Life in Crimea - Photographs by Arthur Bondar

"One year ago today, after twenty-three years as an autonomous region within Ukraine, Crimea voted in a referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Russian elections aren’t known for their fairness, and the official reports of eighty-three-per-cent turnout, with ninety-seven per cent voting to join Russia, were widely questioned. Still, it’s clear that many Crimeans truly wanted to become Russian, hoping to be rescued from the uncertainty of post-Maidan Ukraine, to receive higher pensions, and to exit a nation in which they’d never really felt at home. The Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar, who documented life on the peninsula between 2010 and 2014, says that Crimeans have 'celebrated grandly' this past year."
New Yorker
Arthur Bondar
VII Photo
Chernobyl Anniversary: Arthur Bondar Photos Document Life In The Exclusion Zone
vimeo: Shadows of Wormwood, Balaklava: The Lost History
YouTube: Barricade: The EuroMaidan Revolt

Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City - John Dunstan

"My short film 'Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City' has been selected for the Golden Door International Film Festival of Jersey City, Wildlife Vaasa in Finland and Village Docs in Milan. ... A film I am very much looking forward to about the plight of bees and the fascinating people involved with them in Weehawken, New York, Colarado and across the country. My short film, around 17 mins should be an eye opener for many area residents, touching on the unprecedented Snowy Owl irruption of this past winter, hawks, falcons, over wintering herons, Raven Snowy Owl interaction all in the most unlikely of environments and on the big screen, this is not your modern multiplex, a real movie palace, admission is a reasonable 10 dollars, a family friendly program."
facebook
vimeo: "Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City"

Archie Shepp - Attica Blues (1972)

"Refining his large-ensemble experiments of 1971, Attica Blues is one of Archie Shepp's most significant post-'60s statements, recorded just several months after authorities ended the Attica prison uprising by massacring 43 inmates and hostages. Perhaps because Shepp's musical interests were changing, Attica Blues isn't the all-out blast of rage one might expect; instead, it's a richly arranged album of mournful, quietly agonized blues and Ellingtonian swing, mixed with a couple of storming funk burners. Of course, Shepp doesn't quite play it straight, bringing his avant-garde sensibilities to both vintage big band and contemporary funk, with little regard for the boundaries separating them all. ..."
allmusic
W - Attica Blues (1972)
amazon
YouTube: Attica Blues, Attica Blues 8:44
vimeo: Archie Shepp's new Attica Blues Band Project
YouTube: Attica Blues 39:30

Life in Hell - Matt Groening

Wikipedia - "Life in Hell was a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, which was published from 1977 to 2012. The strip featured anthropomorphic rabbits and a gay couple. Groening used these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death. His drawings were full of expressions of angst, social alienation, self-loathing, and fear of inevitable doom. ... Groening photocopied and distributed the comic book to friends. He also sold it for two dollars a copy at the 'punk' corner of the record store in which he worked, Licorice Pizza on Sunset Boulevard. Life in Hell debuted as a comic strip in the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978, to which Groening made his first professional cartoon sale."
Wikipedia
Life in Hell Archives
13 Of The Best "Life In Hell" Comics By Matt Groening
amazon: Matt Groening

Jeff Greinke - Lost Terrain (1992)

"This 1992 entry from Jeff Greinke is strongly suggestive of some of the works of Harold Budd and the cooler ambient pieces of Brian Eno. The often opaque shades of 'Changing Skies,' his previous release, give way here to culturally flavored hues that drift through dreamlike states with similar theme variations. A journey into night, Lost Terrain has the feeling of exploring forgotten landscapes of both inner and outer worlds. The first cut, 'Terrain of Memory,' will strike a sympathetic chord with those who like Budd's The White Arcades in its cool, dark ambience. ..."
allmusic
Hypnos
Spiderbytes
BestBuy: Lost Terrain - CD (Video)
YouTube: Veiled

2009 December: Jeff Greinke, 2012 September: Cities in Fog, 2013 May: Timbral Planes.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Henry David Thoreau (1849)

Wikipedia - "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is a book by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). It is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, that Thoreau took with his brother John in 1839. John died of tetanus in 1842 and Thoreau wrote the book, in part, as a tribute to his memory. ... While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, this is deceptive. The actual trip took two weeks and while given passages are a literal description of the journey — from Concord, Massachusetts, down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, to the Merrimack River, up to Concord, New Hampshire, and back — much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history. Thoreau relates these topics to his own life experiences, often in the context of the rapid changes taking place in his native New England during the Industrial Revolution, changes that Thoreau often laments."
Wikipedia
The Walden Woods Project
Prezi (Video)
amazon (Audible Audio Edition)

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden.

27 hilariously bad maps that explain nothing

10 - Whole Foods reshuffles Europe
"Maps can illuminate our world; they can enlighten us and make us see things differently; they can show how demographics, history, or countless other factors interact with human and physical geography. But, sometimes, maps can be utter disasters, either because they're wrong or simply very dumb. Here are a collection of maps so hilariously bad that you may never trust the form again. Tellingly, the bulk of the collection comes from cable TV news."
Vox

Freedom Tunnel

Wikipedia - "The Freedom Tunnel is the name given to the Amtrak tunnel under Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City. It got its name because the graffiti artist Chris 'Freedom' Pape used the tunnel walls to create some of his most notable artwork. The name may also be a reference to the former shantytowns built within the tunnel by homeless populations seeking shelter and freedom to live rent-free and unsupervised by law enforcement. ... Over the tunnel's years of disuse, its isolated nature allowed graffiti artists and street artists to work without fear of arrest, leading to larger and more ambitious pieces. The tunnel has unique lighting provided by grates in the sidewalks of Riverside Park above the space. The descending shafts of light allow graffiti art to be seen in the gloom, and artists would often center their projects under the light to take advantage of the spot-lighting effect, as if in a gallery."
Wikipedia
Chris Pape's Freedom Tunnel
NYC Underground: A Journey To The Freedom Tunnel
Exploring an Active Amtrak Tunnel Under the Upper West Side
W - Dark Days (film)
vimeo: Freedom Tunnel - Filmed and cut by Charles le Brigand
YouTube: How to get to the Freedom Tunnel, Marc Singer - Dark Days Documentary (first 10 minutes)

Au Pairs - "Inconvenience" / Pretty Boys (12")

"Blasting into the post-punk consciousness with a tremendous debut album, the Au Pairs, fronted by lesbian-feminist Lesley Woods, played brittle, dissonant, guitar-based rock that shared political and musical kinship with the Mekons and (especially) the Gang of Four. The music was danceable, imbued with an almost petulant irony, and for a while, very hip and well-liked by critics. Unlike many bands of the day, however, the Au Pairs (at least initially) backed it up with searing, confrontational songs celebrating sexuality from a woman's perspective. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Inconvenience / Pretty Boys (12")

2008 May: Au Pairs, 2012 October: Au Pairs @ Pinkpop 1982, 2014 August: Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology (2006).

"That's A Pretty Good Love" - Big Maybelle (1956)

"Baby my love is deep (How deep?)
Deep as the bottom of the ocean (How pure?)
Pure as the new born baby (How bright?)
Outshine's the sun above
That's a pretty good love."
Wikipedia
YouTube: That's A Pretty Good Love

Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia

La Loge, 1908, Huile sur toile
"After the Bonnard exhibitions held the world over, the Musee d'Orsay, which manages the artist's output, owed it to itself to devote a retrospective to him that is representative of all his creative periods. Practicing art in its multifarious forms - painting, drawing, prints, decorative art, sculpture, photography - Bonnard advocated a basically decorative esthetic, fuelled by sharp, humorous observations drawn from his immediate surroundings. From the small picture to the large format, from the portrait to the still life, from the intimate scene to the pastoral subject, from the urban landscape to the ancient setting, Bonnard's work reveals an instinctive and supremely sensitive artist. His palette of bright, luminous colors makes him one of the leading exponents of modern art and an eminent representative of the Arcadian movement."
Musée d'Orsay
Les Hôtels Paris Rive Gauche
MoMA: Dining Room Overlooking the Garden (The Breakfast Room), The Bathroom

2012 January: Pierre Bonnard

Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori

"In August 2002, I drove from Los Angeles to Calgary, Canada to film Phantom Orchard recording their first record in the home studio of the fascinating David Kean, founder of The Audities Foundation, an organization committed to the preservation of rare electronic instruments (www.audities.org). This footage was shot for what eventually evolved into the feature documentary 'The Reach Of Resonance,' though this footage was not actually used in the film."
Steve Elkins
YouTube: Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori in the studio, Live @ Teatro Fondamenta Nuove

2011 January: Zeena Parkins, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2012 December: Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins / sound. at REDCAT, 2013 October: Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival, 2014 October: Janene Higgins & Zeena Parkins (2000), 2012 October: Ikue Mori.

Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector

A collection of elephant figurines in the studio of Sir Peter Blake
"What a delightful exhibition Magnificent Obsessions proves to be. Bursting at the seams with bizarre and beautiful objects, collected over decades by 15 famous post-war and contemporary artists, it is by turns amusing, surprising, illuminating – and always engrossing. The idea behind the show is simple: why not explore some of the idiosyncratic personal collections built up by well-known artists to see whether they can shine light upon those artists’ work? After all, artists have obsessively collected things for centuries: Rembrandt’s habit was so extreme he eventually went bankrupt. ..."
Telegraph
NY Times

‘Remote New York,’ a Tour From Brooklyn to Greenwich Village

"On a rainy afternoon this week, passers-by may have paused to wonder about a headphone-wearing group assembled in front of a guardhouse at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, staring at a nondescript commercial strip outside the gates before suddenly bursting into applause. They weren’t mourners, but both actors, after a fashion, and audience for 'Remote New York,' a 'pedestrian-based live art experience' that, starting on Saturday, will take 50 people (the script calls them a 'horde') per performance along a carefully planned route that wends, on foot and by subway, from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village. 'It’s a kind of invisible architecture,' Stefan Kaegi, part of the German-based arts collective Rimini Protokoll and the piece’s creator, said in a post-rehearsal interview. 'We’re setting up a precise geographical structure, like a tunnel through the city that nobody sees.' ...”
NY Times
NYU Skirball
Rimini-Protokoll

"Little Wing" - Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

Wikipedia - "'Little Wing' is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967. It is a slower tempo, rhythm and blues-inspired ballad featuring Hendrix's vocal and guitar with recording studio effects accompanied by bass, drums, and glockenspiel. Lyrically, it is one of several of his songs that reference an idealized feminine or guardian angel-like figure. At about two and a half minutes in length, it is one of his most concise and melodically-focused pieces. ..."
Wikipedia
In Deep Lesson with Andy Aledort: How to Play "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix (Video)
Spotify
YouTube: Little Wing (Live in London)

2010 September: Jimi Hendrix, 2013 November: Watch Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’, the New PBS Documentary, 2014 July: Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock: The Complete Performance in Video & Audio (1969), 2014 October: Live at Monterey (1967).

Bill Watterson talks: This is why you must read the new ‘Exploring Calvin and Hobbes’ book

"The wait was worth it. Bill Watterson, that master of timing, waited decades to give a truly in-depth interview. As he did with his beloved strip, the 'Calvin and Hobbes' creator knows when and how to aim for, and deliver, the exceptional. ... For years, the cartoonist didn’t make public comments. Now, in a single wide-ranging and revealing and illuminating and engrossing and self-deprecating and poignant and, of course, deeply funny interview, Watterson has proved more generous than we perhaps could have ever hoped for. Bill Watterson has delivered a gift, a trip down memory lane that is populated densely on each side with personal and professional insights — some grippingly specific, some that ring universal, many that resonate as both. ..."
Washington Post
Washington Post - Read: Here’s an excerpt from Bill Watterson’s rare new ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ interview
amazon

2011 January: Calvin and Hobbes

Habibi funk: Listen to this rare vinyl mix of incredible Arab songs from the 60s/70s

"'I got to travel a lot in North Africa in the last years through touring with Blitz the Ambassador,' Jannis writes on his Soundcloud page, and the studio session with Oddisee for Sawtuha in Tunisia. While being there, I did some digging and found some incredible music from the ’60s and ’70s. Some of the music in this mix has zero info on the Net, was never sold on eBay, and has not been ‘rediscovered’ yet. Others are somewhat classics in the field of ‘Arabic groove.’ The music in this mix comes from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, and Syria.”
Your Middle East (Video)
Soundcloud: Radio Jakarta 001: Jannis of Jakarta Records - "Arab 60s/70s Vinyl Mix", Radio Jakarta 007 (Video)
Sawtuha by Various Artists (Video)

Martin Mull

Viewing Room
Wikipedia - "Martin Eugene Mull (born August 18, 1943) is an American actor who has appeared in many television and film roles. He is also a comedian, painter, and recording artist. ... Mull has been a painter since the 1970s, and has had his work appear in group and solo exhibits since that time. He participated in the June 15, 1971 exhibit 'Flush with the Walls' in the men's room of the Boston Museum of Art to protest the lack of contemporary and local art in the museum. His work often combines photorealist painting, and the pop art and collage styles. He published a book of some of his paintings, titled Paintings Drawings and Words, in 1995."
Wikipedia
Samuel Freeman
artnet
YouTube: The Humming Song, KPCS: Martin Mull #64

Hooking Up

In 2009, all eyes were on Kanye West and his crew, in Paris to attend the men's fashion shows.
"Hip-hop has always had a way of asserting its domain — it shows up, it makes a scene, it seduces and cajoles, it is embraced, it takes over. Which makes it all the more vexing that, for decades, men’s fashion managed to resist its charms. I don’t mean style — hip-hop has always had signature style, defining looks that changed practically every year. But the higher end of men’s fashion long kept its nose in the air, old money letting new money know exactly where it wasn’t welcome. Since the days when Dapper Dan was cooking up flamboyant luxury knockoffs out of a Harlem storefront, hip-hop had its sights set on infiltration, and it’s finally making headway as an influence on the runway. But the silk ceiling was real, and so hip-hop made do, writing its own fashion codes, doing what it could with what was around. ..."
T Magazine: NY Times

Two-Lane Blacktop - Monte Hellman (1971)

Wikipedia - "Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 road movie directed by Monte Hellman, starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird. Esquire magazine declared the film its movie of the year for 1971, and even published the entire screenplay in its April 1971 issue, but the film was not a commercial success. The film has since become a counterculture-era cult classic. ... Two-Lane Blacktop is notable as a time capsule film of U.S. Route 66 during the pre-Interstate Highway era, and for its stark footage and minimal dialogue. As such, it has become popular with fans of Route 66. Two-Lane Blacktop has been compared to similar road movies with an existentialist message from the era, such as Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, and Electra Glide in Blue."
Wikipedia
The Making Of TWO LANE BLACKTOP
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP | UNDER THE HOOD OF THE EPIC 1971 ROAD FLICK
Behind The Camera: Two-Lane Blacktop
YouTube: Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) - Trailer, Critics' Picks | The New York Times, (1978) James Taylor Interview

Twenty-two on 'Tender Buttons' - Gertrude Stein

"For the 100th anniversary of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, published in a corrected centennial edition by City Lights Books in 2014, Jacket2 invited a number of writers to pen 'microreviews' — short, impressionistic, discursive, or momentary reflections on the book which first appeared in 1914 in a print run of 1,000 by Claire Marie and has been republished since by Green Integer, Gordon, Sun and Moon, and others. Tender Buttons has come to be understood as one of the most important and challenging texts of twentieth-century literary modernism, what Charles Bernstein has called 'the fullest realization of the turn to language and the most perfect realization of ‘wordness,’ where word and object are merged.'”
Jacket2
W - Tender Buttons (book)
Bartleby: Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein

2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 January: The Making of an American by Edward White.

How the impressionists found a new way of capturing the remarkable in everyday life

Degas, Dance Foyer of the Opera at rue le Peletier (1872)
"Here are some chairs I noticed. An empty chair at the natural optical centre of Degas’s Dance Foyer of the Opera at rue le Peletier (1872), occupied by a fan and a puddle of white cloth. It is waiting – and the viewer is waiting, subliminally – for its occupant to return and claim the fan. It is reserved. Someone has bagged it. Not a circumstance you often see painted, though common enough in real life. Nor is the violinist playing. He is pausing, his bow at rest on his trouser leg. Degas has painted a pause. A thing that hasn’t been painted before. In the same picture, a dancer to the right, in the foreground, is sitting on another chair, her legs stiffly out front – ungainly yet graceful, resting. The upright back of the chair is invisible because it is under her unmanageably stiff tulle skirt, lifting the skirt up and slightly out of alignment. All her fatigue is there in the mistake, the carelessness of her plonking down."
New Statesman
Inventing Impressionism
amazon: Luncheon of the Boating Party - Susan Vreeland
YouTube: Inventing Impressionism | The National Gallery, London

In New Exam for Cabbies, Knowledge of Streets Takes a Back Seat

"The trip from Kennedy Airport to La Guardia is a straight shot on the Van Wyck Expressway, with a little jog on the Grand Central Parkway at the end. Canal Street may be the shortest route from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan Bridge, but traffic can make it feel like the longest. And all even-numbered, one-way streets in Manhattan run west-to-east, except for the handful that do not. Knowing how to get around the five boroughs of New York City — understanding not just the geography, but the nuances of timing and the endless exceptions to every rule — is part of driving a yellow cab here. And as part of their training, New York cabbies have long had to face a rigorous set of geography questions on the 80-question test they must pass to get a license. Landmarks and popular destinations were on the test, but so were less familiar streets and alternate routes. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Who Needs a GPS? A New York Geography Quiz

2012 June: Taxicabs of New York City

"Freddie's Dead" - Curtis Mayfield (1972)

Wikipedia - "'Freddie's Dead' is a song by Curtis Mayfield. It was the first single from his 1972 soundtrack album for the film Super Fly. The single was released before the Super Fly album, and in fact before the film itself was in theaters. ... The song laments the death of Fat Freddie, a character in the film who is run over by a car. Like most of the music from the Super Fly album, 'Freddie's Dead' appears in the film only in an instrumental arrangement, without any lyrics. The song's music is featured prominently in the film's opening sequence and also recurs at several other points. Because of this usage the song was subtitled 'Theme from Superfly' on its single release (but not on the album). It is not to be confused with 'Superfly', a different song and the second single released from the Super Fly album. The arrangement is driven by a strong bass line, wah wah guitars, and a melancholy string orchestration."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "Freddies Dead" (Live)

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975), 2014 September: Back to the World (1973), 2014 October: Omnibus (1995).

Lumière and Company - David Lynch (1995)

"Lumière and Company (1995, original title 'Lumière et compagnie') was a collaboration between 41 international film directors in which each made a short film using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers. Shorts were edited in-camera and abided by three rules: A short may be no longer than 52 seconds; No synchronized sound; No more than three takes."
UbuWeb (Video)
#147: David Lynch's Lumière Short (David Lynch, 1995)
Open Culture: What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Camera and 52 Seconds of Film (Video)

2014 September: David Lynch: The Unified Field, 2014 December: David Lynch’s Bad Thoughts - J. Hoberman.

Richard Estes: Painting New York City

"From March 10 to September 20, 2015, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents Richard Estes: Painting New York City, the first exhibition of the art of Richard Estes to focus on the artist’s technique and process, through an examination of his New York City paintings, prints, and photographs. Spanning from the mid-1960s to the present and featuring over forty paintings and works on paper, the exhibition is Estes’ first New York City museum survey. It is also the first solo painting show in the history of the Museum of Arts and Design. ..."
Madmuseum
Madmuseum: Richard Estes
NY Times - From Snapshots Come Paintings: Work by Richard Estes
W - Richard Estes
NPR: Painting Or Photograph? With Richard Estes, It's Hard To Tell (Video)
amazon: Richard Estes' Realism (Portland Museum of Art)
vimeo: PMA presents: Richard Estes' Realism
YouTube: Not photos...paintings !!!, An Evening with Richard Estes - Smithsonian American Art Museum 1:09:11

Revisiting Selma

"Growing up as a person of African descent in Sweden made me hungry for role models, so I read about the fight for civil rights in America with fascination. As I took photos around the world, I saw that I was not alone. Blacks and other minorities I met in Europe, South America and the Middle East looked toward leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as beacons of hope. When I moved to the United States in 2003, I felt that I was stepping into that history. Being black here means that one stands on the shoulders of those who fought for freedom. Before I visited Alabama, the American South blended together for me, as I imagine it does for many outsiders, but the photographic landscape of the civil rights movement, and in particular the march from Selma to Montgomery, was much more familiar. ..."
NY Times

2015 January: Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery March by Stephen Somerstein, 2015 February: Spider Martin’s Photographs of the Selma March Get a Broader View.

In Which Berthe Morisot And Claude Monet Exchange Winter Letters

Monet, Snow Scene
"Seasonal depression affected the most talented artists. The more talent they had, the more likely they were to be felled to their knees by this phenomenon. Then as now, it was the worst winter in recorded history. People always have the tendency to exaggerate the horrors of the most recent snow. The letters of Berthe Morisot and her friend Claude Monet during this period are unmistakably gloomy. It was the dark surroundings that moved the two artists to write to each other at all, for if the weather was at all better, they would have seen one another in person. ..."
This Recording

Blu goes black, buffing his own work in Berlin

"Last week, Blu shocked Berlin by orchestrating the removal of two of his own iconic murals, including a mural that was at one point a collaboration with JR. The murals were located in the city’s famous Kreuzberg neighborhood, which was once home to squatters and artists, but is now undergoing significant and swift gentrification. The squatters in the buildings Blu had painted were recently evicted, and a real estate developer is about to build on the empty lot in front of the murals. Apparently, the new condos would have had a great view of the murals. So, one night last week, a team with two lifts painted the walls black, and they did it with Blu’s support. ..."
Vandalog
Blu

Delta 5

Wikipedia - "Delta 5 were a post-punk band from Leeds, England. The original members of Delta 5, Julz Sale (vocals/guitar), Ros Allen (bass) and Bethan Peters (bass), formed the band 'on a lark', but soon became a part of the thriving Leeds post-punk scene, and later added Kelvin Knight on drums and Alan Riggs on guitar. Combining feminist politics with a two-bass funk-punk sound (much in the style of another, more famous Leeds band, Gang of Four), they released their debut single in 1979, 'Mind Your Own Business'. ... Delta 5 were also important figures in the Rock Against Racism movement, and were the subject of a highly publicized assault at the hands of a right-wing group affiliated with rival movement Rock Against Communism."
Wikipedia
Perfect Sound Forever
allmusic/a>
amazon
YouTube: Anticipation, Mind Your Own Business, You, Now That You've Gone, Journey, Shadow, Train song (BBC radio session) 1981, Make Up (John Peel Session), Triangle (John Peel Session)
Live Berkeley Square 9:27:80 47:35

Dagmar Krause - "The Ballad of Bougeois Welfare", "The Ballad of The Sackslingers", "Pavel's Prison Song", Etc.

"... Radical in both music and politics, the band relocated to London in the early '70s, eventually joining forces with progressives Henry Cow. After Cow's demise in 1980, Krause teamed up with former-bandmates guitarist Fred Frith and drummer Chris Cutler in the wonderfully anarchic Art Bears, who disbanded after three excellent records.  ... As a vocalist, Krause is arguably something of an acquired taste. Her husky, vibrato-laden alto can suddenly swoop into a breathtaking upper register with a power that belies her small, frail physique. Her English singing retains a heavy German accent, but whether she sings in German or English (which she often does on the same record), she retains her impeccable phrasing and ability to inject the most oft-heard lyric with almost palpable emotion."
SoundHound
YouTube: "The Ballad of Bougeois Welfare", "The Ballad of The Sackslingers", "Pavel's Prison Song", "Genevieve", "Surabaya Johnny", "Song of a German Mother"

2010 January: Dagmar Krause, 2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht / Weill & Eisler, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2013 February: Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler.

Art+Feminism

Cuban Feminist Poster Art “Lipstick” — Artist José Gómez Fresquet (Frémez), circa 1970
"Art+Feminism is a campaign to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s content and community skews male, creating significant gaps in an increasingly important repository of shared knowledge. We invite you to address this absence by organizing in-person, communal updating of Wikipedia’s entries on art and feminism."
Art+Feminism (Video)
W - Meetup/ArtAndFeminism
Feminism & Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum - Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base
facebook: Art+Feminism

Albert Maysles, Pioneering Documentarian

"Albert Maysles, the award-winning documentarian who, with his brother, David, made intensely talked-about films, including 'Grey Gardens' and 'Gimme Shelter,' with their American version of cinéma vérité, died Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 88. His death was confirmed by K. A. Dilday, a family friend. Mr. Maysles (pronounced MAY-zuls) departed from documentary conventions by not interviewing his films’ subjects. As he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 1994, 'Making a film isn’t finding the answer to a question; it’s trying to capture life as it is.' That immediacy was a hallmark of the Maysles brothers’ films, beginning in the 1960s, when they made several well-regarded documentaries. But it was 'Gimme Shelter' (1970), about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 American tour, that brought them widespread attention. It included a scene of a fan being stabbed to death at the group’s concert in Altamont, Calif., and the critical admiration for the film was at least partly countered by concerns that it was exploiting that violence.”
NY Times
MAYSLES FILMS (Video)
W - Albert and David Maysles

Jonathas de Andrade - 40 Nego Bom é um real

"In the work 40 Nego Bom é um real, the young Brazilian artist Jonathas de Andrade tells the story of a sweet. Based on the production process of this nego bom (the name literally means 'good black' and has racial connotations), he shows how in the social, political and ideological reality of Brazilian society, difficult issues are preferably 'forgotten'. His work is based on a variety of historical documentary material. The installation is inspired by a street vendor promoting his banana sweets at the top of his voice. Like an anthropologist, the artist sketches a fictive sweet factory with forty workers. The work is divided into two parts. Colourful silk prints and paintings on board show people working in apparent harmony on the production of the sweet. The second part consists of pictures of individual workers. The accompanying texts show a less good-humoured picture and expose the false working relationships. Andrade subtly reveals a racism that is deeply rooted in Brazilian culture."
Bonnefanten
Jonathas de Andrade - 40 Nego Bom é um real
Jonathas de Andrade
Guggenheim
frieze - Focus: Jonathas de Andrade
YouTube: Future Generation Art Prize 2012

"I Only Want to Be with You" - Dusty Springfield (1963)

"I don't know what it is that makes me love you so
I only know I never want to let you go
'Cause you've started something
Oh, can't you see?
That ever since we met
You've had a hold on me
It happens to be true
I only want to be with you"
W - "I Only Want to Be with You"
YouTube: "I Only Want to Be with You"

In Reverse - Ron Arad

Pressed Flower Navy Blue, 2013
"... Each catalogue contains its own trio of real pressed flowers hidden within its pages, making each one a unique specimen in its own right. The flowers in the catalogue poetically replicate in miniature the large pressed-flower fiat Cinquecentos on the walls of the In Reverse Exhibition. With a typeface derived from those of licence plates, and the usual layout of a catalogue being reversed with the headline at the bottom of pages, and the bottom at the top, the themes of reversal and cars run through from the front page to the back. The cover is an image of the Roddy Giacosa, a metal tube piece in the show, and is embossed so that the texture and feel of the image recall that of the sculpture itself."
Ron Arad
WSJ: Crushed Cars
Paul Kasmin Gallery
Design Museum Holon

The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World

Laura Owens, “Untitled” (2013)
"Forever Now presents the work of 17 artists whose paintings reflect a singular approach that characterizes our cultural moment at the beginning of this new millennium: they refuse to allow us to define or even meter our time by them. This phenomenon in culture was first identified by the science fiction writer William Gibson, who used the term 'a-temporality' to describe a cultural product of our moment that paradoxically doesn’t represent, through style, through content, or through medium, the time from which it comes. A-temporality, or timelessness, manifests itself in painting as an ahistorical free-for-all, where contemporaneity as an indicator of new form is nowhere to be found, and all eras coexist. ..."
MoMA
MoMA: INSIDE/OUT
amazon
New Yorker: Take Your Time by Peter Schjeldahl
NY Times: The Paintbrush in the Digital Era
YouTube: The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at MoMA

To Arms! Deployment of Troops I THE GREAT WAR - Week 3

"The first few days of war were a combination of failed organisation and chaos. The Austro-Hungarian supreme command lacks in combat experience, and their irrational actions in Serbia are causing turmoil among the Germans. At the Eastern and Western Front, early signs of problems can be seen, too, which the armies will pay a terrible price for, in the upcoming weeks."
YouTube: To Arms! Deployment of Troops I THE GREAT WAR - Week 3

2014 December: The Great War: WWI Starts - How Europe Spiraled Into the Great War - Week 1, Europe Prior to WWI: Allies and Enemies I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 1/3, Tinderbox Europe - From Balkan Troubles to WWI I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 2/3, A Shot that Changed the World - The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 3/3, 2015 January: Germany in Two-Front War and the Schlieffen-Plan I - Week 2

Studio One: Jump Up

"... In the early releases featured here you will find the roots of Studio One’s unique sound – from the first jump-up, boogie-woogie and shuffle recordings made in Jamaica in the late 1950s, as the artists emulated their American rhythm and blues idols – Louis Jordan, Roscoe Gordon, Fats Domino – through to the early Rastafari rhythms of Count Ossie, the righteous Baptist beat of Toots and the Maytals up to the joyous excitement of Ska with tracks by Studio One’s young protégées Bob Marley and The Wailers and the all-mighty Skatalites. Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd first began recording music in the late 1950s, making one-off records to play on his Downbeat Sound System. These ‘exclusive dup-plates’ enabled him to reign supreme in the regular dancehall soundclashes of Kingston, fighting off the competition from rivals including Duke Reid the Trojan and Prince Buster. This new album traces the roots of the legendary label as it created the sound of the young independent Jamaican nation going into the early 1960s. ..."
Soul Jazz Records
amazon
Juno: Studio One Jump Up: The Birth Of A Sound Jump Up (Video)

Madame Cézanne

Paul Cézanne, Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair. About 1877.
"This exhibition of paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906) traces his lifelong attachment to Hortense Fiquet (French, 1850–1922), his wife, the mother of his only son, and his most painted model. Featuring twenty-five of the artist's twenty-nine known portraits of Hortense, including Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory (1891) and Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress (1888–90), both from the Metropolitan Museum's collection, the exhibition explores the profound impact she had on Cézanne's portrait practice."
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Exhibition Objects
NY Times: Take My Wife. S’il Vous Plaît.
amazon: Madame Cézanne

Manhole covers that left their mark on the city

"Looking up at New York’s buildings isn’t the only way to get a sense of the city’s past. Cast your eyes down on the sidewalk and street, and you’ll start seeing an incredible variety of manhole covers—many from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These iron lids serve a utilitarian purpose. But the men who made them at Ironworks across the city imbued them with a sense of pride and craftsmanship. Jacob Mark created his signature covers with colored glass, which look like glistening jewels. The one at top of the page was discovered in Tribeca. ..."
Ephemeral New York
Ephemeral New York: Manhole covers that left their mark on the city
Ephemeral New York: The most beautiful manhole covers in Manhattan
Ephemeral New York: More old-school city manhole covers
Ephemeral New York: What a 19th century manhole cover has to say

System and Vision

Type 42 (Anonymous), Ursula Andress 37–22–35, 1960s–1970s
"David Zwirner is pleased to present the group exhibition System and Vision, organized in collaboration with Delmes & Zander in Berlin and Cologne. It includes artists whose unique ideas developed outside the circuit of art world institutions, often with limited interaction with other peers. Each offers a highly individualistic, authentic, and imaginative practice that roughly falls into one of four identifiable areas commonly absent from mainstream art-historical narratives: pseudo-science, science fiction, eroticism, and the occult. ..."
David Zwirner
Widewalls
Paris Photo

Lydia Davis

Wikipedia - "Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American writer noted for her short stories. Davis is also a novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.  Davis' stories are acclaimed for their brevity and humour. Many are only one or two sentences. Davis has compared these shorter stories to skyscrapers in the sense that they are surrounded by an imposing blank expanse. Some of her stories are considered poetry or somewhere between philosophy, poetry and short story. ... Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers, as well as the Dutch writer A.L. Snijders."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Long Story Short
Believer
NPR: Lydia Davis' New Collection Has Stories Shorter Than This Headline (Video)
Atlantic: Lydia Davis’s Very Short Stories
amazon: Lydia Davis

Wes Anderson’s Cinematic Influences: Video Series Reveals His Roots in Truffaut, Welles, Scorsese & More

"Matt Zoller Seitz is easily one of the finest film critics working today. Over the years, he has done quite a lot of work unpacking the dense visual world of filmmaker Wes Anderson, culminating in a gorgeous coffee table book called, aptly, The Wes Anderson Collection. Today you can explore a series of video essays that delve into the filmmaker’s work. Zoller Seitz argues that Anderson’s distinctive look is not merely empty aesthetics. Instead, he asserts that there is substance to Anderson’s style."
Open Culture (Video)

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013), 2015 January: Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe.

The Filming Locations of The Naked City

"...The Lower East Side & Williamsburg Bridge. Location: Norfolk St. & Rivington St. No neighborhood shines more in The Naked City than the Lower East Side, its Jewish heritage on display in nearly every shot. We’ll start at the corner of Norfolk and Rivington. Note the corner soda fountain, offering Borden’s ice cream. Today, it’s Tiny’s Giant Sandwich (quite good!)."
Part 1: The Lower East Side & Williamsburg Bridge, Part 2: Times Square, Chelsea, Soho and Wall Street

2012 April: The Naked City - Jules Dassin

Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome

"Season 5, Episode 9. Oh, Abbots. It can’t be over, can it? Another season, gone as quickly as a grouse flying over Brancaster Castle. So let us keep sorrow at bay by reminding ourselves: We’ve finally pulled abreast. Oh, sure, those viewers in Britain got their usual three-month head start on us (just as the Brits used to get first crack at the latest Dickens installment). Viewers in the United States who were too impatient to wait for the weekly drip of revelation snapped up their DVDs and sometimes blurted out key plot developments over a few too many Manhattans. They had us in their spoiler-alert grip, Abbots, but no longer. Democracy reigns."
NY Times: Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome

2012 March: Downton Abbey, 2013 February: Downton Abbey 3, 2015 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ and History: A Look Back, Recap: Rumble With Lord G!, 2015 February: Recap: Prayers for Lord G’s Truest, Furriest Love, 2015 February: Recap: The Crawleys Should Have Sent Their Regrets, 2015 February: Recap: Yes, It’s Called the Hornby Hotel.

Rare Early ’70s Sun Ra and June Tyson Recording I Roam The Cosmos Presented As 24-Bit iTunes Release

"... Known for their acceptance of avant-garde forms in jazz and beyond, it was in 1966 and 1967 that the Sun Ra Arkestra would become residents at the club, playing every Monday and coming back a handful of times after their residency had ended. 1972 was the year Slug’s would end and it’s a great historical document to get an unreleased Ra recording from this venue and the year they closed operations. This set deviated from the main system of live shows Sun Ra was giving to the world in the early ’70s, showcasing June Tyson and Ra in a cosmo-drama call and response performance for the entire concert. More of a play, the Arkestra is backing the two in their vocal voyage and considering the wealth of live and studio material from Sun Ra available to the public, it’s beautiful to experience brand new music from the mysterious creator with such clarity and quality."
Sound Colour Vibration
Spotify
YouTube: I Roam The Cosmos 51:18

The Life Of A Slave From Cradle To The Tomb

The grounds include slave quarters, a mule barn, an African-American church founded by freed slaves and sugar kettles, where they used to boil the cane to make sugar. Some buildings have been brought in from other historic sites.
"The section of Louisiana's serpentine River Road that tracks along the Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is known as 'Plantation Alley.' The restored antebellum mansions along the route draw hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The newest attraction aims to give visitors a realistic look at life in the pre-Civil War South. Don't expect hoop skirts and mint juleps, but stark relics that tell the story of a dark period in American history, through the eyes of the enslaved. From the entrance, Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La., resembles the other plantations, with majestic oaks framing the front walk to the French-Creole style 'big house'."
NPR: New Museum (Video)
NY Times: Building the First Slavery Museum in America
The house that slavery built gets a new home in Smithsonian

PJ Harvey - Who Will Love Me Now (1996)

"In the forest lives a monster
he has done terrible things
so in the wood it's hiding
And this is the song he sings

Who will love me now
Who will ever love me?
Who will say to me
You are my desire
I'll set you free"
YouTube: Who Will Love Me Now

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake, 2013 May: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, 2013 July: White Chalk (2007), 2014 July: LSO St Luke's in London (2005).

Historic Places LA

"Historic Places LA is the first online information and management system specifically created to inventory, map and help protect the City of Los Angeles’ significant historic resources. It showcases the city's diversity of historic resources, including architecturally significant buildings and places of social importance, as well as historic districts, bridges, parks, and streetscapes."
Historic Places LA
Getty and city of L.A. launch website mapping historic places

2014 July: Downtown Los Angeles