What Guitars Were Like 400 Years Ago: An Introduction to the 9 String Baroque Guitar

in History, Music | October 30th, 2019

Maybe it’s just me, but it some­times feels like gui­tar music is on the wane. Sure, there are plen­ty of gui­tar bands out there, gui­tar sales seem to hold steady, but the syn­the­siz­er, midi con­troller, and dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion have become the dom­i­nant instru­ments of pop­u­lar music. Then again, it’s short-sight­ed to count the gui­tar out just yet, giv­en the 500-year longevi­ty of its design.

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Lute Soci­ety of Dart­mouth notes, the gui­tar was “cul­ti­vat­ed by play­ers and com­posers with­in the courts of princes and kings.” The Baroque gui­tar was very much like the mod­ern six string (or, as often these days, sev­en and eight string) that we know today, “aside from a dif­fer­ence of tun­ing,” writes luthi­er Clive Tit­muss. Where “the mod­ern gui­tar is a baritone/tenor… the baroque is an alto instru­ment, about the size of a vio­la.”

The dif­fer­ences in size and pitch change the sus­tain and artic­u­la­tion. The Baroque gui­tar’s tonal char­ac­ter­is­tics are much more del­i­cate, per­cus­sive, and lute-like. “The great­est music for baroque gui­tar is dif­fi­cult to ren­der ade­quate­ly on the mod­ern gui­tar because the tra­di­tions of the two instru­ments have diverged so wide­ly: They speak basi­cal­ly the same lan­guage, but with a dif­fer­ent vocab­u­lary and accent.” Ear­ly Renais­sance gui­tars had what is called a “four course” string arrange­ment, with eight dou­bled strings. The baroque gui­tar added one more for a “five course” instru­ment with nine strings.

Like its Renais­sance fore­bear, lutes, and mod­ern twelve-string gui­tars today, four of those “cours­es” were dou­bled, with pairs of strings tuned to the same note. This essen­tial­ly made it a five string gui­tar with the ring­ing sonor­i­ty of a man­dolin. In the video at the top, Bran­don Ack­er explains what this means in the­o­ry and prac­tice. The tun­ing was fair­ly close to a mod­ern six-string, but one octave up and miss­ing the low E. The lone high E string was called the chanterelle or “singing string.”

Pop­u­lar main­ly in south­ern Europe, the Baroque gui­tar “may well have been used as it fre­quent­ly is today,” the Lute Soci­ety points out: “to pro­vide a sim­ple strummed accom­pa­ni­ment for a singer or small group.” It was first held in con­tempt by ear­ly Span­ish com­posers who pre­ferred the sim­i­lar vihuela. But the gui­tar would dis­place that instru­ment, as well as the lute, in musi­cal com­po­si­tions across Spain, Italy, France and else­where in Europe.

In the videos above, you can see and hear some fine demon­stra­tions from Ack­er, who plays peri­od pieces like Suite in D Minor by Robert de Visée, court com­pos­er and musi­cian for Louis XIV and Louis XV. Below, see gui­tarist Ste­fano Maio­rana play a gor­geous Span­ish piece.

Giv­en the 400 years that sep­a­rate the mod­ern gui­tar from its Baroque ances­tor, the resem­blances are remark­able, prov­ing that the instrument’s 17th cen­tu­ry refin­ers hit on a design that per­fect­ly com­ple­ments the human voice, sounds great solo and in groups, and can han­dle both rhythm and lead. Even if most gui­tars in the future dou­ble as midi-con­trol­ling synth instru­ments, it’s prob­a­bly safe to say mod­ern music won’t give up this bril­liant, time-test­ed design any time soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar & Gui­tar Leg­ends: From 1929 to 1979

The Ency­clo­pe­dia Of Alter­nate Gui­tar Tun­ings

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Are Stand-Up Comedians Our Modern Day Philosophers? Pretty Much Pop #17 Considers

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 30th, 2019

In an age where the aver­age per­son can’t name a liv­ing aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­pher, it’s been claimed that the social role of an indi­vid­ual orat­ing to the mass­es and get­ting them to think about fun­da­men­tal ques­tions is actu­al­ly not per­formed by aca­d­e­mics at all, and cer­tain­ly not by politi­cians and reli­gious fig­ures who need to keep on mes­sage in one way or oth­er, but by stand-up come­di­ans.

This is the premise of the Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers pod­cast, where come­di­an Daniel Lobell inter­views some of our best known and loved comics. How­ev­er, as Daniel has dis­cov­ered in the course of that show, only some come­di­ans are try­ing to express orig­i­nal views on the world. Many are just try­ing to tell good jokes. So do the rou­tines of those more idea-based come­di­ans count as phi­los­o­phy? Or does telling the whole truth (instead of a fun­ny one-side or exag­ger­at­ed take on truth) rule out being fun­ny? 

Daniel joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er (of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast), actor Eri­ca Spyres, and sci-fi author/linguist Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er ques­tions of authen­tic­i­ty and offen­sive humor.  We look at how philoso­phers and comics can use some of the same com­mu­nica­tive tools like invent­ing new words, irony, and auto­bi­og­ra­phy. We touch on Dave Chap­pelle, Bill Burr, Han­nah Gads­by, George Car­lin, Emo Phillips, Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, Louis CK, Between Two Ferns, Berke­ley, Socrates, Kierkegaard, and more.

A few sources:

Find out about Dan­ny’s pod­casts, graph­ic nov­el, album, and videos at dannylobell.com.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion (includ­ing some out-takes from the inter­view where we got too off-top­ic) that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Frank Zappa’s Surreal Movie 200 Motels: The First Feature Film Ever Shot on Videotape (1971)

in Film, Music | October 29th, 2019

As a famous first, Frank Zappa’s 1971 film 200 Motels set a stan­dard for hun­dreds of wacky exper­i­men­tal, B‑movies to come. The first full-length film shot entire­ly on video­tape, the cheap alter­na­tive to film that had thus far been used pri­mar­i­ly for TV shows and news broad­casts, the movie exploit­ed the medium’s every pos­si­bil­i­ty. “If there is more that can be done with video­tape,” wrote Roger Ebert in his review at the time, “I do not want to be there when they do it.”

The movie is not only a “joy­ous, fanat­ic, slight­ly weird exper­i­ment in the uses of the col­or video­tape process”; it is also a visu­al encap­su­la­tion of Zappa’s most com­i­cal­ly juve­nile, most musi­cal­ly vir­tu­osic sen­si­bil­i­ties, with Ringo Star play­ing “Zap­pa as ‘a very large dwarf,’” the Moth­ers of Inven­tion play­ing them­selves, Kei­th Moon appear­ing as a nun, the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra tak­ing abuse from Zap­pa, and a series of row­dy, raunchy mis­ad­ven­tures piled one atop the oth­er.

“It assaults the mind with every­thing on hand,” Ebert both mar­veled and half-com­plained. “Video­tape report­ed­ly allowed Zap­pa to film the entire movie in about a week, to do a lot of the edit­ing and mon­tage in the cam­era and to use cheap video­tape for his final edit­ing before trans­fer­ring the whole thing to a sur­pris­ing­ly high-qual­i­ty 35mm image.” As the mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary below notes, the movie was edit­ed with­out “the use of com­put­er facil­i­ties,” and its lay­ers of effects helped invent new aes­thet­ic forms which now feel quite famil­iar.

Hyper­ki­net­ic, sur­re­al­ist, and bizarre, 200 Motels is a mélange of ani­ma­tion, musi­cal per­for­mance, crude jokes, and “a kind of mag­i­cal mys­tery trip,” wrote Ebert, “through all the motels, con­cert halls, cities, states and groupies of a road tour.” It was not beloved by crit­ics then (though Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars) and still gets a mixed recep­tion. It may or may not be the “kind of movie you have to see more than once,” giv­en its full-on sen­so­ry assault.

But Zappa’s exper­i­men­tal tour de force is essen­tial view­ing for Zap­pa fans, and also for stu­dents of the video­tape aes­thet­ic that has become an almost clas­sic style in its own right. We can see in 200 Motels the roots of the music video—Zappa was a decade ahead of MTV—though, for bet­ter or worse, its “whim­si­cal­ly impen­e­tra­ble plot­line and absur­dist sub-Mon­ty Python humor,” as Ian Git­tens writes at The Guardian, “were met with wide­spread baf­fle­ment and it sank with­out a trace.”

In the 80s, how­ev­er, 200 Motels found new life in a for­mat that seemed well suit­ed to its look, VHS. Then it found a home on the inter­net, that Val­hal­la of ancient video of every kind. A tout­ed DVD boxset, it appears, will not be com­ing. (Seems the dis­trib­uter has been slapped with a “wind­ing up order” of some kind.) But you can find it on disc, “intact and with the cor­rect aspect ratio” as one hap­py review­er notes.

What­ev­er medi­um you hap­pen to watch 200 Motels on, your expe­ri­ence of it will very much depend on your tol­er­ance for Zappa’s brand of scat­o­log­i­cal satire. But if you’re will­ing to take Roger Ebert’s word for such things, you should try to see this odd­ball piece of movie his­to­ry at least once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Monument Valley Became the Most Iconic Landscape of the American West

in Film, History | October 29th, 2019

The Amer­i­can West has nev­er been a place so much as a con­stel­la­tion of events—incursion, set­tle­ment, seizure, war, con­tain­ment, and exter­mi­na­tion in one order or anoth­er. These bloody his­to­ries, san­i­tized and seen through anti-indige­nous ide­ol­o­gy, formed the back­drop for the Amer­i­can Western—a genre that depends for its exis­tence on cre­at­ing a con­vinc­ing sense of place.

But where most West­erns are sup­posed to be set—Colorado, Cal­i­for­nia, Texas, Kansas, or Montana—seems less impor­tant than that their scenery con­form to a stereo­type of what The West should look like. That image has, in film after film, been sup­plied by the tow­er­ing buttes of Mon­u­ment Val­ley. The Vox video above tells the sto­ry of how this par­tic­u­lar place became the sym­bol of the Amer­i­can West, begin­ning with the iron­ic fact that Mon­u­ment Val­ley isn’t actu­al­ly part of the U.S., but a trib­al park on the Nava­jo Nation reser­va­tion, inside the states of Utah and Ari­zona.

“For cen­turies, only Native Amer­i­cans, specif­i­cal­ly the Paiute and Nava­jo, occu­pied this remote land­scape, field­ing con­flicts with the U.S. gov­ern­ment.” That would change when set­tlers and sheep traders Har­ry and Leone “Mike” Gould­ing set up a trad­ing post right out­side Nava­jo ter­ri­to­ry on the Utah side. Gould­ing tried tire­less­ly to attract tourists to Mon­u­ment Val­ley dur­ing the Great Depres­sion but didn’t get any trac­tion until he took pho­tos of the land­scape to Hol­ly­wood.

The movie world imme­di­ate­ly saw poten­tial, and West­ern direct­ing leg­end John Ford chose the stun­ning loca­tion for his 1939 film Stage­coach. It would be the first of scores of films shot in Mon­u­ment Val­ley and the ori­gin of cin­e­mat­ic iconog­ra­phy now insep­a­ra­ble from our idea of the rugged Amer­i­can West. The land­scape, and Ford’s vision, ele­vat­ed the West­ern from low-bud­get pulp to “one of Hollywood’s most pop­u­lar gen­res for the next 20 years.”

Pho­to by Dsdugan, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Stage­coach pro­vid­ed the “break­out role for Amer­i­can icon John Wayne” (who once declared that Native peo­ple “self­ish­ly tried to keep their land” for them­selves and thus deserved to be dis­pos­sessed.) And just as Wayne became the face of the West­ern hero, Mon­u­ment Val­ley became the cen­tral icon of its mythos. Ford used Mon­u­ment Val­ley sev­en more times in his films, most notably in The Searchers, set in Texas, wide­ly praised as one of the best West­erns ever made.

Ford’s final film to fea­ture the land­scape takes place all over the coun­try, appro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en its title, How the West Was Won. Its all-star cast, includ­ing Wayne, sold this major 1962 epic, mar­ket­ed with the tagline “24 great stars in the might­i­est adven­ture ever filmed.” But it wouldn’t have been a true West­ern at that point, or not a true John Ford West­ern, with­out Mon­u­ment Val­ley as one of its many land­scapes. The imagery may have become cliché, but “clichés are use­ful for sto­ry­telling,” sig­nal­ing to audi­ences “what kind of sto­ry this is.”

From Stage­coach to Marl­boro Ads to Thel­ma and Louise to The Lego Movie to the Cohen Broth­ers’ com­ic clas­sic West­ern trib­ute The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs, the image of Mon­u­ment Val­ley has become short­hand for free­dom, adven­ture, and the risks of the fron­tier. But like oth­er icon­ic places in oth­er for­bid­ding land­scapes around the world, the myth of Mon­u­ment Val­ley cov­ers over the his­tor­i­cal and present-day strug­gles of real peo­ple. We get a lit­tle bit of that sto­ry in the Vox explain­er, but most­ly we learn how Mon­u­ment Val­ley became an end­less­ly repeat­ing “back­drop” that “could be any­where in the West.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ser­gio Leone Made Music an Actor in His Spaghet­ti West­erns, Cre­at­ing a Per­fect Har­mo­ny of Sound & Image

The Great Train Rob­bery: Where West­erns Began

John Wayne: 26 Free West­ern Films Online

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Peruvian Scholar Writes & Defends the First Thesis Written in Quechua, the Main Language of the Incan Empire

in Literature | October 29th, 2019

We hear many trag­ic sto­ries of dis­ap­pear­ing indige­nous lan­guages, their last native speak­ers dying out, and the sym­bol­ic and social worlds embed­ded in those lan­guages going with them, unless they’re record­ed (or recov­ered) by his­to­ri­ans and archived in muse­ums. Such report­ing, sad but nec­es­sary, can some­times obscure the mil­lions of liv­ing indige­nous lan­guage speak­ers who suf­fer from sys­temic neglect around the world.

The sit­u­a­tion is begin­ning to change. The UN has called 2019 the Year of Indige­nous Lan­guages, not only to raise aware­ness of the loss of lan­guage diver­si­ty, but also to high­light the world’s con­tin­ued lin­guis­tic rich­ness. A 2015 World Bank report esti­mat­ed that 560 dif­fer­ent lan­guages are spo­ken in Latin Amer­i­ca alone.

The South Amer­i­can lan­guage Quechua—once a pri­ma­ry lan­guage of the Incan empire—claims one of the high­est num­ber of speak­ers: 8 mil­lion in the Andean region, with 4 mil­lion of those speak­ers in Peru. Yet, despite con­tin­ued wide­spread use, Quechua has been labeled endan­gered by UNESCO. “Until recent­ly,” writes Frances Jen­ner at Latin Amer­i­can Reports, “the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment had few lan­guage preser­va­tion poli­cies in place.”

“In 2016 how­ev­er, TV Perú intro­duced a Quechua-lan­guage dai­ly news pro­gram called Ñuqanchik mean­ing ‘All of us,’ and in Cus­co, the lan­guage is start­ing to be taught in some schools.” Now, Peru­vian schol­ar Rox­ana Quispe Col­lantes has made his­to­ry by defend­ing the first doc­tor­al the­sis writ­ten in Quechua, at Lima’s 468-year old San Mar­co Uni­ver­si­ty. Her project exam­ines the Quechuan poet­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry writer Alen­cas­tre Gutiér­rez.

Col­lantes began her the­sis pre­sen­ta­tion with a tra­di­tion­al thanks­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny,” writes Naveen Razik at NITV News, “and pre­sent­ed her study titled Yawar Para (Blood Rain),” the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­en years spent “trav­el­ing to remote com­mu­ni­ties in the moun­tain­ous Canas region” to “ver­i­fy the words and phras­es used in Gutiérrez’s works.” The exam­in­ers asked her ques­tions in Quechua dur­ing the near­ly two hour exam­i­na­tion, which you can see above.

The project rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al achieve­ment for Col­lantes who “grew up speak­ing Quechua with her par­ents and grand­par­ents in the Aco­mayo dis­trict of Cus­co,” reports The Guardian. Col­lante’s work also rep­re­sents a step for­ward for the sup­port of indige­nous lan­guage and cul­ture, and the recog­ni­tion of Quechua in par­tic­u­lar. The lan­guage is foun­da­tion­al to South Amer­i­can cul­ture, giv­ing Spanish—and English—words like puma, con­dor, lla­ma, and alpaca.

But it is “rarely—if ever—heard on nation­al tele­vi­sion or radio sta­tions.” Quechua speak­ers, about 13% of Peru­vians, “are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly rep­re­sent­ed among the country’s poor with­out access to health ser­vices.” The stig­ma attached to the lan­guage has long been “syn­ony­mous with dis­crim­i­na­tion” and “social rejec­tion” says Hugo Coya, direc­tor of Peru’s tele­vi­sion and radio insti­tute and the “dri­ving force” behind the new Quechua news pro­gram.

Col­lantes’ work may be less acces­si­ble to the aver­age Quechua speak­er than TV news, but she hopes that it will make major cul­tur­al inroads towards greater accep­tance. “I hope my exam­ple will help to reval­ue the lan­guage again and encour­age young peo­ple, espe­cial­ly young women, to fol­low my path, “she says. “My great­est wish is for Quechua to become a neces­si­ty once again. Only by speak­ing it can we revive it.” Maybe in part due to her exten­sive efforts, UNESCO can take Quechua off its list of 2,860 endan­gered lan­guages.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

The Atlas of Endan­gered Alpha­bets: A Free Online Atlas That Helps Pre­serve Writ­ing Sys­tems That May Soon Dis­ap­pear

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Beauty of Degraded Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wobbly VHS & Other Analog-Media Imperfection

in Art, Film, Music | October 29th, 2019

“What­ev­er you find weird, ugly, or nasty about a medi­um will sure­ly become its sig­na­ture,” writes Bri­an Eno in his pub­lished diary A Year with Swollen Appen­dices. “CD dis­tor­tion, the jit­ter­i­ness of dig­i­tal video, the crap sound of 8‑bit — all these will be cher­ished as soon as they can be avoid­ed.” Eno wrote that in 1995, when dig­i­tal audio and video were still cut­ting-edge enough to look, sound, and feel not quite right yet. But when DVD play­ers hit the mar­ket not long there­after, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to watch movies in flaw­less dig­i­tal clar­i­ty, few con­sumers with the means hes­i­tat­ed to make the switch from VHS. Could any of them have imag­ined that we’d one day look back on those chunky tapes and their wob­bly, mud­dy images with fond­ness?

Any­one with much expe­ri­ence watch­ing Youtube has sensed the lengths to which its cre­ators go in order to delib­er­ate­ly intro­duce into their videos the visu­al and son­ic arti­facts of a pre-dig­i­tal age, from VHS col­or bleed and film-sur­face scratch­es to vinyl-record pops and tape hiss. “Why do we grav­i­tate to the flaws that we’ve spent more than a cen­tu­ry try­ing to remove from our media?” asks Noah Lefevre, cre­ator of the Youtube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic, in his video essay “The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Media.” He finds exam­ples every­where online, even far away from his plat­form of choice: take the many faux-ana­log fil­ters of Insta­gram, an app “built around arti­fi­cial­ly adding in the blem­ish­es and dis­col­orations that dis­ap­peared with the switch to dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy.”

Lefevre even traces human­i­ty’s love of degrad­ed media to works and forms of art long pre­dat­ing the inter­net: take now-mono­chro­mat­ic ancient Greek stat­ues, which “were orig­i­nal­ly paint­ed with bold, bright col­ors, but as the paints fad­ed, the art took on a new mean­ing. The pure white seems to car­ry an immac­u­late beau­ty to it that speaks to our per­cep­tion of Greek philoso­phies and myths cen­turies lat­er.” He likens what he and oth­er dig­i­tal-media cre­ators do today to a kind of reverse kintsu­gi, the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art of repair­ing bro­ken pot­tery with con­spic­u­ous gold and sil­ver seams: “Instead of fill­ing in flaws in imper­fect objects, we’re cre­at­ing arti­fi­cial flaws in per­fect objects.” Whether we’re stream­ing video essays and vapor­wave mix­es or watch­ing VHS tapes and spin­ning vinyl records, “we want our media to feel lived in.”

Or as Eno puts it, we want to hear “the sound of fail­ure.” And we’ve always want­ed to hear it: “The dis­tort­ed gui­tar is the sound of some­thing too loud for the medi­um sup­posed to car­ry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emo­tion­al cry too pow­er­ful for the throat that releas­es it. The excite­ment of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excite­ment of wit­ness­ing events too momen­tous for the medi­um assigned to it.” This leads into advice for artists, some­thing that Eno — who has made as much use of delib­er­ate imper­fec­tion in his role as a pro­duc­er for acts like U2 and David Bowie as he has in his own music and visu­al art — has long excelled at giv­ing: “When the medi­um fails con­spic­u­ous­ly, and espe­cial­ly if it fails in new ways, the lis­ten­er believes some­thing is hap­pen­ing beyond its lim­its.” It was true of art in the 90s, and it’s even truer of art today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

When Mistakes/Studio Glitch­es Give Famous Songs Their Per­son­al­i­ty: Pink Floyd, Metal­li­ca, The Breed­ers, Steely Dan & More

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

How Com­put­ers Ruined Rock Music

Kintsu­gi: The Cen­turies-Old Japan­ese Craft of Repair­ing Pot­tery with Gold & Find­ing Beau­ty in Bro­ken Things

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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 ) |

The Paintings of Miles Davis: Discover Visual Art Inspired by Kandinsky, Basquiat, Picasso, and Joni Mitchell

in Art, Music | October 28th, 2019

Few artists have lived as many cre­ative life­times as Miles Davis did in his 65 years, con­tin­u­ing to evolve even after his death with the posthu­mous release of a lost album Rub­ber­band ear­li­er this year. The album’s cov­er, fea­tur­ing an orig­i­nal paint­ing by Davis him­self, may have turned fans on to anoth­er facet of the composer/bandleader/trumpeter’s artis­tic evolution—his career as a visu­al artist, which he began in earnest just a decade before his 1991 death.

“Dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s,” writes Tara McGin­ley at Dan­ger­ous Minds, Davis “made cre­at­ing art as much a part of his life as mak­ing music…. He was said to have worked obses­sive­ly each day on art when he wasn’t tour­ing and he stud­ied reg­u­lar­ly with New York painter Jo Gel­bard.” Nev­er one to do any­thing by half-mea­sures, Davis turned out can­vas after can­vas, though he didn’t exhib­it much in his life­time.

He paint­ed main­ly for him­self. “It’s like ther­a­py for me,” he said, “and keeps my mind occu­pied with some­thing pos­i­tive when I’m not play­ing music.” Being the intim­i­dat­ing Miles Davis, how­ev­er, it wasn’t exact­ly easy for him to find artis­tic peers with whom he could com­mune. When he first approached Gel­bard, the artist says, “I was scared to death! I could bare­ly speak.”

The two lived in the same New York build­ing and Gel­bard even­tu­al­ly relaxed enough to give Davis lessons, then lat­er became his girl­friend, col­lab­o­rat­ing with him on work like the cov­er of the 1989 album Amand­la. As she char­ac­ter­izes his style:

The way Miles paint­ed was not the way he played or the way he sketched. He was so min­i­mal and light-hand­ed in his sound, in his walk. His body was very light; he was a slight man, a del­i­cate kind of guy. His sketch­es are light and airy and min­i­mal, but when he took his brush and paint, he was dead­ly – he was like a child with paints in kinder­garten. He would pour it on and mix it until it got too mud­dy and over-paint. He just loved the tex­ture and the feel. It got all over his clothes and his hands and his hair and it was just fun for him…

Miles also found a peer in fel­low painter Joni Mitchell. She describes how he called her one day and said, “Joni, I like that paint­ing that you did. Nice col­ors. I want to come over and watch you paint.” Davis, her musi­cal hero, wouldn’t record with her (though she found out lat­er that he owned all her records). “He would talk paint­ing but he wouldn’t talk music with me.”

Davis’ paint­ings are rough and expres­sion­is­tic, a coun­ter­point to the for­mal dis­ci­pline of his music. (McGin­ley suc­cinct­ly describes them as a “sharp, bold and mas­cu­line mix­ture of Kandin­sky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picas­so and African trib­al art”.) He didn’t make inroads in the art world, but paint­ing did become “a prof­itable side­line,” not­ed the L.A. Times in ’89. Friends and fel­low musi­cians like Lionel Richie and Quin­cy Jones bought his work. “A mag­a­zine called Du in Zurich bought some of my sketch­es for a spe­cial edi­tion they’re putting out on me,” he said.

In 2013, a hard­cov­er edi­tion of his col­lect­ed paint­ings appeared, with a fore­word by Jones, per­haps the most avid of Miles Davis col­lec­tors. There are many oth­er voic­es in the book, includ­ing author Steve Gutterman—who inter­viewed Davis before his death and writes an introduction—and var­i­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers who con­tribute per­son­al sto­ries. Miles sums up his own “refresh­ing­ly unpre­ten­tious atti­tude” toward his art­work in one brief state­ment: “It ain’t that seri­ous.”

Pick up a copy of Miles Davis: The Col­lect­ed Art­work here.

Note: This post updates mate­r­i­al that first appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Lis­ten to The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970

The Influ­ence of Miles Davis Revealed with Data Visu­al­iza­tion: For His 90th Birth­day Today

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

A Collection of Vintage Fruit Crate Labels Offers a Voluptuous Vision of the Sunshine State

in Art, Design, Food & Drink, Life, Travel | October 28th, 2019

Ah, Flori­da… The Sun­shine State.

Tourists began flock­ing to it in earnest once the rail­roads expand­ed in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, drawn by visions of sun­set beach­es, grace­ful palms, and plump cit­rus fruit in a warm weath­er set­ting.

The fan­ta­sy gath­ered steam in the 1920s when cit­rus grow­ers began affix­ing col­or­ful labels to the fruit crates that shipped out over those same rail­road lines, seek­ing to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion with mem­o­rable visu­als.

These labels offered lovers of grape­fruit and oranges who were stuck in cold­er climes tan­ta­liz­ing glimpses of a dreamy land filled with Span­ish Moss and grace­ful long-legged birds. Words like “gold­en” and “sun­shine” sealed the deal.

(The real­i­ty of cit­rus pick­ing, then and now, is one of hard labor, usu­al­ly per­formed by under­paid, unskilled migrants.)

The State Library of Florida’s Flori­da Crate Label Col­lec­tion has amassed more than 600 exam­ples from the 1920s through the 1950s, many of which have been dig­i­tized and added to a search­able data­base.

While the major­i­ty of the labels ped­dle the sun­shine state mythos, oth­ers pay homage to grow­ers’ fam­i­ly mem­bers and pets.

Oth­ers like Kil­lar­ney Luck, Umpire, Sherlock’s Delight, and Watson’s Dream built brand iden­ti­ty by play­ing on the grove’s name or loca­tion, though one does won­der about the mod­els for the deli­cious­ly dour Kiss-Me label. Sib­lings, per­haps? Maybe the Kissim­mee Cit­rus Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion dis­ap­proved of the PDA their name seems so ripe for.

Native Amer­i­cans’ promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tion like­ly owed as much to the public’s fas­ci­na­tion with West­erns as to the state’s trib­al her­itage, evi­dent in the names of so many loca­tions, like Umatil­la and Immokalee, where cit­rus crops took root.

Mean­while, Mam­my, Aun­ty, and Dix­ieland brands relied on a stereo­typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of African-Amer­i­cans that had a proven track record with con­sumers of pan­cakes and Cream of Wheat.

The vibrant­ly illus­trat­ed crate labels were put on hold dur­ing World War II, when the bulk of the cit­rus crop was ear­marked for the mil­i­tary.

By the mid-50s, card­board box­es on which com­pa­ny names and logos could be print­ed direct­ly had become the indus­try stan­dard, rel­e­gat­ing crate labels to antique stores, swap meets, and flea mar­kets.

Begin your explo­ration of the Flori­da Crate Label Col­lec­tion here, brows­ing by image, place, com­pa­ny, or brand name.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Browse a Col­lec­tion of Over 83,500 Vin­tage Sewing Pat­terns

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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