The Extraordinary Life and Art of Henri Cartier-Bresson Revealed in 1998 Documentary

in Art, Photography | June 14th, 2013

The cam­era, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son once said, is an instru­ment of intu­ition and spon­tane­ity — “the mas­ter of the instant which, in visu­al terms, ques­tions and decides simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.” Like a Zen archer, Carti­er-Bres­son viewed his méti­er as a way of being in the world. Pho­tog­ra­phy for him was an “art­less art,” best approached by for­get­ting tech­nique and open­ing one­self to the uncon­scious. “To take pho­tographs,” he said, “means to recognize–simultaneously and with­in a frac­tion of a second–both the fact itself and the rig­or­ous orga­ni­za­tion of visu­al­ly per­ceived forms that give it mean­ing. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.”

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son: Pen, Brush and Cam­era (above) is an excel­lent overview of the great pho­tog­ra­pher’s life and work. Direct­ed and nar­rat­ed by Patri­cia Wheat­ley, the film was pro­duced for the BBC in 1998, the year four major exhi­bi­tions were held in Lon­don to cel­e­brate Carti­er-Bres­son’s 90th birth­day. The film traces the pho­tog­ra­pher’s extra­or­di­nary life, from his ear­ly train­ing as a painter and his infat­u­a­tion with Sur­re­al­ism to his lat­er work as a globe-trot­ting pho­to­jour­nal­ist and his deci­sion, after 40 years of work in the medi­um, to give up pho­tog­ra­phy and ded­i­cate the last decades of his life to draw­ing. The film includes rare footage of Carti­er-Bres­son at work, along with inter­views by Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eve Arnold and oth­ers. Best of all, Wheat­ley was able to film exten­sive inter­views with the noto­ri­ous­ly shy pho­tog­ra­ph­er, both in Lon­don and in his apart­ment over­look­ing the Tui­leries Gar­dens in Paris.

To learn more about Carti­er-Bres­son and to see a won­der­ful slide show of his pho­tog­ra­phy nar­rat­ed by the man him­self, please see our ear­li­er piece, “Hen­ri Carti­er Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cre­ative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Science

in Biology, Education, Science | June 14th, 2013

A year ago the Euro­pean Union launched a cam­paign to attract more young women into the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sions. In Europe, women lag behind men in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, mak­ing up only a third of sci­ence researchers. But the video the EU made was laugh­able.

You may recall. It was called, Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! and fea­tured three young fash­ion­istas parad­ing around in high heels while a male sci­en­tist peers quizzi­cal­ly at them over his micro­scope.

Along comes sci­ence jour­nal­ist Ker­stin Hop­pen­haus to set the record straight. Hoppenhaus’s new series for the Ger­man sci­ence site SciLogs is called Sig­nif­i­cant Details: Con­ver­sa­tions with Women in Sci­ence. The inter­views are fresh, infor­ma­tive, and acces­si­ble.

It’s inspir­ing to see such a range of women explain their research and walk us through their process for doing it.

A recent inter­view fea­tured Dr. Kris­ten Pan­fil­io (above), an Amer­i­can biol­o­gist on fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. Panfilio’s work focus­es on insect extraem­bry­on­ic devel­op­ment, which means she stud­ies how insect tis­sues devel­op into the bug’s ulti­mate shape by com­par­ing the process in two insects: the milk­weed bug and the red flour bee­tle.

Each con­ver­sa­tion begins with a “sig­nif­i­cant detail” of the woman’s work. With the wry humor and pre­ci­sion of a true sci­en­tist, Pan­fil­io demon­strates how she pre­pares her favorite tool, a glass stick, by soft­en­ing the end with a cig­a­rette lighter.

Panfilio’s spe­cif­ic field is evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­men­tal genet­ics. Along with her lab assis­tants she stud­ies how embry­on­ic cells know what role they should play in form­ing a spe­cif­ic organ­ism shape. How does a bone cell know it’s a bone cell?

The inter­view is about as much like Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! as Meryl Streep is like Lind­say Lohan. This is a real per­son talk­ing about how she has built her career (she want­ed to be an artist when she was a teenag­er and stud­ied ancient Chi­nese his­to­ry at a small lib­er­al arts col­lege) and explain­ing her high­ly spe­cial­ized work.

She also touch­es on one of the most won­der­ful things about sci­en­tif­ic research: Some of the most excit­ing moments are when the results don’t align at all with expec­ta­tions.

Best of all, it’s just one of the won­der­ful inter­views in Hoppenhaus’s series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix and vis­it her web­site to learn more.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Paul McCartney Talks Beatles & Wings with Stephen Colbert, Performs 6 Songs Live

in Comedy, Music | June 13th, 2013

The Col­bert Report opened last night with a seg­ment called “Stephen Col­bert’s Trib­ute to Hav­ing Paul McCart­ney on His Show, Fea­tur­ing Paul McCart­ney, With Spe­cial Guest Stephen Col­bert.” And, for the next 12 min­utes, Paul and Stephen cov­ered a lot of ground. Because McCart­ney has just released mate­r­i­al from Wings — a 1976 con­cert film called Rock­show and a reis­sue of Wings Over Amer­i­ca — the con­ver­sa­tion begins with the Wings era: how Mac­ca start­ed all over again; drove to gigs in a van, with no hotel reser­va­tions booked; even­tu­al­ly record­ed a fine album (Band on the Run) in Nige­ria, amidst a cholera out­break; and began per­form­ing live for the first time in years … which led to inevitable ques­tions about the Bea­t­les: why they stopped per­form­ing live in 1966, and how their song­writ­ing evolved. It all ends with inter­view­er and inter­vie­wee singing a charm­ing duet of Irv­ing Berlin’s 1936 clas­sic “Cheek to Cheek.” Lat­er, McCart­ney treat­ed the Col­bert crowd to six songs. We’ve embed­ded a cou­ple of clips below. You can watch the full 60-minute show here.

Lis­ten to What the Man Said

Birth­day

via Rolling Stone

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Greatness of Charles Darwin Explained with Rap Music

in Biology, Music | June 13th, 2013

Read Open Cul­ture long enough, and soon­er or lat­er you’ll encounter “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman, the Cana­di­an MC whose rhyming sub­jects of choice include evo­lu­tion, The Can­ter­bury Tales, and British ver­sus Cana­di­an Eng­lish. Though the hard-read­ing Brinkman has, it seems, staked out the musi­cal genre of “lit hop” for him­self, he’s gained just as much of his dis­tinc­tive brand of rig­or­ous­ly fac­tu­al hip-hop noto­ri­ety by rap­ping for the oth­er of what C.P. Snow defined as the “two cul­tures.” His par­al­lel sci­ence rap­ping career began on a com­mis­sion from Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick micro­bi­ol­o­gist and Rough Guide to Evo­lu­tion author Mark Pallen. Out of all this came “the first peer-reviewed rap” show, The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion, whose devel­op­ment we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured.

Above, you’ll find the music video for “Artif­i­cal Selec­tion,” one song from The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion. “Arti­fi­cial selec­tion, it starts with a ques­tion,” Brinkman raps. “How did peo­ple ever get cows, chick­ens and pigs / And oth­er ani­mals and plants to act so domes­tic? / We took them from the wild and we bred them, brethren.” He explores the top­ic fur­ther, touch­ing on Charles Dar­win’s The Ori­gin of Species, the inad­ver­tent usage of evo­lu­tion by ear­ly farm­ers and live­stock breed­ers, domes­tic aphids kept by ant colonies, and even the nat­ur­al selec­tion inher­ent in the MC’s devel­op­ment of his per­for­mance tech­niques. On Brinkman’s offi­cial site, the video comes with tags like “Hered­i­ty,” “Lamark­ism,” and “Uni­ty of Com­mon Descent.” How many rap videos could cred­i­bly do the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Download 60 Free History Courses from Great Universities

in History, Online Courses | June 13th, 2013

The_Parthenon_in_Athens

The His­to­ry sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 60 cours­es. Some cours­es (like those fea­tured below) focus on broad time peri­ods and themes. Oth­ers take a look at more spe­cial­ized top­ics that will keep you engaged for hours. All lec­tures were taped right in the class­rooms of great uni­ver­si­ties:

  • Ancient Greek His­to­ry — YouTube — iTunes Audio — iTunes Video- Down­load Course – Don­ald Kagan, Yale
  • Chi­na: Tra­di­tions and Trans­for­ma­tions – Mul­ti­ple For­mats – Peter K. Bol & William Kir­by, Har­vard
  • Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to the Present - YouTube - iTunes Video — Web —  Thomas Lac­quer, UC Berke­ley
  • His­to­ry of the World to 1500 CE – YouTube - iTunes Video – Richard Bul­li­et, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
  • His­to­ry of the World Since 1500 CE – YouTube — iTunes Video – Richard Bul­li­et, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The West­ern Tra­di­tion (Video) – YouTube – Eugen Weber, UCLA
  • US His­to­ry: From Civ­il War to Present — iTunes Audio — Web — Jen­nifer Burns, UC Berke­ley

As you can see, the cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web. And they’re all list­ed in our meta col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es. Oth­er key dis­ci­plines found in the col­lec­tion include Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond.

Find us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll make it easy to share intel­li­gent media with your friends! 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Original 1940s Superman Cartoon: Watch 17 Classic Episodes Free Online

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | June 13th, 2013

On the eve of yet anoth­er Super­man movie reboot—coming tomor­row with all the usu­al sum­mer hit fan­fare and noise—take a moment before gorg­ing your­self on pop­corn and extrav­a­gant CGI spec­ta­cles to reflect on the character’s endur­ing­ly sim­ple ori­gins. After all, this month marks the 75th anniver­sary of this most icon­ic of Amer­i­can super­heroes, who first appeared in the June 1938 Action Comics #1. The brain­child of Cleve­land high school stu­dents Jer­ry Siegel and Joe Shus­ter (so mem­o­rably fic­tion­al­ized in Michael Chabon’s The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay), Super­man is what Neil Gaiman calls an arche­typ­al “pri­mal thing,” a char­ac­ter who can be rein­vent­ed every decade while still remain­ing unmis­tak­ably him­self.

Wit­ness, for exam­ple, the first appear­ance of Super­man on the big screen in the 1941 Fleis­ch­er car­toon (top), Super­man (or The Mad Sci­en­tist)—the first in a series of sev­en­teen shorts. On the heels of the first non-print adap­ta­tion of the char­ac­ter—the Adven­tures of Super­man radio dra­ma (lis­ten below)—the car­toon series shows us the orig­i­nal Siegel and Shus­ter hero, a rough-and-tum­ble space alien raised in an orphan­age, not by the kind­ly Kents in rur­al Amer­i­ca.

You’ll notice how­ev­er, that Superman’s resume—more pow­er­ful than a loco­mo­tive, able to leap tall build­ings… etc.—hasn’t changed a bit. But some of the character’s attrib­ut­es and ori­gins were con­sid­er­ably soft­ened after DC Comics edi­tor Whit­ney Ellsworth insti­tut­ed a code of super­hero ethics (many years before the Comics Code Author­i­ty stepped in to cen­sor the whole indus­try).

You can learn even more about Superman’s ori­gins from his cre­ators them­selves, inter­viewed in the clip above for the 1981 BBC doc­u­men­tary Super­man: The Com­ic Strip Hero. Siegel reveals how the idea for Super­man came to him dur­ing one rest­less night in which he com­posed all of the basic script for the char­ac­ter, “an entire­ly new con­cept.” The very next day, Shus­ter sat down at his draw­ing board and Super­man’s look emerged ful­ly-formed. Both cre­ators and their heirs have won and lost high-pro­file law­suits over rights to their char­ac­ters. But legal wran­gling over com­pen­sa­tion aside, there’s no deny­ing that their mad eure­ka moment left an indeli­ble cul­tur­al lega­cy no updat­ed film, logo, or con­tro­ver­sy can dimin­ish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orig­i­nal Super­man Car­toon Series Now Online

The Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters: Sem­i­nal Super­man Ani­mat­ed Film from 1941

Free Gold­en Age Comics

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

250,000 Artworks from 250 Museums, Now Viewable for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

in Art, Museums, Technology | June 12th, 2013

stripedshirt

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured the Nation­al Gallery of Art’s site NGA Images, where you can down­load 25,000 high-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal images of that muse­um’s works of art. Today, why not have a look at Google Art Project? Though we’ve post­ed about it before, you’ll want to check out its slick new redesign — not to men­tion its expand­ed col­lec­tion, which now includes more than 250,000 works of art from over 250 muse­ums. TechCrunch’s Fred­er­ic Lar­de­nois writes that the lat­est iter­a­tion of Google Art Pro­jec­t’s “improved search tools now make it sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er to fil­ter any list of art­works by artist, place, data and relat­ed events. [ … ] Some of the most impor­tant art­works are also avail­able as gigapix­el images. Many muse­ums also allow you to browse their gal­leries using Google Street View.”

The col­lec­tions new­ly added to Google Art Project come from insti­tu­tions as far- and wide-rang­ing as Kuwait­’s al Sabah Col­lec­tion, Japan’s Kawabara Memo­r­i­al DIC Muse­um of Art, Den­mark’s Statens Muse­um for Kun­st, and Aus­trali­a’s Art Gallery of New South Wales. At the top, we have an image of Sunkwan Kwon’s “A Man in Stripe Shirt Who is Drop­ping His Head for a Long Time After Phone Call,” made avail­able in the Kore­an Art Muse­um Asso­ci­a­tion col­lec­tion. But don’t look at the image in this post; look at the piece’s entry in Google Art Project, which lets you scroll and zoom as you please. And you will want to zoom, since Kwon’s very large-for­mat pho­tog­ra­phy demands close atten­tion to detail. At such a high res­o­lu­tion, you can pay that atten­tion, look­ing right into the win­dows and observ­ing the peo­ple behind them. View­ers, as the work’s descrip­tion says, “should keep hav­ing tena­cious ques­tions that ask who the char­ac­ters are, why they show tense expres­sions on their face and what their sit­u­a­tions are.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

What Happens on the Internet in 60 Seconds

in Technology, Web/Tech | June 12th, 2013

Chances are in the past week you’ve read some argu­ment about how the inter­net has destroyed the mid­dle class, democ­ra­cy, cul­ture, etc, or a rebut­tal of one of the above. I can’t add much to these debates. They some­times sound like argu­ments over whether tele­pho­ny is a boon or a curse. These technologies—as long as the grid’s up and running—we shall always have with us.

Soci­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion notwith­stand­ing, the expo­nen­tial­ly increas­ing com­put­ing pow­er that push­es our online inter­ac­tions to ever-dizzy­ing speeds is sure­ly some­thing to pause and mar­vel at, if not to fear. The short video above from Buz­zfeed takes us on a wild ride through the mil­lions of trans­ac­tions that occur online in a sin­gle minute. Here we learn that in six­ty-sec­onds, there will be 2,000,000 Google search­es, 27,800 uploads to Insta­gram, 278,000 Tweets, 1,875,000 Face­book likes, a “low esti­mate” of 200,000 peo­ple stream­ing porn….

Actu­al­ly, it does start to seem like all this online activ­i­ty is pret­ty nar­row­ly focused, or maybe that’s a lim­i­ta­tion of the sur­vey. Anoth­er video from 2011 (below) and info­graph­ics here and here offer some com­par­a­tive ana­lyt­ics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Uni­ver­si­ty Projects Use Twit­ter to Under­stand Hap­pi­ness, Hate and Oth­er Emo­tions in Amer­i­ca

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear A Young Bob Dylan Sing 11 Songs and Tell Tall Tales on a 1962 Radio Show

in Music, Radio | June 12th, 2013

In Feb­ru­ary of 1962, less than a month before the release of his debut album, an obscure young folk singer named Bob Dylan record­ed some songs and an inter­view for a local New York City radio show called Folksinger’s Choice.

The show was broad­cast on WBAI and host­ed by Cyn­thia Good­ing, an estab­lished folk singer 17 years old­er than Dylan. As it hap­pened, both Good­ing and Dylan were native Min­nesotans. Good­ing had first met Dylan in Min­neapo­lis in late 1959, not long after he grad­u­at­ed from high school.

As the inter­view gets rolling, the 20-year-old Dylan wastes lit­tle time before launch­ing into some tall tales about his past. He says he moved to Min­neapo­lis from South Dako­ta, because Min­neapo­lis was “about the only place you did­n’t have to go too far to find the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er.” Before that, he says, he trav­eled with a car­ni­val, “off and on for about six years.” When Good­ing asks whether that might have inter­fered with his school­ing, Dylan does­n’t miss a beat. “Well,” he says, “I skipped a bunch of things, and I did­n’t go to school a bunch of years and I skipped this and that.” He says he wrote a song for the “ele­phant lady” in the car­ni­val and called it “Won’t You Buy A Post­card?” But he quick­ly adds that he for­got how it went.

To fol­low along with the inter­view, click here to open the full tran­script in a new win­dow. And while you won’t hear Dylan’s ode to the ele­phant lady, if you lis­ten to the com­plete one-hour pro­gram you will be treat­ed to 11 songs from his ear­ly reper­toire.  They include sev­er­al that Dylan wrote, along with some old folk and blues songs:
  1. “(I Heard That) Lone­some Whis­tle” (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davis)
  2. “Fix­in’ to Die” (Buk­ka White)
  3. “Smoke­stack Ligh­n­ing” (Howl­in’ Wolf)
  4. “Hard Trav­elin’ ” (Woody Guthrie)
  5. “The Death of Emmett Till”  (Bob Dylan)
  6. “Stand­ing on the High­way” (Bob Dylan)
  7. “Roll on John” (Rufus Crisp)
  8. “Stealin’ ” (tra­di­tion­al)
  9. “It Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad” (tra­di­tion­al)
  10. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (Big Joe Williams)
  11. “Hard Times in New York Town” (Bob Dylan)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on the Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Listen to Freddie Mercury’s Wondrous Piano and Vocal Tracks for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975)

in Music | June 12th, 2013

bohemian rhapsodyMaybe you liked hear­ing Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie belt out the vocal track for the 1981 hit, ‘Under Pres­sure.’ Well, here’s anoth­er one for you: Fred­die Mer­cury’s piano and vocal tracks for the Queen clas­sic, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” Although the song was released on the 1975 album A Night at the Opera, Fred­die Mer­cury first began work­ing on the epic song dur­ing the late 1960s, often using his piano at home.

Accord­ing to the 2011 doc­u­men­tary Queen: The Days of Our Lives (watch it here), Mer­cury took ideas for three songs and knit­ted them into one com­plex oper­at­ic bal­lad. It was long enough (almost six min­utes) that it seemed unlike­ly to get any radio play. The music execs begged Mer­cury to sim­pli­fy things, to pare things down, but he did­n’t relent. It was all or noth­ing. And the record­ing process equaled the com­plex­i­ty of the song. Six dif­fer­ent stu­dios were used along the way, with Mer­cury try­ing to help the band record the sprawl­ing song he had mapped out in his mind.

The first video above fea­tures Mer­cury’s piano track that forms the back­bone of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” On it, Mer­cury plays a Bech­stein con­cert grand piano, which oth­er­wise appears in the famous video that pro­mot­ed the song. The sec­ond video above fea­tures the iso­lat­ed vocal parts. Dur­ing the gru­el­ing record­ing ses­sions, Mer­cury, Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor spent 10–12 hours each day work­ing on the vocals. And final­ly, for good mea­sure, we’ve added below a fresh reminder of what a beau­ti­ful thing Queen cre­at­ed almost 40 years ago. Filmed just last week, the clip fea­tures a crowd of 60,000 singing along to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” before the start of a Green Day con­cert in Lon­don. I’ll just leave it with that.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

The National Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Artwork Freely Available Online

in Art, Music, Technology | June 11th, 2013

A14623.jpg

No sur­prise that in “Mas­ter­works for One and All,” an arti­cle about how muse­ums have begun to offer free, high-qual­i­ty down­load­able images of works from their col­lec­tions, the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal brings up Wal­ter Ben­jamin. The pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the philoso­pher behind “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” may seem more rel­e­vant than ever in these days of not just mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, but uni­ver­sal, devel­oped-world own­er­ship of the means of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion — and near­ly instan­ta­neous, effort­less mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion at that. Many rights-hold­ers, includ­ing cer­tain muse­ums, have effec­tive­ly decid­ed that if you can’t beat the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­ers, join ’em. “With the Inter­net, it’s so dif­fi­cult to con­trol your copy­right or use of images,” Sie­gal quotes the Rijksmu­se­um’s direc­tor of col­lec­tions as say­ing. “We decid­ed we’d rather peo­ple use a very good high-res­o­lu­tion image of [Ver­meer’s] ‘Milk­maid’ from the Rijksmu­se­um rather than using a very bad repro­duc­tion.” (See our pre­vi­ous post: The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art.)

A17014.jpg

Sie­gal goes on to men­tion the efforts of Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, which has so far made super high-res­o­lu­tion images of 25,000 works freely avail­able on NGA Images, a site that describes itself as “designed to facil­i­tate learn­ing, enrich­ment, enjoy­ment, and explo­ration.” You can browse the images by col­lec­tion — French gal­leries, self-por­traits, music — view the most recent addi­tions, or pull up the works of art most fre­quent­ly request­ed by oth­ers. Leonar­do’s por­trait of the Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat Ginevra de’ Ben­ci, seen up top, has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, as has Claude Mon­et’s The Japan­ese Foot­bridge just above. But does all this bear out Ben­jam­in’s con­cerns about mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion cheap­en­ing the orig­i­nal aura of a work? “I don’t think any­one thinks we’ve cheap­ened the image of the ‘Mona Lisa,’” an NGA spokes­woman said to Sie­gal. “Peo­ple have got­ten past that, and they still want to go to the Lou­vre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-cen­tu­ry way of respect­ing images.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast