Arlen Schumer’s VisuaLectures—they’re not your father’s art history lectures!
They’re more graphic—oversized images designed for maximum impact, cross-fading beautifully as Schumer makes his points powerfully, passionately and with keen insight—never veering into academic jargon but bubbling with pop-cultural crosspollination!
BOND ON BOND: The Sean Connery James Bond Films
In this multimedia retrospective, Schumer uses clips from the first five seminal Connery Bond films of the 1960s, augmented by graphics culled from the Bondmania of the era, to illustrate Bond’s place in pop culture history—and Connery’s preeminence in the iconic role.
COMICULTURE: How Comic Books are Taking Over The World
We’re living in a comic book world, from movies to television, from pop art to pop culture, from the walls of museums to the halls of academia—and Schumer will show you why, in a multimedia overview of the impact comics have had on high and low culture, and everything in between!
DOC SAVAGE: The Heroic Art of James Bama
With a Doc Savage movie on the horizon, Schumer looks back on the series of sixty-two Doc Savage paperback covers that artist James Bama painted between 1964 and 1972—miniature in size though gargantuan in pop cultural stature and influence—that represent an apex in heroic, realistic figure painting of not only the 20th Century, but of the entire history of the human figure in fine or commercial art.
THE FIVE THEMES OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE Mini-Marathon
Though Twilight Zone creator and head writer Rod Serling worked with a number of renowned writers on the series, their combined works fall under a set of recurring themes of Serling’s, “The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone.” In this three-hour mini-marathon, host Schumer, with his patented, penetrating analysis, introduces the five episodes that best illustrate each theme.
THE FLINTSTONES: Anatomy of a Pop Culture Classic
You’ll have a gay ol’ time during this multimedia, idiosyncratic history of The Flintstones, from early concept sketches and rare video clips to an analysis of its storied place in American pop culture!
GREAT COMIC BOOK TYPOGRAPHY
An overview of some of the best typography in comic book history—hand-lettered balloons, ads and logotypes—and the impact it has had on Schumer’s own comic book-styled illustration the past 25 years.
JEWS ‘N’ COMICS: A Past & Present History
From Ben Grimm to the Golem, Schumer details the specific Jewish influence in the creation of the superheroes of the 20th Century, and their antecedents in older, ancient myths.
MY COMIC BOOK LIFE! The Illustration of Arlen Schumer
From thumbnail sketches to finished coloring, you’ll be inspired by how Schumer’s turned a childhood love of comic books into an adult livelihood, creating comic book-style illustration for commercial usage for over 25 years!
SUPERANIMATION: The Fleischer Superman Cartoons
The series of 17 eight-minute Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer Studios (Popeye, Gulliver’s Travels) between 1941-3 are considered by animation aficionados to be the greatest realistically-animated cartoons ever made. In this multimedia overview, along with clips from all 17 cartoons, Schumer utilizes all extant background materials, model sheets and storyboards to spotlight the artistic highlights of these animated jewels.
SUPERHEROES IN THE ‘60s: Comics & Counterculture
The origins of the superhero tradition are explored, its personification of American ideals and values, and how these attitudes and portrayals changed during the turbulent ‘60s, through the works of eight artists who not only drew definitive versions of the medium’s greatest characters—the ones being made into films today—but set trends in the art of comic book storytelling.
THE TWILIGHT ZONE FOREVER 50th Anniversary Celebration
While tracing the iconic 1960s series’ roots in surrealist art and ideas, to its pervasive influence on film, television, art and pop culture ever since—and screening the classic episode "Eye of The Beholder"—Schumer reads excerpts of dialogue and narration from the series like spoken word poetry, in sync with soundtrack music from The Twilight Zone.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S SWEET 16: His Greatest Hits You’ve Never Heard
Bruce Springsteen has unreleased outtakes and alternate mixes that could justifiably be called his “greatest hits”—because many who’ve heard them consider them better than his “official” greatest hits. In this aural (and visual) retrospective—by the former art director of Bruce’s first fan magazine, Thunder Road—you’ll get to hear them!
