It’s Nice That surveyed an eclectic group of artists, designers, and thinkers on the outsize impact of 2001 since its premiere 50 years ago this month.
Graphic designer David Rudnick began his tribute with an apt summary:
It’s difficult to write this little article or tribute. Sometimes art can be so powerful that you begin to ration your access to it. We live in a paradigm where, technologically, you could watch this movie every night. And yet, it feels so sacred that loving 2001 becomes almost an exercise in avoiding watching 2001, holding off until particular moments or screenings, almost trying to forget, to let years pass, life go on, maybe most importantly, to control a little the way it changes you by allowing yourself to have changed before you see it again. You begin to understand why festivals happen once a year in religions; later when I would study painted altarpieces it was one of the ways I would rationalise how things so astonishingly beautiful could be kept closed for all but one moment of the year.
• “Something bold, something pure” – the 50-year long legacy of 2001: A Space Odyssey (It’s Nice That)