The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters

in Art, Literature | May 14th, 2013

Sylvia Plath’s poet­ic tal­ent should go unques­tioned, but as Plath fans will know, she first intend­ed to become a visu­al artist, and some of her ear­li­est work—illustrated child­hood let­ters like the adorable dog below—remained hid­den away in the fam­i­ly attic until 1996. Edi­tor Kath­leen Con­nors includ­ed this juve­nil­ia in a 2007 col­lec­tion of Plath’s work enti­tled Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visu­al, which also fea­tures sketch­es, pho­tographs, and portraits—such as the brood­ing 1951 self-por­trait above—that rep­re­sent Plath’s work while an art stu­dent at Smith Col­lege.

Much of the art-school work is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Plath’s best. While she made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion at age 20 to aban­don aspi­ra­tions for an art career and focus on her writ­ing, Plath con­tin­ued to make visu­al art. For exam­ple, at 23, she pro­duced a con­fi­dent­ly-ren­dered series of pen-and-ink drawings—such as the fish­ing boats below—while she and Ted Hugh­es hon­ey­mooned in Paris and Spain.

The Tele­graph has a gallery of thir­ty of these draw­ings, which were on dis­play at London’s May­or Gallery between Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 2011. Plath’s writ­ing has always been remark­ably visu­al, her deft han­dling of some­times star­tling imagery giv­ing her work so much of its abil­i­ty to seduce, enthrall, and unset­tle. As in her poet­ry, the images of her­self seem to attract the most inter­est. There are oth­er pieces of Plath self-por­trai­ture, but none con­trasts so much with the youth­ful paint­ing above, I think, as the accom­plished pen­cil draw­ing below, with the poet’s fear­less side­long stare and bare shoul­ders express­ing both her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and con­sid­er­able per­son­al and cre­ative pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

Sylvia Plath Reads “Dad­dy”

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

Daft Punk’s New Album, Random Access Memories, Streaming for Free on iTunes for a Limited Time

in Music | May 13th, 2013

A quick heads up: Daft Punk’s fourth album, Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries, will be released on May 21. But, right now, you can hop over to iTunes and stream it for free on your com­put­er or iPad (for a lim­it­ed time).

To access the stream, sim­ply click this link, tap the “View in iTunes” but­ton, and then click the “Lis­ten Now” but­ton.

If you like what you hear, you can always pre-order the album on iTunes and Ama­zon.

PS If you need iTunes soft­ware, you can down­load it for free here.

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

Carl Jung Explains His Groundbreaking Theories About Psychology in a Rare Interview (1957)

in Psychology | May 13th, 2013

Here’s an extra­or­di­nary film of the great Swiss psy­chol­o­gist Carl Gus­tav Jung speak­ing at length about some of his key con­tri­bu­tions to psy­chol­o­gy. Jung on Film (above) is a 77-minute col­lec­tion of high­lights from four one-hour inter­views Jung gave to psy­chol­o­gist Richard I. Evans of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton in August of 1957. In “Sit­ting Across From Carl Jung,” an arti­cle for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, Evans explains how the inter­views came about:

I was teach­ing a grad­u­ate sem­i­nar called Approach­es to Per­son­al­i­ty when it seemed like an inter­est­ing idea to have the grad­u­ate stu­dents in the sem­i­nar role-play in front of the class and pre­tend to inter­view the var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ty the­o­rists that I was pre­sent­ing. Carl Jung was one of those the­o­rists, and dur­ing the sem­i­nar, I learned that he had nev­er agreed to an exten­sive record­ed inter­view except for a brief exchange on the BBC. I wrote a let­ter to Dr. Jung to request an inter­view because I believed that filmed inter­views of emi­nent psy­chol­o­gists would encour­age stu­dents to read their work.

Jung, who was 82 years old at the time, agreed to the inter­view and set aside an hour a day over a four-day peri­od. Evans met with Jung in Zurich at the Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, or ETH. In the excerpts above, Jung talks about his ear­ly asso­ci­a­tion with Sig­mund Freud and how he came to dis­agree with Freud’s fix­a­tion on the sex dri­ve as the pri­ma­ry influ­ence in men­tal life. He talks about his the­o­ry of per­son­al­i­ty types and about uni­ver­sal arche­types, includ­ing the ani­ma and ani­mus. He talks about the inter­play between instinct and envi­ron­ment, and about dreams as man­i­fes­ta­tions of the uncon­scious. At one point he stress­es the urgency of under­stand­ing psy­chol­o­gy in a world where man-made threats, like the threat of the hydro­gen bomb, are greater than those posed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. “The world hangs on a thin thread,” says Jung, “and that is the psy­che of man.”

Note: You can down­load sem­i­nal works by Carl Jung as free audio­books if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audible.com. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

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:

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

The Genius of Brian Eno On Display in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

in Art, Music | May 13th, 2013

Four years ago, I expe­ri­enced musi­cal poly­math, rock pro­duc­er, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and high-tech painter Bri­an Eno’s gen­er­a­tive-art instal­la­tion 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings in Long Beach. I also saw him give an enter­tain­ing talk there on his obser­va­tions of and ideas about sound, images, and cul­ture. This year, he brought the show to New York City, giv­ing it the largest stag­ing yet, and then sat down for an equal­ly enter­tain­ing 80-minute Q&A for the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my. Per­haps it sounds a lit­tle odd that a cre­ator who has based the past few decades of recent solo work on qui­etude, reflec­tion, and men­tal recep­tive­ness would appear at such length in a forum spon­sored by an ener­gy drink, but hey, we live in inter­est­ing times, and Eno has inter­est­ing thoughts, no mat­ter where he voic­es them.

Sit­ting back on a sofa (whose side table comes stocked with cans of Red Bull), Eno dis­cuss­es com­pos­ing music for hos­pi­tals after meet­ing a great many chil­dren born to his 1975 album Dis­creet Music; the ama­teur cho­rus he runs and with whom he some­times invites famous singer friends to sit in; “sce­nius,” or the spe­cial kind of genius that emerges when large num­bers of enthu­si­asts cohere into a scene; the DJ as cul­tur­al “lubri­cant”; his love of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian paint­ing; what makes pop­u­lar music, from Abba to Bey­on­cé, sound pop­u­lar; the impor­tance of dead­lines; and his new iPad app Scape, which, to his mind, should soon dis­place the tire­some con­ven­tions of Hol­ly­wood film scor­ing entire­ly. While this pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing intro­duc­tion to Eno the intel­lec­tu­al, long­time fans will want to catch up with his lat­est thoughts on sev­er­al favorite sub­jects, such as the val­ue of sur­ren­der in not just expe­ri­enc­ing but cre­at­ing art, and the coun­ter­in­tu­itive bursts of cre­ativ­i­ty that come when work­ing with few­er options, not more.

H/T goes to Heather

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

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.

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hendrix Invites Paul McCartney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

in Music | May 13th, 2013

Click above for a (slight­ly) larg­er image

A trend­ing sto­ry this week­end brings to light what could have been a pret­ty super 1969 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Miles Davis, his phe­nom­e­nal long­time drum­mer Tony Williams, Jimi Hen­drix and Paul McCart­ney. Davis and Hen­drix had already been jam­ming togeth­er infor­mal­ly in New York, plan­ning to record an album. The pair­ing seems nat­ur­al con­sid­er­ing this was Davis’ Bitch­es Brew psy­che­del­ic fusion phase.

The inclu­sion of McCartney’s pop sen­si­bil­i­ties seems odd, though, and pos­si­bly inspired. It could have result­ed in some real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing music, or a mess of per­son­al­i­ties and ideas. But alas, it nev­er came to pass. Davis and Hen­drix sent McCart­ney an impromp­tu Octo­ber 21st, 1969 telegram request to record with them in New York: “We are record­ing an LP togeth­er this week­end. How about com­ing in to play bass stop call Alan Dou­glas 212–5812212. Peace Jimi Hen­drix Miles Davis Tony Williams.” [Alan Dou­glass was the osten­si­ble pro­duc­er.] But, as Rolling Stone explains:

It’s unclear if McCart­ney was aware of the request….  Bea­t­les aide Peter Brown respond­ed the next day, telling Hen­drix and Davis that McCart­ney was out on vaca­tion and was­n’t expect­ed back for two weeks.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the only repro­duc­tions of the cor­re­spon­dence avail­able online are the poor­ly vis­i­ble images at the top and below. Nonethe­less, you can make out Davis, Hen­drix, and Williams’ request on the right, and the response at the left (the order is reversed below). Both telegrams are locat­ed at the Hard Rock Café in Prague. For more on the sto­ry, read the Tele­graph’s sum­ma­tion. I’m sure it won’t be long before some enter­pris­ing music hack­er cre­ates the ulti­mate Davis/Hendrix/McCartney mashup and gives us a taste of what might have been.

Click to (slight­ly) enlarge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Miles Davis Live Record­ings Cap­ture the Jazz Musi­cian at the Height of His Pow­ers

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

Paul McCart­ney Shoots New Music Video with Natal­ie Port­man and John­ny Depp

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

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Sings David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” On Board the International Space Station

in Astronomy, Music | May 12th, 2013

Chris Had­field has spent the past five months on the ISS. And, if you reg­u­lar­ly fol­low our site, you’ll know that the media-savvy astro­naut has engaged earth­lings with a steady stream of tweets, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos (see below), and the occa­sion­al enter­tain­ing rou­tine. In recent months, he has kib­itzed with William Shat­ner and even strummed a tune for Peter Gabriel. Now, before hand­ing over com­mand of the ISS to a Russ­ian cos­mo­naut, Had­field bade us farewell by singing a zero grav­i­ty ver­sion of “Space Odd­i­ty,” the song that helped launch David Bowie’s music career back in 1969. What could be a more per­fect pick? In case you’re won­der­ing, Had­field is play­ing a Lar­rivée Par­lor gui­tar, which he used to make the first album ever record­ed in orbit. We’ll even­tu­al­ly tell you more about that.…

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Going to the Bath­room in Space But Were Afraid to Ask

If Astro­nauts Cry in Space, Will Their Tears Fall?

William Shat­ner Puts in a Long Dis­tance Call to Astro­naut Aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

The Romantic George Carlin Writes a Nano-Powered, Sub Atomic-Filled Love Letter to His Wife

in Comedy, Life, Science | May 11th, 2013

George Car­lin was more than a Class Clown. He was also a class act, as evi­denced by this undat­ed mis­sive to com­e­dy writer Sal­ly Wade, with whom he shared the final decade of his life. The man who once parsed the Sev­en Words You Can Nev­er Say on Tele­vi­sion show­ered his “spouse with­out papers” with such notes dai­ly.

Giv­en such a prodi­gious out­put, he wise­ly turned to sci­ence to quan­ti­fy his ardor in the repro­duc­tion above. (His physi­cian’s scrawl can be dif­fi­cult to deci­pher — a tran­scrip­tion is sup­plied below.)

SALLYBURGER,

If you took THE NUMBER OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES IN THE UNIVERSE and mul­ti­plied that num­ber times itself THAT MANY TIMES; and then added the total num­ber of MICRO-SECONDS since the begin­ning of time, times itself; and then added 803—you would STILL have only the tini­est frac­tion of A BILLION-BILLIONTH PER CENT of the amount of love I HAVE FOR YOU.

Love,

your can­dle part­ner,
the roman­tic Mr Car­lin,
your eter­nal flame

A por­tion of these sweet noth­ings were col­lect­ed in The George Car­lin Let­ters. Its sub­ti­tle, The Per­ma­nent Courtship of Sal­ly Wade, was tak­en from the note he left on her com­put­er the day he died, two days shy of their 10th anniver­sary.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

RIP: George Car­lin on the Tonight Show (1966)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

George Car­lin: The Mod­ern Man in Three Min­utes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has been lov­ing on Greg Kotis since 1991. Such notes as there are remain pri­vate, but you can fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Google Reveals the Evolution of Our Planet in Timelapse Motion

in Google | May 10th, 2013

Yes­ter­day Google released a trove of time­lapse images that offers, it believes, “the most com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of our chang­ing plan­et ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” Fea­tur­ing a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry of images tak­en from space by NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, the repos­i­to­ry lets you wit­ness the retreat of glac­i­ers (see above), the defor­esta­tion of wide swathes of rain­for­est, the growth of sprawl­ing cities, and the build­ing of huge arti­fi­cial islands, all hap­pen­ing in time­lapse motion.

To cre­ate its Time­lapse web­site, Google “sift­ed through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 ter­abytes of data—to find the high­est-qual­i­ty pix­els … for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth.” They then used this data to cre­ate com­pos­ite images for each year, all view­able in brows­able HTML5 ani­ma­tion. Some strik­ing images have also been post­ed on Google+.

via Google

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

Freiheit, George Lucas’ Short Student Film About a Fatal Run from Communism (1966)

in Film | May 10th, 2013

Here we have an ear­ly short film by Star Wars mas­ter­mind George Lucas that con­tains no invent­ed worlds, elab­o­rate spe­cial effects, or con­scious myth­mak­ing. But Frei­heit, the third film Lucas made while a film-school stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the first with a nar­ra­tive, has the kind of impact that con­vinces you its fledg­ling cre­ator just might have an inter­est­ing pic­ture or two in him. Titled with the Ger­man word for “free­dom,” the short uses Sovi­et-era Ger­many as a set­ting and free­dom as its dri­ving con­cept, fol­low­ing a young pro­tag­o­nist trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin bor­der who attempts a flight from his restric­tive soci­ety but meets a grim end.

Even those of you who don’t respect what we now think of as George Lucas’ brand of moviemak­ing may find much of inter­est in Frei­heit’s three-minute run­time. From the title card read­ing “a film by LUCAS” onward, you know you’re in for more of an “art” film than you may have expect­ed. Lucas com­bines still with mov­ing images and dynam­i­cal­ly varies the speed of the lat­ter to build as much visu­al inter­est as pos­si­ble in a short time (and on an undoubt­ed­ly near-nonex­is­tent bud­get). He cre­ates an urgent mood quick­ly by using both music and abstract sound, ulti­mate­ly intro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of spo­ken words about free­dom itself. Lucas would clear­ly remain fas­ci­nat­ed, even while mak­ing block­buster space operas, by the nature of oppres­sive pow­er struc­tures, but this lit­tle project reveals his aes­thet­ic road not tak­en.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

David Lynch’s Ear­ly Short Film

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.

Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkner on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mississippi

in Film, Literature | May 9th, 2013

Ear­ly in his life, William Faulkn­er had an epiphany: “I dis­cov­ered that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about, and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it.” And so, as he told The Paris Review in 1956, “by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal” Faulkn­er was able to take his home­town of Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side and use it to cre­ate his own imag­i­nary cos­mos. He called it Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty.

In Novem­ber of 1952, the nor­mal­ly reclu­sive Faulkn­er allowed a film crew into his seclud­ed world at Oxford to make a short doc­u­men­tary about his life. The film, shown here in five pieces, was fund­ed by the Ford Foun­da­tion and broad­cast on Decem­ber 28, 1952 on the CBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram Omnibus. The script­ed film re-enacts events from Novem­ber 1950, when Faulkn­er received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, through the spring of 1951, when he spoke at his daugh­ter Jil­l’s high school grad­u­a­tion.

There are scenes of Faulkn­er at Rowan Oak, his ante­bel­lum house on the edge of Oxford, and at Green­field Farm, 17 miles away, where he is shown dri­ving a trac­tor and talk­ing with work­ers. Faulkn­er is also shown briefly with his wife, Estelle, and with sev­er­al promi­nent Oxford res­i­dents, includ­ing drug­gist Mac Reed, Oxford Eagle edi­tor Phil Mullen, who col­lab­o­rat­ed  with the film­mak­ers on the script, and lawyer Phil Stone, who was an ear­ly lit­er­ary men­tor and cham­pi­on of Faulkn­er. Accord­ing to Joseph Blot­ner in his biog­ra­phy Faulkn­er, the famous writer put aside his usu­al can­tan­ker­ous­ness when the film­mak­ers arrived in Oxford:

To the plea­sure of direc­tor Howard T. Mag­wood and his ten-man crew, Faulkn­er showed him­self to be a con­sid­er­ate host and an inter­est­ed actor. He even offered Mullen some advice on read­ing his lines. He was at ease when he appeared with Mac Reed, but in a scene with Phil Stone he seemed stiff and dis­tant.

The uneasi­ness between Faulkn­er and Stone may have had some­thing to do with Stone’s feel­ing (as Mullen report­ed­ly said lat­er) that Faulkn­er had come down with a bad case of “Nobelitis in the Head.” Actu­al­ly the entire film is stiff and unre­al­is­tic. It’s a bit of a shock to see Faulkn­er, a mas­ter of the nar­ra­tive form, going through the motions as a bad actor in a hor­ri­bly writ­ten sto­ry about his own life. But any lit­er­ary fan should be fas­ci­nat­ed by this rare glimpse of the mas­ter at home on his own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

William Faulkn­er Explains Why Writ­ing is Best Left to Scoundrels