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I've shared some of Aiden Arata's other delightful digital quarantine art, and once again, she does not disappoint. But if I want to win, I guess I'm going to have to take up knitting.
Top image: Ms Crowley's Classroom / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest
The Night Watch is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt. It hangs in The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Today, the museum posted the "largest and most detailed ever photograph of The Night Watch on its website, making it possible to zoom in on individual brushstrokes and even particles of pigment in the painting." I've been exploring it and it's incredible!
The Rijksmuseumâs imaging team led by datascientist Robert Erdmann made this photograph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 exposures. The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of neural networks. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapixels (44,804,687,500 pixels), and the distance between each pixel is 20 micrometres (0.02 mm). This enables the scientists to study the painting in detail remotely. The image will also be used to accurately track any future aging processes taking place in the painting.
Okay, now THAT is a selfie.
This is such a cool photography/biology experiment. Read the rest
Banksy hung this stunning painting in the foyer of Southampton General Hospital's emergency department. Apparently the installation of the framed, one meter square artwork was completed in cahoots with the hospital management. Video below.
Banksy left a note that reads, "Thanks for all you're doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if its only black and white."
According to the BBC, "the painting will remain at Southampton General Hospital until the autumn when it will be auctioned to raise money for the [UK's National Health Service]."
In 1984, pioneering street artist Keith Haring painted a mural in Collingwood, Melbourne at a school there. Today, that mural is only one of 31 Haring murals that still exist, but it was almost lost to time and controversy. Above is "Keith Haring Uncovered," a documentary telling the story of Haring's time down under and what happened after he was gone. From CityLab:
Read the restCollingwood was an industrial, blue-collar neighborhood when Haring arrived, but gentrification has swept through recently, filling it up with art galleries and expensive real estate. The school closed in 1987. In 2004, the mural was added to the Victorian Heritage Register but it continued to deteriorate. A concerned local stole the small wooden door that contained Haringâs signature to spare it from further decay. In 2010, Creative Victoria, a state agency that advocates for local creative industries, took over management of the site and an effort to conserve the mural began as part of a plan to make the former school into the new Collingwood Arts Precinct.
Today, the mural looks as fresh as it ever has, restored in 2014 by Antonio Rava, who is now responsible for the same task in Amsterdam. The anonymous door thiefâone of the more rewarding interviews in Uncoveredâreturned the prized possession to its right place knowing that the muralâs fate appears to be in good hands now.
An incredibly dedicated art project from the very talented @madebyedgar, of Jersey City NJ. You can purchase Edgar's art here. Read the rest
Police procedural novelist Michael Connelly is a connoisseur of jazz music so it's no surprise that his most famous character, LAPD detective Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch, is also a deep enthusiast of the genre. (Connelly has a page on his personal Web site all about the "music in the novels.") Illustrator Russell Walks took those cues and his own penchant for Los Angeles noir and mid-century design to create a terrific series of imaginary Michael Connelly albums released by Blue Note Records.
"Most of these pieces were influenced or inspired by the work of Reid Miles, the designer who created somewhere around 500 covers for Blue Note Records in the mid-twentieth century," Russell writes. "Iâm not breaking new ground here; Milesâ work has been the launching point for a thousand other designers and artists. Still, thereâs something about the way these mid-century colors & typefaces just seem to fit Harryâs L.A., a place where shadows and sadness are as common as sunshine."
"The Bosch Series" (Russell Walks Illustration)
âI painted a happy little scene from Animal Crossing. Doomguy is there too!â
This video is from Two Ruru Paints, IMGURian @tworuru's YouTube show in which he paints landscapes and scenes from video games and pop culture. Read the rest
I was invited to participate in the Face Shield Art project and draw illustrations on a face shield. The one I scribbled on, along with other face shield art, is up for auction on eBay.
Proceeds from the auction sales will go toward protective equipment for healthcare workers. Read the rest
Soundwaves Art is the brainchild and handiwork of Austin-based visual artist Tim Wakefield, who creates digital prints based on the visualized waveforms of popular songs.
For example, here's one made from "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran that's signed by the band themselves:
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"Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd:
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"I'm Amazed" by My Morning Jacket
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It's a pretty cool project overall, and Wakefield has also registered it as a 501(c)(3) non-profit:
Read the restSoundwaves Art Foundation's (501c3) mission is to find and collaborate with organizations that make a lasting impact on society's greatest challenges.
âYou need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you," Andy Warhol said.
A collection of Warhol's Polaroid photos and snapshots are up for auction at Christie's to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundationâs emergency relief fund for artists. The body of work is title "Better Days."
DICK-RNN is a recurrent neural network trained with 10,000 doodles of dicks. You start drawing a shape and the AI tries its best to finish it as a penis. Starting with the balls helps a lot.
For the technical background and conceptual inspiration: GitHub page for DICK-RNN Read the rest
"The Angel, The Automobilist, and Eighteen Others" is a new collection of early drawings by eccentric illustrator and storyteller Edward Gorey (1925-2000). Over at The Comics Journal, Mark Dery, author of the Gorey biography Born to Be Posthumous, reviews the slim new volume while considering where Gorey's odd oeuvre sits (or doesn't) in the comic book tradition. Dery writes:
Read the rest[Gorey's] library, at the time of his death, included anthologies of Bill Wattersonâs Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larsonâs Far Side, the droll caricatures of Ronald Searle, European comics like AstĂ©rix and Tintin (HergeÌâs ligne claire aesthetic surely chimed, in Goreyâs mind, with the crisp line of his own hand-drawn âengravingsâ), 12 volumes of Hyperionâs Library of Classic American Comic Strips, Winsor McCayâs Little Nemo, and Wilhelm Buschâs classic Max and Moritz (1865), a black-comedy parody of moralizing childrenâs literature like Heinrich Hoffmannâs macabre Struwwelpeter (1845). Predictably, his small but carefully curated (as weâre taught to say) collection of original art included cartoons by Glen Baxter and the loopy New Yorker stalwart George Booth. Less predictably, his bookshelves were stuffed, too, with collections of superhero comics, especially Marvel titles: Batman from the 30s to the 70s, Superman Battles the Mightiest Men in the Universe, Bring on the Bad Guys: Origins of Marvel Villains, Marvelâs Greatest Superhero Battles, The Silver Surfer, The Incredible Hulk, and on and on.
Goreyâs fondness for comics and cartoons isnât proof positive they influenced his work, but Steven Heller, a historian of design and illustration, has no doubt he has a foot in the comic-art tradition.
On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman ingested 240 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide, a curious compound he had synthesized for possible use as a respiratory and circulatory stimulant. An hour later, Hoffman wrote one sentence in his journal: "Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh." As he rode his bicycle home, the effects intensified. Eventually though, the fear gave way to wonder.
"Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes," Hoffman wrote. "Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux..."
April 19 is now celebrated as Bicycle Day to commemorate the first intentional acid trip, a hallucinogenic revelation that had a profound impact on art, music, culture, and consciousness.
We can't go out right now, but we can go in. Way in. To celebrate Bicycle Day, my Ozma Records partner Tim Daly and I are offering a 33% discount on The Family Acid: California, a book of marvelous photographs drenched in the psychedelic experience.
For more than 50 years, photographer Roger Steffens has explored the electric arteries of the counterculture, embracing mind-expanding experiences, deep social connection, and unadulterated fun at every turn. After serving in Vietnam at the end of the 1960s, Steffens immersed himself in Californiaâs vibrant bohemia. Since then, with his wife Mary and children Kate and Devon, he has sought out the eccentric, the outlandish, and the transcendent. Read the rest
It took this artist around 330 hours and 300,000 matches to make this coronavirus sculpture. In under five minutes you can watch its creation and then its satisfying destruction.
Mute until the burning starts (2:18) for a better viewing experience. Read the rest
Hayao Miyazakiâs Studio Ghibli has released stunning free backgrounds for videoconferencing software like Zoom. Change your set and setting to Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky, and four other enchanting film scenes. Download them here: "Studio Ghibli wallpaper that can be used for web conferences"
(via Open Culture)
"I sleep with life and death in the same bed." Two weeks ago, the great Bob Dylan released his first new song in eight years, "Murder Most Foul," a beautiful ballad about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Today, he surprised us with the stunning "I Contain Multitudes."
Iâm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones I go right to the edge, I go right to the end I go right where all things lost are made good again I sing the songs of experience like William Blake I have no apologies to make Everything flowing all at the same time I live on a boulevard of crime I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods I contain multitudes
Read the rest#today and #tomorrow,#skeletons and #nudes,#sparkle and #flash,#AnneFrank and #IndianaJones,#fastcars and #fastfood, #bluejeans and #queens,#Beethoven and #Chopin,#life and #death.https://t.co/o5VQKJ0NHx
— bobdylan.com (@bobdylan) April 17, 2020
