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From?
  15. Richard Feyn­man: Fun to Imag­ine
  16. Rare Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock Now Online
  17. Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
  18. Footage of Nietzsche’s Final Days (May be bogus)
  19. Samuel Beck­ett Speaks
  20. Jimi Hen­drix Plays Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band
  21. Djan­go Rein­hardt at 100
  22. When Pavarot­ti Met James Brown, the God­fa­ther of Soul
  23. James Dean and Ronald Rea­gan Clash in New­ly Dis­cov­ered Video
  24. The Last Czar (1896)
  25. Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co
  26. Revis­it­ing JFK on YouTube
  27. Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)
  28. Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964
  29. Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video
  30. Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online
  31. Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties (Frank Lloyd Wright, Pearl Buck, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, etc.)

Audio:

  1. Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)
  2. Aldous Hux­ley Nar­rates Brave New World
  3. Tru­man Capote Reads from Break­fast at Tiffany’s
  4. Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five
  5. William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online
  6. The John Lennon Inter­views
  7. Rare Record­ing of Walt Whit­man Read­ing
  8. Vir­ginia Woolf: Her Voice Recap­tured
  9. T.S. Eliot Reads The Waste Land
  10. Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”
  11. F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare
  12. James Joyce Read­ing from Finnegans Wake
  13. Rare Ezra Pound Record­ings Now Online
  14. William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)
  15. Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

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MoMA Puts Pollock, Rothko & de Kooning on Your iPad

in Art, iPad, Museums | November 17th, 2010

Through next April, you can vis­it “Abstract Expres­sion­ist New York,” – an exhib­it at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (NYC) that looks back at the work of Jack­son Pol­lock, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Willem de Koon­ing and many oth­ers. If you can’t make the trip, then you can do the next best thing. Fire up your iPad, down­load the free app cre­at­ed by MoMA, and start watch­ing a slideshow of 60 paint­ings cur­rent­ly on dis­play in “AB EX NY.” All images are pre­sent­ed in high res­o­lu­tion, and the app also fea­tures 20 videos cre­at­ed by the cura­tors, each of which con­cen­trates on indi­vid­ual painters and their tech­niques. And did I men­tion that the app is free? (via Arts Beat)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Dis­play

Vis­it 890 UNESCO World Her­itage Sites with Free iPhone/iPad App

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David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Display

in Art | November 14th, 2010

Famed British artist David Hock­ney start­ed cre­at­ing art for the iPhone in 2008, and then for the iPad this year, using noth­ing but his fin­gers and this handy Brush­es app. Ini­tial­ly, Hock­ney only shared his dig­i­tal draw­ings with a small cir­cle of friends. But now he’s mak­ing that cir­cle much larg­er. Start­ing in late Octo­ber, Hock­ney’s dig­i­tal fin­ger paint­ing went on dis­play at the Fon­da­tion Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Lau­rent in Paris. The exhi­bi­tion, enti­tled Fleurs fraîch­es (Fresh Flow­ers), runs until Jan­u­ary 30, 2011. Here, Hock­ney explains the basic think­ing behind the exhi­bi­tion, and here you can sam­ple some of the dig­i­tal works on dis­play. Just click and scroll down.

Thanks Ian in Brazil for send­ing this our way…

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Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

This won­der­ful stop motion film makes you pine for the good old fash­ioned print­ed book, per­haps because we all real­ize that Guten­berg’s gift will even­tu­al­ly give way to the Kin­dle and oth­er devices. The three minute film (offi­cial­ly enti­tled This is Where We Live) was shot over three weeks in autumn 2008 to cel­e­brate the 25th anniver­sary of 4th Estate Pub­lish­ers. No less than 20 ani­ma­tors took part in the project, and no less than 1000 books were put to use.

Designrelated.com takes a lit­tle clos­er look at the mak­ing of the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing film. Big thanks to Mike for the good find…

Fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book!

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Writing Studio Floating in Foliage

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

When asked to design a writ­ing stu­dio in the woods of New York, archi­tect Andrew Berman began work on his dream project. And here’s what he deliv­ered. If only we could all write in such lux­u­ry…

via Media Bistro

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A‑List Authors, Artists & Thinkers Draw Self Portraits

in Art, Literature | November 8th, 2010

Over the years, Burt Brit­ton con­vinced A‑list writ­ers and artists to draw self-por­traits of them­selves. He first enticed Nor­man Mail­er long ago, while work­ing as a bar­tender at the Vil­lage Van­guard in NYC. Then came Miles Davis, Jorge Luis Borges (who was already blind), Mar­garet Atwood, Frank Gehry, Saul Bel­low, David Hock­ney, Allen Gins­berg, Cor­mac McCarthy (see above) and a parade of oth­ers. The doo­dled por­traits were lat­er col­lect­ed in a now out-of-print book, Self-Por­trait: Book Peo­ple Pic­ture Them­selves. You can still find a small­er col­lec­tion online at The Dai­ly Beast. The New York Times gives you more of the back­sto­ry on this col­lec­tion here.

via Maud New­ton

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