Judy Blume Now Teaching an Online Course on Writing

in Online Courses, Writing | September 27th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

After announc­ing that Mar­tin Scors­ese will be teach­ing an online course on film­mak­ing, Mas­ter­Class made it known today that Judy Blume has cre­at­ed an online course on Writ­ing. In 24 lessons, the beloved author of Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet and Tales of a Fourth Grade Noth­ing will show you “how to devel­op vibrant char­ac­ters and hook your read­ers.” The indi­vid­ual course costs $90 and is now ready go. You can also buy an All-Access Annu­al Pass for $180 and explore every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue. Some cours­es worth explor­ing include:

• Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz
• Gar­ry Kas­parov on Chess
• Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment
• David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing
• Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy
• Aaron Sorkin on Screen­writ­ing
• Gor­don Ram­say on Cook­ing

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

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:

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Sovi­et Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artis­tic, Ide­o­log­i­cal Col­lec­tion (1917–1953)

When John Cage & Marcel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chessboard That Turned Chess Moves Into Electronic Music (1968)

in Art, Music | September 27th, 2017

Pho­to­graph by Lynn Rosen­thal

When is a chess game not a chess game?

When it’s played between Mar­cel Duchamp and John Cage.

Both the man who turned a uri­nal into a piece of mod­ern art and the man who reduced musi­cal com­po­si­tion all the way down to silence were fans of tak­ing things to absurd con­clu­sions. And they were both fans of chess; Duchamp the grand mas­ter and Cage the duti­ful stu­dent. Asked in 1974 whether Duchamp was a good teacher, Cage replied, “I was using chess as a pre­text to be with him. I didn’t learn, unfor­tu­nate­ly, while he was alive to play well.”

But Cage seemed to have lit­tle inter­est in com­pe­ti­tion. “Duchamp once watched me play­ing and became indig­nant when I didn’t win,” he said. “He accused me of not want­i­ng to win.” Instead, he approached chess as he approached the piano—as a decoy, a feint, that leads into anoth­er kind of game entire­ly. In a 1944 trib­ute to Duchamp, he paint­ed a chess­board that was actu­al­ly a musi­cal score, and, in 1968, he arranged a pub­lic game as a pre­text for a musi­cal per­for­mance called Reunion, per­formed in Toron­to with Duchamp and his wife Tee­ny (we have no film of the game-slash-con­cert; you can see Cage play Tee­ny in the video above).

Cage was an admir­er of the elder artist for over 20 years, play­ing chess with him fre­quent­ly. But he “didn’t want to both­er Duchamp with his friend­ship,” writes Syl­vere Lotringer, “until he real­ized that Duchamp’s health was fail­ing. Then he decid­ed to active­ly seek his com­pa­ny.” Play­ing on an elec­tron­ic chess board designed by Low­ell Cross, known as the inven­tor of the laser light show, the two cre­at­ed an extem­po­ra­ne­ous com­po­si­tion that last­ed as long as the audi­ence, and Duchamp, could tol­er­ate. “The con­cert,” Cross remem­bered on the for­ti­eth anniver­sary of the piece, “began short­ly after 8:30 on the evening of March 5, 1968, and con­clud­ed at approx­i­mate­ly 1:00 a.m. the next morn­ing.”

Debunk­ing a num­ber of mis­con­cep­tions about the chess­board, Cross explains that its oper­a­tion “depend­ed upon the cov­er­ing or uncov­er­ing of its 64 pho­tore­sis­tors.” It also con­tained con­tact micro­phones so that “the audi­ence could hear the phys­i­cal moves of the pieces of the board.” When either play­er made a move, it trig­gered one of sev­er­al elec­tron­ic “sound-gen­er­at­ing sys­tems” cre­at­ed by com­posers David Behrman, Gor­dan Mum­ma, David Tudor, and Cross him­self. Addi­tion­al­ly, “oscil­lo­scop­ic images emanat­ed from… mod­i­fied mono­chrome and col­or tele­vi­sion screens, which pro­vid­ed visu­al mon­i­tor­ing of some of the sound events pass­ing through the chess­board.”

As Lotringer describes the scene, the two mod­ernist giants “played until the room emp­tied. With­out a word said, Cage had man­aged to turn the chess game (Duchamp’s osten­sive refusal to work) into a work­ing per­for­mance…. Play­ing chess that night extend­ed life into art—or vice ver­sa. All it took was plug­ging in their brains to a set of instru­ments, con­vert­ing nerve sig­nals into sounds. Eyes became ears, moves music.” Duchamp had giv­en the impres­sion he was done mak­ing art. “Cage found a way to lure him into one final pub­lic appear­ance as an artist,” notes the Toron­to Dreams Project blog.

Indeed, Cage may have been for­mu­lat­ing the idea for over twen­ty years, each time he sat down to play a game with Duchamp, and lost. When Duchamp arrived in Cana­da for the per­for­mance at what was called the Sight­soundsys­tems Fes­ti­val, he had no idea that he would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the head­lin­ing event.

What he found when he arrived was a sur­re­al scene. Two of the great­est artists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry took their seats in the mid­dle of the stage at the Ryer­son The­atre, bathed in bright light and the gaze of the audi­ence. Pho­tog­ra­phers cir­cled around them, shut­ters snap­ping; a movie cam­era whirred. The stage was a mess of gad­gets. There were wires every­where; a tan­gle of them plugged right into side of the chess­board. A pair of TV screens was set up on either side of the stage. The Toron­to Star called it “a cross between an elec­tron­ic fac­to­ry and a movie set.”

Cage lost, as usu­al, though he was more even­ly matched when he played Duchamp’s wife. The three of them, wrote the Globe, were “like fig­ures in a Beck­ett play, locked in some mean­ing­less game. The audi­ence, star­ing silent­ly and sul­len­ly at what was placed before it, was itself a char­ac­ter; and its role was as mean­ing­less as the oth­ers. It was total non-com­mu­ni­ca­tion, all around.” The wires run­ning from the chess­board con­nect­ed to “tuners, ampli­fiers and all man­ner of elec­tron­ic gad­getry,” the Star wrote, fill­ing the room with “screech­es, buzzes, twit­ters and rasps.”

The Star pro­nounced the event “infi­nite­ly bor­ing,” a wide­ly shared crit­i­cal assess­ment of the night. (Cage explains the Zen of bore­dom in his voice-over at the top.) But we can hard­ly expect most review­ers of either artist’s most exper­i­men­tal work to respond with less than bewil­der­ment, if not out­right hos­til­i­ty. It was to be Duchamp’s last pub­lic appear­ance. He passed away a few months lat­er. For Cage, the evening had been a suc­cess. As Cross put it, Reunion was “a pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion of Cage’s delight in liv­ing every­day life as an art form.”

Every­day life with Duchamp meant play­ing chess, and there were few greater influ­ences than Duchamp on Cage’s con­cep­tu­al approach to what music could be—and what could be music. “Like Duchamp,” writes PBS, “Cage found music around him and did not nec­es­sar­i­ly rely on express­ing some­thing from with­in.” Fur­ther up, see Cage’s 1944, Duchamp-inspired “Chess Pieces” per­formed on harp and accor­dion, and above hear a piece he wrote for Duchamp for a sequence in Hans Richter’s 1947 sur­re­al­ist film Dreams that Mon­ey Can Buy.

To delve deep­er, you can explore the book, Mar­cel Duchamp: The Art of Chess by Fran­cis M. Nau­mann.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Play Chess Against the Ghost of Mar­cel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

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

Watch the New Anime Prequel to Blade Runner 2049, by Famed Japanese Animator Shinichiro Watanabe

in Animation, Film | September 27th, 2017

The run-up to Blade Run­ner 2049, befit­ting what now looks like the cin­e­mat­ic event of the decade, has con­sist­ed of not just mar­ket­ing hype (though it does include plen­ty of that) but gen­uine artis­tic mate­r­i­al as well. Last month we fea­tured Nexus: 2036, the first of three short “pre­quels” to Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s upcom­ing Blade Run­ner sequel. That one and its fol­low up 2048: Nowhere to Run, both direct­ed by Luke Scott (son of Blade Run­ner direc­tor Rid­ley Scott), use live action to fill in some of the sto­ry between the 2019 of the first movie and the 2049 of the sec­ond. The just-released third short, Black Out 2022, from Cow­boy Bebop direc­tor Shinichirō Watan­abe, brings the Blade Run­ner uni­verse into the realm of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion.

“Blade Run­ner was def­i­nite­ly the movie that influ­enced me the most as an ani­me direc­tor,” says Watan­abe in the pre­view of his pre­quel down below. He and oth­er Japan­ese view­ers under­stood the film’s pow­er long before most any­one in the West (with the notable excep­tion of Philip K. Dick, author of its source mate­r­i­al), and Japan­ese artists began pay­ing trib­ute to it almost imme­di­ate­ly.

In a sense, Blade Run­ner took ani­me form thir­ty years ago: Kat­suhi­to Akiya­ma’s ani­mat­ed series Bub­blegum Cri­sis, the sto­ry of arti­fi­cial humans (called “booomers” instead of repli­cants) run amok and the advanced police team (called “Knight Sabers” instead of “Blade Run­ners”) who hunt them down in a Tokyo of the future rebuilt after a dis­as­trous earth­quake, could hard­ly wear its influ­ence more open­ly.

Filled with visu­al, son­ic, and the­mat­ic ref­er­ences to the orig­i­nal Blade Run­ner while tak­ing the sto­ry in new direc­tions — and also intro­duc­ing two new repli­cant char­ac­ters — Watan­abe’s Black Out 2022–view­able up top–depicts the events lead­ing up to the det­o­na­tion of an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse that destroys the elec­tron­ics and machin­ery on which human­i­ty has become so reliant. Human­i­ty blames the repli­cants, and so begins a peri­od of pro­hi­bi­tion on repli­cant pro­duc­tion, only brought to an end by the efforts of Nian­der Wal­lace, the char­ac­ter so eeri­ly played by Jared Leto in Nexus: 2036. Blade Run­ner 2049 will pick things up 26 years after the EMP attack. What shape will Los Ange­les be in then? What shape will the cat-and-mouse game between repli­cants and Blade Run­ners take there? We’ll find out, and sure­ly in no small amount of detail, next month.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jared Leto Stars in a New Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

Watch Tears In the Rain: A Blade Run­ner Short Film–A New, Unof­fi­cial Pre­quel to the Rid­ley Scott Film

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

Watch the New Trailer for Wes Anderson’s Stop Motion Film, Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Akira Kurosawa

in Animation, Film | September 22nd, 2017

It sur­prised every­one, even die-hard fans, when Wes Ander­son announced that he would not just adapt Roald Dahl’s chil­dren’s book Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox for the screen, but do it with stop-motion ani­ma­tion. But after we’d all giv­en it a bit of thought, it made sense: Ander­son­’s films and Dahl’s sto­ries do share a cer­tain sense of inven­tive humor, and step­ping away from live action would final­ly allow the direc­tor of such detail-ori­ent­ed pic­tures as Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, and The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou fuller con­trol over the visu­als. Eight years lat­er, we find Ander­son over­see­ing anoth­er team of ani­ma­tors to tell anoth­er, even more fan­tas­ti­cal-look­ing sto­ry, this one set not in an Eng­land of the past but a Japan of the future.

There, accord­ing to the pro­jec­t’s new­ly released trail­er, “canine sat­u­ra­tion has reached epic pro­por­tions. An out­break of dog flu rips through the city of Megasa­ki. May­or Kobayashi issues emer­gency orders call­ing for a hasty quar­an­tine. Trash Island becomes an exile colony: the Isle of Dogs.” Equals in fur­ri­ness, if not attire, to Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox’s wood­land friends and voiced by the likes of Jeff Gold­blum, Scar­let Johans­son, Til­da Swin­ton, and of course Bill Mur­ray (in a cast also includ­ing Japan­ese per­form­ers like Ken Watan­abe, Mari Nat­su­ki, and Yoko Ono — yes, that Yoko Ono), the canines of var­i­ous col­ors and sizes forcibly relo­cat­ed to the bleak tit­u­lar set­ting must band togeth­er into a kind of rag­tag fam­i­ly.

Ander­son must find him­self very much at home in this the­mat­ic ter­ri­to­ry by now. It would also have suit­ed the tow­er­ing fig­ure in Japan­ese film to whom Isle of Dogs pays trib­ute. Although Ander­son has cit­ed the 1960s and 70s stop-ani­ma­tion hol­i­day spe­cials of Rankin/Bass like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer and The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy — all pro­duced, inci­den­tal­ly, in Japan — as one inspi­ra­tion, he also said on an ArteTV Q&A ear­li­er this year that “the new film is real­ly less influ­enced by stop-motion movies than it is by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.” Per­haps he envi­sioned Atari Kobayashi, the boy who jour­neys to Trash Island to retrieve his lost com­pan­ion, as a twelve-year-old ver­sion of one of Kuro­sawa’s lone heroes.

And per­haps it owes to Kuro­sawa that the set­ting — at least from what the trail­er reveals — com­bines ele­ments of an imag­ined future with the look and feel of Japan’s rapid­ly devel­op­ing mid-20th cen­tu­ry, a peri­od that has long fas­ci­nat­ed Ander­son in its Euro­pean incar­na­tions but one cap­tured crisply in Kuro­sawa’s home­land in crime movies like High and Low and The Bad Sleep Well. Ander­son has made lit­tle to no ref­er­ence to the Land of the Ris­ing Sun before, but his inter­est makes sense: no land bet­ter under­stands what Ander­son has expressed more vivid­ly with every project, the rich­ness of the aes­thet­ic mix­ture of the past and future that always sur­rounds us. And from what I could tell on my last vis­it there, its dog sit­u­a­tion remains bless­ed­ly under con­trol — for now.

via Uncrate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Acci­den­tal Wes Ander­son: Every Place in the World with a Wes Ander­son Aes­thet­ic Gets Doc­u­ment­ed by Red­dit

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Circus Artist Roxana Küwen Will Captivate You with Her Foot Juggling Routine

in Art | September 21st, 2017

Rox­ana Küwen is a Ger­man-born cir­cus artist who “likes to take her audi­ence into her world and make them be aston­ished, con­fused or amazed by play­ing with cat­e­gories and pres­ence.” Wit­ness the video above, where Küwen does some­thing quite sim­ple. She puts her feet next to her hands and moves her 20 dig­its in uni­son. Famil­iar body parts are put into strange motion, leav­ing you feel­ing charmed. But also a bit dis­con­cert­ed.

Then Rox­ana starts her foot jug­gling rou­tine. It’s not the most high veloc­i­ty, risk-filled jug­gling act. The balls move slow­ly and nev­er get more than a few feet off of the ground. There’s a strange sim­plic­i­ty to it, though cap­ti­vat­ing nonethe­less. 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch Alexan­der Calder Per­form His “Cir­cus,” a Toy The­atre Piece Filled With Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Wire Sculp­tures

Watch Mar­cel Marceau Mime The Mask Mak­er, a Sto­ry Cre­at­ed for Him by Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky (1959)

How Mar­cel Marceau Start­ed Mim­ing to Save Chil­dren from the Holo­caust

How a Recording Studio Mishap Created the Famous Drum Sound That Defined 80s Music & Beyond

in Music | September 20th, 2017

It’s not a sub­tle effect, by any means, which is pre­cise­ly what makes it so effec­tive. Gat­ed reverb, the sound of an airbag deploy­ing or weath­er bal­loon sud­den­ly blow­ing out, an airy thud that per­vades eight­ies pop, and the work of every musi­cian there­after who has ref­er­enced eight­ies pop, includ­ing CHVRCHES, Tegan and Sara, M83, Bey­on­cé, and Lorde, to name but a very few.

Before them came the pum­mel­ing gat­ed drums of Kate Bush, Bruce Spring­steen, Prince, Depeche Mode, New Order, Cocteau Twins, David Bowie, and Grace Jones, who turned Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” into a strict machine with the gat­ed reverb of her 1980 cov­er.

Roxy Music caught up quick­ly with songs like the love­ly “More Than This” on 1982’s Aval­on, but Jones was an ear­ly adopter of the effect, which—like many a leg­endary piece of stu­dio wizardry—came about entire­ly by acci­dent, dur­ing a 1979 record­ing ses­sion for Peter Gabriel’s eerie solo track “Intrud­er.”

On the drums—Vox’s Estelle Caswell tells us in the explain­er video at the top—was Gabriel’s for­mer Gen­e­sis band­mate Phil Collins, and in the con­trol room, record­ing engi­neer Hugh Padgham, who had inad­ver­tent­ly left a talk­back mic on in the stu­dio.

The mic hap­pened to be run­ning through a heavy com­pres­sor, which squashed the sound, and a noise gate that clamped down on the rever­ber­at­ing drums, cut­ting off the nat­ur­al decay and cre­at­ing a short, sharp echo that cut right through any mix. After hear­ing the sound, Gabriel arranged “Intrud­er” around it, and the fol­low­ing year, Collins and Padgham cre­at­ed the most icon­ic use of gat­ed reverb in pop music his­to­ry on “In the Air Tonight.” “Thanks to a hap­py acci­dent,” says Caswell, “the sound of the 80s was born.” Also the sound of the oughties and beyond, as you’ll hear in the 38-s0ng playlist above, fea­tur­ing many of the pio­neers of gat­ed reverb and the many earnest revival­ists who made it hip, and ubiq­ui­tous, again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

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

Watch Author Chuck Palahniuk Read Fight Club 4 Kids

in Books, Comedy, Film | September 18th, 2017

The first rule of Hors­ing Around Club is: You do not talk about Hors­ing Around Club.  ― Chuck Palah­niuk, Fight Club for Kids

Retool­ing a pop­u­lar show, film, or com­ic to fea­ture younger ver­sions of the char­ac­ters, their per­son­al­i­ties and rela­tion­ships vir­tu­al­ly unchanged, can be a seri­ous, if cyn­i­cal source of income for the orig­i­nal cre­ators.

The Mup­pets, Archie, Sher­lock Holmes, and James Bond have all giv­en birth to spin-off babies.

So why not author Chuck Palah­niuk?

Per­haps because spin-off babies are designed to gen­tly ensnare a new and younger audi­ence, and Palah­niuk, whose 2002 nov­el Lul­la­by hinged on a nurs­ery rhyme that kills chil­dren in their cribs, is unlike­ly to file down the dark, twist­ed edges that have won him a cult fol­low­ing.

That said, his most recent title is for­mat­ted as a col­or­ing book, with anoth­er due to drop lat­er this fall.

The same spir­it of mis­chief dri­ves Fight Club for Kids, which mer­ci­ful­ly will not be hit­ting the children’s sec­tion of your local book­store in time for the upcom­ing hol­i­day sea­son (or ever).

Much like Tyler Dur­den, Palah­niuk’s most infa­mous cre­ation, this title is but a fig­ment, exist­ing only in the above video, where it is read by its puta­tive author.

If you think Samuel L. Jackson’s nar­ra­tion of Go the F**k to Sleep—which can actu­al­ly be pur­chased in book form—rep­re­sents the height of adult read­ers run­ning off the rails, you ain’t heard noth­ing yet:

The horse­play would go on until it was done

And every­one who did it would always have fun

Espe­cial­ly the Boy Who Had No Name

Who once just, like, beat this dude, who was actu­al­ly Jared Leto in the movie, which was so fuckin’ cool and intense, and he’s just pum­mel­ing this guy and of course, being Jared Leto, he was essen­tial­ly a mod­el, but when our guy is done with him, he’s just this pur­ple, bloat­ed, chewed up bub­blegum-look­ing moth­er­fuck­er cov­ered in blood, head to toe!

(The sec­ond rule of Hors­ing Around Club is: You DO NOT TALK ABOUT HORSING AROUND CLUB!)

Find more print­able Chuck Palah­niuk col­or­ing pages here.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Famous Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in a Short Film

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

Enter a Digital Archive of 213,000+ Beautiful Japanese Woodblock Prints

in Art | September 15th, 2017

Most of us have now and again seen and appre­ci­at­ed Japan­ese wood­block prints, espe­cial­ly those in the tra­di­tion of ukiyo‑e, those “cap­ti­vat­ing images of seduc­tive cour­te­sans, excit­ing kabu­ki actors, and famous roman­tic vis­tas.” Those words come from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, whose essay on the art form describes how, “in the late sev­en­teenth and ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, wood­block prints depict­ing cour­te­sans and actors were much sought after by tourists to Edo and came to be known as ‘Edo pic­tures.’ In 1765, new tech­nol­o­gy made pos­si­ble the pro­duc­tion of sin­gle-sheet prints in a range of col­ors,” which brought about “the gold­en age of print­mak­ing.”

At that time, “the pop­u­lar­i­ty of women and actors as sub­jects began to decline. Dur­ing the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Uta­gawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai (1760–1849) brought the art of ukiyo‑e full cir­cle, back to land­scape views, often with a sea­son­al theme, that are among the mas­ter­pieces of world print­mak­ing.”

Even if you’ve only seen a few Japan­ese wood­block prints, you’ve seen the work of Hiroshige and Hoku­sai, thou­sands of exam­ples of which you can find in the vast Japan­ese wood­block data­base of Ukiyo‑e.org.

This Eng­lish-Japan­ese bilin­gual site, a project of pro­gram­mer and Khan Acad­e­my engi­neer John Resig, launched in 2012 and now boasts 213,000 prints from 24 muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties, libraries, auc­tion hous­es, and deal­ers world­wide. You can search it by text or image (if you hap­pen to have one of a print you’d like to iden­ti­fy), or you can browse by peri­od and artist: not just the “gold­en age” of Hiroshige and Hoku­sai (1804 to 1868), but ukiyo-e’s ear­ly years (ear­ly-mid 1700s), the birth of full-col­or print­ing (1740s to 1780s), the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of wood­block print­ing (1804 to 1868), the Mei­ji peri­od (1868 to 1912), the artist-cen­tric Shin Hanga and Sosaku Hanga move­ments (1915 to 1940s), and even the mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary era (1950s to now).

That last group includes wood­block prints of styles and sub­ject mat­ter one cer­tain­ly would­n’t expect from clas­sic ukiyo‑e, though the works nev­er go com­plete­ly with­out con­nec­tion to the tra­di­tion of pre­vi­ous mas­ters. Some of these more recent prac­ti­tion­ers, like Dan­ish-Ger­man-Aus­tralian print­mak­er Tom Kris­tensen, have even gone so far as to not be Japan­ese. Kris­tensen, who “works in typ­i­cal­ly Japan­ese ‘sosaku hanga’ style: self-carved and self-print­ed with nat­ur­al Japan­ese pig­ments on hand-made washi paper,” has pro­duced works like the 36 Views of Green Island series, of which num­ber 21 appears below. The surf­boards may at first seem incon­gru­ous, but one imag­ines that Hiroshige and Hoku­sai, those two great appre­ci­a­tors of waves, might approve. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here, and note that if you click on an image, and then click on it again, you can view it in a larg­er for­mat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Harry Dean Stanton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukowski

in Audio Books, Poetry | September 15th, 2017

Vari­ety is report­ing tonight that Har­ry Dean Stan­ton has died in Los Ange­les, at the age of 91. He’s best remem­bered, of course, for his roles in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, HBO’s Big Love, Alex Cox’s Repo Man, and Wim Wen­der’s Paris, Texas. Over a 60 year career, Stan­ton made appear­ances in 116 films, 77 TV shows, and sev­er­al music videos. He also lent his voice to an Alien video game and record­ed poems by Charles Bukows­ki. Above and below, hear him read “Blue­bird” and “Torched Out.” Both record­ings come from the 2003 doc­u­men­tary, Bukows­ki: Born Into This. Back in 2012, Stan­ton head­lined an L.A. trib­ute to the Los Ange­les poet.

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:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Three Charles Bukows­ki Books Illus­trat­ed by Robert Crumb: Under­ground Com­ic Art Meets Out­sider Lit­er­a­ture

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Watch “Beer,” a Mind-Warp­ing Ani­ma­tion of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 Poem Hon­or­ing His Favorite Drink

Free Courses on Design from the Famous California Design Firm IDEO Start This Week

in Design, Online Courses | September 14th, 2017

A quick fyi: This week, the famous Cal­i­for­nia design firm IDEO has launched two free courses–a 7‑week Intro­duc­tion to Human-Cen­tered Design and a 4‑week course on Pro­to­typ­ing.

As you might recall, we recent­ly fea­tured A Crash Course in Design Think­ing from Stanford’s Design School. If that piqued your inter­est in design and design think­ing, then IDEO’s cours­es might hold appeal. You can enroll in both cours­es, at no cost, today.

More free cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Down­load 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

Abstract: Netflix’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series About “the Art of Design” Pre­mieres Today