Steve Martin on How to Look at Abstract Art

in Art | December 12th, 2019

The stan­dard “any­one could do that” response to abstract art gen­er­al­ly falls apart when the per­son who says it tries their hand at mak­ing some­thing like a Kandin­sky or Miró. Not only were these artists high­ly trained in tech­niques and mate­ri­als, but both pos­sessed their own spe­cif­ic the­o­ries of abstract art—the role of line, col­or, shape, neg­a­tive space, etc., along with grander ideas about the role of art itself. Few of us walk around with such con­sid­ered opin­ions and the abil­i­ty to turn them into art­works. The abstrac­tion begins in the mind before it reach­es the can­vas.

For his appear­ance on the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and BBC web series The Way I See It, Steve Mar­tin chose two obscure Amer­i­can abstract artists who per­fect­ly illus­trate the rela­tion­ship between the the­o­ry and prac­tice of abstrac­tion.

“I don’t gen­er­al­ly care about the­o­ries,” Mar­tin says. “They kind of get in the way of look­ing at the pic­ture. But I think the result of work­ing from a the­o­ry can be fan­tas­tic.” We may not need to know that these two artists, Mor­gan Rus­sell and Stan­ton Mac­don­ald Wright, paint­ed in accor­dance with a the­o­ry they called Syn­chromism, but it cer­tain­ly helps.

“The result­ing paint­ings, called Syn­chromies,” explains The Art Sto­ry, “used the col­or scale in the way notes might be arranged in a musi­cal piece. As the two artists wrote, ‘Syn­chromism sim­ply means ‘with col­or’ as sym­pho­ny means ‘with sound’.…” And as com­pos­er and pianist Jason Moran demon­strates in his The Way I See It episode, above, Piet Mon­dri­an went even fur­ther in this direc­tion with his Broad­way Boo­gie Woo­gie, which rep­re­sents, in its arrange­ment of col­ored squares, the very essence of the musi­cal form from which it takes its title. Moran can even play the paint­ing like a musi­cal score.

The kind of abstrac­tion Mar­tin and Moran grav­i­tate toward turns sound into visu­al plea­sure and stim­u­lates the think­ing mind. Com­ment­ing on one of his selec­tions, Mar­tin says, “I think of this as an intel­lec­tu­al paint­ing.” When it came time for John Waters to make his choice, he went for the gut (and the uncon­scious), with “a giant, two-pan­eled paint­ing of a ham­mer,” he says, “a very butch paint­ing by a het­ero­sex­u­al woman. I love the idea of how scary it is and how pow­er­ful.” It’s an image, he says, that reminds him of per­son­al trauma—though noth­ing so grue­some as one might think.

Waters seeks a kind of cathar­sis from art by look­ing at work that scares him. Lee Lozano’s unti­tled 1963 paint­ing, he says, is “threat­en­ing…. All the art I like makes me angry at first…. That’s part of its job, to make you angry.” Paint­ings of this size have tra­di­tion­al­ly been “reserved for lofty sub­jects,” notes the MoMA. “In this painting—and in oth­ers, of wrench­es, clamps, and screwdrivers—Lozano weds the mun­dane with the grand.” As Waters delight­ed­ly points out, her work, like his own, deals a heavy blow, pun intend­ed, to canons of taste.

The Way I See It series acts as a teas­er for a BBC pod­cast of the same name, which inter­views 30 cre­atives and sci­en­tists on their respons­es to pieces of art in the MoMA’s col­lec­tion. See more of these short videos at the MoMA’s YouTube chan­nel. Down­load episodes of the pod­cast here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Quick Six Minute Jour­ney Through Mod­ern Art: How You Get from Manet’s 1862 Paint­ing, “The Lun­cheon on the Grass,” to Jack­son Pol­lock 1950s Drip Paint­ings

The Art Assign­ment: Learn About Art & the Cre­ative Process in a New Web Series by John & Sarah Green

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es His First Online Course on Com­e­dy

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

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Meditation for Artists: Learn Moebius’ Meditative Technique Called “Automatic Drawing”

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | December 11th, 2019

Med­i­ta­tion and art have an ancient, inter­twined his­to­ry in Chi­na, where the begin­nings of Chan Bud­dhism are insep­a­ra­ble from land­scape paint­ing. In Japan, Zen art has con­sti­tut­ed “a prac­tice in appre­ci­at­ing sim­plic­i­ty,” of dis­ap­pear­ing into the cre­ative act, cul­ti­vat­ing degrees of ego­less­ness that allow an artist’s move­ments to become spon­ta­neous and unham­pered by sec­ond guess­es. The “first Japan­ese artists to work in [ink],” notes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, “were Zen monks who paint­ed in a quick and evoca­tive man­ner.” They passed their tech­niques, and their wis­dom, on to their stu­dents.

Per­haps the clos­est ana­logue to this tra­di­tion in the west is com­ic art. Artist Ted Gula has worked with comics leg­ends Frank Frazetta and Moe­bius and drawn for Dis­ney, Mar­vel, and DC. As a child, he watched Jack Kir­by work. “He wouldn’t speak,” says Gula. “He’d be in a trance…. The pen­cil would hit the paper and it wouldn’t stop until the page was com­plete, like it poured out.” How is that pos­si­ble? Gula asked him­self, aston­ished. Kir­by had dis­ap­peared into the work. There were no pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es or rough indi­ca­tors. He would draw an entire book like that, Gula says in the video above from Proko.

Say what you will about the con­tent of Kirby’s work—superhero comics aren’t to everyone’s lik­ing. But no dis­taste for the nature of his sto­ry­telling dimin­ish­es Kirby’s attain­ment of a pure­ly extem­po­ra­ne­ous method he seems nev­er to have explained to Gula in words. Lat­er, how­ev­er, while work­ing with Moe­bius, Gula says, he learned the tech­nique of “auto­mat­ic draw­ing.” Demon­strat­ing it for us above, Gula describes a way of draw­ing that shares much in com­mon with oth­er med­i­ta­tive visu­al art tra­di­tions.

“It’s all doing very organ­ic shapes,” he says, show­ing us how to “draw your mind’s eye. This takes your mind, and your mind’s eye, to a place that nor­mal­ly is unex­plored, and it can’t help but enhance your whole view of your abil­i­ty.” The ego must step aside, exec­u­tive func­tion­ing isn’t need­ed here. “I have no idea,” Gula says, “it’s all just hap­pen­ing on its own.” Moe­bius explained it as “just let­ting my mind relax” and Gula has observed sim­i­lar prac­tices among all the artists he’s worked with.

Gula describes auto­mat­ic draw­ing as a nat­ur­al process for the artist’s mind and hands. The inter­view­er, artist and teacher Sam Prokopenko, also men­tions Kore­an artist Kim Jung Gi in their inter­view, who does “amaz­ing­ly accu­rate draw­ings from his mem­o­ry with­out any con­struc­tion lines,” as Prokopenko says above, in a video from his “12 Days of Proko” series, which inter­views well-known artists about their tech­niques. What’s Kim Jung Gi’s secret? Is he pos­sessed of a super­hu­man, pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry? No, he tells Prokopenko.

The secret to becom­ing ful­ly immersed in the work—one that sure­ly goes for so many pur­suits, both cre­ative and athletic—is just to do it: over and over and over and over and over again. (To many people’s dis­ap­point­ment, this also seems to be the secret of med­i­ta­tion.) In Kim Jung Gi’s case, “of course, some part of it is a tal­ent he was born with, but we can’t over­look how much that tal­ent was devel­oped.” We need no expert tal­ent, either innate or devel­oped, to get start­ed. Auto­mat­ic draw­ing seems to require a beginner’s mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

In Search of Mœbius: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to the Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

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

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You Can Sleep in an Edward Hopper Painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: Is This the Next New Museum Trend?

in Art, Design, Life, Museums, Travel | December 2nd, 2019

Let’s pre­tend our Fairy Art Moth­er is grant­i­ng one wish—to spend the night inside the paint­ing of your choice.

What paint­ing will we each choose, and why?

Will you sleep out in the open, undis­turbed by lions, a la Rousseau’s The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy?

Or expe­ri­ence the volup­tuous dreams of Fred­er­ic Leighton’s Flam­ing June?

Paul Gauguin’s por­trait of his son, Clo­vis presents a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect for those of us who haven’t slept like a baby in decades…

The Night­mare by Herny Fuseli should chime with Goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties…

And it’s a fair­ly safe bet that some of us will select Edward Hop­per’s West­ern Motel, at the top of this post, if only because we heard the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Fine Arts was accept­ing dou­ble occu­pan­cy book­ings for an extreme­ly faith­ful fac­sim­i­le, as part of its Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel exhi­bi­tion.

Alas, if unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Hop­per Hotel Expe­ri­ence, with mini golf and a curat­ed tour, sold out quick­ly, with prices rang­ing from $150 to $500 for an off-hours stay.

Tick­et-hold­ing vis­i­tors can still peer in at the room any time the exhib­it is open to the pub­lic, but it’s after hours when the Insta­gram­ming kicks into high gear.

What guest could resist the temp­ta­tion to strike a pose amid the vin­tage lug­gage and (blue­tooth-enabled) wood pan­eled radio, fill­ing in for the 1957 painting’s lone fig­ure, an icon­ic Hop­per woman in a bur­gundy dress?

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go notes that she is sin­gu­lar among Hopper’s sub­jects, in that she appears to be gaz­ing direct­ly at the view­er.

But as per the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, from which West­ern Motel is on loan:

The woman star­ing across the room does not seem to see us; the pen­sive­ness of her stare and her tense pos­ture accen­tu­ate the sense of some impend­ing event. She appears to be wait­ing: the lug­gage is packed, the room is devoid of per­son­al objects, the bed is made, and a car is parked out­side the win­dow.

Hope­ful­ly, those lucky enough to have secured a book­ing will have per­fect­ed the pose in the mir­ror at home pri­or to arrival. This “motel” is a bit of a stage set, in that guests must leave the paint­ing to access the pub­lic bath­room that con­sti­tutes the facil­i­ties.

(No word on whether the theme extends to a paper “san­i­tized for your pro­tec­tion” band across the toi­let, but there’s no show­er and a secu­ri­ty offi­cer is sta­tioned out­side the room for the dura­tion of each stay.)

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of this once-in-a-life­time exhib­it tie-in may spark oth­er muse­ums to fol­low suit.

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go start­ed the trend in 2016 with a painstak­ing recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s room at Arles, which it list­ed on Air BnB for $10/night.

Think of all the fun we could have if the bed­rooms of art his­to­ry opened to us…

Dog lovers could get cozy in Andrew Wyeth’s Mas­ter Bed­room.

Delacroix’s The Death of Sar­dana­palus (1827) would require some­thing more than dou­ble occu­pan­cy for prop­er Insta­gram­ming.

Piero del­la Francesca’s The Dream of Con­stan­tine might elic­it impres­sive mes­sages from the sub-con­science…

Tuber­cu­lo­sis noth­with­stand­ing, Aubrey Beardsley’s Self Por­trait in Bed is rife with pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Or skip the cul­tur­al fore­play and head straight for the NSFW plea­sures of The French Bed, a la Rembrandt’s etch­ing.

Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel will be trav­el­ing to the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art at New­fields in June 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Inside Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Paint­ings with a New Dig­i­tal Exhi­bi­tion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Isamu Noguchi Museum Puts Online an Archive of 60,000 Photographs, Manuscripts & Digitized Drawings by the Japanese Sculptor

in Archives, Art | November 28th, 2019

No mat­ter how unfa­mil­iar you may be with the work of Isamu Noguchi, you’re like­ly to have encoun­tered it, quite pos­si­bly more than once, in the form of a Noguchi table. Designed in the 1940s for the Her­man Miller fur­ni­ture com­pa­ny (in a cat­a­log that also includ­ed the work of George Nel­son, Paul Lás­zló, and Charles Eames of the epony­mous chair), it shows off Noguchi’s dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic as well as many of his most acclaimed sculp­tures, set designs, and pub­lic spaces. That aes­thet­ic could only have arisen from a sin­gu­lar artis­tic life like Noguchi’s, which began in Los Ange­les where he was born to an Amer­i­can moth­er and a Japan­ese father, and soon start­ed cross­ing back and forth across both the Pacif­ic and the Atlantic: a child­hood spent around Japan, school­ing and appren­tice­ship back in the U.S., a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship in Paris, peri­ods of study in Chi­na and Japan — and all that before age 30.

Now, thanks to the Noguchi Muse­um, we can take a clos­er look at not just the Noguchi table but all the fruits of Noguchi’s long work­ing life, which began in the 1910s and con­tin­ued until his death in the 1980s. (He exe­cut­ed his first notable work, the design of the gar­den for his moth­er’s house in Chi­gasa­ki, at just eight years old.)

The insti­tu­tion that bears his name recent­ly dig­i­tized and made avail­able 60,000 archival pho­tographs, man­u­scripts, and dig­i­tized draw­ings, and also launched a dig­i­tal cat­a­logue raison­né designed to be updat­ed with dis­cov­er­ies still to come about Noguchi’s life and work. “The com­ple­tion of a mul­ti­year project, the archive now fea­tures 28,000 pho­tographs doc­u­ment­ing the artist’s works, exhi­bi­tions, var­i­ous stu­dios, per­son­al pho­tographs, and influ­en­tial friends and col­leagues,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alis­sa Guz­man. “The wealth of imagery is over­whelm­ing and also sur­pris­ing, bring­ing atten­tion to works we might not often asso­ciate with Noguchi.”

Indeed, as the pro­jec­t’s man­ag­ing edi­tor Alex Ross tells Guz­man, the research process revealed “sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant art­works which were assumed to have been lost or destroyed,” as well as “pre­vi­ous­ly unat­trib­uted pieces that the archive is now able to con­firm as works by Noguchi.” The dif­fi­cul­ty of con­firm­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of cer­tain works speaks to the pro­tean qual­i­ty of Noguchi’s art that goes hand-in-hand with its dis­tinc­tive­ness, a bal­ance struck by few major artists of any era. And though quite a few of Noguchi’s cre­ations (and not just the table) have been described as time­less, no oth­er body of work reflects quite so clear­ly the inter­min­gling of East and West – a West that includ­ed the Old World as well as the New — that, hav­ing begun on eco­nom­ic and social lev­els, reached the aes­thet­ic one in the cen­tu­ry through which Noguchi lived. Explore his cat­a­logue raison­né, and you may find that, no mat­ter what part of the world you’re from, you have more expe­ri­ence with Noguchi’s work than you thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Get­ty Dig­i­tal Archive Expands to 135,000 Free Images: Down­load High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of Paint­ings, Sculp­tures, Pho­tographs & Much Much More

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Lynda Barry’s New Book Offers a Master Class in Making Comics

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons | November 22nd, 2019

In the same way you don’t have to like the way your liv­er looks for it to be able to func­tion, you don’t have to like the way your draw­ings look for them to start to work.  —Lyn­da Bar­ry

Want to feel more alive in the world?

Get back in touch with your inner four-year-old artist, using meth­ods put for­ward by artist, edu­ca­tor, and g*ddamn nation­al trea­sure Lyn­da Bar­ry.

Mak­ing Comics, the lat­est book from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin asso­ciate pro­fes­sor, MacArthur Genius, and Omega Insti­tute fac­ul­ty mem­ber, bypass­es stan­dard­ized pro­fes­sion­al skills such as ink­ing, sto­ry­board­ing, and let­ter­ing, in order to foment a deep­er emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between car­toon­ist and com­ic.

First things first, you can draw. Stop say­ing you can’t. You can.

Stop say­ing your draw­ings look like they were made by a four-year-old.

In Barry’s expe­ri­ence, the unfet­tered draw­ings of four-year-old artists are some­thing to aim for.

As author and comics his­to­ri­an Chris Gavaler notes in his Pop Mat­ters review:

Mak­ing Comics is a love let­ter to every child who ever picked up a cray­on and start­ed mak­ing marks with unself­con­scious inten­si­ty. Those chil­dren include her col­lege stu­dents. Like her read­ers, some arrive at class with artis­tic train­ing and some arrive with none at all. The lat­ter arrive hav­ing long for­got­ten the unin­hib­it­ed style of image-mak­ing they under­stood instinc­tive­ly as chil­dren. Find­ing each of those chil­dren is Bar­ry’s mis­sion, and she is very very good at it.

Bar­ry, who is child­less, is keen­ly attuned to the sort of play­ful assign­ments that hold imme­di­ate appeal for chil­dren of all ages.

And she doles out instruc­tions on a need to know basis, dis­arm­ing the self-doubt and excuse-mak­ing that plague adult stu­dents who are pre­sent­ed with the big pic­ture too ear­ly in the process.

In Mak­ing Comics, exer­cis­es include draw­ing with eyes closed, draw­ing with the non-dom­i­nant hand, two-hand­ed draw­ing, simul­ta­ne­ous part­ner draw­ing, Exquis­ite Corpse, and trans­form­ing scrib­bles and cof­fee stains by teas­ing out what­ev­er image they may sug­gest.

Bar­ry also con­veys pre­cise instruc­tions with regard to speed and mate­ri­als, know­ing that those can close as many win­dows as they open.

She’s bat­tling the sti­fling impulse toward per­fec­tion, the impos­si­ble stan­dards that cause so many to turn away from mak­ing pic­tures and sto­ries as they mature.

Don’t sweat it! More rock, less talk! Unleash the mon­sters of your id! Invite unfore­seen ghosts into the frame!

As Bar­ry says:

….there are two work­ing lan­guages in human life. One is sort of top of the mind, what we’re con­scious of. The oth­er is this uncon­scious stuff that we might not know about or have access to. The way we access it is usu­al­ly through this thing we call ‘the arts.’ Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that has got­ten removed from the reg­u­lar dai­ly expe­ri­ence of human life. What I’m try­ing to do is to show that there is a way that they can come togeth­er, and that you can make things in a way that makes you actu­al­ly feel alive and present.

Read an excerpt of Lyn­da Barry’s Mak­ing Comics. Or pur­chase your own copy of Mak­ing Comics here.

Video at the top of the page cour­tesy of Art Book Walk-throughs & Reviews.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fol­low Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s 2017 “Mak­ing Comics” Class Online, Pre­sent­ed at UW-Wis­con­sin

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in Animation, Art | November 20th, 2019

The image of Amer­i­ca is an image bound up with the movies. That even goes for Amer­i­ca as rep­re­sent­ed in media oth­er than film, sug­gest­ing a cer­tain cin­e­mat­ic char­ac­ter in Amer­i­can life itself. No painter under­stood that char­ac­ter more thor­ough­ly than Edward Hop­per, an avid film­go­er who worked for a time cre­at­ing movie posters. He even “sto­ry­board­ed” his most famous 1942 Nighthawks, whose late-night din­er remains the visu­al def­i­n­i­tion of U.S. urban alien­ation. And though Hop­per’s Amer­i­ca also encom­pass­es the coun­try­side, nev­er would his views of it feel out of place in a work of film noir. His cin­e­mat­ic paint­ings have in turn influ­enced cin­e­ma itself, shap­ing the visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ties of auteurs across coun­tries and gen­er­a­tions.

Nighthawks, cit­ed as an influ­ence on urban visions like Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, has also been faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed in films like Her­bert Ross’ Pen­nies from Heav­en, Wim Wen­ders’ The End of Vio­lence, and Dario Argen­to’ Deep Red. 1952’s House by the Rail­road has inspired direc­tors from Alfred Hitch­cock in Psy­cho to Ter­rence Mal­ick in Days of Heav­en.

A glance across the rest of Hop­per’s body of work reminds each of us of count­less shots from through­out cin­e­ma his­to­ry, Amer­i­can and oth­er­wise. Per­haps even more films will be brought to mind by the Hop­per-paint­ings-turned-ani­mat­ed GIFs com­mis­sioned by trav­el site Orb­itz as “a 21st-cen­tu­ry trib­ute to this titan of 20th-cen­tu­ry art, for the younger gen­er­a­tion who may not have been direct­ly intro­duced to his work.”

The ten of Hop­per’s works thus brought to life include, of course, Nighthawks and House by the Rail­road, as well as oth­er of his paint­ings both ear­ly and late, such as 1927’s Automat and 1952’s Morn­ing Sun. Both paint­ings depict a woman alone, a motif empha­sized by the notes accom­pa­ny­ing the ani­ma­tions. In the night­time of Automat, she “has an emp­ty plate in front of her, sug­gest­ing she’s already had some­thing to eat with her cof­fee,” and the win­dow’s reflec­tion of lamps extend­ing into the dark­ness sug­gests her “pos­si­ble lone­li­ness.” In the day­time of Morn­ing Sun, the build­ing out­side the win­dow “sug­gests that the woman’s view is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly scenic one,” and “the fact that she is sit­ting mere­ly to enjoy the sun could be inter­pret­ed as her desire to be clos­er to the out­doors, to nature, and escape the bleak­ness of urban life.”

Even in a more scenic set­ting, like the Cape Eliz­a­beth, Maine of 1927’s Light­house Hill, an enrich­ing touch of bleak­ness nev­er­the­less comes through. “Both the light­house and cot­tage are the focal points of the paint­ing, yet despite the blue sky and calm scenery dis­played, the shad­ows bring an omi­nous feel­ing to what one would assume is an invit­ing house.” Befit­ting the work of a painter whose use of light and shad­ow still inspires artists of all kinds today, these GIFs most­ly ani­mate light sources: the blink of a neon sign, the sun’s dai­ly arc across the sky.

The GIF of 1939’s New York Movie, Hop­per’s most overt trib­ute to the cin­e­ma, intro­duces the flick­er­ing of the film pro­jec­tor. Purists may not appre­ci­ate these touch­es, but many of us will real­ize that Hop­per’s pro­jec­tors have always been flick­er­ing, his neon signs always blink­ing, his cups of cof­fee always steam­ing, and his suns always set­ting, at least in our minds. See all of the ani­mat­ed gifs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

9‑Year-Old Edward Hop­per Draws a Pic­ture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card

Paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, & Oth­er Great Mas­ters Come to Life in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

See Clas­sic Japan­ese Wood­blocks Brought Sur­re­al­ly to Life as Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Watch Klaus Nomi Debut His New Wave Vaudeville Show: The Birth of the Opera-Singing Space Alien (1978)

in Art, Music | November 19th, 2019

Giv­en the his­to­ry of New York’s East Vil­lage as the first for­eign lan­guage neigh­bor­hood in the coun­try after waves of Euro­pean immi­gra­tion, per­haps it’s only nat­ur­al that Klaus Nomi, opera-singing Ger­man per­for­mance artist who made a name for him­self in the punk clubs of the late 70s, would find a home there.

By his time, the ten­e­ments had giv­en way to oth­er demo­graph­ic waves: includ­ing Beat­niks, writ­ers, actors, Warho­lian Fac­to­ry super­stars, and punk and New Wave scen­esters, whom Dan­ger­ous Mind’s Richard Met­zger calls a “sec­ond gen­er­a­tion” after Warhol, “drawn in by that Warhol myth but doing their own things.”

Even amidst the thriv­ing DIY exper­i­men­tal­ism of Post-Warho­lian art, fash­ion, and music, of a scene includ­ing Talk­ing Heads, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kei­th Har­ing, Nomi stood out. It was the way he seemed to inhab­it two time peri­ods at once. He arrived both as a cabaret per­former from Weimar Germany—a trag­ic clown with the voice of an angel—and as a thor­ough­ly con­vinc­ing inter­galac­tic trav­el­er, tele­port­ing in briefly from the future.

No one was pre­pared for this when he made his New York debut at Irv­ing Plaza’s New Wave Vaude­ville show in 1978, evok­ing an even ear­li­er era by singing “Mon cœur s’ou­vre à ta voix,” from Camille Saint-Saëns’ 1877 opera Sam­son et Dalila. After his stun­ning per­for­mance, he would dis­ap­pear from the stage in a con­fu­sion of strobe lights and smoke. East Vil­lage artist Joey Arias remem­bers, “It was like he was from a dif­fer­ent plan­et and his par­ents were call­ing him home.”

Oth­er acts at New Wave Vaude­ville, a four-night East Vil­lage vari­ety show, were “doing a punk ver­sion of Mick­ey Rooney, ‘We’re going to do a goofy show,’” says Kris­t­ian Hoff­man, the musi­cian who became Nomi’s musi­cal direc­tor. In came Nomi with “a whole dif­fer­ent lev­el of accom­plish­ment.” MC David McDer­mott was oblig­ed to announce that he was not singing to a record­ing. You can see Nomi debut at New Wave Vaude­ville above, in a clip from the 2004 film The Nomi Song.

The sig­nif­i­cance of these ear­ly per­for­mances goes far beyond the imme­di­ate shock of their first audi­ences. At these shows, Nomi met Hoff­man, who would form his band and write the songs for which he became best known. Pro­duc­er and direc­tor of the New Wave Vaude­ville show Susan Han­naford and Ann Mag­nu­son were also the own­er and bar­tender at Club 57, where Nomi would help them orga­nize exhibits by artists like Ken­ny Scharf.

See­ing Nomi’s debut can still feel a bit like watch­ing a vis­i­tor arrive from both the past and the future at once. And it is lucky we have this ear­ly footage of an artist who would to on to per­form with David Bowie and become a gay icon and pio­neer of the­atri­cal New Wave. But we should also see his arrival on the scene as an essen­tial doc­u­ment of the his­to­ry of the East Vil­lage, and its trans­for­ma­tion into “a play­ground,” as Messy Nessy writes, “for artis­tic mis­an­thropes, anar­chists, exhi­bi­tion­ists, queers, poets, punks and every­thing in between,” includ­ing opera-singing aliens from West Berlin.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Enchant­i­ng Opera Per­for­mances of Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi Per­forms with Kraftwerk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1982)

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

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

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Download Stunning 3D Scans of the Bust of Nefertiti, Now Released by Berlin’s Neues Museum

in Art, Current Affairs, Museums | November 18th, 2019

Two years ago, a scan­dalous “art heist” at the Neues Muse­um in Berlin—involving ille­gal­ly made 3D scans of the bust of Nefer­ti­ti—turned out to be a dif­fer­ent kind of crime. The two Egypt­ian artists who released the scans claimed they had made the images with a hid­den “hacked Kinect Sen­sor,” reports Annalee Newitz at Ars Tech­ni­ca. But dig­i­tal artist and design­er Cos­mo Wen­man dis­cov­ered these were scans made by the Neues Muse­um itself, which had been stolen by the artists or per­haps a muse­um employ­ee.

The ini­tial con­tro­ver­sy stemmed from the fact that the muse­um strict­ly con­trols images of the art­work, and had refused to release any of their Nefer­ti­ti scans to the pub­lic. The prac­tice, Wen­man point­ed out, is con­sis­tent across dozens of insti­tu­tions around the world. “There are many influ­en­tial muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties, and pri­vate col­lec­tions that have extreme­ly high-qual­i­ty 3D data of impor­tant works, but they are not shar­ing that data with the pub­lic.” He lists many promi­nent exam­ples in a recent Rea­son arti­cle; the long list includes the Venus de Milo, Rodin’s Thinker, and works by Donatel­lo, Berni­ni, and Michelan­ge­lo.

What­ev­er their rea­sons, the aggres­sive­ly pro­pri­etary atti­tude adopt­ed by the Neues seems strange con­sid­er­ing the con­tro­ver­sial prove­nance of the Nefer­ti­ti bust. Ger­many has long claimed that it acquired the bust legal­ly in 1912. But at the time, the British con­trolled Egypt, and Egyp­tians them­selves had lit­tle say over the fate of their nation­al trea­sures. Fur­ther­more, the chain of cus­tody seems to include at least a few doc­u­ment­ed instances of fraud. Egypt has been demand­ing that the arti­fact be repa­tri­at­ed “ever since it first went on dis­play.”

This crit­i­cal his­tor­i­cal con­text notwith­stand­ing, the bust is already “one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt­ian art,” and one of the most famous. “Muse­ums should not be repos­i­to­ries of secret knowl­edge,” Wen­man argued in his blog post. Pres­ti­gious cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions “are in the best posi­tion to pro­duce and pub­lish 3D data of their works and pro­vide author­i­ta­tive con­text and com­men­tary.”

Wen­man waged a “3‑year-long free­dom of infor­ma­tion effort” to lib­er­ate the scans. His request was ini­tial­ly met with “the gift shop defense”—the muse­um claimed releas­ing the images would threat­en sales of Nefer­ti­ti mer­chan­dise. When the appeal to com­merce failed to dis­suade Wen­man, the muse­um let him exam­ine the scans “in a con­trolled set­ting”; they were essen­tial­ly treat­ing the images, he writes, “like a state secret.” Final­ly, they relent­ed, allow­ing Wen­man to pub­lish the scans, with­out any insti­tu­tion­al sup­port.

He has done so, and urged oth­ers to share his Rea­son arti­cle on social media to get word out about the files, now avail­able to down­load and use under a CC BY-NC-SA license. He has also tak­en his own lib­er­ties with the scans, col­oriz­ing and adding the blue 3D map­ping lines him­self to the image at the top, for exam­ple, drawn from his own inter­ac­tive 3D mod­el, which you can view and down­load here. These are exam­ples of his vision for high-qual­i­ty 3D scans of art­works, which can and should “be adapt­ed, mul­ti­plied, and remixed.”

“The best place to cel­e­brate great art,” says Wen­man, “is in a vibrant, live­ly, and anar­chic pop­u­lar cul­ture. The world’s back cat­a­log of art should be set free to run wild in our visu­al and tac­tile land­scape.” Orga­ni­za­tions like Scan the World have been releas­ing unof­fi­cial 3D scans to the pub­lic for the past cou­ple years, but these can­not guar­an­tee the accu­ra­cy of mod­els ren­dered by the insti­tu­tions them­selves.

Whether the actu­al bust of Nefer­ti­ti should be returned to Egypt is a some­what more com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion, since the 3,000-year old arti­fact may be too frag­ile to move and too cul­tur­al­ly impor­tant to risk dam­ag­ing in tran­sit. But whether or not its vir­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions should be giv­en to every­one who wants them seems more straight­for­ward.

The images already belong to the pub­lic, in a sense, Wen­man sug­gests. With­hold­ing them for the sake of pro­tect­ing sales seems like a vio­la­tion of the spir­it in which most cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions were found­ed. Down­load the Nefer­ti­ti scans at Thin­gi­verse, see Wen­man’s own 3D mod­els at Sketch­fab, and read all of his cor­re­spon­dence with the muse­um through­out the free­dom of infor­ma­tion process here. Next, he writes, he’s lob­by­ing for the release of offi­cial 3D Rodin scans. Watch this space. 

via Rea­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

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

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