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7 posts tagged with “art”

If you’ve ever wondered why every version of Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” feels just a little bit different, this video from the British Museum is a gem. It dives into the subtle variations across 111 known prints and shows how art, time, and technique all leave their mark.

Capucine Korenberg from the British Museum spent over 50 hours just staring at different versions of the print, joking “This is about the same amount of time you would spend brushing your teeth over two years. So, next time you brush your teeth just think of me looking at The Great Wave.”

Hokusai’s 'The Great Wave' (and the differences between all 111 of them)

Did you know there are 113 identified copies of Hokusai's The Great Wave. I know the title says 111, but scientist Capucine Korenberg found another 2 after completing her research. What research was that? Finding every print of The Great Wave around the world and then sequencing them, to find out when they were created during the life cycle of the woodblocks they were printed from.

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Here’s a fun visual essay about a artist Yufeng Zhao’s piece “Alt Text in NYC.” It’s a essentially a visual search engine that searches all the text (words) on the streets of New York City. The dataset comprises of over eight million photos from Google Street View! Matt Daniels, writing for The Pudding:

The result is a search engine of much of what’s written in NYC’s streets. It’s limited to what a Google Street View car can capture, so it excludes text in areas such as alleyways and parks, or any writing too small to be read by a moving vehicle.

The scale of the data is immense: over 8 million Google Street View images (from the past 18 years) and 138 million identified snippets of text.

Just over halfway down the article, there is a list of the top 1,000 words in the data. Most are expected words from traffic signs like “stop.” But number twenty-five is “Fedders,” the logo of an air-conditioner brand popular in the 1950s to the 1990s. They’re all over the exteriors of the city’s buildings.

Best viewed on your computer, IMHO.

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NYC’s Urban Textscape

Analyzing All of the Words Found on NYC Streets

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1 min read

Talking Heads Release a Video for “Psycho Killer”

The Talking Heads have released a new music video for an old song. Directed by Mike Mills—who is not only a filmmaker but also a graphic designer—and starring Saoirse Ronan, the video for the band’s first hit, “Psycho Killer” is a wonderful study on the pressures, anxieties, and joys of being a young person in today’s world. It was made to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary.

Play

Watch on YouTube

On Instagram, the band said, “This video makes the song better- We LOVE what this video is NOT - it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.”

Me too.

You might not know his name—I sure didn’t—but you’ll surely recognize his illustration style that came to embody the style du jour of the 1960s and ’70s. Robert E. McGinnis has died at the age of 99. The New York Times has an obituary:

Robert E. McGinnis, an illustrator whose lusty, photorealistic artwork of curvaceous women adorned more than 1,200 pulp paperbacks, as well as classic movie posters for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” featuring Audrey Hepburn with a cigarette holder, and James Bond adventures including “Thunderball,” died on March 10 at his home in Greenwich, Conn. He was 99.

…

Mr. McGinnis’s female figures from the 1960s and ’70s flaunted a bold sexuality, often in a state of semi undress, whether on the covers of detective novels by John D. MacDonald or on posters for movies like “Barbarella” (1968), with a bikini-clad Jane Fonda, or Bond films starring Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

Illustrated movie poster for the James Bond film "The Man with the Golden Gun," featuring Roger Moore as Bond, surrounded by action scenes, women in bikinis, explosions, and a large golden gun in the foreground.

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Robert E. McGinnis, Whose Lusty Illustrations Defined an Era, Dies at 99

(Gift Article) In the 1960s and ’70s, his leggy femmes fatales beckoned from paperback covers and posters for movies like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Thunderball.”

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7 min read
Poster of Donald Trump as a false god with the phrase FALSE GOD

Trump: False God

Update: A 18” x 24” screenprinted version of this poster is now available at my Etsy shop.

Golden bust of Donald Trump

Michael C. Bender, writing for the Wall Street Journal in early September 2019:

[Trump rally regulars] describe, in different ways, a euphoric flow of emotions between themselves and the president, a sort of adrenaline-fueled, psychic cleansing that follows 90 minutes of chanting and cheering with 15,000 other like-minded Trump junkies.

“Once you start going, it’s kind of like an addiction, honestly,” said April Owens, a 49-year-old financial manager in Kingsport, Tenn., who has been to 11 rallies. “I love the energy. I wouldn’t stand in line for 26 hours to see any rock band. He’s the only person I would do this for, and I’ll be here as many times as I can.”

Sixteen months before the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump was already in the midst of touring the southeastern US, holding rallies to support his 2020 re-election bid. During his initial run for the 2016 election, he held 323 rallies, creating a wake of fans who held onto every one of his words, whether by speech, interview, or tweet. Some diehards would even follow him across the country like deadheads following The Grateful Dead, attending dozens of rallies.

4 min read
Poster of Putin as a false idol with the word FALSE

Putin: False

Update: A 18” x 24” screen-printed version of this poster is now available at my Etsy shop. It’s four colors: red, blue, black, and gold; and printed on thick 100 lb French Paper Co. cover stock. Proceeds will be donated to help Ukraine.

“…I want a man like Putin
One like Putin, full of strength
One like Putin, who won’t be a drunk
One like Putin, who wouldn’t hurt me
One like Putin, who won’t run away!”

— Lyrics from a popular Russian pop song, “One Like Putin,” from 2010.

Vladimir Putin has long been regarded as a divine hero in Russia. Propagandist imagery such as him riding shirtless on horseback, shooting a tiger with a tranquilizing dart to save a group of journalists, racing in an F1 car on a track, or defeating an opponent in martial arts, help cultivate an image of Putin as a strong, masculine savior—the only one who could lead Russia against the West. These and many more staged acts of supposed strength and bravery have turned him into a sex symbol in the country for women and a man’s man for men.

3 min read
3D red text “VOTE” with aviator sunglasses above it

Art for Biden

Sometimes it takes a small push to get the creative obsessions going. Like the majority of the country, I’ve been appalled at Donald Trump’s presidency. From his administration’s cruel policies to just how awful of a man Trump has shown himself, I have been gritting my teeth for four years, waiting for him to lose his re-election bid. I was profoundly concerned about democracy in the United States and how it was being actively undermined by Trump and his band of far-right Republicans.

When Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016, I made a poster and website called “Inside Trump’s Brain.” I knew back then how terrible of a president he would be, but had hoped he’d grow into the office. Boy, was I wrong.

So when Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination, I needed to do all I could to get him elected and make Trump a one-term president.