Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
In 1970, the American artist John Baldessari cremated every painting he had made between 1953 and 1966, and promised not to make any more boring art. In the ensuing years, he has created countless works across a range of media; his art has travelled the world, and he has been hailed as a surrealist for the digital age. But who is John Baldessari, really? Narrated by the singer-songwriter Tom Waits, and overflowing with grand ideas and amusing footnotes, this film is a glimpse into the life of an artistic giant.
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Producers: Mandy Yaeger, Erin Wright
video
Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
video
Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
video
History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes