Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Personal Library

in Books, Literature | March 10th, 2015

borges personal library

“Jorge Luis Borges 1951, by Grete Stern” by Grete Stern (1904–1999). Licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

Jorge Luis Borges’ terse, mind-expand­ing sto­ries reshaped mod­ern fic­tion. He was one of the first authors to mix high cul­ture with low, merg­ing such pop­u­lar gen­res as sci­ence fic­tion and the detec­tive sto­ry with heady philo­soph­i­cal dis­cours­es on author­ship, real­i­ty and exis­tence. His sto­ry “The Gar­den of the Fork­ing Paths,” which describes a nov­el that is also a labyrinth, pre­saged the hyper­tex­tu­al­i­ty of the inter­net age. His tone of iron­ic detach­ment influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of Latin Amer­i­can authors. The BBC argued that Borges was the most impor­tant writer of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Of course, Borges wasn’t just an author. When not writ­ing fic­tion, Borges worked as a lit­er­ary crit­ic, occa­sion­al film crit­ic, a librar­i­an, and, for a spell, as the direc­tor of the Bib­liote­ca Nacional in Buenos Aires. His tastes were famous­ly eclec­tic. He did not think of much of canon­i­cal writ­ers like Goethe, Jane Austen, James Joyce and Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez. He favored the 19th sto­ry­tellers like Edgar Allan Poe and Rud­yard Kipling.

In 1985, Argen­tine pub­lish­er Hys­pamer­i­ca asked Borges to cre­ate A Per­son­al Library — which involved curat­ing 100 great works of lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing intro­duc­tions for each vol­ume. Though he only got through 74 books before he died of liv­er can­cer in 1988, Borges’s selec­tions are fas­ci­nat­ing and deeply idio­syn­crat­ic. He list­ed adven­ture tales by Robert Louis Steven­son and H.G. Wells along­side exot­ic holy books, 8th cen­tu­ry Japan­ese poet­ry and the mus­ing of Kierkegaard. You can see the full list below. A num­ber of the select­ed works can be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

1. Sto­ries by Julio Cortázar (not sure if this refers to Hop­scotch, Blow-Up and Oth­er Sto­ries, or nei­ther)
2. & 3. The Apoc­ryphal Gospels
4. Ameri­ka and The Com­plete Sto­ries by Franz Kaf­ka
5. The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mys­tery by G.K. Chester­ton
6. & 7. The Moon­stone by Wilkie Collins
8. The Intel­li­gence of Flow­ers by Mau­rice Maeter­linck
9. The Desert of the Tar­tars by Dino Buz­za­ti
10. Peer Gynt and Hed­da Gabler by Hen­rik Ibsen
11. The Man­darin: And Oth­er Sto­ries by Eça de Queirós
12. The Jesuit Empire by Leopol­do Lugones
13. The Coun­ter­feit­ers by André Gide
14. The Time Machine and The Invis­i­ble Man by H.G. Wells
15. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
16. & 17. Demons by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
18. Math­e­mat­ics and the Imag­i­na­tion by Edward Kas­ner
19. The Great God Brown and Oth­er Plays, Strange Inter­lude, and Mourn­ing Becomes Elec­tra by Eugene O’Neill
20. Tales of Ise by Ari­wara no Nar­i­hara
21. Ben­i­to Cereno, Bil­ly Budd, and Bartle­by, the Scriven­er by Her­man Melville
22. The Trag­ic Every­day, The Blind Pilot, and Words and Blood by Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni
23. The Three Impos­tors
24. Songs of Songs tr. by Fray Luis de León
25. An Expla­na­tion of the Book of Job tr. by Fray Luis de León
26. The End of the Teth­er and Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad
27. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gib­bon
28. Essays & Dia­logues by Oscar Wilde
29. Bar­bar­ian in Asia by Hen­ri Michaux
30. The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse
31. Buried Alive by Arnold Ben­nett
32. On the Nature of Ani­mals by Claudius Elianus
33. The The­o­ry of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
34. The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antony by Gus­tave Flaubert
35. Trav­els by Mar­co Polo
36. Imag­i­nary lives by Mar­cel Schwob
37. Cae­sar and Cleopa­tra, Major Bar­bara, and Can­dide by George Bernard Shaw
38. Macus Bru­tus and The Hour of All by Fran­cis­co de Queve­do
39. The Red Red­maynes by Eden Phillpotts
40. Fear and Trem­bling by Søren Kierkegaard
41. The Golem by Gus­tav Meyrink
42. The Les­son of the Mas­ter, The Fig­ure in the Car­pet, and The Pri­vate Life by Hen­ry James
43. & 44. The Nine Books of the His­to­ry of Herodotus by Her­do­tus
45. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rul­fo
46. Tales by Rud­yard Kipling
47. Vathek by William Beck­ford
48. Moll Flan­ders by Daniel Defoe
49. The Pro­fes­sion­al Secret & Oth­er Texts by Jean Cocteau
50. The Last Days of Emmanuel Kant and Oth­er Sto­ries by Thomas de Quincey
51. Pro­logue to the Work of Sil­ve­rio Lan­za by Ramon Gomez de la Ser­na
52. The Thou­sand and One Nights
53. New Ara­bi­an Nights and Markheim by Robert Louis Steven­son
54. Sal­va­tion of the Jews, The Blood of the Poor, and In the Dark­ness by Léon Bloy
55. The Bha­gavad Gita and The Epic of Gil­gamesh
56. Fan­tas­tic Sto­ries by Juan José Arreo­la
57. Lady into Fox, A Man in the Zoo, and The Sailor’s Return by David Gar­nett
58. Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els by Jonathan Swift
59. Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism by Paul Grous­sac
60. The Idols by Manuel Muji­ca Láinez
61. The Book of Good Love by Juan Ruiz
62. Com­plete Poet­ry by William Blake
63. Above the Dark Cir­cus by Hugh Wal­pole
64. Poet­i­cal Works by Eze­quiel Mar­tinez Estra­da
65. Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
66. The Aeneid by Vir­gil
67. Sto­ries by Voltaire
68. An Exper­i­ment with Time by J.W. Dunne
69. An Essay on Orlan­do Furioso by Atilio Momigliano
70. & 71. The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence and The Study of Human Nature by William James
72. Egil’s Saga by Snor­ri Sturlu­son
73. The Book of the Dead
74. & 75. The Prob­lem of Time by J. Alexan­der Gunn

As you will observe, Borges’ list is very short on books by women writ­ers. As a counter-offer­ing, you might want to explore this list: 74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Visual Art of William S. Burroughs: Book Covers, Portraits, Collage, Shotgun Art & More

in Art, Literature | March 10th, 2015

burroughs_books

As an artist, William S. Bur­roughs was undoubt­ed­ly his own man, behold­en to no par­tic­u­lar aes­thet­ic, move­ment, or school, always inde­pen­dent even as a fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor with many oth­er notable writ­ers and artists. It didn’t hurt that he came from money—Burroughs’ grand­fa­ther invent­ed the adding machine, and the writer’s inher­i­tance, writes the Dai­ly Beast, “left the young scion free to pur­sue edu­ca­tion and drugs at his leisure.” Yet, although he pur­sued the lat­ter with­out reser­va­tion, he also worked hard­er than most of his con­tem­po­raries, con­stant­ly inno­vat­ing and pur­su­ing new paths. Bur­roughs’ “entire cre­ative project,” writes blog­ger Dan She­lalevy, “encom­passed art, graph­ics, cal­lig­ra­phy, type, pho­tog­ra­phy, film, assem­blage, poet­ry, spo­ken word, and music…. Cul­ture itself was his medi­um.”

Burroughs Art 1

He may be asso­ci­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly with the Beats, but Bur­roughs him­self reject­ed the label, say­ing, “We’re not doing at all the same thing, either in writ­ing or in out­look.” As a visu­al artist, London’s Octo­ber Gallery informs us, he “col­lab­o­rat­ed with Kei­th Har­ing, George Con­do, Robert Rauschen­berg, and oth­ers.” As in his writ­ing, Bur­roughs exper­i­ment­ed through­out his art career with col­lage, incor­po­rat­ing pho­tographs and pop cul­ture ephemera like com­ic strips and adver­tis­ing into paint­ings rich­ly textured—as in the thick impas­to sur­round­ing the por­trait of Samuel Beck­ett above—and often vio­lent, as below.

burroughs_mink1

The noto­ri­ous gun enthu­si­ast often blast­ed holes through his can­vass­es and even exper­i­ment­ed with shot­gun paint­ing. (See him with his shot­gun below, on the front page of a Times arti­cle cov­er­ing a 2005 exhib­it of his work.) Bur­roughs also incor­po­rat­ed gun imagery into his paintings—often made on slabs of plywood—and used pop art tech­niques like sten­cils and spray paint, as below.

burroughs2

Bur­roughs even designed his own book cov­ers, as you can see at the top of the post in the rel­a­tive­ly aus­tere paper­back cov­ers for Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, both fea­tur­ing repeat­ing pat­terns of sym­bols. His visu­al art reflects the same obses­sions we find in all of his work. These recur­ring motifs are what Paul Pieroni, co-orga­niz­er of the 2005 gallery show at The Rifle­mak­er gallery in Lon­don, describes as a “het­ero-ontol­ogy of forces at work,” includ­ing the “cen­tral themes” of “vice, vio­lence and pas­sion.”

Burroughs-Times

The same imagery that recurs in hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry nov­els like Junky, Naked Lunch, and The West­ern Lands appears in the writer’s art­work: “thus, as in his lit­er­a­ture,” says Pieroni, “we find war, cocks, vio­lence, dirt, par­a­sites, guns—junk.” In Bur­roughs’ hands the detri­tus of Amer­i­can culture—the con­tents of adver­tise­ments, for­eign pol­i­cy briefs, and seedy motel rooms—takes on an omi­nous, myth­ic sig­nif­i­cance that shows us as much about our­selves as it does about the artist.

burroughs_face

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

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

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The 1981 TIME Magazine Profile That Introduced Michel Foucault to America

in Philosophy | March 10th, 2015

michel-simeon-and-michael1
These days, would we expect to find a pro­file of a homo­sex­u­al rad­i­cal-left philoso­pher spe­cial­iz­ing in dis­ci­pline and pun­ish­ment in the pages of Time mag­a­zine? Maybe, maybe not—and few of us would find out if there were one, giv­en that the mag­a­zine seems to have long since ced­ed its cen­tral­i­ty in Amer­i­can cul­ture, falling back on a sub­scriber base of retirees and den­tist offices. But in Novem­ber 1981, when Time was def­i­nite­ly still TIME, it did indeed run such a pro­file, and now you can read it in full in PDF form.

“Watch­ing French Marx­ists grap­ple with the rad­i­cal the­o­ries of Michel Fou­cault, says the philoso­pher’s trans­la­tor Alan Sheri­dan, is like watch­ing ‘a police­man attempt­ing to arrest a par­tic­u­lar­ly out­ra­geous drag queen.’ ” So reports jour­nal­ist and cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an Otto Friedrich in the piece’s open­ing. “The solemn spe­cial­ists who patrol the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty have their own dif­fi­cul­ties with Fou­cault. Leo Bersani of the French depart­ment at Berke­ley eulo­gizes him as ‘our most bril­liant philoso­pher of pow­er,’ but Yale His­to­ri­an Peter Gay dis­miss­es him: ‘He does­n’t do any research, he just goes on instinct.’ ”

Oth­er sources offer­ing acco­lade, con­dem­na­tion, and a mix­ture of both for the author of The Archae­ol­o­gy of Knowl­edge and The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, include (broad­ly speak­ing) col­leagues like lit­er­ary the­o­rist Edward Said, who com­plains that Fou­cault “has nev­er been able to explain his­tor­i­cal change,” and philoso­pher Richard Rorty, who sug­gests Fou­cault “join the bour­geois lib­er­als he despis­es.” When Fou­cault him­self speaks, he exhibits the expect­ed ten­den­cy toward intel­lec­tu­al defi­ance and rug-pulling rede­f­i­n­i­tion of terms, though the arti­cle also gath­ers sev­er­al moments of sur­pris­ing frank­ness about his own life. (“I can­not expe­ri­ence plea­sure,” he claims.)

Of course, not every Amer­i­can of the day got to know Fou­cault through Time. Rather than in that most main­stream of all mag­a­zines, they may have dis­cov­ered him through one of the least: Chez Fou­cault, the low bud­get fanzine we fea­tured last week. And the con­nec­tion goes deep­er: “In 1981, when Time mag­a­zine pub­lished an arti­cle on Fou­cault,” writes James Miller in his biog­ra­phy The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault, “the pho­to­graph accom­pa­ny­ing the piece [above] showed Fou­cault sit­ting with Sime­on Wade”—publisher of Chez Fou­cault. Wade put the ‘zine togeth­er with oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents, a group whom the philoso­pher’s ideas would con­tin­ue to influ­ence until his death, as evi­denced by his final UC Berke­ley lec­tures in 1983, and beyond—as col­le­gians cur­rent­ly work­ing under the sys­tem of con­trol known as the cul­tur­al the­o­ry depart­ment can attest.

via Crit­i­cal Theory/Pro­gres­sive Geo­gra­phies

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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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Weapons of Mass Instruction: Watch a 1979 Ford Falcon Get Converted in a Tank Armored with 900 Free Books

in Books | March 10th, 2015

He has a wild look in his eyes, but a beau­ti­ful idea in his mind. Meet Raul Leme­soff, an eccen­tric char­ac­ter from Buenos Aires, who takes old cars and turns them into “mil­i­taris­tic bib­lio­the­cas” that dri­ve the streets of Argenti­na, giv­ing free books to those who want them. This is an ongo­ing project for Leme­soff, but the weaponized 1979 Ford Fal­con you see above was spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed to cel­e­brate World Book Day on March 5th. You can thank 7UP for com­mis­sion­ing that project.

via Men­tal Floss/This is Colos­sal

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you see any great items we should fea­ture on our site, send them our way. We’d love to get your ideas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free eBooks

630 Free Audio Books

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Watch “Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man”

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Wittgenstein’s Masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Gets Turned into Beautiful, Meditative Music

in Music, Philosophy | March 9th, 2015

Lud­wig Wittgen­stein’s Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus (avail­able in our col­lec­tion of 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks has sure­ly set a fair few of its read­ers on the path to phi­los­o­phy. But how much music has it inspired? Improb­a­ble as it may sound, the Ger­man-Aus­tri­an philoso­pher of math­e­mat­ics, lan­guage, and mind’s ultra-terse 1922 mas­ter­piece has brought about at least two pieces. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Finnish com­pos­er M.A. Num­mi­nen adapt­ing the Trac­ta­tus into an avant-garde com­ic opera. Today, we have Tibor Szemző’s Trac­ta­tus.

You can down­load the whole piece as a sin­gle MP3 on Ubuweb, or hear it above. Accord­ing to UBU’s page about it, the work, first com­posed for Szemző and Péter Forgács’ video Wittgen­stein Trac­ta­tus, “took six months of hard work in the stu­dio to pro­duce, yet it is only 30 min­utes and 30 sec­onds long.”

And not only has Szemző set to music Wittgen­stein’s state­ment after state­ment on the rela­tion­ship of lan­guage to real­i­ty, he’s done so in sev­en dif­fer­ent lan­guages, com­bin­ing read­ings record­ed in Eng­lish, Span­ish, and Hun­gar­i­an in Budapest, Japan­ese in Tokyo, Czech in Prague, the orig­i­nal Ger­man in Vien­na, and Slo­vak in Bratisla­va.

Though I can only real­ly fol­low three of those (assum­ing I real­ly grasp Wittgen­stein in the first place), Szemző’s Trac­ta­tus makes me appre­ci­ate how well Wittgen­stein’s Trac­ta­tus — with its sim­ple yet com­plex lines like “Every­thing we see could also be oth­er­wise” and “The light that work sheds is a beau­ti­ful light, which, how­ev­er, only shines with real beau­ty if it is illu­mi­nat­ed by yet anoth­er light” — func­tions not just as a set of lyrics, but as an exer­cise in for­eign-lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion. And did­n’t Wittgen­stein want to get us think­ing about lan­guage in the first place?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day: Face­book Page Tracks the Philosopher’s Wartime Expe­ri­ence 100 Years Ago

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Gets Adapt­ed Into an Avant-Garde Com­ic Opera

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

See the Homes and Stud­ies of Wittgen­stein, Schopen­hauer, Niet­zsche & Oth­er Philoso­phers

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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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Albert Einstein Sports a Native American Headdress and a Peace Pipe at the Grand Canyon, 1931

in History, Physics | March 9th, 2015

einstein with the hopi
Click here to view the image in a larg­er for­mat.

In 1931, Cal­tech invit­ed Albert Ein­stein to spend some time on their cam­pus, with the hopes that he might even­tu­al­ly join their fac­ul­ty. While in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, he met Char­lie Chap­lin, took a pho­to with an Ein­stein pup­pet, enjoyed the mild win­ter, ruf­fled a few con­ser­v­a­tive feath­ers, then even­tu­al­ly left town. On the train ride back across the coun­try, he vis­it­ed the Hopi House, near the Grand Canyon, where he posed for a pic­ture with mem­bers of the Hopi tribe. The web­site Hanksville.org revis­its the clas­sic pho­to­graph (appar­ent­ly tak­en by Eugene O. Gold­beck) that doc­u­ment­ed his short vis­it:

There are sev­er­al strik­ing things about this pho­to­graph that deserve men­tion. It is clear that the head­dress that has been placed on Pro­fes­sor Ein­stein’s head and the pipe he has been giv­en to hold have no rela­tion­ship to the Indi­ans in this pho­to­graph. These Indi­ans are Hopis from the rel­a­tive­ly near­by Hopi pueb­los while the head­dress and pipe belong to the Plains Indi­an cul­ture.… The Hopis in this pic­ture were employ­ees of the Fred Har­vey Com­pa­ny who demon­strat­ed their arts there and, no doubt, posed for many oth­er pic­tures with tourists.

Besides Albert Ein­stein and his wife, there are 3 adult Hopis and one Hopi child in the pho­to­graph. Ein­stein is hold­ing the hand of a young Hopi girl in a very nat­ur­al man­ner; she is clutch­ing some­thing tight­ly in her oth­er hand and is quite intent upon some­thing out­side the frame. Prof. Ein­stein’s attrac­tion to chil­dren is seen in sev­er­al oth­er unof­fi­cial pho­tographs. He loved chil­dren and felt quite com­fort­able with them. The two men on the left side of the pho­to­graph were there to facil­i­tate the Ein­steins’ trip. The man on the left is J. B. Duffy, Gen­er­al Pas­sen­ger Agent of the ATSF (the famous Atich­son, Tokepa and San­ta Fe Rail­road); the oth­er man is Her­man Schweiz­er, Head of Fred Har­vey Curio, nor­mal­ly sta­tioned in Albu­querque. He may have spo­ken Ger­man and was there­fore present because Prof. Ein­stein was not com­plete­ly com­fort­able yet with Eng­lish.

Accord­ing to the Ein­stein Almanac, the Hopi “gave Ein­stein a peace pipe, rec­og­niz­ing his paci­fism, and dubbed him the ‘Great Rel­a­tive.’ ” You can see the pipe on dis­play in the pho­to.

As one web­site observed, what’s per­haps most notable about the his­toric image is this: It cap­tures lay­ers of commodification/fetishization. Here stands the most fetishized intel­lec­tu­al of the 20th cen­tu­ry pos­ing with one of the most fetishized peo­ples. Or maybe that’s just over­think­ing things.

Note: Some sources date the clas­sic pho­to back to 1922, but that seems less plau­si­ble. The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter pro­vides an image avail­able for down­load here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

Albert Ein­stein Hold­ing an Albert Ein­stein Pup­pet (Cir­ca 1931)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es

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Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Drawing Road Runner Cartoons, or How to Create a Minimalist Masterpiece

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | March 9th, 2015

chuck jones rules

Google the key­words “art” and “lim­its” (or “bound­aries”) and you will find thou­sands of results with titles like “art with­out lim­its” or “art with­out bound­aries.” With­out dis­sect­ing any of them in par­tic­u­lar, the gen­er­al idea strikes me as a fan­ta­sy. Art can­not exist with­out lim­its: the lim­i­ta­tions of par­tic­u­lar media, the lim­i­ta­tions of the artist’s vision, the lim­i­ta­tions of space and time. We always work with­in lim­its, and often those cre­ators who are most delib­er­ate about set­ting lim­i­ta­tions for them­selves pro­duce some of the most pro­found and unusu­al works. One could name min­i­mal­ists like Samuel Beck­ett, or Lars Van Tri­er, or Erik Satie. Or Chuck Jones, Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor of such clas­sic Warn­er Brother’s char­ac­ters as Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and, of course, the Road Run­ner and Wile E. Coy­ote. Hey, why not? He’s a genius.

Jones had a keen ear for wise­cracks, a satir­i­cal bent, and per­fect com­ic tim­ing; his ver­bal humor is as deft as his slap­stick; and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, he rec­og­nized the impor­tance of set­ting strict lim­its on his car­toon uni­verse, so as to make its rapid-fire jokes phys­i­cal­ly intel­li­gi­ble and wring from them the max­i­mum amount of ten­sion and irony. Take the list of rules above for the Road Runner/Wile E. Coy­ote car­toons. These have been cir­cu­lat­ing wide­ly on the inter­net, and I’d guess peo­ple find them intrigu­ing not only because they pull back the cur­tain on the inner work­ings of a fic­tive world as famil­iar as the back of our hands, but also because they reveal how Jones’ car­toon series func­tions as a min­i­mal­ist thought exper­i­ment. What hap­pens when you restrict two car­toon char­ac­ters to the barest of expres­sions, move­ments, and set­ting, and to the odd­ball con­sumer prod­ucts of one mega­cor­po­ra­tion?

Road Runner Rules

We all know the answer: A per­pet­u­al motion machine of phys­i­cal com­e­dy, with loads of near-myth­ic sub­text under­ly­ing Wile E.‘s tragi­com­ic fol­ly. The list of rules is on dis­play at New York’s Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image in an exhib­it called What’s Up Doc? The Ani­ma­tion Art of Chuck Jones. The sto­ry has a twist. Appar­ent­ly, writes Kottke—who shared a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the rules—“long-time Jones col­lab­o­ra­tor Michael Mal­tese said he’d nev­er heard of the rules.” Whether this means that Jones kept them secret and nev­er shared them with his team, or whether he for­mu­lat­ed them after the fact, we may nev­er know. In any case, I imag­ine that if we sat down and watched all of the Road Run­ner car­toons with a copy of the rules in front of us, we’d find that they apply in almost every case.

via Men­tal Floss/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short, The Dot and the Line, Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try and Hard Work (1965)

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

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The Prado Museum Creates the First Art Exhibition for the Visually Impaired, Using 3D Printing

in Art, Life, Museums, Technology | March 9th, 2015

prado1

Image cour­tesy of The Pra­do

Are you one of the mil­lions of sight­ed vis­i­tors who’ll vis­it a world class insti­tu­tion this year only to find your­self suf­fer­ing from muse­um fatigue a cou­ple of hours in? You know, that moment when all the paint­ings start to look alike, still lifes, cru­ci­fix­ions, and teenage noble­women swim­ming before your eyes?

If so, may we rec­om­mend clos­ing your eyes and lim­it­ing your­self to an in-depth study of a half dozen paint­ings? That’s the num­ber of works on dis­play in Hoy toca el Pra­do, Madrid’s Museo del Pra­do’s land­mark exhi­bi­tion aimed at peo­ple with visu­al dis­abil­i­ties.

The Lou­vre, New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, and London’s Nation­al Gallery all have touch-friend­ly pro­gram­ming that allows blind vis­i­tors to expe­ri­ence sculp­tur­al works with their hands. The Prado’s ini­tia­tive is unique in that it applies 3D print­ing tech­niques to repro­duc­tions of painted—i.e. flat—work.

Cer­tain aspects of each paint­ing, includ­ing tex­tures, were select­ed for show­cas­ing in the 3D repro­duc­tions. A chem­i­cal process involv­ing ultra­vi­o­let light and spe­cial ink result­ed in a few mil­lime­ters of added vol­ume. The repro­duc­tions retained the orig­i­nals’ col­or, for visu­al­ly impaired vis­i­tors with the abil­i­ty to per­ceive it.

prado

Image cour­tesy of The Pra­do

Sight­ed patrons can try their hands at expe­ri­enc­ing such works as The Para­sol by Goya and Velazquez’s Vul­can’s Forge in a non-visu­al way by don­ning opaque glass­es. Texts are in braille. Audio­gu­ides are acces­si­ble to all.

Accord­ing to the original’s record in the museum’s cat­a­log, El Gre­co’s The Noble­man with His Hand on His Chest is notable for the “expres­sive gaze its sit­ter directs at the view­er.” The exhibit’s cura­tor report­ed that one of the first blind vis­i­tors to come through want­ed to know the subject’s eye col­or. He found that he could not con­fi­dent­ly respond with­out dou­ble check­ing.

classic-paintings-3D-visual-impaired-prado-museum-madrid-3

Image cour­tesy of ABC News

Oth­er paint­ings in the col­lec­tion include: Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s  “Mona Lisa;” “Don’t touch me” (Noli me tan­gere) by Anto­nio da Cor­reg­gio; and “Still life with Arti­chokes, Flow­ers and Glass Ves­sels” by Juan Van Der Hamen. See an online gallery of the exhib­it, which will be up through June, here.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Art Lovers Rejoice! New Goya and Rem­brandt Data­bas­es Now Online

100 Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um Cura­tors Talk About 100 Works of Art That Changed How They See the World

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

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

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