What’s the Key to American Gothic’s Enduring Fame? An Introduction to the Iconic American Painting

in Art | September 27th, 2019

The Last Sup­per…

The Birth of Venus…

The Mona Lisa…

Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Grant Wood’s cel­e­brat­ed depic­tion of two Depres­sion-era Iowa farm­ers, holds its own against those icon­ic Euro­pean works as one of the world’s most par­o­died art­works.

Vox’s Phil Edwards dis­pens­es with that sta­tus quick­ly in the above video for Over­rat­ed, a series that unpacks the rea­sons behind icon­ic works’ last­ing fame.

By his reck­on­ing, Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess hinges on the dual nature of its cre­ator, a native Iowan who trav­eled exten­sive­ly in Europe, grav­i­tat­ing to such sophis­ti­cat­ed fare as Impres­sion­ism, Pointil­lism, and the work of Flem­ish mas­ter Jan van Eyck.

While he didn’t express satirist and cul­tur­al crit­ic H. L. Menck­en’s overt dis­dain for his rur­al-dwelling sub­jects, his ren­der­ing sug­gests that he per­ceived them inca­pable of under­stand­ing the appeal of his own rar­i­fied plea­sures.

As Kar­al Ann Mar­ling, pro­fes­sor of art his­to­ry and Amer­i­can stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, writes in The Annals of Iowa:

In the ear­ly 1930s, many Iowa farm­ers sus­pect­ed that Wood was mak­ing fun of them in Amer­i­can Goth­ic, that he was a pic­to­r­i­al H. L. Menck­en cas­ti­gat­ing a Mid­west­ern “booboisie.” (He had, after all, lived in Paris briefly and even grew a beard there!) But by 1933, when Amer­i­can Goth­ic was exhib­it­ed in con­junc­tion with the Chica­go Cen­tu­ry of Progress Fair, the paint­ing had become a beloved nation­al sym­bol, sec­ond only to Whistler’s por­trait of his moth­er in the affec­tions of the pub­lic.

Wood, who staged the paint­ing using his sis­ter, his den­tist and a “card­boardy frame house” typ­i­cal of Iowa farms as mod­els, admit­ted that his inten­tions weren’t entire­ly noble:

There is satire in it, but only as there is satire in any real­is­tic state­ment. These are types of peo­ple I have known all my life. I tried to char­ac­ter­ize them truthfully—to make them more like them­selves than they were in actu­al life.

As the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Judith Barter observes in an audio guide accom­pa­ny­ing the paint­ing, the dour, over­all-clad farmer betrays a bit of van­i­ty, gussy­ing up in a dress shirt and Sun­day-Go-To-Meet­ing jack­et while his female companion—Wood nev­er revealed if she was sis­ter, wife, or daughter—accessorizes her tidy apron with a cameo brooch in antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing their like­ness cap­tured.

Author Christo­pher Mor­ley, who first saw Amer­i­can Goth­ic in 1930, when it won the Nor­man Wait Har­ris Bronze Medal at the forty-third Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Annu­al Exhi­bi­tion of Amer­i­can Paint­ings and Sculp­ture, lat­er wrote:

In those sad and yet fanat­i­cal faces may be read much of what is Right and what is Wrong with Amer­i­ca.

Per­haps we are drawn to the reflec­tion of our own foibles, whether we’re ascetic every­day folks or big-for-our-britch­es coun­try-born city slick­ers…

The paint­ing con­tin­ues to delight the mass­es in the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Gallery 263.

And when in Eldon, Iowa be sure to pose in front of the his­toric Amer­i­can Goth­ic House, with props kind­ly sup­plied by the adja­cent Amer­i­can Goth­ic House Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch 15 Films by Designers Charles & Ray Eames

in Architecture, Art, Design, Film | September 25th, 2019

If you’re read­ing this, chances are good that you live in the mod­ern world, or at least vis­it it from time to time. But what do I mean by “mod­ern”? It’s a too-broad term that always requires a def­i­n­i­tion. Some­times, for brevity’s sake, we set­tle for list­ing the names of artists who brought moder­ni­ty into being. When it comes to the tru­ly mod­ern in indus­tri­al design, we get two names in one—the hus­band and wife team of Charles and Ray Eames.

The design world, at least in the U.S., may have been slow­er to catch up to oth­er mod­ernist trends in the arts. That changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly when sev­er­al Euro­pean artists like Wal­ter Gropius immi­grat­ed to the coun­try before, dur­ing and after World War II. But the Amer­i­can Eames left per­haps the most last­ing impact of them all.

The first home they designed and built togeth­er in 1949 as part of the Case Study House Pro­gram became “a mec­ca for archi­tects and design­ers from both near and far,” notes the Eames Office site. “Today it is con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant post-war res­i­dences any­where in the world.” “Famous for their icon­ic chairs,” writes William Cook at the BBC, the stream­lined objets that “trans­formed our idea of mod­ern fur­ni­ture,” they were also “graph­ic and tex­tile design­ers, archi­tects and film­mak­ers.”

The Eames’ film lega­cy may be less well-known than their rev­o­lu­tions in inte­ri­or design. We’ve all seen or inter­act­ed with innu­mer­able ver­sions of Eames-inspired designs, whether we knew it or not. The pair stat­ed their desire to make uni­ver­sal­ly use­ful cre­ations in their suc­cinct mis­sion state­ment: “We want to make the best for the most for the least.” They meant it. “What works good,” said Ray, “is bet­ter than what looks good because what works good lasts.”

When design “works good,” the Eames under­stood, it might be attrac­tive, or pure­ly func­tion­al, but it will always be acces­si­ble, unob­tru­sive, com­fort­able, and prac­ti­cal. We might notice its con­tours and won­der about its prin­ci­ples, but it works equal­ly well, and maybe bet­ter, if we do not. The Eames films explain how one accom­plish­es such design. “Between 1950 and 1982,” the Eames “made over 125 short films rang­ing from 1–30 min­utes in length,” notes the Eames Office site, declar­ing: “The Eames Films are the Eames Essays.”

If this state­ment has pre­pared you for dry, didac­tic short films filled with jar­gon, pre­pare to be sur­prised by the breadth and depth of the Eames’ curios­i­ty and vision. Here, we have com­piled some of the Eames films, and you can see many, many more (15 in total) with the playlist embed­ded at the bot­tom of the post. At the top, see a brief intro­duc­tion the design­ers’ films. Then, fur­ther down, we have the “bril­liant tour of the uni­verse” that is 1977’s Pow­ers of Ten; 1957’s Day of the Dead, their explo­ration of the Mex­i­can hol­i­day; and 1961’s “Sym­me­try,” one of five shorts in a col­lec­tion made for IBM called Math­e­mat­i­ca Peep Shows.

Just above, see the Eames short House, made after five years of liv­ing in their famed Case Study House #8. The design on dis­play here shows how the Eames “brought into the world a new kind of Cal­i­forn­ian indoor-out­door Mod­ernism,” as Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a recent post here on famous archi­tects’ homes. Their house is “a kind of Mon­dri­an paint­ing made into a liv­able box filled with an idio­syn­crat­ic arrange­ment of arti­facts from all over the world.” Unlike most of the Eames designs, the Case Study house was nev­er put into pro­duc­tion, but in its ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty, we can see all of the cre­ative impuls­es the Eames brought to their redesign of the mod­ern world.

See many more of the Eames filmic essays in this YouTube playlist. There are 15 in total.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pow­ers of Ten and Let Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Take You on a Bril­liant Tour of the Uni­verse

How the Icon­ic Eames Lounge Chair Is Made, From Start to Fin­ish

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

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

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Art Trips: Visit the Art of Cities Around the World, from Los Angeles & London, to Venice and New York

in Art, Travel | September 17th, 2019

When first we vis­it a city, even a small one, we can’t hope to see all of it. Hence the need for strate­gies of approach and explo­ration: do we walk its main streets? Eat its food and drink its drinks? Vis­it its most beloved book­stores? Sarah Urist Green gets into cities through their art, hard­ly a sur­pris­ing habit for the cre­ator of the PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios series The Art Assign­ment. We first fea­tured The Art Assign­ment five years ago here on Open Cul­ture, and Green and her col­lab­o­ra­tors have kept up the good work ever since. In that time their mis­sion of “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you an art assign­ment” has expand­ed, tak­ing them out­side Amer­i­ca as well. On the road they’ve col­lect­ed not just mate­r­i­al for reg­u­lar episodes, but for spe­cial Art Trips as well.

Their first Art Trip to Los Ange­les, for instance, takes Green and com­pa­ny to the Ham­mer Muse­um, the gal­leries of Cul­ver City (one of which has a show up of Andy Warhol’s shad­ow paint­ings), the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art (where they walk under Michael Heiz­er’s Lev­i­tat­ed Mass and through Chris Bur­den’s much-Insta­grammed Urban Light), and the then-new­ly-opened Broad Art Muse­um. In between they take side trips for refresh­ment at the not­ed ice cream sand­wich shop Cool­haus (named in hon­or of the Dutch archi­tect) and deep into the Inland Empire city of Bak­ers­field. This com­bi­na­tion of places expect­ed and unex­pect­ed comes not with­out the occa­sion­al tourist cliche, such as Green’s descrip­tion of “the most quin­tes­sen­tial of Los Ange­les expe­ri­ences: dri­ving.”

The Art Assig­ment’s return vis­it to the south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis focus­es on “the Los Ange­les hid­ing in plain sight” with Pacif­ic Stan­dard Time: LA/LA, a series of exhi­bi­tions all over the city on Lati­no and Lati­na artists at insti­tu­tions like the Craft and Folk Art Muse­um, the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library, and the Gef­fen Con­tem­po­rary. All the while Green and her team eat plen­ty of tacos, as any Ange­leno would advise, and the final night of their stay finds them in Grand Park among the shrine-like hand­made offer­ings set up for Día de los Muer­tos, all of them craft­ed with an eeri­ness matched only by their good humor.

Los Ange­les has become an acknowl­edged art cap­i­tal over the past half-cen­tu­ry, but Lon­don, fair to say, has a bit more his­to­ry behind it. The Art Assign­ment’s time in the Eng­lish cap­i­tal coin­cides with Frieze Week, when gal­leries from all over the world descend on Regen­t’s Park to show off their most strik­ing artis­tic wares. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the muse­ums and gal­leries based in the city use the same part of the year to sched­ule some of their most antic­i­pat­ed shows, turn­ing the few days of this Art Trip in Lon­don into a mad rush from Trafal­gar Square to the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery to the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts to the Cour­tauld Insti­tute of Art, by which point Green admits the onset of “mas­ter­piece over­load ” — but also has sev­er­al gal­leries, not to men­tion the main event of Frieze itself, to go.

Frieze Week does­n’t come to Detroit, the one­time cap­i­tal of Amer­i­can auto man­u­fac­tur­ing whose pop­u­la­tion peaked in the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry and whose sub­se­quent hard times, cul­mi­nat­ing in the city’s 2013 bank­rupt­cy, have been chron­i­cled with both fas­ci­na­tion and despair. But The Art Assign­ment finds a Detroit apart from the ruined fac­to­ries, the­aters, and train sta­tions, the stuff of so many inter­net slideshows, at the Motown Muse­um and the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts (home to Diego River­a’s Detroit Indus­try Murals), as well as in folk-art envi­ron­ments like the famous Hei­del­berg Project and pub­lic-art envi­ron­ments like down­town Detroit, whose recent revival has proven as com­pelling as its long decline. But many ruins remain, and artists like Scott Hock­ing have found in them not just their sub­jects but their mate­ri­als as well.

More strik­ing than Detroit’s urban des­o­la­tion is that of anoth­er unlike­ly The Art Assign­ment des­ti­na­tion, Mar­fa, Texas. In his essay “The Repub­lic of Mar­fa,” Sean Wilsey describes it as “a hard­scrab­ble ranch­ing com­mu­ni­ty in the upper Chi­huahuan desert, six­ty miles north of the Mex­i­can bor­der, that inhab­its some of the most beau­ti­ful and intran­si­gent coun­try­side imag­in­able.” In the mid-1970s “the min­i­mal­ist artist Don­ald Judd moved to Mar­fa, exil­ing him­self from what he termed the ‘glib and harsh’ New York art scene, in order to live in a sort of high plains lab­o­ra­to­ry devot­ed to build­ing, sculp­ture, fur­ni­ture design, muse­ol­o­gy, con­ser­va­tion, and a dash of ranch­ing,” and his influ­ence — as well as the pres­ence of his large-scale instal­la­tions — helped to make Mar­fa “a sort of city-state of cat­tle­men, artists, writ­ers, fugi­tives, smug­glers, free-thinkers, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, sol­diers and seces­sion­ists.”

In Mar­fa Green explores the mon­u­men­tal work Judd left behind as well as the mon­u­men­tal work oth­er artists have since con­tributed, includ­ing a project in a con­vert­ed mil­i­tary bar­racks by neon artist Dan Flavin and a fake Pra­da store. Oth­er Art Trip des­ti­na­tions include the likes of Chica­go and Colum­bus, Indi­ana (mod­ern-archi­tec­ture mec­ca and set­ting of the recent fea­ture film by video essay­ist Kog­o­na­da) as well as Tijua­na and the Venice Bien­nale, all of which you can find on one playlist. Green has even done an Art Trip right where she lives, the “bland-lean­ing, chain restau­rant-lov­ing” Mid­west­ern city of Indi­anapo­lis — which boasts the Muse­um of Psy­ch­phon­ics, an under-free­way art instal­la­tion by Vito Acconci, and a fair few bike-share book-share sta­tions as well. We can nev­er ful­ly know the cities we don’t live in, but nor can we ever ful­ly know the cities we do live in either — which, if we nev­er­the­less enjoy the attempt as much as Green does, is no bad thing at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Amer­i­can Cities Then & Now: See How New York, Los Ange­les & Detroit Look Today, Com­pared to the 1930s and 1940s

Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

Elec­tric Gui­tars Made from the Detri­tus of Detroit

Video Essay­ist Kog­o­na­da Makes His Own Acclaimed Fea­ture Film: Watch His Trib­utes to Its Inspi­ra­tions Like Ozu, Lin­klater & Mal­ick

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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25 John Lennon Fans Sing His Album, Working Class Hero, Word for Word, and Note for Note

in Art, Music | September 16th, 2019

A work­ing class hero is some­thing to be
If you want to be a hero well just fol­low me

- John Lennon, “Work­ing Class Hero”

Artist Can­dice Bre­itz knows that a true fan’s con­nec­tion to a beloved musi­cal artist is a source of pow­er, how­ev­er lop­sided the “rela­tion­ship” may be.

Favorite albums are touch­stones that get us through good times and bad.

They pin us to a par­tic­u­lar place and time.

There are patch­es when it feels like a singer we’ve nev­er met is the only one in the world who tru­ly knows us. Just ask your aver­age teenag­er.

A dime will net you dozens upon dozens of Bea­t­les fans, but a per­son who knows all the words to John Lennon / Plas­tic Ono Band, the 1970 solo album that fol­lowed hard on the heels of the Fab Four’s break up inhab­its a far more rar­i­fied stra­ta of fan­dom.

That per­son has earned the man­tle of tried-and-true John fan.

And 25 of those earned a spot in Breitz’s 2006 “Work­ing Class Hero (A Por­trait of John Lennon),” above, a mul­ti-chan­nel sin­ga­long of the afore­men­tioned John Lennon / Plas­tic Ono Band.

As with Breitz’s pre­vi­ous por­traits of Bob Mar­ley, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son, the singer is the ele­phant in the room, the only voice absent from the choir that forms when the par­tic­i­pants’ solo record­ing ses­sions are played simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as they are in the fin­ished piece.

Recruit­ed by notices in papers through­out the UK, includ­ing the Liv­er­pool Echo, the fans’ degree of devo­tion, as evi­denced by their respons­es to an in-depth ques­tion­naire, mat­tered far and above train­ing, tal­ent, or appear­ance:

I want peo­ple who’ve been fans for 30 years or more, who aren’t shy in front of a cam­era and want to pay trib­ute to John Lennon.

We’d love some Scousers, it would be a great pity not to have a group of Liv­er­pudlians.

Those who made the cut were reim­bursed for trav­el to a record­ing stu­dio at New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty, and filmed wear­ing their own clothes, free to emote or not as they saw fit. Some may have  fall­en shy of the “30 years or more” require­ment, and indeed, may not even have been born at the time of Lennon’s 1980 mur­der.

Just more proof of this legend’s stay­ing pow­er.

Their sta­mi­na is to be con­grat­u­lat­ed. It’s no easy feat to open with “Moth­er,” a lit­er­al scream­er born of Lennon’s for­ays into Pri­mal Ther­a­py.

And the ten­der­ness they bring to qui­eter num­bers like “Love” and “Hold On” is touch­ing indeed. It’s not hard to guess who they’re singing to.

(It’s also real­ly fun to wit­ness them fum­bling through “Hold On”’s ad-libbed “cook­ies,” a salute to Cook­ie Mon­ster that also harkens to the child­hood regres­sion Lennon under­went as part of his Pri­mal Ther­a­py.)

Read­ers, if you were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to one of Can­dice Breitz’s com­pos­ite celebri­ty por­traits, who would you want to pay trib­ute to, liv­ing or dead?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Fans Joy­ous­ly Sing the Entire­ty of Bob Marley’s Leg­end Album in Uni­son

Hear the Orig­i­nal, Nev­er-Heard Demo of John Lennon’s “Imag­ine”

John Lennon’s Report Card at Age 15: “He Has Too Many Wrong Ambi­tions and His Ener­gy Is Too Often Mis­placed”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Imagined Medieval Comics Illuminate the Absurdities of Modern Life

in Art, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Fashion, History, Museums | September 16th, 2019

In 2005, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture revised its famous food pyra­mid, jet­ti­son­ing the famil­iar hier­ar­chi­cal graph­ic in favor of ver­ti­cal rain­bow stripes rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous nutri­tion­al groups. A stick fig­ure bound­ed up a stair­case built into one side, to rein­force the idea of adding reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to all those whole grains and veg­gies.

The dietary infor­ma­tion it pro­mot­ed was an improve­ment on the orig­i­nal, but nutri­tion­al sci­en­tists were skep­ti­cal that the pub­lic would be able to parse the con­fus­ing graph­ic, and by and large this proved to be the case.

Artist Tyler Gun­ther, how­ev­er, was inspired:

I start­ed think­ing about the mes­sag­ing school chil­dren in 1308 were force fed to believe was part of a heart healthy diet, only to have the rug pulled out from under them 15 years lat­er when some monk rearranged the whole thing.

In oth­er words, you’d bet­ter dig into that annu­al goose pie, kids, while you’ve still got 6 glass­es of ale to wash it down.

The imag­ined over­lap between the mod­ern and the medieval is a fer­tile vein for Gunter, whose MFA in Cos­tume Design is often put to good use in his hilar­i­ous his­tor­i­cal comics:

Mod­ern men’s fash­ion is so incred­i­bly bor­ing. A guy wears a pat­tered shirt with a suit and he gets laud­ed as though he won the super bowl of fash­ion. But back in the Mid­dle Ages men made bold, brave fash­ion choic­es and I admire them great­ly for this. It’s so excit­ing to me to think of these inven­tive, strange, fan­tas­tic cre­ations being a part of the every­day mas­cu­line aes­thet­ic.

The shapes and struc­tures of women’s head­wear in the dark ages are tru­ly inspir­ing. Where were these milliners draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from? How were they engi­neered? How com­fort­able were they to wear? How did they fit through the major­i­ty of door­ways? What was it like to sit behind a par­tic­u­lar­ly large one in church? I’m still scrolling through many an inter­net his­to­ry blog to find the answers. 

Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog has proved a help­ful resource, as has Anne H. van Buren’s book Illu­mi­nat­ing Fash­ion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Nether­lands.

The Brook­lyn-based, Arkansas-born artist also makes peri­od­ic pil­grim­ages to the Clois­ters, where the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um hous­es a vast num­ber illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, pan­el paint­ings, altar pieces, and the famed Uni­corn Tapes­tries:

On my first trip to The Clois­ters I saw a paint­ing of St. Michael and the dev­il almost imme­di­ate­ly. I don’t think my life or art has been the same since. None of us know what the dev­il looks like. But you wouldn’t know that based on how con­fi­dent­ly this artist por­trays his like­ness. After gaz­ing at this paint­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time I want­ed so bad­ly to under­stand the imag­i­na­tion of who­ev­er could imag­ine an alli­ga­tor arms/face crotch/dragon pony­tail com­bo. I don’t think I’ve come close to scratch­ing the sur­face.

Every time I go to that muse­um I think, “Wow it’s like I’m on Game of Thrones” and then I have to remind myself kind­ly that this was real life. Almost every­thing there was an object that peo­ple inter­act­ed with as part of their aver­age dai­ly life and that fas­ci­nates me as some­one who lives in a world filled with mass pro­duced, plas­tic objects. 

Gunther’s draw­ings and comics are cre­at­ed (and aged) on that most mod­ern of conveniences—the iPad.

The British monar­chy and the First Ladies are also sources of fas­ci­na­tion, but the mid­dle ages are his pri­ma­ry pas­sion, to the point where he recent­ly cos­tumed him­self as a page to tell the sto­ry of Piers Gave­ston, 1st Earl of Corn­wall and Edward II’s dar­ling, aid­ed by a gar­ment rack he’d retooled as a medieval pageant cart-cum-pup­pet the­ater.

See the rest of Tyler Gunther’s Medieval Comics on his web­site and don’t for­get to sur­prise your favorite hygien­ist or oral sur­geon with his Medieval Den­tist print this hol­i­day sea­son.

All images used with per­mis­sion of artist Tyler Gun­ther

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley, with a spe­cial appear­ance by Tyler Gun­ther. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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30 Fans Joyously Sing the Entirety of Bob Marley’s Legend Album in Unison

in Art, Life, Music | September 9th, 2019

The thir­ty Bob Mar­ley super­fans who heed­ed artist Can­dice Bre­itz’s 2005 call to vis­it a Port Anto­nio, Jamaica record­ing stu­dio, to be filmed indi­vid­u­al­ly per­form­ing the entire­ty of Marley’s Leg­end album a capel­la, were not pro­pelled by show­biz dreams.

Rather, their par­tic­i­pa­tion was a way for them to con­nect with the beloved icon, in a man­ner as inti­mate as singing along in one’s teenaged bed­room.

They were giv­en no direc­tion as far as per­for­mance style or cos­tume, only that they stick with it for the dura­tion of the hour-long album, piped into their ears via dis­creet grey buds.

Some dart their eyes appre­hen­sive­ly, bare­ly mov­ing.

Oth­ers bob and weave with unbri­dled aban­don.

One man shucks his cap when dread­locks are men­tioned in “Buf­fa­lo Sol­dier.”

A young woman gri­maces and shrugs apolo­get­i­cal­ly as the final track’s many “jammin’s” get away from her.

Some nod and widen their eyes at per­son­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant lines, point­ing for empha­sis, as if to tell view­ers less famil­iar with Marley’s work to lis­ten up, because here­in the mes­sage lies.

In between songs, they sip from plas­tic bot­tles of water and soda, occa­sion­al­ly offer­ing impromp­tu com­men­tary (“I feel this one!”). The grey-beard­ed gent mops his brow.

Once these solos were in the can, Bre­itz arranged them into a choir, stacked Brady Bunch-style, six across, five down.

Every­one starts at the same moment, but with no instruc­tion as to how to approach back­ing vocals and the word­less aspects of Marley’s per­for­mance, inad­ver­tent soloists emerge, some­times as the result of a jumped gun.

(You try singing “I Shot the Sher­iff” with no karaoke prompts guid­ing you…)

Bre­itz, who has since cre­at­ed sim­i­lar work with Michael Jack­son, John Lennon, Madon­na, and Leonard Cohen fans, took pains to make sure the par­tic­i­pants left the stu­dio feel­ing good about the expe­ri­ence. It’s not a TV tal­ent con­test.

While cer­tain squares con­tain star qual­i­ty charis­ma, all thir­ty were nec­es­sary to achieve the goal of a com­pos­ite por­trait that eschews the “overt­ly icon­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion” of the sub­ject as “some kind of fixed, unchang­ing enti­ty.”

As art crit­ic Christy Lange observed in con­junc­tion with an inter­view with Bre­itz for Mod­ern Painters:

While Mar­ley, Madon­na and Jack­son may play a lop­sid­ed­ly cen­tral role in shap­ing their fans’ lives and iden­ti­ties, these fans play a rec­i­p­ro­cal part in res­ur­rect­ing the stars’ orig­i­nal appeal, which has been sub­sumed by the celebri­ty cul­ture that cre­at­ed them. The cul­ture of star­dom may thrive on a series of cheap imi­ta­tions, mim­ic­k­ing an elu­sive idea of ‘celebri­ty’, but even in this con­cate­na­tion of sim­u­lat­ed iden­ti­ties, a few authen­tic por­traits can still be dis­cov­ered.

Listen—and sing along—to Bob Marley’s Leg­end in its entire­ty on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her in NYC tonight, Sep­tem­ber 9, for the sea­son kick-off of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Makes Guernica So Shocking? An Animated Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Monumental Anti-War Mural

in Art, History | September 2nd, 2019

What emo­tion did you feel the first time you saw Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca? Per­haps curios­i­ty or fas­ci­na­tion, and maybe even sur­prise, giv­en how dif­fer­ent the paint­ing looks from every­thing else in a muse­um or an art-his­to­ry text­book. There was almost cer­tain­ly a dash of con­fu­sion as well, but you prob­a­bly did­n’t feel the kind of shock you would have if you had learned what many of its ear­ly view­ers did. Just what gave Guer­ni­ca its ear­ly impact is the cen­tral ques­tion of the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, writ­ten by human­i­ties schol­ar Iseult Gille­spie. “How can we make sense of this over­whelm­ing image,” asks its nar­ra­tor, “and what exact­ly makes it a mas­ter­piece of anti-war art?”

Find­ing the answer requires going back to April 26th, 1937, when “Fas­cist forces bombed the Basque vil­lage of Guer­ni­ca in North­ern Spain. It was one of the worst civil­ian casu­al­ties of the Span­ish Civ­il War, waged between the demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic and Gen­er­al Franco’s fas­cist con­tin­gent.” For Picas­so, it sparked the “fren­zied peri­od of work” in which he cre­at­ed this 25-and-a-half-foot-wide mod­ernist mur­al named for the ruined vil­lage. Guer­ni­ca’s “mon­u­men­tal can­vas is dis­ori­ent­ing from the start, ren­dered in the abstract­ed Cubist style Picas­so pio­neered.” That style “afford­ed view­ers mul­ti­ple and often impos­si­ble per­spec­tives on the same object; a tech­nique con­sid­ered shock­ing even in Picasso’s domes­tic scenes.”

All great works of art unite form and sub­stance, and here Picas­so used a shock­ing tech­nique to ren­der shock­ing mate­r­i­al: “The style offers a pro­found­ly over­whelm­ing view of vio­lence, destruc­tion, and casu­al­ties. Mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives only com­pound the hor­ror on dis­play — send­ing the eyes hurtling around the frame in a futile hunt for peace.” But the eyes find only a horse run through with a spike, a scream­ing woman hold­ing a dead child, a vil­lager about to be con­sumed by flames, and the help­less­ly bro­ken stat­ue of a sol­dier. “Each of these fig­ures bor­der­ing the paint­ing are hor­ri­bly trapped, giv­ing the work an acute sense of claus­tro­pho­bia. And where you might expect the can­vas’ mas­sive size to coun­ter­act this feel­ing, its scale only high­lights the near­ly life-sized atroc­i­ties on dis­play. ”

A life­like depic­tion of such a scene would be more dif­fi­cult to look at, but the aes­thet­ic Picas­so used, which at a mod­ern view­er’s first glance might appear car­toon­ish and even humor­ous, makes Guer­ni­ca much more haunt­ing in the long term — a term that has exceed­ed 80 years now, dur­ing which the paint­ing’s con­sid­er­able pow­er has grown more sub­tle as the events of the Span­ish Civ­il War have grown dis­tant. “Like the bomb­ing of Guer­ni­ca itself, Picasso’s paint­ing is dense with destruc­tion. But hid­den beneath this sup­posed chaos are care­ful­ly craft­ed scenes and sym­bols, car­ry­ing out the painting’s mul­ti­fac­eted attack on fas­cism.” Yet it was also sim­ple enough to rile up the Gestapo, one of whose offi­cers barged into Picas­so’s apart­ment in occu­pied Paris, point­ed at a pho­to­graph of Guer­ni­ca, and asked, “Did you do this?” No, the artist replied, “you did.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

Guer­ni­ca: Alain Resnais’ Haunt­ing Film on Picasso’s Paint­ing & the Crimes of the Span­ish Civ­il War

A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

A Clas­sic Video of Pablo Picas­so Mark­ing Art, Set to the Song, “Pablo Picas­so,” by Jonathan Rich­man & The Mod­ern Lovers

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

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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The Scandalous Painting That Helped Create Modern Art: An Introduction to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

in Art, History | August 30th, 2019

Here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, only the most shel­tered among us could be shocked by the sight of a naked body. It would seem that the whole of human his­to­ry has at least that in com­mon with us: only cer­tain soci­eties at cer­tain times have con­sid­ered nudi­ty a force worth sup­press­ing. But then, has the prob­lem ever been nudi­ty in gen­er­al, or rather the con­text, the nature, and the impli­ca­tions of par­tic­u­lar instances of nudi­ty? It’s fair to say that Titian’s Venus of Urbino has scan­dal­ized prac­ti­cal­ly no one. Yet three cen­turies lat­er, Édouard Manet’s out­ward­ly sim­i­lar 1865 can­vas Olympia sent shock­waves through the Paris art world. Why?

The rules of the Paris Acad­e­my of Fine Arts at the time dic­tat­ed that “great art was sup­posed to con­vey a moral or intel­lec­tu­al mes­sage,” says the nar­ra­tor of Vox’s video essay on Olympia above. “All accept­able art fell into one of five cat­e­gories, ranked by their capac­i­ty to deliv­er those mes­sages.” The less­er of these were still lifes and land­scapes, in the mid­dle fell genre paint­ings, and the great­est were por­traits and his­tor­i­cal works. And “equal­ly impor­tant to what was paint­ed was how it was paint­ed,” with more points going to “idol­ized, pret­ti­fied visions of the world, smooth and beau­ti­ful with no body hair and flaw­less skin,” all paint­ed in a way “that fol­low the rules of depth and per­spec­tive, mean­ing it looks like it could exist in the real world.”

The Acad­e­my of Fine Arts would pay lit­tle regard, then, to the “stark and unnat­ur­al col­ors” of Olympia, its “rough and tex­tured” brush­strokes, and its much “flat­ter and less com­plex” look than the Renais­sance real­ism idol­ized in those days. That Manet would dare give his obvi­ous “homage” to the Venus of Urbino a title like Olympia, a com­mon nom de guerre for pros­ti­tutes in 19th-cen­tu­ry Paris, caused some seri­ous­ly ruf­fled feath­ers as well. So why did the Acad­e­my put Manet’s paint­ing on dis­play in the first place? “It prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with his grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. You can see his influ­ence so clear­ly in what came next. He led the charge towards Mod­ernism in the late 1800s, start­ing with the Impres­sion­ists — Mon­et, Degas — who adopt­ed his pen­chant for mod­ern themes and lucent brush­strokes.”

A more 20th-cen­tu­ry read­ing of Olympia holds up the paint­ing as proof that “no one enti­ty gets to decide what art should look like.” An episode of the ArtCu­ri­ous pod­cast about Olympia goes fur­ther still, claim­ing for Manet’s sub­ject the sta­tus of a fem­i­nist icon. But even the paint­ing’s con­tem­po­rary detrac­tors saw some­thing impor­tant in it. Émile Zola at first seemed to dis­miss the work by writ­ing, “You want­ed a nude, and you chose Olympia, the first that came along.” But he also admit­ted that Olympia cap­tured some­thing more gen­uine than even the most glo­ri­ous­ly real­is­tic paint­ings could: “When our artists give us Venus­es, they cor­rect nature, they lie. Édouard Manet asked him­self why lie, why not tell the truth; he intro­duced us to Olympia, this fille of our time, whom you meet on the side­walks.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

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 Most Dis­turb­ing Paint­ing: A Close Look at Fran­cis­co Goya’s “Sat­urn Devour­ing His Son”

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

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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