Meet “Father Philanthropy”: America’s Most Prolific and Unlikely Master Art Forger

in Art, Random, Video - Arts & Culture | January 28th, 2013

Close your eyes and pic­ture a phil­an­thropist.

Like­ly you envi­sioned a fat cat with a design­er check­book. It’s the accept­ed image, but not every bene­fac­tor fits the mold.

Take Mark Lan­dis, a gen­tle soul who’s spent three decades sur­pris­ing the staffs of small Amer­i­can muse­ums with art­work pre­sent­ed out of the blue. Not just any art­work, and cer­tain­ly not the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry orig­i­nals they were rep­re­sent­ed as—in every case, donor Lan­dis was even­tu­al­ly revealed to be the artist.

In Ter­ri Time­ly’s doc­u­men­tary glimpse, “Father Phil­an­thropy” (above, with a delet­ed scene below), Lan­dis oblig­ing­ly guides view­ers through the mul­ti-step process by which his forg­eries are cre­at­ed, but he reveals lit­tle about his moti­va­tion, beyond a desire to hon­or the mem­o­ry of his par­ents (Moth­er looms large here.)

His fakes don’t add up to a grand con­cep­tu­al piece, a la artist  J. S. G. Bog­gs’ incred­i­bly detailed, far-more-valu­able-than-the-items-they-were-used-to-pur­chase ban­knotes. He seems indif­fer­ent to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of high pro­file, if ill got­ten, pres­tige. He is, quite sim­ply a giv­er. His gifts cost the recip­i­ents pro­fes­sion­al pride and unex­pect­ed fees asso­ci­at­ed with fer­ret­ing out the truth, but they seem mal­ice-free. “About all I’ve got is an abil­i­ty to draw and paint,” he states, “So nat­u­ral­ly it led me to give away draw­ing and paint­ings.”

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent

Art for the One Per­cent: 60 Min­utes on the Excess & Hubris of the Inter­na­tion­al Art Mar­ket

Art Lovers Rejoice! New Goya and Rem­brandt Data­bas­es Now Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day keeps things real @ayunhalliday

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Hear Tennessee Williams Read Hart Crane’s “The Broken Tower” and “The Hurricane” (1960)

in Literature, Poetry | January 28th, 2013

Note: Audio takes about 8 sec­onds to play…

Many Moons Ago, a poet­ry teacher of mine intro­duced me to the term “ter­mi­nal aes­thet­ic,” mean­ing a style that could go no fur­ther, hav­ing burned up all of its resources. It’s a great way to char­ac­ter­ize the poet Hart Crane’s ambiva­lent appraisal of his lit­er­ary fore­fa­ther, T.S. Eliot. Crane spent his poet­ry career try­ing to rem­e­dy what he saw as Eliot’s fail­ure to sal­vage any­thing from the mod­ern world but cramped despair in The Waste Land. As Crane put it, Eliot’s mas­ter­work was “so damned dead” and man­i­fest­ed “a refusal to see cer­tain spir­i­tu­al events and pos­si­bil­i­ties.” It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that near­ly every­one sub­ject­ed to Eliot’s por­ten­tous verse has felt this way at one time or anoth­er. But Crane felt it and per­se­vered; he tried to out-write The Waste Land with his own mod­ernist epic, The Bridge.

The poet’s opti­mism was total­ly at odds with his brief, painful life. As David Dud­ley summed it up recent­ly:

Crane’s short life was a train wreck—a teenage sui­cide attempt, fol­lowed by bit­ter estrange­ments from his moth­er, a Chris­t­ian Sci­en­tist, and his father, a well-to-do Cleve­land can­dy mak­er who dis­ap­proved of his son’s habits. Liv­ing as a semi-clos­et­ed gay man on the fringes of the cul­tur­al lime­light in New York and Europe, Crane had affairs with sailors, drank too much, got in fights, and couldn’t hold a job.

Crane’s depres­sion and feel­ings of fail­ure drove him to sui­cide in 1932, at age 32: he leapt into the Gulf of Mex­i­co from the steam ship Oriz­a­ba (most think; he left no note). His tomb­stone is inscribed with the words “lost at sea.”

That phrase also cap­tures how so many read­ers feel when faced with Crane’s roco­co verse. With its archa­ic (some would say pre­ten­tious) dic­tion, and obscure allu­sions nest­ed inside oblique ref­er­ences, the word “dif­fi­cult” may be an under­state­ment. But Crane’s work has had many cham­pi­ons, among them, Ten­nessee Williams. As an epi­graph to A Street­car Named Desire, Williams chose these lines from Crane’s “The Bro­ken Tow­er”:

And so it was I entered the bro­ken world
To trace the vision­ary com­pa­ny of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whith­er hurled)
But not for long to hold each des­per­ate choice.

The exquis­ite rhythms of Crane’s lines—Shakespearean by way of Eliot—lend them­selves so well to read­ing aloud. Above, then, we have the priv­i­lege of hear­ing Crane’s defend­er Williams read “The Bro­ken Tow­er” in his reedy, South­ern voice. Fol­low the text of the poem in the video as Williams reads. Both the audio above and that below—of Williams read­ing Crane’s hyp­not­ic “The Hurricane”—come from a near­ly-impos­si­ble-to-find 1960 LP from Caed­mon Records. Thanks again, Inter­net, and thanks to Don Yorty, who post­ed these videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Bro­ken Tow­er, James Franco’s Docu­d­ra­ma On “Dif­fi­cult” Poet Hart Crane: A Pre­view

Mar­lon Bran­do Opens Up to Ten­nessee Williams

British Actors Read Poignant Poet­ry from World War I

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

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Father Guido Sarducci Pitches “The Five Minute University”

in Comedy, Education | January 28th, 2013

If you expe­ri­enced the hey­day of Sat­ur­day Night Live, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly remem­ber Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci, the chain-smok­ing, sun­glass-wear­ing priest who worked (rather implau­si­bly) as a rock crit­ic for the Vat­i­can news­pa­per L’Osser­va­tore Romano. The Sar­duc­ci char­ac­ter was the brain­child of Don Nov­el­lo, a come­di­an who first began play­ing with the char­ac­ter in the ear­ly 1970s, when he bought a mon­signor’s out­fit for $7.50 at a thrift shop. Nov­el­lo took “Sar­duc­ci” from the San Fran­cis­co night­clubs, to The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Show, to Sat­ur­day Night Live in 1977. The irrev­er­ent priest often appeared on the “Week­end Update” seg­ment and even once opened the show. And then, lat­er, Nov­el­lo brought Sar­duc­ci onto the Amer­i­can com­e­dy cir­cuit where he pitched audi­ences on the “Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty,” a con­cept you’ll want to con­sid­er in case that MOOC thing does­n’t quite work out. Appar­ent­ly it now has VC fund­ing too.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Pope John Paul II Takes Bat­ting Prac­tice in Cal­i­for­nia, 1987

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mis­sion for Com­e­dy & Music

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Join Cartoonist Lynda Barry for a University-Level Course on Doodling and Neuroscience

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Education, Science | January 26th, 2013

lyndabarry

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry, who has helped legions of adults grope their way back to the unself­con­scious cre­ativ­i­ty of child­hood, is teach­ing at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. Bar­ry’s Unthink­able Mind course is designed to appeal to stu­dents of the human­i­ties.  Also hard­core sci­ence majors, the sort of lab-coat­ed spec­i­mens the first group might refer to as “brains.” The instruc­tor describes her Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin spring semes­ter offer­ing thus:

A writ­ing and pic­ture-mak­ing class with focus on the basic phys­i­cal struc­ture of the brain with empha­sis on hemi­spher­ic dif­fer­ences and a par­tic­u­lar sort of insight and cre­ative con­cen­tra­tion that seems to come about when we are using our hands (the orig­i­nal dig­i­tal devices) —to help us fig­ure out a prob­lem.

The twen­ty-one grads and under­grads accept­ed into Pro­fes­sor Bar­ry’s course have been warned, via the illus­trat­ed let­ter above,  hand­writ­ten on legal paper, that the work­load will be heavy.

lyndabarry2

You should be warned as well, if you elect to audit this course from home. Enroll­ment is not nec­es­sary. Pro­fes­sor Bar­ry will be post­ing her week­ly assign­ments and cur­ricu­lum mate­ri­als on her tum­blr, a forum where her abid­ing inter­est in sci­ence is as appar­ent as her devo­tion to undi­rect­ed doo­dling. Your first assign­ment, post­ed above, requires a box of crayons, the col­or­ing pages of your choice, down­loaded to four types of paper, and a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of time set aside for brain-relat­ed arti­cles and vin­tage videos star­ring Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Michael Gaz­zani­ga and astronomer Carl Sagan. You should also be com­mit­ted to keep­ing a four-minute diary and serv­ing as your own guinea pig.

Who’s in?

A big H/T @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent

Car­toon­ist Kate Beat­on Plays on Lit­er­ary Clas­sics — The Great Gats­by, Julius Cae­sar & More

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Hux­ley and Gide

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day ‘s most recent book is Peanut.

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Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quintet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

in Music | January 25th, 2013

Here’s some­thing to get your week start­ed on the right note: John Coltrane in 1961, play­ing his hyp­not­ic, dervish-like modal arrange­ment of the pop­u­lar Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein song, “My Favorite Things.”

The per­for­mance was record­ed by Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion in Baden-Baden on Novem­ber 24, 1961–the same year as the release of Coltrane’s break­through solo album, also named My Favorite Things. The quin­tet includes Coltrane on sopra­no sax­o­phone, Eric Dol­phy on flute, McCoy Tyn­er on piano, Reg­gie Work­man on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. You can see the com­plete TV broad­cast, along with two oth­ers, in our Novem­ber 21 post, “John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1960, 1961 and 1965.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ Ani­mat­ed

John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot (1945)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

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Meet “Dashan,” the Canadian Comedian Who Achieved Accidental Stardom in China

in Comedy, Life | January 25th, 2013

West­ern stu­dents of the Chi­nese lan­guage tend to know Dashan. Some­times they don’t like him very much. The vari­ety of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions obvi­ous­ly includes sim­ple jeal­ousy, since Dashan (giv­en name Mark Rowswell) enjoys fame across Chi­na for his mas­tery of Man­darin. But just as this anti-Dashan resent­ment actu­al­ly springs from more com­pli­cat­ed caus­es, so the fer­vent­ly pro-Dashan feel­ings of mil­lions of Chi­nese fans spring from more than his unusu­al flu­en­cy. Ambas­sador to Chi­na’s Fun­ny Bone, the fifty-minute doc­u­men­tary above, traces Dashan’s seem­ing­ly uncal­cu­lat­ed rise from his under­grad­u­ate days in Chi­nese stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, to his break­through appear­ance on Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion’s 1988 New Year’s Gala, to his inescapable pres­ence on the Chi­nese stage and screen — includ­ing but by no means lim­it­ed to endors­ing a “Cana­di­an fast food restau­rant.” This sort of celebri­ty makes one instinc­tive­ly want to para­phrase Samuel John­son’s line about the dog walk­ing on its hind legs: even if a west­ern­er speak­ing Chi­nese on tele­vi­sion is not done well, audi­ences are sur­prised to find it done at all.

But Dashan does do it well, and he does it in a con­text even more chal­leng­ing than a four-legged ani­mal walk­ing upright: the tra­di­tion­al form of lan­guage com­e­dy known as xiang­sheng. The doc­u­men­tary shows Dashan per­form­ing as part of a duo, and just above you can see him going solo. Out­side of this spe­cial­ized set­ting, observers have com­pared his mild, easy­go­ing, friend­ly — dare I say Cana­di­an? — per­sona to Dick Clark’s; one inter­vie­wee in Ambas­sador even describes him as harm­less­ly sym­bol­iz­ing Cana­da just as a pan­da sym­bol­izes Chi­na. Yet his detrac­tors have grown vocal enough to prompt some­one to pub­licly ask, on ques­tion-and-answer site Quo­ra, “Why do so many Chi­nese learn­ers seem to hate Dashan?” The top answer comes from Dashan him­self, who pro­vides a thor­ough, clear­head­ed, and self-aware analy­sis of the per­cep­tion of his char­ac­ter. He even cites, approv­ing­ly, the answer from Chi­na watch­er and rock­er Kaiser Kuo: “Dashan seems like a nice enough guy, but for some rea­son every once in a while I have the urge to punch him in the face.”

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.

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Tom Waits and Keith Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenandoah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Listen Online

in Music | January 25th, 2013

In 2006, Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Kate Bush (and so many more favorites of mine, this list is already too long), pub­lished the tons-of-fun com­pi­la­tion Rogue’s Gallery, a selec­tion of sea shanties and pirate songs as inter­pret­ed by an ensem­ble of lumi­nar­ies from the pop, indie, and folk worlds. The two-CD, forty-three track release is avail­able on YouTube (I’d rec­om­mend Nick Cave’s “Fire Down Below,” but he’s an old hand at this kind of thing).

Both CDs are pro­duced by Hal Will­ner and curat­ed by Will­ner and Pirates of the Caribbean star John­ny Depp and direc­tor Gore Verbin­s­ki; Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Bal­lads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys is set for release on Feb­ru­ary 19th. Will­ner told Rolling Stone in Decem­ber that this new release “seems happier—not as much about tor­ture, sodomy and death.” Hard to imag­ine a sea song with­out those three things, but here we are, with “Shenan­doah” (above), a nos­tal­gic hymn to old Vir­ginia, sup­pos­ed­ly sung by Mis­souri Riv­er flat­boat­men in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, then export­ed ‘round the world on clip­per ships. The ver­sion above by Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards turns the maudlin bal­lad into a drunk­en funer­al dirge. A com­menter on the video puts it per­fect­ly: “If a song could smell like whiskey….” Richards’ spare elec­tric gui­tar work near the end adds a clean, melod­ic coun­ter­point to Waits’ down-and-out growl. Won­der­ful stuff.

The song has long been a favorite of clean-shaven choral and vocal groups like the Statler Broth­ers and Mor­mon Taber­na­cle Choir and was the title theme of the 1965 Civ­il War film Shenan­doah, with Jim­my Stew­art. Waits and Richards do the song a much-need­ed service—they reclaim it for the drunk­en, dirty boat­men and rum-soaked, lone­ly sailors who sang it at sea.

* Cor­rec­tion: a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this post stat­ed that Rogue’s Gallery and Son of Rogue’s Gallery were asso­ci­at­ed with the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny and part of the Pirates of the Caribbean pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign. As you can see from pro­duc­er Hal Will­ner’s com­ment below, nei­ther project is asso­ci­at­ed with Dis­ney or the mar­ket­ing of the Pirates films. We apol­o­gize for the mis­take. 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

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

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The Time Neil Young Met Charles Manson, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

in Music | January 25th, 2013

Wag­ing Heavy Peace — it’s not your aver­age rock star biog­ra­phy. There’s not much sex and drugs. There’s some rock ’n’ roll. But most­ly, there’s a lot of Neil Young being an ordi­nary guy, hang­ing out with fam­i­ly and friends, tin­ker­ing with toy trains, and refur­bish­ing old cars. It’s a decid­ed­ly down-to-earth auto­bi­og­ra­phy, so far as auto­bi­ogra­phies go. But it’s not entire­ly devoid of fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ries. Like the time when, dur­ing the late 1960s, Young stopped by the Los Ange­les home of Den­nis Wil­son, the drum­mer of The Beach Boys. There, Wil­son was liv­ing with three or four girls who had an “intense vibe” and a “detached qual­i­ty about them.” Young con­tin­ues:

After a while, a guy showed up, picked up my gui­tar, and start­ed play­ing a lot of songs on it. His name was Char­lie. He was a friend of the girls and now of Den­nis. His songs were off-the-cuff things he made up as he went along, and they were nev­er the same twice in a row. Kind of like Dylan, but dif­fer­ent because it was hard to glimpse a true mes­sage in them, but the songs were fas­ci­nat­ing. He was quite good.

Young then adds:

I asked him if he had a record­ing con­tract. He told me he did­n’t yet, but he want­ed to make records. I told Mo Ostin at Reprise about him, and rec­om­mend­ed that Reprise check him out.… Short­ly after­ward, the Sharon Tate-La Bian­ca mur­ders hap­pened, and Char­lie Man­son’s name was known around the world.

After the mur­ders, Man­son kind of got a record deal. His record­ings were com­mer­cial­ly released on the album Lie: The Love and Ter­ror Cult. Above, we have one bizarrely upbeat song from the col­lec­tion, “Home Is Where You’re Hap­py.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

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