Arts and Culture

How does one define a masterpiece? Is it personally subjective, or it is just another word we use for status symbols? In an essay on the Florida-born bass player Jaco Pastorius’ 1976 self-titled debut album, scholar Uri Gonza?lez offers an older definition : “in the old European guild system, the aspiring journeyman was expected to create a piece of handicraft of the highest quality in order to reach the status of ‘master.’ One was then officially allowed to join the guild and to take pupils under tutelage.” Pastorius’ debut album certified him as a master musician; he leapt from “anonymity to jazz stardom, earning admiration both from the average musically uneducated concert-goer to the hippest jazz cat,” and he gained a following among an “ever growing number of adept students that, still today, study his solos, licks, compositions and arrangements.” Pastorius’ solo on his version of the Charlie Parker tune  “Donna Lee,” especially, helped redefine the instrument by, firs...

When  The Sopranos drew to a close fourteen years ago, its ambiguous yet somehow definitive final scene hardly promised a continuation of the New Jersey mafia saga. Since then, fans have had to make do with reflections, histories, and exegeses, up to and including re-watch podcasts hosted by the actors themselves . As time has passed the show has only drawn higher and higher acclaim, which can’t be said about every product of the ongoing “golden age of television drama”  The Sopranos got started. A return to the well was perhaps inevitable, and indeed has just been announced: The Many Saints of Newark , a prequel film co-written by David Chase, the creator credited with contributing to the original series a significant portion of its genius . Onscreen, The Sopranos drew its power from one Soprano above all: local mob boss Tony Soprano, as portrayed by James Gandolfini in what has been ranked among the greatest screen acting achievements of all time . Whether or not...

Georges Méliès directed, produced, edited, and starred in over 500 films between 1896 and 1913, most of them brimming with special effects the filmmaker himself invented. Before Méliès, such things as split screens, dissolves, and double exposures did not exist. After him, they were critical to cinema’s vocabulary, and the image of a rocket in the Moon’s eye became iconic. Méliès shocked, scared, and delighted popular audiences while also earning recognition from the avant garde. “The Surrealists would hail him as a great poet,” writes Darrah O’Donohue at Senses of Cinema , “in particular his erasure or subversion of boundaries.” Critics would later call him the first auteur . Méliès originally set out to become a stage illusionist. He performed in — and purchased, in 1888 — famous magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin ’s theater, where he became obsessed with film in 1895 at a private demonstration of the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph. When they refused to sell him one...

Graphic artist Todd Alcott  has endeared himself to Open Culture readers by retrofitting midcentury pulp paperback covers and illustrations with classic lyrics from the likes of  David Bowie ,  Prince ,  Bob Dylan , and  Talking Heads . Although he’s dabbled in the abstractions that once graced the covers of  psychology, philosophy, and science texts , his overarching attraction to the visual language of science fiction and illicit romance speak to the premium he places on narrative. And with hundreds of  “mid-century mashups”  to his name, he’s become quite a master of bending existing narratives to his own purposes. Recently, Alcott turned his attention to the creation of  the Pulp Tarot deck  he is funding on Kickstarter. A self-described “clear-eyed skeptic as far as paranormal things” go, Alcott was drawn to the “simplicity and strangeness” of  Pamela Colman Smith ’s “bewitching” Tarot imagery: Maybe because they were ...

Some marble statues, even when stripped of their color by the sands of time since the heyday of Greece and Rome , look practically alive. But they began their “lives,” their appearance often makes us forget, as rough-hewn blocks of stone. Not that just any marble will do: following the example of Michelangelo , the discerning sculptor must make the journey to the Tuscan town of Carrara, “home of the world’s finest marble.” So claims the video above , a brief look at the process of Hungarian sculptor Márton Váró. That entire process, it appears, takes place in the open air: mostly in his outdoor studio space, but first at the Carrara quarry (see bottom video) where he picks just the right block from which to make his vision emerge. Like Michelangelo, Váró has a manifestly high level of skill at his disposal — and unlike Michelangelo, a full set of modern power tools as well. But even today, some sculptors work without the aid of angle cutters and diamond-edged blades...