Watch Peluca, the Student Film That Became the Cultural Phenomenon Napoleon Dynamite (2002)

in Film | January 7th, 2020

You could say that Jared and Jerusha Hess got lucky. When first the hus­band-and-wife team got the chance to make a fea­ture, it turned out to be Napoleon Dyna­mite, the movie that launched a mil­lion “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirts. But that visu­al­ly, nar­ra­tive­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly askew tale did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed into the the­aters. Nor did its title char­ac­ter, an extrav­a­gant­ly nerdy and sav­age­ly defen­sive high-school stu­dent in small-town Ida­ho. Napoleon Dyna­mite has a pre­de­ces­sor in Pelu­ca, the short film Jared Hess made for an assign­ment at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty’s film school. Napoleon Dyna­mite him­self has a pre­de­ces­sor in Seth, whose curly hair, enor­mous spec­ta­cles, severe awk­ward­ness, and pen­chant for thrift­ing and faux curs­ing will look famil­iar indeed.

Pelu­ca appears to have much the same to rela­tion­ship to Napoleon Dyna­mite as Wes Ander­son­’s Bot­tle Rock­et short has to the fea­ture ver­sion. Both were shot in black-and-white in locales their film­mak­ers clear­ly know well, both are mem­o­rably scored (Ander­son uses jazz, Hess uses Burt Bacharach), and both tell in a basic form sto­ries that would lat­er unfold to their full cin­e­mat­ic length.

Just as Bot­tle Rock­et, the short, stars Owen and Luke Wil­son, who would go on to reprise their roles and gain fame there­after, Jon Hed­er played Seth in Pelu­ca before play­ing Napoleon Dyna­mite. And just as there’s lit­tle obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions of the char­ac­ter besides their names, the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Hess’ cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty shows through in Pelu­ca just as it would, to a much wider audi­ence, in Napoleon Dyna­mite.

The Hess­es once drew fre­quent com­par­isons to Ander­son, though the past decade and a half has exposed their cin­e­mat­ic enter­pris­es as entire­ly dif­fer­ent. Their sec­ond fea­ture Nacho Libre, a Mex­i­can wrestling com­e­dy star­ring Jack Black, fit com­fort­ably enough into the Hol­ly­wood zone of ado­les­cent goofi­ness. But New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody saw some­thing deep­er, call­ing it “the strangest Amer­i­can reli­gious film since The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ,” one that “presents a case for noth­ing less than Catholic-Protes­tant rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” The Hess­es’ third fea­ture Gen­tle­men Bron­cos, the sto­ry of a young aspir­ing sci­ence-fic­tion writer in north­ern Utah, went almost com­plete­ly ignored, but Brody deemed it an “even more ecsta­t­ic and per­son­al explo­ration — in loopy, gross-out com­ic form — of the essence of faith in cos­mic reli­gious vision itself, and the ease with which those visions can be per­vert­ed to world­ly ends.”

Brody con­tin­ues to speak for the cinephiles who’ve paid to the work of Jared and Jerusha Hess ever more atten­tion, not less, since Napoleon Dyna­mite. 2015’s Don Verdean, about a crooked Bib­li­cal archae­ol­o­gist, is “a pur­er, stranger, and more dan­ger­ous reli­gious vision than the three films that pre­ced­ed it.” 2016’s Mas­ter­minds, a Hes­s­ian treat­ment of a real-life North Car­oli­na heist gone wrong due to sheer incom­pe­tence, “has the reli­gious inten­si­ty and spir­i­tu­al res­o­nance that marks all of Hess’s oth­er films” and “extends his vision into dark­er cor­ners of exis­tence than he had for­mer­ly con­tem­plat­ed.” Con­sid­er­ing that pic­ture, Brody sees “a wide-eyed frontal­i­ty to Hess’s film­mak­ing, includ­ing face-to-face set pieces and action scenes done in wide and sta­t­ic tableaux that sug­gest a kin­ship with the tran­scen­den­tal cin­e­ma of Robert Bres­son and Carl Theodor Drey­er.” And from the right crit­i­cal per­spec­tive, we can see it in Pelu­ca as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

Doo­dle­bug, Christo­pher Nolan’s First Short: What Came Before The Dark Night, Memen­to & Incep­tion (1997)

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

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.

A Brief History of John Baldessari (RIP) Narrated by Tom Waits: A Tribute to the Late “Godfather of Conceptual Art”

in Art | January 6th, 2020

All mod­ern art is con­cep­tu­al in some way, bound to aes­thet­ic the­o­ries and com­bat­ive man­i­festoes against com­pla­cen­cy. But only in the move­ment known as cap­i­tal “C” Con­cep­tu­al Art do the ideas become more impor­tant than the objects. Con­cep­tu­al Art traces its his­to­ry to Mar­cel Duchamp and the Sur­re­al­ists who declared war on the bour­geois cul­tur­al sta­tus quo.

Lat­er exper­i­men­tal artists did the same by ele­vat­ing mass cul­ture to the sta­tus of high art: adver­tis­ing, com­ic books, Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle, and—in the past twen­ty-five years or so—the Inter­net: Pop Art fore­ground­ed con­cepts over objects by means of pas­tiche and meta­com­men­tary. The work of L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, for exam­ple, cen­ters slo­gans and clichés over ambigu­ous images that some­times look like stock desk­top back­grounds.

Both Duchamp and Ruscha were influ­ences on Amer­i­can Con­cep­tu­al­ist John Baldessari, who passed away yes­ter­day at age 88, leav­ing behind a lega­cy as “arguably America’s most influ­en­tial Con­cep­tu­al artist,” accord­ing to L.A. Times crit­ic Christo­pher Knight. Born of Euro­pean par­ents and raised in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Baldessari incor­po­rat­ed humor, satire, and Pop Art ele­ments into his work.

He did not begin his career, how­ev­er, as part of a move­ment, and he nev­er expect­ed to have much of an audi­ence. In the ear­ly six­ties, he was teach­ing high school art in San Diego and felt “total­ly iso­lat­ed,” he says in the inter­view with Knight below. Baldessari resigned him­self to a “nor­mal life,” paint­ing when he could on the week­ends. These con­di­tions inspired him to “try to fig­ure out what art meant for me, what was the bot­tom line.”

Baldessari answers the ques­tion, to laughs from the audi­ence, with typ­i­cal lacon­ic wit: “any­thing you put on can­vas is art.” Baldessari reversed Duchamp’s for­mu­la. Put a cin­derblock in a muse­um, he says, and it becomes art through con­text, but put a can­vas on the street and it doesn’t become some­thing else. It always retains its sta­tus as an art object. Such objects, for Baldessari, served main­ly as mate­r­i­al plat­forms for ideas.

“Pic­tures are not enough, Baldessari seems to sug­gest,” writes Alex Green­berg­er in an ART­news trib­ute. “Con­cepts mat­ter equal­ly, if not even more.” Baldessari has been called “the god­fa­ther of Con­cep­tu­al Art” for this insight, says Tom Waits says in his nar­ra­tion of “A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari” at the top. He’s also been called a “mas­ter of appro­pri­a­tion” and “Sur­re­al­ist for the dig­i­tal age.” He nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to just can­vas but worked in almost every medi­um of visu­al and tex­tu­al art.

Those media includ­ed cred­it card and iPhone app design. Art isn’t only mate­r­i­al: it is vir­tu­al, ephemer­al, and dis­pos­able. Baldessari demon­strat­ed his own com­mit­ment to destroy­ing the past when, in 1970, he burned all of the work he had made between 1953 and 1966 for a con­cep­tu­al piece called The Cre­ma­tion Project. But he wasn’t an art world anar­chist. As he toyed with and chal­lenged tra­di­tion, he also helped instill it.

Baldessari become famous enough to have war­rant­ed a guest spot on The Simp­sons (and was award­ed a Nation­al Medal of Arts). He became wealthy enough by far to quit his day job. But he nev­er stopped teach­ing, from high school to posts at CalArts, UCLA, and UC San Diego. “I’ve taught all my life,” he said in 2003, “Every­thing from grade school to col­lege to juve­nile delin­quents.”

We might be inclined to see in his teach­ing phi­los­o­phy a key to under­stand­ing his con­cep­tu­al uni­verse: “I set out to right all the things wrong with my own art edu­ca­tion. But I found that you can’t real­ly teach art, you can just sort of set the stage for it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

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

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

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

Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Available as a Free AudioBook and eBook: Features Narrations by Paul Simon, Kristen Bell & Stephen Fry

in Audio Books, e-books, Life, Philosophy | January 6th, 2020

In 2009, Prince­ton philoso­pher Peter Singer pub­lished his prac­ti­cal handbook/manifesto The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Pover­ty. Bill and Melin­da Gates called it “a per­sua­sive and inspir­ing work that will change the way you think about philanthropy”–a book that “shows us we can make a pro­found dif­fer­ence in the lives of the world’s poor­est.”

Now, on its tenth anniver­sary, Singer has released an updat­ed ver­sion of The Life You Can Save. And he’s made it avail­able as a free ebook, and also as a free audio­book fea­tur­ing nar­ra­tions by Kris­ten Bell, Stephen Fry, Paul Simon and Natalia Vodi­ano­va, among oth­ers. You can get the down­loads here.

Singer’s web­site fea­tures a page where you can find the best char­i­ties that address glob­al pover­ty. Each char­i­ty has been “rig­or­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed to help you make the biggest impact per dol­lar.” If you are look­ing for an effi­cient approach, you can also make one sin­gle dona­tion to sup­port all of the char­i­ties vet­ted and rec­om­mend­ed by Singer’s orga­ni­za­tion.

The audio ver­sion of The Life You Can Save will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life You Can Save in 3 Min­utes, by Peter Singer

Peter Singer’s Course on Effec­tive Altru­ism Puts Phi­los­o­phy Into World­ly Action

The Jour­nal of Con­tro­ver­sial Ideas, Co-Found­ed by Philoso­pher Peter Singer, Will Pub­lish & Defend Pseu­do­ny­mous Arti­cles, Regard­less of the Back­lash

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Inter­views with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

The Vatican Library Goes Online and Digitizes Tens of Thousands of Manuscripts, Books, Coins, and More

in Books, History | January 6th, 2020

If any one of us ran our own coun­try, we’d sure­ly dri­ve no small amount of resources toward build­ing an impres­sive nation­al library. That would be true even if we ran a coun­try the size of the Vat­i­can, the small­est sov­er­eign state in the world — but one that, unsur­pris­ing­ly, punch­es well above its weight in terms of the size and his­tor­i­cal val­ue of its hold­ings. “It was in 1451 when Pope Nicholas V, a renowned bib­lio­phile him­self, attempt­ed to re-estab­lish Rome as an aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ter of glob­al impor­tance,” writes Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza. That for­mi­da­ble task involved first “build­ing a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est library of over 1,200 vol­umes, includ­ing his per­son­al col­lec­tion of Greek and Roman clas­sics and a series of texts brought from Con­stan­tino­ple.”

The Vat­i­can Apos­tolic Library, known as “VAT,” has grown a bit over the past five and a half cen­turies. Today it con­tains around 75,000 codices and 85,000 incunab­u­la (which Esparza defines as “edi­tions made between the inven­tion of the print­ing press and the 16th cen­tu­ry”) amid a total of over one mil­lion vol­umes.

And in the case of increas­ing­ly many of these doc­u­ments, you no longer have to make the jour­ney to Vat­i­can City to see them. Thanks to an ongo­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion project launched a decade ago, increas­ing­ly many have become search­able and down­load­able on Digi­VatLib, a data­base of the Vat­i­can Library’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tions includ­ing not just the afore­men­tioned codices and incunab­u­la but “archival mate­ri­als and inven­to­ries as well as graph­ic mate­ri­als, coins and medals.”

Back in 2016 we fea­tured a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of 5,300 rare man­u­scripts dig­i­tized by the col­lec­tion, includ­ing the Ili­ad and Aeneid as well as Japan­ese and Aztec illus­tra­tions. The VAT’s scan­ning, upload­ing, and orga­niz­ing has con­tin­ued apace since, and though it pri­or­i­tizes man­u­scripts “from the Mid­dle Age and Human­is­tic peri­od,” its mate­ri­als tak­en togeth­er have a wider his­tor­i­cal and indeed cul­tur­al sweep, one that only gets wider with each page added. You can get start­ed explor­ing this wealth of doc­u­ments by scrolling down a lit­tle on Digi­VatLib’s front page, in the mid­dle of which you’ll find the lat­est dig­i­tized mate­ri­als as well as a host of select­ed man­u­scripts, a few of whose pages you see above. The VAT has enjoyed its sta­tus as one of the chief repos­i­to­ries of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion longer than any of us has been alive, but we can count our­selves in the first gen­er­a­tion of human­i­ty to see it open up to the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

How the Mys­ter­ies of the Vat­i­can Secret Archives Are Being Revealed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Explore 5,300 Rare Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized by the Vat­i­can: From The Ili­ad & Aeneid, to Japan­ese & Aztec Illus­tra­tions

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

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.

Free Online Writing & Journalism Courses

in | January 4th, 2020

• A Beginner’s Guide to Writ­ing in Eng­lish for Uni­ver­si­ty Study — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing
• An Intro­duc­tion to Screen­writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia
• Advanced Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Busi­ness Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC-Boul­der
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Char­ac­ter — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Plot — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Set­ting and Descrip­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Style — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Dis­cov­er­ing Sci­ence: Sci­ence Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ists, Part 1 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ists, Part 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Get­ting Start­ed with Essay Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Gram­mar and Punc­tu­a­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Gram­mar and Punc­tu­a­tion Advanced — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• How To Make A Poem — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty
• How to Write an Essay — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics — Free Online Course — Jim New­ton, UCLA
• Jour­nal­ism Under Siege — Free Online Course — Mul­ti­ple Fac­ul­ty, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Mem­oir and Per­son­al Essay: Man­ag­ing Your Rela­tion­ship with the Read­er — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty
• Press and Soci­ety — Free iTunes Audio — Christo­pher Scan­lon, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty
• Rhetoric: The Art of Per­sua­sive Writ­ing and Pub­lic Speak­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Script Writ­ing: Write a Pilot Episode for a TV or Web Series — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Michi­gan State
• Sharp­ened Visions: A Poet­ry Work­shop — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Cal Arts
• Song­writ­ing: Writ­ing the Lyrics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Berklee Col­lege of Music
• Start Fic­tion Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Open Uni­ver­si­ty
• Start Writ­ing Essays — Free Course - Open Uni­ver­si­ty
• Writ­ing in the Sci­ences — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Writ­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion & Fan­ta­sy — Free Online Videos — BYU, Bran­don Sander­son
• Writ­ing Sto­ries About Our­selves — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

38 Major Pop Songs Played with the Exact Same Four Chords: Watch a Captivating Medley Performed by the Axis of Awesome

in Comedy, Music | January 3rd, 2020

When we call music a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, it’s usu­al­ly under­stood to be a metaphor. In its purest the­o­ret­i­cal form, music may be more like math—a tru­ly uni­ver­sal language—but in its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the real world, it resem­bles more the great diver­si­ty of tongues around the globe. Each region­al, nation­al, and glob­al music has its gram­mar of scales, rhythms, and chords, each its syn­tax of melodies and har­monies, though these share some impor­tant com­mon­al­i­ties.

The syn­tax of pop music, like its blues pre­de­ces­sor, con­sists of stan­dard chord pro­gres­sions, eas­i­ly swapped from song to song: repeat­able units that form a range of avail­able emo­tion­al expres­sion. Want to see that range on full dis­play, in a brava­do per­for­mance by an Aus­tralian com­e­dy rock band? Look no fur­ther: just above, the Axis of Awe­some per­form their live ren­di­tion of “4 Chord Song,” a stun­ning med­ley of pop hits from Jour­ney to Mis­sy Hig­gins that all use the same four-chord sequence.

With the excep­tion of an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, “Bird­plane,” the ensemble’s selec­tion of 38 songs includes some of the biggest hits of the past few decades. The tonal breadth is sur­pris­ing, as we leap from “Don’t Stop Believ­ing” to “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to “With or With­out You” to Aqua’s “Bar­bie Girl” and Lady Gaga’s “Pok­er Face.” Imag­ine Natal­ie Imbruglia, Green Day, and Toto trad­ing licks, or Pink, the Bea­t­les, and A‑Ha. Maybe these artists have more in com­mon, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, than we thought. Or, as one of the Axis of Awe­some band­mem­ber asks, mock-incred­u­lous­ly, “You can take those four chords, repeat them, and pop out every pop song ever?”

Well, maybe not every pop song. One could choose oth­er pro­gres­sions and make sim­i­lar com­pi­la­tions. These par­tic­u­lar four chords have some­thing of a melan­choly sound, and tend to come up music with an under­cur­rent of sad­ness (yes, even “Bar­bie Girl”). One can quib­ble with some of the par­tic­u­lars here. “Don’t Stop Believ­ing,” for exam­ple, throws a dif­fer­ent chord into the sec­ond phrase of its pro­gres­sion. But the ubiq­ui­ty of this melody in pop is quite reveal­ing, and amus­ing in this musi­cal mashup. See the Axis of Awe­some in a pol­ished video ver­sion of “4 Chord Song,” above, and con­sid­er all the oth­er ways pop music recy­cles and reuses the same ele­ments over and over to con­vey its range of feel­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

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

Free Art & Art History Courses

in | January 3rd, 2020

• Aes­thet­ics & the Phi­los­o­phy of Art - Free Online Video — James Grant, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Art Through Time: A Glob­al View — Free Online Video — Annen­berg Media
• Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy — Free Online Course —  Dan Armen­dariz, Har­vard
• Effec­tive Fundrais­ing and Lead­er­ship in Arts and Cul­ture — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds
• Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­dad Car­los III de Madrid
• Fash­ion as Design — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Muse­um of Mod­ern Art
• Foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can Cyber-Cul­­ture — Free Online Video — UC Berke­ley
• In the Stu­dio: Post­war Abstract Paint­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Muse­um of Mod­ern Art
• Inten­tion­al Pub­lic Dis­rup­tions: Art, Respon­si­bil­i­ty, and Ped­a­gogy — Free Online Video —  Stephen Car­pen­ter II and Lawrence Susskind, MIT
• Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy — Free Online Course — Marc Lev­oy, Stanford/Google
• Intro­duc­tion to Visu­al Design - Free Online Course — Carnegie Mel­lon
• Intro­duc­tion to Visu­al Think­ing — Free Online Video — John McNa­ma­ra, UC Berke­ley
• Islam­ic Cal­lig­ra­phy: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of Hand­writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Malaya 
• Ital­ian Renais­sance — Free Online Course — Dr. Vida Hull, East Ten­nessee State Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ital­ic Cal­lig­ra­phy & Hand­writ­ing — Free Online Course — Lloyd Reynolds, Reed Col­lege
• Let This Be a Les­son: Heroes, Hero­ines & Nar­ra­tive in Paint­ings at Yale — Free Online Video — John Walsh, Yale
• Mod­ern Art & Ideas — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Muse­um of Mod­ern Art
• Pho­tog­ra­phy Lec­tures from the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) — Free Online Lec­tures
• See­ing Through Pho­tographs — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) - Muse­um of Mod­ern Art
• SmARThis­to­ry Video Lec­tures — Free Online Video/Audio — Beth Har­ris, MoMA & Steven Zuck­er, Pratt Insti­tute
• Teach­ing Crit­i­cal Think­ing through Art with the Nation­al Gallery of Art — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) 
• The Ele­ments of Draw­ing — Free Online Course — Stephen Far­thing, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
• What Is Con­tem­po­rary Art? — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Muse­um of Mod­ern Art

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Watch A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Video Newly Remastered in 4K .… and Learn About the Band’s Struggle to Make the Classic Song

in Music | January 2nd, 2020

Though the ‘80s didn’t invent music videos, they did become an essen­tial form of cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy, as high pro­file direc­tors, big bud­gets, and a chan­nel that played them non-stop pushed them into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. But it’s only recent­ly that those orig­i­nal videos–most shot on film, not video by the way–have been get­ting the remas­ter treat­ment that Hol­ly­wood block­busters and art house clas­sics receive. Last month, we saw the film grain and roman­tic light­ing in Wham’s “Last Christ­mas” video remas­tered in 4K. And now anoth­er inescapably ‘80s ear­worm gets the treat­ment: “Take on Me” by Norway’s finest, A‑ha.

For those who haven’t seen the video, it’s a fairy­tale of a down-on-her luck girl who falls in love with the hero (A‑ha’s lead singer Morten Har­ket) in a com­ic book, then falls into the com­ic book where both become pen­cil draw­ings. Under attack from wrench-wield­ing bad guys, she escapes back into the real world and in a love-con­quers-all mir­a­cle, Morten makes it into the real world and into the arms of his love. All in three min­utes and change.

A‑ha might have been seen as a one-hit won­der band by some, but the lov­ing doc on the mak­ing of the song and video demon­strates there’s no such thing as an overnight suc­cess. The band strug­gled for years to make it, and “Take On Me” wasn’t even their first choice for a song–the band called it “Juicy Fruit” because its relent­less cheer­ful pop sound­ed to the band like an Amer­i­can chew­ing gum ad.

And they strug­gled to get the song right–an ear­ly ver­sion was released three times but failed to catch on. They even record­ed a ver­sion and filmed a bland music video for it. For some groups, this fail­ure might have been it, but you have to admire A‑ha. They were hun­gry and they knew, just knew, that the song should be a hit.

As the doc shows, sev­er­al music indus­try execs thought so too. The band plead­ed and got them­selves a new pro­duc­er: Alan Tar­ney. He went back to the group’s orig­i­nal demo and brought back what their first pro­duc­er had tak­en out, but lay­ered on synth after synth as well. From orig­i­nal demo to the hit sin­gle, it had tak­en four years.

For the video, Warn­er Bros. exec Jeff Ayeroff want­ed some­thing com­ic book based, and co-work­er John Beug knew what might work. He had seen a stu­dent ani­ma­tion called “Com­muter” by Can­dace Reckinger and Mike Pat­ter­son, and the two were hired to recre­ate their roto­scoped tech­nique for the video, tak­ing months and months of hand-drawn hard work to com­plete.

The result­ing video, direct­ed by Steve Bar­ron is a clas­sic. It’s been par­o­died on Fam­i­ly Guy and as a Chil­dren In Need char­i­ty spe­cial. And it still works as a mini nar­ra­tive: each verse adds an ele­ment to the sto­ry, the fre­net­ic piano instru­men­tal bridge brings in the ele­ment of dan­ger, and the final cho­rus brings it all togeth­er with a tear and an embrace. (The influ­ence of Ken Russell’s Altered States is not men­tioned in the doc, but it’s an obvi­ous touch­stone.)

The young woman co-star­ring in the video is Bun­ty Bai­ley, who appeared in sev­er­al oth­er ‘80s videos (like this one for Bil­ly Idol). For a lump in the throat moment reunion, keep watch­ing through to the end, where old friends get reunit­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A‑ha Per­forms a Beau­ti­ful Acoustic Ver­sion of Their 1980s Hit, “Take on Me”: Record­ed Live in Nor­way

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Per­formed by North Kore­an Kids with Accor­dions

19-Year-Old Russ­ian Gui­tarist Plays an Inge­nious Cov­er of Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean”

The Trick That Made Ani­ma­tion Real­is­tic: Watch a Short His­to­ry of Roto­scop­ing

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

How Cartoons Saved R. Crumb’s Life, and How R. Crumb Turned Cartoons into an Art Form (NSFW)

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | January 2nd, 2020

Robert Crumb, the icon­ic, found­ing fig­ure of the under­ground and alter­na­tive comix scene, began his career as the ulti­mate out­sider. “I was so alien­at­ed when I was young that draw­ing was like my only con­nec­tion to soci­ety,” he says in the video inter­view above from the Louisiana Chan­nel, “the only thing I could see that was gonna save me from a real­ly dis­mal fate of god knows what.” He had no social skills and no oth­er abil­i­ties to speak of. He was debil­i­tat­ed by self-doubt yet inflat­ed by the buoy­ant ego of the lone artist deter­mined to “make [his] mark on the world.”

What Crumb calls his “two sides” have nev­er been rec­on­ciled, although he has left behind cer­tain racial car­i­ca­tures in more recent work and he claims, in a recent inter­view with Nad­ja Sayej, that he is “no longer a slave to a rag­ing libido.” But his shame­less indul­gence in exag­ger­at­ed stereo­types was always a blunt instru­ment that both pulled read­ers in and pushed them away from the more sub­tle satire and pathos in his comics. As an edi­tor at a Lon­don gallery put it, “there’s some­thing irrec­on­cil­able at the heart of the work that doesn’t resolve towards a sin­gle vision of beau­ty.”

Crumb’s comics are “about seduc­tion and repul­sion. You are drawn into the work and you are judg­ing your­self as you look at it.” We are also judg­ing the artist. Crumb has been called racist, misog­y­nist, a bit­ter, hate­ful lon­er with a nihilis­tic streak five miles wide. These descrip­tions hap­pen to apply to a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of con­vict­ed and poten­tial ter­ror­ist killers these days, the very peo­ple we seek to mar­gin­al­ize from pub­lic dis­course with hate speech laws and pub­lic sham­ing and shun­ning.

As you might expect, Crumb has no tol­er­ance for such things as fall under the head­ing “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” Sup­press­ing art that offends “can even lead to cen­so­r­i­al poli­cies in the gov­ern­ment,” he says, defend­ing the rights of the artist to say what­ev­er they deem nec­es­sary. His work, he says, even at its most extreme, was nec­es­sary. It saved his life. “The art­work I did that used those images and expressed those kinds of feel­ings, I stand by it…. I still think that’s some­thing that need­ed to be said and need­ed to be done…. It prob­a­bly hurts some people’s feel­ings to see those images, but still, I had to put it out there.”

Some of Crum­b’s imagery is hard to defend, such as his use of black­face imagery from the 1920s and 30s, and his some­times vio­lent objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women, from the point of view of char­ac­ters near­ly impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate from their cre­ator. But why, if his art is con­fes­sion­al, should he not con­fess? In so doing, he reveals not only his own teem­ing desires. Crumb illus­trat­ed the male hip­pie uncon­scious as well as his own.

After start­ing a rel­a­tive mass move­ment in under­ground comix in the 60s (and becom­ing a reluc­tant leg­end for “Keep on Truckin’”), he says, “I decid­ed I don’t want to be America’s best-loved hip­pie car­toon­ist. I don’t want that role. So I’ll just be hon­est about who I am, and the weird­ness, and take my chances.” Crumb’s can­dor hap­pened to lay bare many of the atti­tudes he observed not only in him­self but in the denizens of the San Fran­cis­co scene, as he told Jacques Hyza­gi in a very reveal­ing Observ­er inter­view (which prompt­ed a very bit­ter feud between the two).

The hip­pie cul­ture of Haight-Ash­bury, where it all start­ed for me, was full of men doing noth­ing all day and expect­ing women to bring them food. The ‘chick’ had to pro­vide a home for them, cook meals for them, even pay the rent. It was still very much ingrained from the ear­li­er patri­ar­chal men­tal­i­ty of our fathers, except that our fathers, gen­er­al­ly, were providers. Free love meant free sex and food for men. Sure, women enjoyed it, too, and had a lot of sex, but then they served men. Even among left-wing polit­i­cal groups, women were always rel­e­gat­ed to sec­re­tar­i­al, menial jobs. We were all on LSD, so it took a few years for the smoke to dis­si­pate and for women to real­ize what a raw deal they were get­ting with the ne’er-do-well hip­pie male. 

Do we see in Crumb’s work, in which burly, huge-calved women dom­i­nate weak-willed men, a cel­e­bra­tion or a con­dem­na­tion of these atti­tudes? We can say, “it’s com­pli­cat­ed,” which sounds like a cop out, or we can go back to the source. Hear Crumb him­self explain his work, as a prod­uct of two war­ring selves and a need to draw him­self into the world with­out hold­ing any­thing back. He showed oth­er artists and writ­ers who were also “born weird,” as he says, that they could tell their sto­ries entire­ly their own way too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

R. Crumb Illus­trates Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb Cre­ates an Illus­trat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

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

The Music, Books & Films Liberated into the Public Domain in 2020: Rhapsody in Blue, The Magic Mountain, Sherlock, Jr., and More

in Books, Film, Music | January 2nd, 2020

“I heard it as a sort of musi­cal kalei­do­scope of Amer­i­ca, of our vast melt­ing pot, of our undu­pli­cat­ed nation­al pep, of our blues, our met­ro­pol­i­tan mad­ness.” So said Por­gy and Bess com­pos­er George Gersh­win of Rhap­sody in Blue, the orches­tral piece he wrote back in 1924 and which has remained in the Amer­i­can canon ever since. It will sure­ly become even more wide­ly heard from this year on, since 1924 plus 95 — the term of a copy­right under cur­rent Unit­ed States law — equals 2020. Giv­en that Rhap­sody in Blue’s entrance into the pub­lic domain means that cre­ators can now freely do what they like with it, the piece will also, no doubt, under­go all man­ner of cre­ative rearrange­ment and repur­pos­ing in order to reflect the Amer­i­ca of the 2020s.

Copy­right terms did­n’t always last near­ly a cen­tu­ry. Before the 1998 Copy­right Term Exten­sion Act they last­ed only 75 years, and for the addi­tion­al two decades of wait­ing for works to enter the pub­lic domain we usu­al­ly blame Dis­ney. That enter­tain­ment giant did indeed do much of the lob­by­ing for copy­right exten­sion, seek­ing to retain its rights to Mick­ey Mouse’s 1928 debut Steam­boat Willie.

But as Duke Law’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain reports in a post on the works new­ly in pub­lic domain this year, “the Gersh­win Fam­i­ly Trust also pushed for the exten­sion, so that George and Ira Gershwin’s works from the 1920s and 1930s would remain under copy­right.” But now sev­er­al been lib­er­at­ed from it: not just Rhap­sody in Blue, but also stan­dards (with lyrics penned by Gersh­win’s broth­er Ira) like “Fas­ci­nat­ing Rhythm” and “Oh, Lady Be Good!”

2020’s is a promis­ing Pub­lic Domain Day indeed for fans of the Great Amer­i­can Song­book, what with the work of oth­er com­posers like Irv­ing Berlin (specif­i­cal­ly the pop­u­lar tune “Lazy,” well known from Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe’s per­for­mance in There’s No Busi­ness Like Show Busi­ness.) But the list of lit­er­ary works that have just gone pub­lic-domain is even more impres­sive, boast­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed books like Thomas Man­n’s The Mag­ic Moun­tain, E.M. Forster’s A Pas­sage to India, Edith Whar­ton’s novel­la col­lec­tion Old New York, and the pil­lar of mod­ern dystopi­an lit­er­a­ture that is Yevge­ny Zamy­at­in’s We (in Eng­lish trans­la­tion by Gre­go­ry Zil­boorg). In many works of 1924, we can see the roots of the art we make and enjoy in 2020.

That holds espe­cial­ly true in the realm of film, which this year con­tributes to the pub­lic domain pic­tures from two mas­ters of silent com­e­dy: Harold Lloyd’s Girl Shy and Hot Water, and Buster Keaton’s The Nav­i­ga­tor and Sher­lock, Jr. That last film has the hon­or of being pre­served by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress for its cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance, as well as of hav­ing been named by the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute one of the fun­ni­est motion pic­tures in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. You can learn more about all that entered the pub­lic domain this year (and what might, but for changes in the law, have entered it) at the Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain and the Pub­lic Domain review. But even more impor­tant than what enters the increas­ing­ly kalei­do­scop­ic melt­ing pot of the pub­lic domain, of course, is what we do with it. Future George Gersh­wins, Thomas Manns, and Buster Keatons, take note.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gersh­win Plays Gersh­win: Hear the Orig­i­nal Record­ing of Rhap­sody in Blue, with the Com­pos­er Him­self at the Piano (1924)

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

Safe­ty Last, the 1923 Movie Fea­tur­ing the Most Icon­ic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Pub­lic Domain

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

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.