a visual way to explore the brain pickings book archive :: otlet's shelf theme :: back to brain pickings
CREATIVITY :: DESIGN :: SCIENCE :: HISTORY :: PSYCHOLOGY :: ART
“By the force and power of the artist’s vision the static, synthetic whole which is called the world is destroyed. The artist gives back to us a vital, singing universe, alive in all is parts.”
Henry Miller on creative death
A thoughtful, minimalist Cold War allegory that tells the story of two characters who watch each other observantly through the seasons across the narrow walls that separate them. As they move between day and night, glued to their binoculars and brimming with suspicion over even the most mundane of activities, they stubbornly refuse to bridge the gap between them — until, one day, a snail shows up, followed by a bird and then, suddenly, they find themselves face to face, realizing that having differences doesn’t mean they have to be foes.
Tallec’s stunning, expressive duotone illustrations capture the intricate frictions of passive-aggressive conflict with equal parts wit, poignancy, and contained eloquence.
One of the best children’s books of 2012 – read on for the rest:
“If you resist too much the power of the big primary-color emotions that surround the dog, you’re missing the experience.”
A remarkable chronicle of the domestic dog’s journey across thousands of years and straight into our hearts, written with equal parts tenderness and scientific rigor.
Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite book on love – a sort of dictionary of romance and sexual relationships covering everything from radical-for-the-era topics like birth control and homosexuality to mundanities like bidets and picnics to abstractions like disappointment and excess, originally published in 1963 by Danish husband-and-wife duo Inge and Sten Hegeler and featuring gorgeous black-and-white sketches by artist Eiler Krag.
“It is the artist’s task, through offering his best and most carefully prepared achievements, to educate the public, to ennoble it.”
This remarkable and beautifully illustrated 1902 guide to singing by German opera superstar Lilli Lehmann doubles as a thoughtful meditation on the art of learning in general.
Photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) might be best-remembered for her striking black-and-white prints of New York’s changing face in the 1930s, but she was also intensely interested in science and in making the abstract elegance and beauty of science visible and concrete. In 1939, she began experimenting with scientific imagery and capturing the whimsy of physics, mathematics and chemistry in her minimalist yet dramatic black-and-white photos. Documenting Science collects the best of that work, which culminated with the Physical Science Study Project at MIT in 1958.
“Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally.”
Read on for Sontag’s poignant essay on courage and resistance:
Stendhal’s a timeless treatise attempting to rationally analyze the highest human emotion. Read on for his fascinating concept of “crystallization” and the seven stages of love.
A peek inside more than 250 creators’ notebooks, including ones by beloved artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and designers like Paula Scher, Sigur Rós, Dave Eggers, and Spike Jonze.
A memory warehouse… a means of detachment… the perfect place to document daydreams.
Inside the sketchbooks of some of the world’s most exciting illustrators and designers
“The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing.”
Iconic Italian designer Bruno Munari on design as the bridge between art and life
Dutch illustrator Rop Van Mierlo’s gentle, lovely wash paintings, made by dropping ink and watercolor onto paper to create softly explosive shapes with no hard edges or contours.
A delightful compilation of 62 tender, poignant, beautiful micro-narratives selected from nearly 15,000 submissions. All the stories are made collaboratively — a writer would submit a story to the site, then an artist who likes it would illustrate it, or vice-versa, then others would join in and remix the stories and artwork.
“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”
Joan Didion on keeping a notebook:
Photographer Andrew Zuckerman’s mesmerizing, luminous close-ups of more than 150 plant species, making the familiar sparkle with newfound curiosity and shedding scintillating light on the exotic.