The John Lennon Sketchbook, a Short Animation Made of Lennon’s Drawings

in Animation, Music | June 9th, 2015

In 1986, Yoko Ono com­mis­sioned the Oscar-win­ning ani­ma­tor John Cane­mak­er to bring to life the draw­ings and doo­dles of John Lennon (1940–1980), cul­mi­nat­ing in the release of a short film called The John Lennon Sketch­book. Almost 30 years lat­er, that film has now been offi­cial­ly released on YouTube.

A prod­uct of Liv­er­pool’s art schools, John Lennon drew through­out his life, illus­trat­ing two of his books with play­ful draw­ings, and draw­ing Christ­mas Cards for Oxfam, just to cite two exam­ples. You can see Lennon’s visu­al tal­ents on full dis­play in The John Lennon Sketch­book, a short ani­ma­tion that is pret­ty whim­si­cal and fun — until the very end, when Lennon seem­ing­ly pre­dicts his own vio­lent death in the audio record­ing that serves as the film’s sound­track.

The John Lennon Sketch­book will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. 

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!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Film Revis­it­ing a Teenager’s 1969 Inter­view with John Lennon

The Bea­t­les: Why Music Mat­ters in Two Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

John Lennon Illus­trates Two of His Books with Play­ful Draw­ings (1964–1965)

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Animated Ayn Rand Dispenses Terrible Love Advice to Mike Wallace (1959)

in Animation, Philosophy | June 9th, 2015

In the past, the good folks over at Blank on Blank have turned rarely-seen inter­views with the likes of Ray Brad­bury and John Coltrane into bril­liant lit­tle ani­mat­ed shorts. This week, their lat­est install­ment is on Ayn Rand.

Rand, of course, is the mind behind Objec­tivism, the patron saint of lais­sez faire cap­i­tal­ism, and the author of such unwieldy tomes as The Foun­tain­head and Atlas Shrugged. Among Wall Street bankers, Wash­ing­ton con­ser­v­a­tives and insuf­fer­able col­lege sopho­mores, Rand is a revered fig­ure. For­mer vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rand Paul are both acknowl­edged fol­low­ers. For­mer Fed­er­al Reserve head Alan Greenspan was Rand’s pro­tégé. To a lot of oth­er peo­ple, of course, her the­o­ries are lit­tle more than a shrill jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sociopa­thy, an empa­thy-chal­lenged vision of social inter­ac­tion that flies in the face of basic ideas of human decen­cy.

The inter­view dates back to a 1959 inter­view by Mike Wal­lace (see the orig­i­nal here) who grills Rand on her con­cept of love and hap­pi­ness, which leads to this exchange:

Ayn Rand: I say that man is enti­tled to his own hap­pi­ness. And that he must achieve it him­self. But that he can­not demand that oth­ers give up their lives to make him hap­py. And nor should he wish to sac­ri­fice him­self for the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

Mike Wal­lace: And can­not man have self-esteem if he loves his fel­low man? Christ, every impor­tant moral leader in man’s his­to­ry, has taught us that we should love one anoth­er. Why then is this kind of love in your mind immoral?

Ayn Rand: It is immoral if it is a love placed above one­self. It is more than immoral, it’s impos­si­ble. Because when you are asked to love every­body indis­crim­i­nate­ly. That is to love peo­ple with­out any stan­dard. To love them regard­less of whether they have any val­ue or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

Watch­ing the piece, I kept hear­ing the title of Ray­mond Carver’s bril­liant short sto­ry run through my mind, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” (Hear Carv­er read that sto­ry here.) My sense is that her ver­sion of love is very dif­fer­ent from mine. Watch the full ani­mat­ed video above.

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

The Out­spo­ken Ayn Rand Inter­viewed by Mike Wal­lace (1959)

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Mystical Poetry of Rumi Read By Tilda Swinton, Madonna, Robert Bly & Coleman Barks

in Poetry | June 8th, 2015

Everyone’s favorite mys­ti­cal poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥam­mad Rūmī, prob­a­bly could not have pre­dict­ed how much glob­al influ­ence his work would have eight cen­turies after his death. Nor could he have appre­ci­at­ed the irony of his 13th cen­tu­ry Islam­ic Per­sian verse mak­ing him the best-sell­ing poet in the U.S. And yet, a huge part of Rumi’s appeal to the major­i­ty of his read­ers, reli­gious and non‑, comes from his non-tra­di­tion­al­ism, his anti-dog­ma­tism, gen­tle icon­o­clasm, and roman­ti­cism.

Claims that the poet was gay may be con­tentious, but there’s no get­ting away from the eroti­cism, much of it homo­eroti­cism, in much of Rumi’s poet­ry. Rumi also inspired the hard­ly ortho­dox Sufi sect known as “Whirling Dervish­es,” who invoke a trance-like state through a rhyth­mic spin­ning rit­u­al based on the poet­’s own devo­tion­al prac­tices.

But Rumi did not begin his career as a mys­tic, or as a poet. Author Brad Gooch, who is writ­ing a biog­ra­phy of Rumi, describes him as “a tra­di­tion­al Mus­lim preach­er and schol­ar, as his father and grand­fa­ther had been.” That is until age 37, when in 1244, he met a mys­tic called Shams of Tabriz. “The two of them have this elec­tric friend­ship for three years—lover and beloved [or] dis­ci­ple and sheikh, it’s nev­er clear,” says Gooch.

After Shams’ death, pos­si­bly by mur­der, Rumi began writ­ing poet­ry. “Most of the poet­ry we have comes from age 37 to 67. He wrote 3,000 [love songs] to Shams, the prophet Muham­mad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubay­at, four-line qua­trains. He wrote in cou­plets a six-vol­ume spir­i­tu­al epic, The Mas­navi.” These poems, writes the BBC, are “recit­ed, chant­ed, set to music and used as inspi­ra­tion for nov­els, poems, music, films, YouTube videos and tweets.” Today we bring you some of those con­tem­po­rary appro­pri­a­tions of Rumi’s work.

At the top of the post, hear actress Til­da Swinton—who has her own glob­al cult of admirers—read Rumi’s “Like This.” Swin­ton recent­ly turned to Rumi’s poet­ry to pro­mote her line of fra­grances. Below Swin­ton’s read­ing, celebri­ty spir­i­tu­al adven­tur­er (some might say spir­i­tu­al tourist) Madon­na reads Rumi’s “Bit­ter Sweet” with her guru Deep­ak Chopra.

It was record­ed for the album, A Gift Of Love: Deep­ak & Friends Present Music Inspired By The Love Poems Of Rumi. And just above, we have two very devot­ed schol­ars and inter­preters of Rumi’s work, Cole­man Barks (who trans­lat­ed the poem Swin­ton reads) and poet Robert Bly, accom­pa­nied by tablas, sitar, and drums. Barks has done much to explain the glob­al reach of Rumi’s poet­ry, writ­ing in the intro­duc­tion to The Illu­mi­nat­ed Rumi that the poet­’s “whole life was a wit­ness to the bound­less uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the Heart…. His vision was a whole-world work and the poet­ry was part of the soul-unfold­ing done in a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty.” When Rumi died, Barks tells us, “he was mourned by Chris­tians and Jews, as well as Mus­lims and Bud­dhists.” Below, hear Barks attempt to expound on Rumi’s very non-tra­di­tion­al, non-West­ern, and dif­fi­cult-to-trans­late view of love.

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:

Til­da Swin­ton Recites Poem by Rumi While Reek­ing of Vetiv­er, Heliotrope & Musk

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Minutes

in Art | June 8th, 2015

Ear­li­er this year, Col­in Mar­shall intro­duced you to The Art Assign­ment, a week­ly web series that cel­e­brates the cre­ative process and “today’s most inno­v­a­tive artis­tic minds.” The series typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures the hosts, John Green and Sarah Urist Green, “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you [the audi­ence] an art assign­ment.” But some­times they take a break from their trav­els and look back at influ­en­tial artists who shaped the mod­ern art scene — like Andy Warhol.

Above, you can watch “The Case for Andy Warhol,” a three minute video that puts Warhol’s life and work in artis­tic per­spec­tive, explain­ing why his work, some­times dis­missed as a pass­ing fad, is real­ly worth your time and con­sid­er­a­tion.

When you’re done with the clip, you can head over to this Smart His­to­ry clip where Steven Zuck­er and Sal Khan break down the artis­tic mer­its of Warhol’s famous soup cans. This one runs sev­en min­utes.

And stay tuned, The Art Assign­ment will be back soon with a primer on Mark Rothko.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Lucian Freud’s Very Last Day of Painting (2011)

in Art | June 8th, 2015

All artists are mor­tal. Lucian Freud was, by any­one’s def­i­n­i­tion, an artist. There­fore, Lucian Freud was mor­tal — as, so his artis­tic vision empha­sized, are the sub­jects of his “stark and reveal­ing paint­ings of friends and inti­mates, splayed nude in his stu­dio,” which, wrote William Grimes in Freud’s 2011 New York Times obit­u­ary, “recast the art of por­trai­ture and offered a new approach to fig­u­ra­tive art.” Freud “put the pic­to­r­i­al lan­guage of tra­di­tion­al Euro­pean paint­ing in the ser­vice of an anti-roman­tic, con­fronta­tion­al style of por­trai­ture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordi­nary peo­ple — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the can­vas, vul­ner­a­ble to the artist’s ruth­less inspec­tion.”

Or, in Freud’s own words: “I work from the peo­ple that inter­est me and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know.” Just as every mor­tal artist’s career must begin with a first work, so it must end with a final work, and in the clip at the top of the post you can wit­ness a few min­utes from the very last day the painter spent paint­ing some­body who inter­est­ed him and whom he cared about, in a room he lived in and knew. He spent it on this can­vas, an enor­mous and unfin­ished por­trait of his assis­tant David Daw­son and his whip­pet Eli called Por­trait of the Hound.

“Every morn­ing, sev­en days a week, I sat for Lucian,” said Daw­son to The Tele­graph’s Mar­tin Gay­ford. “There was a very open accep­tance of his not hav­ing so long to live. But he still had a burn­ing desire to make a very good paint­ing, right up to the end. He was paint­ing three weeks before he died.” Daw­son shot this footage of Freud’s final work­ing day, July 3, 2011, which made it into the doc­u­men­tary Lucian Freud: Paint­ed Life [part one, part two]. “We are in Freud’s home, which is very qui­et, with lots of paint­ings on the walls, and filled with a sub­tle, nat­ur­al light,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Elisa Wouk Almi­no. “He was par­tic­u­lar about paint­ing under a north­ern light, which he once described as ‘cold and clear and con­stant.’ ”

Whether Freud lived the last tru­ly painter­ly life, we can’t know for sure; we do know, how­ev­er, that he lived one of the most res­olute­ly painter­ly lives in recent his­to­ry. “Lucian did­n’t both­er about what he did­n’t need to,” said his final sub­ject. “What was impor­tant was try­ing to make the best paint­ing he pos­si­bly could. Work was what kept him going: that need to get out of bed, pick up a paint­brush and make anoth­er mark, make anoth­er deci­sion. So that was what he did. It was a good way to go about liv­ing a life.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Creepy Cut Out Animation of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Novel, The Unnamable

in Animation, English Language, Literature | June 8th, 2015

Morn­ing, friend! Ready to kick off your week with a Beck­et­t­ian night­mare vision?

Samuel Beck­ett schol­ar Jen­ny Trig­gs was earn­ing a mas­ters in Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art when she cre­at­ed the unset­tling, cut out ani­ma­tion for his 1953 nov­el, The Unnam­able, above. (Her PhD exhi­bi­tion, a decade lat­er, was a mul­ti-screen video response to Beckett’s short sto­ry, Ping.)

The wretched crea­tures haunt­ing the film con­jure Bosch and Gilliam, in addi­tion to Ire­land’s best known avant-garde play­wright.

Trig­gs seem to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from the name­less narrator’s phys­i­cal self-assess­ment:

I of whom I know noth­ing, I know my eyes are open because of the tears that pour from them unceas­ing­ly. I know I am seat­ed, my hands on my knees, because of the pres­sure against my rump, against the soles of my feet? I don’t know. My spine is not sup­port­ed. I men­tion these details to make sure I am not lying on my back, my legs raised and bent, my eyes closed.

Despite the narrator’s effort to keep track of his parts, Trig­gs ensures that some­thing will always be miss­ing. Her char­ac­ters make do with rods, bits of chess pieces or noth­ing at all in places where limbs should be.

Are these birth defects or some sort of wartime dis­abil­i­ty that pre­cludes pros­thet­ics?

One char­ac­ter is described as “noth­ing but a shape­less heap… with a wild equine eye.”

The nar­ra­tor steels him­self “to invent anoth­er fairy tale with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that fol­lows.” Mean­while, he’s tor­ment­ed by a spir­i­tu­al push-me-pull-you that feels very like the one afflict­ing Vladimir and Estragon in Wait­ing for Godot:

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll nev­er know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Trig­gs describes The Unnam­able as a book that begs to be read aloud, and her nar­ra­tors Louise Milne and Chris Noon are deserv­ing of praise for pars­ing the mean­der­ing text in such a way that it makes sense, at least atmos­pher­i­cal­ly.

To go on means going from here, means find­ing me, los­ing me, van­ish­ing and begin­ning again, a stranger first, then lit­tle by lit­tle the same as always, in anoth­er place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know noth­ing, being inca­pable of see­ing, mov­ing, think­ing, speak­ing, but of which lit­tle by lit­tle, in spite of these hand­i­caps, I shall begin to know some­thing, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swal­lows me up, I’ll nev­er know, which is per­haps mere­ly the inside of my dis­tant skull where once I wan­dered, now am fixed, lost for tini­ness, or strain­ing against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever mur­mur­ing my old sto­ries, my old sto­ry, as if it were the first time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads From His Nov­el Watt

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Brazilian Man Sings The Beatles’ “Yesterday” as Doctors Perform Brain Surgery on Him

in Music | June 7th, 2015

It’s a bit­ter­sweet scene. Actu­al­ly, more bit­ter than sweet. The video above doc­u­ments a recent oper­a­tion where doc­tors removed a brain tumor from Antho­ny Kulkamp, a 33 year old Brazil­ian banker, all while he sang and played The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” on the gui­tar. Clear­ly the song was­n’t an arbi­trary pick, not with lyrics like:

Yes­ter­day, all my trou­bles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
oh, I believe in yes­ter­day

Sud­den­ly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shad­ow hang­ing over me
Oh, yes­ter­day came sud­den­ly.

There was a point to singing “Yes­ter­day” and oth­er songs. Sur­geons were able to mon­i­tor Kulkam­p’s cere­bral activ­i­ty and ensure that his sen­so­ry, motor, and speech areas remained unharmed dur­ing the oper­a­tion. Dr Jean Abreu Macha­do, a clin­i­cal direc­tor at the hos­pi­tal in Brazil, told The Tele­graph: “By keep­ing the patient awake dur­ing surgery, these areas [of the brain] can be mon­i­tored in real time. A kind of map­ping of impor­tant areas can be done.”

Mr. Kulkamp was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal last Wednes­day, and we hope to see him play­ing some­thing opti­mistic before too long. Maybe a lit­tle “Here Comes the Sun” …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Singing: New, High-Speed MRI Machine Images Man Singing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear the Enchanting Jorge Luis Borges Read “The Art of Poetry”

in Literature, Poetry | June 5th, 2015

Very few peo­ple can offer us a sat­is­fy­ing def­i­n­i­tion of poet­ry. Enu­mer­at­ing the tech­ni­cal qual­i­ties of lit­er­ary verse, as Eng­lish teach­ers do each day, seems like a pal­try expla­na­tion of what poet­ry is and does. Even the poets them­selves have strug­gled might­i­ly to find the con­tours of their art, only to end in gnom­ic koans or exas­per­at­ed sighs. “A poem should not mean / But be,” con­cludes Archibald MacLeish’s “ Ars Poéti­ca,” after telling us a poem should be “dumb,” “silent,” and “word­less.” MacLeish’s con­tem­po­rary Mar­i­anne Moore famous­ly spent five decades revis­ing her attempt, “Poet­ry.” Final­ly, she reduced it to three irri­ta­ble lines in which she con­fess­es her “dis­like” and “per­fect con­tempt” for her own art, how­ev­er “gen­uine” it may be.

These pinched mod­ernists not only resist­ed didac­tic con­cep­tions of poet­ry put forth by the ancients, but they also turned away from the grandiose rhetoric of the Roman­tics, who saw poets, in Per­cy Shelley’s unfor­get­table phrase, as the “unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world.” Per­haps they were right to do so. Per­haps also, there is anoth­er way to approach the sub­ject, a way open to one poet only—Jorge Luis Borges. No one but Borges could make the claims for poet­ry as he does in his “Arte Poéti­ca” in such a mov­ing and per­sua­sive way: Poet­ry, he tells us, is the knowl­edge of time, of death, of infin­i­ty, and of our very selves. “Hum­ble and immor­tal,” poet­ry allows us “To see in every day and year a sym­bol”

Of all the days of man and his years
And con­vert the out­rage of the years
Into a music, a sound, and a sym­bol

To see in death a dream, in the sun­set
A gold­en sad­ness, such is poet­ry

With ref­er­ence to the mys­ti­cal pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher Her­a­cli­tus in the first and last stan­za, Borges makes his case with state­ments that seem the very oppo­site of humil­i­ty, and yet feel utter­ly right; poet­ry is immor­tal, it is “a green eter­ni­ty,” like Ulysses’ Itha­ca, it is “end­less like a riv­er flow­ing.” Or at least we feel it should be. Borges gives us a Pla­ton­ic ide­al of poet­ry, and it is one he might say, humbly, every poet should aspire to.

At the top of the post, you can hear Borges him­self read his poem, in Span­ish with Eng­lish titles, in a video shot in Uruguay and Borges’ native Argenti­na and fea­tur­ing a stir­ring Span­ish gui­tar score aug­ment­ing Borges’ solemn voice. Be sure to read the full text of Borges’ poem. As read­ers often do after fin­ish­ing one of the Argen­tine master’s pro­found­ly poet­ic works, you may find your­self for some time after­wards under a kind of spell, from an incan­ta­tion that seems, at last, to unlock the secrets of art, of poet­ry, and of so much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Borges Explains The Task of Art

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

New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appre­ci­ate Poet­ry

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.