A new documentary by the Quay Brothers which focuses on the The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the fascinating Mütter Museum will have its premier on September 22 in Philadelphia.

Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum) is a documentary on the collections of books, instruments, and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mütter Museum. This short film (running time: 31 minutes) is the first made by the internationally recognized Quay Brothers in the United States.

Learn more about the Mutter Museum by visiting their website.

The Quay Brothers discuss the making of their new film:
 

 
Latex artist SikRik’s latest creation is the Andre The Giant mask.

SikRik handcrafts and paints each mask individually so that no two are exactly alike. The process of making a mask is complete when…

“...it usually speaks to me right at the end and says ‘stop I’m done’,” says SikRik. “The last step is to gloss the eyes. I will never grow tired of this step. This is when they take their first breath.”

Only 35 numbered copies will be produced, and they can be preordered for $125.00 USD plus S/H at www.sikrikmasks.com. After that, an unlimited edition will be available for $99.00 USD + S/H.

 
I like this idea: “connect the street gum” to create graffiti portraits. BTW, this was spotted in SoHo in New York City.

(via Wooster Collective)

 
After a 3 year wait, artist Max Hattler’s beautiful animation AANAATT is now available on-line. Made in collaboration with musician Jemapur, AANAATT has been described as:

“...a classic in the field of Visual Music, and a unique example of creative ingenuity and elegant design.” - Robert Darroll

“An exciting experiment in the tradition of Oskar Fischinger (Komposition in Blau, 1935), Dwinell Grant (Composition No. 1, 1940) and Slavko Vorkapich (Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome, 1950s).” - Anton Fuxjäger

Hattler’s AANAATT explores:

“A strange world where experience, both familiar and unfamiliar, is cut-up, upside-down and otherwise displaced, as modernist shapes move and construct themselves in almost organic ways. AANAATT, a 2008 music video from artist Max Hattler is a sublime stop-motion animation that hearkens back to 40′s and 50′s abstract films through its geneological exploration of shape and movement with music.” - Jason Sondhi

Discover more of Max Hattler’s work here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Surface World: Max Hattler’s short film ‘Drift’

 
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Kurcfeld interviewed French artist Christian Boltanski in Paris recently and unwittingly became grist for the artist’s mill, but I’ll let Michael explain:

It’s not every day that a journalist becomes part of a work of art. In a stroke of autobiographical fervor a few years ago Christian Boltanski had sold the rights to his daily life to a wealthy collector, who installed 24/7 live cameras all over his studio at the southern edge of Paris. These tapes become part of a massive unfolding record entitled simply The Life of C.B. Enter one unsuspecting American journalist prepared to shoot an interview there… A French TV crew had just been chastised by the artist for trying to glamorize him with their multi-camera shoot, and he was in ill temper before we began. But he soon became both reflective and jolly, his rueful sense of humor occasionally igniting like a firecracker.

Boltanski is acknowledged to be France’s most important living artist. His dark and prodigious body of work is esteemed by critics and crowds alike, and it seemed high time, at 66, that he represented France at the Venice Biennale. For the task of filling the French pavilion this year, he created an overwhelming jungle-gym of metal pipe and literally streaming video (whizzing through the vast structure as a giant ribbon of black-and-white frames). The images are of day-old infants, photos cut from Polish newspapers that announce births routinely. Every 10 minutes or so, a bell rings and the frames halt, randomly focusing on a single baby. It’s a loud, visceral and claustrophobic encounter with Boltanski’s most recent meditation on long-time fascinations: chance and identity. Chance is both scary and exhilarating.

He’s created a colossal machine that’s a demonic hybrid of printing press and film projector. As architecture, it made me think of Piranesi, a kind of enveloping prison. It exalts the mechanical, by alluding to the Industrial Age, and satirizes it with a whiff of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Chance is interactive: In the chamber just beyond the main hall is a screen that visitors can control with a big button at the entry. Faces sliced into three segments jumpcut at high speed, such that the recombinant photos whirl like a giant slot machine. Or cards being shuffled. Games of chance. Winning and losing. But the work never veers far from the assertion that we all lose in the end… Is Boltanski a pessimist? He’ll say not really, that in fact he’s happier than ever knowing that the world will go on without him. Nor is he a fatalist. To him, nothing is written so fate is an illusion.

Read—and see—more at Huffington Post
 

 
Well sort of, anyways. The late great Don Van Vliet does a brief, throaty, whistled rendition with organ accompaniment of the Beatles’ standard which is about as random a moment as anything I can imagine. It’s the cherry on top of this amusing and good natured 1974 Dutch TV appearance which also features a mime-tastic version of “Upon The My-Oh-My.”
 

 
Thanks to Ace Farren Ford !

 
In a 1965 letter, Andy Warhol’s landlord asks him to “keep it down.” This image came from Johan Kugelberg’s VU coffee table book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art (Rizzoli).

Via Letters of Note

 
Digging the music. Biker women in San Bernadino, 1965

The girl kneeling by the jukebox is Ruthie and she’s the ‘old lady’ of Harvey, a Diablos member from San Bernardino. Harvey attends Angels’ meetings and rides with them but is not a member. It’s only two in the afternoon but Ruthie has already ‘crashed’ from beer and bennies .”

On assignment for Life Magazine in 1965, photographer Bill Ray spent a month hanging out with the Mother Charter of the Hells Angels (est. 1948) in San Bernadino, California. Life never published the photos, though they’ve recently made them available on their website. Last year Ray’s photographs were collected in book form, Hells Angels Of San Berdoo, that you can buy here.

The photograph of the two biker chicks at the jukebox is one of Bill Ray’s favorites and mine too.

Bill Ray ruminates on the photo:

There’s something kind of sad and at the same time defiant about the atmosphere. Ruthie is probably playing the same 45 over and over and over again. A real music lover.”

 
While all of Ray’s photographs are extraordinarily expressive and strikingly composed, his shots of the women are the ones that really get to me. Badass, beautiful and forlorn. These chicks could eat today’s hipsters for breakfast. I want to know them.
 

 
More photos after the jump…

 
Apparently these porcelain Rorschach test plates by designer Isabelle Foirest “discourage getting depressed from the routine of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

They’re $180.00 for a set of four over at Fitsu.
 

 
(via Book of Joe)

Limited edition of 100, signed and numbered 13” x 19” print on fine art, acid-free paper
 
Limited editon print by Jason Edmiston.

This painting is inspired by the scene at the beginning of the first Apes movie. Gorilla soldiers are standing posing for a photo after the great human hunt. This is the view from the photographer’s perspective.

(via Laughing Squid)