“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper & Francis Bacon Influenced David Lynch’s Cinematic Vision

in Art, Film | August 29th, 2017

When an artist becomes an adjective—think Orwellian, Kafkaesque, or Joycean—one of two things can hap­pen: their work can be super­fi­cial­ly appro­pri­at­ed, reduced to a col­lec­tion of obvi­ous ges­tures clum­si­ly com­bined in bad pas­tiche. Or their dis­tinc­tive style can inspire artists with more skill and depth to make orig­i­nal cre­ations that may them­selves become touch­stones for the future. What might dis­tin­guish one from the oth­er is the degree to which we under­stand not only the work of Orwell, Kaf­ka, or Joyce, but also the work that influ­enced them.

When it comes to David Lynch, there’s no doubt that the “Lynchi­an” stands as a mod­el for so much con­tem­po­rary film and tele­vi­sion. But while some direc­tors make excel­lent use of Lynch’s influ­ence, oth­ers strive for Lynchi­an atmos­phere only to reach a kind of unin­spired, unin­ten­tion­al par­o­dy. The sub­lime bal­ance of humor and hor­ror Lynch has achieved over the course of his extra­or­di­nary career seems like the kind of thing one shouldn’t attempt with­out seri­ous study and prepa­ra­tion.

With­out Lynch’s sur­re­al­ist vision, odd­ball char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and dia­logue fall flat—as in Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son, which Lynch him­self says “sucked.” So what defines the Lynchi­an? A very dis­tinc­tive use of music, for one thing. And as the video essay above by Men­no Koois­tra demon­strates, the sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of paint­ing. Lynch him­self began paint­ing and draw­ing at a young age and stud­ied art at the School of the Muse­um of Fine Arts in Boston in the six­ties. While he found his call­ing in film, his art edu­ca­tion pre­pared him to dream up the unfor­get­table com­po­si­tions of the Lynchi­an world.

Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per, Arnold Böck­lin, and the mas­ter of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Fran­cis Bacon—all of these painters have direct­ly informed Lynch’s night­mar­ish mise-en-scène. As you’ll see in Kooistra’s video, in side by side com­par­isons, Lynch adapts the work of his favorite artists for his own pur­pos­es. In an inter­view clip, he says he dis­cov­ered Bacon at a gallery in 1966 and found the expe­ri­ence “thrilling”—later using the painter’s work as inspi­ra­tion for The Ele­phant Man and Twin Peak’s dis­ori­ent­ing Red Room.

We see Lynch’s homage to his favorite painters in Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet, as well as the cur­rent, third sea­son of Twin Peaks, over which he has (as he well should) com­plete cre­ative con­trol. You may not find Fran­cis Bacon’s dis­turb­ing por­traits quite as thrilling as Lynch does, or draw on Edward Hop­per for a warped ver­sion of 1950’s Amer­i­cana. These are Lynch’s ref­er­ences; they res­onate on his par­tic­u­lar fre­quen­cy, and hence pro­vide him with visu­al frames for his own per­son­al dream log­ic.

But what we might take away from “The Art of David Lynch” is that the Lynchi­an is nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to a painter­ly sen­si­bil­i­ty, and that with­out the influ­ence of fine art on com­po­si­tion, col­or, and fram­ing, a Lynchi­an pro­duc­tion may be in dan­ger of looking—as he says of that dis­ap­point­ing Twin Peaks’ sec­ond season—“stupid and goofy.”

via IndieWire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

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

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The Dune Coloring & Activity Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Created Countless Hours of Peculiar Fun for Kids

in Coloring Books, Film | August 29th, 2017

David Lynch’s Dune, the $40 mil­lion cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle based on Frank Her­bert’s sci­ence-fic­tion epic, faced more than its fair share of chal­lenges: Lynch’s lack of artis­tic con­trol, elab­o­rate but not quite suc­cess­ful spe­cial effects, source mate­r­i­al so unsuit­ed to fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion that audi­ences had to read glos­saries before the first screen­ings. In an attempt to get ahead of bad buzz, the mas­sive adver­tis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing blitz had begun well before the movie’s Christ­mas 1984 release, but none of its flaks seemed to under­stand the enter­prise of Dune any bet­ter than most of those view­ers did.

Case in point: the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books, evi­dence that, as Comics Alliance’s Jason Miche­litch writes, “what Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures want­ed was a Star Wars of their very own — a whiz-bang space adven­ture for eight-year-olds that they could mer­chan­dise the heck out of to the wide-eyed kids that just a year pre­vi­ous had whee­dled their par­ents into buy­ing plush ewok dolls and toy lightsabers. Instead, Lynch and pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­tis pro­vid­ed them with a dark epic actu­al­ly fit for con­sump­tion by think­ing adults. Imag­ine their cha­grin.”

Mered­ith Yanos at Coil­house offers a more detailed write­up of the hours of fun on offer in these tonal­ly bizarre books: “First, there’s the Dune Col­or­ing Book, 44 pages of lurid scenes fea­tur­ing con­spir­a­to­r­i­al char­ac­ters from the film. Then there’s the Dune Activ­i­ty Book. 60 pages of puz­zles and games, mazes and more pic­tures for col­or­ing,” includ­ing a recipe for “No-Bake Spice Cook­ies” that sub­sti­tutes com­mon cin­na­mon for Dune’s Spice, a  “wacky aware­ness spec­trum nar­cot­ic that con­trols the uni­verse.” Oth­er vol­umes con­tain Dune-themed paper dolls, Dune-themed word puz­zles, and even Dune-themed math prob­lems.

Though Dune remains pri­mar­i­ly remem­bered as one of the worst flops in cin­e­ma his­to­ry (and even Lynch him­self usu­al­ly refus­es to dis­cuss it), a few fans have also come to its defense over the past 32 years. Some of them have no doubt want­ed to pass this revi­sion­ist appre­ci­a­tion down to their chil­dren, a task the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books may (or may not) make eas­i­er. If you buy them on Ama­zon, you’ll have to pay between $45 and $75 each — noth­ing com­pared to the cost of any­thing in the actu­al pro­duc­tion of Dune, of course, but still, you may want to keep an eye on eBay instead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The Met, New York Pub­lic Library, Smith­son­ian & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read 1,000 Editions of The Village Voice: A Digital Archive of the Iconic New York City Paper

in Art, Film, Magazines, Music | August 25th, 2017

After The Vil­lage Voice announced this week that it was fold­ing its print oper­a­tion, a cou­ple peo­ple com­pared the ven­er­a­ble NYC rag’s demise to the end of Gawk­er, the snarky online tabloid tak­en down by Hulk Hogan and his shad­owy financier Peter Thiel. For too many rea­sons to list, this com­par­i­son seems to my mind hard­ly apt. There’s a ges­ture toward the Voice’s pro­fane unruli­ness, but the alter­na­tive week­ly, found­ed in 1955, tran­scend­ed the blog age’s sopho­moric nihilism. The her­met­ic con­tain­er of its newsprint sealed out froth­ing com­ment sec­tions; no links fer­ried read­ers through rivers of per­son­al­ized algo­rithms.

The Voice pub­lished hard jour­nal­ism that many, includ­ing Voice writ­ers them­selves, have rue­ful­ly revis­it­ed of late. Its music and cul­ture writ­ers like Nat Hentoff, Lester Bangs, Sasha Frere-Jones, Robert Christ­gau and so many oth­ers are some of the smartest in the busi­ness. Its colum­nists, edi­tors, and reviewers—Andrew Sar­ris, J. Hober­man, Robert Siet­se­ma, Tom Rob­bins, Greg Tate, Michael Mus­to, Thu­lani Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates—equally so.

In its over six­ty-year run, Voice writ­ers sat in the front rows for the birth for hard bop, free jazz, punk, no wave, and hip-hop, and all man­ner of down­town exper­i­men­tal­ism in-between and after.

Amongst the many remem­brances from cur­rent and for­mer Voice staff in a recent Esquire oral his­to­ry, one from edi­tor and writer Camille Dodero stands out: “The alt-weekly’s pur­pose was, in the­o­ry, speak­ing truth to pow­er and the abil­i­ty to be irrev­er­ent, and print the word ‘fuck’ while doing so.’” Mis­sion accom­plished many times over, as you can see your­self in Google’s Vil­lage Voice archive, fea­tur­ing 1,000 scanned issues going all the back to 1955, when Nor­man Mail­er found­ed the paper with Ed Fanch­er, Dan Wolf, and John Wilcock. There are “blind spots” in Google’s archive of the Voice, not­ed John Cook at the erst­while Gawk­er. In 2009, his “search­es didn’t turn up any cov­er­age of Nor­man Mailer’s 1969 cam­paign or the Stonewall riots… and there’s not much on Rudy Giuliani’s may­oral bid.” Many years lat­er, months and years in the Google archive remain blank, “no edi­tions avail­able.”

The Voice has had its own blind spots. Writer Wal­ter Troy Spencer referred to Stonewall, for exam­ple, as “The Great Fag­got Rebel­lion” and used a phrase that has per­haps become the most weari­some in Amer­i­can Eng­lish: “there was most­ly ugli­ness on both sides.” This anti-gay prej­u­dice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of the paper’s first few years, but by 1982, just as the AIDS cri­sis began to fil­ter into pub­lic con­scious­ness, the Voice was the sec­ond orga­ni­za­tion in the US to offer extend­ed ben­e­fits to domes­tic part­ners. It became a promi­nent voice for New York’s LGBTQ cul­ture and pol­i­tics, through all the buy­outs, cut­backs, and unbeat­able com­pe­ti­tion that brought it to its cur­rent pass.

The paper also became a voice for the most inter­est­ing things hap­pen­ing in the city at any giv­en time, such as the goings on at a Bow­ery dive called CBGB in 1975. Char­ac­ter stud­ies have long been a Voice sta­ple. Lester Bangs’ write-up of Iggy Pop two years lat­er cut to the heart of the mat­ter: “It’s as if some­one writhing in tor­ment has made that writhing into a kind of poet­ry.” Back in ’75, Andrew Sar­ris wrote a rather jaw-drop­ping pro­file of Hervé  Vil­lechaize (in which he begins a sen­tence, “The prob­lem of midgets….”).  …. the more I look through Voice back issues, the more I think it might have been a Gawk­er of its time, but as one­time colum­nist Har­ry Siegel tells Esquire, “what made it unique depends a lot on the age of who you’re ask­ing. It was a very dif­fer­ent paper in dif­fer­ent decades. It was valu­able enough for a long time that peo­ple paid mon­ey to read it.”

Indeed its first issue cost 5 cents, though by the non­de­script cov­er, above, you wouldn’t guess it would amuse or tit­il­late in the ways the Vil­lage Voice became well-known for—in its columns, pho­tos, car­toons, and lib­er­tine adver­tis­ing and clas­si­fieds. But most peo­ple these days remem­ber it as “free every Wednes­day,” to prof­fer dance, film, the­ater, music, restau­rants, to line sub­way cars and bird­cages, and to open up the city to its read­ers. The Voice is dead, long live the Voice.

Enter the dig­i­tal archive of the Voice here.

Writ­ings from the Voice have been col­lect­ed in these antholo­gies: The Vil­lage Voice Anthol­o­gy (1956–1980) and The Vil­lage Voice Read­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Down­load 36 Dadaist Mag­a­zines from the The Dig­i­tal Dada Archive (Plus Oth­er Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

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

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Watch Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Acted Out Literally as a Short Crime Film

in Film, Music | August 23rd, 2017

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”–you can play it on a 1910 fair­ground organ; you can get Siri to sing the song on your iPhone and use it to help explain string the­o­ry; and you can even turn the song into a vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence. There’s noth­ing you can’t do with “Bohemi­an Rhapsody”–down to and includ­ing mak­ing it the basis of a short crime film. “Fred­die” is played by Jeff Schine above; and Deb­o­rah Ramaglia plays “Mama.” You know the script.

via Digg

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Relat­ed Con­tent: 

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

1910 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

Inside the Rhap­sody: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’ (2002)

Bohemi­an Grav­i­ty: String The­o­ry Explored With an A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody

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India on Film, 1899–1947: An Archive of 90 Historic Films Now Online

in Film, History, Nature, Travel | August 21st, 2017

India, the largest democ­ra­cy in the world, is a ris­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, and a major play­er in the fields of media, enter­tain­ment, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

But for many arm­chair trav­el­ers, sub­con­ti­nen­tal moder­ni­ty takes a back­seat to post­card visions of ele­phants, teem­ing rus­tic streets, and snake charm­ers.

Fans of Rud­yard Kipling and E.M. Forster will thrill to the vin­tage footage in a just released British Film Insti­tute online archive, India on Film (see a trail­er above).

1914’s The Won­der­ful Fruit of the Trop­ics, a sten­cil-coloured French-pro­duced primer on the edi­ble flo­ra of India offers just the right blend of exoti­cism and reas­sur­ance (“the fruit of a man­go is excel­lent as a food”) for a new­ly arrived British house­wife.

A Native Street in India (1906) speaks to the pop­u­lous­ness that con­tin­ues to define a coun­try sched­uled to out­pace China’s num­bers with­in the next 10 years.

An East­ern Mar­ket fol­lows a Pun­jabi farmer’s trek to town, to buy and sell and take in the big city sights.

The archive’s biggest celeb is sure­ly activist Mahat­ma Gand­hi, whose great nephew, Kanu, enjoyed unlim­it­ed film­ing access on the assur­ance that he would nev­er ask his uncle to pose.

The Raj makes itself known in 1925’s King Emper­or’s Cup Race, a Han­d­ley Page biplane arriv­ing in Cal­cut­ta in 1917, and sev­er­al films doc­u­ment­ing Edward Prince of Wales’ 1922 tour

Explore the full BFI’s full India on Film: 1899–1947 playlist here. It fea­tures 90 films in total, with maybe more to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Par­vati Saves the World: Watch a Remix of Bol­ly­wood Films That Com­bats Rape in India

Google’s Mov­ing Ad About 1947 Par­ti­tion of India & Pak­istan Tops 10 Mil­lion Views

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How TV Addles Kids’ Brains: A Short Film Directed by Godfrey Reggio (Maker of Koyaanisqatsi) & Scored by Philip Glass

in Film, Television | August 18th, 2017

On Octo­ber 4, 1982, “more than 5,000 peo­ple filled the Radio City Music Hall to expe­ri­ence a remark­able event. That event was the world pre­miere of Koy­aanisqat­si.” So says the poster for the wide release of that film, an exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary with­out spo­ken words on the nat­ur­al and man­made envi­ron­ment that nei­ther looked nor sound­ed — nor felt — like any­thing many of its view­ers had ever expe­ri­enced in a movie the­ater before.

Unable to muster any of their stan­dard reac­tions, they had no choice but to sit and observe as, in slow motion and fast motion and every speed in between, water­falls thun­dered, chasms yawned, sky­scrap­ers soared, com­muters scur­ried, and rock­ets launched before their eyes — all to the music of Philip Glass. You might say that Koy­aanisqat­si (see trail­er below), as well as its for­mal­ly sim­i­lar sequels Powaqqat­si and Naqoyqat­si, puts its view­ers in an altered state of mind.

The tril­o­gy’s direc­tor, a for­mer monk-in-train­ing named God­frey Reg­gio, might say the same thing about tele­vi­sion, whose flick­er­ing blueish pres­ence emerges from time to time in his work, but he would­n’t mean it in a good way. In 1995, between Powaqqat­si and Naqoyqat­si, he made a short called Evi­dence which, in the words of koyaanisqatsi.org, “looks into the eyes of chil­dren watch­ing tele­vi­sion — in this case Walt Disney’s Dum­bo. Though engaged in a dai­ly rou­tine, they appear drugged, retard­ed, like the patients of a men­tal hos­pi­tal.”

Accom­pa­ny­ing and in a sense com­ment­ing on their glazed, often slack-jawed expres­sions, we once again, as in Reg­gio’s trans­fix­ing fea­ture doc­u­men­taries, have a Glass-com­posed score. Unlike movie­go­ers in a the­ater, “tele­vi­sion view­ers become prey to the television’s own light impuls­es, they go into an altered state — a trans­fixed con­di­tion where the eyes, the mind, the breath­ing of the sub­ject is clear­ly under the con­trol of an out­side force. In a poet­ic sense and with­out exag­ger­at­ing one might say that the tele­vi­sion tech­nol­o­gy is eat­ing the sub­jects who sit before its gaze.”

In the more than two decades since, this kind of crit­i­cism of tele­vi­sion has giv­en way to a more gen­er­al crit­i­cism of elec­tron­ic media, most of whose cur­rent­ly pop­u­lar forms did­n’t exist in 1995; Reg­gio and Glass’ most recent col­lab­o­ra­tion, 2013’s Vis­i­tors, deals with “human­i­ty’s trance­like rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy.” You and your chil­dren may have escaped the “trac­tor beam that holds its sub­jects in total con­trol” as Evi­dence depicts it, but in the 21st cen­tu­ry the num­ber of trac­tor beams has great­ly mul­ti­plied. And so the ques­tion remains worth ask­ing: which ones have you under their con­trol?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Koy­aanisqat­si at 1552% Speed

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Mar­shall McLuhan Explains Why We’re Blind to How Tech­nol­o­gy Changes Us, Rais­ing the Ques­tion: What Have the Inter­net & Social Media Done to Us?

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Jim Carrey Needs to Paint: “Painting Frees Me, from the Past and Future, from Regret and Worry”

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Film | August 18th, 2017

In his top-gross­ing come­dies, actor Jim Car­rey dis­played an antic qual­i­ty that seemed to rule over his per­son­al life as well. While oth­er stars used inter­views as oppor­tu­ni­ties to nor­malise them­selves to the civil­ians in the audi­ence, clown prince Car­rey was relent­less, an uncon­trol­lable fire hose of fun­ny faces and voic­es that felt not unlike demons.

All that out­put was exhaust­ing, and caused many to won­der if the man was capa­ble of calm­ing down long enough to receive any mean­ing­ful input.

His per­for­mances in films such as the Tru­man Show and Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind sug­gest­ed that per­haps he was…

As did the rev­e­la­tion that he spent a lot of his child­hood in his bed­room draw­ing — the flip side to his crazy liv­ing room per­for­mances, staged, in part, to keep an emo­tion­al­ly trou­bled fam­i­ly from sink­ing any low­er. He also drew in school, aggra­vat­ing teach­ers with unau­tho­rised por­traits.

As Car­rey recalled in a 2011 inter­view:

After I became famous, my sixth-grade teacher sent me sketch­es she had con­fis­cat­ed. She kept them because she thought they were cute. She also knew how to har­ness the ener­gy. If I was qui­et, she would give me 15 min­utes at the end of class to per­form. Today, I’d be on Rital­in, and Ace Ven­tu­ra would have nev­er been made.

These days, the fun­ny man seems to have turned his back on per­form­ing in favor of a more con­tem­pla­tive visu­al arts prac­tice. His most recent act­ing cred­it is over a year old. As David Bushell’s doc­u­men­tary short, I Need­ed Col­or, above reveals, the quan­ti­ty of Carrey’s out­put is still impres­sive, but there’s a qual­i­ta­tive dif­fer­ence where the artist is con­cerned.

His face and body are calm, and the crazed imper­a­tive to enter­tain seems to have left him. Watch­ing him go about his work, one is remind­ed of car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Barry’s obser­va­tions about the neu­ro­log­i­cal con­nec­tion between the abil­i­ty to go down the rab­bit hole of art and a child’s men­tal health:

I think it’s what keeps us sane. I think about how, if I’m sit­ting here with a kid who’s four years old and I have all these mark­ers and I say, do you want to draw, and that kid’s too freaked out to draw, we’d be wor­ried about that kid a lit­tle bit, wouldn’t you? We’d be wor­ried about them emo­tion­al­ly. OK, on this side I have a 40-year-old, same sit­u­a­tion, she’s too scared to draw, but we’re not wor­ried about her. Why? Because there is a tac­it under­stand­ing that some­thing is going on when kids are play­ing or [draw­ing] that has some­thing to do with their men­tal health. All of us know that if a kid is not allowed to play till he’s 21, he’s going to be a nut. He’s going to be a psy­chopath, actu­al­ly. The brain stud­ies they’ve done of kids in deep play show that their brains are iden­ti­cal to an adult’s brain that is in cre­ative con­cen­tra­tion. We know that play is essen­tial for men­tal health. I would argue that so is draw­ing.

Art saves lives, right?

Carrey’s ear­li­er suc­cess affords him the lux­u­ry of time and mon­ey to immerse him­self in his new voca­tion with­out lim­it­ing him­self to any one style or medi­um. Giant paint­ings, tiny sculp­tures, works that involve black light, squeegees, or shred­ded can­vas stitched back togeth­er with wire are all crick­et.

Giv­en his movie star sta­tus, nasty reviews are to be expect­ed, but approval is no longer what Car­rey is seek­ing:

When I paint and sculpt it stops the world for me, as if all time has been sus­pend­ed. My spir­it is com­plete­ly engaged, my heart is engaged, and I feel com­plete­ly free. I think I just like cre­at­ing. All of it is a por­tal into present, into absolute, qui­et, gen­tle, still­ness. This involve­ment, this pres­ence, is free­dom from con­cern. That’s har­mo­ny with the uni­verse.

Those who can’t make it to Sig­na­ture Gal­leries in Las Vegas this Sep­tem­ber 23 for a $10,000 per cou­ple open­ing of Carrey’s paint­ings can take a gan­der at his work for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

Jim Car­rey Sings a Pret­ty Damn Good Cov­er of The Bea­t­les “I Am the Wal­rus”

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Color Palettes of Your Favorite Films: The Royal Tenenbaums, Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner & More

in Film | August 17th, 2017

We tend to think of film as rough­ly divid­ed into the “black and white” and “col­or” eras, the lat­ter ush­ered in by such lav­ish Tech­ni­col­or pro­duc­tions as Gone with the Wind and The Wiz­ard of Oz. But we also know it’s not as sim­ple as that: those pic­tures came out in Hol­ly­wood’s “gold­en year” of 1939, but some film­mak­ers had already been exper­i­ment­ing with col­or, and the gold­en age of black-and-white film would con­tin­ue through the 1960s. Movies today still occa­sion­al­ly dare to ven­ture into the nev­er-entire­ly-shut­tered realm of the mono­chrome, but on the whole, col­or reigns supreme.

Even though most movies now use col­or, few use it to its fullest advan­tage. Col­or gives view­ers some­thing more to look at, of course, but it can also give a movie its visu­al iden­ti­ty. Think of the films you’ve seen that you can call back most vivid­ly to mind, almost as if you had a pro­jec­tor inside your head, and most of them will prob­a­bly have a dis­tinc­tive col­or palette.

The most mem­o­rable cin­e­mat­ic images, in oth­er words, will have been com­posed not just with any col­or they hap­pened to need, but with a very spe­cif­ic set of col­ors, delib­er­ate­ly assem­bled by the film­mak­ers for its par­tic­u­lar expres­sive­ness.

For a few years now, the Twit­ter account Cin­e­ma Palettes has drawn out and iso­lat­ed those col­ors, ten per film, for all to see. “Though based on a momen­tary still, each spec­trum of shades seems to encap­su­late its movie’s over­all mood,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Leah Pel­le­gri­ni, point­ing to “the somber, oth­er­world­ly blues of Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows: Part 2, the dream­like pinks and pur­ples of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the cloy­ing­ly pret­ty pas­tels of Edward Scis­sorhands, and the earth­ly, organ­ic greens and browns of Atone­ment.”

It will sur­prise nobody to see the work of Wes Ander­son, famed for the care he gives not just to col­or but every visu­al ele­ment of his film, appear more than once on the feed. Here we see Cin­e­ma Palettes’ selec­tions from The Roy­al Tenen­baums, as well as from Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Reser­voir Dogs, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s A Clock­work Orange, and Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner. The project reveals an aspect of film­mak­ing that few of us may think con­scious­ly about, but nev­er­the­less reflects the nature of cin­e­ma itself: the best films select not just the right col­ors but the right aspects of real­i­ty itself to present, to inten­si­fy, to dimin­ish, and to leave out entire­ly.

Explore more films and col­ors at Cin­e­ma Palettes.

via My Mod­ern Met and h/t Natal­ie W‑S

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Film­mak­ers Like Kubrick, Jodor­owsky, Taran­ti­no, Cop­po­la & Miyaza­ki Use Col­or to Tell Their Sto­ries

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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