Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Double as Playable Vinyl Records

in Music, Random | October 16th, 2015

The tiny, Himalayan king­dom of Bhutan has a unique nation­al aspi­ra­tion that sets it apart from its neigh­bors, Chi­na and India. (And cer­tain­ly the Unit­ed States too.) Rather than increas­ing its gross nation­al prod­uct, Bhutan has instead made it a goal to increase the Gross Nation­al Hap­pi­ness of its cit­i­zens. There’s wealth in health, not just mon­ey, the Bhutanese have argued. And since the 197os, the coun­try has tak­en a holis­tic approach to devel­op­ment, try­ing to increase the spir­i­tu­al, phys­i­cal, and envi­ron­men­tal health of its peo­ple. And guess what? The strat­e­gy is pay­ing off. A 2006 glob­al sur­vey con­duct­ed by Busi­ness Week found that Bhutan is the hap­pi­est coun­try in Asia and the eighth-hap­pi­est coun­try in the world.

It’s per­haps only a nation devot­ed to hap­pi­ness that could throw its sup­port behind this — postage stamps that dou­ble as playable vinyl records. Cre­at­ed by an Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur Burt Todd in the ear­ly 70s, at the request of the Bhutanese roy­al fam­i­ly, the “talk­ing stamps” shown above could be stuck on a let­ter and then lat­er played on a turntable. Accord­ing to Tod­d’s 2006 obit­u­ary in The New York Times, one stamp “played the Bhutanese nation­al anthem,” and anoth­er deliv­ered “a very con­cise his­to­ry of Bhutan.” Thanks to WFMU, our favorite inde­pen­dent free form radio sta­tion, you can hear clips of talk­ing stamps above and below. Don’t you feel hap­pi­er already?

via The Reply All Pod­cast

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Sovi­et Hip­sters Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

Watch Dismaland — The Official Unofficial Film, A Cinematic Journey Through Banksy’s Apocalyptic Theme Park

in Art, Comedy | October 16th, 2015

After a frus­trat­ing day spent deal­ing with a tena­cious ghost in my two-year-old lap­top, I’d much rather vis­it the drea­ry bemuse­ment park, Dis­ma­land, than that soul­less, slick-sur­faced “genius” bar. It just feels more real, some­how.

Sad­ly for those of us in gloomy, defeatist moods, Dis­ma­land, the artist Banksy’s high con­cept, mul­ti­ple acre instal­la­tion, was nev­er intend­ed to be a per­ma­nent fix­ture. It went the way of Cinderella’s coach ear­li­er this fall, but not before pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Bright­more man­aged to squeeze in amongst the great throngs of British curios­i­ty seek­ers, cam­era in hand.

The weath­er was drea­ry for his three vis­its, and a secu­ri­ty guard denud­ed him of his tri­pod, but he still man­aged to cap­ture the dystopi­an scene on behalf of arm­chair trav­el­ers every­where. A cat­a­logue of hor­rors awaits you above in Dis­ma­land: The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film. He also paid close atten­tion to the sound design of the apoc­a­lyp­tic get­away, under­stand­ing the audio com­po­nent to such grim exhibits as Relent­less Paparazzi and the hor­ri­fy­ing mer­ry-wheel, Cor­po­rate Scan­dal.

The artist, a true Dis­ma­teer, shares more about his time at the least hap­py place on earth here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Pat­ti Smith Presents Top Web­by Award to Banksy; He Accepts with Self-Mock­ing Video

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

A Young Hunter S. Thompson Appears on the Classic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

in Books, Television | October 15th, 2015

Once upon a time, avant-garde com­posers, sur­re­al­ist painters, and Gonzo jour­nal­ists made guest appear­ances on the most main­stream Amer­i­can game shows. It does­n’t hap­pen much any­more.

We’ve shown you John Cage per­form on I’ve Got a Secret in 1960; Sal­vador Dalí do his Dalí schtick on What’s My Line in 1952; and a young Frank Zap­pa turn a bicy­cle into a musi­cal instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show in ’63. Now we can add to the list a young Hunter S. Thomp­son mak­ing an appear­ance on To Tell the Truth, one of the longest-run­ning TV game shows in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The episode (above) aired on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1967, the year after Thomp­son pub­lished his first major book of jour­nal­ism, Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. (See him get con­front­ed by the Angels here.)

If you’re not famil­iar with the show, To Tell the Truth works like this:

The show fea­tures a pan­el of four celebri­ties whose object is the cor­rect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a described con­tes­tant who has an unusu­al occu­pa­tion or expe­ri­ence. This cen­tral char­ac­ter is accom­pa­nied by two impos­tors who pre­tend to be the cen­tral char­ac­ter; togeth­er, the three per­sons are said to belong to a “team of chal­lengers.” The celebri­ty pan­elists ques­tion the three con­tes­tants; the impos­tors are allowed to lie but the cen­tral char­ac­ter is sworn “to tell the truth”. After ques­tion­ing, the pan­el attempts to iden­ti­fy which of the three chal­lengers is telling the truth and is thus the cen­tral char­ac­ter.

Giv­en the whole premise of the show, Thomp­son, only 30 years old, was still an unrec­og­niz­able face on Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al scene. But, with the pub­li­ca­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas just around the cor­ner, all of that was about to change.

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!

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

Maurice Sendak Illustrates Tolstoy in 1963 (with a Little Help from His Editor)

in Art, Literature | October 15th, 2015

Even those of us who know noth­ing else of Mau­rice Sendak’s work know Where the Wild Things Are, almost always because we read and found our­selves cap­ti­vat­ed by it in our own child­hoods — if, of course, our child­hoods hap­pened in 1963 or lat­er. Though that year saw the pub­li­ca­tion of that best-known of Sendak’s many works as an illus­tra­tor and writer — and indeed, quite pos­si­bly the best-known chil­dren’s book of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, illus­trat­ed or writ­ten by any­one — the world got some­thing else intrigu­ing from Sendak at the same time: an illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Leo Tol­stoy’s 1852 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el Nikolenka’s Child­hood.

At Brain­pick­ings, Maria Popo­va writes of the strug­gle Sendak, then a young and inse­cure artist at the begin­ning of his career, endured to com­plete this less­er-known project: “His youth­ful inse­cu­ri­ty, how­ev­er, presents a beau­ti­ful par­al­lel to the com­ing-of-age themes Tol­stoy explores. The illus­tra­tions, pre­sent­ed here from a sur­viv­ing copy of the 1963 gem, are as ten­der and soul­ful as young Sendak’s spir­it.” Here we’ve select­ed a few of the images that Popo­va gath­ered from this out-of-print book; to see more, do have a look at her orig­i­nal post.

Lat­er in life Sendak explained his anx­i­ety about accom­pa­ny­ing the words of the man who wrote War and Peace: “You can’t illus­trate Tol­stoy. You’re com­pet­ing with the great­est illus­tra­tor in the world. Pic­tures bring him down and just limp along.” At Let­ters of Note, you can read the words of encour­age­ment writ­ten to the young Sendak by his edi­tor Ursu­la Nord­strom, who acknowl­edged that, “sure, Tol­stoy and Melville have a lot of fur­ni­ture in their books and they also know a lot of facts, but that isn’t the only sort of genius, you know that. Yes, Tol­stoy is won­der­ful (his pub­lish­er asked me for a quote) but you can express as much emo­tion and ‘cohe­sion and pur­pose’ in some of your draw­ings as there is in War and Peace. I mean that.”

Again, find more of Sendak’s illus­tra­tions of Tol­stoy’s Nikolenka’s Child­hood at Brain­Pick­ings. Used copies can be found on Abe­Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mau­rice Sendak Sent Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Let­ters to Fans — So Beau­ti­ful a Kid Ate One

Mau­rice Sendak’s Bawdy Illus­tra­tions For Her­man Melville’s Pierre: or, The Ambi­gu­i­ties

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

When Frank Zappa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Dealer and a Pimp on Miami Vice

in Music, Television | October 14th, 2015

For all the neon-Fer­rari-and-raw-silk gar­ish­ness the show now seems to embody, Mia­mi Vice (1984–1990) paid uncom­mon atten­tion to cul­tur­al detail. Music, for instance, did­n’t get thrown onto its sound­track, but care­ful­ly select­ed to reflect both the mid-80s zeit­geist and the aes­thet­ic of a par­tic­u­lar episode. Any time you tuned in, you could hear the likes of Devo, Phil Collins, The Tubes, Depeche Mode, or the Alan Par­sons project behind the action. Some­times you could also see musi­cians onscreen, involved in the action, albeit musi­cians of a some­what dif­fer­ent kind: the inno­v­a­tive exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er and rock­er Frank Zap­pa, for instance, once appeared as “weasel dust” deal­er Mario Fuente.

That hap­pened on “Pay­back,” the nine­teenth episode of Mia­mi Vice’s sec­ond sea­son which aired on March 14, 1986, a clip of which you can watch at the top of the post. (Nat­u­ral­ly, the scene takes place on a boat staffed with armed thugs and biki­ni girls.) If, after the cliffhang­er it ends on, you sim­ply must see the whole thing, you may be able to watch the full episode on Hulu. The same goes for Novem­ber 8, 1985’s “Junk Love,” anoth­er episode from the same sea­son with no less dis­tin­guished a musi­cian guest star than Miles Davis.

“The idea is that Crock­ett and Tubbs arrest the own­er of a whore­house,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, “a dude named ‘Ivory Jones’ — played by Miles.” And while “most of Davis’ dia­logue is semi-incom­pre­hen­si­ble… you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the genius behind Bitch­es Brew croak, ‘Watch that big cab­in cruis­er, he has a thing about them.’ ” We’ve embed­ded part of “Junk Love” just below, which, since “Ivory is a scum­bag but col­lab­o­rat­ing with the local con­stab­u­lary,” offers “plen­ty of scenes of him hang­ing out with Crock­ett and Tubbs.” Add to this Leonard Cohen’s 1986 role as malev­o­lent French secret ser­vice agent Fran­cois Zolan, and you real­ize that Mia­mi Vice has turned out to cater straight to cul­tur­al­ly omniv­o­rous 21st cen­tu­ry view­ers: those who can appre­ci­ate Songs of Love and Hate as well as a neon Fer­rari, Freak Out! as much as raw silk, and Devo as much as Davis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Paint­ings of Miles Davis

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated Introduction to Jane Austen

in Animation, Literature | October 14th, 2015

From Alain de Bot­ton’ School of Life comes the lat­est in a series of ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tions to influ­en­tial lit­er­ary fig­ures. Pre­vi­ous install­ments gave us a look at the life and work of Mar­cel Proust and Vir­ginia Woolf. This one takes us inside the lit­er­ary world of Jane Austen. And, as always, de Bot­ton puts an accent on how read­ing lit­er­a­ture can change your life. “Jane Austen’s nov­els are so read­able and so inter­est­ing…” notes The School of Life Youtube chan­nel,” because she wasn’t an ordi­nary kind of nov­el­ist: she want­ed her work to help us to be bet­ter and wis­er peo­ple. Her nov­els [avail­able on this list] had a phi­los­o­phy of per­son­al devel­op­ment at their heart.” The video above expands on that idea. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Lit­er­ary Phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cel Proust, Pre­sent­ed in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Vir­ginia Woolf

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Down­load the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Music That Helps You Sleep: Minimalist Composer Max Richter, Pop Phenom Ed Sheeran & Your Favorites

in Music | October 14th, 2015

I admit it now, I was once an avid lis­ten­er of the sooth­ing new age music of Enya. At the time, in my musi­cal cir­cles, this was not cool, and at the time I cared about such things. So Enya was my guilty secret. I didn’t need to work that hard to hide my affec­tion. I only lis­tened to Enya at night, as I lay in bed alone and drift­ed off. I used my Enya cas­sette tapes (yes tapes), you see, to put myself to sleep.

I’ve had oth­er sleep favorites. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach… inter­pre­ta­tions of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach by syn­the­siz­er wiz­ard Wendy Car­los…. It may seem dis­parag­ing to say that a cer­tain composer’s music lulls one to sleep, but I think it’s just the oppo­site. So does com­pos­er and musi­cian Max Richter, who has cre­at­ed an eight-hour piece called “Sleep” that is “meant to be slept through,” says Richter. (There’s also a one hour ver­sion that’s more read­i­ly avail­able for pur­chase.) Its gen­tle waves of strings, voice, piano, and synths are like a musi­cal Lethe one floats on into obliv­ion.

Richter has per­formed the piece with oth­er musi­cians, just recent­ly overnight on a Sep­tem­ber 27th BBC Radio 3 broad­cast, “the longest live broad­cast,” writes The New York­er, “of a sin­gle piece of music in the station’s his­to­ry.” The small audi­ence in atten­dance most­ly stayed awake. One mem­ber report­ed­ly hal­lu­ci­nat­ed. The com­po­si­tion con­sists of thir­ty-one themed move­ments (Hear “Dream 3 (in the midst of my life)” above). Lovers of mod­ern min­i­mal­ist com­posers like Philip Glass and William Basin­s­ki will notice sim­i­lar uses of drone notes and rep­e­ti­tion in “Sleep.” You may even hear a touch of Enya….

Richter’s is the per­fect music to accom­pa­ny me into dream­land; even those move­ments that include a vocal­ist use the voice as a word­less, ethe­re­al instru­ment, as so many ambi­ent musi­cians do. I’ve come across more than a few favorite ambi­ent and min­i­mal­ist com­posers late at night, when Spo­ti­fy begins rec­om­mend­ing sleep playlists. “Sleep,” it turns out, “is one of Spotify’s most pop­u­lar cat­e­gories,” accord­ing to Bill­board. How­ev­er, the “world’s favorite choice when choos­ing music to unwind” may sur­prise you: red-head­ed Eng­lish singer/songwriter Ed Sheer­an.

I’m not per­son­al­ly a fan of his music, but even if I were, I can’t imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it as I set­tle down to sleep. Nonethe­less, mil­lions of peo­ple stream Sheer­an’s songs on repeat at bed­time, along with oth­er pop artists like Ellie Gould­ing, John Leg­end, Sam Smith, and Rihan­na. To each their own, I guess. Hear a playlist of the most-streamed “sleep” music on Spo­ti­fy above. (If you don’t have Spotify’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) If none of these tunes do it for you, con­sid­er giv­ing iTunes’ 27th most pop­u­lar pod­cast, Sleep With Me, a chance. Or, let us know in the com­ments below what music, if any, helps calm your nerves and soothe your tired brain as you climb into bed after a long day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spo­ti­fy Playlist of Your Selec­tions

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son

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

The History of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jefferson (1928) to Joe Bonamassa (2009)

in Music | October 13th, 2015

If you’ve ever had any doubt, for some rea­son or oth­er, that rock and roll descend­ed direct­ly from the blues, the video above, a his­to­ry of the blues in 50 riffs, should con­vince you. And while you might think a blues his­to­ry that ends in rock n roll would start with Robert John­son, this gui­tarist reach­es back to the coun­try blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” from 1928 then moves through leg­en­dar­i­ly tune­ful play­ers like Skip James and Rev­erend Gary Davis before we get to the infa­mous Mr. John­son.

Big Bill Broonzy is, as he should be, rep­re­sent­ed. Oth­er coun­try blues greats like soft-spo­ken farmer Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt and hard­ened felon Lead Bel­ly, “King of the 12 String Gui­tar,” are not. Say what you will about that. The record­ings these artists made with Okeh Records and Alan Lomax, despite their com­mer­cial fail­ure in the 30s, mid­wifed the blues revival of the fifties and six­ties. Hear Lead Bel­ly’s ver­sion of folk bal­lad “Gal­lows Pole” above, a song Led Zep­pelin made famous. Lead Belly’s acoustic blues inspired every­one from John Foger­ty to Skif­fle King Lon­nie Done­gan, Pete Seeger to Jim­my Page, as did the root­sy coun­try blues of Light­nin’ Hop­kins, who is includ­ed in the 50 riffs. As are John Lee Hook­er, Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, and BB King’s elec­tric styles—all of them picked up by blues rock revival­ists, includ­ing, of course, Jimi Hen­drix.

Hendrix’s “Red House” riff makes the cut here, as we move slow­ly into rock and roll. But before we get to Hen­drix, we must first check in with two oth­er Kings, Fred­die and Albert—especially Albert. Hen­drix “was star struck,” says Rolling Stone, “when his hero [Albert King] opened for him at the Fill­more in 1967.” For his part, King said, “I taught [Hen­drix] a les­son about the blues. I could have eas­i­ly played his songs, but he couldn’t play mine.” See King play “Born Under a Bad Sign” in 1981, above, and hear why Hen­drix wor­shipped him.

Mis­sis­sip­pi blues moved to Mem­phis, Chica­go, New York and to Texas, where by the 70s and 80s, ZZ Top and Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an added their own south­west road­house swag­ger. (No John­ny Win­ter, alas.) Many peo­ple will be pleased to see Irish rock­er Rory Gal­lagher in the mix, and amused that The Blues Broth­ers get a men­tion. Many more usu­al sus­pects appear, and a few unusu­al picks. I’m very glad to hear a brief R.L. Burn­side riff. The White Stripes, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Joe Bona­mas­sa round things out into the 2010’s. Every­one will miss their favorite blues play­er. (As usu­al, the pow­er­house gospel blues gui­tarist Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe gets over­looked.) I would love to see includ­ed in any his­to­ry of blues such obscure but bril­liant gui­tarists as Evan Johns (above), whose rock­a­bil­ly blues gui­tar freak­outs sound like noth­ing else. Or John Dee Hole­man, below, whose effort­less, under­stat­ed rhythm play­ing goes unmatched in my book.

Like so many of the blues­men who came before them, these gen­tle­men seem to rep­re­sent a dying breed. And yet the blues lives on and evolves in artists like Gary Clark Jr., The Black Keys, and Alaba­ma Shakes. And of course there’s the prodi­gy Bona­mas­sa, whom you absolute­ly have to see below at age 12, jam­ming with exper­i­men­tal coun­try speed demon Dan­ny Gatton’s band (he gets going around 1:05).

If you’re miss­ing your favorites, give them a shout out below. Who do you think has to be includ­ed in any his­to­ry of the blues—told in riffs or otherwise—and why?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

Watch Rock Pio­neer Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe Wow Audi­ences With Her Gospel Gui­tar

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

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

Browse Paintings, Photos, Papers & More in the Archive of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, America’s Original Art Power Couple

in Art, Photography | October 13th, 2015

Does any cou­ple loom larg­er in the world of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can art than Alfred Stieglitz and Geor­gia O’Ke­effe? Not if you believe the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Ke­effe Archive at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bei­necke Rare Book and Man­u­script Library. If you go there, you’ll find “thou­sands of let­ters and hun­dreds of pho­tographs in addi­tion to a col­lec­tion of lit­er­ary man­u­scripts, scrap­books, ephemera, fine art, and realia, pri­mar­i­ly dat­ing between 1880 and 1980, which doc­u­ment the lives and careers of the photographer/publisher/gallery own­er Alfred Stieglitz and the painter Geor­gia O’Ke­effe.” But you can even view some of its mate­r­i­al here on the inter­net, includ­ing pho­tos by and of “Stieglitz and his cir­cle of artists and writ­ers” and “a vari­ety of paint­ings and draw­ings, let­ters and ephemera, and medals and awards.”

The online archive does, of course, con­tain some paint­ings from O’Ke­effe, such as House I Live in 1937 at the top of the post or, more in line with her famous­ly flo­ral focus, Pink Ros­es just below. But you’ll also find behind-the-work per­son­al arti­facts like the 1929 image of Stieglitz and O’Ke­effe togeth­er at Lake George, New York just above. You can browse through all the mate­r­i­al avail­able with this list, or you can fil­ter it down to the items per­tain­ing specif­i­cal­ly to O’Ke­effe or those per­tain­ing specif­i­cal­ly to Stieglitz, though in life the two had an “instant men­tal and phys­i­cal attrac­tion” that kept them on some lev­el insep­a­ra­ble dur­ing the course of their forty-year rela­tion­ship.

They even enjoyed a kind of artis­tic togeth­er­ness dur­ing the long-dis­tance stretch­es of that rela­tion­ship, when O’Ke­effe “dis­cov­ered her love for the land­scape of the Amer­i­can South­west and spent increas­ing amounts of time liv­ing and work­ing there.”

And while many of us already know about her favorite sub­jects and the ways in which she real­ized them on can­vas, few­er of us know about the efforts Stieglitz took to make pho­tog­ra­phy into not just a legit­i­mate but respect­ed art form. To get a sense of what that took, start with Stieglitz’s autochromes (below), some of the ear­li­est ven­tures made by an Amer­i­can artist into the realm of col­or pho­tog­ra­phy. Both Stieglitz and O’Ke­effe, each in there own medi­um, made us see things dif­fer­ent­ly. How many art-world pow­er cou­ples can say the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Real Geor­gia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Her­self in Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary Clips

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

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Amazing Miniature Sculptures of New York City Landmarks: CBGB, Katz’s Deli, Vesuvio Bakery & More

in Art | October 13th, 2015

If you’re near Pasade­na, Cal­i­for­nia, stop by the Flower Pep­per Gallery and see Facade, the new exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing the work of visu­al artist Randy Hage. For decades now, Hage has been fas­ci­nat­ed by the beau­ty of aging struc­tures in New York City. This led him, begin­ning in the late 1990s, to start pho­tograph­ing aging store­fronts in the city, “with their hand paint­ed signs, lay­ers of archi­tec­ture, won­der­ful pati­nas and intrigu­ing his­to­ry.” Lat­er, he decid­ed to pre­serve their mem­o­ry in minia­tur­ized, hyper-real­is­tic sculp­tures (like the ones now on dis­play in Pasade­na through Novem­ber 18th). In the video above, see just how per­fect­ly Hage man­ages to recre­ate New York store­fronts in minia­ture. Here’s anoth­er famous-but-now-defunct facade you might rec­og­nize:

Minia­ture sculp­ture of CBGB. Real struc­ture was locat­ed at 315 Bow­ery, LES, NYC. Shown light­ed. Piece mea­sures 19″ x 17″ x 7″. Fol­low me on FB for event info. If you have friends who might be inter­est­ed in see­ing my work, please pass this on. Many thanks! #cbgb #omfug #bow­ery #scale­mod­el #Randy­hage #dis­ap­pear­ingNY #façade #flow­er­pep­per­gallery #graf­fi­ti #graf­fitinyc #minia­ture #minia­tureart #nyc #newyork #nycde­cay #nyc­store­front #nyc­store­fronts #newyork­store­front #newyorkin­spiredart #old­NYC #store­front #vin­ta­ge­newyork

A pho­to post­ed by Randy Hage (@rhageart) on Oct 5, 2015 at 8:19am PDT

To take a clos­er look at his work, vis­it Hage’s Insta­gram page where you will see mini sculp­tures of fad­ing New York insti­tu­tions like Katz’s Deli, CBGB, McSor­ley’s Old Ale House, Vesu­vio Bak­ery, and more.

via Super­Son­ic Art/Boing­Bo­ing

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