This seems to be the week of excellent tips from friends on inspiring videos. Interesting that both of the ones I am posting are of fellows from the UK.
Recently writer Neil Gaiman was invited to address the University of the Arts Class of 2012. It’s incredibly inspiring for anyone who needs encouragement to keep on making art. Watch this.
Macy Gray, on a CBC radio interview yesterday with Jian Gomeshi, stated that she doesn’t pay attention to the numbers. She commented that as soon as producers focussed on marketing to teenagers, the music industry started to suffer. Gray, now in her forties, feels that there is plenty to say with her music to people who are a little older. In order to be true to her own voice, she “went back to basics” to produce her new record, “The Sellout”; the basics for her means making great music. This video is proof that she is onto something. Thank you, Macy Gray.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qX7ZsxD3Ik]
According to Hollywood legend, a screen test report on Fred Astaire for RKO Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.”
Whether or not the story is accurate, David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo “I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.”
Through hardwork and extreme dedication Astaire managed to make it all look easy. The rest, as we know, is history. Below is a brief moment from Fred’s stellar career.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTN-NPtNOHU&feature=related]According to Hollywood legend, a screen test report on Fred Astaire for RKO Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.”
Whether or not the story is accurate, David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo “I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.”
Through hardwork and extreme dedication Astaire managed to make it all look easy. The rest, as we know, is history. Below is a brief moment from Fred’s stellar career.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTN-NPtNOHU&feature=related]In these difficult times, looking at and making art can help us get back in touch with the best things that humans are capable of–– a sense of play, a sense of excitement in the creative act.
The following excerpt, from David Hockney’s book, That’s the Way I See It, reveals the artist’s philosophy on viewing and making art:
I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair. It means at least that you are trying to communicate what you feel to somebody else and the very fact that you can communicate it takes away a little of the despair. Art has this contradiction built into it. All one has to do is look at its history.
A few years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York there was a show of Fragonard. He is an artist who has been thought sometimes to be much too pleasurable, much too playful, much too sweet to be serious, and certainly in the early nineteenth century that’s how he was dismissed. It was only the Goncourt brothers who started looking seriously at his paintings and buying them.
Today we see him differently. To me Fragonard is a wonderful artist. I think you can’t have art without play; Picasso always understood that. I think you can’t have much human activity of any kind without a sense of playfulness. Someone once criticized my work, saying it was too playful. I said, That’s hardly a criticism at all, that’s a compliment. I do see it as a compliment because I believe that without a sense of play there’s not much curiosity either; even a scientist has a sense of play. And that allows for surprises, the unexpected, discoveries. Anybody who gets good at it knows that. You can use it. I use it. People tend to forget that play is serious, but I know that of course it is. Some people have got the idea that if it’s boring it’s art and if it’s not boring it’s not art. Well, I’ve always thought it was the other way round. If it’s boring, more than likely it’s not art, if it’s exciting, thrilling, more than likely it is. I don’t know of any good art that’s boring, in music, poetry or painting. Isn’t that why Shakespeare is so exciting?
You can find more information on David Hockney on the Artsy website.
Text excerpt from That’s the Way I See It, page 133 © David Hockney
Fed up with the doom and gloom about the recession, global warming, and rising terrorism? Since they probably aren’t going to go away, perhaps you should read The Optimist, a new book by Laurence Shorter. Over three years, he spent time finding people who make the best of their time on the planet, including Richard Branson, Mick Jagger, and Desmond Tutu.
In his research, he discovered that “optimism” is actually misrepresented. A word coined by 17th century philosopher Leibniz, its original meaning was actually “optimal”, to signify the perfection of the universe as it is now–in other words, being in the moment, and deciding to accept things as they really are.
Interestingly,”Martin Seligman, in researching this area, criticises academics for focusing too much on causes for pessimism and not enough on optimism. He states that in the last three decades of the 20th century journals published 46,000 psychological papers on depression and only 400 on joy.” (Wikipedia).
Interesting, n’est-ce pas?
