Here is a little macabre fun for your Tuesday morning - an old David Lynch miniseries (from 1993). This comes via Open Culture, the curators of cool on the interwebs.

Watch David Lynch’s Hotel Room: The Complete Miniseries Featuring Harry Dean Stanton, Griffin Dunne, and Crispin Glover (1993)

December 9th, 2013


David Foster Wallace once came up with this academic definition of the Lynchian: “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.” Twin Peaks, the famously David Lynch-created series that ran in ABC primetime in 1990 and 1991, gave American television its first strong shot of the Lynchian. Though the director who had earlier offered up Eraserhead and Blue Velvet would spend most of his creative energy later that decade on cinema — the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk with Me, the twitchy neo-noir Lost Highway, and the seemingly heartwarming but deceptively grim The Straight Story — he followed up Twin Peaks by making more TV shows, expressing varying degrees of the Lynchian, and meeting with varying degrees of acclaim. These include the documentary series American Chronicles, the retro sitcom On the Air (which Wallace describes as “mercifully ablated”), and the more highly appreciated (if even lesser-known) HBO miniseries Hotel Room, all of whose three episodes you can watch above. Lynch directed, and Barry Gifford (collaborator on Lost Highway and Wild at Heart) wrote, the first and third episodes; the second comes directed by James Signorelli and written by Bright Lights, Big City author Jay McInerney.

“For a millennium the space for the hotel room existed – undefined,” pronounces Lynch at the top of each chapter. “Mankind captured it and gave it shape and passed through. And sometimes when passing through, they found themselves brushing up against the secret names of truth.” All of Hotel Room‘s episodes play out in one such space in particular, number 603 of New York City’s Railroad Hotel. Each visits it in a different era, though, in typically Lynchian fashion, the hotel’s ageless maid and bellboy exist outside of time. The first story, set in 1969, finds 603 occupied by a prostitute, her hapless john Moe (played by Harry Dean Stanton), and a shady fellow who knows a bit too much about Moe’s past. The second, featuring Griffin Dunne and Mariska Hargitay, tells the then-present day tale of three fashionable young ladies and how they deal with one’s unstoppably amorous fiancée. The most enclosed and haunting of these chamber pieces happens during a blackout in 1936 wherein 603′s occupants, a couple played by Crispin Glover and Alicia Witt, make their way through a psychologically harrowing confrontation with the death of their son. While little in Hotel Room qualifies as “very macabre,” per se, the series still reflects a distinctive vision of America as a flat and colloquial yet crisply formal interplay of light and dark — one I can only call Lynchian.

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~ Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, literature, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Facebook page.

Take a Virtual Tour of the 1913 “Armory Show” - America's First Exposure to Avant-Garde Art

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912. Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This is the art show that all students of modernist art - from Dada to Surrealism, from Futurism to Cubism - know about and would love to have attended. For the first time in an American Gallery (actually the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York), major figures such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, and Duchamp, among others, displayed their art to a new and unsuspecting audience.

The 1913 Armory Show was the largest and most widely publicized exhibition of European avant-garde art ever held in the United States to date. It was organized by a small group of progressive East Coast artists who, in December 1911, banded together to form the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS). Dissatisfied with the conservative standards of New York City's official arbiter of taste, the National Academy of Design, they were determined to hold exhibitions with a wider, more representative range of contemporary American artists. By the late summer of 1912, with the immense 69th Regiment Armory secured as their first exhibition's venue, the AAPS decided to include the most recent developments in art outside the United States as well.

Prior to the Armory Show, there were few places to see avant-garde art in the United States. European modernism had been slowly appearing on the New York art scene for some time through Alfred Steiglitz's pioneering gallery, 291, while nascent American modernists were welcomed at the Madison and the Macbeth Galleries, as well as at the studio of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. In Chicago, opportunities to see vanguard art prior to 1913 were even more limited. The most advanced art yet exhibited in the city's few progressive art galleries, like those of W. Scott Thurber, Albert Roullier, and J. W. Young—as well as at the Art Institute—was French and American Impressionism. In the year preceding the Armory Show's arrival, however, a number of more radical artists infiltrated the city. In March 1912, under a special arrangement with Steiglitz's 291, the Thurber Gallery presented the works of the American artist Arthur Dove to generally positive reviews. Less than a year later, the Art Institute itself mounted two exhibitions of contemporary European art: the Exhibition of Contemporary German Graphic Art (January 1913), which included works by such Expressionist artists as Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, and Hermann Max Pechstein; and the Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art (March 1913), which consisted mostly of artists working in Post-Impressionist styles and featured Edvard Munch.

It was not a coincidence that the Art Institute was the only museum to host the Armory Show. Since its founding in 1879, the museum's progressive mission had been not only to educate the public about the history of art, but to serve as "a museum of living thought" that, through temporary exhibitions, lectures, club meetings, concerts, pageants, plays, and parties, would encourage a wide range of the public to take an active interest in the fine arts. Indeed, the regularity and frequency with which the Art Institute mounted exhibitions of works by living artists alongside its collection of antique casts and Old Master paintings was still unusual for the time. In January 1912, in response to recent criticism of the "rough-and-tumble of temporary exhibitions at the Institute," Harriet Monroe, one of the city's premier cultural critics, defended the museum's commitment to contemporary art:

Any museum which would offer only the perfect and absolute to the hard pressed, preoccupied American public would offer them in vain, keep them "in cold storage." Such a museum, superior to popular and momentary needs and desires, existing for the instructed and elect, would become cold, empty and soulless, a mere uninhabited treasure house, as so many museums are. The Art Institute may be over-active, over-hospitable, overcrowded with passing  exhibitions and students, but at least it is alive. There is always something doing there, its galleries are usually crowded, it is reaching the people. If the temporary exhibitions are too free, at least they try to offer a fair summary of contemporary achievement, to inform us of what is going on.1

This attitude of the Art Institute is responsible not only for the museum's bringing the Amory Show to Chicago but also for the very way in which it chose to present, advertise, celebrate, and remember the exhibition—an approach that, to some AAPS organizers, appeared more like the proceedings of a circus than a serious art exhibition.

1 Harriet Monroe, "Rothenstein Counsels Perfection as Standard for Museums of Art.," Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 14, 1912.

The show is a virtual tour, which is a little less fun to navigate, but it provides a feel for what the walls of the exhibit actually looked like and how viewers would have seen the works. As an added benefit, you download the original program for the show, as well as several other supporting documents.

Take a Virtual Tour of the 1913 Exhibition That Introduced Avant-Garde Art to America

February 28th, 2013

One hundred years ago, America had only just begun talking about “avant garde” art. Before the famous “Armory Show,” no one was even using the term; after it, United States’ art-watchers had many reasons to. It’s what they saw on display at the exhibition, mounted by two dozen artists entirely without public funding. Properly called The International Exhibition of Modern Art, the show got its popular name by starting out in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York. It then moved to Chicago and Boston, provoking shock, dismissal, and sometimes even appreciation across the East Coast and Midwest. A little Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp can do that to you.

Or at least, they do that to you if you live in 1913 and have never seen such bold destruction and reinvention of visual art’s established forms. To mark the Armory Show’s centennial, the Art Institute of Chicago has recreated its viewing experience on the web. There you can explore the galleries as Chicagoans actually saw them a century ago, albeit in black-and-white. The site also provides much in the way of context, offering articles on the exhibition’s genesis, program notes, legacy, and more. You can learn more about the impact of the Armory Show in this recent NPR piece, which quotes Museum of Modern Art curator Leah Dickerman on the subject: “It’s this moment in time, 100 years ago, in which the foundations of cultural practice were totally reordered in as great a way as we have seen. And that this marks a reordering of the rules of art-making — it’s as big as we’ve seen since the Renaissance.”

via @coudal

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• MoMA Puts Pollock, Rothko & de Kooning on Your iPad

~ Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film - The Blood of a Poet (1930)

Way weird and ultra cool, although my tastes run to the surreal, symbolic, and non-rational.

Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film From 1930, The Blood of a Poet

November 8th, 2012

In a 1946 essay Jean Cocteau cautions against making a quick interpretation of his first film, The Blood of a Poet, with a quote from Montaigne:

Most of Aesop’s fables have many different levels and meanings. There are those who make myths of them by choosing some feature that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most superficial aspect. There are others that are more vital, more essential and profound, that they have not been able to reach.

Cocteau conceived The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète) in late 1929, soon after the publication of his novel Les Enfants Terribles. He had just kicked his opium habit and was entering one of the most prolific periods of his career. The film is often called a surrealist work, but Cocteau rejected the association, saying that he had set out “to avoid the deliberate manifestations of the unconscious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wandered as though in a labyrinth.” He goes on:

The Blood of a Poet draws nothing from either dreams or symbols. As far as the former are concerned, it initiates their mechanism, and by letting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets memories entwine, move and express themselves freely. As for the latter, it rejects them, and substitutes acts, or allegories of these acts, that the spectator can make symbols of if he wishes.

Many of its first spectators saw anti-Christian symbolism in the film. Although production ended in September of 1930, Cocteau was not able to get his film shown publicly until January of 1932. The Blood of a Poet features the only film appearance by Lee Miller, a noted photographer and model of Man Ray. (She plays a statue.) The film is now considered a classic of experimental cinema and is the first in what came to be known as Cocteau’s “Orphic Trilogy,” which includes Orphée (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1959). The Blood of a Poet will be added to our collection of free movies online.

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Open Culture Offers Surreal Friday with Films by Dali and Buñuel

Cool stuff - I love surrealism.

Make Friday Surreal With Two Vintage Films by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel

June 29th, 2012

While studying at the University of Madrid in the late 1910s, a young Luis Buñuel befriended an even younger Salvador Dalí. The first fruit of their association, a short film called Un Chien Andalou, appeared a decade later, in 1929, and quickly achieved the international renown it still has today. Several elements had to fall into place to bring this cinematic dream — or cinematic nightmare, or, most accurately, something nebulously in-between — into reality. First, Buñuel gained experience in the medium by assistant-directing on major silent-era European films like Mauprat, La chute de la maison Usher, and La Sirène des Tropiques. Then, Buñuel dreamt of the simultaneous image of a cloud slicing through the moon and a razor slicing through an eye. Then, Dalí dreamt of a human hand covered in ants. With those two visuals in place, they proceeded to collaborate on the rest of the film, working under the principle that “no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.”

We could discuss Un Chien Andalou‘s rationally inexplicable images, but wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? The moon, the eye, the hand, the ants, the cyclist in the nun’s habit — these nonsensical but enduring images must be seen, and you can do that free on YouTube. But at sixteen minutes, the movie will only whet your aesthetic appetite for Buñuel and Dalí’s particular flavor of flamboyantly nonsensical, grimly satirical imagery. Luckily, you can follow it up with 1930′s L’Age d’Or, which began as another Buñuel-Dalí joint venture until the two suddenly went their separate ways after writing the script. Buñuel took over, crafting a wryly savage five-part critique of the Roman Catholic Church. Buñuel and Dalí had prepared themselves for shock-induced physical violence at the premiere of Un Chien Andalou, only to find that the crowd had heartily approved. But L’Age d’Or drew enough fire for both pictures and then some, getting banned in France and eventually withdrawn from distribution until re-emerging in 1979. Now you can watch it whenever you like on the internet, suggesting that the controversy has evaporated — yet the images remain as surreal a way as any to begin your weekend.

You will find these surreal films listed in our collection of 500 Free Movies Online.

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

Open Culture - David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psychotic Backyard Craziness (NSFW)

WOW, one has to wonder what David Lynch would be like if he didn't meditate every day. His subjectivity must be a scary place . . . or at least the glimpses of it that he shares with us are eerie and freaky. His album, from which this video comes, is Crazy Clown Time.

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psychotic Backyard Craziness (NSFW)

April 3rd, 2012

What could be more wholesome and all-American than a backyard barbecue? Unless, of course, the backyard in question belongs to David Lynch.

Lynch has long-since established himself as a sort of anti-Norman Rockwell. This week, with the release of a new video to go with his debut music album, Crazy Clown Time, Lynch stays true to form. As he explained to Entertainment Weekly when the video was still in production, “A ‘Crazy Clown Time’ should have an intense psychotic backyard craziness, fueled by beer.” Yesterday Lynch offered further explanation when he sent a message on Twitter announcing the release: “Be the 1st on your block to see the Advancement of the Race which Conway Twitty spoke so clearly.”

The video lasts seven minutes and might be considered NSFW, depending on your office’s policy on nudity, demonic wailing and depictions of people pouring lighter fluid on their spiked mohawk hairdo and setting it afire.

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Destino - Salvador Dali Does Disney

Very cool and deeply weird, and it does exactly what it is meant to do, offer a visual explication of Dali's version of surrealism. The story is that this was made almost 70 years, but some of the animation looks state of the art - I'm a little skeptical that is this a Dali work. [OK, a little digging and I think it is valid.]

Either way, however, it's amazing to watch. Thanks to whoever it was at Facebook from whom I stole this video.

Disney cartoon by Salvador Dali

68 years ago Walt Disney has asked Salvador Dali to draw a cartoon film which would be an embodiment of his idea of surrealism. But it turned out that it was so unusual to the ordinary spectator that Disney did not display it, and it was not available to the public until 2003.

Tags: Art, animation, cartoons, surrealism, Salvador Dali, Walt Disney, dream-like, images, heroine, Destino

Brothers Quay - The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984)

I've been watching a collection of the short films of the Brothers Quay the last couple of nights. Some of them I have seen before, others are new and very strange, as a true fan would expect. Here is a good sample of their work.



And here is a bit about this particular film.

The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, Prague's Alchemist of Film (its full on-screen title) began life as an hour-long documentary for Channel 4's esoteric late-night film strand Visions about the work of the great Czech animator, filmmaker and card-carrying Surrealist artist. The programme was made up of extracts from Svankmajer's work interspersed with analysis from critics, art historians and Surrealists, linked by nine animated sequences by the Brothers Quay. These links were subsequently joined together and released to cinemas as a separate 14-minute short.

Even after the removal of the contextual material, what remains is surprisingly coherent and accessible, at least by the Quays' usual standards. Though prior familiarity with Svankmajer's work helps, even a complete newcomer (which would have described most of the original audience) will be able to glean that he's based in Prague, that he's fascinated by the era of the sixteenth-century Bohemian emperor Rudolf II, especially his court painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (creator of portraits of human faces made up of fruit, vegetables, fish and other assorted objects), and that he has a peculiar addiction both to the hidden power of inanimate objects in general and, more specifically, their texture and feel.

While the Quays' film draws heavily on these elements of Svankmajer's universe, it otherwise makes no attempt at imitating his highly individual style. This was partly an expedient measure dictated by the demands of the original documentary, where it would clearly have been undesirable to risk confusing actual Svankmajer clips with the Quays' work - but it also allows them to delve far deeper into Svankmajer's philosophy by giving it an alternative interpretation via their own distinctive imagery.

The puppet representing Svankmajer bears little resemblance to the man himself: he's an Arcimboldesque representation whose head is made up largely of books. Throughout the film, he demonstrates his ideas to an unnamed child 'pupil', whose hollowed-out head he literally empties at the start, before crowning it with a small book-hairstyle of its own at the end to suggest that his education is complete.

The closing credits supply two dedications, the other being in memory of the then recently deceased Zdenek Liska (1922-1983). A major though undervalued composer, largely because his best work was produced for stage and screen, his music can be heard throughout the Quays' film in excerpts taken from the Svankmajer films Historia Naturae, Suita (1967), The Flat (Byt, 1968) and The Ossuary (Kostnice, 1970).

~ Michael Brooke

*The short film version is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003', while the original full-length Channel 4 documentary is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films'

Tags: film, animation, surrealism, Brothers Quay, The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, 1984, Michael Brooke, Quay Brothers, The Short Films 1979-2003, Prague's Alchemist of Film, Channel 4, BBC