60-Second Introductions to 12 Groundbreaking Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hopper, Pollock, Rothko & More

in Art, History | November 21st, 2017

Some art his­to­ri­ans ded­i­cate their entire careers, and indeed lives, to the work of a sin­gle artist. But what about those of us who only have a minute to spare? Address­ing the demand for the briefest pos­si­ble primers on the cre­ators of impor­tant art, paint­ings and oth­er­wise, of the past cen­tu­ry or so, the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts’ Painters in 60 Sec­onds series has pub­lished twelve episodes so far. Of those infor­ma­tion­al­ly dense videos, you see here the intro­duc­tions to Sal­vador Dalí, Mar­cel Duchamp, Edward Hop­per, Jack­son Pol­lock, and Mark Rothko.

Though short, these crash cours­es do find their way beyond the very basics. “There’s more to Dalí,” says the Roy­al Acad­e­my of the Arts’ Artis­tic Direc­tor Tim Mar­low, than “skill­ful­ly ren­dered fever dreams of sex and decay.

He paint­ed one of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s great cru­ci­fix­ions, but it’s more about physics than reli­gion, and he was as influ­enced by phi­los­o­phy as he was by Sig­mund Freud.” Ducham­p’s unortho­dox and influ­en­tial ideas “came togeth­er in one of the most ambi­tious works of the 20th cen­tu­ry, The Large Glass, an end­less­ly ana­lyzed work of machine-age erot­ic sym­bol­ism, sci­ence, alche­my, and then some.”

In the seem­ing­ly more staid Depres­sion-era work of Edward Hop­per, Mar­low points to “a pro­found con­tem­pla­tion of the world around us. Hop­per slows down time and cap­tures a moment of still­ness in a fran­tic world,” paint­ed in a time of “deep nation­al self-exam­i­na­tion about the very idea of Amer­i­can­ness.” Hop­per paint­ed the famous Nighthawks in 1942; the next year, and sure­ly on the very oth­er end of some kind of artis­tic spec­trum, Hop­per’s coun­try­man and near-con­tem­po­rary Jack­son Pol­lock paint­ed Mur­al, which shows “the young Pol­lock work­ing through Picas­so, con­tin­u­ing to frac­ture the archi­tec­ture of cubism” while “at the same time tak­ing on the lessons of the Mex­i­can mural­ists like Siqueiros and Oroz­co.”

Yet Mur­al also “starts to pro­claim an orig­i­nal­i­ty that is all Pol­lock­’s,” open­ing the gate­way into his hero­ic (and well-known) “drip peri­od.” Rothko, prac­tic­ing an equal­ly dis­tinc­tive but entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of abstrac­tion, end­ed up pro­duc­ing “some of the most mov­ing paint­ings in all of the 20th cen­tu­ry: sat­u­rat­ed stains of col­or.” Mak­ing ref­er­ence to clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture — going back, even, to Stone­henge — his work becomes “a kind of thresh­old into which you, the view­er, project your­self,” but its soft edges also give it a sense of “breath­ing, pul­sat­ing, and some­times, of dying.”

If you hap­pen to have more than a minute avail­able, how could you resist dig­ging a bit deep­er into the life and work of an artist like that? Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to get intro­duced to anoth­er: Hen­ri Matisse or Grant Wood, say, or Kaz­imir Male­vich or Joan Mitchell. You may just find one about whom you want to spend the rest of your years learn­ing.

See all videos, includ­ing new ones down the road, at the Painters in 60 Sec­onds series playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

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

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Colorful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Smaller and Travel Times Quicker

in Maps | November 21st, 2017

This time of year espe­cial­ly, we com­plain about the greed and arro­gance of air­lines, the con­fu­sion and inef­fi­cien­cy of air­ports, and the sar­dine seat­ing of coach. But we don’t have to go back very far to get a sense of just how tru­ly painful long-dis­tance trav­el used to be. Just step back a hun­dred years or so when—unless you were a WWI pilot—you trav­eled by train or by ship, where all sorts of mis­ad­ven­tures might befall you, and where a jour­ney that might now take sev­er­al dull hours could take sev­er­al dozen, often very uncom­fort­able, days. Before rail­roads crossed the con­ti­nents, that num­ber could run into the hun­dreds.

In the ear­ly 1840s, for exam­ple, notes Simon Willis at The Econ­o­mist’s 1843 Mag­a­zine, “an Amer­i­can dry-goods mer­chant called Asa Whit­ney, who lived near New York, trav­elled to Chi­na on busi­ness. It took 153 days, which he thought was a waste of time.” It’s prob­a­bly eas­i­er to swal­low plat­i­tudes about des­ti­na­tions and jour­neys when the jour­ney doesn’t take up near­ly half the year and run the risk of cholera. By 1914, the explo­sion of rail­roads had reduced trav­el times con­sid­er­ably, but they remained at what we would con­sid­er intol­er­a­ble lengths.

We can see just how long it took to get from place to place in the “isochron­ic map” above (view it in a large for­mat here), which visu­al­izes dis­tances all over the globe. The rail­ways “were well-estab­lished,” notes Giz­mo­do, “in Europe and the U.S., too, mak­ing trav­el far more swift than it had been in the past.” One could reach “the depths of Siberia” from Lon­don in under ten days, thanks to the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­way. By con­trast, in Africa and South Amer­i­ca, “any trav­el inland from the coast took weeks.”

The map, cre­at­ed by roy­al car­tog­ra­ph­er John G. Bartholomew, came pack­aged with sev­er­al oth­er such tools in An Atlas of Eco­nom­ic Geog­ra­phy, a book, Willis explains, “intend­ed for school­boys,” con­tain­ing “every­thing a thrust­ing young entre­pre­neur, impe­ri­al­ist, trad­er or trav­eller could need.” All of the dis­tances are mea­sured in “days from Lon­don,” and col­or-cod­ed in the leg­end below. Dark green areas, such as Sudan, much of Brazil, inland Aus­tralia, or Tibet might take over 40 days trav­el to reach. All of West­ern Europe is acces­si­ble, the map promis­es, with­in five days, as are parts of the east coast of the U.S., with parts fur­ther Mid­west tak­ing up to 10 days to reach.

What might have seemed like wiz­ardry to Wal­ter Raleigh prob­a­bly sounds like hell on earth to busi­ness class denizens every­where. How do these jour­neys com­pare to the cur­rent age of rapid air trav­el? Rome2rio, a “com­pre­hen­sive glob­al trip plan­ner,” aimed to find out by recre­at­ing Bartholomew’s map, updat­ed to 2016 stan­dards. You can see, just above (or expand­ed here), the same view of the world from its one­time impe­ri­al­ist cen­ter, Lon­don, with the same col­or-cod­ed leg­end below, “Dis­tances in Days from Lon­don.” And yet here, a jour­ney to most places will take less than a day, with cer­tain out­er reaches—Siberia, Green­land, the Arc­tic Cir­cle, stretch­ing into two, maybe three.

Should we have rea­son to com­plain, when those of us who do travel—or who must—have it so easy com­pared to the dan­ger, bore­dom, and gen­er­al unpleas­ant­ness of long-dis­tance trav­el even one-hun­dred years ago? The ques­tion pre­sumes humans are capa­ble of not com­plain­ing about trav­el. Such com­plaint may form the basis of an ancient lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, when heroes ven­tured over vast ter­rain, slay­ing mon­sters, solv­ing rid­dles, mak­ing friends, lovers, and ene­mies…. The epic dimen­sions of his­toric trav­el can seem quaint com­pared to the ster­ile tedi­um of air­port ter­mi­nals. But just maybe—as in those long sea and rail­way voy­ages that could span sev­er­al months—we can dis­cov­er a kind of romance amidst the queasy food courts, tacky gift shops, and motor­ized mov­ing walk­ways.

via  1843 Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Col­or­ful Map Visu­al­izes the Lex­i­cal Dis­tances Between Europe’s Lan­guages: 54 Lan­guages Spo­ken by 670 Mil­lion Peo­ple

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

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

What Made Freddie Mercury the Greatest Vocalist in Rock History? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

in Music | November 20th, 2017

I wasn’t always a Queen fan. Hav­ing cut my music fan teeth on espe­cial­ly down­beat, mis­er­able bands like Joy Divi­sion, The Cure, and The Smiths, I couldn’t quite dig the unabashed sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and oper­at­ic bom­bast. Like one of the “Kids React to Queen” kids, I found myself ask­ing, “What is this?” What turned me around? Maybe it was the first time I heard Queen’s theme song for Flash Gor­don. The 1980 space opera is most remark­able for Max von Sydow’s turn as Ming the Mer­ci­less, and for those bursts of Fred­die Mer­cury and his mates’ mul­ti-tracked voic­es, explo­sions of syn­co­pat­ed angel song, announc­ing the com­ing of the eight­ies with all the high camp of Rocky Hor­ror and the rock con­fi­dence of Robert Plant.

As a front­man Mer­cury had so much more than the per­fect style and stance—though he did own every stage he set foot on. He had a voice that com­mand­ed atten­tion, even from mopey new wave teenagers vibrat­ing on Ian Curtis’s fre­quen­cy. What makes Mer­cury’s voice so compelling—as most would say, the great­est vocal­ist in all of rock his­to­ry? One recent sci­en­tif­ic study con­clud­ed that Mercury’s phys­i­cal method of singing resem­bled that of Tuvan throat singers.

He was able to cre­ate a faster vibra­to and sev­er­al more lay­ers of har­mon­ics than any­one else. The video above from Poly­phon­ic adds more to the expla­na­tion, quot­ing opera sopra­no Montser­rat Cabal­lé, with whom Mer­cury record­ed an album in 1988. In addi­tion to his incred­i­ble range, Mer­cury “was able to slide effort­less­ly from a reg­is­ter to anoth­er,” she remarked. Though Mer­cury was nat­u­ral­ly a bari­tone, he pri­mar­i­ly sang as a tenor, and had no dif­fi­cul­ty, as we know, with sopra­no parts.

Mer­cury was a great performer—and he was a great per­for­ma­tive vocal­ist, mean­ing, Cabal­lé says, that “he was sell­ing the voice…. His phras­ing was sub­tle, del­i­cate and sweet or ener­getic and slam­ming. He was able to find the right colour or expres­sive nuance for each word.” He had incred­i­ble dis­ci­pline and con­trol over his instru­ment, and an under­rat­ed rhyth­mic sen­si­bil­i­ty, essen­tial for a rock singer to con­vinc­ing­ly take on rock­a­bil­ly, gospel, dis­co, funk, and opera as well as the blues-based hard rock Queen so eas­i­ly mas­tered. No style of music elud­ed him, except per­haps for those that call for a cer­tain kind of vocal­ist who can’t actu­al­ly sing.

That’s the rub with Queen—they were so good at every­thing they did that they can be more than a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. Watch the rest of the video to learn more about how Mercury’s super­hu­man vibra­to pro­duced sounds almost no oth­er human can make; see more of Polyphonic’s music analy­sis of one-of-a-kind musi­cians at our pre­vi­ous posts on Leonard Cohen and David Bowie’s final albums and John Bonham’s drum­ming; and just below, hear all of those Mer­cury qualities—the vibra­to, the per­fect tim­ing, and the expres­sive performativity—in the iso­lat­ed vocal track from “I Want to Break Free” just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

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

An Artist with Synesthesia Turns Jazz & Rock Classics Into Colorful Abstract Paintings

in Art, Music, Neuroscience, Video - Arts & Culture | November 20th, 2017

For those in the arts, few moments are more bliss­ful than those spent “in the zone,” those times when the words or images or notes flow unim­ped­ed, the artist func­tion­ing as more con­duit than cre­ator.

Viewed in this light, artist Melis­sa McCrack­en’s chromes­the­sia—or sound-to-col­or synesthesia—is a gift. Since birth, this rare neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non has caused her to see col­ors while lis­ten­ing to music, an expe­ri­ence she likens to visu­al­iz­ing one’s mem­o­ries.

Trained as a psy­chol­o­gist, she has made a name for her­self as an abstract painter by trans­fer­ring her col­or­ful neu­ro­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions onto can­vas.

John Lennon’s “Julia” yields an impas­to flame across a pale green field.

The bold daf­fodil and phlox hues of Jimi Hendrix’s “Lit­tle Wing” could have sprung from Monet’s gar­den at Giverny.

McCrack­en told Broad­ly that chromes­thetes’ col­or asso­ci­a­tions vary from indi­vid­ual to indi­vid­ual, though her own expe­ri­ence of a par­tic­u­lar song only wavers when she is focus­ing on a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment, such as a bass line she’s nev­er paid atten­tion to before.

While her port­fo­lio sug­gests a woman of catholic musi­cal tastes, col­or­wise, she does tend to favor cer­tain gen­res and instru­ments:

Expres­sive music such as funk is a lot more col­or­ful, with all the dif­fer­ent instru­ments, melodies, and rhythms cre­at­ing a high­ly sat­u­rat­ed effect. Gui­tars are gen­er­al­ly gold­en and angled, and piano is more mar­bled and jerky because of the chords. I rarely paint acoustic music because it’s often just one per­son play­ing gui­tar and singing, and I nev­er paint coun­try songs because they’re bor­ing mut­ed browns.

Her favorite kind of music, jazz, almost always presents itself to her in shades of gold and blue, lead­ing one to won­der if per­haps the Utah Jazz’s uni­form redesign has a synes­thet­ic ele­ment.

Cer­tain­ly, there are a large num­ber of musi­cians—includ­ing Duke Elling­ton, Kanye West, and Bil­ly Joel—for whom col­or and music are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

View Melis­sa McCracken’s port­fo­lio here.

via Broad­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

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

New “Women of NASA” Lego Immortalizes the STEM Contributions of Sally Ride, Margaret Hamilton, Mae Jemison & Nancy Grace Roman

in Gender, Science, Technology | November 20th, 2017

Ear­li­er this year, the Lego com­pa­ny announced that it would pro­duce a Women of NASA Lego set, based on a pro­pos­al it received from sci­ence writer Maia Wein­stock. In that pro­pos­al, Wein­stock wrote: “Women have played crit­i­cal roles through­out the his­to­ry of the U.S. space pro­gram, a.k.a. NASA or the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion. Yet in many cas­es, their con­tri­bu­tions are unknown or under-appre­ci­at­ed — espe­cial­ly as women have his­tor­i­cal­ly strug­gled to gain accep­tance in the fields of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics (STEM).”

Now on the mar­ket, the new Lego set immor­tal­izes the con­tri­bu­tions of NASA astro­nauts Sal­ly Ride and Mae Jemi­son; astronomer Nan­cy Grace Roman; and com­put­er sci­en­tist Mar­garet Hamil­ton, who we fea­tured here this past sum­mer. The video above gives you a com­plete walk-through, show­ing you, for exam­ple, Hamil­ton stand­ing next to the large pile of source code that pow­ered the Apol­lo mis­sion (just as she did in this his­toric pho­to). Or you’ll see Nan­cy Grace Roman accom­pa­nied by a pos­able Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and a pro­ject­ed image of a plan­e­tary neb­u­la. The video clos­es with some com­men­tary on the social mer­its of this new Lego set, which you may or may not agree with.

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:

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a Lego Pro­fes­sor­ship

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

Helen Mirren Now Teaching Her First Online Course on Acting

in Film, Online Courses | November 20th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­Class remains on fire. In recent months, the new online course provider has announced the devel­op­ment of online cours­es taught by lead­ing fig­ures in their fields. And cer­tain­ly some names you’ll rec­og­nize: Mar­tin Scors­ese on Film­mak­ing, Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz, Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment, David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing, Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy, Ron Howard on Direct­ing and Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing too. Now add this to the list: Helen Mir­ren on Act­ing:

Writes Mas­ter­Class:

Oscar, Gold­en Globe, Emmy, and Tony win­ner Helen Mir­ren is one of the great­est actress­es of our time. In her first online class, she dis­cuss­es the dual­ism that is core to her method: the neces­si­ty for mas­ter­ing tech­nique (craft) and then let­ting go so that your imag­i­na­tion can take over (art). Learn how to break down a script, research char­ac­ters, and mas­ter tech­niques so you can tran­scend them to find free­dom in every role.

The course just opened for enroll­ment. Priced at $90, the course fea­tures 28 video lessons where Mir­ren “brings you behind the scenes to show you the secrets of her act­ing tech­nique.” And a down­load­able work­book that fea­tures sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als and les­son recaps.

Learn more about Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in get­ting access to all of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es, you can buy an All-Access Annu­al Pass.

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:

Helen Mir­ren Holds Her Own (and Then Some) in a Cringe-Induc­ing­ly Sex­ist TV Inter­view, 1975

Helen Mir­ren Tells Us Why Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Act­ing & Mod­ern Art Have in Com­mon)

Nine Tips from Bill Murray & Cellist Jan Vogler on How to Study Intensely and Optimize Your Learning

in Education, Life, Music | November 20th, 2017

Pho­to by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Would you take study tips from Bill Mur­ray? After high school, he did spend some time as a pre-med­ical stu­dent at Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­ver — before drop­ping out to return to his home­town of Chica­go and get his start in com­e­dy with the famed improv group Sec­ond City. Still, Reg­is did even­tu­al­ly award him an hon­orary Doc­tor of Human­i­ties a decade ago, and you have to admit that the fame-and-for­tune path worked out for him. In fact, it worked out and then some: see­ing the mas­sive suc­cess of Ghost­busters (and the temp­ta­tions there­of) loom­ing in 1984, Mur­ray decid­ed to make his return to school, this time to study phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, and French — and at the Sor­bonne, no less.

The Spo­ti­fy playlist below offers brief selec­tions of spo­ken-word wis­dom relat­ed to study­ing and learn­ing in gen­er­al, part of the fruit of a project by Mur­ray and Ger­man cel­list Jan Vogler. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.)

They recent­ly made an album togeth­er called New Worlds, where the sounds of Vogler’s clas­si­cal trio accom­pa­ny Mur­ray’s voice, singing and read­ing clas­sic works of Amer­i­can music and lit­er­a­ture from Mark Twain to Van Mor­ri­son. They also record­ed this selec­tion of mem­o­ries, gal­va­niz­ing mes­sages, and “intense study tips” briefly sum­ma­rized as fol­lows: “Don’t cram,” “Con­cen­trate,” “One prob­lem,” “Sleep on it,” “Take a bath,” “Focus on oth­ers,” “More is more,” “Take a break,” and “Build a rou­tine.”

Lis­ten to the playlist and you can hear Mur­ray expand on these sug­ges­tions, some of which will res­onate with mate­r­i­al we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: the psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non that has us do our best think­ing in the show­er (or indeed the bath), for instance, or the intel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tions of Mur­ray’s comedic per­sona. If you find his advice use­ful, you might also look to the exam­ple he sets with how he runs his career, famous­ly tak­ing risks on untest­ed ideas or col­lab­o­ra­tors (includ­ing a cer­tain Wes Ander­son) and going to great lengths (up to and includ­ing replac­ing his agent with a voice­mail box) to avoid get­ting caught in the gears of his indus­try. Whether study­ing a sub­ject or becom­ing the most beloved com­ic actor of your gen­er­a­tion, in oth­er words, you’ve got to find a path that works for you and you alone. As one track of Mur­ray and Vogler’s help­ful playlist puts it, “Good luck.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Rare 1915 Film Shows Claude Monet at Work in His Famous Garden at Giverny

in Art, History | November 17th, 2017

Long ago, we showed you some star­tling footage of an elder­ly, arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir, paint­ing with hor­ri­bly deformed hands. Today we offer a more idyl­lic image of a French Impres­sion­ist painter in his gold­en years: Claude Mon­et on a sun­ny day in his beau­ti­ful gar­den at Giverny.

Once again, the footage was pro­duced by Sacha Gui­t­ry for his project Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land.” It was shot in the sum­mer of 1915, when Mon­et was 74 years old. It was not the best time in Mon­et’s life. His sec­ond wife and eldest son had both died in the pre­vi­ous few years, and his eye­sight was get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly worse due to cataracts. But despite the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal set­backs, Mon­et would soon rebound, mak­ing the last decade of his life (he died in 1926 at the age of 86) an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive peri­od in which he paint­ed many of his most famous stud­ies of water lilies.

At the begin­ning of the film clip we see Gui­t­ry and Mon­et talk­ing with each oth­er. Then Mon­et paints on a large can­vas beside a lily pond. It’s a shame the cam­era does­n’t show the paint­ing Mon­et is work­ing on, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the great artist all clad in white, a cig­a­rette dan­gling from his lips, paint­ing in his love­ly gar­den.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

1922 Pho­to: Claude Mon­et Stands on the Japan­ese Foot­bridge He Paint­ed Through the Years

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Rare Film of Sculp­tor Auguste Rodin Work­ing at His Stu­dio in Paris (1915)

Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

How Seinfeld, the Sitcom Famously “About Nothing,” Is Like Gustave Flaubert’s Novels About Nothing

in Comedy, Literature, Television | November 17th, 2017

“A show about noth­ing”: peo­ple have described Sein­feld that way for decades, but cre­ators Jer­ry Sein­feld and Lar­ry David did­n’t set out to cre­ate any­thing of the kind. In fact, with Sein­feld him­self already estab­lished as a stand-up come­di­an, they orig­i­nal­ly pitched to NBC a show about how a com­ic finds mate­r­i­al in his day-to-day life. But in its 43rd episode, when the series had become a major cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, Sein­feld’s char­ac­ter and Jason Alexan­der’s George Costan­za (whom David based on him­self) pitch a show to tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives where “noth­ing hap­pens,” and fans seized upon the truth about Sein­feld they saw reflect­ed in that joke.

In the video essay above, Evan Puschak, known as the Nerd­writer, fig­ures out why. It’s a cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney that takes him back to the 19th-cen­tu­ry nov­els of Gus­tave Flaubert. “Flaubert was a pio­neer of lit­er­ary real­ism, in large part respon­si­ble for rais­ing the sta­tus of the nov­el to that of a high art,” says Puschak.

In 1852, Flaubert wrote a let­ter describ­ing his ambi­tion to write “a book about noth­ing, a book depen­dent on noth­ing exter­nal, which would be held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its style.” Instead of want­i­ng to “string you along with mul­ti­ple sus­pense-height­en­ing nar­ra­tive devel­op­ments,” in Puschak’s view, “he wants to bring you into the text itself, to look there for the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed mean­ings that he’s built for you.”

And so, in their own way, do Sein­feld and David in the sit­com that became and remains so beloved in large part with its numer­ous depar­tures from the tra­di­tions the form had estab­lished over the past forty years. “It was­n’t until Sein­feld that the con­ven­tions of the sit­com were decon­struct­ed ful­ly, when all forms of uni­ty, famil­ial and espe­cial­ly roman­tic, were whole­heart­ed­ly aban­doned. For Sein­feld, these addi­tion­al ele­ments were just so much fluff,” dis­trac­tions from telling a sto­ry “held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its com­e­dy.” The crit­ic James Wood, quot­ed in this video, once wrote that “nov­el­ists should thank Flaubert the way poets thank spring: it real­ly all begins with him.” By the same token, two epochs exist for the writ­ers of sit­coms: before Sein­feld and after. Not bad for a show about noth­ing — or not about noth­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Watch a New, “Orig­i­nal” Episode of Sein­feld Per­formed Live on Stage

Sein­feld & Noth­ing­ness: A Super­cut of the Show’s Emp­ti­est Moments

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Hear a Complete Chronological Discography of Patti Smith’s Fiercely Poetic Rock and Roll: 13 Hours and 142 Tracks

in Music | November 17th, 2017

Pat­ti Smith has always aligned her­self with artists who were out­siders and exper­i­men­tal­ists in their time, but who have since moved to the cen­ter of the cul­ture, where they are often reduced to a few bio­graph­i­cal notes. Arthur Rim­baud, Vir­ginia Woolf, William Blake…. As much moti­vat­ed by art and poet­ry as by the aggres­sion of rock and roll, Smith’s 1975 debut album reached out to peo­ple on the mar­gins of pop­u­lar cul­ture. “I was speak­ing to the dis­en­fran­chised, to peo­ple out­side soci­ety, peo­ple like myself,” she says, “I didn’t know these peo­ple, but I knew they were out there. I think Hors­es did what I hoped it would do. It spoke to the peo­ple who need­ed to hear it.”

It’s hard to imag­ine who those peo­ple were. In the process of its can­on­iza­tion, unfor­tu­nate­ly, punk has come to be seen as a rejec­tion of cul­ture, a form of anti-art. But Smith’s amal­gam of loose, rangy garage rock brims with arti­ness, mak­ing it “the nat­ur­al link between the Vel­vet Under­ground and the Ramones,” writes Jil­lian Mapes at Pitch­fork, “in the con­tin­u­um of down­town New York rock.” Pitch­fork sit­u­ates Smith’s first record at the top of their “Sto­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk in 33 Songs,” more “influ­en­tial in its atti­tude” per­haps than in its par­tic­u­lar style. “Her pres­ence at the fore­front of the scene was a state­ment in itself,” but a state­ment of what, exact­ly?

One of the fas­ci­nat­ing things about Smith was her sub­ver­sion of gen­dered expec­ta­tions and iden­ti­ties. In the epic med­ley “Land: Horses/Land of a Thou­sand Dances/La Mar (De),” her pro­tag­o­nist is an abused boy named John­ny. She slides into a sin­u­ous androg­y­nous vamp, por­tray­ing a “sweet young thing. Hump­ing on a park­ing meter” with the dan­ger­ous sex­u­al ener­gy she appro­pri­at­ed from idols like Mick Jag­ger. Yet in her twist on the per­for­mance of a clas­si­cal­ly mas­cu­line sex­u­al­i­ty, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty becomes dan­ger­ous, sur­vival a fierce act of defi­ance: “Life is filled with holes,” she sings, “Johnny’s lay­ing there, his sperm cof­fin, angel looks down at him and says, ‘Oh, pret­ty boy, can’t you show me noth­ing but sur­ren­der?”

John­ny shows the angel, in a grit­ty West Side Sto­ry-like scene that illus­trates the razor edges at the heart of Smith’s musi­cal poet­ry. He gets up, “takes off his leather jack­et, taped to his chest there’s the answer, you got pen knives and jack knives and switch­blades pre­ferred, switch­blades pre­ferred.” Hors­es is so foundational—to punk rock, fem­i­nist punk, and a whole host of oth­er coun­ter­cul­tur­al terms that didn’t exist in 1975—that it’s unfair to expect Smith’s sub­se­quent albums to reach the same heights and depths with the same raw, unbri­dled ener­gy. Her 1976 fol­low-up, Radio Ethiopia, dis­ap­point­ed many crit­ics and fans, though it has since become a clas­sic.

As William Ruhlmann writes at All­mu­sic, “her band encoun­tered the same devel­op­ment prob­lem the punks would—as they learned their craft and com­pe­tence set in, they lost some of the unself-con­scious­ness that had made their music so appeal­ing.” The music may have become man­nered, but Smith was a pro­found­ly self-con­scious artist from the start, and would remain so, explor­ing in album after album her sense of her­self as the prod­uct of her influ­ences, whom she always speaks of as though they are close per­son­al friends or even aspects of her own mind. Who is Pat­ti Smith speak­ing to? Her heroes, her friends, her fam­i­ly, her var­i­ous selves, the men and women who form a com­mu­ni­ty of voic­es in her work.

We get to lis­ten in on those con­ver­sa­tions, and we find our­selves torn out of the famil­iar through Smith’s detourn­ment of clas­sic rock swag­ger and beat­nik pos­es. You can hear her many voic­es devel­op, refine, and some­times stum­ble into cre­ative mis­steps that are far more inter­est­ing than so many artists’ suc­cess­es in the playlist above, a com­plete 13-hour chrono­log­i­cal discog­ra­phy (save some rar­i­ties and live albums that aren’t on Spo­ti­fy) of Smith’s work—a life­time of what her father called a “devel­op­ment of the coun­try of the mind” as she remarked in a 1976 inter­view. “He believed that the mind was a coun­try, and you had to devel­op it, you had to build and build and build the mind.”

These are not the kinds of sen­ti­ments we might expect to hear from the so-called “God­moth­er of Punk.” Which might speak to how lit­tle we under­stand about what Smith and her mot­ley com­pa­tri­ots were up to amid the grime and squalor of mid-sev­en­ties down­town New York.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read the Poet­ry that Would Become Hors­es: A Read­ing of 14 Poems at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, 1975

Pat­ti Smith’s New Haunt­ing Trib­ute to Nico: Hear Three Tracks

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