The Discipline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Story by William S. Burroughs (1978)

in Film, Literature | July 24th, 2018

Every­one who’s read Jack Ker­ouac knows what it means to go vis­it the sage Old Bill Lee. And even many who haven’t read Ker­ouac know who Old Bill Lee real­ly was: inno­v­a­tive writer, Beat Gen­er­a­tion elder states­man, and sub­stance enthu­si­ast William S. Bur­roughs. Gus Van Sant, who had imbibed from the coun­ter­cul­ture ear­ly on, paid his own vis­it to Old Bill Lee a few years after grad­u­at­ing from the Rhode Island School of Design. On a recent episode of WTF, Van Sant tells Marc Maron how, hav­ing read a Bur­roughs essay called “The Dis­ci­pline of DE” back in Prov­i­dence, he looked Bur­roughs up in the New York City phone book, called him, and paid him a vis­it — not just because Ker­ouac’s char­ac­ters did it, but because he want­ed the rights to turn the sto­ry into a film.

The result­ing nine-minute short puts images to Bur­roughs’ words. “DE is a way of doing,” says its nar­ra­tor Ken Shapiro, who had direct­ed the tele­vi­sion-satriz­ing cult film The Groove Tube a few years ear­li­er. “DE sim­ply means doing what­ev­er you do in the eas­i­est most relaxed way you can man­age, which is also the quick­est and most effi­cient way, as you will find as you advance in DE.”

We then see var­i­ous cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly illus­trat­ed exam­ples of DE in action, includ­ing  “the art of ‘cast­ing’ sheets and blan­kets so they fall just so,” pick­ing up an object by drop­ping “cool pos­ses­sive fin­gers onto it like a gen­tle old cop mak­ing a soft arrest,” and even gun fight­ing in the old west as prac­ticed by Wyatt Earp, the only gun fight­er who “ever real­ly grasped the con­cept of DE.”

Van Sant com­plet­ed The Dis­ci­pline of DE, his sixth short film, in 1978. Just over a decade lat­er he would cast Bur­roughs in a high­ly Old Bill Lee-like role in his sec­ond fea­ture Drug­store Cow­boy, bring­ing him back a few years lat­er for Even Cow­girls Get the Blues. Van Sant adapt­ed both of those films from nov­els, as he’s done in much of his fil­mog­ra­phy. Trav­el­ing Europe with a film club after col­lege, he told Maron, he got the chance to vis­it famed auteurs like Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, Lina Wert­müller, and Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni. It was Pasoli­ni to whom he explained his own ambi­tion in film­mak­ing: “to trans­late lit­er­a­ture into film.” Paolin­i’s less-than-encour­ag­ing response: “Why would you do that? Why would you both­er?” Yet Van San­t’s dri­ve to make cin­e­ma “more mal­leable, like the nov­el,” has served him well ever since, as — if he adheres to it — has the dis­ci­pline of DE.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

William S. Bur­roughs’ Home Movies, Fea­tur­ing Pat­ti Smith, Allen Gins­berg, Steve Busce­mi & Cats

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What Is Stoicism? A Short Introduction to the Ancient Philosophy That Can Help You Cope with Our Hard Modern Times

in Life, Philosophy | July 23rd, 2018

The word “sto­ic” (from the Greek stoa) has come to mean a few things in pop­u­lar par­lance, most of them relat­ed direct­ly to the ancient Greek, then Roman, phi­los­o­phy from which the term derives. Sto­ic peo­ple seem unmov­able. They stay cool in a cri­sis and “keep calm and car­ry on” when oth­ers lose their heads. For sev­er­al, per­haps obvi­ous, rea­sons, these qual­i­ties of “calm, resilience, and emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty” are par­tic­u­lar­ly need­ed in a time like ours, says Alain de Bot­ton in his School of Life video above.

But how do we acquire these qual­i­ties, accord­ing to the Sto­ics? And what philoso­phers should we con­sult to learn about them? One of the most pro­lif­ic of Sto­ic philoso­phers, the Roman writer and states­man Seneca, advised a typ­i­cal course of action. In a let­ter to his friend Lucil­ius, who feared a poten­tial­ly career-end­ing law­suit, Seneca coun­seled that rather than rest­ing in hopes of a hap­py out­come, his friend should assume that the worst will come to pass, and that, no mat­ter what, he can sur­vive it.

The goal is not to make Deb­bie Down­ers of us all, but to con­vince us that we are stronger than we think—that even our worst fears need­n’t mean the end of the world. Seneca’s sto­icism is a thor­ough­go­ing real­ism that asks us to account for the entire range of pos­si­ble outcomes—even the absolute worst we can imagine—rather than only those things we want or have pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enced. In this way, we will not be caught off-guard when bad things come to pass, because we have already made a cer­tain peace with them.

Rather than a pes­simistic phi­los­o­phy, Seneca’s thought seems entire­ly prac­ti­cal, a means of pierc­ing our pleas­ant illu­sions and com­fort­able bub­bles of self-regard, and con­sid­er­ing our­selves just as sub­ject to mis­for­tune as any­one else in the world, and just as capa­ble of endur­ing it as well.

To par­take of Seneca’s wis­dom your­self, con­sid­er read­ing this online three-vol­ume col­lec­tion of his let­ters, The Tao of Seneca. And for a longer list of Sto­ic thinkers, ancient and mod­ern, see this post from Ryan Hol­i­day of the Dai­ly Sto­ic, a blog that offers use­ful Sto­ic advice for con­tem­po­rary peo­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Three Huge Vol­umes of Sto­ic Writ­ings by Seneca Now Free Online, Thanks to Tim Fer­riss

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philo­soph­i­cal Recipe for Get­ting Over the Sources of Regret, Dis­ap­point­ment and Suf­fer­ing in Our Lives

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Epi­cu­rus and His Answer to the Ancient Ques­tion: What Makes Us Hap­py?

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Rare Photos of Frida Kahlo, Age 13–23

in Art, History, Photography | July 23rd, 2018

“Before they were famous” pho­tos are a click­bait sta­ple, espe­cial­ly if they reveal a hereto­fore unseen side of some­one whose image is tight­ly con­trolled:

The smol­der­ing activist-actress-direc­tor as a gawky, open-faced sopho­more, her hair moussed to the very lim­its of her mod­el­ing school test shots?

The ris­ing polit­i­cal star, pim­ple-faced and cen­ter-part­ed, pos­ing with the oth­er three mem­bers of his high school’s Dun­geons and Drag­ons Club?

What about ever­green art star Fri­da Kahlo?

Though her hus­band, mural­ist Diego Rivera, was the one who urged her to adopt the tra­di­tion­al Tehua­na dress of their native Mex­i­co as a uni­form of sorts, Fri­da engi­neered her image by plac­ing her­self cen­ter stage in dozens of alle­gor­i­cal, inti­mate self-por­traits.

Much of her work alludes to the hor­rif­ic acci­dent she suf­fered at 18, and the tor­tu­ous treat­ments and surg­eries she under­went as a result for the rest of her life.

It shaped the way she saw her­self, and, in turn, the way we see her. Her endur­ing appeal is such that even those who aren’t over­ly famil­iar with her work feel they have a pret­ty good han­dle on her, thanks to her ubiq­ui­ty on tote­bags, appar­el, and var­i­ous gift relat­ed items—even Fri­da Kahlo action fig­ures and paper dolls.

We know this lady, right?

What a plea­sure to get to know her bet­ter. A col­lec­tion of pho­tos that has recent­ly come to light intro­duces us to a younger, more can­did Frida—both before and after the acci­dent, when she returned to her stud­ies at Nation­al Prepara­to­ry School.

Tak­en togeth­er with the por­traits made by her pho­tog­ra­ph­er father, they show ear­ly evi­dence of the force­ful per­son­al­i­ty that would dom­i­nate and define her pub­lic image, Mary Jane-style pumps with socks, a mid­dy blouse, and a vari­ety of blunt bobs aside.

Some of the lat­er pho­tos in this batch speak to her increas­ing inter­est in dis­tin­guish­ing her­self from her female peers. Her exper­i­ments in cross dress­ing ensured she would stand out in every group pho­to, a dash­ing fig­ure in suit, tie, and slicked back hair.

Though this peri­od of her life is less a mat­ter of pub­lic record, it gets its due in the 2017 graph­ic nov­el Fri­da: The Sto­ry of Her Life by Van­na Vin­ci. Some of the oth­ers in these pho­tos, includ­ing her sis­ters and her first boyfriend, Ale­jan­dro Gómez Arias, appear as char­ac­ters, as does Death in the form of print­mak­er José Guadalupe Posada’s La Calav­era Cat­ri­na—per­haps the only image for­mi­da­ble enough to hold its own against the fab­u­lous Fri­da.

Fri­da Kahlo The Sto­ry of Her Life p. 22–23

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Kraftwerk Perform a Real-Time Duet with a German Astronaut Living on the International Space Station

in Music, Technology | July 23rd, 2018

Last Fri­day, Alexan­der Gerst, an astro­naut liv­ing aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, wel­comed Kraftwerk and 7500 atten­dees to the Jazz Open Fes­ti­val in Stuttgart. There, writes the Euro­pean Space Agency, “Kraftwerk found­ing mem­ber Ralf Hüt­ter and Alexan­der played a spe­cial duet ver­sion of the track Space­lab, for which Alexan­der had a tablet com­put­er con­fig­ured with vir­tu­al syn­the­siz­ers on board.” You can watch the far-out scene play out above.

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 Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What a Conductor Actually Does on Stage: Two Short Videos Explain the Little-Understood Art

in Music | July 23rd, 2018

When we imag­ine a sym­pho­ny orches­tra, even those of us oth­er­wise unfa­mil­iar with clas­si­cal music imag­ine a con­duc­tor stand­ing up front. We know the con­duc­tor leads the orches­tra, but how exact­ly does he/she do it? “What the pub­lic needs to under­stand about con­duct­ing is that it’s an antic­i­pa­to­ry art,” says con­duc­tor James Gaffi­gan in the short Vox explain­er video above. “What we do takes place before the music hap­pens,” all of it meant “to do jus­tice to the com­pos­er.” He then breaks down the func­tion of the main tools avail­able to the con­duc­tor to do that: the right hand, which holds the baton, and the left hand, which “has a much more com­pli­cat­ed, strange role in our phys­i­cal world.”

Clear­ly some aspects of con­duct­ing aren’t so eas­i­ly explained. Hence the beau­ty of con­duct­ing as an art form, which encom­pass­es exem­plars as dif­fer­ent as Gus­tav Mahler, rep­re­sent­ed in his day by car­i­ca­tures “mak­ing crazy ges­tures” and “jump­ing up and down on the podi­um,” and Mahler’s con­tem­po­rary Richard Strauss, who con­duct­ed by “bare­ly mov­ing.”

Gaffi­gan also brings in the exam­ple of Leonard Bern­stein, the best-known con­duc­tor of the 20th cen­tu­ry in the West, who in record­ings of his per­for­mances is “always danc­ing,” who “can’t help mov­ing around the podi­um, and his rhythm is con­ta­gious.” (But as Open Cul­ture read­ers know, Bern­stein could also con­duct with only his eye­brows.)

You can hear, and see, anoth­er per­spec­tive on what a con­duc­tor does in the New York Times video just above. “There’s no way to real­ly put your fin­ger on what makes con­duct­ing great, even what makes con­duct­ing work,” says New York Phil­har­mon­ic direc­tor Alan Gilbert. Gilbert pro­vides sev­er­al exam­ples of the tech­niques he uses while con­duct­ing not just to tell which musi­cians to start play­ing when, but to imbue their col­lec­tive per­for­mance with just the desired tex­tures and nuances and bring out all the lay­ers of the music and the rela­tion­ship between them. All the while, the con­duc­tor must remain in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion: some­times with all the play­ers at once, some­times with just one sec­tion, and some­times with just one indi­vid­ual.

“There are some con­duc­tors who look as if they’re incred­i­bly well put togeth­er, and phys­i­cal­ly all in order,” Gilbert says. “That does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that you’ll hear inspired music-mak­ing. There will be some con­duc­tors whose tech­nique is osten­si­bly all over the place, not nec­es­sar­i­ly so clear, but some­thing comes across, and it can even be extreme­ly pre­cise.” A con­duc­tor can have all man­ner of ideas about how the orches­tra should play, but with­out the faith of the musi­cians, none of those ideas can take musi­cal form. “One of the ways to make your sound bet­ter is to make it real­ly obvi­ous that you’re real­ly lis­ten­ing, and that it real­ly mat­ters to you what it sounds like. That’s not actu­al­ly con­duct­ing; that’s embody­ing or rep­re­sent­ing an aspi­ra­tion.” Con­duc­tors, in oth­er words, must be the music they wish to hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Move­ments of a Sym­pho­ny Con­duc­tor Get Artis­ti­cal­ly Visu­al­ized in an Avant-Garde Motion Cap­ture Ani­ma­tion

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

Watch Leonard Bern­stein Con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Using Only His Eye­brows

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Stream Online the Complete “Lost” John Coltrane Album, Both Directions at Once

in Jazz, Music | July 20th, 2018

Expec­ta­tions ran high when it was announced last month that a lost (!) John Coltrane album, Both Direc­tions at Once, had been dis­cov­ered by the fam­i­ly of his ex-wife Naima, and would final­ly be released for fans to hear. Would it prove wor­thy of Son­ny Rollin’s com­par­i­son to “find­ing a new room in the Great Pyra­mid”? Such dis­cov­er­ies can lead to dead ends and dis­ap­point­ments as often as to rev­e­la­tions. In this case, the album yields nei­ther, which is not to say it isn’t, as Chris Mor­ris writes at Vari­ety, “a god­send.”

The album lives up to its title, cho­sen by Coltrane’s son Ravi, as a tran­si­tion­al doc­u­ment, stun­ning, but not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing. Hear all 7 cuts on the sin­gle-disc ver­sion of the release on this page, with typ­i­cal­ly excel­lent play­ing by Coltrane’s clas­sic quar­tet (bassist Jim­my Gar­ri­son, drum­mer Elvin Jones, and pianist McCoy Tyn­er) and an ear­ly take on “one of the warhors­es of the Coltrane catalog”—“Impressions”—including three addi­tion­al takes on the Deluxe Ver­sion, which you can stream on Spo­ti­fy here or pur­chase here. (Tyn­er sits out the take on the sin­gle disc ver­sion, turn­ing it into a “hard-edged, per­co­lat­ing show­case for Coltrane in trio for­mat.”)

Sev­er­al crit­ics have sug­gest­ed that this “lost album” isn’t a prop­er album at all, but rather, as Ravi Coltrane put it, “a kick­ing-the-tires kind of ses­sion,” and per­haps that’s so. Nonethe­less, it works as “a por­trait of an artist and a band on the brink of a his­toric explo­sion,” Mor­ris writes.

“The brac­ing, prob­ing, self-ques­tion­ing and keen­ly played music on this col­lec­tion is the miss­ing link between the pro­vi­sion­al work heard on 1962’s ‘Coltrane’ and the quartet’s epochal stu­dio albums – ‘Cres­cent,’ the devout ‘A Love Supreme’ and (with addi­tion­al per­son­nel) the free jazz mag­num opus ‘Ascen­sion.’”

Oth­ers echo this assess­ment. Drowned in Sound’s Joe Gog­gins calls Both Direc­tions at Once “hard evi­dence that he was still look­ing for new sounds with­in old struc­tures,” and The New Yorker’s Richard Brody describes the ses­sion as “some­thing of a stock­tak­ing” that bal­ances the exper­i­ments of the band’s live sets with the reigned-in dis­ci­pline of its ear­ly 60s stu­dio work. Brody also laments that “lit­tle on the album match­es the music that Coltrane was mak­ing at the time in con­cert.” Win­ston Cook-Wil­son at Spin describes the music as “some­times at war with itself…. The con­trasts of their cat­a­logue are pushed against each oth­er, some­times with­in the same song.”

All of this inter­nal ten­sion makes for an excit­ing lis­ten, espe­cial­ly in its two new orig­i­nals, known only as “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11383” and “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11386,” and the 11-minute “Slow Blues,” which Mor­ris apt­ly describes as “a geared-down, ency­clo­pe­dic work­out on blues changes” that builds, after its tem­po dou­bles, to a “full-cry con­clu­sion.”

In all, the new lost album shows Coltrane just about to break new ground, but not quite yet, which per­haps makes it a new­ly essen­tial doc­u­ment for the Coltrane com­pletist. For most lovers of the great inno­va­tor, it’s just a damn fine “new” Coltrane record, both dar­ing and acces­si­ble at once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The 10 Rules for Students and Teachers Popularized by John Cage: “Nothing Is a Mistake,” “Consider Everything an Experiment” & More

in Creativity | July 20th, 2018

The Bri­an Eno archive More Dark than Shark recent­ly post­ed on its Twit­ter account a list of twelve rules for stu­dents and teach­ers used by John Cage. Though much has been writ­ten about the artis­tic affini­ties between Eno and Cage, both of whose com­po­si­tions have pushed the bound­aries of how we think about music itself, they also both have a deep con­nec­tion to the idea of using rules to enhance the expe­ri­ence of cre­ation. Where Eno has his deck of cre­ative process-enhanc­ing Oblique Strate­gies cards, Cage had this list of rules first com­posed by an edu­ca­tor, silkscreen artist, and nun named Sis­ter Cori­ta Kent.

Kent came up with the list, writes Brain­pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va, “as part of a project for a class she taught in 1967–1968. It was sub­se­quent­ly appro­pri­at­ed as the offi­cial art depart­ment rules at the col­lege of LA’s Immac­u­late Heart Con­vent, her alma mater, but was com­mon­ly pop­u­lar­ized by Cage, whom the tenth rule cites direct­ly.”

That tenth rule, more of a meta-rule, reminds the read­er that “we’re break­ing all the rules” by “leav­ing plen­ty of room for X quan­ti­ties.” But one can eas­i­ly imag­ine how the pre­vi­ous nine, hav­ing as much to do with the enjoy­ment of the work of learn­ing, teach­ing, and cre­at­ing as with its rig­or­ous per­for­mance, might appeal to Cage as well. The com­plete list runs as fol­lows:

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trust­ing it for a while.

RULE TWO: Gen­er­al duties of a stu­dent: Pull every­thing out of your teacher; pull every­thing out of your fel­low stu­dents.

RULE THREE: Gen­er­al duties of a teacher: Pull every­thing out of your stu­dents.

RULE FOUR: Con­sid­er every­thing an exper­i­ment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-dis­ci­plined: this means find­ing some­one wise or smart and choos­ing to fol­low them. To be dis­ci­plined is to fol­low in a good way. To be self-dis­ci­plined is to fol­low in a bet­ter way.

RULE SIX: Noth­ing is a mis­take. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to some­thing. It’s the peo­ple who do all of the work all of the time who even­tu­al­ly catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to cre­ate and ana­lyze at the same time. They’re dif­fer­ent process­es.

RULE NINE: Be hap­py when­ev­er you can man­age it. Enjoy your­self. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: We’re break­ing all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leav­ing plen­ty of room for X quan­ti­ties.

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to every­thing. Always go to class­es. Read any­thing you can get your hands on. Look at movies care­ful­ly, often. Save every­thing. It might come in handy lat­er.

Some of the rules on Ken­t’s list, which has now exert­ed its influ­ence for half a cen­tu­ry, sound faint­ly like the Oblique Strate­gies Eno and the painter Peter Schmidt would come up with in the 1970s. Take rule num­ber six, “Noth­ing is a mis­take,” which brings to mind the Oblique Strat­e­gy “Hon­or thy error as a hid­den inten­tion.” But we’re all on the same field when it comes to tech­niques to move our minds in worth­while new direc­tions, as Cage, Kent, Eno, Schmidt, and most oth­er seri­ous stu­dents, teach­ers, and cre­ators might agree. They’d cer­tain­ly agree that, all rules aside, every­thing ulti­mate­ly comes down to doing the work itself, day in and day out. “Craft,” as Eno once said,” is what enables you to be suc­cess­ful when you’re not inspired.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Impres­sive Audio Archive of John Cage Lec­tures & Inter­views: Hear Record­ings from 1963–1991

How to Get Start­ed: John Cage’s Approach to Start­ing the Dif­fi­cult Cre­ative Process

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

How to Paint Like Kandinsky, Picasso, Warhol & More: A Video Series from the Tate

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Museums | July 20th, 2018

Learn How to Print like Warhol… in five min­utes?

That sounds like fun! My Saturday’s pret­ty open…

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, The Tate’s How To series is a bit of a mis­nomer. This is not the any­one-can-do-it approach of PBS leg­end Bob Ross and his Hap­py Lit­tle Trees…

Yes, the short video demon­stra­tions come with sup­ply lists and step-by-step instruc­tions, but with­out an exist­ing fine arts back­ground, you may feel more than a lit­tle bit daunt­ed, pin­ing for the sort of kid-friend­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions that help sec­ond graders mim­ic famous artists with such aplomb.

Rather than rel­e­gate your fresh­ly-pur­chased screens, roll of acetate, and econ­o­my-sized con­tain­er of pho­to-emul­sion to the same clos­et where your cross coun­try skis, for­eign lan­guage cas­settes, and beer-mak­ing kit are cur­rent­ly spend­ing eter­ni­ty, we sug­gest that you not buy them at all.

Instead, appre­ci­ate the way these videos bridge “the gap between Art His­to­ry and Art Cre­ation,” in the words of one view­er.

So THAT’S how Warhol and untold thou­sands of oth­er artists, includ­ing this segment’s guide Mar­i­anne Keat­ing, make their prints! A lot of equip­ment! A lot of pre­cise steps. Maybe some day you’ll take a stab at it.

’Til then… Keat­ing picked for­mer Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter Michael Man­ley as her sub­ject. Who would you choose?

Artist Sui Kim’s seg­ment on Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s approach to paint­ing inspires a semi-abstract scene from her South Kore­an child­hood, using the same col­or palette as Kandinsky’s Cos­sacks.

What would you paint?

Though before blithe­ly slap­ping a sec­ond-grad­er rain­bow on your vision and assum­ing you now know how to paint like Kandin­sky (whether or not you know how to paint), check out the Tate’s descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal:

Paint­ed between 1910 and 1911, Cos­sacks is an expres­sion of Kandinsky’s belief in the pow­er of art “to awak­en this capac­i­ty for expe­ri­enc­ing the spir­i­tu­al in mate­r­i­al and in abstract phe­nom­e­na.” The dynam­ic ten­sion between abstract form and con­crete con­tent may be read as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the wider con­flict between the forces of polit­i­cal oppres­sion – Kandin­sky had been deeply moved by the strikes and upheavals in Odessa a few years ear­li­er – and the hunger for spir­i­tu­al reju­ve­na­tion con­se­quent upon the rise of soul­less moder­ni­ty. Like his con­tem­po­raries Piet Mon­dri­an and Hen­ri Matisse, Kandin­sky saw paint­ing as an exten­sion of reli­gion, capa­ble, as he wrote in his Rem­i­nis­cences (1913), of reveal­ing ‘new per­spec­tives and true truths’ in ‘moments of sud­den illu­mi­na­tion, resem­bling a flash of light­ning.’ The echo of the Ancient Greek writer Longinus’s notion of sub­lime speech, which sim­i­lar­ly strikes like a bolt of light­ning, is car­ried over into Kandinsky’s descrip­tion of the spir­i­tu­al mis­sion of the mod­ern artist. In his 1911 essay On the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, he com­pares the life of the spir­it to ‘a large, acute-angled tri­an­gle,’ at the apex of which stands the soli­tary artis­tic genius dis­pens­ing spir­i­tu­al food to the mul­ti­tudes below.

Pret­ty com­plex stuff!

Per­haps Picas­so is a more straight­for­ward propo­si­tion.

Reck­on you could rope a friend into mod­el­ing for a Cubist por­trait a la Bust of a Woman (1909)? If so, which friend, and what might you do for them in return?

Oth­er artists in the Tate’s How To series include J.M.W. Turn­er and sculp­tor Rachel Whiteread. Watch them all here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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