A Short Video Introduction to Hilma af Klint, the Mystical Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

in Art, Religion | December 17th, 2018

It can be both a bless­ing and curse for an artist to toil at the behest of an influ­en­tial patron. Finan­cial sup­port and pow­er­ful con­nec­tions are among the obvi­ous perks. Being ham­strung by some­one else’s ego and time­frame are some of the less wel­come real­i­ties on the flip side.

Hilma af Klint, the sub­ject of a high pro­file exhi­bi­tion at the Guggen­heim, does not fit the usu­al artist-patron mold. She made her paint­ings to suit a spir­it named Amaliel, with whom she con­nect­ed in a seance. Amaliel tapped her to con­vey a very impor­tant, as yet inde­ci­pher­able mes­sage to humankind.

Although af Klint was an accom­plished botan­i­cal and land­scape painter who trained at the Roy­al Acad­e­my in Stock­holm, “Paint­ings for the Tem­ple,” 193 works pro­duced between 1906 and 1915 upon order of her spir­it guide, are bright­ly col­ored abstrac­tions.

As the Guggenheim’s Senior Cura­tor and Direc­tor of Col­lec­tions, Tracey Bashkoff, points out above, af Klint’s work was trad­ing in sym­bol­ic, non-nat­u­ral­is­tic forms ten years before abstrac­tions began show­ing up in the work of the men we con­sid­er pio­neers—Vasi­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an, and Paul Klee. Yet, she was nowhere to be found in MoMA’s 2012 block­buster show, Invent­ing Abstrac­tion: 1910–1925. Cura­tor Leah Dick­er­man implied that the snub was af Klint’s own fault for con­sid­er­ing her work to be part of a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, rather than a pure­ly artis­tic one.

In his 1920 essay, Cre­ative Con­fes­sion, Klee wrote, “art does not repro­duce the vis­i­ble; rather, it makes vis­i­ble.”

It was a sen­ti­ment Klint shared, but the spir­i­tu­al mes­sage encod­ed in her work was intend­ed for a future audi­ence. She instruct­ed her nephew that her work was to be kept under wraps until twen­ty years after her death. (She died in 1944, the same year as Kandin­sky and Mon­dri­an, but her work was not pub­licly shown until 1986, when the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art orga­nized an exhi­bi­tion titled The Spir­i­tu­al in Art.)

Per­haps af Klint did not fore­see how dra­mat­i­cal­ly the respectabil­i­ty of spir­i­tu­al­ism and seances—a pop­u­lar pur­suit of her time, and one shared by Mon­dri­an and Kandinsky—would decline.

Her ded­i­ca­tion to car­ry­ing out her spir­it guide’s mis­sion may remind some mod­ern view­ers of Hen­ry Darg­er, the Chica­go jan­i­tor who cre­at­ed hun­dreds of art­works and thou­sands of pages of text doc­u­ment­ing the Glan­de­co-Angelin­ian War Storm, a strange and gory series of events tak­ing place in an alter­nate real­i­ty that was very real to him.

Thus far no one has ful­ly divined the spir­it’s mes­sage af Klint devot­ed so much of her life to pre­serv­ing.

As crit­ic Rober­ta Smith notes in her New York Times review of the Guggen­heim show, af Klint, a mem­ber of the Swedish Lodge of the Theo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety, was well versed in occult spir­i­tu­al­ism, Rosi­cru­cian­ism, Bud­dhism, Dar­win­ism, and the sci­ence of sub­atom­ic par­ti­cles.

Hints of these inter­ests are thread­ed through­out her work.

Col­or also helps to unlock the nar­ra­tive. She used blue and lilac to rep­re­sent female ener­gy, rose and yel­low for male, and green for the uni­ty of the two. The Guardian’s Kate Kell­away reports that the artist may have been influ­enced by Goethe’s 1810 The­o­ry of Colours.

Mov­ing on to geom­e­try, over­lap­ping discs also stand for uni­ty. U‑shapes ref­er­ence the spir­i­tu­al world and spi­rals denote evo­lu­tion.

Af Klint’s spi­ral obses­sion was not con­fined to the can­vas. Rober­ta Smith reveals that af Klint envi­sioned a spi­ral-shaped build­ing for the exhi­bi­tion of The Paint­ings for the Tem­ple. Vis­i­tors would ascend a spi­ral stair­case toward the heav­ens, the exact con­fig­u­ra­tion described by archi­tect Frank Lloyd Wright’s inte­ri­or ramps at the Guggen­heim.

Per­haps we are get­ting clos­er to under­stand­ing.

For fur­ther study, check out the Guggenheim’s Teacher’s Guide to Hilma af Klint: Paint­ings for the Future. See the exhi­bi­tion in per­son through mid-April.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Hilma af Klint: Pio­neer­ing Mys­ti­cal Painter and Per­haps the First Abstract Artist

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Syncs His Abstract Art to Mussorgsky’s Music in a His­toric Bauhaus The­atre Pro­duc­tion (1928)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Evolution of The Great Wave off Kanagawa: See Four Versions That Hokusai Painted Over Nearly 40 Years

in Art, History | December 13th, 2018

Has any Japan­ese wood­block print — or for that mat­ter, any piece of Japan­ese art — endured as well across place and time as The Great Wave off Kana­gawa? Even those of us who have nev­er known its name, let alone those of us unsure of who made it and when, can bring it to mind it with some clar­i­ty, as sure a sign as any (along with the numer­ous par­o­dies) that it taps into some­thing deep with­in all of us. But though the artist behind it, 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry ukiyo‑e painter Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, was undoubt­ed­ly a mas­ter of his tra­di­tion, even he did­n’t con­jure up The Great Wave off Kana­gawa in the form we know it on the first try.

In fact, he’d been pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent ver­sions of it for near­ly forty years. On Twit­ter Tarin tkasasa­gi recent­ly post­ed four ver­sions of the Great Wave that Hoku­sai paint­ed over that peri­od. Here you see them arranged from top to bot­tom: the first from 1792, when he was 33; the sec­ond from 1803, when he was 44; the third from 1805, when he was 46; and the famous fourth from 1831, when he was 72.

Each time, Hoku­sai de-empha­sizes the human pres­ence and empha­sizes the nat­ur­al ele­ments, bring­ing out dra­ma from the water itself rather than from the peo­ple who regard or nav­i­gate it. In each ver­sion, too, the col­ors grow bold­er and the lines stronger.

The skill lev­el of a work­ing artist — espe­cial­ly an artist work­ing as hard as Hoku­sai — almost inevitably increas­es over time, and that must have some­thing to do with these changes, though it also looks like the process of an artis­tic per­son­al­i­ty set­tling into its sub­ject mat­ter. “From the time I was six, I was in the habit of sketch­ing things I saw around me,” says Hoku­sai him­self in a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed quo­ta­tion. “Around the age of 50, I began to work in earnest, pro­duc­ing numer­ous designs. It was not until my 70th year, how­ev­er, that I pro­duced any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.”

In the artist’s telling, only at the age of 73, after the final Great Wave, did he begin to grasp “the under­ly­ing struc­ture of birds and ani­mals, insects and fish, and the way trees and plants grow. Thus if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a bet­ter under­stand­ing when I was 80 and by 90 will have pen­e­trat­ed to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a lev­el of divine under­stand­ing, and if I live decades beyond that, every­thing I paint — dot and line — will be alive.” The fact that he did­n’t make it to 100 will for­ev­er keep enthu­si­asts won­der­ing what mag­nif­i­cence an even old­er Hoku­sai might have achieved, but even so, the body of work he man­aged to pro­duce in his 88 years con­tains works that, like the ulti­mate form of The Great Wave off Kana­gawa, out­lived him and will out­live all of us.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave off Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

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

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

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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Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Revolutionary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large Format Book by Taschen

in Art, Books | December 13th, 2018

At many a book­store and art gallery gift shop, you will find copies of writer and artist Java­ka Steptoe’s Radi­ant Child, a young person’s intro­duc­tion to Jean-Michel Basquiat. The book has deserved­ly won a Calde­cott Medal and the praise of adult read­ers who find as much or more to admire in it as their kids do. A sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing short biog­ra­phy, it hits many of the major notes in Basquiat’s for­ma­tive years: His Brook­lyn child­hood and Hait­ian and Puer­to Rican her­itage; his love for his encour­ag­ing moth­er and heart­break at her insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in a men­tal hos­pi­tal; his child­hood spent in New York art gal­leries plan­ning to be a famous artist, and his keen inter­est in anato­my text­books, jazz, and black his­to­ry….

But for a seri­ous­ly deep immer­sion in the artist’s his­to­ry and devel­op­ment, you will want to con­sult a new 500-page book from TASCHEN, Jean-Michel Basquiat XXL. Writ­ten by cura­tor Eleanor Nairne and edit­ed by Hans Wern­er Holzwarth, the “over­sized hard­cov­er,” notes This is Colos­sal,” is filled with large-scale repro­duc­tions of the artist’s draw­ings, paint­ings, and note­book pages. Sev­er­al essays guide the read­er year-by-year through Basquiat’s artis­tic career, from 1978 to his untime­ly death in 1988.”

The ten years the book cov­ers pro­vide enough mate­r­i­al for two or three vol­umes, and also hap­pen to tell the sto­ry of a cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion in which Basquiat was at the cen­ter, as TASCHEN writes:

The leg­end of Jean-Michel Basquiat is as strong as ever. Syn­ony­mous with New York in the 1980s, the artist first appeared in the late 1970s under the tag SAMO, spray­ing caus­tic com­ments and frag­ment­ed poems on the walls of the city. He appeared as part of a thriv­ing under­ground scene of visu­al arts and graf­fi­ti, hip hop, post-punk, and DIY film­mak­ing, which met in a boom­ing art world. As a painter with a strong per­son­al voice, Basquiat soon broke into the estab­lished milieu, exhibit­ing in gal­leries around the world.

Basquiat is now rec­og­nized—art schol­ar and cura­tor Dieter Buch­hart argues—as an artist who “eter­nal­ized… the exhil­a­rat­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for art, music, and social cri­tique in New York.” But for all the high praise he has gar­nered after his trag­ic over­dose at 27, in life his work was often “’explained away’ by his Afro-Hait­ian and Puer­to Rican her­itage,” writes Kris­ten Foland at Swamp. “Some art his­to­ri­ans and crit­ics, includ­ing Sharon F. Pat­ton, cat­e­go­rized his work as ‘prim­i­tive’ and called him a ‘black graf­fi­ti artist,’ a term he found inher­ent­ly racist.”

Basquiat recoiled at the idea of being seg­re­gat­ed and sin­gled out as a “black artist”; but he proud­ly cel­e­brat­ed black life and cul­tur­al forms in nar­ra­tive works rich with sym­bol­ism and poet­ry, mourn­ing and tri­umph. Asked about his sub­ject mat­ter, he once replied, “roy­al­ty, hero­ism and the streets.” Grand themes and set­tings were what he had in mind, and Nairne fit­ting­ly titles her essay in the TASCHEN book, “The Art of Sto­ry­telling.”

Per­haps the rea­son Basquiat’s life makes such a good sto­ry, for kids and grownups alike, is that he him­self was such a pow­er­ful sto­ry­teller. He weaved his per­son­al his­to­ry seam­less­ly into the social and polit­i­cal fab­ric that enmeshed him in the leg­endary late-sev­en­ties/ear­ly-eight­ies down­town New York scene. The new large for­mat TASCHEN book lets you get a close-up look at the fine details of his rev­o­lu­tion­ary can­vas­es, draw­ings, col­lages, wood pan­el paint­ings, and street poet­ry and paint­ing.

You can pur­chase the book through Ama­zon.

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:

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

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

Down­load 50,000 Art Books & Cat­a­logs from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions

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

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Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burger King Whopper–While Wishing the Burger Came from McDonald’s (1981)

in Art, Film, Food & Drink | December 12th, 2018

In the ear­ly 1980s, Dan­ish exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Jør­gen Leth came to Amer­i­ca intent on cap­tur­ing it live as it was actu­al­ly lived across that vast, still-new, and often strange coun­try. The result, 66 Scenes from Amer­i­ca, offers images of road­side motels and din­ers, desert land­scapes, the Man­hat­tan sky­line, miles of lone­ly high­way, and stars and stripes aplen­ty. Halfway through it all comes the longest, and per­haps most Amer­i­can, scene of all: Andy Warhol eat­ing a fast-food ham­burg­er. A few moments after he accom­plish­es that task, he deliv­ers the film’s most mem­o­rable line by far: “My name is Andy Warhol, and I just fin­ished eat­ing a ham­burg­er.”

“Leth did not know Warhol, but he was a bit obsessed with him so he def­i­nite­ly want­ed to have him in his movie,” writes Dai­l­yArt’s Zuzan­na Stan­s­ka. And so when Leth came to New York, he sim­ply showed up at Warhol’s Fac­to­ry and pitched him the idea of con­sum­ing a “sym­bol­ic” burg­er on film. “Warhol imme­di­ate­ly liked the idea and agreed to the scene – he liked it because it was such a real scene, some­thing he would like to do.”

When Warhol showed up at the pho­to stu­dio Leth had set up to shoot the scene, com­plete with a vari­ety of fast-food ham­burg­ers from which he could choose, he had only one ques­tion: “Where is the McDon­ald’s?” Leth had­n’t thought to pick one up from the Gold­en Arch­es as well, not know­ing that Warhol con­sid­ered McDon­ald’s pack­ag­ing “the most beau­ti­ful.”

Warhol had a deep inter­est in Amer­i­can brands. “What’s great about this coun­try is that Amer­i­ca start­ed the tra­di­tion where the rich­est con­sumers buy essen­tial­ly the same things as the poor­est,” he wrote in The Phi­los­o­phy of Andy Warhol. “You can be watch­ing TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the Pres­i­dent drinks Coke, Liz Tay­lor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of mon­ey can get you a bet­ter Coke than the one the bum on the cor­ner is drink­ing. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Sure­ly the same could be said of any par­tic­u­lar fast-food burg­er, even if Warhol could­n’t have his pre­ferred brand on that par­tic­u­lar day in New York in 1981. In the event, he chose a Whop­per from Burg­er King, still a well-known brand if hard­ly as icon­ic as McDon­ald’s — or, for that mat­ter, as icon­ic as Warhol him­self.

Above, you can see Leth talk­ing years lat­er about his expe­ri­ence film­ing Warhol.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

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)

Warhol’s Cin­e­ma: A Mir­ror for the Six­ties (1989)

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

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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See the Complete Works of Vermeer in Augmented Reality: Google Makes Them Available on Your Smartphone

in Art, Technology | December 4th, 2018


No muse­um could ever put on a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion. The prob­lem isn’t quan­ti­ty: thus far, only 36 works have been defin­i­tive­ly attrib­uted to the 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch painter of domes­tic scenes and por­traits, most famous­ly Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. But they all hang in col­lec­tions scat­tered around the world, not just in places like Ams­ter­dam and The Hague but Lon­don, New York, Paris, and else­where besides. Some have become too frag­ile to trav­el, and one, The Con­cert, was stolen in 1990 and has­n’t been seen since. But all of this makes a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion the per­fect con­cept to exe­cute in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, or rather aug­ment­ed real­i­ty — a con­cept just recent­ly exe­cut­ed by the Mau­rit­shuis muse­um and Google Arts & Cul­ture.

“In total, 18 muse­ums and pri­vate col­lec­tions from sev­en coun­tries con­tributed high-res­o­lu­tion images of the Ver­meers in their pos­ses­sion, which were then com­piled into a vir­tu­al muse­um by Google,” writes Giz­mod­o’s Vic­to­ria Song.

“To view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android. So long as you have a smart­phone with a work­ing cam­era, all you have to do is point your phone at a flat sur­face, wave it in a cir­cle, and voila — you, too, can have a vir­tu­al muse­um float­ing above your bed and night­stand. After that, you can pinch and zoom on each of the sev­en rooms to ‘enter’ the AR muse­um to view the paint­ings.” If you enter the vir­tu­al muse­um on a com­put­er, you can nav­i­gate a com­plete­ly vir­tu­al ver­sion of those themed rooms, of which you can catch glimpses in the GIF below.

Google’s aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, in oth­er words, allows not just the cre­ation of an entire vir­tu­al muse­um in which to view Ver­meer’s body of work togeth­er, but the cre­ation of such a muse­um in any loca­tion where you might pos­si­bly open the app. Those of us who tend toward fan­tasies of a high-pow­ered art col­lec­tion will, of course, want to give it a try in our homes and get a taste of what it would look like if we had the cash on hand to round up all the Ver­meers in the world our­selves. Whether the impe­cu­nious Ver­meer him­self — impe­cu­nious in part, no doubt, due to his lack of pro­lifi­ca­cy — enter­tained such dreams of wealth, his­to­ry has­n’t record­ed, though giv­en the unabashed domes­tic­i­ty of his sub­jects, he might well agree that, for an exhi­bi­tion of every­thing he ever paint­ed, there’s no place like home.

Again, to view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

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

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

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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Download Over 325 Free Art Books From the Getty Museum

in Art, Books | December 4th, 2018

cézanne

In 2014, Get­ty Pub­li­ca­tions announced the launch of its Vir­tu­al Library, where read­ers can freely browse and down­load 325 art books from the publisher’s back­list cat­a­logue. The Vir­tu­al Library con­sists of texts asso­ci­at­ed with sev­er­al Get­ty insti­tu­tions. Read­ers can view exten­sive­ly researched exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues from the J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um, includ­ing Paul Cézan­ne’s late-life water­colours, when the painter raised the still life to a high art (Cézanne in the Stu­dio: Still Life in Water­col­ors, 2004), as well as the woe­ful­ly under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed Flem­ish illus­tra­tions of the 15th and 16th cen­turies (Illu­mi­nat­ing the Renais­sance: The Tri­umph of Flem­ish Man­u­script, 2003).

The col­lec­tion also con­tains detailed trea­tis­es on art con­ser­va­tion from the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute, and schol­ar­ly works from the Get­ty Research Insti­tute, both of which include a mul­ti­tude of books on spe­cial­ized top­ics. Fan­cy read­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, the two leg­endary 17th cen­tu­ry painters who lived in the Nether­lands’ city of Antwerp? There’s a book on that.

Intrigued by all the pros­ti­tutes in French impres­sion­ism? Try Paint­ed Love: Pros­ti­tu­tion in French Art of the Impres­sion­ist Era (2003). Per­haps you’re par­tial to ancient vas­es, and have already read The Col­ors of Clay (2006), Pots & Plays (2007), and Greek Vas­es (1983)? Don’t wor­ry, the Getty’s vir­tu­al library has at least 8 more vase-ori­ent­ed books.

All of the Getty’s vir­tu­al library vol­umes are avail­able in a down­load­able PDF for­mat. If you’re look­ing for more free art books, please explore the resources in the Relat­eds below.

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

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 502 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load 50,000 Art Books & Cat­a­logs from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions

Down­load 200+ Free Mod­ern Art Books from the Guggen­heim Muse­um

2,000+ Archi­tec­ture & Art Books You Can Read Free at the Inter­net Archive

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Behold the Original Deck of Oblique Strategies Cards, Handwritten by Brian Eno Himself

in Art, Creativity, Music | December 3rd, 2018

“Hon­or thy error as a hid­den inten­tion.” “Work at a dif­fer­ent speed.” “Try fak­ing it!” These sug­ges­tions will sound famil­iar to every­one who’s ever flipped through the deck of cards known as Oblique Strate­gies. You can now do that dig­i­tal­ly, of course, but Oblique Strate­gies remains an essen­tial­ly phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, one whose shuf­fling and draw­ing reminds the user that they’re draw­ing from the well of chance for a way to break them through a cre­ative impasse or just rethink part of a project. It also began as thor­ough­ly a phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, invent­ed by pro­duc­er-artist-ambi­ent musi­cian Bri­an Eno and painter Peter Schmidt, who first came up with them in the pre-dig­i­tal days of 1974.

Back then, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, the con­cept for Eno and Schmidt’s “set of 115 cards with ellip­ti­cal imper­a­tives designed to spark in the user cre­ative con­nec­tions unob­tain­able through reg­u­lar modes of work” emerged as a form of “rad­i­cal inter­ven­tion with roots in East­ern phi­los­o­phy.”

Hav­ing first come on the mar­ket in the 1970s, Oblique Strate­gies has gone through sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion runs, usu­al­ly pack­aged in hand­some box­es with the deck­’s name embla­zoned in gold. “The first four edi­tions are out of print and collector’s items (and priced to match). The 5th edi­tion is cur­rent­ly avail­able from Eno’s web­site for £30 (about $50). In 2013 a lim­it­ed 6th edi­tion of 500 num­bered sets were avail­able but quick­ly sold out.” At this moment, you can find one import­ed set on Ama­zon.

But it seems that the very first set of Oblique Strate­gies, fea­tured in Schnei­der’s post, is unavail­able at any price. Writ­ten in Eno’s own hand, some­times cur­sive and some­times block, on cards with a wood­en-look­ing tex­ture and with­out the round­ed cor­ners that char­ac­ter­ize the com­mer­cial ver­sion, these first Oblique Strate­gies include “Don’t be fright­ened to dis­play your tal­ents,” “If a thing can be said, it can be said sim­ply,” and “Do we need holes?” Those who have fol­lowed Eno’s work will sure­ly appre­ci­ate in par­tic­u­lar the card that says to “use non-musi­cians,” “non-musi­cian” being one of Eno’s pre­ferred titles for him­self, espe­cial­ly when work­ing in a musi­cal capac­i­ty. The total pack­age of Oblique Strate­gies may have grown more refined over the years, but this hand­made first set does have a cer­tain imme­di­a­cy, and also, in a sense, the impri­matur of his­to­ry: after all, they worked for Bri­an Eno.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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

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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Anatomy of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Painting by Jackson Pollock (or Any Other Artist)

in Art, Chemistry, History, Science, Technology | December 3rd, 2018

In the old days, deter­min­ing an art forgery was most­ly a mat­ter of nar­ra­tive deduc­tion, a la Sher­lock Holmes.

Thi­a­go Piwowar­czyk and Jef­frey Tay­lor, founders of New York Art Foren­sics, employ such tech­niques to estab­lish prove­nance, trac­ing the chain of own­er­ship of any giv­en work back to its orig­i­nal sale by research­ing cat­a­logues, title trans­fers, and cor­re­spon­dence.

But they also bring a num­ber of high tech tools to the table, to fur­ther prove—or in the case of the alleged Jack­son Pol­lock drip paint­ing above, disprove—a work’s authen­tic­i­ty.

In the WIRED video above, these experts, whose pedi­gree includes degrees in Chem­istry, Foren­sic Sci­ence, and Com­par­a­tive His­to­ry, a Visu­al Arts Man­age­ment text­book, and two Frick Col­lec­tion Fel­low­ships, break the sleuthing process down to five crit­i­cal steps:

1. Estab­lish prove­nance

Obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy has a place in the process too, in the form of a high­ly unre­li­able fax, alleged­ly sent in 1997. It pur­ports to be a pho­to­copy of a type­writ­ten let­ter from 1970, writ­ten by a gallery own­er who talked one of the artist’s for­mer girl­friends into part­ing with a num­ber of works after his death.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the painting’s cur­rent own­er, Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor could find no proof that the gallery or its own­er ever exist­ed. The let­ter also botch­es Pollock’s death date and odd­ly, there’s a blank where the sender’s num­ber would nor­mal­ly be.

Due dili­gence reveals noth­ing resem­bling this paint­ing in the cat­a­logue raison­né of Pollock’s work.

2. Close up visu­al analy­sis

This can be accom­plished with tools as sim­ple as the flash­light and plas­tic caliper Tay­lor uses to exam­ine the sta­ple holes found at reg­u­lar inter­vals along the unsigned can­vas’ edges. In the 1940s, artists start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward sta­ples over tacks as a method for secur­ing their can­vas­es to stretch­er bars, but would Pol­lock have done so? Like­ly not, to hear him tell it:

I hard­ly ever stretch my can­vas before paint­ing. I pre­fer to tack the unstretched can­vas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resis­tance of a hard sur­face.

Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor draw on their oth­er sens­es, too, when per­form­ing this in-depth visu­al inspec­tion. A deep sniff reveals that teabags were used to dis­col­or the can­vas, in hope of mak­ing it appear old­er than it is.

3. Pho­tog­ra­phy with a mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing cam­era 

This camera’s abil­i­ty to see the Ultra-Vio­let spec­trum allows our foren­sic experts to spot restora­tions, under­draw­ing, and pen­ti­men­ti. Here, the cam­era revealed an under­ly­ing paint­ing whose geo­met­ric lay­out is unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of Pol­lock, as well as a sus­pi­cious­ly ama­teur­ish patch job on the back of the can­vas, anoth­er attempt to make the paint­ing appear old­er than it is.

4. Exam­i­na­tion with an X‑ray flu­o­res­cence spec­trom­e­ter

It looks like a cool Star Wars prop, and allows the exam­in­ers to iden­ti­fy ele­ments in the pig­ment. Here, our “Pol­lock” gets a pass. There’s tita­ni­um (as in Tita­ni­um White) in evi­dence, but that’s per­mis­si­ble for any­thing paint­ed from the 30s onward.

5. Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing and Analy­sis by Raman Spec­troscopy

The forg­er might have got­ten away with it if it weren’t for those med­dling kids and their Raman Spec­tro­scope! The minus­cule sam­ples of paint Piwowar­czyk har­vests from the can­vas reveal all sorts of organ­ic debris that have no place in a Pol­lock, such as dry­wall dust and an acrylic that didn’t come into use ‘til the 1960s.

In con­clu­sion, exer­cise cau­tion and con­sult the experts before pur­chas­ing a high val­ue drip paint­ing this hol­i­day sea­son! Accord­ing to Piwowar­czyk, the fakes—over 100 and pre­sum­ably still counting—outstrip the num­ber of drip paint­ings Pol­lock cre­at­ed through­out his life­time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edi­tion of Galileo’s Sci­en­tif­ic Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC from Decem­ber 6 — 20 for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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