Erica Galvin

The stench of Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t taint everything Russian, especially some of its finest cinema. So we’ll give you this heads up: Mosfilm, the largest and oldest film studio in Russia, has posted several major films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), on its official YouTube channe l. Above, you can watch Stalker, which we’ve covered amply here on Open Culture . Below, stream The Mirror, Andrei Rublev, and Ivan’s Childhood. Stream other Mosfilm movies here . The Mirror Andrei Rublev Ivan’s Childhood If you would like to get Open Culture post’s via email, please sign up for our free email newsletter here . And 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 cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal , Patreon , Venmo (@openculture) and Crypt...

This past Tuesday, April 26, experimental German electronic composer and musician Klaus Schulze died , leaving a musical legacy as significant as they come in the past half-century or so. Crowned the “godfather of techno,” Pitchfork writes , he was integral to both Krautrock (as 1970s German progressive rock was unflatteringly called) and the “Berlin School” of techno, and he “laid the groundwork for ambient, IDM, and many other sub-genres of contemporary electronic music. His relevance never waned.” Although a legend among those in the know, Schulze isn’t known in broader popular culture. He should be, and will be, says Oscar-winning Dune composer Hans Zimmer, who worked parts of Schulze’s 1978 composition “Frank Herbert” (below) into the 2021 film’s score. “Klaus Schulze’s music has never been as relevant as it is now,” said Zimmer. Soon afterward, Schulz recorded a new album, Deus Arrakis, scheduled for release on June 10. “I needed more of that spice,” the 74-year-o...

Eyes are the key metaphor in the Venice Biennale’s central show of 213 artists, an unprecedented percentage of whom are women. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/udn3Rrv via IFTTT

We all know that sweetened, carbonated soft drinks have effects on those who drink them. The most conspicuous, among especially avid consumers, include obesity and its associated health troubles. This, fair to say, was not the intention of John Stith Pemberton , the Georgia pharmacist who in the 1880s came up with the drink that would become Coca-Cola. In that era, writes Smithsonian.com’s Kat Eschner , “people overwhelmed by industrialization and urbanization as well as the holdover of the Civil War and other social changes struggled to gain purchase, turning to patent medicines for cures that doctors couldn’t provide.” And it was in a patent medicine, one of the countless many dubiously ballyhooed in the nineteenth century, that Coca-Cola first appeared . Injured in the Civil War, Pemberton developed a morphine addiction for which he fruitlessly sought treatment. But then he got word of a new substance with the potential to cure his “morphinism”: cocaine.  At the time, c...

The auction house says this is the first ever sale of a Deinonychus, the species on which the ‘Velociraptor’ in the 1993 movie was based. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/i8TVcx7 via IFTTT

The objects in the painting are brought together in a spectacular show at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s a marvel of detective work by the curators. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/DtALhy3 via IFTTT

Dina Furrer is a Dutch photographer and visual artist based in Tilburg. Her varied portfolio largely comprises still lifes and landscapes; richly detailed works show bold experimentation with colour. Inspiration comes from within the artist herself as well as nature and everyday life. She recently participated in the exhibition H2O / Water at Galerie TON, Rucphen; past fairs include Art Eindhoven and EuropArtFair. A: In Issue 105 of Aesthetica, we feature Blue Bird. What is the inspiration behind this piece? DF: The idea came out of the blue. While creating this work I was inspired by an interesting combination of exotic from a documentary I watched plus blue light I’d seen somewhere that day. Also, I was in a peaceful mood and I think you can feel it when looking at the artwork. A: What was the process behind the creation of Blue Bird and how did it differ from works such as Snowstorm and Gold Explosion? DF: It was indeed very different. I was in a different point of my...

The 59th Venice Biennale takes its title from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington’s fantastical book The Milk of Dreams, in which she describes “a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination…” In this year’s central exhibition, 213 artists from 58 countries reflect on the unpredictability of the contemporary moment, exploring how the definition of humanity is constantly evolving. We select 10 must-see shows from the 2022 edition, including award-winning sculpture from America’s national pavilion and large-scale video installation that draws connections between humans and nature. Simone Leigh: Sovereignty | America Pavilion Simone Leigh transforms America’s neoclassical-style pavilion with thatch, wood and an array of powerful sculptures, expanding on her long-term exploration of self-determination. Abstract bodies crafted from bronze are found alongside meditative figures in ceramic, referencing artistic traditions associated with Af...

“Painting the Blue Period” at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., gives a glimpse of the artist before he came into his own with Cubism. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/V1vcaUB via IFTTT

In addition to playing the beating human heart on the Beatles’ glorious swan song Abbey Road, Paul McCartney’s bass provides melodic accompaniment, harmony, counterpoint, emphasis… and sometimes it just sings a little tune up and down the neck, the sort of thing a bass player can turn into needless showboating in rock and roll. That’s not at all the case on “Something,” where McCartney runs, slides, and bounces through the guitar solo, a moment when a support player might conserve his musical energy…. McCartney totally goes for it, as he does on every song, Fender amps pushed into overdrive through Abbey Road Studio’s famous compressors . Go on… put your LP on the Hi-Fi and listen to the way he swings on “Oh! Darling,” how he anchors “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” so heavily he almost makes Ringo’s bass drum redundant (but it isn’t), how he bounces through Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden” with an exaggerated music hall lilt, then, in the bridge, obliquely turns the song into a...

If only we could have had a teacher as insightful as Sir Ian McKellen explain some Shakespeare to us at an impressionable age. Above, a 38-year-old McKellen breaks down Macbeth’s famous final soliloquy as part of a 1978 master class in Acting Shakespeare. He makes it clear early on that relying on Iambic pentameter to convey the meaning of the verse will not cut it. Instead, he calls upon actors to apply the power of their intellect to every line, analyzing metaphors and imagery, while also noting punctuation, word choice, and of course, the events leading up to the speech. In this way, he says, “the actor is the playwright and the character simultaneously.” McKellen was, at the time, deeply immersed in Macbeth , playing the title role opposite Judi Dench in a bare bones Royal Shakespeare Company production that opened in the company’s Stratford studio before transferring to the West End. As McKellen recalled in a longer meditation on the trickiness of staging this particu...

Gallery Hyundai is showing seven artists who represent how the nation’s art has evolved since the Korean War. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/iA2VUzr via IFTTT

The long-delayed survey, now wrapped in the equivalent of caution tape, opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It’s been a learning-curve climb for four venues. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/rJIXGty via IFTTT

Igshaan Adams and Bronwyn Katz use abstraction and humble materials to make sense of a fraught terrain at the Venice Biennale. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/Op753fX via IFTTT

“Painting the Blue Period” at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., gives a glimpse of the artist before he came into his own with Cubism. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/R8lIdZs via IFTTT

The practice of cultivating mindfulness through meditation first took root in Europe and the U.S. in the 1960s, when Buddhist teachers from Japan, Tibet, Vietnam, and elsewhere left home, often under great duress, and taught Western students hungry for alternative forms of spirituality. Though popularized by countercultural figures like Alan Watts and Allen Ginsberg, the practice didn’t seem at first like it might reach those who seemed to need it most — stressed out denizens of the corporate world and military industrial complex who hadn’t changed their consciousness with mind-altering drugs, or left the culture to become monastics. Then professor of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn came along, stripped away religious and new age contexts, and began redesigning mindfulness for the masses in 1979 with his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Now everyone knows, or thinks they know, what mindfulness is. As meditation teacher Lokadhi Lloyd tells The Guardian , Kabat-Zinn is “M...

The word ‘abstract’ derives from the Latin abstractus, or ‘drawn away’. It’s suggestive of extraction, detachment or isolation: reducing something down to its component parts or taking them out of context. In fine art, the movement emerged in the 20th century, as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Georges Braque and Sonia Delaunay shocked audiences with a newfound focus on form and colour. This, in turn, inspired photographers to break the rules of composition. Today, lens-based artists continue to push the boundaries of the genre. Here are five such examples, as featured on online art platform Artsper . Shapes, Reflections and Cut-Outs Venezuelan artist Cristina Matos-Albers (b. 1982 above left) is interested in detail, structure and form. The artist experiments with colour, refracting light through bright geometric panes to create interesting gradients. It’s an approach reminiscent of Barbara Kasten (b. 1936), a pioneer of the genre. Elsewhere, Vik Muniz (b. 1961, right) tak...

Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually and in person in New York City. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/A7wxJGd via IFTTT

The world thinks of Japan as having transformed itself utterly after its defeat in the Second World War. And indeed it did, into what by the nineteen-eighties looked like a gleaming, technology-saturated condition of ultra-modernity. But the standard version of modernity, as conceived of in the early 20th century with its trains, telephones, and electricity, came to Japan long before the war did. “Between 1900 and 1940, Japan was transformed into an international, industrial, and urban society,” writes Museum of Fine Arts Boston curator Anne Nishimura Morse. “Postcards — both a fresh form of visual expression and an important means of advertising — reveal much about the dramatically changing values of Japanese society at the time.” These words come from the introductory text to the MFA’s 2004 exhibition “Art of the Japanese Postcard,” curated from an archive you can visit online today . (The MFA has also published it in book form .) You can browse the vintage Japanese postcards in...

It’s not everyday that New York has two Basquiat exhibitions. At “Art and Objecthood,” decoding the basics: his materials, iconography and unmistakable line. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/shwpxXt via IFTTT

The New York Public Library opened in 1911, an age of magnificence in American city-building. Eighteen years before that, writes architect-historian Witold Rybczynski , “Chicago’s Columbian Exposition provided a real and well-publicized demonstration of how the unruly American downtown could be tamed though a partnership of classical architecture, urban landscaping, and heroic public art.” Modeled after Europe’s urban civilization, the “White City” built on the ground of the Columbian Exposition inspired a generation of American architects and planners including John Nolen , Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. , and John Carrère , co-designer of the New York Public Library. Carrère appears in the Architectural Digest tour video of the NYPL building above — or at least his bust does, prominently placed as it is on the landing of one of the grand staircases leading up from the main entrance. The staircases are marble, as is much of else; when the NYPL opened after nine years of co...

A renowned photographer who hopes to persuade humans to love their insect brethren has teamed with scientists on a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/WtklnZV via IFTTT

In growing urban areas like Austin, Texas; Denver; and Raleigh, N.C., regional museums are rolling out the welcome mat. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/tSPGZr3 via IFTTT

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has undergone multiple renovations in its 80-plus years. This spring it has opened after yet another. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/1MyNGln via IFTTT

The Bronx Museum of the Arts celebrates a major anniversary with plans for expansion that will include a restaurant, a boutique and enhanced public spaces. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/CDWZhUA via IFTTT

A show at the Broad explores an artist’s efforts to confront the ills of society, and his own anxiety. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/FrhNTec via IFTTT

The National Portrait Gallery is embracing live performance to highlight American stories missing from its halls. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/TUPxCYy via IFTTT

The Manhattan museum’s first poet in residence plans to fill the space with “poem signs,” panels, interactive experiences and pop-up readings. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/ndrs1S4 via IFTTT

Masters like Cézanne, Matisse and Georgia O’Keeffe are on display across the country, as well as contemporary artists. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/j0f16ki via IFTTT

From Timeline comes a free streaming documentary called Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Greatest Architect?:  Frank Lloyd Wright is America’s greatest ever architect. But few people know about the Welsh roots that shaped his life and world-famous buildings. Now, leading Welsh architect Jonathan Adams sets off across America to explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces for himself. Along the way, he uncovers the tempestuous life story of the man behind them, and the secrets of his radical Welsh background . In a career spanning seven decades, Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings, and changed the face of modern architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Greatest Architect? will be added to our list of Free Documentaries , a subset of our collection 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More . Related Content How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs, “America’s National Toy” (1916) 12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wr...

The study of Islamic calligraphy is “almost inexhaustible,” begins German-born Harvard professor Annemarie Schimmel’s  Calligraphy and Islamic Culture , “given the various types of Arabic script and the extension of Islamic culture” throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. The first calligraphic script, called Ḥijāzī, allegedly originated in the Hijaz region, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad himself. Another version called Kūfī, “one of the earliest extant Islamic scripts,” developed and flourished in the “Abbasid Baghdad,” Anchi Hoh writes for the Library of Congress , “a major center of culture and learning during the classical Islamic age.” Despite the long and venerable history of calligraphy around the Islamic world, there is good reason for the saying that the Qur’an was “revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt, and written in Istanbul.” The Ottomans refined Arabic calligraphy to its highest degree, bringing the art into a “g...

In the National Gallery there hangs a portrait of an unknown woman, painted by an unknown artist around 1470 somewhere in southwestern Germany. This may sound like an artwork of little note, but it does boast one highly conspicuous mark of distinction: a housefly. It’s not that the portraitist was in such thrall to realism that he included an insect that happened to drop into the sitting; at first glance, the fly looks as if it belongs to our reality, and has alighted on the canvas itself.  Why would a painter, presumably commissioned at the considerable expense of the sitter’s family, include such a seemingly bizarre detail? National Gallery curator Francesca Whitlum-Cooper offers answers in the video below . “It’s a joke,” says Whitlum-Cooper. “And it’s a joke that works on different levels, because on the one hand, the fly has been tricked into thinking this is a real headdress,” fooled by the painter’s mastery of that most difficult color for light and shadow, white. ...

Bosco Sodi’s new museum in New York’s Catskill Mountains will feature artists from around the world and perhaps add some glimmer to a place that time has frayed. from Art Life Culture https://ift.tt/nqbEr6u via IFTTT

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” wrote George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the iconic dystopian novel first published in 1949. The statement remains chillingly relevant today, and it raises the question: who controls history? Award-winning artist Larry Achiampong (b. 1984) explores these ideas in his work, with projects such as Relic Traveller considering the rise of nationalism, capitalism and globalisation. Now, at the Aesthetica Future Now Symposium 2022 , Achiampong will discuss pop culture and postcolonialism, whilst questioning who, or what, shapes history. We caught up with the artist ahead of his talk on 5 May. A: How would you describe your role? LA: As an artist I do a range of things, I don’t just make artwork or work on commissions and exhibit, but I plan projects, build relationships and collaborations through continued conversations. Teaching is important to what I do – I taught at the RCA on the Phot...