An older tutorial (2015) from the wise folks at The School Of Life, who have demonstrated the knack of providing solutions to mankind’s perennial problems in videos of less than 5 minutes in duration.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
FIELD TRIP TO GORDON MATTA-CLARK’S “SPLITTING HOUSE”, circa 1974, 33min
Holly Solomon, Gordon Matta-Clark, and a schoolbus full of people travel from 98 Greene Street in SOHO to the Englewood, NJ site of Matta-Clark’s site-specific work, “Splitting.”
From the Holly Solomon Gallery records, circa 1948-2003. Archives of American Art. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/hol…
JAMES BALDWIN DEBATES WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, Cambridge University, 1965, 60min
Historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
Below is an interesting commentary which looks back upon the debate, from OpenCulture.com:
One often hears lamented the lack of well-spoken public intellectuals in America today. Very often, the lamenters look back to James Baldwin, who in the 1950s and 1960s wrote such powerful race-, class-, and sex-examining books as Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and The Fire Next Time, as one of the greatest figures in the field. Though Baldwin expatriated himself to France for much of his life, he seems never to have let the state of his homeland drift far from his mind, and his opinions on it continued to put a charge into the grand American debate.
Continue reading JAMES BALDWIN DEBATES WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, Cambridge University, 1965, 60min
LEONARD BERNSTEIN: THE UNANSWERED QUESTION, Harvard Lecture Series, 1973, excerpt from Lecture #1 , 5min.
The Unanswered Question is the title of a lecture series given by Leonard Bernstein in the fall of 1973. This series of six lectures was a component of Bernstein’s duties as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry for the 1972-73 academic year at Harvard University, and is therefore often referred to as the Norton Lectures. The lectures were both recorded on video and printed as a book, titled The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard.
During his year as visiting professor at Harvard University, Leonard Bernstein had various duties, such as being in residence and advising students, but historically the most significant of these was to deliver a series of lectures. This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse.
FRANK STELLA :: WOLFEBORO I , 1966
Wolfeboro I is a 1966 abstract painting by Frank Stella. It is currently in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
REBELS: A JOURNEY UNDERGROUND, EPISODE 2 OF 6 “A NEW KIND OF BOHEMIAN”, documentary 47min.
Episode 2 of the 6-part canadian documentary series, “Rebels”, by writer/director Kevin Alexander. “A New Kind Of Bohemian” focuses on The Beat Generation: “Following World War II, a new period of post-war social complexity overtook America. It was during this turbulent, often repressive Cold War time that Jack Kerouac coined the phrase, “beat” and gave birth to a new literary movement. This film follows the activities of this new breed of writer: Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsburg and a handful of outsiders who became known as the “Beat Generation.”
WOODY HARRIS :: I GREET THE CROW IN THE PINK THUNDERBIRD, 1976
A wonderful fingertyle guitar piece by Woody Harris. From his album “American Guitar Solos”, Arhoolie Records, 1976. There isn’t much information about Woody Harris out there, but he was a classical guitarist who released at least three solo albums and one collaboration album with Mike Bloomfield in the 70s.
ALEX COUWENBERG: SESSIONS: THE MAKING OF LA FONDA, documentary, 20min.
A very well-made and engaging mini-documentary on the working process of Alex Couwenberg. Continue reading ALEX COUWENBERG: SESSIONS: THE MAKING OF LA FONDA, documentary, 20min.
ERNEST HAAS, photographer “I am not interested in shooting new things – I am interested to see things new.”
A group of women in santa costumes ride through the streets of New York in a red convertible, 1969. (Photo by Ernst Haas/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
A cracked pane of glass, March 1963. (Photo by Ernst Haas/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Buildings on Third Avenue, New York reflected in a shop window, 1952. (Photo by Ernst Haas/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
1953: On 5th Avenue, New York, pedestrians and buildings reflected almost perfectly in a window. (Photo by Ernst Haas/Ernst Haas/Getty Images)
Lights from a neon sign and a stained glass window, reflected in a swimming pool, California, USA, July 1977. (Photo by Ernst Haas/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921 – September 12, 1986) was a photojournalist and a pioneering color photographer. During his 40-year career, the Austrian-born artist bridged the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a medium for expression and creativity. In addition to his prolific coverage of events around the globe after World War II, Haas was an early innovator in color photography. His images were widely disseminated by magazines like Life and Vogue and, in 1962, were the subject of the first single-artist exhibition of color photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He served as president of the cooperative Magnum Photos, and his book The Creation (1971) was one of the most successful photography books ever, selling 350,000 copies.
Haas was uninterested in learning photography as a child, though his father—an avid amateur—tried to share his interest. Upon his father’s death in 1940, however, Haas first entered the darkroom, learning to print old family negatives. His interest grew, and he soon began to take his own photographs.
REBELS: A JOURNEY UNDERGROUND, EPISODE 1, “SOCIETY’S SHADOW”, 47 MIN
Rebels: A Journey Underground is an excellent Canadian documentary history of “the counterculture” produced for television in the late 1990s and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. It’s the work of writer/director Kevin Alexander, who did a great job with it. More people should see it. I’m happy to see that the series has been posted in full on YouTube.
The six-part series covers a wide swath of historical countercultures moving from William Blake and 1830s Parisian bohemians to mostly 20th century movements like hippie, Jazz, Beatniks, punk, and what was at the time the series was produced, the brave new world of cyberspace. Continue reading REBELS: A JOURNEY UNDERGROUND, EPISODE 1, “SOCIETY’S SHADOW”, 47 MIN
The Incubator 