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

in Art, Technology, Television | April 3rd, 2012

Say what you will about mid-eight­ies Amer­i­can cul­ture, but how many his­tor­i­cal moments could bring togeth­er a world-famous visu­al artist and rock star over a gen­uine­ly inno­v­a­tive con­sumer prod­uct? Maybe Apple could orches­trate some­thing sim­i­lar today; after all, we endure no drought of celebri­ty enthu­si­asm for iPods, iPads, iMacs, and iPhones. But could they come up with par­tic­i­pants to match the icon­ic grav­i­ty of Andy Warhol and Deb­bie Har­ry? In the clip above, both of them arrive at the 1985 launch of the Com­modore Ami­ga, and the sil­ver-wigged one sits down to demon­strate the per­son­al com­put­er’s then-unpar­al­leled graph­i­cal pow­er by “paint­ing” the Blondie front­wom­an’s por­trait. He tints it blue, clicks some red paint buck­et here, clicks some yel­low paint buck­et there, and before we know it, we’re gaz­ing upon a Warho­lian image ready for admi­ra­tion, one we too could wield the dig­i­tal pow­er to cre­ate for a mere $1295 — in 1985 dol­lars.

To watch Warhol at the Ami­ga is to watch a man encounter a machine whose func­tions dove­tail uncan­ni­ly well with his own. The way he uses the com­put­er casts a light on what peo­ple seem to find most bril­liant and most infu­ri­at­ing about his work. “All he does is select fill and click on her hair and it turns yel­low and its done?” types one YouTube com­menter. “Her face is fuck­ing blue.” Depart­ing from the stan­dard tone of YouTube dis­course, anoth­er com­menter tries to break it down: “As an artist myself, I find Andy Warhol a genius in mak­ing him­self famous for art that any­one can do. I could take the same pic­ture of Debra [sic] Har­ry and do the same thing in Pho­to­shop. Andy Warhol was great at being Andy Warhol. His art was sim­ply an exten­sion of him­self — sim­ple and col­or­ful.” Indeed, Warhol and Har­ry alike seem to under­stand that their work con­sists as much in the mate­r­i­al they pro­duce as in who they are, leav­ing no dis­cernible bound­ary between the iden­ti­ty and val­ue of the cre­ator and the iden­ti­ty and val­ue of the cre­at­ed.

Ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts of Andy Warhol and/or the Com­modore Ami­ga might also give his 1986 inter­view in Ami­ga World a look, despite its sketchy scan qual­i­ty. It took place dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the MTV music- and talk-show Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes, whose Ami­ga-enhanced pro­mo spot (which fea­tures Deb­bie Har­ry) you can watch above. “Do you think [the Ami­ga] will push the artists?” Ami­ga World asks. “Do you think that peo­ple will be inclined to use all the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of the art, music, video, etc.?” “That’s the best part about it,” Warhol replies. “An artist can real­ly do the whole thing. Actu­al­ly, he can make a film with every­thing on it, music and sound and art… every­thing.” “How do you feel about the fact that every­one’s work will now look like your own?” Ami­ga World asks. “But it does­n’t,” Warhol replies. Alas, Andy Warhol would not live to take advan­tage of the unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid devel­op­ment of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy the nineties would bring, but that par­tic­u­lar rev­o­lu­tion has offered us all, in some sense, the chance to get Warho­lian.

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:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol and Bian­ca Jag­ger

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Has Wes Anderson Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Critics Take Up the Debate

in Business, Film, Television | March 19th, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, we post­ed a pair of Wes Ander­son-direct­ed tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials adver­tis­ing the Hyundai Azera. While I under­stood that, at one time, a known auteur using his cin­e­mat­ic pow­ers to pitch sen­si­ble sedans would have raised hack­les, I did­n’t real­ize that it could still spark a live­ly debate today. See­ing as Open Cul­ture has already fea­tured com­mer­cials by the likes of David Lynch, Fred­eri­co Felli­ni, Ing­mar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard — and I could­n’t resist link­ing to Errol Mor­ris’ when dis­cussing El Wingador — I assumed any issues sur­round­ing this sort of busi­ness had already been set­tled. On Twit­ter, the New York­er’s Richard Brody, author of a hefty tome on Godard, seemed to cor­rob­o­rate this con­clu­sion: “Bergman made com­mer­cials, so did Godard; the more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the less the artist need wor­ry about it.” “Also,” the Chica­go Sun-Times’ Jim Emer­son tweet­ed, “the, con­cept of “sell­out” no longer exists.”

From all the ensu­ing back-and-forth between crit­ics and cinephiles emerged Brody’s New York­er blog post, “Wes Ander­son: Clas­sics and Com­mer­cials.” Point­ing out that “so many great paint­ings were made for popes and kings and patrons, and great build­ings spon­sored by tycoons and cor­po­ra­tions,” Brody finds that “the bet­ter and stronger and more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the more like­ly it is that any­thing he or she does will bear the artist’s mark and embody the artist’s essence. Those who are most endan­gered by the mak­ing of com­mer­cials (of what­ev­er sort in what­ev­er medi­um) are those whose abil­i­ties are more frag­ile, more pre­car­i­ous, more incip­i­ent, less devel­oped.” But a dis­sent­ing voice appears in the com­ment sec­tion: “The rea­son that Godard and Ander­son can make com­mer­cials that feel more like short films is not so much because their tal­ents are more devel­oped; it’s because their rep­u­ta­tion is more secure. [ … ] It would be bet­ter to regard these com­mer­cials as short films financed by a com­pa­ny’s patron­age (with a few strings attached) than as com­mer­cials prop­er.”

An even more force­ful objec­tion comes from Chris Michael in the Guardian: “Is it worth remain­ing scep­ti­cal about art made in the direct ser­vice of a sales pitch? I think it is. Does it cheap­en your tal­ent to con­sis­tent­ly sell its actu­al goals to the high­est bid­der? I think it does. When the goal or per­sua­sive intent does not ‘res­onate with audi­ence in mean­ing­ful way’, but rather ’employ style to con­flate love for artist with love for prod­uct’, there’s a gen­uine, full-frontal, non-imag­i­nary assault on the integri­ty of the art’s mean­ing. Bet­ter to ask: What mean­ing? What art? Tak­ing it fur­ther, can a car ad ever be art?” When Slate’s For­rest Wick­man entered the fray, he hauled a Dar­ren Aronof­sky-direct­ed Kohl’s spot in with him to demon­strate that “that there is such a thing as sell­ing out,” com­par­ing it unfa­vor­ably with Ander­son­’s ads as “noth­ing more than a sec­ond-rate ripoff, a cheap copy of ads and music videos past.”

Michael remains unim­pressed: “Aronof­sky real­ly sold out least: by not pros­ti­tut­ing his style and deliv­ery, by not wrap­ping any­thing of him­self around a dull car or depart­ment store, by just doing the job for the mon­ey like a pro­fes­sion­al. That, I can respect.” Respond­ing, Brody holds fast in defense of Ander­son­’s ads, one of which he calls “a feat of aston­ish­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty. “These lit­tle films, which hap­pen to be com­mer­cials for a car,” he writes, “share not only the style but also the con­tent, the theme, and the emo­tion­al and per­son­al con­cerns, of Anderson’s fea­ture films. Yes, they’re short. Yes, there’s a dif­fer­ence between what can be devel­oped in two hours and what can be devel­oped in thir­ty seconds—it’s the dif­fer­ence between a poem and a nov­el, between a song and an opera.” Has Wes Ander­son sold out? Is sell­ing out still be pos­si­ble? As in every­thing, dear read­er, the task of weigh­ing the evi­dence and mak­ing the deci­sion falls ulti­mate­ly to you.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Belushi’s Improvised Screen Test for Saturday Night Live (1975)

in Comedy, Television | March 13th, 2012

In this rare footage from 1975, a 26-year-old John Belushi warms up with some eye­brow cal­is­then­ics before doing his sig­na­ture Mar­lon Bran­do impres­sion in a screen test for a new late-night tele­vi­sion pro­gram called Sat­ur­day Night Live. He got the part, of course, and his star rose rapid­ly along with the show’s. By 1978 Belushi could boast of hav­ing the num­ber one late-night tele­vi­sion show (SNL), the num­ber one movie (Ani­mal House) and the num­ber one musi­cal album (The Blues Broth­ers’ Brief­case Full of Blues). But sad­ly it all came crash­ing down 30 years ago this month–on March 5 1982–when he died of a drug over­dose. In this clip we remem­ber the young Belushi: cocky, tal­ent­ed, with a bril­liant future ahead of him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci Pitch­es “The Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty”

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

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Frank Zappa Debates Censorship on CNN’s Crossfire (1986)

in Music, Politics, Television | March 9th, 2012

Cross­fire aired on CNN from 1982 to 2005, famous­ly pit­ting lib­er­al pun­dits and spe­cial guests against their con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ter­parts. Per­haps you will remem­ber the most famous episode — the day in 2004 when Jon Stew­art paid a vis­it and demol­ished the whole premise of the show. It’s hard to top that moment. But, maybe com­ing in a close sec­ond was Frank Zap­pa’s mem­o­rable appear­ance in 1986.

On that March day, Zap­pa jumped into the fray and fought the cul­ture wars of the 1980s. His main oppo­nent was­n’t the often prick­ly con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Robert Novack. Instead, it was John Lofton, a right-wing colum­nist for The Wash­ing­ton Times, who argued that gov­ern­ment should cen­sor rock lyrics deemed unfriend­ly to fam­i­lies. Zap­pa, who con­sid­ered him­self a con­ser­v­a­tive too, took umbrage and you can watch the con­ver­sa­tion unfold … and at times dete­ri­o­rate. Also don’t miss Zap­pa’s tes­ti­mo­ny before Con­gress in 1985.

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:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith on The Monkees(1967)

 

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Socrates on TV, Courtesy of Alain de Botton (2000)

in Philosophy, Television | March 8th, 2012

We could call Alain de Bot­ton, in the clas­si­cal sense, a philo­soph­i­cal ama­teur: that is, one who loves phi­los­o­phy. But not every­body loves the way he approach­es the field. His 2000 book The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy drew a par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp line through the crit­ics: some found great refresh­ment in the acces­si­bil­i­ty he grant­ed philoso­phers like Seneca and Schopen­hauer by fram­ing them in an unex­pect­ed­ly sin­cere par­o­dy of a self-help book; oth­ers judged this method inad­e­quate to deal with the thinkers’ true seri­ous­ness and com­plex­i­ty. This clicks right in with what seems like de Bot­ton’s grand mis­sion: tak­ing West­ern civ­i­liza­tion’s most respect­ed words, writ­ten and spo­ken, and using them to adjust the nuts and bolts of our mod­ern, every­day pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. He wrote anoth­er book called How Proust Can Change Your Life; he estab­lished a school which offers cours­es like “How to Bal­ance Work with Life” and “How to Be Cool;” and his lat­est project involves adapt­ing reli­gion for use by athe­ists (watch relat­ed video here).

No sur­prise, then, that de Bot­ton’s work would extend to that most com­mon medi­um, tele­vi­sion, with a series called Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness. You can watch a num­ber of episodes on YouTube, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to “Socrates on Self-Con­fi­dence.” Zip­ping through the streets of Athens on a canary-yel­low Ves­pa, de Bot­ton tells us of the life and meth­ods of the fifth-cen­tu­ry-BC philoso­pher who seems to remain the dis­ci­pline’s most famous prac­ti­tion­er. Illus­trat­ing Socrates’ famous habit of pub­lic inter­ro­ga­tion, de Bot­ton strolls up to oth­er vis­i­tors in the mar­ket­place, ask­ing them to define the idea of jus­tice or their con­cep­tion of their per­son­al life. The answers don’t come eas­i­ly: a French­woman strug­gles to respond even when our intre­pid host shifts into her lan­guage, and a reli­gious­ly out­fit­ted local blows him off with­out even slow­ing down. A few hearty Aus­tralian trav­el­ers — a breed found at every point on the map, cra­dles of phi­los­o­phy and oth­er­wise — do lay out their self-styled philoso­phies with­out hes­i­ta­tion, but de Bot­ton has plen­ty more places to go and peo­ple to see, like a focus group whose vol­ley of opin­ions would have sum­moned Socrates’ gravest reser­va­tions about democ­ra­cy, and a pot­ter who crafts a tan­gi­ble metaphor for Socrates’ notion of the well-test­ed, water­tight belief.

Those who’ve ques­tioned whether de Bot­ton knows how to han­dle phi­los­o­phy may well come away from these pro­grams con­vinced that he does­n’t. I, how­ev­er, find some­thing almost rad­i­cal in the way his demeanor, unyield­ing­ly straight­for­ward and nev­er for­get­ful of con­cerns oth­ers might dis­miss as mun­dane, inter­acts with the great works of the philo­soph­i­cal canon. I sense an almost strate­gic naïveté at work, and it takes him places, intel­lec­tu­al­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly, to which his clos­est peers in let­ters may nev­er get around. The stark­ly divid­ed reac­tion de Bot­ton draws shows, to my mind, that he’s being just the right kind of provoca­tive — in his gen­tle man­ner.

Com­plete set of links to Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness episodes: Socrates on Self-Con­fi­dence, Epi­cu­rus on Hap­pi­ness, Seneca on Anger, Mon­taigne on Self-Esteem, Niet­zsche on Hap­pi­ness

Relat­ed con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness

Alain de Bot­ton: The Glass of Life is Half-Emp­ty

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene: Watch the Complete NOVA Series Online

in Physics, Television, Video - Science | March 7th, 2012

For­get about inclined planes and pul­leys. In this series from the PBS pro­gram NOVA, physics is pre­sent­ed as an exot­ic, mind-bend­ing realm.

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, first broad­cast in Novem­ber, fol­lows up on the 2003 Peabody Award-win­ning The Ele­gant Uni­verse. Both series are adapt­ed from the best-sell­ing books of host Bri­an Greene, a math­e­mati­cian and physi­cist at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Like the ear­li­er series, which was cen­tered around String The­o­ry, The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos deals with ideas that are on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry. “This is a report from the fron­tier of cos­mic thought,” wrote Den­nis Over­bye last Novem­ber in The New York Times, “as fresh as last mon­th’s Nobel Prizes, uncom­pro­mis­ing in its intel­lec­tu­al ambi­tions and dis­cern­ing in its choice of com­pelling sci­en­tif­ic issues. The action ranges from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, from bowl­ing lanes and bil­liard tables to the lim­its of the imag­i­na­tion.”

The series is arranged in four parts of approx­i­mate­ly 50 min­utes each. The episodes are called “What is Space?;” ‘The Illu­sion of Time,’ ‘Quan­tum Leap,’ and ‘Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?’

 

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Wes Anderson’s New Commercials Sell the Hyundai Azera

in Film, Television | March 7th, 2012

Many high-pro­file fea­ture film­mak­ers occa­sion­al­ly direct com­mer­cials (find spots by Felli­ni, Bergman, and David Lynch below), but few put their own stamp on them quite so bold­ly as Wes Ander­son does. Each of his for­ays into adver­tise­ment, mar­ket­ing, shilling, pro­pa­gan­diz­ing, cin­e­ma by oth­er means — call it what­ev­er you like — bears the mark of a man who sees real­i­ty in his own way, regard­less of con­text. Hence his fans’ ten­den­cy to receive and pass around his lat­est tele­vi­sion spots with almost the same urgency they would a trail­er for one of his “real movies.” Whether tak­ing on as his sub­ject Bel­gian beer or wide-range call­ing plans or Japan­ese cell­phones or self-satire by way of Amer­i­can Express, Wes Ander­son remains Wes Ander­son down to the last detail. The word “integri­ty,” I real­ize, tends to be reserved specif­i­cal­ly for artists who don’t do com­mer­cials. But if Ander­son­’s unwa­ver­ing respect for his own fas­ci­na­tions and aes­thet­ic impuls­es in every project he works on does­n’t count as integri­ty, what does?

Now that the Hyundai Motor Com­pa­ny has designed a fifth gen­er­a­tion of its Azera mod­el, they’ve engaged Ander­son to help get the word out. I can’t pre­tend to know what spe­cif­ic requests the cor­po­ra­tion made of the film­mak­er, but it would­n’t sur­prise me if they issued only two imper­a­tives: “Tell peo­ple the car’s qui­et, and tell peo­ple they can talk to it.” In “Mod­ern Life” (the first video above), a crum­pling, emas­cu­lat­ing­ly aproned hus­band tries des­per­ate­ly to pre­pare din­ner while keep­ing his anachro­nis­ti­cal­ly large brood under con­trol. As the wife gives him cook­ing instruc­tions and a descrip­tion of the traf­fic jam all around her, we fol­low a stray kid out to the dri­ve­way where — what have we here! — the lady of the house reclines in the beige leather of her Azera, parked not amidst free­way grid­lock but less than a dozen feet from the door. “Talk to My Car” presents a series of increas­ing­ly less fan­tas­ti­cal sce­nar­ios of fam­i­ly auto­mo­bile voice-con­trol, the first in a Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang-style crop-dust­ing con­vert­ible; the sec­ond in an amphibi­ous yel­low sedan, com­plete with periscope; the third in a cross between the Bat­mo­bile and Knight Rid­er’s K.I.T.T., which Dad com­mands to “acti­vate rear incen­di­ary devices”; the fourth in a present-day Azera on its way to a Cos­ta Mesa Ital­ian joint.

These spots, espe­cial­ly the first, show­case a num­ber of clas­si­cal­ly Ander­son­ian qual­i­ties. Enthu­si­asts of his pic­tures’ metic­u­lous pro­duc­tion design — as near­ly every enthu­si­ast of his pic­tures must be — will find plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to pause the video and mar­vel at the ele­ments of the belea­guered father’s house: the deep red oven knobs; the cor­ner drum set; the vin­tage toy robots tucked here and there; the minia­ture heli­copter; each kid’s elab­o­rate, inex­plic­a­ble cos­tume; the cam­era move­ment straight through the front wall, reveal­ing the house­’s the­atri­cal “cut­away” con­struc­tion. The strangest ele­ment proves, iron­i­cal­ly, to be the car itself. In Rush­more, Bill Mur­ray dri­ves a Bent­ley; in The Roy­al Tenen­baums, Owen Wil­son dri­ves an Austin-Healey. What self-respect­ing Wes Ander­son char­ac­ter would be caught dead in this year’s sen­si­ble, gray, Blue­tooth-enabled four-door, no mat­ter how many lux­u­ry-car fea­tures it brings into its afford­able class? So many of us long to live in Wes Ander­son­’s world, but the Hyundai Azera seems a high­ly unsuit­able vehi­cle to take us there. You could prob­a­bly dri­ve it to a show­ing of Moon­rise King­dom, though. H/T Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

1950s Soap Com­mer­cials by Ing­mar Bergman

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Remembers His First Meeting with Carl Sagan

in Astronomy, Physics, Science, Television | March 5th, 2012

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His elo­quence, his pas­sion for explain­ing sci­ence to a wider pub­lic, made him a major cul­tur­al fig­ure in late 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. Now a new voice is emerg­ing. Neil deGrasse Tyson, like Sagan, is an astronomer and physi­cist with a remark­able gift for speak­ing about the beau­ty and impor­tance of sci­ence. Like Sagan, he hosts a PBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram (NOVA Sci­en­ceNOW) and appears fre­quent­ly on talk shows. The pass­ing of the torch will become obvi­ous next year, when Tyson hosts the sequel to Sagan’s ground-break­ing 1980 TV series, Cos­mos. Tyson’s con­nec­tion to Sagan actu­al­ly began at a very young age. In the video clip above, Tyson tells Ted Simons of the region­al PBS show Ari­zona Hori­zon the sto­ry of a remark­able act of gen­eros­i­ty by Sagan when Tyson was only a teenag­er. If it whets your appetite, be sure to watch the com­plete 25-minute inter­view below. And don’t miss our very pop­u­lar relat­ed post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

 

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