Studio 54

Wikipedia - "Studio 54 was a popular New York nightclub from 1977 until 1981 when it was sold by founders and creators Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. It was called the most famous nightclub of all time and was a sophisticated, groundbreaking multi-media visual extravaganza. It continued to operate as a nightclub until 1991 by other owners. Located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York City, the space was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming CBS radio and television Studio 52. Since November 1998 it has been a venue for the Roundabout Theatre Company and is still called Studio 54, but is no longer a nightclub."
Wikipedia
NY Daily - Studio 54: Inside the world's most famous celebrity nightclub in its heyday
YouTube: Studio 54

30 for 30 Shorts: The Schedule Makers

"Welcome back to our 30 for 30 documentary short series. Each year, everyone from front-office executives to sports-radio callers ridicules the logic of the MLB schedule. Complaints aside, putting this together is a daunting task: 30 teams, 162 games a year, cross-country flights, night games, day games … you name it. So, who manages all of this? For almost a quarter-century it was the husband-and-wife duo of Henry and Holly Stephenson, two math and computer whizzes who did it all with nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper. This film is the story of how the Stephensons landed their first MLB contract and became The Schedule Makers."
Grantland (Video)

Poor-Man's Speed: Coming of Age in Wigan's Anarchic Northern Soul Scene

"One Saturday night ­in 1975, I met my mate at a shop in Manchester that would, for certain, sell you Bronchipax: ephedrine capsules, the poor-man’s speed, banned now but sold without prescription back then. We bought a packet each and swallowed the lot with tonic water: eight times the maximum adult dose. But what did we care about the adult dose? We were 15, and about to set off for the greatest dance club in the world. We reached Wigan Casino around midnight with my mate’s cousin who was a 'face' on the Northern Soul scene. That got us into a café nearby, packed – not with soul boys as I expected – but with music journos from London, cool Italians in micro-sunglasses, American vinyl collectors and other global bohemians."
Vice (Video)
W - Wigan Casino
BBC - Northern Soul: 40 years of the sound of Wigan Casino (Video)
YouTube: Wigan Casino - A Lifestyle Of Northern Soul

2012 October: Northern Soul, 2012 December: The obsession that is Northern Soul.

A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson

"Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be 'a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me.' This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version. Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be 'a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me.' This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version."
Google
Google: A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson by George F. Butterick
Aimless Reading: The O's, Part 5.32 (Charles Olson)

2009 January: Charles Olson, 2009 April: Rockport Harbor, 2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12, 2010 December: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", NET film, 2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957, 2012 April: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester, 2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length, 2013 January: Mass.Charles Olson, 2013 May: The Maximus Poems.

The Picture Collection - Taryn Simon

"... The Picture Collection comprises forty-four works inspired by the New York Public Library’s picture archive, one of the august institution’s lesser-known troves. The archive contains 1.2 million prints, postcards, posters, and printed images, most of which have been cut from secondary sources, such as books and magazines. It is the largest circulating picture library in the world, organized according to a complex cataloging system of over 12,000 subject headings. Since its inception in 1915, it has been an important resource for writers, historians, artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, and advertising agencies."
Gagosian
Gagosian - 1
Taryn Simon
W - Taryn Simon

P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)/Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) - Parliament

Wikipedia - "'Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)' is a funk song by Parliament. It was released as a single under the name 'Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)'. It was the second single to be released from Parliament's 1976 album Mothership Connection (following 'P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)'), and was the highest-charting single from the album, reaching number five on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart and number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100pop singles chart. With its anthemic sing-along chorus, it is one of the most famous P-Funk songs. It also became Parliament's first certified million-selling single, going Gold in 1976."
Wikipedia
W - "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)"
YouTube: P. Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up), Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)

French fries

Wikipedia - "French fries (American English) or chips, fries, finger chips, or French-fried potatoes are batons of deep-fried potato. North Americans refer to any elongated pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are sometimes called fries to distinguish them from the more thickly cut strips called chips. French fries are served hot and generally eaten as an accompaniment with lunch or dinner, or eaten as a snack, and they are a common fixture of fast food. French fries are generally salted and, in their simplest and most common form, are served with ketchup; in many countries, though, they are topped instead with other condiments or toppings, including vinegar, mayonnaise, or other local specialities. Fries can also be topped more elaborately, as is the case with the dishes of poutine and chili cheese fries. Sometimes, fries are made with sweet potatoes instead of potatoes, are baked instead of fried, or are cut into unusual shapes, as is the case with curly fries, wavy fries, or tornado fries."
Wikipedia
YouTube: French Fries - How to Make Crispy French Fries

Degenerate art

Wikipedia - "Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely. Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria. While modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were traditional in manner and that exalted the 'blood and soil' values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. Similarly, music was expected to be tonal and free of any jazz influences; films and plays were censored."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Modernist art haul, 'looted by Nazis', recovered by German police
NYT: Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar
amazon: The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany
Open Library: Degenerate Art
YouTube: Degenerate Art - 1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism 56:14

2009 February: The Rape of Europa

"The Man With The Four Way Hips" - Tom Tom Club

Wikipedia - "'The Man With The Four Way Hips' is a single by Tom Tom Club, on their second album Close To The Bone, released in 1982. It was released as a single in the US, UK, and Japan in 1983."
Wikipedia
Soundcloud: The man with the 4-way hips (Guido.reedit)
YouTube: "The Man With The Four Way Hips", The Man With The 4-Way Hips (Dub Version)

2010 August: Tom Tom Club

Children of Men

Wikipedia - "Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian science fiction film co-written, co-edited and directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based loosely on P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men. In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in the United Kingdom, where the last functioning government imposes oppressive immigration laws on refugees. Clive Owen plays civil servant Theo Faron, who must help a pregnant West African refugee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Pam Ferris, and Chiwetel Ejiofor."
Wikipedia
Reverse Shot
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Children of Men Trailer HD, Ark of the Arts

Small Town Noir

"Small Town Noir is dedicated to recovering the life stories behind mug shots from the vanished golden age of one American town. The men and women in these mug shots are nobody special, but they saw things that none of us will ever see. They were all arrested in New Castle, a small town in western Pennsylvania, right over by the Ohio border. It was once one of the most industrially productive cities in America, but all that’s gone now. At the beginning of the 20th century, New Castle was a boom town – its population almost tripled between 1890 and 1900 as thousands of immigrants from Europe and across America arrived to work in its tin plate mills, steel factories, ceramics works, foundries and paper mills. The depression of the 1930s hit the town as hard as anywhere else, but world war two and the Korean war kept its manufacturing base going. ... - Diarmid Mogg"
Small Town Noir - About
Small Town Noir

Paris 13‎

"Yesterday in Paris, the largest collective street art exhibition opened in the 13th arrondissement on Rue de Bellievre near the Quai d’Austerlitz in a 10-story concrete and brick tower. The Galerie Itinerrance obtained use of the building before its demolition in 2014 and invited 80 artists from all over the world to decorate freely on the inside and outside of the building. 36 apartments were entirely painted and the artists each had their own area to work. In total more than 4500 square meters of street art were created."
untappedcities
A Walk On the Waterfront
YouTube: LA TOUR PARIS 13
Paris 13

Too Much Too Young - The Special AKA (1980)

"Released at a time when 2 Tone could do no wrong, this 5 track EP became the labels first UK Number 1 single. Recorded at The Lyceum in London and Tiffanys in Coventry, it was also issued as the labels first picture sleeve and for some strange reason saw the band revert to their previous name of The Special A.K.A.. Why they reverted back to this title remains a mystery and the plot is only further complicated by the listing of the band as The Specials on the records labels. The sleeve has a photograph of an audience on the front and a favourable report from the Coventry Evening Telegraph on the band as its rear. . It was also the first 2 Tone release to fall foul of the censors. The final line of Too Much Too Young , 'Try wearing a cap', proved too much for the nations moral guardians and the song was deliberately cut short before the offending word 'cap' was broadcast."
2 Tone
YouTube: Too Much Too Young (Old Grey Whistle Test 1979), Guns of Navarone, Long Shot Kick De Bucket, Liquidator, Skinhead Moonstomp

2009 October: The Specials, 2912 September: Ghost Town.

Before the Poison - Marianne Faithfull (2005)

"Each time Marianne Faithfull issues a recording, fans and pundits hold their breaths waiting for another outing as iconoclastic as Broken English. Before the Poison isn't it for a number of reasons, quality not being one of them. Simply put, Before the Poison is an album that concerns itself with both sides of love, friendship, and redemption, not desolation or desperation. That said, there is plenty of human shadow in these ten songs. Polly Harvey wrote three songs here, co-wrote a pair with Faithfull, and is present on all of them. Nick Cave co-wrote three with the singer and his Bad Seeds back her on these tracks. She also co-wrote one apiece with Blur's Damon Albarn and composer Jon Brion. Along with Harvey and Cave, Rob Ellis and Hal Willner aided in production. Therefore, Before the Poison, like its predecessor, Kissin' Time, is an album of collaborations. But unlike that offering, this one is seamless; its songs are sequenced impeccably and all feel of a piece linked by emotional thematics. ..."
allmusic
W - Before the Poison
Pitchfork
YouTube: My Friends have, Crazy Love (Live BBC4 Sessions), There Is a Ghost @Lycabettus, Athens, Green Fields (Last Song), Before the poison, In The Factory, Mystery of love, Before The Poison - Interview

2008 June: Marianne Faithfull, 2010 November: Marianne Faithfull - 1, 2013 January: Broken English: Deluxe Edition.

Forging an Art Market in China

"When the hammer came down at an evening auction during China Guardian’s spring sale in May 2011, 'Eagle Standing on a Pine Tree,' a 1946 ink painting by Qi Baishi, one of China’s 20th-century masters, had drawn a startling price: $65.4 million. No Chinese painting had ever fetched so much at auction, and, by the end of the year, the sale appeared to have global implications, helping China surpass the United States as the world’s biggest art and auction market. But two years after the auction, Qi Baishi’s masterpiece is still languishing in a warehouse in Beijing. The winning bidder has refused to pay for the piece since doubts were raised about its authenticity."
NYT: Forging an Art Market in China

La La La Human Steps perform New Work (2010)

"Purcell's Dido & Aeneas and Gluck's Orpheus & Eurydice must be the most choreographed operas in the repertory. Their buoyant, punchy baroque rhythms, and the simple arc of their plots, lend themselves naturally to dance. Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock joins the illustrious line of Balanchine, Bausch and Morris in tackling these two classics. But Lock is a refusenik when it comes to dance narrative, believing that even the most basic of stories is not carried well by pure movement. So his own interpretation, modestly titled New Work, is presented as an abstraction of the tragic love affairs at the heart of both operas: uniting them into a single choreographic meditation on yearning, anger and loss."
Guardian
Telegraph
YouTube: New Work
YouTube: Interview + Infante c'est Destroy (1991-92)

2008 July: La La La Human Steps, 2010 May: David Bowie - "Look Back In Anger", 2010 September: Mondo Beyondo, 2012 September: Amelia.

Mexican Portraits

"In the history of photography in Mexico, portraiture is an important tradition that transcends styles, subjects, and decades. Mexican Portraits includes more than 350 portraits from over eighty anonymous and well-known Mexican photographers, including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Agustín V. Casasola, Romualdo García, Graciela Iturbide, and Enrique Metinides. Including both contemporary and classic works, mostly created from the 1970s to the present, this diverse group of images has been selected by photographer and editor Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, in conjunction with curator Vesta Mónica Herrerías, and presents an idiosyncratic and personal perspective on this particular genre."
Aperture
NYT: Mexico Points the Camera at Itself
amazon
vimeo: Mexican Portraits: A Presentation by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio

The Case for Studying Physics in a Charming Animated Video

"Xiangjun Shi, otherwise known as Shixie, studied animation at RISD and physics at Brown. Then, she harnessed her training in both disciplines to create an animation explaining the virtue of studying physics. Pretty quickly, it gets to the crux of the matter: Studying physics will change how you see the world and how you understand your place in it, all while letting you wrap your mind around some pretty electrifying concepts. I think I’m sold! You can find more videos by Shixie here."
Open Culture (Video)
Xiangjun Shi
vimeo: Shixie

Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
"The Frick Collection is the final American venue of a global tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands. While the prestigious Dutch museum undergoes an extensive two-year renovation, it is lending masterpieces that have not traveled in nearly thirty years. At the Frick, a selection of fifteen paintings includes the beloved Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) by Johannes Vermeer and Carel Fabritius’s exquisite Goldfinch (1654). The exhibition continues the Frick’s tradition of presenting masterpieces from acclaimed museums not easily accessible to the New York public."
The Frick Collection (Video)
Glenwood
YouTube: Girl with a Pearl Earring at The Frick

2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light.

George Jackson

Wikipedia - "George Henry Jackson (March 12, 1945 – April 14, 2013) was an American rhythm & blues, rock and soul songwriter and singer. His prominence was as a prolific and skilled songwriter; he wrote or co-wrote many hit songs for other musicians, including 'One Bad Apple', 'Old Time Rock and Roll' and 'The Only Way Is Up'. As a southern soul singer he recorded a mere 15 singles between 1963 and 1985, with some success."
Wikipedia
YouTube: I'm Just A Prisoner, So Good To Me, The weekend, The feeling is right, Find 'Em, Fool 'Em And Forget 'Em, The Only Way Is Up, I Found What I Wanted, Aretha, Sing One for Me, Slippin on your love

Baaba Maal

Wikipedia - "Baaba Maal (born 12 November 1953) is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. He is well known in Africa and internationally is probably Senegal's most famous musician after Youssou N'Dour. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary. Baaba sings primarily in Pulaar and is the foremost promoter of the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking peoples who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Three Little Birds, Yela, CACE INT'L TV, Baaba Maal Baayo Live Acoustic, Dakar Moon

Beached

"There is something brutal about Philip Glass’s opera. The way it stops and starts, the taunting tease of a story, then the way it’s anything but narrative. Composed of nine twenty-minute scenes, the whole of Einstein on the Beach — first produced in 1976 and shown in L.A. for the first time this month—is interspersed by five so-called 'knee plays,' in which two women sit or stand or writhe around on plastic platforms, or search dreamily inside gently moving glass boxes. It’s not easy to watch."
The Paris Review
YouTube: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs discuss Einstein on the Beach, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs discuss Einstein on the Beach

2010 January: Einstein on the Beach, 2011 May: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985), 2012 February: Choreographic, Lucinda Childs

Lou Reed (1942 - 2013)

"Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today on Long Island. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May. With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example."
Rolling Stone: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer
Wikipedia
Lou Reed (Video)
NYT: Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ’n’ Roll (Video)
YouTube: Lou Reed - Topic

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale.

Ernie Barnes

Wikipedia - "Ernest 'Ernie' Eugene Barnes, Jr. (July 15, 1938 – April 27, 2009) was an African-American painter, well known for his unique style of elongation and movement. He was also a professional football player, actor and author. ... According to Barnes, he created the original version of Sugar Shack after reflecting upon his childhood, during which he was not 'able to go to a dance.' In a 2008 interview, Barnes said, 'Sugar Shack is a recall of a childhood experience. It was the first time my innocence met with the sins of dance. The painting transmits rhythm so the experience is re-created in the person viewing it. To show that African-Americans utilize rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension.'"
Wikipedia
Ernie Barnes
Google
YouTube: Ernie Barnes - This is my art, CNN Tribute to Ernie Barnes, Artist Ernie Barnes - October Gallery

What Lies Beneath

"Deep below the streets of New York City lie its vital organs—a water system, subways, railroads, tunnels, sewers, drains, and power and cable lines—in a vast, three-dimensional tangle. Penetrating this centuries-old underworld of caverns, squatters, and unmarked doors, William Langewiesche follows three men who constantly navigate its dangers: the subway-operations chief who dealt with the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the engineer in charge of three underground mega-projects, and the guy who, well, just loves exploring the dark, jerry-rigged heart of a great metropolis."
Vanity Fair

The Pet Sounds Sessions

Wikipedia - "The Pet Sounds Sessions is a 4-CD boxed set released in 1997 which compiles tracks from The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, and its recording sessions. The album is included in its entirety in its original mono mix, as well as a stereo mix. The set also contains instrumental tracks, vocals-only tracks, alternate mixes, and edited highlights from the recording sessions for many of the album's songs, as well as several songs not included on the album. ... The stereo mix of the album contains some notable differences from the original mono mix. Among them, alternate vocal parts used for the bridge of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and the end of 'God Only Knows' due to the original tracks no longer existing. 'You Still Believe in Me' also features a single tracked vocal instead of the doubled vocal of the original due to a missing tape. Other differences are also noted in the booklet."
W - The Pet Sounds Sessions
amazon - The Pet Sounds Sessions [Box set, Original recording remastered], ☼SMiLE
Pet Sounds Track Notes
Pet Sounds Track Notes - 1
allmusic: Pet Sounds, allmusuc: SMiLE
Pitchfork
W - Smile
SOS: The Resurrection Of Brian Wilson's SMiLE
YouTube: Brian Wilson - SMiLE live 51:56, Pet Sounds live, part 1/3, part 2/3, Pet Sounds live, part 3/3
YouTube: The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (FULL ALBUM), ☼SMiLE (FULL ALBUM)
YouTube: Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds Live 39:38, Beautiful Dreamer - Brian Wilson and the Story of 'SMiLE' 1:49:53

2010 July: Pet Sounds

Sally Mann - Deep South

"Sally Mann began to experiment with the wet collodian process in the 1990s to create two photographic series, Deep South and Eva. Mann's images have a feeling of cultivated imperfection about them due to a lens she employs in which mildew and misaligned elements contribute a sort of melancholy fog. The use of the collodian process was therefore a natural development to her work because of the interplay between clarity, dreaminess and wildness."
The Crafted Photograph
Sally Mann - Deep South
amazon
YouTube: Deep South

2009 September: Sally Mann, 2010 March: Sally Mann - 1

John Singer Sargent Watercolors

Ponte San Giuseppe di Castello, Venice
"'To live with Sargent’s water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held,' according to the painter’s first biographer. Presenting more than 90 of Sargent’s dazzling works, this exhibition, co-organized with the Brooklyn Museum, combines for the first time the two most significant collections of watercolor paintings by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), images created by a consummate artist with daring compositional strategies and a complex technique. 'John Singer Sargent Watercolors' also celebrates a century of Sargent watercolors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."
MFA (Video)
W - John Singer Sargent
New Yorker: Sargent’s Watercolors
amazon
YouTube: WITHOUT ZOOM - VENICE

My Desk - Vanity Fair

"From artistic floral arrangements to signed prints by Annie Leibovitz, to boxes upon boxes of perfume and cologne, the desks of Vanity Fair’s editors and producers are often works of art in themselves. In honor of our regular 'My Desk' feature, VF.com takes a tour of the classy clutter that surrounds the makers of a magazine."
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair - 1

Cluster & Eno (1977)

Wikipedia - "Cluster & Eno is a collaborative album by the German electronic music group Cluster and English ambient musician Brian Eno. The style of this album is a collection of gentle melodies: a mixture of Eno’s ambient sensibilities and Cluster's avant-garde style. In June, 1977 the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius joined with Brian Eno for recording sessions at Conny Plank's studio. The first release from those sessions on Sky Records was Cluster & Eno. Guest musicians on the album included Can bassist Holger Czukay and Asmus Tietchens on synthesizer. The association with Eno brought Cluster a much wider audience than previous albums and international attention. ..."
Wikipedia
Pitchfork
YouTube: Cluster & Eno (Full Album 1977)

John Ashbery: Poet Among Things

"Loretta Howard Gallery is pleased to present John Ashbery Collects, an immersive multi-media gallery experience showcasing a selection of things that inform Ashbery’s sensibility as well as his work as a poet, visual artist, collaborator, art critic and collector. Co-curated by Adam Fitzgerald and Emily Skillings and Loretta Howard Gallery, John Ashbery Collects explores the poet’s lifelong interest in collecting through the medium of his late-19th century house in Hudson, NY, a carefully composed collage-environment constructed over thirty-five years with an eclectic array of fine art by European and American masters, furniture, pottery, textiles, bric-a-brac, toys, and other objects, augmented by the content and associations that these objects hold for him—the images and artworks he arranges on his walls, the books he puts on his shelves, the music he plays, the cinema he watches—all organized in an architecturally-distinguished setting. ..."
Loretta Howard Gallery
John Ashbery: Poet Among Things - Loretta Howard Gallery
Standing Inside One of Ashbery’s Poems: Reviews of “John Ashbery Collects” (Video)
The Paris Review - Art House: On “John Ashbery Collects”
John Ashbery Collects: poet among things

2007 November: John Ashbery, 2009 October: PennSound, 2012 February: Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987, 2012 October: Rivers and Mountains, 2012 November: Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 2013 June: New critical edition of John Ashbery’s “The Skaters”, 2013 August: Some Trees.

See No Evil

"... They clapped when I finished, but this time around, instead of feeling like I had fomented revolution, I felt like I had done something truly terrible: not so much because I had ripped off another songwriter’s words, but because hearing the lyrics to Television’s 'Marquee Moon' without the unmistakable double-stop guitar intro or the complex key changes is like looking at an Instagram photo of an Egon Schiele painting with some dimwit obscuring part of the view—it just doesn’t compare to the real thing. That song, and all of the other songs on side A of the band’s eponymous 1977 LP, is perfect. I can say without reservation that the first half of Marquee Moon is the greatest single side of any rock album, ever, and like some less-creepy teenage Humbert Humbert, I was obsessed with it, wanted to consume it, and I did something irrevocably horrible to it by appropriating it so disingenuously."
The Paris Review

2007 November: Tom Verlaine, 2010 March: Tom Verlaine - 1, 2011 October: Warm and Cool, 2012 Nov: Little Johnny Jewel, 2012 December: Words from the Front, 2013 July: Flash Light.

On Reading Proust

Marcel Proust on vacation with his family, circa 1892
"The following interview with Justice Stephen Breyer was conducted in French by Ioanna Kohler and was initially published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in Paris as part of a special issue entitled 'Proust vu d’Amérique.' It appears here in translation."
NYBook

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles

Opening Day Film

"On October 21, 1959, sixteen years after it was first conceived, the Guggenheim Museum opened to the public. Thousands flocked to the opening and the film 'Buildings & Crowd' captures the their excitement as lines formed down Fifth Avenue. The end of the film highlights the inaugural exhibition within the rotunda. With works by Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Stuart David, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, and Vasily Kandinsky, visitors were wowed by both the art and the Guggenheim Museum itself."
Guggenheim (Video)

Montreal Metro

Wikipedia - "The Montreal Metro (French: Métro de Montréal) is a rubber-tired metro system, and the main form of public transportation underground in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Metro, operated by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), was inaugurated on October 14, 1966, during the tenure of Mayor Jean Drapeau. Originally consisting of 26 stations on three separate lines, the Metro now has 68 stations on four lines measuring 69.2 km (43.00 mi) in length, serving the north, east, and centre of the Island of Montreal with connections to Longueuil, via the Yellow Line, and Laval, via the Orange line."
Wikipedia
Map of the Montreal Metro System
YouTube: Montreal Metro Source Engine First Preview, Métro de Montréal - Garage Beaugrand - ligne 1 verte, Métro de Montréal - Essai de train (nuit) ligne 5

Rucker Park

Dr. J - Rucker Park
Wikipedia - "Rucker Park is a basketball court in the Harlem neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan, at 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard across the street from the former Polo Grounds site. Many who played at the park in the Rucker Tournament achieved a level of fame for their abilities, and several have gone on to play in the NBA. ... The court is named after Harlem teacher and playground director for the New York City Parks Department Holcombe L. Rucker, who started a basketball tournament in 1950 in order to help less-fortunate kids stay off the streets and aim for college careers. The players in the Rucker Tournament featured slam dunks, crossover dribbles, and bravado that excited the crowd, a playing style then foreign to the National Basketball Association (NBA). The original court on which Rucker founded his tournament actually is on 7th Avenue between 128th and 129th streets in New York."
Wikipedia
W - Earl Manigault, W - Sylvester Blye, W - Jumpin Jackie Jackson
YouTube: Dr. J at Harlem's famed Rucker Park, Julius Erving dunk at 63 years

Robert Motherwell: Early Collages

"Devoted exclusively to papier collés and related works on paper from the 1940s and early 1950s by Robert Motherwell, this exhibition features nearly sixty artworks and examines the American artist’s origins and his engagement with collage. The exhibition also honors Peggy Guggenheim’s early patronage of the artist. At her urging, and under the tutelage of émigré Surrealist artist Matta, Motherwell first experimented with the papier collé technique."
Guggenheim
amazon
YouTube: Robert Motherwell: Early Collages

Street Photography V

"As you may or may not have heard, the video game Grand Theft Auto V, was released (September 17, 2013) after more than 5 years in the making. It went on to make $800 million in the first 24 hours of sales, and it was also the most expensive game ever made. Being a big fan of GTA, I went to the midnight launch and played the night away. ... With this new tool, and the huge world of Los Santos, I started experimenting with the camera and the digital streets. What I found was remarkable. The game is so realistic that it felt like being in the streets outside, running around for shots, anticipating passersby’s movements and reactions. In a way, it was also incredibly frightening that these algorithms could look so real, or is it that we ourselves are becoming ever more algorithmic?"
Street Photography V

Flâneur

Paul Gavarni, Le Flâneur, 1842.
Wikipedia - "Flâneur (pronounced: [flanuʁ]), from the French noun flâneur, means 'stroller', 'lounger', 'saunterer', or 'loafer'. Flânerie refers to the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. It carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, who made him the object of scholarly interest in the 20th century, as an emblematic figure of urban, modern experience. Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important figure for scholars, artists and writers."
Wikipedia
The Arcades Project Project
The Paris Review: In Praise of the Flâneur
NYT: The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris By Edmund White
amazon - The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White
YouTube: Flâneur - Walter Benjamin

The villages of yesterday

"I wanted to write just a short post on those villages in Kostroma province where the Black Ethnographer is gathering his photo findings in the abandoned houses. But as I was reading about them, the topic was gradually increasing and the accents were relocated. This is how a short post turned into a couple of long ones. In this first one, as an atmospheric introduction, I only quote from two photo blogs which approach the Ethnographers’s subject from two different sides. In the first one nub1an crosses in a jeep the region where the Ethnographer is gleaning, the surroundings of Chukhloma village in Kostroma, exactly five hundred kilometers from Moscow to the north-east and only about three hundred more from the already seen dying villages around Kich, that is in their neighborhood on a Russian scale."
Poemas del río Wang

Silas Hogan

Wikipedia - "Silas Hogan (September 15, 1911 – January 9, 1994)[2] was an American blues musician. Hogan most notably recorded 'Airport Blues' and 'Lonesome La La', was the front man of the Rhythm Ramblers, and became an inductee in the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. Hogan learned guitar playing as a teenager and was performing on a regular basis by the late 1930s. Similar to Lazy Lester and Slim Harpo, Hogan was influenced by Jimmy Reed. He had relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana by the early 1950s, and equipped with a Fender electric guitar, Hogan put together the Rhythm Ramblers. They assisted in the development of the Baton Rouge Blues sound, and with band members Hogan (guitar), Isaiah Chapman (lead guitar), Jimmy Dotson (drums), plus Sylvester Buckley (harmonica), they stayed together for almost ten years."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: Hoodooman Blues, So Glad, I'm Gonna Quit You Pretty Baby, Baby Please Come Back To Me, Airport Blues, Let Me Be Your Hatchet, Ain't It Sad, Rats And Roaches In My Kitchen

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies

"The Spy Who Liked Me by John le Carré. Whenever I allow myself to remember my first encounter with the American director Martin Ritt, who made the film version of my novel 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' I blush to think of the idiotic clothes I was wearing. It was 1963. The book had not yet been published. Ritt had bought the film rights to it on the strength of a rogue typescript slipped to him by my literary agent or my publisher, or maybe by some bright soul in a duplicating office who had a pal in the studio, which was Paramount. Ritt later boasted that he stole the rights. I later agreed with him. At the time, I saw him as a man of unlimited generosity who had taken the trouble to fly all the way from Los Angeles, with some like-minded friends, in order to give me lunch at that altar to Edwardian luxury the Connaught hotel and talk flatteringly about my book. ..."
The New Yorker
Guardian - Rereading: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
NYT: Temptations of a Man Isolated in Deceit - January 12, 1964
Criterion (Video)
YouTube: Initial briefing from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Suite)

2011 December: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
2013 July: The Legend of Rita - Volker Schlondorff (2001), 2013 August: Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), 2013 August: Der Tunnel (2001), The Lives of Others (2007).

Hellzapoppin' (1941) - Slim Gaillard & Slam Stewart - The Harlem Congeroos

"Slim Gaillard - piano, guitar
Slam Stewart - bass
Rex Stewart - trumpet
Elmer Fane - clarinet
Jap Jones - trombone
CP Jonstone - drums"
YouTube: Hellzapoppin'

Ernie Gehr

Side/ Walk/Shuttle (1991)
Wikipedia - "Ernie Gehr (born 1941) is an American experimental filmmaker closely associated with the Structural film movement of the 1970s. A self-taught artist, Gehr was inspired to begin making films in the 1960s after chancing upon a screening of a Stan Brakhage film. Gehr's film Serene Velocity (1970) has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Gehr served as faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute. The New York Times described Gehr's work as 'abstract, beautiful, mysterious, invigorating, utopian' saying he had 'embraced [the] Modernist cry, shunning mainstream narrative to make films in which bubbling grain, streaks of color and pulses of light are the main attraction.' His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in San Francisco."
Wikipedia
W - Serene Velocity (1970)
NYT: Can We See Philosophy? A Dialogue With Ernie Gehr
MAKING LIGHT OF IT
Chicago Reader, February, 1995. Edge City: Side/Walk/Shuttle
UbuWeb - Serene Velocity (Video)
NYT: No Blockbusters Here, Just Mind Expanders
Selected Films of Ernie Gehr
vimeo: Rear Window (1991), Morning (MiniDV, 2004)
SCI-ARC: Ernie Gehr Film And Architecture - Eureka (1974), Side/Walk/Shuttle (1991), and This Side of Paradise (1995)
YouTube: Side/Walk/Shuttle (1991), Signal-Germany on the Air (1985), Carte de visite (2003)

Grant Snider

"Grant Snider's interests have changed drastically since he was four years old, with one major exception: drawing. And maybe dinosaurs. Grant started out drawing a daily cartoon for the University of Kansas student newspaper, which led to a weekly strip called "Delayed Karma" for the Kansas City Star. His comics and illustrations now appear in newspapers, magazines, and across the internet."
Incidental Comics

Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

"... The tale’s author, Jorge Luis Borges, lived his life between English and his native Spanish, just as he lived between his public and private personas. No surprise, then, that his writing generates so much energy from matters of identity, language, and thought, and thus makes you want to learn more about the mind behind it. Here at Open Culture, we particularly enjoy doing our learning through Arena, the BBC’s intellectually omnivorous and artistically liberated television documentary series. The 1983 broadcast above, takes as its subject the imaginative Argentine master of the short story."
Open Culture
UbuWeb (Video)

2009 August: Jorge Luis Borges, 2013 May: Jorge Luis Borges - 1.

Claire Denis Dialogue with Eric Hynes

"Claire Denis joins writer/critic Eric Hynes in a discussion of her creative process, influences, and the films she's made over the course of some 25 years."
YouTube: Claire Denis Dialogue with Eric Hynes 1:44:36

2009 September: Claire Denis, 2011 April: White Material.

Art Connect Liverpool

"Video documentation of Wendell McShine’s ArtConnect project earlier this year with regulars from the Bluecoat’s learning disabled group, Blue Room, and young people from the Pad in Norris Green. 'We all share a common interest to the well being of our societies and self expression is one of our core values both as individuals and groups. I have created the Art Connect Project rooted in the philosophy that investment in education, art and humanities is vital for the uplifting and development of any society. This program is created to promote self awareness through the use of educational and dynamic creative workshops'."
vimeo: ART CONNECT- DOCUMENTARY, Art Connect Liverpool, STUDIO VISIT
The Bluecoat: Art:Connect Liverpool
.ARTIST-WENDELL MC SHINE (Video)

2013 March: Outsider Art

Stromae: Disillusion, With a Dance Beat

"Paul Van Haver is a musician for his time, with the charts, headlines and YouTube clicks to prove it — a gravel-voiced, mixed-race performer whose melancholic French-language dance pop has channeled, to popular acclaim, the gray that currently hangs over Europe. Mr. Van Haver, 28, who is best known as his stage persona Stromae, rose to fame with a beat-heavy 2009 single called 'Alors On Danse' (So We Dance) that is still played at parties and clubs across the Continent. It is a mournful anthem that evokes unemployment, divorce, debt, the financial crisis and a sort of resigned hope 'to forget all our problems'; it reached No.1 on the charts in 19 countries. Still Mr. Van Haver has no desire to be a 'salesman of the crisis,' he said in an interview here, and his music is by no means intended to intensify European pessimism, although he has at least once called his genre 'suicide dance.'"
NY Times
Wikipedia
YouTube: Alors on danse, Formidable, Te Quiero, Papaoutai

Last Days of Summer at Coney Island

"The landscape of New York keeps on changing, but Coney Island is cruising through time with the same vivid and dissolute charm, against its own 'transition.' As summer wraps up, the gritty seaside amusement district is effervescent, the boardwalk filled with bronzed and tattooed flesh and grinning characters, chasing and squeezing in the last bit of the New York-style endless summer."
charles le brigand

2009 April: Coney Island, 2010 July: Nathan's Famous, 2011 March: "An Underground Movement: Designers, Builders, Riders", Owen Smith, 2013 August: Donna Dennis: Coney Night Maze.