Pablo Picasso’s Tender Illustrations For Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1934)

in Art, Books, Literature | October 23rd, 2013

In the mid-1930s, some beau­ti­ful, high-qual­i­ty books were pub­lished by a com­pa­ny called Lim­it­ed Edi­tions Club, which, accord­ing to Antiques Road­show apprais­er Ken Sanders, was “famous for re-issu­ing clas­sics of lit­er­a­ture and com­mis­sion­ing con­tem­po­rary liv­ing artists to illus­trate 1500-copy signed lim­it­ed edi­tions.”  One of those books—the 1934 Pablo Picas­so-illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta—is, next to Hen­ri Matisse’s 1935 edi­tion of Joyce’s Ulysses, one of “the most sought after and desir­able lim­it­ed edi­tions on the mar­ket today.”

The book’s rar­i­ty, of course, ren­ders it more valu­able on the mar­ket than a mass-pro­duced object, but whether it was worth $5,000 or $50, I think I’d hold onto my copy if I had one (here’s one for $12,000 if you’re buy­ing). While Aubrey Beardsley’s 1896 illus­tra­tions do full and styl­ish jus­tice to the satir­i­cal Greek comedy’s bawdy nature, Picasso’s draw­ings ren­der sev­er­al scenes as ten­der, soft­ly sen­su­al tableaux. The almost child­like sim­plic­i­ty of these illus­tra­tions of a play about female pow­er and the lim­its of patri­archy do not seem like the work of a rumored misog­y­nist, but then again, nei­ther do any of Picasso’s oth­er domes­tic scenes in this spare, round­ed style of his.

In Aristo­phanes’ play, the women of Greece refuse their hus­bands sex until the men agree to end the Pelo­pon­nesian War. The play makes much of the men’s mount­ing sex­u­al frus­tra­tion, with sev­er­al humor­ous ges­tures toward its phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions. Beardsley’s draw­ings offend Vic­to­ri­an eyes by mak­ing these scenes into exag­ger­at­ed nud­ist farce. Picas­so’s mod­ernist sketch­es all but ignore the overt sex­u­al­i­ty of the play, pic­tur­ing two lovers (2nd from top) almost in the pos­ture of moth­er and child, the pent up men (image above) as deject­ed and down­cast gen­tle souls, and the reunion of the sex­es (below) as a high­ly styl­ized, none too erot­ic, feast. These images are three of six signed proofs fea­tured on the blog Book Graph­ics. See their site to view all six illus­tra­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

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

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

in Art | October 22nd, 2013

What did Banksy’s month-long show, “Bet­ter Out than In,” bring today? Why noth­ing oth­er than a minia­ture ver­sion of The Great Sphinx of Giza. Accord­ing to the street artist’s web site, the 22nd install­ment in the exhi­bi­tion is a “1/36 scale repli­ca of the great Sphinx of Giza made from smashed cin­derblocks.” And it comes with the warn­ing, “You’re advised not to drink the repli­ca Arab spring water.”

You can fol­low Bet­ter Out than In on Insta­gram through the end of Octo­ber.

H/T Robin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

The Always Bank­able Banksy

Animated Video: Kurt Cobain on Teenage Angst, Sexuality & Finding Salvation in Punk Music

in Animation, Life, Music | October 22nd, 2013

The Blank on Blank “Lost Inter­view” series con­tin­ues to roll along. Today, they’ve released an ani­mat­ed video based on a July, 1993 inter­view with Nir­vana front­man Kurt Cobain. Record­ed less than a year before his death, the inter­view­er, Jon Sav­age, finds Cobain feel­ing rel­a­tive­ly opti­mistic, upbeat, bet­ter than he’d felt in years. The inter­view touch­es on many things, but, if there’s a com­mon theme, it’s iden­ti­ty — Cobain’s Irish­ness, his ques­tions about his sex­u­al­i­ty as a younger man, his views on women and sex­ism, his sense of being an out­sider through­out his child­hood, and how punk music saved him from all of that. Pre­vi­ous Blank on Blank videos have revived inter­views from Ray Charles, Janis Joplin, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck. For footage of Kurt Cobain back in the day, see some of the choice mate­r­i­al below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Stephen King Writes A Letter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recreational Drugs”

in Letters, Life, Literature | October 22nd, 2013

By the 1980s, it looked like Stephen King had every­thing. He had authored a series of best­sellers — Car­rie, The Shin­ing, Cujo – and turned them into block­buster movies. He had a big, 24-room house. Plen­ty of cash in the bank.  All the trap­pings of that Amer­i­can Dream. And yet … and yet … he was angry and depressed, smok­ing two packs of cig­a­rettes a day, drink­ing lots of beer, snort­ing coke, and enter­tain­ing sui­ci­dal thoughts. It’s no won­der then that the author, who sobered up dur­ing the late 80s, con­tributed the let­ter above to a 2011 col­lec­tion called Dear Me: A Let­ter to My 16-Year-Old Self. Edit­ed by Joseph Gal­liano, the book asked 75 celebri­ties, writ­ers, musi­cians, ath­letes, and actors this ques­tion: “If as an adult, you could send a let­ter to your younger self, what words of guid­ance, com­fort, advice or oth­er mes­sage would you put in it?” In King’s case, the advice  was short, sweet, to the point. In essence, a mere five words.

To view the let­ter in a larg­er for­mat, click here.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Stephen King Reads from His Upcom­ing Sequel to The Shin­ing

William S. Burroughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Original Bands

in Literature, Music | October 22nd, 2013

The nineties saw a lot of alter­na­tive bands not only wear their influ­ences on their sleeves, but also bring them up on stage and into the stu­dio. William S. Bur­roughs was one such lumi­nary, appear­ing on Tom Waits’ 1993 The Black Rid­er, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kurt Cobain titled “Priest They Called Him,” and Sep­tem­ber Songs, a 1997 Kurt Weill trib­ute album fea­tur­ing the likes of PJ Har­vey, Nick Cave, Elvis Costel­lo, and Lou Reed. In 1996, Bur­roughs got togeth­er with R.E.M. for a cov­er of their “Star Me Kit­ten” from ‘92’s Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple. In the track above, hear Bur­roughs recite Michael Stipe’s lyrics over the band’s instru­men­ta­tion. The record­ing comes from an album called Songs in the Key of X: Music From and Inspired By the X‑Files, which includ­ed Frank Black, Soul Cough­ing, Foo Fight­ers, and PM Dawn. Bur­roughs intro­duces his ren­di­tion by cit­ing a much more clas­si­cal source for his cabaret approach to the song: Mar­lene Diet­rich. “Not one of my favorite peo­ple,” he mum­bles, dourly. See per­haps why.

Bur­roughs didn’t only work musi­cal­ly with con­tem­po­rary alt bands in the ’90s, and he had a long, illus­tri­ous record­ing career sev­er­al decades pri­or. In a mash-up that brings togeth­er a band clos­er to Bur­roughs’ prime, hear the beat writer’s rhyth­mic dead­pan of Jim Morrison’s “Is Every­body In?,” backed by the sur­viv­ing Doors. Despite the orig­i­nal play­ers, it’s still a very ‘90s pro­duc­tion (though released in 2000). From a Doors trib­ute album called Stoned Immac­u­late, the song sits, some­what uncom­fort­ably, next to cov­ers and inter­pre­ta­tions by Stone Tem­ple Pilots, The Cult, Creed, Smash Mouth, Days of the New, and Train, and a bit cozi­er next to stal­warts like John Lee Hook­er, Exene Cer­ven­ka, and Bo Did­dley. Bur­roughs’ is the stand-out track among many that also fea­ture the Doors as a back­ing band, although in an acid-jazz production–with sam­ples of soul music and Mor­ri­son himself–that may sound a bit dat­ed. But Bur­roughs is as dry as ever, under­lin­ing the sheer creepi­ness of Mor­rison’s poet­ry in a trib­ute that also high­lights the debt Mor­ri­son owed him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

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

An Animation of Orson Welles’ Famous Frozen Peas Rant

in Animation, Television | October 22nd, 2013

If you get into a con­ver­sa­tion with an Orson Welles enthu­si­ast, try not to men­tion frozen peas. By now, even those who bare­ly know Welles’ work — those who’ve bare­ly seen Cit­i­zen Kane or heard War of the Worlds, let alone The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons or F for Fake — chuck­le at the fact that, in the twi­light of his career, the actor-auteur took on such the­o­ret­i­cal­ly easy-mon­ey jobs as pre­sent­ing an “instruc­tion­al film” on gam­bling for Cae­sars Palace and nar­rat­ing a series of British tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials for Swedish frozen-food giant Find­us. But even in hum­ble con­texts like these, Welles, as his afore­men­tioned fans would sure­ly admit, could make headaches for his employ­ers. The Find­us peo­ple, with whose direc­tor and copy­writer Welles appar­ent­ly did­n’t see eye-to-eye, would soon find this out — as would every lis­ten­er to the uncut record­ings from that unhap­py day in the stu­dio.

At the top, you can hear that very audio and watch it ani­mat­ed by Neil Williams. He visu­al­izes Welles’ con­ster­na­tion in the face of the direc­tor’s request to empha­size the word “in” (“there’s no known way of say­ing an Eng­lish sen­tence in which you begin a sen­tence with ‘in’ and empha­size it”) while pitch­ing those frozen peas. And then there’s Welles’ objec­tion to the dif­fi­cult-to-enun­ci­ate “crumb crisp coat­ing” on Find­us fish sticks, and his blowup over how many times to say “beef” when describ­ing their ham­burg­ers as well. Vet­er­an voice actor Mau­rice LaMarche, who has no doubt labored even longer in record­ing booths than Welles did, won an ear­ly burst of fame with his uncan­ny impres­sion of Welles. When he used a ver­sion of that voice for The Brain, the Ani­ma­ni­acs’ dour, world-dom­i­na­tion-mind­ed car­toon mouse, the idea for a frozen peas par­o­dy sketch, which you can watch above, must have sug­gest­ed itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Teach­es Bac­carat, Craps, Black­jack, Roulette, and Keno at Cae­sars Palace (1978)

Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles’ The Stranger: Watch The Full Movie Free Online

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

30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God: From Isaac Asimov to Margaret Atwood

in Literature, Religion | October 21st, 2013

Back in 2011,  Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham, a British med­ical doc­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in Neu­ro­surgery, cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics talk­ing about their views on the exis­tence of God. Then came Part II about a month lat­er – Anoth­er 50 Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God. The videos most­ly fea­tured sci­en­tists, fig­ures like Richard Feyn­man, Steven Pinker, Oliv­er Sacks, Stephen Hawk­ing, and Richard Dawkins. Notice­ably miss­ing were the lib­er­al art­sy types. But then … hold the phones … came Parara­jas­ing­ham’s 2012 video: 30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God. Run­ning 25 min­utes, the clip brings togeth­er com­ments by Nobel Lau­re­ates José Sara­m­a­go and Nadine Gordimer, sci-fi leg­ends Isaac Asi­mov and Arthur C. Clarke, and impor­tant con­tem­po­rary nov­el­ists: Philip Roth, Mar­garet Atwood, Ian McE­wan, Salman Rushdie, to name a few. You can find the com­plete list of authors below the jump.

All of these authors ques­tion the exis­tence of God. Some are doubt­ful. Oth­ers round­ly reject the idea. That’s the slant of this video. To the­ists out there, let me just say this: If you find a mon­tage that fea­tures thinkers of sim­i­lar stature and cal­iber mak­ing the case for God, send it our way. We’ll hap­pi­ly give it a look. Speak­ing for myself, I don’t have much of a dog in this fight.

(more…)

The Challenge of Archiving Sound + Vision in the 21st Century

in Music | October 21st, 2013

Where is the wis­dom we have lost in knowl­edge?

Where is the knowl­edge we have lost in infor­ma­tion?

So won­ders T.S. Eliot’s cho­rus in a pageant play he once helped write in 1934. Nev­er one to let moder­ni­ty tram­ple glee­ful­ly over tra­di­tion, Eliot asks us to consider—long before it seemed necessary—what the sea of infor­ma­tion we now swim in might be worth with­out good maps to guide us and wise nav­i­ga­tors to chart out the course. We live in a time in which every­thing can be cat­a­logued, pre­served, backed up, and made open and search­able. This is a won­der­ful thing. But Will Pren­tice, Audio Engi­neer and Con­ser­va­tion Spe­cial­ist at the British Library’s Sound and Vision Divi­sion, points out a spe­cial prob­lem with archiv­ing in the dig­i­tal age. Echo­ing Eliot, Pren­tice says in the short film above, pro­duced by British music mag­a­zine The Wire:

The 20th cen­tu­ry was about audio­vi­su­al mate­r­i­al, our mem­o­ry of the 20th cen­tu­ry is heav­i­ly audio­vi­su­al, but our sense of the 21st cen­tu­ry is going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of audio­vi­su­al… archiv­ing is not going to be so much about what we can bring in, but about what to exclude.

As much as we mod­erns hate the idea of dis­crim­i­na­tion in any form, when it comes to media, past and present, it’s often a nec­es­sary good. In thought­ful inter­views above, see Pren­tice, Pop­u­lar Music Cura­tor Andy Line­han, and Wildlife Sounds Cura­tor Cheryl Tipp dis­cuss their roles as archivists of vast troves of audio­vi­su­al infor­ma­tion in their Lon­don library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

The Haircut: A Student Film Starring the Great John Cassavetes (1982)

in Film | October 21st, 2013

Giv­en the length of the aver­age hair­cut, it sur­pris­es me that I don’t see more short films built around them. Tamar Simon Hoffs knew the advan­tages of the hair­cut-based short film, and she put them to use in 1982, dur­ing her time in the Amer­i­can Film Institute’s Direct­ing Work­shops for Women pro­gram. The Hair­cut’s script has a busy record exec­u­tive on his way to an impor­tant lunch appoint­ment. With only fif­teen min­utes to spare, he drops into Rus­so’s bar­ber shop for a trim. Lit­tle does he expect that, with­in those fif­teen min­utes, he’ll not only get his hair cut, but enjoy a shave, a mas­sage, a glass of wine, sev­er­al musi­cal num­bers, romance real or imag­ined,  and some­thing close to a psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic ses­sion. He goes through quite a few facets of the human expe­ri­ence right there in the chair — minus the time-con­sum­ing “hot tow­el treat­ment” — and Rus­so and his col­or­ful, effi­cient crew still get him out of the door on time. Hoffs knew the per­fect actor for the star­ring role: John Cas­savetes. What’s more, she knew him per­son­al­ly.

The con­nec­tion came through her friend Eliz­a­beth Gaz­zara, daugh­ter of a cer­tain Ben Gaz­zara, star of the The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie, my own favorite Cas­savetes-direct­ed film. After read­ing the script, Cas­savetes agreed to per­form, “his only stip­u­la­tion being that his co-stars must be entire­ly rehearsed and ready to go, so he could just come in and per­form as if he real­ly was the cus­tomer,” writes British Film Insti­tute DVD pro­duc­er James Black­ford. “Even in a lit­tle film such as this, Cas­savetes was still search­ing for those per­fect moments that come from the spon­tane­ity of ear­ly takes.” You’ll even laugh at a few lines, spo­ken by Cas­savetes as his char­ac­ter begins to enjoy him­self, that must sure­ly have come out of his beloved impro­vi­sa­tion­al meth­ods. And we can cred­it the film’s sur­pris­ing end to an even more per­son­al con­nec­tion of Hoffs’: to her daugh­ter Susan­na, front­woman of The Ban­gles, then known as The Bangs. You can watch The Hair­cut on the BFI’s new DVD/Blu-Ray release of The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie, or you can watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

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

Charles Darwin’s Son Draws Cute Pictures on the Manuscript of On the Origin of Species

in Art, Creativity, K-12, Science | October 21st, 2013

Most of us can iden­ti­fy Charles Dar­win as the father of mod­ern evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, but were you aware that he also fathered ten chil­dren with his cousin, Emma Wedg­wood?

As dad­dies go, Dar­win was quite evolved him­self, dis­play­ing a 21st-cen­tu­ry lev­el of devo­tion to and involve­ment with his young. He even went so far as to let one of his kids draw on the orig­i­nal man­u­script for On the Ori­gin of Species. Sav­ing paper was as good for the envi­ron­ment in the mid-1800s as it is today, but his will­ing­ness to let his pre­cious pages do dou­ble duty may explain why the sem­i­nal doc­u­ment sur­vives as mere piece­meal today.

Maybe Charles and Emma read some arti­cle that sug­gest­ed their house­hold would run more smooth­ly if it were bet­ter orga­nized, and lack­ing such mod­ern solu­tions as col­or­ful Ikea stor­age bins and scan­ners, sim­ply pitched all but the absolute best of their chil­dren’s art­work. (Or maybe their youngest was a scrunch­er, destroy­ing pages by the fist­ful.)

It seems a good bet young Fran­cis Dar­win’s water­col­or of birds, bugs and a but­ter­fly con­verg­ing on a trio of botan­i­cal­ly viable flow­ers (above) would’ve done his nat­u­ral­ist papa proud.

I can also state with near-sci­en­tif­ic cer­tain­ty that if the Dar­wins had had a refrig­er­a­tor, The Bat­tle of the Fruit and Veg­etable Sol­diers (top) would have been on it. Today, Fran­cis’ masterpiece—and its flipside—reside in the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library.

via The Tele­graph

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dar­win, a 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Darwin’s Lega­cy, a Stan­ford course in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day remem­bers her grand­moth­er was very impressed by her abil­i­ty to  draw Huck­le­ber­ry Finn with his legs crossed. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday