idleformat

Really enjoyable documentary about the painter, Sean Scully, shown recently on the BBC.

On what got him interested in art:

“I can’t really explain why I got hypnotised by art. I don’t really know how I managed to get there from where I was. It’s sort of inexplicable to me, but I used to look at books. I loved these books and they had almost this kind of religious importance to me. And the ones that were the most approachable were these books by Thames & Hudson called The World of Art.”

How Van Gogh’s Chair got him into art school:

“When I was trying to get into art school I had to find something that I could do, that I could teach myself, because I was self-taught. And, some of these things, I can see, are a bit too complicated, but I thought this painting looked as if anybody could have painted it. It seemed as if it was something I could do myself. So I made all these little Van Gogh's and I got my portfolio together and I got turned down by eleven art schools. All of them. And it was unbelievably discouraging. And finally I came upon an art school that had a little vocational course - not a degree course - in Croydon. So I applied and I miraculously got in. And that’s the beginning.”

On doubt:

“I don’t have self-doubt. I don’t have doubt and I don’t think that doubt is useful, or constructive. It doesn’t create anything. You have to have faith and commitment and belief to do something that hasn’t been done before or to create something extraordinary. It’s already difficult enough without you putting roadblocks in your own way.”

On America:

“[W]ork never leaves my mind. I’m always looking, thinking, taking pictures with my phone - of a splat on the street or a ship bow down at Mission Bay. I pretty much remember everything - or I’ll bark it into my recorder.”

Guardian goes tabloid

“The important thing is not to read them. Absorb them. Study the image. Find the message woven into the artist’s work. Don’t just look at the words. In a good graphic novel the words and the images are involved in a dance – like two stars smashing into each other, spraying silver and gold.”

How Hans Zimmer and Radiohead transformed “Bloom” for Blue Planet II

via Vox:

I recently heard Richard Linklater mention the word ‘Lebenskünstler’ on the excellent WTF podcast with Marc Maron. A German word, it ​“connotes a person who approaches life with the zest and inspiration of an artist, although he or she may not be working recognizably as an artist.”

​Lebensfreude = joy of living

Lebenskunst = art of living

Lebenskünstler = master of the art of living

Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker:

Realizing that the day’s workflow is irrevocably disrupted, Fat Controller decides that Henry must be punished—for life. “We shall take away your rails, and leave you here for always and always,” he tells Henry. As Henry’s face contorts into anguish and the background music toots a series of Oompa Loompa faux-glum flourishes, railway employees build a brick prison around Henry, leaving only half of his face visible. His train friends pass by: one snubs him, and another whistles hello. Henry has no steam left to whistle back. He spends his days alone, soot-streaked, wondering if he’ll ever be allowed to go back to work. The last line of the segment is the narrator saying, “I think he deserved his punishment, don’t you?” In the U.S. version, this voice-over is tweaked so that Henry’s fate seems temporary. But the original version is still on YouTube, and it’s comically bleak. As one commenter writes, “What moral lesson are kids supposed to learn from this? Do as you’re told or you will be entombed forever in the darkness to die?”