L'Inhumaine

Marcel L'Herbier's 1924 film, with a score by Darius Milhaud:

Hans Haacke: Manhattan Real Estate Holdings

This is superb:

Hans Haacke's Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971... owned by the Whitney Museum.

Read about it here.

Here's an interview with Haacke:

Jazz Musicians Play Hendrix

Jaco Pastorius plays "Third Stone from the Sun":

Vijay Iyer plays "Because of Guns" (based on "Hey Joe"):

Cory Arcangel's Paganini

Niccolo Paganini's Fifth Caprice in A minor for solo violin, performed by Nathan Milstein:

Here is the original manuscript of all twenty-four caprices, published in 1820, and here is a modern edition of the score.  Cory Arcangel, who curently has a solo show at the Whitney Museum, wrote this computer code enabling him to edit together clips from a lot of YouTube videos of guitarists into a complete performance of the caprice:

This seems to effect an interesting Cartesian reversal: the Caprices, which are typically regarded as a spectacle of physical virtuosity with relatively little aesthetic merit or intellectual substance, are refashioned into basically a display of conceptual ingenuity involving no technical instrumental prowess whatsoever.  Rather than being dazzled by a performer's dexterity, agility, and the labor expended in mastering the work, we're dazzled by the idea and the technological expertise involved in writing the computer code.  At any rate, Arcangel sure does get you thinking.  Just imagine: around the world at any particular time, millions of musicians are collectively playing all the notes of every possible piece of music—everything that's ever been composed, and everything that ever will be (here's Arcangel's earlier Schoenberg/cat piece).  I wonder whether, with speech recognition technology, somebody could write some computer code that would edit together individual words spoken on youtube videos of people talking to recreate works of literature?  The bible could be recited by hip hop MCs; newcasters could recite Ezra Pound's Cantos...

Here's a filmed interview with Arcangel.

Martha Graham

Martha Graham dances in 1943:

Appalachian Spring:

Kurt Weill Sings

Here is Kurt Weill singing his composition "Speak Low":

Some books on Weill here, here, and here.  And here is an NPR segment on Weill and Lotte Lenya—their published letters are available here.

Saul Kripke

A lecture by the philosopher Saul Kripke:

Henri Matisse Talks, Paints, and Makes Collages

Son House: New Biography

Daniel Beaumont, a professor at the University of Rochester, has just published a biography of the blues singer Son House entitled Preachin' the Blues (see it on google books here).  Beaumont discusses his book:

And here are three filmed renditions of "Death Letter":

The Goldberg Variations

J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, in Dimiti Sitkovetksy's string trio arrangement:

....and interpreted by Wanda Landowska:

...Keith Jarrett:

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) during a visit to America in the late 1920s:

Download Archibald Henderson's early biography here.

Three Flutists

Claire Chase:

Alex Sopp:

Erin Lesser:

Ethel Waters

Here she is, singing "Am I Blue," in 1929:

A 1925 recording of "I've Found A New Baby":

Here she is in 1975, almost 80 years old, singing "His Eye Is On The Sparrow" at some kind of revival meeting (as she explains, she got religion in the last years of her life):

...His Eye Is On The Sparrow is also the title of her autobiography.

Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny... and many others... on the Dave Letterman Show:

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

Music/sculpture installations by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at the Barbican:

... and RPI in Troy, NY:

Read more here.

Smell-O-Vision

So now some researchers are trying to create a device that produces aromas while you're watching TV.  This idea isn't entirely new—there was an attempt to do the same thing in movie theaters in the early 1960s.  The failure of that enterprise suggests that smells may not enhance the viewing experience compellingly.  At any rate, there's a longstanding question about whether film/TV viewing is really about realism at all—remember, many people, like Sergei Eisenstein, opposed adding sound to movies in the 1920s on the grounds that film aesthetics ought not to be be realistic.  Of course, another possibility is that this is all just another attempt to thwart digital piracy by adding non-downloadable enrichment to entertainment products.

Weird Al Yankovic offers some thoughts:

Richard Pryor

U.C. Berkeley Professor Scott Saul is writing a biography of Richard Pryor:

Some clips:

Gunter Hampel

A Deutschewelle news item on Gunter Hampel:

Live at the Velvet Lounge in Washington, D.C.:

Listen to his early album Heartplants here.

Lester Bowie and The Leaders

Great group from the 1980s featuring Bowie (tpt), Arthur Blythe (alto sax), Chico Freeman (tenor sax), Kirk Lightsey (pno), Cecil McBee (bass), and Don Moye (drums):

Try to track down a copy of their album Mudfoot.

Dick Hyman's The Age of Electronicus

A 1969 Moog synthesizer album by Dick Hyman, featuring tracks such as "Time is Tight":

Jacques Derrida and Ornette Coleman

You can read a transcript of Jacques Derrida's 1997 conversation with Ornette Coleman here.

Robert Christgau

A 1999 documentary about rock critic Robert Christgau:

Richard Arum, Meet Branford Marsalis

Here's a nice example of lived experience and social scientific research reaching the same conclusions.  Richard Arum's written a book called Academically Adrift, with Josipa Roksa, about how students today aren't learning much of anything.

Branford Marsalis evidently didn't need to read this book to know the same thing, as he explains in this 2006 interview:

Geoff Dyer on Michael Fried

Geoff Dyer explains here that he's not a fan of Michael Fried's prose :(  Too much metadiscourse for Dyer's liking, it seems.

Make up your own mind by reading some of Fried's work for yourself in a Critical Inquiry article about Jeff Wall here.  Part of the problem seems to be that Fried has virtually published a spoken lecture verbatim; here's the lecture:

Since Fried certainly knows that spoken and written language have different conventions, I suppose he simply didn't see any reason to bother making more than a few superficial revisions to the lecture before publishing it.  Some version of this lecture may be in the book on photography that Dyer critiques, although I'm not sure whether it's been more substantially revised there, since it's hard to find excerpts of the book online...  But probably the underlying cause is Fried's haste to rush to publish, and the failure of his publisher, Yale University Press, to devote editorial resources to improving the manuscript.  This is probably just a case of melted gorgonzola—a big cheese becoming sloppy.  Fried's published eleven books and knows that he can get away with this.  His early work is better written; compare the opening of "Art and Objecthood," from 1967:

The enterprise known variously as Minimal Art, ABC Art, Primary Structures, and Specific Objects is largely ideological. It seeks to declare and occupy a position—one that can be formulated in words, and in fact has been formulated by—some of its leading practitioners.

...with the opening of the Jeff Wall essay:

I want to begin by considering a well-known picture by the contemporary Vancouver- based photographer Jeff Wall, the full title of which is Adrian Walker, artist, drawing from a specimen in a laboratory in the Dept. of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (1992; Fig. 1).  Technically, it is a large Cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbox, which is to say illuminated from behind by fluorescent lights (Wall's preferred medium).

UPDATE: Michael Fried's response (scroll to the bottom of the letters web page) basically seems to  amount to a tacit acknowledgement of the problem and its cause.  He refrains from commenting on the substance of Dyer's criticism, instead simply plugging his newest book.  In other words , Fried isn't really too concerned about whether his books are well written; he just wants to write lots of them and make sure that lots of people know it.  Quality succumbs to quantity...

Raymond Queneau

A comme arithmétique:

Exercices de style:

Zazie dans le metro:

Richard Sennett

The sociologist Richard Sennett discusses his life and work:

Marshall McLuhan

The CBC archives has a lot of clips of Marshall McLuhan, who would have turned 100 today, here.  Considering that he was ubiquitous public intellectual during the ’60s and ’70s, it's surprising how far McLuhan's receded from the public consciousness today.  Aside from a few key insights and slogans, many of his ideas don't seem to have worn terribly well—and the whole hot and cool media distinction never seemed to make a lot of sense to begin with, as Alan Jacobs discusses in this rather critical article.  Here's a 1968 conversation between McLuhan and Norman Mailer:

Buster Keaton

This article on Buster Keaton is worth reading.  The author, Jana Prikryl, has written an interesting range of stuff, like this and this.

Georges Simenon

(1903–89)

Two filmed interviews:

Music and Baseball

Anthony Tommasini writes about music at a Yankee game.  It would have been nice if he'd mentioned Timothy Johnson's book about Charles Ives and Baseball.  (Read an excerpt here.)

(Ives is on the left.)

Leo Tolstoy

See him:

And hear his voice:

Download War and Peace here and here... and Anna Karenina here.

Mondo Cane

This film is offensive:

Schoenberg's Violin Phantasy: Gould & Menuhin

Visit the Arnold Schoenberg Center's website here.

Schoenberg's grandson Randol explains that "My father's name is also an anagram, Ronald.  And so are the middle names of my three siblings: Roland, Lorand and Raldon.  The only possibilities left are Dranol, Orland and Dorlan, so we had to stop that tradition."

Frank Zappa Plays the Bicycle

Jeanne Lee

Jeanne Lee with Ran Blake:

...and Mal Waldron:

Read Eric Porter's article about her here.

Louis Andriessen's Workers Union

Louis Andriessen's 1975 composition "Workers Union" performed by The Bang on a Can All-Stars:

...Crash Ensemble:

...Ensemble Offspring:

...A group at William Paterson University:

...

...Third Coast Percussion:

...and Eighth Blackbird:

Read about "Workers Union" here.  And for more on Andriessen, read Yayoi Uno Everett's book.

That's Life

Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon's song, sung by Frank Sinatra:

....and James Brown:

Roland Petit's Carmen

Roland Petit (1924-2011)

Fortunately, Richard White has tenure

So this guy's just published a book about how the big four, who built the transcontinental railroad, were a bunch of unethical bums.  And, as Michael Kazin (who's Alfred Kazin's son) points out in his review of the book, "White seems to take particular pleasure in belittling the image of the man who founded the well-endowed university that currently employs him."  Well it's a good thing that Professor White has tenure.  Back in the days before scholars had job security, he'd have likely been fired for telling the truth.  Jane Stanford would have turfed him out in no time, the same way she did in the case of Professor Edward A. Ross.

Edouard Manet's Argenteuil—Les Canotiers

Check out T. J. Clark's book on Manet.

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier asks, "If you are only a reflector of information, are you really there?"  ...which reminds me of this blog.

Joan Mitchell

A video interview with the painter Joan Mitchell:

More of her paintings:

Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope

Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904)

"The Horse in Motion":

...commissioned by Leland Stanford:

Here's an animated version:

And here's a zoopraxiscope disc:

You can listen to, or read, this NPR feature on the 2010 Corcoran Gallery Exhibit.  And there's a big book of Muybridge photographs—or you can download the complete text of Animal Locomotion here.  Also check out Rebecca Solnit's book.

Fly

Nat King Cole, "Straighten Up and Fly Right":

Jean-Paul Sartre, "Les Mouches":

Lord of the Flies:

Sarah Vaughan, "Fly Me to the Moon":

Curtis Mayfield, "Superfly":

Herbie Hancock, "Butterfly":

Esperanza Spalding, "Little Fly":

William Blake, "Little Fly":


Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And Drink,& sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath,
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die.

Tristan Murail's La Mandragore

Pianist Sophia Valliant perform's Tristan Murail's composition La Mandragore:

Murail's complete writings were published in an issue of Contemporary Music Review.  Anthony Cornicello's dissertation on Murail is available here.

Duane Hanson's Hyperrealism

Also check out Duane Hanson's sunbather sculpture here.

George Lewis: Les Exercises Spirituels

George E. Lewis's recent composition, performed at Brown University by Dinosaur Annex:

The album is for sale (for personnel, see here).  Lewis discusses the composition:

He talks on video some more here and here.  Check out his book on the AACM.

Henriette Darricarrère

She was Henri Matisse's model during the early to mid-1920s:

Zoom in on another painting here, and some sketches here, here and here.  Read more here, here, and here.  And look at this and this.  He painted her a lot.

More etchings and paintings:

Picasso, Le désir attrapé par la queue

Pablo Picasso's surrealist play, "Desire Caught by the Tail" (1941):

The cast at the premiere performance featured Michel Leiris, Raymond Queneau, Zanie Campanm Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louise Leiris, Jacques Bost, Dora Maar, Germaine Hugnet, and Jean Aubier.

Jazz Musicians on T.V. Commercials

Louis Armstrong—Schaeffer Beer:

Cab Calloway—Hula Hoops:

Benny Goodman—Geico Insurance:

Les Paul—Coors Beer:

Ella Fitzgerald—Memorex:

Ella Fitzgerald: Kentucky Fried Chicken:

Miles Davis—Honda Scooter:

Oscar Peterson—Royal Bank:

Buddy Rich—Synsonics Drums:

Mel Tormé—Revlon:

Stan Getz—Muriel Cigars:

Ray Charles—California Raisins:

Ray Charles—Diet Pepsi:

Ron Carter—Tully's Coffee:

Herbie Hancock—Suntory Whiskey:

Bobby McFerrin—Ocean Spray:

Kenny G—Audi:

Wynton Marsalis—The iPod:

Harry Connick—The National Football League:

John Pizzarelli—Foxwoods Casino: