Higgs Boson, the Musical: CERN Data Turned into Melody

in Music, Science, Technology | October 4th, 2012

When researchers at CERN announced the dis­cov­ery of the Hig­gs Boson this sum­mer, Domeni­co Vic­i­nan­za, a pro­fes­sion­al com­pos­er and par­ti­cle physi­cist at DANTE (Deliv­ery of Advanced Net­work Tech­nol­o­gy to Europe) took the Hig­gs research data and turned it into a melody. He explained how he did it to PRI’s The World:

In order to take a sub­atom­ic par­ti­cle like the Hig­gs Boson and con­vert it into a melody, to notes, what we do is basi­cal­ly take the data and asso­ciate with each one of the numer­ic val­ues a sin­gle note on a score. Melody is fol­low­ing basi­cal­ly exact­ly the same behav­ior the sci­en­tif­ic data is show­ing. So when the piano starts play­ing, you can hear some real­ly real­ly high pitched notes.… They are the sig­na­ture of the Hig­gs Boson melody and they are cor­re­spond­ing to a peak in the sci­en­tif­ic draft research has shown at CERN. The actu­al data points are only the one played by the piano at the begin­ning and then played by piano and marim­ba in the sec­ond rep­e­ti­tion. So the marim­ba was play­ing the low­er notes and the piano was play­ing the high­er notes. So it sounds like a Cuban Habanera but this is clas­si­cal insi­d­ence.… I thor­ough­ly believe that sci­ence can offer musi­cians a won­der­ful way to look for inter­est­ing melodies, inter­est­ing har­monies, inter­est­ing son­ic phe­nom­e­na. They can be tak­en and be used by com­posers to cre­ate some real enter­tain­ment.

Back in 2009, Vic­i­nan­za orig­i­nal­ly caught our atten­tion when he and the ‘Lost Sounds Orches­tra’ gave a unique per­for­mance, play­ing ancient instru­ments live in Stock­holm while the audi­ence watched dancers per­form some 7,000 miles away in Kuala Lumpur on an ultra-fast dis­play screen. You can catch scenes from that per­for­mance right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hig­gs Boson and Its Dis­cov­ery Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Hig­gs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String The­o­ry

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Listen: Beck Reworks 20 Philip Glass Compositions Into a 20 Minute Song, ‘NYC: 73–78’

in Music | October 4th, 2012

Lat­er this month — Octo­ber 23rd to be pre­cise — the singer-song­writer Beck and fel­low musi­cians will cel­e­brate Philip Glass’ 75th birth­day with the release of Rework: Philip Glass Remixed. The album will be streamed online in its entire­ty on NPR’s First Lis­tens site start­ing next Mon­day.

But you can already catch Beck­’s con­tri­bu­tion to the release. It’s noth­ing oth­er than 20 Philip Glass com­po­si­tions remixed into a 20 minute track, and it’s called ‘NYC: 73–78’. Catch it on NPR’s site or lis­ten below.

If the whole idea of Glass turn­ing 75 makes you feel nos­tal­gic, and if you want to revis­it some vin­tage mate­r­i­al, don’t miss two old chest­nuts: Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979) and Philip Glass, Seen and Heard Through the Cin­e­mat­ic Mind of Peter Green­away (1983).

 

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1972 Diane Arbus Documentary Interviews Those Who Knew the American Photographer Best

in Film, Photography | October 4th, 2012

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Diane (pro­nounced Dee-Ann) Arbus received much new press a few years ago with the release of the high­ly fic­tion­al­ized and mis­guid­ed biopic Fur, star­ring Nicole Kid­man. The movie did not do well, and its crit­i­cal fail­ure may have eclipsed some re-eval­u­a­tion of her work in favor of pruri­ent spec­u­la­tion about the woman behind it. Anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty arrived last year on the 40th anniver­sary of Arbus’s death by sui­cide at age 48, and with the pub­li­ca­tion of William Todd Schultz’s Arbus biog­ra­phy An Emer­gency in Slow Motion. But long before all of this renewed inter­est in Arbus, there was the short doc­u­men­tary Mas­ters of Pho­tog­ra­phy: Diane Arbus (above). Pro­duced in 1972, one year after Arbus’s death, the film is built on inter­views with the peo­ple who knew her best: her daugh­ter Doon, her teacher at the New School, Lisette Mod­el, col­league Mar­vin Israel, and the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy at the time for the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, John Szarkows­ki. That same year, Arbus became the first Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er to be fea­tured, posthu­mous­ly, at the Venice Bien­nale.

Born Diane Nemerov to wealthy par­ents in New York City, Arbus once con­fid­ed to Studs Terkel that she “grew up feel­ing immune and exempt from cir­cum­stance.” “One of the things I suf­fered from,” said Arbus, “was that I nev­er felt adver­si­ty. I was con­firmed in a sense of unre­al­i­ty.” Arbus gained a rep­u­ta­tion for pur­su­ing the seem­ing­ly “unre­al” in the midst of real­i­ty; her pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects were cir­cus “freaks,” social out­siders, eccen­tric per­form­ers, the phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled (whom she called “aris­to­crats”) and just ordi­nary, not very attrac­tive, peo­ple.

Some­times her sub­jects seem unre­al because their warts-and-all ordi­nar­i­ness con­trasts so stark­ly with the glossy denizens of slick, full-col­or magazines–those who can seem more real to us than we do to our­selves. She may have been dri­ven to the mar­gins because of her hatred for the fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy she and her hus­band, Allan Arbus, did for Vogue, Sev­en­teen, and Glam­our.

Arbus had a unique abil­i­ty to coax pow­er­ful por­traits from her sub­jects, most of whom stare direct­ly at her cam­era, and the view­er, and do not shrink from con­fronta­tion. As with most artists who com­mit sui­cide, a “cult of Arbus” has sprung up to defend her from crit­i­cal scruti­ny, but there are legit­i­mate ques­tions about whether her por­trai­ture human­izes or exploits her sub­jects. Susan Son­tag believed the lat­ter and described her work as “based on dis­tance, on priv­i­lege.” React­ing to her por­trait of him, Nor­man Mail­er found her work dan­ger­ous enough to quip, “Giv­ing a cam­era to Diane Arbus is like giv­ing a hand grenade to a baby.” But Arbus was not naïve: she describes her­self in an audio inter­view above as “kind of two-faced, very ingra­ti­at­ing,” and “a lit­tle too nice” to her sub­jects while she cap­tures their flaws. I’ll admit, it’s a lit­tle hard to make up one’s mind about her moti­va­tions, but the pho­tographs are always deeply com­pelling.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

in Books, Literature | October 3rd, 2012

In case you did­n’t real­ize it, we’re smack dab in the mid­dle of Banned Books Week, which reminds us not to take intel­lec­tu­al free­dom for grant­ed. Hun­dreds of books are cen­sored each year in Amer­i­ca’s schools, book­stores and libraries, many of them works of unques­tion­able lit­er­ary mer­it, books like The Catch­er in the Rye, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and Huck­le­ber­ry Finn.

The New York Times has cre­at­ed a handy guide out­lin­ing Ways to Cel­e­brate Banned Books Week, while City Lights, the beloved San Fran­cis­co book­store found­ed by Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, came up with its own way to raise aware­ness. They got film­mak­er John Waters to read a steamy pas­sage from D.H. Lawrence’s con­tro­ver­sial nov­el, Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover. Although orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1928, an uncen­sored ver­sion of the book did­n’t appear in Britain until 1960. And almost imme­di­ate­ly Pen­guin, the pub­lish­er, was tried under the Obscene Pub­li­ca­tions Act. A jury returned with a ver­dict of ‘Not Guilty.’ As you can imag­ine, the lines read by Mr. Waters are not safe for work. You can find Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover housed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

–  Cen­sor­ship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. Mark Twain

via @GalleyCat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Clas­sic Beat Poem, Howl

Mike Wal­lace and Ben­nett Cerf (Founder of Ran­dom House) Talk Cen­sor­ship

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The ‘Tractate on the Steppenwolf’: Max Von Sydow Narrates Animated Scene from Hermann Hesse’s Novel

in Animation, Books, Literature | October 3rd, 2012

Her­mann Hes­se’s 1927 nov­el Step­pen­wolf is a curi­ous mix­ture of mys­ti­cism and exis­ten­tial angst. It’s the sto­ry of a strange man who appears one day in an unnamed town and rents an attic apart­ment. By day he stays alone in his rooms, read­ing Goethe and Novalis. By night he wan­ders the dark alley­ways of the Old Town, like “a wolf of the steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd.”

Despite a strong ele­ment of mag­ic in the sto­ry, Step­pen­wolf is essen­tial­ly an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal book. Hesse wrote it dur­ing a time of acute per­son­al cri­sis, when he had entered mid­dle age and was deal­ing with the fail­ure of his mar­riage to a younger woman. Strug­gling against thoughts of sui­cide, the book­ish Hesse sought to over­come his sense of iso­la­tion and estrange­ment from soci­ety by going out at night to the tav­erns and dance halls. For a sense of his men­tal state, here is a pas­sage from Step­pen­wolf in which the pro­tag­o­nist Har­ry Haller talks in a dream to his “immor­tal” hero, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe:

Like all great spir­its, Herr von Goethe, you have clear­ly rec­og­nized and felt the rid­dle and the hope­less­ness of human life, with its moments of tran­scen­dence that sink again to wretched­ness, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ris­ing to one fair peak of feel­ing except at the cost of many days’ enslave­ment to the dai­ly round; and, then, the ardent long­ing for the realm of the spir­it in eter­nal and dead­ly war with the equal­ly ardent and holy love of the lost inno­cence of nature, the whole fright­ful sus­pense in vacan­cy and uncer­tain­ty, this con­dem­na­tion to the tran­sient that can nev­er be valid, that is ever exper­i­men­tal and dilet­tan­tish; in short, the utter lack of pur­pose to which the human state is condemned–to its con­sum­ing despair.

But Hesse saw Step­pen­wolf as an opti­mistic book. It’s about a man’s jour­ney to self-aware­ness and spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion. As he wrote in the intro­duc­tion, “The ‘Trea­tise’ [see above] and all those spots in the book deal­ing with mat­ters of the spir­it, of the arts and the ‘immor­tal’ men oppose the Step­pen­wolf’s world of suf­fer­ing with a pos­i­tive, serene, super-per­son­al and time­less world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still it is not a book of a man despair­ing, but of a man believ­ing.”

The ani­mat­ed sequence above is from the rarely seen 1974 film of Step­pen­wolf by Fred Haines, in which the Har­ry Haller char­ac­ter played by Max von Sydow reads from the “Trac­tate on the Step­pen­wolf,” a mys­te­ri­ous text that was giv­en to Haller and then left behind by him, describ­ing the Step­pen­wolf’s divid­ed nature. The scene fea­tures imagery by the Czech artist Jaroslav Bradác.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Franz Kaf­ka: The Ani­mat­ed Short Film

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The Long, Violent History of Israel and Palestine Musically Animated by Nina Paley

in Animation, History | October 3rd, 2012

You may remem­ber Nina Paley, about whose movie Sita Sings the Blues we post­ed back in 2009. If you fol­low ani­ma­tion, you cer­tain­ly remem­ber her, since she put togeth­er that fea­ture-length, jazz vocal-scored, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal adap­ta­tion of the Indi­an myth the Ramayana almost entire­ly with her own set of self-taught skills. For some time now, Paley’s fans have known that her next major project, Seder-Masochism, will retell the sto­ry of Exo­dus using nar­ra­tion assem­bled from gen­uine Passover Seder record­ings. This we learned when Paley chose to fund the first phase of the project on Kick­starter. We can now watch, embed­ded above, the very first scene she has com­plet­ed: “This Land is Mine,” a brief and bloody musi­cal his­to­ry of the ter­ri­to­ry called, depend­ing upon your per­spec­tive, Israel, Pales­tine, Canaan, or Lev­ant.

Help­ful­ly, Paley has writ­ten up a guide to this sequence’s many play­ers: you’ve got the Canaan­ites, who kill Ear­ly Man; the Egpy­tians, who kill the Canaan­ites; the Assyr­i­ans, who kill the Egyp­tians; and so on for­ward through the annals until we arrive at the mod­ern-day bat­tles between “PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah,” the State of Israel, and “guerrillas/freedom fighters/terrorists.” Any­one who even occa­sion­al­ly glances toward the news knows full well how large con­flict and death loom today over this par­tic­u­lar slice of the world, but through Paley’s high-body-count ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of the place’s his­to­ry, we can see that it was ever thus. She flinch­es not from her sub­ject mat­ter’s over­whelm­ing vio­lence, nor from her own ten­den­cy to inject it with humor. This bodes well for what she’ll do with the rest of the sto­ry, col­lect it as she will from as many Seders as she can attend. The mak­ings, tru­ly, of an Exo­dus dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Exo­dus­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

Dra­ma­tiz­ing the Mid­dle East

Rev­o­lu­tions in the Mid­dle East: Head of Al Jazeera Speaks at TED

Sita Sings the Blues Now on YouTube

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Final Episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Features a Manic Michael Richards

in Comedy | October 3rd, 2012

Come­di­an Daniel Tosh, who isn’t known for his sen­si­tiv­i­ty, to say the least, has a seg­ment on his show Tosh.0 called “Web Redemp­tion” in which he allows peo­ple who became the butt of inter­net jokes to reclaim their dig­ni­ty. One might refer to the sea­son finale of Jer­ry Seinfeld’s free web series Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee as some­thing of a “web redemp­tion” for his guest, Michael Richards, Sein­feld’s Kramer. Like Tosh, Richards had a high­ly-pub­li­cized and very ugly moment onstage at the Laugh Fac­to­ry in response to some heck­lers. I can’t say that I’ve felt a lot of sym­pa­thy for either of these guys, both raked over the inter­net’s coals. But does this final episode of Seinfeld’s breezy series redeem Michael Richards? Maybe a lit­tle? Well, it’s def­i­nite­ly fun to watch these two rem­i­nisce about their Sein­feld days, espe­cial­ly my per­son­al favorite episode, “Ken­ny Rogers’ Roast­ers.”

And it’s also very touch­ing. Seinfeld’s loy­al­ty and con­cern for his friend after that infa­mous melt­down always seemed gen­uine, and here Jer­ry’s gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it ele­vates him to some­thing of a per­son­al cheer­leader for the ram­shackle Richards—represented in this episode by the car Jer­ry choos­es: a rusty, beat-up 1962 VW van that dou­bles as a pick­up. My favorite exchange, hands-down, gives us a glimpse into the two come­di­ans’ souls: Jer­ry, sage of the every­day, and Richards, the man­ic absur­dist. Richards, a lit­tle shy or just clown­ing around, puts on a wig and dark glass­es:

Richards: “you should put on a hat and some sun­glass­es”
Sein­feld: “Oh, Michael, free your­self. We’re just rain­drops on a wind­shield.”
Richards: “I wan­na know who’s wip­ing me off!”

It’s got­ta be the kind of ban­ter you can’t script. Or maybe I choose to believe that. Once they sit down for cof­fee, Richards real­ly turns it on. He’s a bril­liant raconteur—tells the great­est chess sto­ry I’ve ever heard. No spoil­ers; you’ve got to see it.  Maybe it redeems him just a little–you decide.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Steven Spielberg Reveals He Is Dyslexic. Making Movies Offered Him a “Great Escape” as a Child

in Education, Film | October 3rd, 2012

We recent­ly brought you an inter­view with Steven Spiel­berg and his father, dis­cussing the films the direc­tor made as a teenag­er. Of all Amer­i­can auteurs, Spiel­berg may be the most in touch with his inner child, so it comes as no sur­prise that the young Spiel­berg record­ed train crash­es and bat­tles using his own room or yard as the back­drop.

What no one, includ­ing the Dream­Works co-founder him­self, knew until recent­ly is that all those 8 mm shorts were more than just a pas­time. In a recent inter­view Spiel­berg revealed that he is dyslex­ic and that he was only diag­nosed five years ago. “It explained a lot of things,” Spiel­berg told Quinn Bradlee. “It was like the last puz­zle part in a tremen­dous mys­tery that I’ve kept to myself all these years.”

Always two years behind the class in read­ing, Spiel­berg was teased by oth­er kids in school. He dread­ed hav­ing to read in front of the class. He nev­er lacked for friends, though look­ing back on it sev­er­al of his friends were prob­a­bly also dyslex­ic.

“Even my own friends who were just like me, we didn’t have the skills to talk about it,” he recalled in the inter­view for Friends of Quinn, a site for peo­ple with learn­ing dif­fer­ences. “I got bul­lied. I dealt with it by mak­ing movies. That was my cov­er up.”

Spiel­berg, whose films have spanned all gen­res over more than four decades, says that moviemak­ing was his “great escape” from feel­ing painful­ly dif­fer­ent.

“I nev­er felt like a vic­tim. Movies helped save me from shame, from guilt from putting it on myself when it wasn’t my bur­den,” he says. “In light of feel­ing like an out­sider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.”

He says that it takes him about three hours to read what most peo­ple could read in a lit­tle more than an hour.

“I’m slow, but I’ve learned to adjust,” he says. “I am in a busi­ness where read­ing is very impor­tant. I read often and I have great com­pre­hen­sion. I retain almost every­thing I read. I real­ly take my time going through a book or a script.”

With all of that said, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post: Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Find more of her work at .

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The Real Alice in Wonderland Circa 1862, and Our Favorite Culture Links on the Web

in Books, Literature | October 2nd, 2012

Over at The Retro­naut they’re fea­tur­ing a gallery of images of Alice Lid­dell cir­ca 1862. Who is that you may ask? Well, it’s only the young girl who inspired Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic sto­ry Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (a text that you can down­load from our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books). If the men­tion of the great children’s tale warms your heart, we’d encour­age you to re-vis­it Maria Popo­va’s guest-authored post, Alice in Open­land, which has all kinds of great relat­ed mate­r­i­al — read­ings of Alice by Cory Doc­torow, film adap­ta­tions of the sto­ry from 1903 and 1915, and much more.

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Bob Dylan’s Historic Newport Folk Festival Performances, 1963–1965

in Film, Music | October 2nd, 2012

“You know him, he’s yours: Bob Dylan.” It’s hard to imag­ine a more iron­ic intro­duc­tion, but those were the words used by Ron­nie Gilbert of The Weavers to intro­duce Dylan at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. “What a crazy thing to say!” Dylan wrote in his mem­oir, Chron­i­cles. “Screw that. As far as I knew, I did­n’t belong to any­body then or now.” A year lat­er at New­port he made his point loud and clear. They did­n’t know him, and he was­n’t theirs.

On July 25, 1965 Dylan shocked the folk purists at New­port by plug­ging his Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er into an ampli­fi­er and join­ing gui­tarist Mike Bloom­field and oth­ers from the But­ter­field Blues Band in a blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of “Mag­gie’s Farm,” a song often inter­pret­ed as Dylan’s protest song against the expec­ta­tion of singing protest songs. (The farm in the title is viewed as a pun on Silas McGee’s farm in Mis­sis­sip­pi, where Dylan made his famous appear­ance dur­ing a civ­il rights ral­ly.) Many in the audi­ence took it as a slap in the face. Boos rose up amid the cheer­ing, and the boo­ing con­tin­ued into Dylan’s next song, the now-clas­sic “Like a Rolling Stone.” Music writer Greil Mar­cus described the scene:

There was anger, there was fury, there was applause, there was stunned silence, but there was a great sense of betray­al. As if some­thing pre­cious and del­i­cate was being dashed to the ground and stomped. As if the del­i­cate flower of folk music, the price­less her­itage of impov­er­ished black farm­ers and des­ti­tute white min­ers, was being mocked by a dandy, with a gar­ish noisy elec­tric gui­tar, who was going to make huge amounts of mon­ey as a pop star by exploit­ing what he found from these poor peo­ple.

The con­tro­ver­sial “elec­tric” per­for­mance was the last of three Dylan appear­ances at the New­port fes­ti­val. His first time there was in 1963, when he was an obscure young singer, lit­tle known out­side of Green­wich Vil­lage. He appeared at the fes­ti­val as a guest of Joan Baez, who was far bet­ter known and had recent­ly appeared on the cov­er of Time mag­a­zine. Baez intro­duced Dylan to audi­ences around the coun­try and encour­aged him to write polit­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted folk songs. But by the 1964 fes­ti­val Dylan had already caught up to Baez, in terms of fame, and by 1965 he was break­ing free of Baez and her expec­ta­tions, and of folk music in gen­er­al.

Mur­ray Lern­er’s The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror: Bob Dylan Live at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val 1963–1965 (above) cap­tures Dylan’s evo­lu­tion over those three years. The footage was orig­i­nal­ly shot for Lern­er’s clas­sic 1967 doc­u­men­tary, Fes­ti­val!, and was even­tu­al­ly acquired by Dylan, whose man­ag­er agreed to let Lern­er assem­ble it into a film–but only after the release of Mar­tin Scors­ese’s No Direc­tion Home, which uses some of the mate­r­i­al. The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror was released in 2007. The doc­u­men­tary was shot on Kodak Plus‑X and Tri‑X film with a three-per­son crew. As Lern­er lat­er explained in an inter­view, his inten­tion was to let Dylan’s evolv­ing music speak for itself:

We decid­ed on no nar­ra­tion, no pun­dit inter­views, no inter­views with Dylan. noth­ing except the expe­ri­ence of see­ing him. That to me is excit­ing. Just the clear expe­ri­ence gives you every­thing you need. I felt that when screened the music of The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror, because he’s tout­ed metaphor­i­cal­ly as the mir­ror of his gen­er­a­tion, and I thought no, he’s beyond that. He always takes the gen­er­a­tion beyond that, and he’s like on the oth­er side of the mir­ror. But I also felt the won­drous qual­i­ty of his imag­i­na­tion took us like Alice to a new world on the oth­er side of the mir­ror.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s (In)Famous Elec­tric Gui­tar From the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val Dis­cov­ered?

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broad­cast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

 

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Metamorphose: 1999 Documentary Reveals the Life & Work of Artist M.C. Escher

in Art, Film | October 2nd, 2012

Made in 1999 by Dutch direc­tor Jan Bos­driesz, the doc­u­men­tary Meta­mor­phose: M.C. Esch­er, 1898–1972 takes its title from one of Escher’s more well-known prints in which the word “meta­mor­phose” trans­forms itself into pat­terns of abstract shapes and ani­mals. It’s one of those col­lege-dorm prints one thinks of when one thinks of M.C. Esch­er, and it’s won­der­ful in its own way. But the doc­u­men­tary reveals oth­er sides of the artist—his art-school days, his sojourn in Italy—that pro­duced a very dif­fer­ent kind of work. Esch­er began as a stu­dent of archi­tec­ture, enrolled in the School for Archi­tec­ture and Dec­o­ra­tive arts in Haar­lem by his par­ents, who strug­gled to help him find his way after he failed his high school exams.

Once in Haar­lem, the lone­ly and some­what morose Esch­er finds him­self drawn to graph­ic art instead. One of his teach­ers, accom­plished Dutch artist Samuel Jes­su­run de Mesqui­ta, whose influ­ence is evi­dent in Escher’s work and life, sees some of Escher’s linocuts and likes them. In archival footage of an inter­view with Esch­er, the artist says that Jes­su­run de Mesqui­ta asked him, “Wouldn’t you rather be a graph­ic artist instead of an archi­tect?”

Esch­er admits, “I wasn’t all that inter­est­ed in archi­tec­ture.” It’s a lit­tle bit of a sur­pris­ing admis­sion giv­en Escher’s wild archi­tec­tur­al imag­i­na­tion, but per­haps what he meant was that he wasn’t inter­est­ed in the con­ven­tion­al, but rather in the archi­tec­ture of the fan­tas­tic, the impos­si­ble spaces he imag­ined in much of his work.

We learn oth­er things about Esch­er: One of his wood­cuts from this peri­od is titled “Nev­er Think before You Begin,” show­ing a lone­ly fig­ure on a dark and treach­er­ous path with only a tiny light to guide him, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Escher’s deci­sion to pur­sue graph­ic art. The nar­ra­tor informs us that “it took more than thir­ty years for him to earn enough from his work to live on.” Luck­i­ly, as with many artists who strug­gle for years, Esch­er had rich par­ents. We can thank them for their patron­age.  To give you some idea of Escher’s mor­bid char­ac­ter, we learn that he chose the top­ic “Dance of Death” for a three-hour lec­ture to his fel­low art stu­dents in Haar­lem. Esch­er told them, “The dance of death and life are two expres­sions with the same mean­ing. What else do we do oth­er than dance death into our souls?”

Meta­mor­phose is an impres­sive doc­u­men­tary, beau­ti­ful­ly shot and edit­ed, with a bal­ance of stock footage of the peri­od, inter­views with the artist him­self, and long, lin­ger­ing shots of his work. The film cov­ers Escher’s entire artis­tic life, end­ing with footage of the artist at work. These “last images” of Esch­er, the nar­ra­tor says, “are not gloomy. We see an artist in his stu­dio, doing the things he enjoys,” a man “proud of his suc­cess.” At the end of his life, he still hon­ored his teacher, de Mesqui­ta, and the South Ital­ian coast that shel­tered him dur­ing his for­ma­tive years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mat­ics Made Vis­i­ble: The Extra­or­di­nary Art of M.C. Esch­er

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

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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