Tate Kids Presents Introductions to Art Movements: Cubism, Impressionism, Surrealism & More

in Animation, Art, K-12, Museums, Video - Arts & Culture | February 8th, 2022

Tate Kids has a sol­id grasp on the sort of hands on art-relat­ed con­tent that appeals to chil­dren — Make a mud paint­ing! Make a spaghet­ti sculp­ture! Pho­to fil­ter chal­lenge!

Chil­dren of all ages, grown ups who skipped out on art his­to­ry includ­ed, will ben­e­fit from their break­neck overviews of entire art move­ments.

Take cubism.

The Tate Kids’ ani­ma­tion, above, pro­vides a sol­id if speedy overview, zip­ping through eight can­vas­es, six artists, and expla­na­tions of the move­men­t’s two phas­es — ana­lyt­i­cal and syn­thet­ic. (Three phas­es if you count Orphism, the abstract, cubist influ­enced paint­ing style mar­ried artists Robert and Sonia Delau­nay hatched around 1912.)

Giv­en the intend­ed audi­ence, the fond friend­ship between the fathers of cubism, Georges Braque and Pablo Picas­so looms large, with nary a peep about Picasso’s nar­cis­sism and misog­y­ny. And it must be said that the narrator’s tone grates a bit — a bit too loud, a bit too wowed.

The Impres­sion­ists come off as the real cool kids, with a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tor, and nifty col­lage ani­ma­tions that find Camille Pis­sar­ro throw­ing horns and a Mohawked Alfred Sis­ley as they reject the Salon’s insis­tence on “myths, bat­tles and paint­ings of impor­tant peo­ple.”

Their defi­ant spir­it is sup­port­ed by crit­i­cism that most def­i­nite­ly has not stood the test of time:

Pure evil! 

Wall­pa­per! 

Like a mon­key has got hold of a box of paints!

Kid pre­sen­ters seize the con­trols for an intro­duc­tion to the mid-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese avant-garde move­ment, Gutai.

Their con­clu­sion?

Smash­ing things up is fun!

As are man­i­festos:

Let’s bid farewell to the hoax­es piled up on the altars and in the palaces, the draw­ing rooms and the antique shops…Lock up these corpses in the grave­yard!

Yay!

Those who are poor­ly equipped to stom­ach the nar­ra­tors’ whizbang enthu­si­asm should take a restora­tive min­utes to vis­it the muse­um oranges in hand, with 12-year-old Jae­da and 9‑year-old Fati­matu. Their calm will­ing­ness to engage with con­cep­tu­al art is a ton­ic:

When I start­ed art, I though art was just about mak­ing it per­fect, but you don’t have to care what oth­er peo­ple say. That could still mean an art to you.

Watch a Tate Kids Art Move­ments playlist on YouTube. Sup­ple­ment what you’ve learned with a host of Tate Kids activ­i­ties, col­or­ing pages, games, quizzes, artist bios and a gallery of crowd­sourced kid art.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Tate Dig­i­tizes 70,000 Works of Art: Pho­tos, Sketch­books, Let­ters & More

Watch the Tate Mod­ern Restore Mark Rothko’s Van­dal­ized Paint­ing, Black on Maroon: 18 Months of Work Con­densed Into 17 Min­utes

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Marcel Duchamp Research Portal Opens, Making Available 18,000 Documents and 50,000 Images Related to the Revolutionary Artist

in Archives, Art, History | January 28th, 2022

Mar­cel Duchamp made films, com­posed music, paint­ed Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case, No. 2, designed an art deco chess set, and of course — the first thing most of us learn about him, as well as the last thing many of us learn about him — he put a uri­nal in an art gal­ley. But as you might expect of an artist who spent the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry at the heart of the avant-garde, there’s more to him than that. This notion is backed up by the more than 18,000 doc­u­ments and 50,000 images made avail­able at the Duchamp Research Por­tal, a new­ly opened archive ded­i­cat­ed to the life and work of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cep­tu­al artist.

The fruit of a sev­en-year col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art, the Asso­ci­a­tion Mar­cel Duchamp, and the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, this for­mi­da­ble dig­i­tal col­lec­tion includes many arti­facts relat­ed to the artist’s best-known work: the “large glass” of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bach­e­lors, Even; the mus­ta­chioed Mona Lisa; the shock­ing attempts to com­mit phys­i­cal motion to can­vas; and that uri­nal, Foun­tain.

But its “most inter­est­ing items,” writes The Art News­pa­per’s Daniel Cas­sady, “are often the most inti­mate and involve oth­er major play­ers in the evo­lu­tion of 20th-cen­tu­ry art. A 1950 let­ter — with enig­mat­ic mar­gin­a­lia — from Bre­ton. A 1933 post­card to Con­stan­tin Brân­cuși. Many can­did pho­tographs by Duchamp’s friend and fel­low giant of the era, Man Ray.”

These names will be famil­iar to read­ers of Open Cul­ture, where we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Brân­cuși on film and por­traits of 1920s cul­tur­al icons by Man Ray — who, as we can see from the above snap­shot of Duchamp at his Span­ish home, did­n’t always work so for­mal­ly. But then, no artist can ful­ly be under­stood through what makes it into the art-his­to­ry text­books alone. Browse the Duchamp Research Por­tal (or click “show me more” to change up the images on its front page) and you’ll see pieces of an artis­tic life ful­ly lived: the floor plan of his West 67th Street stu­dio; a 1940 telegram to Amer­i­can patron Wal­ter Con­rad Arens­berg (“HOLDING SHIPMENT OF MASK AWAITING CONFIRMATION OF INSURANCE AND ADDRESS”); a 1954 French news­pa­per pro­file; and a series of images jux­ta­pos­ing Duchamp with an unclothed Eve Bab­itz, the late Los Ange­les “it-girl” — not just the famous one of them play­ing chess.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Hear the Rad­i­cal Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions of Mar­cel Duchamp (1912–1915)

What Made Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal Art — and an Inven­tive Prank

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Great Art Cities: Visit the Fascinating, Lesser-Known Museums of London & Paris

in Art, History, Travel | January 28th, 2022

Gal­lerists James Payne and Joanne Shurvell under­stand that insti­tu­tion­al big goril­las like the Lou­vre, the Musee d’Or­say, Tate Britain, and London’s Nation­al Gallery require no intro­duc­tion. Their new art and trav­el series, Great Art Cities Explained, con­cen­trates instead on the won­der­ful, small­er muse­ums the big­gies often over­shad­ow.

First time vis­i­tors to Lon­don and Paris may be left scram­bling to rearrange their itin­er­aries.

The first two episodes have us per­suad­ed that Sir John Soane’s Muse­um, Ken­wood House, the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion, Le Musée Nation­al Eugène Delacroix, Le Musée de Mont­martre à Paris, and Ate­lier Bran­cusi are the true “don’t miss” attrac­tions if time is tight.

Cred­it Payne, whose flair for dishy, far rang­ing, high­ly acces­si­ble nar­ra­tion made his oth­er web series, Great Art Explained in Fif­teen Min­utes, an instant hit.

The three British insti­tu­tions fea­tured above were once grand pri­vate homes, whose own­ers decid­ed to donate them and the mag­nif­i­cent art col­lec­tions they con­tained to the pub­lic good.

What­ev­er moti­vat­ed these wealthy men’s gen­eros­i­ty — van­i­ty, the quest for immor­tal­i­ty, or, in one case, the desire to cut off a churl­ish and moral­ly lax son whom Payne com­pares to the cen­tral fig­ure in William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, a Sir John Soane’s Muse­um favorite — Payne holds them in high­er regard than today’s invest­ment-obsessed art col­lec­tors:

The world needs more men like (William) Mur­ray, (Sir John) Soane, and (Sir Richard) Wal­lace, men who saw that art can tran­scend social class. They under­stood that art should enrich the soul, not the bank bal­ance.

His peeks into their cir­cum­stances are every bit as fas­ci­nat­ing as the tid­bits he drops about the artists whose work he includes.

Rather than giv­ing a sweep­ing overview of each col­lec­tion, he focus­es on a few key works, shar­ing his cura­to­r­i­al per­spec­tive on their his­to­ry, acqui­si­tion, sub­ject mat­ter, cre­ation, and recep­tion:

Rembrandt’s Self Por­trait with Two Cir­cles (1669)

Vermeer’s The Gui­tar Play­er (1672)

Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1732)

Canalet­to’s Venice: the Baci­no di San Mar­co from San Gior­gio Mag­giore and Venice: the Baci­no di San Mar­co from the Canale del­la Giudec­ca (c. 1735 — 1744)

Fragonard’s The Swing (1767)

Frans Hal’s Laugh­ing Cav­a­lier (1624)

Payne’s rol­lick­ing approach means each episode is crammed with plen­ty of art­work resid­ing out­side of the fea­tured muse­ums, too, as he com­pares, con­trasts, and con­tex­tu­al­izes.

One of his most inter­est­ing tales in the Lon­don episode con­cerns an 18th-cen­tu­ry por­trait of William Murray’s great-nieces, Dido Belle and Eliz­a­beth Mur­ray, raised by their abo­li­tion­ist great-uncle at Ken­wood House:

Dido Belle was the ille­git­i­mate daugh­ter of a Black slave and William Murray’s nephew and was raised by Mur­ray as part of the aris­toc­ra­cy. By all accounts, Dido and her cousin were raised as equals and this por­trait of the two was seen as an image of sis­ter­hood, reflect­ing their equal sta­tus. But look­ing at it with mod­ern eyes, we can see it more in the vein of tra­di­tion­al ser­vant and mas­ter por­traits of the time. Belle’s exot­ic cloth­ing is designed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate her from her cousin and the paint­ing reflects the con­ser­v­a­tive views of the time.

Artist David Mar­tin places the cousins on a bench out­side the Hamp­stead Heath man­sion, with St. Paul’s Cathe­dral in the back­ground. For years, it was the only known por­trait of Belle.

It hangs, not in Ken­wood House, but in Scone Palace’s Ambas­sador’s Room.

Mean­while, one of Ken­wood House­’s lat­est acqui­si­tions is a 2021 por­trait of Belle by young Jamaican artist Mikéla Hen­ry-Lowe, on dis­play in the library.

Next up on Great Art Cities Explained: New York. Look for it on this playlist on Great Art Explained’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

Mark Rothko’s Sea­gram Murals: What Makes Them Great Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the Renaissance Painting, The Battle of San Romano, Get Brought Beautifully to Life in a Hand-Painted Animation

in Animation, Art, History | January 27th, 2022

Before the advent of the motion pic­ture, human­i­ty had the the­ater — but we also had paint­ings. Though phys­i­cal­ly still by def­i­n­i­tion, paint on can­vas could, in the hands of a suf­fi­cient­ly imag­i­na­tive mas­ter, seem actu­al­ly to move. Arguably this could even be pulled off with ochre and char­coal on the wall of a cave, if you cred­it the the­o­ry that pale­olith­ic paint­ings con­sti­tute the ear­li­est form of cin­e­ma. More famous­ly, and much more recent­ly, Rem­brandt imbued his mas­ter­piece The Night Watch with the illu­sion of move­ment. But over in Italy anoth­er painter, also work­ing on a large scale, pulled it off dif­fer­ent­ly two cen­turies ear­li­er. The artist was Pao­lo Uccel­lo, and the paint­ing is The Bat­tle of San Romano.

“The set of three paint­ings depicts the har­row­ing details of an epic con­fronta­tion between Flo­ren­tine and Sienese armies in 1432,” writes Meghan Oret­sky at Vimeo, which select­ed Swiss film­mak­er Georges Schwiz­ge­bel’s short ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the trip­tych as a Staff Pick Pre­miere. Com­plet­ed in 2017, the film’s begin­nings go back to 1962, when Schwiz­gebel was a gallery-tour­ing art stu­dent in Italy.

“Even though I wasn’t nor­mal­ly moved by old paint­ings, this one made a strong impres­sion on me and still does today,” he tells Vimeo. “I was also inspired by the use of cycles, or loops, which suit­ed a mov­ing ver­sion of this image per­fect­ly.” Schwiz­gebel exe­cut­ed the ani­ma­tion itself over the course of six months, fore­go­ing com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy and paint­ing each frame with acrylic on glass.

Scored by com­pos­er Judith Gru­ber-Stitzer, Schwiz­ge­bel’s “The Bat­tle of San Romano” con­sti­tutes a kind of shape-shift­ing tour of the paint­ing that first cap­ti­vat­ed him half a cen­tu­ry ago. But what he would have seen at the Uffizi Gallery is only one third of Uccel­lo’s com­po­si­tion, albeit the third that art his­to­ri­ans con­sid­er cen­tral. The oth­er two reside at the Lou­vre and the Nation­al Gallery, and you can see the lat­ter’s piece dis­cussed by Direc­tor of Col­lec­tions and Research Car­o­line Camp­bell in the video above. Schwiz­gebel is hard­ly the first to react bold­ly to The Bat­tle of San Romano; in the 15th cen­tu­ry, Loren­zo de’ Medici was suf­fi­cient­ly moved to buy one part, then have the oth­er two stolen and brought to his palace. If that’s the kind of act it has the pow­er to inspire, per­haps it’s for the best that the trip­ty­ch’s union did­n’t last.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

William Blake’s Paint­ings Come to Life in Two Ani­ma­tions

Late Rem­brandts Come to Life: Watch Ani­ma­tions of Paint­ings Now on Dis­play at the Rijksmu­se­um

10 Paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, the Most Cin­e­mat­ic Amer­i­can Painter of All, Turned into Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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1,100 Delicate Drawings of Root Systems Reveals the Hidden World of Plants

in Archives, Art, Biology | January 20th, 2022

We know that plants can inspire art. If you, per­son­al­ly, still require con­vinc­ing on that point, just have a look at Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, the draw­ings of Ernst Hein­rich Haeck­el, Eliz­a­beth Black­well’s A Curi­ous Herbal, and Nan­cy Anne Kings­bury Woll­stonecraft’s Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba — not to men­tion the paint­ings of Geor­gia O’ Keeffe — all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But those works con­cern them­selves only with plant life as it exists above ground.

What goes on down below, under­neath the soil? That you can see for your­self — and with­out hav­ing to pull up one of our fine flow­er­ing (or non-flow­er­ing) friends to do so — at Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty’s online archive of root sys­tem draw­ings. “The out­come of 40 years of  root sys­tem exca­va­tions in Europe,” says that site, the col­lec­tion con­tains 1,180 dia­grams of species from Abies alba (best known today as a kind of Christ­mas tree) to Zygo­phyl­lum xan­thoxy­lon (a faint­ly scrub­by-look­ing native of the arid and semi-arid regions of con­ti­nents like Africa and Aus­tralia).

The site explains that “the draw­ings, their analy­sis and descrip­tion were done by Univ. Prof. Dr. Erwin Licht­eneg­ger (1928–2004) and Univ. Prof. Dr. Lore Kutschera (1917–2008), leader of Pflanzen­sozi­ol­o­gis­ches Insti­tut, Kla­gen­furt, (now in Bad Gois­ern, Aus­tria).”

Over the course of 40 years, writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Erin Blake­more, Licht­eneg­ger and Kustchera “col­lab­o­rat­ed on an enor­mous ‘root atlas’ that maps the under­ground tra­jec­to­ries of com­mon Euro­pean plants.” Cre­at­ed through “a labo­ri­ous sys­tem of dig­ging up and doc­u­ment­ing the intri­cate sys­tems,” these draw­ings are “also art in their own right, hon­or­ing the beau­ty of a part of plants most nev­er give that much thought.”

Even the least botan­i­cal­ly aware among us knows that plants have roots, but how many of us are aware of the scale and com­plex­i­ty those roots can attain? “Root sys­tems allow plants to gath­er the water and min­er­als they use to grow,” writes Blake­more. “As the root sys­tem grows, it cre­ates more and more path­ways that allow water to get into the deep sub­soil, and fos­ter­ing the growth of microbes that ben­e­fit oth­er life. Strong root sys­tems can pre­vent ero­sion, pro­tect­ing the land on which they grow. And the struc­tures allow the soil to cap­ture car­bon.” Thus root sys­tems, nev­er a par­tic­u­lar locus of cool­ness, have the dis­tinc­tion of doing their part to fight cli­mate change. And thanks to Licht­eneg­ger and Kustcher­a’s draw­ings, they under­score the capac­i­ty of art to reveal worlds hid­den to most of us. View all of the images here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When Andy Warhol Guest-Starred on The Love Boat (1985)

in Art, Television | January 18th, 2022

On Fri­day, August 31, 1979, Andy Warhol records in his diary that he took a cab to Elaine’s to “meet the guy who might get me a guest appear­ance on The Love Boat.” But near­ly five years pass before he writes that the writ­ers are work­ing on his episode; with the shoot­ing dates set, “I start­ed to get scared, I don’t know if I can go through with it.” A cou­ple of months lat­er, as the appoint­ed time approach­es, he hears the plot: “There’s a girl on the boat named Mary with her hus­band, and she used to be a super­star of mine, and she doesn’t want her hus­band to know that she used to be ‘Mari­na Del Rey.’ And I just have a few lines, things like ‘Hel­lo, Mary.’ But one of the lines I have to say is some­thing like ‘Art is crass com­mer­cial­ism,’ which I don’t want to say.”

What­ev­er his objec­tions to the script, Warhol does­n’t seem to have been an espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult par­tic­i­pant, of whom The Love Boat must have had more than a few in its 250 episodes. Dur­ing its run on ABC from 1977 to 1986, the series became an Amer­i­can pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non of a scale dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend today. But as a con­nois­seur of Amer­i­can pop cul­ture, Warhol would have com­pre­hend­ed it ful­ly. By the time of his appear­ance in Octo­ber 1985, The Love Boat had entered its ninth sea­son, pre­sum­ably hun­gri­er than ever for atten­tion-grab­bing guest stars; on “his” episode, Warhol shares that billing with, among oth­ers, Mil­ton Berle, Hap­py Days’ Tom Bosley and Mar­i­on Ross, and Andy Grif­fith (who, Warhol notes, “seems bit­ter to be on The Love Boat”).

“If there was any space where painters and artists could brush shoul­ders with soap stars and teen idols, it was aboard the Pacif­ic Princess,” says MeTV. “In one episode ded­i­cat­ed to the fash­ion indus­try, design­ers Glo­ria Van­der­bilt, Geof­frey Beene and Hal­ston all came aboard.” Warhol’s com­ing aboard, then, “was both unex­pect­ed and some­how inevitable.” You can wit­ness this sur­pris­ing yet unsur­pris­ing cul­tur­al crossover in the video above, which con­tains just the scenes from Warhol’s sto­ry with­in the episode (which, like most Love Boat scripts, has three dif­fer­ent plot­lines). Even if it deliv­ers few pro­found insights into the nature of art, celebri­ty, and human aspi­ra­tion, it does cap­ture Warhol’s pres­ence as it seems real­ly to have been dur­ing his final years.

“My Stephen Sprouse jack­ets were there on the wardrobe rack,” Warhol writes in his diary dur­ing the shoot. “When I wear them, I think I final­ly look like peo­ple want Andy Warhol to look again.” That must have been true of the shiny sil­ver num­ber he wears in his first scene of the episode, when first he rolls up with his “entourage” to the ship’s recep­tion desk. “As we’re walk­ing off, the Love Boat girl asks Ray­mond St. Jacques, ‘How does an artist know when a paint­ing is real­ly suc­cess­ful?’ And he says, ‘When the check clears.’ ” But on one take “they did it wrong and it was bet­ter — she said, ‘When is a paint­ing real­ly fin­ished.’ ” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that ver­sion of the line seems to have been a bit too Warho­lian for the Pacif­ic Princess.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Andy Warhol & Edie Sedg­wick, the First Cou­ple of Pop Art, Made an Odd Appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin Show (1965)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

When Frank Zap­pa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Deal­er and a Pimp on Mia­mi Vice

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold Medieval Snowball Fights: A Timeless Way of Having Fun

in Art, History | January 11th, 2022

You can’t get too much win­ter in the win­ter

– Robert Frost, “Snow”

Snowy win­ter then respond­ed with a voice severe:
May the cuck­oo not come, let it sleep in dark hol­lows.
He is accus­tomed to bring hunger with him.

– Anony­mous poem in Medieval Latin, trans­lat­ed by Heather Williams

Win­ter may starve and freeze, but in each place where snow accu­mu­lates, we also find depic­tions of infor­mal hol­i­days — snow days — and one of their most exu­ber­ant pur­suits. “Few sea­son­al activ­i­ties are as uni­ver­sal — across time, place, or cul­ture — as the snow­ball fight,” writes Pub­lic Domain Review. Some have even made it “into the annals of his­to­ry.… Accord­ing to what might be more fable than his­to­ry, the teenage Napoleon Bona­parte famous­ly orga­nized a ten day snow­ball fight at his mil­i­tary school, com­plete with trench­es, reg­i­mens, and rules of engage­ment.”

Snow­ball fights weren’t “con­fined to chil­dren either,” Arendse Lund writes. In the pages of illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval man­u­scripts, “peo­ple of all ages, men and women, can be seen heft­ing an icy ball.” Such images defy a “con­ven­tion­al topos” — “the threat of win­ter” found in Old Eng­lish poet­ry.

In one cal­en­dar poem, The Menologium, for exam­ple, “win­ter comes in like an invad­ing war­rior,” notes A Clerk of Oxford, “and puts autumn in chains, and the green fields which dec­o­rate the earth are per­mit­ted to stay with us no longer.… There are many, many exam­ples of win­ter as dan­ger and sor­row” in Medieval poet­ry.

The tra­di­tion of win­ter as a mar­tial invad­er con­tin­ues in mod­ern verse. In Robert Frost, snow forms “soft bombs.” Even when one is safe and warm at home, snow banked high around the walls out­side, win­ter threat­ens: the house is “frozen, brit­tle, all except this room you sit in.” But along­side these lit­er­ary scenes of unbear­able cold, we have the play­ful­ness and sub­lim­i­ty of win­ter, its abil­i­ty to ele­vate the ordi­nary, break up monot­o­ny, put a tem­po­rary end to dai­ly drudgery. Win­ter brings its own form of beau­ty, and its own fun: the soft bomb of the snow ball.

In one Mid­dle Eng­lish poem by Nico­las Bacon, titled “Of a Snow balle,” spring has noth­ing on win­ter even when it comes to love; the snow­ball fight becomes a pre­text for a roman­tic encounter:

A wan­ton wenche vppon a colde daye
With Snowe balles prouoked me to playe:
But the­is snowe balles soe hette my desy­er
That I maye calle them balles of wylde fyer.

In the delight­ful images here, culled from a num­ber of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts (and one fres­co, at the top), see Medieval Euro­peans play, flirt, and scoff at win­ter’s warn­ing in light­heart­ed snow­ball fights of yore.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado

Medieval Scribes Dis­cour­aged Theft of Man­u­scripts by Adding Curs­es Threat­en­ing Death & Damna­tion to Their Pages

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Introduction to the Painting of Caspar David Friedrich, Romanticism & the Sublime

in Art, History, Philosophy | January 11th, 2022

When Denis Vil­leneuve was announced as the direc­tor of the lat­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of Dune, few could have object­ed on aes­thet­ic grounds. The blast­ed sand plan­et of Arrakis, with its storms and worms, demands a sense of the sub­lime; to a unique degree among film­mak­ers work­ing today, the auteur behind Arrival and Blade Run­ner 2049 seemed to pos­sess it. Though long since vul­gar­ized to mean lit­tle more than “high­ly enjoy­able,” sub­lime has his­tor­i­cal­ly denot­ed a rich­er, more com­plex set of qual­i­ties. The sub­lime can be beau­ti­ful, but it must also be in some way fear­some, pos­sessed of “a great­ness beyond all pos­si­bil­i­ty of cal­cu­la­tion, mea­sure­ment, or imi­ta­tion.”

That quote comes straight from the Wikipedia page on “Sub­lime (phi­los­o­phy),” which also promi­nent­ly fea­tures Cas­par David Friedrich’s paint­ing Der Wan­der­er über dem Nebelmeer, or Wan­der­er above the Sea of Fog. Com­plet­ed around 1818, it has become a famil­iar image even to those who know noth­ing of Friedrich’s work — work to which they can receive an intro­duc­tion from the new video above by Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer.

Friedrich, he explains, was “asso­ci­at­ed with Ger­man Roman­ti­cism, a ris­ing intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic move­ment” of the late 18th and ear­ly 19th cen­turies “that sought to recon­nect human­i­ty with feel­ing and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” after the Enlight­en­ment so desta­bi­lized human­i­ty’s Weltan­schau­ung.

Friedrich’s land­scapes, real­is­ti­cal­ly paint­ed if not nec­es­sar­i­ly faith­ful to real places, “rep­re­sent the pin­na­cle of this move­ment.” They do this by con­vey­ing “the feel­ing he has in the pres­ence of the land­scape, the stag­ger­ing encounter with the divin­i­ty he sees in it. This is the essence of the sub­lime,” which took on spe­cial urgency in an era “when sec­u­lar­ism was threat­en­ing the core of Chris­tian­i­ty.”  More than reli­gion, the Roman­tics thus began to regard nature as awe­some (in the orig­i­nal sense), hum­bling them­selves before the great­ness of land­scapes real and imag­ined. The wan­der­er loom­ing above the sea of fog is actu­al­ly an excep­tion in Friedrich’s work, most of whose human fig­ures are small enough to empha­size “the vast­ness of the ter­rain” — a sub­lime-evok­ing tech­nique that we can still feel work­ing two cen­turies lat­er, Puschak points out, in Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune.

You can pre-order Nerd­writer’s upcom­ing book Escape into Mean­ing: Essays on Super­man, Pub­lic Bench­es, and Oth­er Obses­sions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Andrew Wyeth Made a Paint­ing: A Jour­ney Into His Best-Known Work Christina’s World

When Our World Became a de Chiri­co Paint­ing: How the Avant-Garde Painter Fore­saw the Emp­ty City Streets of 2020

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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