John Waters Gives Art Collection to The Baltimore Museum Of Art in Exchange for Getting Its Bathrooms Named After Him

in Art, Film, Museums | November 16th, 2020

It’s not unusu­al for an insti­tu­tion to rec­og­nize a major benefactor’s gen­eros­i­ty by nam­ing some­thing in their hon­or — a wing, an atri­um, a library, a gym­na­si­um, a con­cert hall…

But bath­rooms?

It’s a fit­ting trib­ute for the Pope of Trash, film­mak­er John Waters.

So fit­ting that he him­self sug­gest­ed it when donat­ing 372 prints, paint­ings, and pho­tographs from his per­son­al col­lec­tion to the Bal­ti­more Muse­um Of Art.

With Har­vard, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado at Boul­der, New York City’s New Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art and famed down­town per­for­mance venue Dixon Place all boast­ing restrooms that dou­ble as tem­ples to phil­an­thropy, Waters is not the first donor to be lion­ized in latrine form…

But he is sure­ly the most famous, thanks to a career that spans six decades, includes numer­ous books and exhi­bi­tions of his pho­tog­ra­phy and sculp­tures, in addi­tion to his infa­mous cult films.

Waters got his start as an art col­lec­tor at the age of 12: he spent $2 on a Joan Miró poster in the Bal­ti­more Museum’s gift shop:

After tak­ing it home and hang­ing it on my bed­room wall at my par­ents’ house, I real­ized from the hos­tile reac­tion of my neigh­bor­hood play­mates that art could pro­voke, shock, and cause trou­ble. I became a col­lec­tor for life. It’s only fit­ting that the fruits of my 60-year search for new art that could star­tle, antag­o­nize, and infu­ri­ate even me, ends up where it all began—in my home­town muse­um.

Muse­um direc­tor Christo­pher Bed­ford calls Waters a “man of extra­or­di­nary refine­ment” as well as “a local trea­sure.”

Cura­tor Asma Naeem adds that Waters’ dona­tion, in addi­tion to being one of the largest gifts of art in recent his­to­ry, is also one of the “most per­son­al and indi­vid­u­al­ized, show­ing the true stamp of the donor’s taste, eye, and predilec­tions.”

Among the 125 artists rep­re­sent­ed are Mike Kel­ley, Cindy Sher­man, Roy Licht­en­stein, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Waters him­self. (The muse­um host­ed a ret­ro­spec­tive of his visu­al art two years ago.)

Waters is per­son­al­ly acquaint­ed with many of the artists in his col­lec­tion, and has a strong pref­er­ence for ear­ly work. “They were nev­er blue-chip artists,” he told The New York Times. “They became that lat­er.”

In an inter­view with the CBC’s Car­ol Off, Waters reflect­ed that he loves art that inspires out­rage:

…because I’m in on it. You final­ly learn to see dif­fer­ent­ly if you like art. And it’s a secret club. It’s like a bik­er gang where you learn a spe­cial lan­guage, you have to dress a cer­tain way. I love all the ridicu­lous elit­ism about the art world. I think it’s hilar­i­ous.

In addi­tion to the two bath­rooms in the East Lob­by, a rotun­da in the Euro­pean art gal­leries will also bear Waters’ name.

The muse­um has pledged to nev­er deac­ces­sion the works in the col­lec­tion, and Waters spec­u­lates that it’s only a mat­ter of time until a gen­der-neu­tral bath­room bear­ing his name will also be made avail­able to patrons.

“I loved going [to the BMA],” he told Bal­ti­more Fish­bowl:

When I was a kid, that was a huge world that I was turned onto. Thank God my par­ents took me.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

John Waters Designs a Wit­ty Poster for the New York Film Fes­ti­val

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Life with­out A*Holes

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

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The Biblical Sci-Fi of “Raised by Wolves”–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #68

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | November 16th, 2020

What hap­pens when a male android loves a female android VERY much, and they nurse human embryos togeth­er on a dis­tant plan­et after flee­ing from war-torn Earth? Why the female android flies and makes a bunch of peo­ple explode with her eyes, that’s what hap­pens! …In the first episode of this bonkers HBO Max series by Aaron Guzikows­ki (with notable assis­tance from Rid­ley Scott of Alien and Blade Run­ner fame).

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er reflect on how much we’re sup­posed to under­stand, what if any char­ac­ter we’re sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, whether the imagery is just TOO heavy-hand­ed, and how this show com­pares with relat­ed sci-fi like West­world or post-apoc­a­lyp­tic shows like The Walk­ing Dead. Beware: Spoil­ers abound in this one, so you might want to watch the show, or just let us reveal its weird­ness to you.

Here are some arti­cles to feast on:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Experience a Video Painting of Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Millions of People

in Music | November 13th, 2020

Bri­an Eno may not have invent­ed ambi­ent music, but he did give it a name. What bet­ter to call an album like his 1978 Music for Air­ports, whose slow­ly shift­ing pieces forego not just melody but all then-accept­ed meth­ods of com­po­si­tion and per­for­mance? The result, as its title sug­gests, is meant not to occu­py the inten­tion of the lis­ten­er but to col­or the atmos­phere of a space. This marked one evo­lu­tion­ary step for an idea Eno first essayed in 1975’s Dis­creet Music, issued on his own label Obscure Records in an era when much of the music peo­ple lis­tened to was any­thing but dis­creet. Record­ing tech­nol­o­gy first made ambi­ent music pos­si­ble; by the mid-1980s, video tech­nol­o­gy had devel­oped to the point that it could pos­sess a visu­al dimen­sion as well.

Just as Eno’s ambi­ent music was­n’t made for lis­ten­ing, Eno’s “video paint­ings,” as he called them, weren’t made for view­ing. 1981’s Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, cap­tures the urban land­scape out­side from Eno’s New York win­dow — iron­i­cal­ly, with a por­trait ori­en­ta­tion, so that any TV dis­play­ing it had to be turned on its side.

Thurs­day After­noon, the next in the series, looks not to the built envi­ron­ment but that oth­er tra­di­tion­al sub­ject of paint­ing, the female form: specif­i­cal­ly that of Eno’s friend, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Chris­tine Ali­ci­no. Here video mak­ing pos­si­ble some­thing tru­ly new, with no artis­tic con­nec­tion to, as Eno put it, “Sting’s new rock video” or “bor­ing, grimy ‘Video Art.’ ”

But just like a Hol­ly­wood movie, Thurs­day After­noon had an epony­mous sound­track album. Released in 1985, it cut the 80-minute video paint­ing’s ambi­ent score down to an unbro­ken track of near­ly 61 min­utes, a length made pos­si­ble by the recent­ly intro­duced Com­pact Disc. “Played” on an acoustic piano and syn­the­siz­ers, the music shifts sub­tly in tex­ture through­out the hour, cre­at­ing a son­ic envi­ron­ment that many have found high­ly con­ge­nial for work­ing, think­ing, and relax­ing. I myself have lis­tened to it hun­dreds of times over the past twen­ty years, and in the form of a Youtube video paint­ing made by fan Jonathan Jol­ly, it’s racked up more than four mil­lion views. The col­or-treat­ed time-lapse footage of pass­ing clouds fits right in with the spir­it of the music, and it cer­tain­ly seems to do the trick for the video’s com­menters, grate­ful as they are for reduced anx­i­eties, recov­ered mem­o­ries, increased focus, and even altered con­scious­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

A Six-Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Five Minute Museum: A Stop Motion Animation Shows the History of Civilization at Breakneck Speed

in Animation, Comedy, Fashion, History, Museums | November 13th, 2020

Exper­i­men­tal direc­tor and ani­ma­tor Paul Bush’s 2015 short film The Five-Minute Muse­um, above, is the dizzy­ing anti­dote to stand­ing, foot­sore, in front of a vit­rine crowd­ed with Ancient Greek amphoras or exquis­ite­ly craft­ed pock­et watch­es and won­der­ing, not about his­to­ry, cul­ture or the nature of time, but whether you can jus­ti­fy spend­ing $15 for an under­whelm­ing cheese and toma­to sand­wich in the muse­um cafe.

It’s a break­neck stop motion jour­ney through the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion via six muse­um collections—three in Lon­don and three in Switzer­land.

Pre­sent­ed pri­mar­i­ly as stills that flash by at a rate of 24 per sec­ond, Bush groups like objects togeth­er, “there­by allow­ing the tri­umphs of human endeav­or to be seen even in far cor­ners of the land, by the bedrid­den, the infirm and the lazy.”

His sense of humor asserts itself the minute an assort­ment of ancient shards appear to ren­der them­selves into not just a state of whole­ness, but an entire up close soci­ety in close-up. It doesn’t take long for these ves­sels’ clash­ing of war­riors to give way to a com­pos­ite por­trait of idle youth, whose flir­ta­tions are stoked by a num­ber of man­ic pipers in rapid suc­ces­sion, and Andy Cow­ton’s orig­i­nal music and sound design.

It’s a shock when Bush slows down and pulls back to show the source objects in their muse­um cas­es, qui­et as a tomb, the sort of dis­play most vis­i­tors blow past en route to some­thing sex­i­er, like a dinosaur or a block­buster exhib­it requir­ing timed entry tick­ets.

Oth­er high­lights include a live­ly assort­ments of guns, hats, chairs, and plas­tic toys.

If you start feel­ing over­whelmed by the visu­al inten­si­ty, don’t wor­ry. Bush builds in a bit of a breather once you hit the clocks, the bulk of which pre­sum­ably hail from the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um in Zurich.

The inge­nious ani­mat­ed short was 10 years in the mak­ing, a fact the artist mod­est­ly down­plays:

It’s very sim­ple. Sim­ple sto­ry, a sim­ple tech­nique and that’s what I like. Poet­ry should be a lit­tle bit stu­pid. This is what Pushkin says, and I try and make my films a lit­tle bit stu­pid as well.

In addi­tion to the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um, you’ll find the fea­tured arti­facts housed in the British Muse­um, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, London’s Muse­um of the Home (for­mer­ly known as the Gef­frye Muse­um) as well as the Lucerne His­tor­i­cal Muse­um and the Bern His­tor­i­cal Muse­um.

Expect a much slow­er expe­ri­ence.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Help your­self to her free down­load­able poster series, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Akira Kurosawa Used Movement to Tell His Stories: A Video Essay

in Film | November 13th, 2020

The his­to­ry books say that there were three Japan­ese film­mak­ers to emerge in the 1950s – Ken­ji Mizoguchi, Yasu­jiro Ozu and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. Nev­er mind that Mizoguchi and Ozu made many of their best movies in the 1930s. Nev­er mind that mas­ter­ful, inno­v­a­tive direc­tors like Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshi­ta have been unfair­ly over­shad­owed by the bril­liance of these three greats.

Mizoguchi was an ear­ly mod­ernist who by the end of his career made med­i­ta­tive movies about how women suf­fer at the hands of men. His mas­ter­pieces like Uget­su and San­sho Dayu feel like Bud­dhist scroll paint­ings come to life. Ozu, “the most Japan­ese” of all film­mak­ers, made qui­et­ly mov­ing dra­mas about fam­i­lies, like Tokyo Sto­ry, but did so in a way that dis­card­ed such Hol­ly­wood prin­ci­ples as con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing and the 180 degree rule. Ozu was a qui­et rad­i­cal.

Com­pared to Ozu and Mizoguchi, Kurosawa’s movies are noisy, mas­cu­line and vital. Unlike Ozu, he didn’t chal­lenge Hol­ly­wood film form but improved on it. Born rough­ly a decade after the oth­er two film­mak­ers, Kuro­sawa spent his youth watch­ing West­ern movies, absorb­ing the lessons of his cin­e­mat­ic heroes like John Ford, Howard Hawks and Frank Capra. At his cre­ative height, in the 1950s and 60s, Kuro­sawa pro­duced mas­ter­piece after mas­ter­piece. Hol­ly­wood would remake or ref­er­ence Kuro­sawa con­stant­ly in the years that fol­lowed but few of those films had Kurosawa’s inven­tive­ness.

Tony Zhou, who has made a career of dis­sect­ing movies in his excel­lent video series Every Frame a Pic­ture, argues that the key to Kuro­sawa is move­ment. “A Kuro­sawa movie moves like no one else’s,” Zhou notes in his video. “Each one is a mas­ter class in dif­fer­ent types of motion and also ways to com­bine them.”

Kuro­sawa had an innate under­stand­ing that there is inher­ent dra­ma in the wind blow­ing in the trees. Like Andrei Tarkovsky and lat­er Ter­rence Mal­ick, he liked to place human dra­ma square­ly in the realm of nature. The rain falls, a fire rages and that move­ment makes an image com­pelling. He under­stood that graph­ic con­sid­er­a­tions out­weighed psy­cho­log­i­cal ones – he sim­pli­fied and exag­ger­at­ed a character’s move­ment with the frame to make char­ac­ter traits and emo­tions easy to reg­is­ter for the audi­ence. His cam­era move­ments were clear, moti­vat­ed and flu­id. Zhou com­pares Sev­en Samu­rai with The Avengers. You might have thought that The Avengers was unin­spired and soul­less but after watch­ing Zhou’s video, you’ll under­stand why – aside from the sil­ly plot and char­ac­ters – the movie was unin­spired and soul­less. The piece should be required view­ing for film­mak­ers every­where. You can watch it above.

And below you can see anoth­er video Zhou did on Kuro­sawa, focus­ing on his 1960 movie The Bad Sleep Well.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

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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Peter Milton Walsh of The Apartments Rejects Assembly-Line Recording: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#135)

in Music, Podcasts | November 13th, 2020

Aus­tralian singer-song­writer Peter Mil­ton Walsh start­ed The Apart­ments in the late ’70s, and our inter­view begins with a snip­pet of the open­ing track from, “Help” from his 1979 Return of the Hyp­no­tist EP. He also around this time played with the Go Betweens and oth­er groups, and released The Apart­ments’ first LP, The Evening Visits…and Stays for Years, in 1985, a heart-wrench­ing affair which made it onto the New Music Express “albums of the year” list. This led to some sin­gles, one of which–“The Shyest Time”–made it onto the sound­track of the 1987 John Hugh­es film Some Kind of Won­der­ful.

The band had all the moody jan­gling of ear­ly REM, the Smiths, and The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, with a unique front man, strong melodies, and the mood of the moment? So why (pre­sum­ably) have you not heard of this group? Their 1993 album drift (the first full album since their debut) was appar­ent­ly a big hit in France, but none of their work sold par­tic­u­lar­ly well in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. As Peter reveals on this episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, he did­n’t much like high-pres­sure stu­dio record­ing, result­ing in whole eras of his song­writ­ing left large­ly undoc­u­ment­ed.

Per­son­al tragedy also derailed his career from the late ’90s until the late ’00s when he returned to live per­form­ing and even­tu­al­ly released a cou­ple of real­ly dev­as­tat­ing albums, includ­ing 2015’s No Song, No Spell, No Madri­gal and the new­ly released In and Out of the Light.

On each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Pod­cast, host Mark Lin­sen­may­er plays four of an artist’s songs in full and dis­cuss­es them with the song­writer at length. Here Mark and Peter dis­cuss the struc­ture and record­ing of two songs off the new album: “What’s Beau­ty to Do?” and “Where You Used to Be.” They then look back to the mid­dle of The Apart­ments’ ’90s out­put with “Sun­set Hotel” from Fête Foraine (1996), a song cap­tur­ing his obser­va­tions of a group of hero­in addicts. Final­ly you’ll hear “Look­ing for Anoth­er Town” from that 2015 come-back album.

For more Apart­ments: The first come-back song was real­ly 2011’s “Black Rib­bon,” which you can watch him play solo. Per­haps my favorite song he’s done is the doom-epic “What’s Left of Your Nerve” from drift. You can watch a recent live ver­sion of “Sun­set Hotel” and catch the offi­cial video for “What’s Beau­ty to Do.” More at theapartmentsmusic.com.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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1,000+ Artworks by Vincent Van Gogh Digitized & Put Online by Dutch Museums: Enter Van Gogh Worldwide

in Art | November 12th, 2020

It gets dark before din­ner now in my part of the world, a recipe for sea­son­al depres­sion. Vin­cent van Gogh wrote about such low feel­ings with deep insight. “One feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bot­tom of a deep dark well, utter­ly help­less.” Yet, when he looked up at the night sky he saw not dark­ness but blaz­ing light: a full moon shines yel­low from White House at Night like the sun, and peeks like a gold coin from behind blue moun­tains in Land­scape with Wheat Sheaves and Ris­ing Moon. The stars in Star­ry Night Over the Rhône appear like fire­works. We are all famil­iar with the blaz­ing night sky of its sequel, The Star­ry Night.

It’s been sug­gest­ed that Van Gogh saw halos of light because of lead poi­son­ing from his paint, and that the Dig­i­tal­is Dr. Gachet pre­scribed for his tem­po­ral lobe epilep­sy caused him to “see in yel­low,” the Van Gogh Gallery Blog writes, “or see yel­low spots which could explain van Gogh’s con­sis­tent use of the col­or yel­low in his lat­er works.”

His most bril­liant works date from this lat­er peri­od, dur­ing his time at the hos­pi­tal at Arles, where he paint­ed his famous bed­room. All of these paint­ings, and hun­dreds more, can be found in high-res­o­lu­tion scans at the new van Gogh resource, Van Gogh World­wide, “a con­sor­tium of muse­ums,” notes Madeleine Muz­dakis at My Mod­ern Met, “doing their part to bring the work of one of the world’s most famous artists to the glob­al mass­es.”

The muse­ums rep­re­sent­ed here are all in the Nether­lands and include the Van Gogh Muse­um, Kröller-Müller Muse­um, the Rijksmu­se­um, the Nether­lands Insti­tute for Art His­to­ry, and the Muse­um Boi­j­mans Van Beunin­gen. Van Gogh was not only a pro­lif­ic painter, of shin­ing night scenes and oth­er­wise, but he was “also a pro­lif­ic sketch artist. His pen­cil and paper draw­ings are worth explo­ration; they depict land­scapes as well as emo­tive fig­ures from Van Gogh’s every­day life. Van Gogh World­wide pro­vides insight into these works of art and the artist behind them. One can also find behind-the-scenes muse­um infor­ma­tion, such as details of restora­tions, ver­so (back) images, and oth­er cura­to­r­i­al notes.”

Van Gogh World­wide expands oth­er dig­i­tal col­lec­tions like the Van Gogh Museum’s almost 1,000 online works. Where that resource includes short infor­ma­tion­al arti­cles and links to lit­er­a­ture about the art­works, Van Gogh World­wide does not, as yet, fea­ture such addi­tion­al mate­ri­als, but it does include links to Van Gogh’s let­ters. In one of them, he writes to his broth­er, Theo, about their par­ents: “They’ll find it dif­fi­cult to under­stand my state of mind, and not know what dri­ves me when they see me do things that seem strange and pecu­liar to them—will blame them on dis­sat­is­fac­tion, indif­fer­ence or non­cha­lance, while the cause lies else­where, name­ly the desire, at all costs, to pur­sue what I must have for my work.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Take a Jour­ney Inside Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Paint­ings with a New Dig­i­tal Exhi­bi­tion

In a Bril­liant Light: Van Gogh in Arles–A Free Doc­u­men­tary

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

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Eno: A 1973 Mini-Doc Shows Brian Eno at the Beginning of His Solo Career

in Music | November 12th, 2020

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve seen bits and pieces of the 1973 mini-doc Eno over the years, as it is such a rare and won­der­ful glimpse into the very begin­nings of Bri­an Eno’s career, and being the go-to footage for any doc about the man. Over the course of the film, we see Eno assembling/recording “The Paw-Paw Negro Blow­torch”, the sec­ond track on his debut album Here Come the Warm Jets. Right from the begin­ning, we see that Eno was true to his word and using the record­ing stu­dio as an instru­ment. With Derek Chan­dler by his side engi­neer­ing, we see Eno lay­er­ing one sound after anoth­er, remov­ing oth­ers, much like a painter. If you know the track, you notice it take form and shape, but there are things that would lat­er be “paint­ed over,” like a sitar solo (!) where the wigged out oscil­la­tor solo now sits. The film opens with Eno play­ing an arpeg­giat­ed bass line on a piano that also doesn’t make it into the song. (The bass instead is sup­plied by Bus­ta Jones, seen play­ing a two note riff with a lot of feel­ing.) Chris Sped­ding stops by to play “some­thing pure­ly Duane Eddy” on his gui­tar, ask­ing Eno “you’ll treat it lat­er?” “Prob­a­bly,” says Eno. (More like def­i­nite­ly).

“I have attempt­ed to replace the ele­ment of skill con­sid­ered nec­es­sary in music with the ele­ment of judge­ment,” Eno says ear­ly in the film, and a lis­ten to the fin­ished track reveals that judge­ment. And what do you know–the sitar *is* there, as are the piano lines, like a space in the can­vas where the orig­i­nal sketch can be seen.

We also get an amaz­ing, extend­ed glimpse at Eno’s note­books, which have popped up in var­i­ous books on Eno, includ­ing More Dark Than Shark and Visu­al Music. From the pro­fane to the pro­found, from draw­ings of gen­i­tals to detailed ana­log sys­tem dia­grams, it’s all here, and as far as we know the note­books, which he start­ed at 14, con­tin­ue to this day.

The film also makes the case for a lat­er Eno the­o­ry, that of the “sce­nius,” which he once described thus: “‘Sce­nius stands for the intel­li­gence and the intu­ition of a whole cul­tur­al scene. It is the com­mu­nal form of the con­cept of the genius.’”

For Eno in 1973, the sce­nius is the Por­to­bel­lo Road area where he can browse thrift stores, run into friends, and check in on designer/girlfriend Car­ol McNi­coll, who made all Eno’s glam out­fits. And he also talks about how Robert Fripp just stopped by on his way home one night and record­ed side one of their team-up album No Pussy­foot­ing.

All in all a ter­rif­ic look into the begin­ning of an artis­tic lega­cy, and a film that des­per­ate­ly needs a pris­tine new trans­fer. (And no, you will nev­er con­vince me that the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia is any good.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Record­ing Stu­dio Rad­i­cal­ly Changed Music: Hear His Influ­en­tial Lec­ture “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool” (1979)

Bri­an Eno Reveals His Favorite Film Sound­tracks

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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