The Zen of Steve Jobs: A Graphic Novella About “The Lost Years”

Lessons on simplicity, sophistication, beauty, and control from the Buddhist tradition.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs may be one of 2011′s best biographies, but it severely skirts a significant aspect of Jobs’ life. The Zen of Steve Jobs, produced by Forbes and data visualization studio JESS3, is a graphic novella that explores the period of Jobs’s life when he was fired from Apple in the mid-80s and how he dealt with it — by turning to Buddhism and reconnecting with a friend he had met nearly a decade earlier, Zen-Buddhist priest and designer Kobun Chino Otogawa (1938-2002), who not only taught Jobs the elements of Zen practice but also shared his passion for sophisticated design and aesthetic rigor. Though most of the book is speculative, reimagining a narrative based on sparse background facts from a relationship that took place mostly in private, it is unexpectedly rich in its graphic simplicity.

A lot of these ideas of simplicity, sophistication, beauty, control came out of this Zen period. The way that we thought about this period in Steve Jobs’s life is kind of like ‘the lost years’ — it is not only the moment when he is the hero, and goes away, and comes back, and does all these triumphant things, but it’s also a period of his life that we maybe haven’t seen.”

The Zen of Steve Jobs might just be the most refreshing thing since the graphic novel biography of Richard Feynman, and is a fine addition to these 10 favorite masterworks of graphic nonficiton.

via Open Culture

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Bike Art: Bicycles in Art Around the World

A two-wheel canvas for creativity, or what pedals have to do with pedestals.

We’ve already seen how the humble bicycle can emancipate women (and keep them patriarchy-bound), rein in incredible design innovation, be a manifesto for the creative life, and serve as a metaphor for computers, courtesy of Steve Jobs. But, it turns out, the bike can also be an incredible canvas for art. Bike Art: Bicycles in Art Around the World presents a voyeuristic tour of the lesser-known intersections of art and bike culture, spanning design, performing arts, steampunk, street art, and more through works created on walls, canvases, paper, pedestals, bikeframes, skin and clothing by a range of international artists.

And, of course, what’s a declaration of obsession if not signed by ink? If science geeks can do it, bike geeks can do it:

For more on the fascinating history and far-reaching impact of bike culture, don’t forget Robert Penn’s excellent It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels.

Images courtesy of Gingko Press; thanks, Sharon

In 2011, bringing you Brain Pickings took more than 5,000 hours. If you found any joy and stimulation here last year, please consider a modest donation.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Three Classic Fairy Tales Examined Through the Lens of Architecture

What Rapunzel’s braid-to-tree connection has to do with the rotational circumference of Baba Yaga’s house.

As a lover of classic fairy tales and longtime fan of Kate Bernheimer’s modernist ones, I was delighted to come across Design Observer’s three-part series, in which Kate and Andrew Bernheimer reimagine the magical homes from three beloved fairy tales — Baba Yaga, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel — through the lens of architecture. In each installment, a different architecture firm selects a favorite fairy tale and examines its pivotal structure through a new kind of imaginative architectural storytelling.

Houses in fairy tales are never just houses; they always contain secrets and dreams. This project presents a new path of inquiry, a new line of flight into architecture as a fantastic, literary realm of becoming. We welcome you to these fairy-tale places.” ~ Kate Bernheimer & Andrew Bernheimer

As a child of Eastern European folklore, I’m partial to the first installment, in which Bernheimer Architecture examine Baba Yaga through its most important structure — the chicken legs, of course — and consider “how one might make a structure or an architecture ‘chicken-like,’ both externally and internally.”

In part two, Leven Betts Studio take a curious paradox of Jack and the Beanstalk — that the vehicle for the story’s magic, adventure and triumph is the beanstalk, yet it’s rarely described — and use it as the focal point of their architectural explorations.

Fairy tales are exemplified by spare and abstract detail, leaving enormous space — big as the sky — for the reader to wonder.”

In the third and final installment, Guy Nordenson and Associates bring their masterful structural engineering to Rapunzel’s tower, blending the original vision of the Brothers Grimm with their own pre-existing design for The Seven Stems Broadcast and Telecommunications Tower .

Rapunzel’s tower has come to symbolize both an enchanted, magical home and a dreadful prison from which to escape. Inside, one’s heart is full of desire and longing; and one must always also get out. The complicated emotional valence of this space is part of its longstanding appeal.”

For more modernist fairy tale magic, don’t miss Kate Bernheimer’s My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales — a wonderful anthology of stories by some of today’s greatest fiction writers, including Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender and Lydia Millet. And for a classical take, look no further than the best illustrations from 130 years of the Brothers Grimm.

via It’s Okay To Be Smart

In 2011, bringing you Brain Pickings took more than 5,000 hours. If you found any joy and stimulation here last year, please consider a modest donation.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.