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Bob Dylan’s little-known songs about Vincent Van Gogh
11.03.2016
09:50 am
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“Side Tracks - 17 October 1964 - Detroit, Michigan” by Bob Dylan (via Halcyon Gallery)
 
Seeing both Bob Dylan and Vincent Van Gogh in the news this week reminded me of the last place I saw these guys together: in the wonderful world of song.

First there’s Robert Friemark’s “Vincent Van Gogh,” a ragged ballad about the painter’s life that Dylan and Bob Neuwirth sang in close harmony at some Rolling Thunder Revue dates. The song has a punchline that calls the seriousness of everything preceding it into question; I believe this is what you call a “shaggy-dog story.” Don McLean’s “Vincent” is scared of meeting Friemark’s number in a dark alley. I’ve cued up the Bobs singing “Vincent Van Gogh” midway through a three-and-a-half-hour recording of the May ‘76 stop in New Orleans here.

But more mysteriously, there’s the spectral Blonde on Blonde-era song known variously as “Spuriously Seventeen Windows,” “The Painting by Van Gogh,” “Definitely Van Gogh” and “Positively Van Gogh.” Under the latter title, it finally came out on last year’s massive 18-CD version of The Cutting Edge 1965-1966. According to Clinton Heylin’s sessionography, Dylan’s biographer Robert Shelton taped the only known rendition of this song in a hotel room in Denver just three days after Dylan finished recording Blonde on Blonde. Heylin sets the scene:

The only evidence we have of a possible direction, post-Blonde on Blonde, pre-accident, derives from two hotel room sessions with Robbie Robertson. That Dylan and Robertson were at this point blowtorching the candle at both ends—staying up late into the night, smoking a little (okay, a lot of) hash, and working on songs with a couple of acoustic guitars—is well-documented. Melbourne’s answer to Allen Ginsberg, Adrian Rawlins, wrote at the time of Dylan playing him “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” at six-thirty in the morning after a night of smoking hash, while actress Rosemary Garrett witnessed an even more extensive all-nighter just five days later:

I was able to listen to a composing session. Countless cups of tea . . . Things happened, and six new songs were born. The poetry seemed already to have been written. Dylan says “Picture one of these cats with a horn, coming over the hill at daybreak. Very Elizabethan, you dig? Wearing garters.” And out of the imagery, he and [Robbie] work on a tune and Dylan’s leg beats time with the rhythm, continuously, even when the rhythm is in his own mind.

Robert Shelton had already taped such a session in a Denver hotel room, three days after Dylan completed Blonde on Blonde (though he lacked the foresight to have enough blank tape, and ended up having to record all but one song of the thirty-five-minute session at 1⅞ ips—hence the poor quality). Though Dylan was anxious to play Shelton a couple of the songs he had just recorded—“Just Like a Woman” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” the latter of which he seemed particularly proud of—Shelton also witnessed Dylan and Robertson working on some newer ideas.

The opening song, the lyrics of which revolve around a painting by Van Gogh, is the most listenable track because Shelton has not as yet knocked the speed of his reel-to-reel down to 1⅞ ips (from 3¾).

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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11.03.2016
09:50 am
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An ear created with Vincent van Gogh’s DNA allows you to ‘speak’ to the artist
11.16.2015
08:40 am
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An ear created using Vincent van Gogh's DNA that can actually hear you
An ear that was created using actual DNA from Vincent van Gogh

In 2014, German-born artist Diemut Strebe launched an “ongoing project” called Sugababe. The focus of the installation was a “living replica” of Vincent van Gogh’s ear which was created using cells from an actual male descendant of van Gogh’s, Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Vincent’s brother Theo. Holy shit.
 
Diemut Strebe's
 
If that’s not bizarre enough for you, not only does the ear in Strebe’s project (which was made using 3D printing technology) contain van Gogh DNA, it also has the ability to hear. Using a microphone that is rigged to a computer, a nifty piece of software then allows for nerve impulses from a visitor’s voice to be simulated as they are received. In other words, you can (in theory) “speak” to the artist who has been dead for 125 years.

If you have something you’ve always wanted to ask Vincent van Gogh (Noam Chomsky was the first person to speak to the ear in case you were curious), simply drop by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York where the ear and various other works by Strebe will be on view through December 5th.
 
h/t: Beautiful Decay

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Palettes of Picasso, Matisse, Degas and Van Gogh are works of art unto themselves

Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.16.2015
08:40 am
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Palettes of Picasso, Matisse, Degas and Van Gogh are works of art unto themselves


Vincent Van Gogh
 
Some years ago the inventive German photographer Matthias Schaller who specializes in what he calls the “indirect portrait” was in the studio of Cy Twombly and happened to glance at the painter’s palette, smeared with pigments of various hues, but mainly a shade of red fairly close to the color of blood. It occurred to Schaller that the palette is arguably as identifiable to an artist as the artist’s work itself, even if created purely by accident. As he puts it, “The palette is an abstract landscape of the painter’s artistic production.”

Schaller has created a series of marvelous photographs of the palettes of famous artists, each of which measures at roughly 190 x 150 cm. The collection, called “Das Meisterstück” (The Masterpiece), has appeared as an exhibition and is available in book form as well—for more information write an email to thepalettebook@gmail.com.

These are all utterly fascinating to gaze at; my favorites are those of Bacon and Kokoschka. They’re all pretty wonderful.
 

Pablo Picasso
 

Claude Monet
 

Salvador Dalí
 
See the palettes of Matisse, Manet, Kandinsky, Kahlo, Bacon and many more after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.22.2015
09:46 am
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Contemporary celebrities inserted into art masterpieces
04.21.2015
11:32 am
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Miley Cyrus in “A Spanish Beauty,” by Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger
 
A French woman named Bénédicte Lacroix has a Tumblr going called “Voyage dans le temps” (Time Travel) in which she inserts photographs of 21st-century famous people into artistic masterpieces. We’ve all seen variations on this general idea, but I especially liked the execution here—not all of the paintings are so familiar, and in fact I would say that in every case, if you click through to the original painting (I’ve supplied the link at each title), you are guaranteed a glimpse of something sublime.

The Roger Federer one is especially clever.
 

Leonardo DiCaprio in “Self-Portrait,” by Vincent Van Gogh

 

Megan Fox in “The Girl With The Pearl Earring,” by Johannes Vermeer
 

Steve Jobs in “The Son of Man,” by René Magritte
 

Beyoncé in “The Necklace,” by Jean-François Portaels
 
More of these after the jump….....

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.21.2015
11:32 am
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Artistic masterpieces rendered in Pantone swatches


Vincent van Gogh, “Self-Portrait”
 
Just the other day, Pantone named Marsala the color of 2015, and the decision, er, “has critics seeing red.” The only thing that gets art and design people more worked up than Pantone swatches is the rampant overuse of Comic Sans. Art and design people LOVE Pantone. ... thus it was inevitable that someone would do what London artist Nick Smith did, and create quasi-“pixelated” versions of famous art masterpieces, only using Pantone swatches.

Smith currently has an exhibition called “Psycolourgy” at the Lawrence Alkin Gallery near Covent Garden. The show runs through February 20. Here’s the poster—you HAD to know this was coming:
 

 
Here are the two Warhols side by side:
 

 
Prints of the two versions of Warhol’s Marilyn were once available at ArtRepublic, and the Van Gogh is currently available.

My favorite thing is to look at a bit up close, where you can’t even tell what the context is anymore, like this:
 

 

‎Edvard Munch, “The Scream”
 

René Magritte, “Son of Man”
 

Leonardo da Vinci, “La Gioconda”
 

Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Monroe (Green)”
 

Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Monroe (Pink)”
 

David Hockney, “A Bigger Splash”
 

George Stubbs, “Whistlejacket”

Posted by Martin Schneider
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02.03.2015
04:27 pm
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