The Adventures of Famed Illustrator Gustave Doré Presented in a Fantasic(al) Cutout Animation

in Animation, Art | October 10th, 2014

When we fea­tured his illu­mi­na­tion of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” we called Gus­tave Doré “one of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” who “made his name illus­trat­ing works by such authors as Rabelais, Balzac, Mil­ton, and Dante.” His hand may have giv­en a visu­al dimen­sion to a num­ber of revered texts, but what of the man him­self? For the deep­est insight into an artist, we should look to the works of art he inspires. In the case of the cutout ani­mat­ed film above, Doré not only pro­vides the inspi­ra­tion but plays, in a sense, the star­ring role. L’imaginaire au pou­voir offers us a por­trait of the artist as a two-dimen­sion­al man, stum­bling into haunt­ing drawn-and-cut-out realms straight from his own imag­i­na­tion.

“The film was cre­at­ed by Vin­cent Piani­na and Loren­zo Papace of Le Petit Écho Malade and fea­tures music by Ödland,” writes EDW Lynch at Laugh­ing Squid (a site that pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Le Petit Écho Malade’s music video for Ödland’s “Øster­søen”) “It is a pro­mo, Lynch adds, for ‘Gus­tave Doré (1832–1883): Mas­ter of Imag­i­na­tion,’ an ongo­ing exhi­bi­tion of Doré’s work at Musée d’Orsay in Paris through May 11, 2014.” Though Doré, by all accounts, lived a fair­ly event­ful life, he had to have spent a great deal of it slav­ing painstak­ing­ly away with his wood engrav­ing tools. The same goes for any pro­duc­er of such vivid artis­tic visions—but I sus­pect that all of them have to go on this kind of har­row­ing jour­ney to the cen­ter of their soul now and again. Here, Piani­na and Papace have, with Doré’s very mate­ri­als, cre­at­ed a jour­ney into the inner realm that still gives them life today. And they’ve added a healthy dose of 21st-cen­tu­ry humor for good mea­sure.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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

Gus­tave Doré’s Dra­mat­ic Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

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

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Woman Takes LSD in 1956: “I’ve Never Seen Such Infinite Beauty in All My Life,” “I Wish I Could Talk in Technicolor”

in History, Life, Science | October 10th, 2014

A decade before tens of thou­sands turned on, tuned in, and dropped out at the Human Be-In in Gold­en Gate Park, psy­chi­a­trist Sid­ney Cohen was inves­ti­gat­ing the effects of LSD on human con­scious­ness. If his vol­un­tary sub­jects at LA’s Vet­er­an’s Admin­is­tra­tion Hos­pi­tal found them­selves sud­den­ly able to “see the music” a la Lizard Queen Lisa Simp­son, they did so in a very respectable-seem­ing, mid-1950s set­ting.

Wit­ness this ses­sion with the polite young wife of a hos­pi­tal employ­ee, above. She’s a bit ner­vous, but not because of any media-fueled pre­con­cep­tions regard­ing the trip she’s about to take. It was 1956, and anoth­er of Dr. Cohen’s guinea pigs, pub­lish­er Hen­ry Luce, had yet to regale the pub­lic with some of acid’s more col­or­ful prop­er­ties via mul­ti­ple arti­cles in both Time and Life mag­a­zines.

As such, our uniden­ti­fied par­tic­i­pant is as pure as the glass of water she’s served at the one minute mark. Pur­er, actu­al­ly, giv­en that the drink has been dosed with 1/10th of a mil­ligram Lyser­gic acid diethy­lamide.

Three hours fur­ther along, she’s trip­ping her brains out, still seat­ed demure­ly in the same chair in which her intake inter­view was con­duct­ed. Had it been filmed 20 years lat­er, her rev­e­la­tions would seem trite, but the con­text ren­ders them endear­ing. If she’s bummed out about any­thing, it’s that the nice doc­tor ques­tion­ing her about her mind blow­ing jour­ney isn’t able to see the mol­e­cules too.

I’d love to know what became of her.

Cohen con­tin­ued observ­ing LSD, with sub­jects as cel­e­brat­ed as writer Aldous Hux­ley, philoso­pher Ger­ald Heard and Bill Wil­son, co-founder of Alco­holics Anony­mous. He pub­lished his find­ings in The Beyond With­in: the LSD Sto­ry. His ulti­mate take­away was that ”beat­nik micro­cul­ture”  destroyed LSD’s chances for achiev­ing its poten­tial as a psy­chother­a­py tool.

This may be why we nev­er hear him urg­ing his sub­ject to check out the drapes, which is sure­ly what sev­er­al young men of my acquain­tance would have resort­ed to, back in the day.

David Lynch-style aus­ter­i­ty of the set­ting aside, per­haps such coach­ing was unnec­es­sary. What­ev­er this woman’s brain had her see­ing, it made her want to “talk in tech­ni­col­or.”

May I sug­gest that we’re just as delu­sion­al if we assume that some­one who could be described as a 1950s “house­wife” must have inhab­it­ed  a world we can only per­ceive in black-and-white?

via Reason.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

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

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50% Off Criterion Films Until 2pm ET Today (October 10)

in Uncategorized | October 9th, 2014

criterion

A quick heads up for film buffs. For the next 12 hours — or until 2pm ET on Fri­day Octo­ber 10 — you can get 50% off Blu-rays and DVDs in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion if you use the pro­mo code SPIKE.

Cri­te­ri­on spe­cial­izes in sell­ing “impor­tant clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary films” to film afi­ciona­dos. If you like mas­ter­pieces by David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, John Cas­savetes, Truf­faut, Felli­ni and the rest, you won’t want to miss this rare sale.

If you pre­fer “Free” to “50% off,” I’m sure you can find some­thing that piques your inter­est in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Sign up for our dai­ly email and, once a day, we’ll bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

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The Paintings of Miles Davis

in Art, Music | October 9th, 2014

Ask enough peo­ple to name their favorite artist of any kind, and soon­er rather than lat­er, some­one will name Miles Davis. The trum­peter and jazz auteur behind — or, strict­ly speak­ing, up in front of — such unchal­lenged mas­ter­pieces as Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Sketch­es of Spain, and Bitch­es Brew has long since ascend­ed to the pan­theon of Amer­i­can music, but that doesn’t mean we should over­look his oth­er artis­tic achieve­ments. Achieve­ments as a painter, for instance: true fans know that Davis’ visu­al art appears on a few of his album cov­ers, such as that of 1989’s Amand­la right below.  “Paint­ing, long a Davis avo­ca­tion, is becom­ing a prof­itable side­line,” says a con­tem­po­rary Los Ange­les Times arti­cle. “In col­lab­o­ra­tion with his girl­friend, Jo Gel­bard, he did the art­work for his new album; the cov­er is an impres­sive self-por­trait using the reds and greens he seems to favor.”

You can see more of Davis’ visu­al art over at Dan­ger­ous Minds and The Dai­ly Beast. The so-called Prince of Dark­ness “didn’t begin to draw and paint in earnest until he was in his mid-fifties, dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s and a peri­od of musi­cal inac­tiv­i­ty,” writes Tara McGin­ley. ”

Miles being Miles, he didn’t mere­ly dab­ble, but made cre­at­ing art as much a part of his life as mak­ing music in his final decade,” result­ing in “a sharp, bold and mas­cu­line mix­ture of Kandin­sky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picas­so and African trib­al art.” Just last year, Insight Edi­tions pub­lished Miles Davis: The Col­lect­ed Art­work, final­ly bring­ing togeth­er the fruits of the cre­ativ­i­ty the trum­peter could com­mand even with­out his horn. Count­less young jazz play­ers claim Davis as an influ­ence to this day, and they’ll con­tin­ue to do so as long as jazz itself per­sists, but I do won­der how soon young painters will as well.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Watch Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Char­lie Parker’s “Con­fir­ma­tion” & Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Miles Davis’ “South Side Chica­go Chili Mack” Recipe Revealed

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

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The Making (and Remaking) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Greatest Rock Album of All Time

in Music | October 9th, 2014

Rock ‘n’ roll has a sad tra­di­tion of genius­es who’ve suc­cumbed to men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Some of them have, para­dox­i­cal­ly, pro­duced some of the best music of their careers dur­ing peri­ods of decline. We’d have to men­tion Pink Floyd’s Syd Bar­rett, Moby Grape’s Skip Spence, Big Star’s Chris Bell… all of whom record­ed strange, inti­mate, and heart­felt solo albums after leav­ing their respec­tive bands. Then, of course, there’s Bri­an Wil­son, whose 1966 Pet Sounds re-invent­ed pop, and laid the ground­work for Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. (Wil­son is said to have been inspired by Rub­ber Soul). We may know Pet Sounds as a Beach Boys release, but it was real­ly Wilson’s record. In the video series here, “Behind the Sounds,” we get a unique lis­ten in to the cre­ation of the album by way of ear­ly takes, lots of stu­dio chat­ter, and pop-up video style fac­toids in the Pet Sounds cover’s Coop­er Black font over behind-the-scenes pho­tos.

At the top, hear behind the sounds of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Just above, hear the mak­ing of “I Know There’s An Answer,” and below, hear Parts 1 and 2 of the cre­ation of “God Only Knows,” the lush, self-effac­ing bal­lad whose harp­si­chord and French horn intro clear­ly inspired the orches­tra­tion in songs like “Pen­ny Lane” and “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” See videos for the rest of Pet Sounds’ songs at the “Behind the Sounds” Youtube chan­nel.

Pet Sounds has been named the great­est album of all time by NME and Mojo mag­a­zines and ranks at num­ber two in Rolling Stone’s 500 Great­est Albums of All Time, right behind Sgt. Pepper’s. Wil­son wrote the songs with lyri­cist Tony Ash­er dur­ing a time when he was pulling away from his sun­ny surf-pop group and expand­ing his reper­toire of stu­dio tech­niques in unprece­dent­ed ways. The songs can sound super­fi­cial­ly like breezy Beach Boys pop, but reveal them­selves as com­plex, baroque orches­tra­tions that hold enough instru­men­tal sur­pris­es and lyri­cal sub­tleties for a life­time of lis­ten­ing. It’s a record both thor­ough­ly of its time and thor­ough­ly time­less.

Unlike many a trag­ic rock com­pos­er, Wil­son has sur­vived and recov­ered (many times over) into old age, record­ing and tour­ing on and off with the Beach Boys and open­ing up about his dark­er times. And unless you’re spend­ing this week under a rock some­where, you’ll catch the BBC’s star-stud­ded video re-make of “God Only Knows,” just below, cir­cu­lat­ing all over the ‘net. Both a pro­mo for the more than two dozen musi­cians involved and a ben­e­fit sin­gle for char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion BBC Chil­dren in Need, the glam­orous pro­duc­tion fea­tures Wil­son behind his piano, look­ing state­ly and healthy. For more on the mak­ing of Pet Sounds, see this 2002 BBC doc­u­men­tary, Art That Shook The World: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. And please, amidst this flur­ry of Pet Sounds good­ies, don’t for­get to lis­ten to the album itself, best appre­ci­at­ed, says Wil­son, with “ear­phones, in the dark.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

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

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“Heidegger in the Kitchen”: Alain de Botton’s Video Essay Explains the Philosopher’s Concept of Being

in Philosophy | October 9th, 2014

Are you feel­ing doomed and insignif­i­cant, like a shrimp des­tined for the fry­ing pan? Well, then, we have just the thing for you. Last week we fea­tured three intro­duc­to­ry phi­los­o­phy videos from Alain de Botton’s School of Life, on Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, the Sto­ics, and Epi­cu­rus. Each of these shorts is designed to show how phi­los­o­phy, ancient and mod­ern, can enhance our dai­ly life by address­ing ques­tions of free­dom, suf­fer­ing, and hap­pi­ness. Above—in what Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings calls an “imag­i­na­tive video essay”—de Bot­ton again engages with Heidegger’s thought, this time dis­till­ing the dif­fi­cult Ger­man philosopher’s con­cept of “Being” (das sein) to its essence.

Heidegger’s desire, de Bot­ton tells us, was to “wake us up to the idea that we are sur­round­ed by death.” (Hei­deg­ger used the “grander term,” das nichts,” the noth­ing, or “inex­is­tence, the oppo­site of life.”) Instead of sim­ply awak­en­ing exis­ten­tial ter­ror by remind­ing us of how frag­ile and pre­car­i­ous our lives are, Hei­deg­ger sought to encour­age moments of insight into the mys­te­ri­ous uni­ty and beau­ty of life. In these moments, he thought, we might learn “to rec­og­nize our kin­ship with all liv­ing things and with the Earth itself.”

What keeps us from hav­ing these insights all of the time? For Hei­deg­ger, our social denial of Being takes the form of “end­less chat­ter,” what he called das gerede. We are all famil­iar with its many man­i­fes­ta­tions; from the per­pet­u­al triv­ia of celebri­ty gos­sip to the numb­ing scare­mon­ger­ing of the 24-hour news cycle, thou­sands of voic­es sur­round us hourly, clam­or­ing for our atten­tion and seek­ing to drown out our indi­vid­ual aware­ness of death and of Being. In the visu­al kitchen metaphor above, das gerede is rep­re­sent­ed by a “pan­cake-like dough lay­er” that “smoth­ers our con­nec­tion with Being.” “The task of phi­los­o­phy,” Hei­deg­ger believed, “is to remove us from the doughy com­fort of chat­ter and intro­duce us, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, to the brac­ing con­cept of Noth­ing­ness.”

It’s cer­tain­ly not for noth­ing that Hei­deg­ger has been iden­ti­fied as an exis­ten­tial­ist, though he repu­di­at­ed the term. For Hei­deg­ger, the ques­tion of human exis­tence was pri­ma­ry and above all oth­er kinds of inquiry. Hei­deg­ger did not believe that the meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies of the nat­ur­al sci­ences could ever offer sat­is­fac­to­ry answers to our fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about our exis­tence. So what was Heidegger’s cheer­ful advice to those of us seek­ing a more authen­tic con­nec­tion to Being? Like Mor­ris­sey and var­i­ous Roman­tic poets, Hei­deg­ger rec­om­mend­ed that we “spend more time in grave­yards.” To get in touch with life, he sug­gests, we must first learn to get in touch with death.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks About Lan­guage, Being, Marx & Reli­gion in Vin­tage 1960s Inter­views

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks Phi­los­o­phy with a Bud­dhist Monk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1963)

Find sev­er­al cours­es on Hei­deg­ger, includ­ing his mag­num opus Being and Time, in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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

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1000 Frames of Hitchcock: See Each of Alfred Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artistic Frames

in Film | October 9th, 2014

psycho frames

Some direc­tors like John Cas­savetes and Wong Kar-wai like to dis­cov­er the movie as they are mak­ing it. Oth­ers film­mak­ers have a very clear con­cep­tion of the movie right from the begin­ning. Alfred Hitch­cock was very much in that lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. “Once the screen­play is fin­ished, I’d just as soon not make the film at all,” he once told Roger Ebert. “I have a strong­ly visu­al mind. I visu­alise a pic­ture right down to the final cuts.” And that is very much evi­dent in the final prod­uct. From the famous Psy­cho show­er scene to a wild-eyed Jim­my Stew­art dan­gling from a ledge in Ver­ti­go to Cary Grant being men­aced by a crop duster in North By North­west, Hitch­cock has pro­duced some of the most mem­o­rable, arrest­ing images of the 20th Cen­tu­ry.

British artist Dave Pat­tern set out to high­light Hitch’s visu­al genius with his 1000 Frames of Hitch­cock series, which com­press­es each of Hitchcock’s 52 major movies down to a mere 1000 frames. That’s about six sec­onds of run­ning time.

“It all start­ed when in 2003 I made a web­site that tries to gath­er infor­ma­tion about Hitch­cock DVD releas­es over the world,” Pat­tern told Dan­ish movie mag­a­zine Echo. “The qual­i­ty of the pub­li­ca­tions are very dif­fer­ent from coun­try to coun­try. It sort of snow­balled from there.”

the birds

What’s amaz­ing about this project is just how much of the movie comes through in this great­ly abbre­vi­at­ed, sound­less ver­sion. You com­plete­ly under­stand that Tip­pi Hedren is get­ting ter­ror­ized by an implaca­ble ene­my in The Birds. You don’t even need to see that malev­o­lent mur­der of crows. You can see it just in her face. At the begin­ning of the movie, she’s ele­gant, aloof and per­fect­ly com­posed. At the end of the film, she’s unkempt, bloody and bro­ken. Hitchcock’s creepy sex­u­al pol­i­tics and his famous­ly unwhole­some obses­sion with blondes shines through here.

north by northwest frames

What is utter­ly appar­ent in this project – and some­thing you might miss while watch­ing the movie — is Hitchcock’s com­plete con­trol of col­or. The palette of The Birds (mid­dle image) is dom­i­nat­ed by the col­or green, from Hedren’s out­fit to the col­or of a pick­up truck to the hue of the hills. North By North­west (bot­tom), by con­trast, is com­posed most­ly of beige and slate blue. Click on the images to view them in a larg­er for­mat.

Below, you can check out all the movies, each dis­tilled down to 1,000 frames. And, if you’re inspired to dive deep into the works of the Mas­ter of Sus­pense, you can watch 23 of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s movies for free here.

 

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Hear ‘Louder Than Words,’ Pink Floyd’s New Song on What’s Likely Their Last Album

in Music | October 9th, 2014

louder than words

(If you have any prob­lems play­ing this clip, please refresh the page.)

On Novem­ber 10, Pink Floyd will unveil The End­less Riv­er. And, above, you can hear ‘Loud­er Than Words,’ the first track released from the album. It’s the only vocal track on an oth­er­wise instru­men­tal LP.

The End­less Riv­er is the band’s first album since 1994’s The Divi­sion Bell. And it’s appar­ent­ly going to be their last. In the sec­ond clip record­ed by the BBC, David Gilmour talks about the con­cept behind The End­less Riv­er, how they wrote “Loud­er Than Words,” and how, espe­cial­ly with the death of key­boardist Richard Wright, it’s going to be their last cre­ative effort. “I think we have suc­cess­ful­ly com­man­deered the best of what there is. I sus­pect this is it.”

The End­less Riv­er can be pre-ordered on Ama­zon or iTunes.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock/Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

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