I see Michael Jackson as a dance style, okay? — Ricardo Walker Ricardo Walker and his Crew’s The Evolution of Dance, 1950 to 2019 will make you regret every minute spent hugging the wall in middle school. The breakneck, 6-minute romp led by dancer, choreographer, and Michael Jackson impersonator Ricardo Walker, not only showcases the all-male …
We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his industry, but even more so for his imagination. Most of us would envision ourselves, had we lived in the late 15th or early 16th century, being perfectly content with having painted the Mona Lisa. But Leonardo had designs on a host of other domains as well, most of …
In ancient Hindu mythology, the Yali appears as a chimera, part lion, part horse, part elephant. It was carved into stone pillars to guard temples, and its form adorned an instrument called the yazh, whose sound “once filled the halls and temples of southern India,” Livia Gershon writes at Smithsonian. “Over time, however, the Tamil …
Americans raised on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books tend to associate slates with one room schoolhouses and rote exercises involving reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. Had we been reared along the banks of the Nile, would our minds go to ancient gessoed boards like the 4000-year-old Middle Kingdom example above? Like our familiar tablet-sized blackboards, this paper — or …
Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” competes with Lennon’s “Julia” as the most tender song on the Beatles’ White Album and maybe in the band’s entire catalogue. Inspired by a Bach piece that McCartney and George Harrison learned to play when they were young, its finger-picked acoustic guitar has the sound of a folk lullaby. But the song’s …
Today we can appreciate Japanese woodblock prints from sizable online archives whenever we like, and even download them for ourselves. Before the internet, how many chances would we have had even to encounter such works of art in the course of life? Very few of us, certainly, would ever have beheld a Japanese printmaker at work, …
https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/partiallyexaminedlife/PMP_88_3-20-21.mp3 In the perennial conflict between art and our corporate entertainment machine, animation seems designed to be mechanized, given how labor-intensive it is, and yes, most of our animation comes aimed at children (or naughty adults) from a few behemoths (like, say, Disney). Your hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt are joined by …
Andrei Tarkovsky is a popular filmmaker. This will come as a surprise to those who know the Soviet master mostly by his reputation as a maker of movies so poetic, serious, and deliberate of pace that they alter their viewers’ relationship to time itself. Yet Stalker, which ranks among his very most poetic, serious, and deliberate works, …
Dave Grohl, like many rock musicians, does not come from a classically trained background. Instead he has an ability to write according to what sounds good, and where noodling around in the studio can bring great rewards. That’s where The Foo Fighters’ best song “Everlong” originates. In this 2020 clip from Oates Song Fest, Grohl …
An online design museum made by and for designers? The concept seems obvious, but has taken decades in internet years for the reality to fully emerge in the Letterform Archive. Now that it has, we can see why. Good design may look simple, but no one should be fooled into thinking it’s easy. “After years …