Behold the Fantastical, Uncannily Lifelike Puppets of Barnaby Dixon

in Art, Design, Technology, Theatre | March 17th, 2023

Barn­a­by Dixon’s incred­i­ble two-piece cre­ations rede­fine the notion of hand pup­pets, by mov­ing and respond­ing in high­ly nuanced, real­is­tic ways.

The pinkie and index fin­ger of one hand slip into the crea­ture’s arms, leav­ing the thumb free to oper­ate the tiny con­trols that tilt head and mouth move­ments.

The pinkie and index fin­ger of one hand slip into the creature’s legs, an attribute few hand pup­pets can claim.

A waist­line mag­net joins the pup­pet’s top half to its bot­tom.

His goal is for view­ers to “for­get the mech­a­nisms and for­get the process that’s gone into mak­ing it so they can just enjoy the motions.”

Each char­ac­ter has a unique set of motions and a cus­tom-designed plas­tic, sil­i­cone and met­al assem­bly, informed by many hours of anatom­i­cal obser­va­tion and study. Their struc­tures speak to Dixon’s ear­ly years as a stop motion ani­ma­tor, as do his fab­ri­ca­tion meth­ods.

His frus­tra­tion with the glacial pace of achiev­ing the end prod­uct in that realm spurred him to exper­i­ment with pup­pets who could be filmed mov­ing in real time.

His first pup­pet, Dab Chick, below, holds a spe­cial place in his heart, and is also one of his mouthi­est.

Dab Chick­’s tiny head cocks on spec­ta­cle hinges and a hand-wound spring wrapped in sil­i­cone. The mech­a­nism that opens and clos­es his beak is a minia­ture spin on bicy­cle hand brakes.

While many of Dixon’s recent pup­pets thrive in a Day-Glo, synth-heavy envi­ron­ment, Dab Chick is a crowd-pleas­ing cur­mud­geon, spout­ing opin­ions and repar­tee. He even plays drunk… a hard assign­ment for any per­former to pull off, but Dixon nails it.

Phil the fish is oper­at­ed with two rods. He per­forms best in water, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, high­light­ing his tal­ent for blow­ing bub­bles, as well as Dixon’s for using physics to his advan­tage.

Many pup­peteers match their breath­ing to that of their puppet’s in an effort to get into the zone. Dixon takes it to the next lev­el by stream­ing real time video of his mouth to a tiny screen embed­ded below the nose of the pup­pet he is oper­at­ing.

In addi­tion to cre­at­ing and direct­ing orig­i­nal work, he pup­peteered the True His­to­ry of Thra, The Dark Crys­tal: Age of Resis­tance’s play with­in a play and designed the origa­mi-inspired, ani­mal-shaped demon pup­pets for the Bridge The­atre pro­duc­tion of Book of Dust – La Belle Sauvage.

The Guardian laud­ed the lat­ter as “gor­geous,” a “mar­vel (that) seem like Jun­gian pro­jec­tions rather than airy, fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures.”

Watch more of Barn­a­by Dixon’s pup­pet videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hand Pup­pets That Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee Made for His Young Son

Meet Lit­tle Amal, the 12-Foot Pup­pet of a 10-Year-Old Syr­i­an Girl, Who Has Been Tour­ing the World

Hiroshige, Mas­ter of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, Cre­ates a Guide to Mak­ing Shad­ow Pup­pets for Chil­dren (1842)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Artificial Intelligence, Art & the Future of Creativity: Watch the Final Chapter of the “Everything is a Remix” Series

in Art, Technology | March 16th, 2023

From 2010 to 2012, film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son released “Every­thing is a Remix,” a four-part series (watch here) that explored art and cre­ativ­i­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. In the ini­tial series, Fer­gu­son focused on musi­cians, film­mak­ers, writ­ers and even video game mak­ers. Now, a lit­tle more than a decade lat­er, Fer­gu­son has resur­faced and released a fifth and final chap­ter in his series, with this episode focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent kind of artist: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Respond­ing to the rise of AI-gen­er­at­ed art, Fer­gu­son delves into the ethics of art gen­er­at­ed by machines, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they’re trained with human-cre­at­ed art. Is AI-gen­er­at­ed art a form of pira­cy? Or is it anoth­er kind of cre­ative remix? And what does AI mean for the future of art and cre­ativ­i­ty? These are just some of the weighty ques­tions Fer­gu­son tack­les in his final install­ment. Watch it 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Every­thing is a Remix: A Video Series Explor­ing the Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty

DALL‑E, the New AI Art Gen­er­a­tor, Is Now Open for Every­one to Use

An AI-Gen­er­at­ed Paint­ing Won First Prize at a State Fair & Sparked a Debate About the Essence of Art

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

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Why Georges Seurat’s Pointillist Painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Is a Masterpiece

in Art, History | March 14th, 2023

Every­one knows that Georges Seu­rat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jat­te, or A Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te, resides at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. Or at least every­one who’s seen Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Insti­tute appears as just one of the implau­si­bly var­ied attrac­tions of Chica­go enjoyed by that film’s tit­u­lar hooky-play­ing high-school senior and his friends — even the anx­i­ety-rid­den Cameron, drops from a moment out of his trou­bled life while trans­fixed by Seu­rat’s most famous paint­ing. The clos­er he looks, the less dis­cernible its gen­teel Parisian fig­ures become, dis­solv­ing into fields of col­ored dots.

“George Seu­rat spent most of his adult life think­ing about col­or,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne, “study­ing the­o­ries and work­ing out sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly how one col­or, placed in a series of dots next to those of anoth­er, cre­ates a whole dif­fer­ent col­or when it hits the reti­na of the human eye.”

By the time of La Grande Jat­te — which he metic­u­lous­ly planned, labo­ri­ous­ly exe­cut­ed, and com­plet­ed between 1884 and 1886 — “he made sure we saw col­or exact­ly how he want­ed us to.” Payne tells the sto­ry of Seu­rat, his sci­en­tif­ic, aes­thet­ic, and philo­soph­i­cal inter­ests, and the fruits of his intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic labors, in the new video from his chan­nel Great Art Explained at the top of the post.

Seu­rat first paint­ed La Grande Jat­te using not dots but dash­es, “ver­ti­cal for trees and hor­i­zon­tal for the water.” After fur­ther devel­op­ing his col­or the­o­ry, he returned to the can­vas and “added hun­dreds of thou­sands of small dots of com­pli­men­ta­ry col­ors on top of what he’d already done, which appear as sol­id and lumi­nous forms when seen from a dis­tance.” The final stage involved the addi­tion of a col­ored bor­der around the entire scene, and not long there­after elab­o­rate inter­pre­ta­tions of the out­ward­ly placid paint­ing began to mul­ti­ply. But “the lack of nar­ra­tive means we real­ly should look to the artist’s obses­sion with form, tech­nique, and the­o­ry, which is prac­ti­cal­ly all he wrote about, and not the mean­ing or sub­ject man­ner.” We may enjoy talk­ing about art’s con­tent, but it is art’s form, after all, that tru­ly cap­ti­vates us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

2,000+ Impres­sion­ist, Post-impres­sion­ist & Ear­ly Mod­ern Paint­ings Now Free Online, Thanks to the Barnes Foun­da­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War

The Scream Explained: What’s Real­ly Hap­pen­ing in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Paint­ing

The Maligned Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illus­trates Emile Zola’s Grit­ty Nov­el L’Assommoir (1878)

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

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 or on Face­book.

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An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | March 13th, 2023

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold 900+ Magnificent Botanical Collages Created by a 72-Year-Old Widow, Starting in 1772

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Nature | March 10th, 2023

“I have invent­ed a new way of imi­tat­ing flow­ers,” Mary Delany, a 72-year-old wid­ow wrote to her niece in 1772 from the grand home where she was a fre­quent guest, hav­ing just cap­tured her host­ess’ gera­ni­um’s like­ness, by col­lag­ing cut paper in a near­ly iden­ti­cal shade.

Nov­el­ty rekin­dled the cre­ative fire her husband’s death had damp­ened.

For­mer pur­suits such as needle­work, sil­hou­ette cut outs, and shell dec­o­rat­ing went by the way­side as she ded­i­cat­ed her­self ful­ly to her botan­i­cal-themed “paper mosaicks.”

Over the next decade Mrs. Delany pro­duced 985 aston­ish­ing­ly flo­ral rep­re­sen­ta­tions from metic­u­lous­ly cut, hand col­ored tis­sue, which she glued to hand paint­ed black back­ings, and labeled with the spec­i­mens’ tax­o­nom­ic and com­mon names, as well as a col­lec­tion of num­bers, date and prove­nance.

In the begin­ning, she took inspi­ra­tion from a giant col­lec­tion of botan­i­cal spec­i­mens amassed by the cel­e­brat­ed botanist Sir Joseph Banks, with whom she became acquaint­ed while spend­ing sum­mers at Bul­strode, the Buck­ing­hamshire estate of her friend Mar­garet Bentinck, duchess of Port­land and a fel­low enthu­si­ast of the nat­ur­al world.

Bul­strode also pro­vid­ed her with abun­dant source mate­r­i­al. The estate boast­ed botan­ic, flower, kitchen, ancient and Amer­i­can gar­dens, as well a staff botanist, the Swedish nat­u­ral­ist Daniel Solan­der charged with cat­a­logu­ing their con­tents accord­ing to the Lin­naean sys­tem.

Sir Joseph Banks com­mend­ed Mrs. Delany’s pow­ers of obser­va­tion, declar­ing her assem­blages “the only imi­ta­tions of nature” from which he “could ven­ture to describe botan­i­cal­ly any plant with­out the least fear of com­mit­ting an error.”

They also suc­ceed as art.

Mol­ly Pea­cock, author of The Paper Gar­den: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, appears quite over­come by Mrs. Delany’s Pas­si­flo­ra lau­ri­fo­lia — more com­mon­ly known as water lemon, Jamaican hon­ey­suck­le or vine­gar pear:

The main flower head … is so intense­ly pub­lic that it’s as if you’ve come upon a nude stody. She splays out approx­i­mate­ly 230 shock­ing­ly vul­vu­lar pur­plish pink petals in the bloom, and inside the leaves she places the slen­der­est of ivory veins also cut sep­a­rate­ly from paper, with vine ten­drils fin­er that a girl’s hair. It is so fresh that it looks wet and full of desire, yet the Pas­si­flo­ra is dull and mat­te

Mrs. Delany’s exquis­ite­ly ren­dered paper flow­ers became high soci­ety sen­sa­tions, fetch­ing her no small amount of invi­ta­tions from titled hosts and host­esses, clam­or­ing for spec­i­mens from their gar­dens to be immor­tal­ized in her grow­ing Flo­ra Delan­i­ca.

She also received dona­tions of exot­ic plants at Bal­strode, where green­hous­es kept non-native plants alive, as she glee­ful­ly informed her niece in a 1777 let­ter, short­ly after com­plet­ing her work:

I am so plen­ti­ful­ly sup­plied with the hot­house here, and from the Queen’s gar­den at Kew, that nat­ur­al plants have been a good deal laid aside this year for for­eign­ers, but not less in favour. O! How I long to show you the progress I have made. 

Her work was in such demand, that she stream­lined her cre­ation process from neces­si­ty, col­or­ing paper in batch­es, and work­ing on sev­er­al pieces simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Her fail­ing eye­sight forced her to stop just shy of her goal of one thou­sand flow­ers.

She ded­i­cat­ed the ten vol­umes of Flo­ra Delan­i­ca to her friend, the duchess of Port­land, mis­tress of Bal­strode “(whose) appro­ba­tion was such a sanc­tion to my under­tak­ing, as made it appear of con­se­quence and gave me courage to go on with con­fi­dence.”

She also reflect­ed on the great under­tak­ing of her sev­enth decade in a poem:

        Hail to the hap­py hour! When fan­cy led

My pen­sive mind this flow’ry path to tread;

And gave me emu­la­tion to pre­sume

With timid art to trace fair Nature’s bloom.

Explore The British Museum’s inter­ac­tive archive of Mary Delany’s botan­i­cal paper col­lages here.

All images © The Trustees of the British Muse­um, repub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

The New Herbal: A Mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance Botan­i­cal Illus­tra­tions Gets Repub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful 900-Page Book by Taschen

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

A Beau­ti­ful 1897 Illus­trat­ed Book Shows How Flow­ers Become Art Nou­veau Designs

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A New Dutch Reality TV Show Challenges Contestants to Paint Like Vermeer–and It’s a Hit!

in Art, Television | March 10th, 2023

Jokes about “real­i­ty tele­vi­sion” being a con­tra­dic­tion in terms go as far back in pop-cul­ture his­to­ry as the for­mat itself. But the fact remains that, delib­er­ate­ly or oth­er­wise, its pro­grams do reflect cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soci­eties that pro­duce them. Before turn­ing into one of the most glob­al­ly suc­cess­ful fran­chis­es of this cen­tu­ry’s real­i­ty-TV boom, the once-con­tro­ver­sial strangers-in-a-house show Big Broth­er pre­miered in the Nether­lands. It will be left as an exer­cise to the read­er what that says about the Dutch, who have been tun­ing in to a very dif­fer­ent kind of real­i­ty pro­gram­ming in the past month: De Nieuwe Ver­meer, or The New Ver­meer.

Aired in con­junc­tion with the Rijksmu­se­um’s largest Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion ever staged, the show invites “two pro­fes­sion­al painters and dozens of ama­teur artists to com­pete to rein­vent the lost works of the 17th-cen­tu­ry mas­ter,” writes the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal.

“The results are judged by Ver­meer experts from the Rijksmu­se­um, the Dutch nation­al muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, and from the Mau­rit­shuis, a col­lec­tion of old mas­ters in The Hague.” The pro­fes­sion­als face such tasks as faith­ful­ly recon­struct­ing Ver­meer’s lost works, whether they van­ished cen­turies ago or in the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um theft of 1990. The ama­teurs work in their own media, includ­ing “stained glass, print­mak­ing and even Lego.”

All this has made The New Ver­meer “an instant sen­sa­tion in the Nether­lands, with 1.3 mil­lion view­ers (in a coun­try of 17 mil­lion) tun­ing in for the first episode.” Like any suc­cess­ful real­i­ty TV show these days, it has also inspired a wealth of sup­ple­men­tary con­tent, includ­ing a pod­cast and an online gallery show­ing all the art­work cre­at­ed by the con­tes­tants. “You can’t cur­rent­ly watch the series in the U.S., writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, “but the net­work is stream­ing a week­ly YouTube ‘Mas­ter­class’ ” offer­ing “step-by-step instruc­tions on how to cre­ate your own Ver­meer can­vas.” At the moment, those videos are avail­able only in Dutch, pre­sum­ably on the assump­tion that The New Ver­meer won’t trav­el well out­side the Nether­lands. But if, by some slim chance, it turned into a Big Broth­er-scale phe­nom­e­non, imag­ine the gold­en age of real­i­ty TV that would lie ahead.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

A Guid­ed Tour Through All of Vermeer’s Famous Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Why is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring Con­sid­ered a Mas­ter­piece?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Meet Noto­ri­ous Art Forg­er Han Van Meegeren, Who Fooled the Nazis with His Coun­ter­feit Ver­meers

Lis­ten to Last Seen, a True-Crime Pod­cast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Mil­lion Art Heist

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 or on Face­book.

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Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beauty of Traditional Japan

in Art | March 9th, 2023

We’ve fea­tured the work of Span­ish film­mak­er Cristóbal Vila before: His short film “Inspi­ra­tions” cel­e­brat­ed the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. “Falling­wa­ter” ani­mat­ed one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest cre­ations. And “Nature by Num­bers” showed us geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las found in nature.

Today, we bring you Vila’s “Wabi-Sabi: A Hand­ful of Mem­o­ries from Tra­di­tion­al Japan.” As he notes on his site, the ani­ma­tion cap­tures the “aspects that inter­est me the most about tra­di­tion­al Japan,” fea­tur­ing “scenes inspired by nature, gar­dens, archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or scenes, etc.” And it attempts to “cre­ate a calm and bal­anced atmos­phere through the use of light, com­po­si­tion, mate­ri­als, move­ment… and the choice of the motifs them­selves.”

Above, you can watch “Wabi-Sabi,” a Japan­ese term that refers to “the [aes­thet­ic] beau­ty of the imper­ma­nent, the imper­fect, the rus­tic, and the melan­choly,” as explains The School of Life video below. If you’re entranced by Vila’s short film, also watch the “Mak­ing of” video (mid­dle).

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:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Kintsu­gi, the Japan­ese Art of Repair­ing Bro­ken Pot­tery and Find­ing Beau­ty in Imper­fec­tion

A Med­i­ta­tive Look at a Japan­ese Artisan’s Quest to Save the Bril­liant, For­got­ten Col­ors of Japan’s Past

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Nature by Num­bers: Short Film Cap­tures the Geo­met­ri­cal & Math­e­mat­i­cal For­mu­las That Reveal Them­selves in Nature

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The Life & Art of Gustav Klimt: A Short Art History Lesson on the Austrian Symbolist Painter and His Work

in Art, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2023

The Aus­tri­an sym­bol­ist painter, Gus­tav Klimt, a dri­ving force of the Vien­na Seces­sion, has joined the ranks of famous, dead artists being served up as pricey, super-sized, Insta­gram-friend­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences.

Jane Kallir, author of Gus­tav Klimt: 25 Mas­ter­works and co-founder of the Kallir Research Insti­tute, a foun­da­tion ded­i­cat­ed to fur­ther­ing the study of Aus­tri­an and Ger­man Mod­ernists, is not buy­ing into this approach.

Hav­ing vis­it­ed the Gold in Motion immer­sive Klimt exhib­it at New York City’s recent­ly inau­gu­rat­ed Hall des Lumières with Art­net’s Ben Davis, she def­i­nite­ly has some notes:

They take lib­er­ties with the orig­i­nals. If you know the orig­i­nals well, which I do, it’s some­times hard to fig­ure out what they were work­ing from. The col­or is some­times way off. And some of the images are not by Klimt at all. They seem like pas­tich­es of Klimt or pieces of Klimts that they’ve past­ed togeth­er in dif­fer­ent ways…these images are blown up to a height of, what, 20 feet? It real­ly doesn’t work, aes­thet­i­cal­ly. Klimt’s draw­ings are espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult because they’re so del­i­cate, at times almost invis­i­ble.

But mustn’t some young vis­i­tors, after post­ing the pletho­ra of self­ies that moti­vate many a pil­grim­age to this “mul­ti-sen­so­ry cel­e­bra­tion,” be moved to learn more about the artist it’s cash­ing in on?

That’d be a good thing, right?

Of course it would, and Paul Priest­ley pro­vides a great intro­duc­tion to Klimt’s life and work in the above episode of his Art His­to­ry School web series.

We grant that spend­ing 13 min­utes with a mid­dle-aged arts edu­ca­tor in a fes­tive vest is a less sexy-see­ing prospect than “step(ping) into a won­der­land of mov­ing paint­ings” to be “amazed by the gold­en era of mod­ernism.”

But Priest­ley offers some­thing you can’t real­ly focus on while gawk­ing at enor­mous 360º pro­jec­tions of The Kiss dur­ing a $35 timed entry  — his­tor­i­cal con­text and a gen­er­ous por­tion of art world dish on a “life­long bach­e­lor who had count­less liaisons dur­ing his life­time, usu­al­ly with his mod­els, and is rumored to have fathered more than a dozen chil­dren.”

Priest­ley makes clear how the young Klimt’s career took a fate­ful turn with Phi­los­o­phy (below), part of a mas­sive com­mis­sion for the ceil­ing of Vien­na University’s Great Hall, that was ulti­mate­ly destroyed by the Nazis, but has since been res­ur­rect­ed after a fash­ion using AI, black and white pho­tos, and eye­wit­ness descrip­tions.


When Klimt’s first go at it was dis­played, it was sav­aged by crit­ics as “chaot­ic, non­sen­si­cal and out of keep­ing with the intend­ed set­ting.”

Philosophy’s drub­bing put an end to Klimt’s offi­cial com­mis­sions, but pri­vate ones flour­ished due to the bohemi­an painter’s “beau­ti­ful women in ele­gant­ly lan­guid and flat­ter­ing pos­es.”

Imag­ine how those sta­tus con­scious soci­ety matrons would have react­ed to see­ing their like­ness­es tapped as immer­sive art, which Vice’s Alex Flem­ing-Brown pegs as “the lat­est lazy lovechild of Tik­Tok and enter­pris­ing ware­house land­lords.”

Sure­ly they would have rel­ished the atten­tion!

Well, every­one, that is, except Mar­garet Ston­bor­ough-Wittgen­stein, sis­ter of Lud­wig, who chafed at her appear­ance in Klimt’s 1905 bridal por­trait as  “too inno­cent, timid and girl­ish…” and stuck the pic­ture in the attic.

C’mon, they can’t all be The Kiss.

It’s an aston­ish­ing paint­ing, but there’s so much more to dis­cov­er about Klimt and his four decades worth of work.

But first, with apolo­gies to any read­ers who gen­uine­ly enjoy immer­sive art exhibits — many do — here are Jane Kallir’s not entire­ly con­cil­ia­to­ry thoughts on Beethoven Frieze, Klimt’s volup­tuous vision of lust, love and dis­ease, which was delib­er­ate­ly enhanced by accom­pa­ny­ing sculp­ture and live music when it made its pub­lic debut in 1902, and is cur­rent­ly being parceled out and writ large in dig­i­tal form in the build­ing for­mer­ly known as New York’s Emi­grant Indus­tri­al Sav­ings Bank:

I asked myself whether Klimt would have approved of the Beethoven Frieze pro­jec­tions. I believe most artists embrace cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, what­ev­er it may be in their day and age. The Beethoven Frieze seg­ment is a Gesamtkunst­werk on a scale that Klimt might have dreamed of—might have. This is the one part of the pre­sen­ta­tion that could be faith­ful to his inten­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

136 Paint­ings by Gus­tav Klimt Now Online (Includ­ing 63 Paint­ings in an Immer­sive Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Gallery)

Vienna’s Alberti­na Muse­um Puts 150,000 Dig­i­tized Art­works Into the Pub­lic Domain: Klimt, Munch, Dür­er, and More

Gus­tav Klimt’s Mas­ter­pieces Destroyed Dur­ing World War II Get Recre­at­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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