Climate Change Gets Strikingly Visualized by a Scottish Art Installation

in Art, Science | April 20th, 2019

What does it accom­plish to talk about cli­mate change? Even those who talk about cli­mate change pro­fes­sion­al­ly might find it hard to say. If you real­ly want to make a point about ris­ing sea lev­els — not to men­tion all the oth­er changes pre­dict­ed to afflict a warm­ing Earth — you might do bet­ter to show, not tell. That rea­son­ing seems to have moti­vat­ed art projects like the giant hands reach­ing out from the waters of Venice pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, and it looks even clear­er in the more recent case of Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W), an instal­la­tion now on dis­play on a Scot­tish island.

All images cour­tesy of Timo Aho and Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta

“At high tide, three syn­chro­nized lines of light acti­vate in the Out­er Hebrides off the west coast of Scot­land,” writes Design­boom’s Zach Andrews, and in the dark, “wrap around two struc­tures and along the base of a moun­tain land­scape.

Every­thing below these lines of light will one day be under­wa­ter.” Cre­at­ed by Finnish artists Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta and Timo Aho for Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre, Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) offers a stark reminder of the future human­i­ty faces if cli­mate change goes on as pro­ject­ed.

But why put up an instal­la­tion of such appar­ent urgency in such a thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed, out-of-the-way place? “Low lying arch­i­pel­a­gos like this one are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of cli­mate change,” Andrews writes, adding that the Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre itself “can­not even afford to devel­op on its exist­ing site any­more due to the pre­dict­ed rise of storm surge sea.” But though the effects of ris­ing sea lev­els may be felt first on islands like these, few pre­dic­tions have those effects stop­ping there; worst-case sce­nar­ios won’t spare our major metrop­o­lis­es, and cer­tain­ly not the coastal ones.

You can get a sense of what Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) looks like in action from the pho­tographs on Niit­tyvir­ta’s site a well as the time-lapse video at the top, which shows the lines of light acti­vat­ing when their sen­sors detect high tide, then only those lines of light remain­ing by the time the sun has gone com­plete­ly down. To expe­ri­ence the full impact of the instal­la­tion, how­ev­er, requires see­ing it in per­son in the con­text for which it was cre­at­ed. So if you’ve been putting off that trip to the Out­er Hebrides, now might be the time to final­ly take it — not just because of Niit­tyvir­ta and Aho’s work, but because in a few years, it may not be quite the same place.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Show the Melt­ing Arc­tic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

A Map Shows What Hap­pens When Our World Gets Four Degrees Warmer: The Col­orado Riv­er Dries Up, Antarc­ti­ca Urban­izes, Poly­ne­sia Van­ish­es

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

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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Street Art for Book Lovers: Dutch Artists Paint Massive Bookcase Mural on the Side of a Building

in Architecture, Art, Books, Travel | April 19th, 2019

Book­cas­es are a great ice break­er for those who love to read.

What relief those shelves offer ill-at ease par­ty­go­ers… even when you don’t know a soul in the room, there’s always a chance you’ll bond with a fel­low guest over one of your hosts’ titles.

Occu­py your­self with a good browse whilst wait­ing for some­one to take the bait.

Now, with the aid of Dutch street artists Jan Is De Man and Deef Feed, some res­i­dents of Utrecht have turned their book­cas­es into street art, spark­ing con­ver­sa­tion in their cul­tur­al­ly diverse neigh­bor­hood.

De Man, whose close friends occu­py the ground floor of a build­ing on the cor­ner of Mimosas­traat and Ams­ter­dam, had ini­tial­ly planned to ren­der a giant smi­ley face on an exte­ri­or wall as a pub­lic morale boost­er, but the shape of the three-sto­ry struc­ture sug­gest­ed some­thing a bit more lit­er­ary.

The trompe-l’oeil Boekenkast (or book­case) took a week to cre­ate, and fea­tures titles in eight dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

Look close­ly and you’ll notice both artists’ names (and a smi­ley face) lurk­ing among the spines.

Design mags may make an impres­sion by order­ing books accord­ing to size and col­or, but this com­mu­nal 2‑D boekenkast looks to belong to an avid and omniv­o­rous read­er.

Some Eng­lish titles that caught our eye:

Sapi­ens

The Sub­tle Art of Not Giv­ing a F*ck

Kei­th Richards’ auto­bi­og­ra­phy Life

The Curi­ous Inci­dent of the Dog in the Night­time 

Pride and Prej­u­dice

The Lit­tle Prince

The World Accord­ing to Garp

Jumper

And a classy-look­ing hard­bound Play­boy col­lec­tion that may or may not exist in real life.

(Read­ers, can you spot the oth­er fakes?)

Boekenkast is the lat­est of a num­ber of glob­al book­shelf murals tempt­ing lit­er­ary pil­grims to take a self­ie on the way to the local indie book­shop.

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Artist Cre­ates Book­shelf Dio­ra­mas That Mag­i­cal­ly Trans­port You Into Tokyo’s Back Alleys

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Virtual Time-Lapse Recreation of the Building of Notre Dame (1160)

in Architecture, Art, Current Affairs | April 16th, 2019

Hun­dreds of goth­ic cathe­drals dot­ted all over Europe have faced dec­i­ma­tion and destruc­tion, whether through sack­ings, rev­o­lu­tions, nat­ur­al decay, or bomb­ing raids. But since World War II, at least, the most extra­or­di­nary exam­ples that remain have seen restora­tion and con­stant upkeep, and none of them is as well-known and as cul­tur­al­ly and archi­tec­tural­ly sig­nif­i­cant as Paris’s Notre Dame. One can­not imag­ine the city with­out it, which made the scenes of Parisians watch­ing the cathe­dral burn yes­ter­day as poignant as the scenes of the fire itself.

The flames claimed the rib-vault­ed roof and the “spine-tin­gling, soul-lift­ing spire,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post, who quote cathe­dral spoke­man Andre Finot’s assess­ment of the dam­age as “colos­sal.” The exte­ri­or stone tow­ers, famed stained-glass win­dows, and icon­ic arch­es and fly­ing but­tress­es with­stood the dis­as­ter, but the wood­en inte­ri­or, “a mar­vel,” writes the Post, “that has inspired awe and won­der for the mil­lions who have vis­it­ed over the centuries—has been gut­ted.” Noth­ing of the frame, says Finot, “will remain.”

The sad irony is that the fire report­ed­ly result­ed from an acci­dent dur­ing the medieval church’s ren­o­va­tion, one of many such projects that have pre­served this almost 900-year-old archi­tec­ture. The French gov­ern­ment has vowed to rebuild. Will it mat­ter to pos­ter­i­ty that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the Cathe­dral dates from hun­dreds of years after its orig­i­nal con­struc­tion? Will Notre Dame lose its ancient aura, and what does this mean for Parisians and the world?

It’s too soon to answer ques­tions like these and too soon to ask them. Now is a time to reck­on with cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal loss, and to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of what was saved. At the top of the post, you can watch a vir­tu­al time-lapse recre­ation of the con­struc­tion of Notre Dame, begun in 1160 and most­ly com­plet­ed one hun­dred years lat­er, though build­ing con­tin­ued into the 14th century—a jaw-drop­ping time scale in an era when tow­er­ing new build­ings go up in a mat­ter of weeks.

After tak­ing more than the human lifes­pan to com­plete, until yes­ter­day the cathe­dral stood the test of time, as the brief France in Focus tour of its eight cen­turies of art and archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry above explains. “The most vis­it­ed mon­u­ment in the French Cap­i­tal” may be a rel­ic of a very dif­fer­ent, pre-mod­ern, pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary, France. But its impos­ing cen­tral set­ting in the city, and in mod­ern works from Vic­tor Hugo’s Hunch­back of Notre Dame to Walt Disney’s Hunch­back of Notre Dame—not to men­tion the tourists, reli­gious pil­grims, schol­ars, and art stu­dents who pour into Paris to see it—mark Notre Dame as a very con­tem­po­rary land­mark. Learn more about how it became so above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

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

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How Andy Warhol and Tintin Creator Hergé Mutually Admired and Influenced One Another

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | April 16th, 2019

Com­ic-book sto­ries of a boy reporter and his dog (lat­er accom­pa­nied by a foul­mouthed sea cap­tain) fea­tur­ing rock­et­ships and sub­marines, boo­by-traps and buried trea­sure, gang­sters and abom­inable snow­men, smug­glers and super-weapons, all told with bright col­ors, clear lines, and prac­ti­cal­ly no girls in sight: no won­der The Adven­tures of Tintin at first looks tai­lor-made for ram­bunc­tious young­sters. But now, eighty years after Tintin’s debut in the chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment of a Bel­gian Catholic news­pa­per, his ever-grow­ing fan base sure­ly includes more grown-ups than it does kids, and grown-ups pre­pared to regard his adven­tures as seri­ous works of mod­ern art at that.

The field of Tintin enthu­si­asts (in their most ded­i­cat­ed form, “Tinti­nol­o­gists”) includes some of the best-known mod­ern artists in his­to­ry. Roy Licht­en­stein, he of the zoomed-in com­ic-book aes­thet­ic, once made Tintin his sub­ject, and Tintin’s cre­ator Hergé, who cul­ti­vat­ed a love for mod­ern art from the 1960s onward, hung a suite of Licht­en­stein prints in his office. As Andy Warhol once put it, “Hergé has influ­enced my work in the same way as Walt Dis­ney. For me, Hergé was more than a com­ic strip artist.” And for Hergé, Warhol seems to have been more than a fash­ion­able Amer­i­can painter: in 1979, Hergé com­mis­sioned Warhol to paint his por­trait, and Warhol came up with a series of four images in a style rem­i­nis­cent of the one he’d used to paint Jack­ie Onas­sis and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Hergé and Warhol had first met in 1972, when Hergé paid a vis­it to Warhol’s “Fac­to­ry” in New York — the kind of set­ting in which one imag­ines the straight-laced, six­tysome­thing Bel­gian set­ting foot only with dif­fi­cul­ty. But the two had more in com­mon as artists than it may seem: both got their start in com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion, and both soon found their careers defined by par­tic­u­lar works that explod­ed into cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na. (Warhol may also have felt an affin­i­ty with Tintin in their shared rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty by hair­style alone.) The Inde­pen­dent’s John Lich­field writes that Hergé, who had by that point learned to paint a few mod­ern abstract pieces of his own, “asked Warhol, mod­est­ly, whether the father of Tintin should also con­sid­er him­self a ‘Pop Artist.’ Warhol, although a great fan of Hergé, sim­ply stared back at him and did not reply.”

Warhol may not have known what to say forty years ago, but in that time Hergé has unques­tion­ably ascend­ed into the insti­tu­tion­al pan­theon of West­ern art: Lich­field­’s arti­cle is a review of a 2006 Hergé ret­ro­spec­tive at the Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, and the years since have seen the open­ing of the Musée Hergé south of Brus­sels as well as increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate exhi­bi­tions on Tintin and his cre­ator all around the world. (I myself attend­ed such an exhi­bi­tion in Seoul, where I live, just last month.) The French artist Jean-Pierre Ray­naud express­es a now-com­mon kind of sen­ti­ment when he cred­its Hergé with “a pre­ci­sion of the kind I love in Mon­dri­an” and “the artis­tic econ­o­my that you find in Matisse.” Warhol, who prob­a­bly would­n’t have phrased his appre­ci­a­tion in quite that way, makes a more tonal­ly char­ac­ter­is­tic response in the clip above when Hergé tells him about Tintin’s lat­ter-day switch from his sig­na­ture plus fours to jeans: “Oh, great!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

When Steve Jobs Taught Andy Warhol to Make Art on the Very First Mac­in­tosh (1984)

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing For Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead

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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How Leonardo da Vinci Drew an Accurate Satellite Map of an Italian City (1502)

in Art, History, Maps, Math | April 16th, 2019

When I look at maps from cen­turies ago, I won­der how they could have been of any use. Not only were they filled with mytho­log­i­cal mon­sters and mytho­log­i­cal places, but the per­spec­tives most­ly served an aes­thet­ic design rather than a prac­ti­cal one. Of course, accu­ra­cy was hard to come by with­out the many map­ping tools we take for granted—some of them just in their infan­cy dur­ing the Renais­sance, and many more that would have seemed like out­landish mag­ic to near­ly every­one in 15th cen­tu­ry Europe.

Every­one, it some­times seems, but Leonar­do da Vin­ci, who antic­i­pat­ed and some­times steered the direc­tion of futur­is­tic pub­lic works tech­nol­o­gy. None of his fly­ing machines worked, and he could hard­ly have seen images tak­en from out­er space. But he clear­ly saw the prob­lem with con­tem­po­rary maps. The neces­si­ty of fix­ing them led to a 1502 aer­i­al image of Imo­la, Italy, drawn almost as accu­rate­ly as if he had been peer­ing at the city through a Google satel­lite cam­era.

“Leonar­do,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Vox video above, “need­ed to show Imo­la as an ichno­graph­ic map,” a term coined by ancient Roman engi­neer Vit­ru­vius to describe ground plan-style car­tog­ra­phy. No streets or build­ings are obscured, as they are in the maps drawn from the oblique per­spec­tive of a hill­top or moun­tain. Leonar­do under­took the project while employed as Cesare Borgia’s mil­i­tary engi­neer. “He was charged with help­ing Bor­gia become more aware of the town’s lay­out.” For this visu­al aid turned car­to­graph­ic mar­vel, he drew from the same source that inspired the ele­gant Vit­ru­vian Man.

While the vision­ary Roman builder could imag­ine a god’s eye view, it took some­one with Leonardo’s extra­or­di­nary per­spi­cac­i­ty and skill to actu­al­ly draw one, in a star­tling­ly accu­rate way. Did he do it with grit and mox­ie? Did he astral project thou­sands of miles above the city? Was he in con­tact with ancient aliens? No, he used geom­e­try, and a com­pass, the same means and instru­ments that allowed ancient sci­en­tists like Eratos­thenes to cal­cu­late the cir­cum­fer­ence of the earth, to with­in 200 miles, over 2000 years ago.

Leonar­do prob­a­bly also used an instru­ment called a bus­so­la, a device that mea­sures degrees inside a circle—like the one that sur­rounds his city map. Painstak­ing­ly record­ing the angles of each turn and inter­sec­tion in the town and mea­sur­ing their dis­tance from each oth­er would have giv­en him the data he need­ed to recre­ate the city as seen from above, using the bus­so­la to main­tain prop­er scale. Oth­er meth­ods would have been involved, all of them com­mon­ly avail­able to sur­vey­ors, builders, city plan­ners, and car­tog­ra­phers at the time. Leonar­do trust­ed the math, even though he could nev­er ver­i­fy it, but like the best map­mak­ers, he also want­ed to make some­thing beau­ti­ful.

It may be dif­fi­cult for his­to­ri­ans to deter­mine which inac­cu­ra­cies are due to mis­cal­cu­la­tion and which to delib­er­ate dis­tor­tion for some artis­tic pur­pose. But license or mis­takes aside, Leonardo’s map remains an aston­ish­ing feat, mark­ing a seis­mic shift from the geog­ra­phy of “myth and per­cep­tion” to one of “infor­ma­tion, drawn plain­ly.” There’s no telling if the arche­typ­al Renais­sance man would have liked where this path led, but if he lived in the 21st cen­tu­ry, he’d already have his mind trained on ideas that antic­i­pate tech­nol­o­gy hun­dreds of years in our future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Rea­son and Math, Fig­ured Out the Earth Isn’t Flat, Over 2,000 Years Ago

The Ele­gant Math­e­mat­ics of Vit­ru­vian Man, Leonar­do da Vinci’s Most Famous Draw­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Saw the World Dif­fer­ent­ly… Thanks to an Eye Dis­or­der, Says a New Sci­en­tif­ic Study

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

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

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Salvador Dalí’s Illustrations for The Bible (1963)

in Art, Books | April 15th, 2019

Some might have tak­en offense when Sal­vador Dalí began illus­trat­ing the Bible in 1963. The noto­ri­ous Sur­re­al­ist “went to jail for his art­works as a young man,” writes Jack­son Arn writes at Art­sy, but he “lived long enough to lend his leg­endary panache to Hol­ly­wood movies and Alka-Seltzer com­mer­cials.” Along the way, he gained a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing a rather vicious char­ac­ter. George Orwell, review­ing Dalí’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, described him as “dis­gust­ing” for his fanat­i­cal harass­ment and abuse of oth­er peo­ple. But, Orwell went on, “Dalí is a draughts­man of very excep­tion­al gifts. He is also, to judge by the minute­ness and the sure­ness of his draw­ings, a very hard work­er…. He has fifty times more tal­ent than most of the peo­ple who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paint­ings.”

Dalí hard­ly need­ed the defense of his morals or his paint­ings, nor might he have want­ed it. That was the wrong sort of atten­tion. But maybe he him­self was sur­prised by a lat­er career turn as an illus­tra­tor of respectable “Great Books”—including not only Judeo-Chris­t­ian scrip­ture, but also Don Quixote, Mac­beth, The Divine Com­e­dy, Alice in Won­der­land, and much more.

The artist who seemed to have noth­ing but con­tempt for tra­di­tion­al canons approached these projects with the skill and pro­fes­sion­al­ism Orwell couldn’t help but admire, as well as sub­tleties and under­stat­ed tonal shifts we might not have asso­ci­at­ed with his work.

These are not his first reli­gious sub­jects; he had always ref­er­enced big scenes and broad themes in Catholi­cism. But the illus­tra­tions rep­re­sent a deep­er engage­ment with the pri­ma­ry text—105 paint­ings in all, each based on select pas­sages from the Latin Vul­gate Bible. Pub­lished by Riz­zoli in 1969, Bib­lia Sacra (The Sacred Bible) was com­mis­sioned by Dalí’s friend, Dr. Guiseppe Albare­to, a devout Catholic whose inten­tion “for this mas­sive under­tak­ing,” writes the Lock­port St. Gallery, “was to bring the artist back to his reli­gious roots.” What­ev­er effect that might have had, Dalí approach­es the project with the same dili­gence evi­dent in his oth­er illustrations—he takes artis­tic risks while mak­ing a sin­cere effort to stay close to the spir­it of the text. If he did this work for the mon­ey, he earned it.

Dalí’s illus­tra­tions “aren’t some kind of sub­ver­sive prank,” writes Arn. “The lumi­nous water­col­ors he pro­duced for the Bible are, in the main, earnest ren­der­ings of their sacred sub­jects.” Per­haps the book illus­tra­tions have attract­ed so lit­tle atten­tion from art his­to­ri­ans because they lack the sen­sa­tion­al­ism and out­rage Dalí aggres­sive­ly cul­ti­vat­ed in his pub­lic per­sona. Maybe these paint­ings, as Ger­man gal­lerist Hol­ger Kemp­kens puts it, show “some­thing of a spir­i­tu­al side of Dalí.” Or maybe they just add to a big­ger pic­ture that shows what he could do with nar­ra­tives not of his own mak­ing, but which he clear­ly respect­ed and found chal­leng­ing and stim­u­lat­ing. These qual­i­ties apply to many parts of the Bible as well as to great lit­er­ary epics, includ­ing those based on the Bible, like John Milton’s Par­adise Lost, which Dalí illus­trat­ed in a series of sur­pris­ing­ly spare, ele­gant etch­ings.

You can buy an orig­i­nal set of Dalí’s illus­trat­ed Bible in five vol­umes from The Lock­port Street Gallery (email for a price and con­di­tion report); buy a more afford­able book online that fea­tures and explores Dalí’s illus­tra­tions; or see all 105 of Dalí’s Bib­li­cal illus­tra­tions (and pur­chase some 1967 prints) at Art­sy.

via Art­sy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued

Sal­vador Dalí’s Haunt­ing 1975 Illus­tra­tions for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juli­et

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

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Google Celebrates the Bauhaus School’s 100th Anniversary with an Animated Doodle

in Art | April 14th, 2019

Google has com­mem­o­rat­ed the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the Bauhaus school with a nice ani­mat­ed doo­dle. They write:

Both a school for the arts and a school of thought, the Bauhaus was found­ed by archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius exact­ly 100 years ago in Weimar, Ger­many, gath­er­ing many of Europe’s most bril­liant artists and design­ers with the aim of train­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of cre­atives to rein­vent the world. Today’s ani­mat­ed Doo­dle cel­e­brates the lega­cy of this insti­tu­tion and the world­wide move­ment it began, which trans­formed the arts by apply­ing the prin­ci­ple “form fol­lows func­tion.”

Gropius envi­sioned the Bauhaus—whose name means “house of building”—as a merg­er of crafts­man­ship, the “fine” arts, and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. His icon­ic Bauhaus Build­ing in Dessau was a fore­run­ner of the influ­en­tial “Inter­na­tion­al Style,” but the impact of the Bauhaus’s ideas and prac­tices reached far beyond archi­tec­ture. Stu­dents of the Bauhaus received inter­dis­ci­pli­nary instruc­tion in car­pen­try, met­al, pot­tery, stained glass, wall paint­ing, weav­ing, graph­ics, and typog­ra­phy, learn­ing to infuse even the sim­plest func­tion­al objects (like the ones seen in today’s Doo­dle) with the high­est artis­tic aspi­ra­tions.

Steer­ing away from lux­u­ry and toward indus­tri­al mass pro­duc­tion, the Bauhaus attract­ed a stel­lar fac­ul­ty includ­ing painters Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky and Paul Klee, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and sculp­tor Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, graph­ic design­er Her­bert Bay­er, indus­tri­al design­er Mar­i­anne Brandt, and Mar­cel Breuer, whose Mod­el B3 tubu­lar chair changed fur­ni­ture design for­ev­er.

Though the Bauhaus offi­cial­ly dis­band­ed on August 10, 1933, its stu­dents returned to 29 coun­tries, found­ing the New Bauhaus in Chica­go, Black Moun­tain Col­lege in North Car­oli­na, and White City in Tel Aviv. Bauhaus affil­i­ates also took lead­er­ship posi­tions at the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, the Har­vard School of Archi­tec­ture, and the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Through all of these insti­tu­tions, and the work cre­at­ed in their spir­it, the ideas of the Bauhaus live on.

Find more anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Dezeen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mod­ern Cor­po­rate Logos Reimag­ined in a Clas­sic Bauhaus Style: Cel­e­brate the 100th Anniver­sary of the Bauhaus Move­ment Today

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: A Dig­i­tal Cel­e­bra­tion of the Found­ing of the Bauhaus School 100 Years Ago

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Made Avail­able Online by Har­vard Muse­um Web­site

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

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Jorge Luis Borges Draws a Self-Portrait After Going Blind

in Art, Literature | April 12th, 2019

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), one of the great writ­ers to come out of Argenti­na, went blind when he was  only 55 years old. As unset­tling as it must have been, it was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly a sur­prise. He once told The New York Times, “I knew I would go blind, because my father, my pater­nal grand­moth­er, my great-grand­fa­ther, they had all gone blind.”

In the years fol­low­ing that life-chang­ing moment, Borges nev­er learned braille and could no longer read. But he did con­tin­ue to write; he served as the direc­tor of Argenti­na’s Nation­al Library; he trav­eled and deliv­ered an impor­tant series of lec­tures at Har­vard on poet­ry (click to lis­ten); and he even took a stab at draw­ing — some­thing he did fair­ly well ear­li­er in life. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions.)

Above, you can see a self por­trait that Borges drew in the base­ment of the famous Strand Book­store in New York City. Accord­ing to the Times, he did this “using one fin­ger to guide the pen he was hold­ing with his oth­er hand.” After mak­ing the sketch, Borges entered the main part of the book­store and start­ed “lis­ten­ing to the room, the stacks, the books,” and made the remark­able obser­va­tion “You have as many books as we have in our nation­al library.”

If you’ve ever been to The Strand, you know how many books it holds. Indeed, the store boasts of being “New York City’s leg­endary home of 18 Miles of new, used and rare books.” My guess is that Argenti­na’s nation­al library might have a few more vol­umes than that. But who is real­ly count­ing?

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges Chats with William F. Buck­ley on Fir­ing Line (1977)

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