Blues for Smoke

"Blues for Smoke is an interdisciplinary exhibition that explores a wide range of contemporary art through the lens of the blues and blues aesthetics. Turning to the blues not simply as a musical category but as a field of artistic sensibilities and cultural idioms, the exhibition features works by over forty artists from the 1950s to the present, as well as materials culled from music and popular entertainment."
Whitney
Whitney: Images
Whitney: Video
NYT - Mood Indigo: A Playlist for the Mind
GalleristNY
Blues for Smoke, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Murray the K

Wikipedia - "Murray Kaufman (February 14, 1922 – February 21, 1982), professionally known as Murray the K, was an influential rock and roll impresario and disc jockey of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. During the early days of Beatlemania, he frequently referred to himself as the fifth Beatle. ... Murray the K reached his peak of popularity in the mid-1960s when, as the top-rated radio host in New York City, he became an early and ardent supporter and friend of The Beatles. When the Beatles came to New York on February 7, 1964, Murray was the first DJ they welcomed into their circle, having heard about him and his Brooklyn Fox shows from American groups such as the Ronettes (sisters Ronnie and Estelle Bennett, and their first cousin, Nedra Talley), also known as Murray's 'dancing girls'."
Wikipedia
Murray the K
The Murray the K Collection

Under An Alias

"Under An Alias is the new big fairytale of nerdworking, a digital historical expression. This time our story takes place in a small German town; Weimar. The effect of a small town with the population of 65,000 people on the world concerns all of us, a city where the majority of its income is from culture. Weimar is a meeting and creation point for eminent intellectuals of our current times. This town, where Goethe wrote his masterpieces, where the music of Franz Liszt could be heard. This is where its republic of Germany was founded in 1919, whose legacy was subsequently marred by the establishment of a Nazi concentration camp in 1937. Weimar, a city that currently merges art and architecture in Bauhaus university, has many untold stories."
vimeo: Under An Alias

Charles Dellschau

"... It turns out that the drawings/watercolors were the work of one Charles August Albert Dellschau (1830 - 1923). Dellschau was a butcher for most of his life and only after his retirement in 1899 did he begin his incredible career as a self-taught artist. He began with three books entitled Recollections which purported to describe a secret organization called the Sonora Aero Club. Dellschau described his duties in the club as that of the draftsman. Within his collaged watercolors were newspaper clippings (he called them 'press blooms') of early attempts at flight overlapped with his own fantastic drawings of airships of all kind."
Design Observer
Wikipedia
Charles Dellschau - Images
ART BRUT

Nina Katchadourian

World Map Scandinavia
"I made this map in college in response to an assignment, and it marks the beginning of my work with maps. Using a blade, I took apart a paper map, moving pieces over to a large piece of paper which I watercolored the same blue as the ocean in the original map. Gradually, the world was reconfigured. I often reconstructed words using presstype in places where the names of countries had gotten truncated. There were switches based on historical or geopological factors (Western Europe inserted into West Africa); others were based on formal correspondences or quirks of the map itself. Australia and Alaska had the same green border color, for example, and fit perfectly together due to the distortion of scale that occurs towards the poles."
Nina Katchadourian: World Map
W - Nina Katchadourian
Nina Katchadourian: Sorted Books project
YouTube: Nina Katchadourian: "Seat Assignment"

Rare Live Footage Documents The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defining London Calling

"For all their leftist political fervor, musical richness, and fiercely uncompromised delivery, The Clash still suffered accusations that they sold out when they signed what looked like a relatively lucrative deal with CBS records in 1977. Those charges came from grassroots fans and critics like Mark Perry, who wrote in his seminal British punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue that 'Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS'. ... If debut album The Clash was mostly raw, gritty punk rock with sprinklings of reggae, and the follow-up Give ‘Em Enough Rope a little too polished for some fans (at CBS’s insistence), the double album London Calling surely marks the band’s writing and recording apex. It tops so many critics’ 'top' lists that I hardly need say more about it to introduce the high-quality film above of a February 27, 1980 Paris show."
openculture (Video)

Debo Band

"Boston's Debo Band takes inspiration from a golden era of popular music in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the late '60s and early '70s. During a brief period of cultural freedom in Ethiopia, funk and soul music fused spectacularly with local traditions. Debo Band's debut album both honors and updates the sound of 'swinging Addis.' ... Debo Band's founder, Danny Mekonnen, was born in Sudan and grew up in Texas, learning about the golden age of Ethiopian pop through recordings. He says Debo Band aims to reinvent old sounds, not just reproduce them. The band adds sousaphone, accordion, electric guitar and violins to the lineup. And the players are strong, capable of improvising their way to the edges of free jazz."
npr - Debo Band: Ethiopian Funk, Reinvented (Video)
Debo Band: Interview (Video)
Pitchfork
YouTube: Debo Band - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) 29:29, Debo Band - Debo Band [FULL ALBUM STREAM]

The Angel of the Odd. Dark Romanticism from Goya to Max Ernst

Les Sirenes, Gustave Morea
"It was in the 1930s that the Italian writer and art historian Mario Praz (1896-1982) first highlighted the dark side of Romanticism, thus naming a vast swathe of artistic creation, which from the 1760s onwards exploited the shadows, excesses and irrational elements that lurked behind the apparent triumph of enlightened Reason. This world was created in the English Gothic novels of the late 18th century, a genre of literature that fascinated the public with its penchant for the mysterious and the macabre. The visual arts quickly followed suit: many painters, engravers and sculptors throughout Europe vied with the writers to create horrifying and grotesque worlds: Goya and Géricault presented us with the senseless atrocities of war and the horrifying shipwrecks of their time, Füssli and Delacroix gave substance to the ghosts, witches and devils of Milton, Shakespeare and Goethe, whereas C.D. Friedrich and Carl Blechen cast the viewer into enigmatic, gloomy landscapes, reflecting his fate."
Musée d'Orsay (Video), The Angel of the Odd
Art History News
Slideshow

Orson Welles Cinema

Wikipedia - "The Orson Welles Cinema was a movie theater at 1001 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts that operated from 1969 to 1986. Showcasing independents, foreign films and revivals, it became a focal point of the Boston-Cambridge film community. The Orson Welles Cinema opened April 8, 1969 with Luis Buñuel's Simon of the Desert, Orson Welles' The Immortal Story and a midnight movie, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. ... Ancillary operations included the Orson Welles Film School, a photo shop, a record store, a bookstore and The Restaurant at the Orson Welles, aka the Orson Welles Restaurant."
Wikipedia
facebook
YouTube - Orson Welles Cinema: The Third Man (1949) Trailer, Dawn Of The Dead (1978) Trailer, At Home, Elsa Dorfman (1973), Bessie Smith 'St. Louis Blues' (Part One), (Part Two)

Matisse: In Search of True Painting

Interior at Nice (Room at the Hôtel Méditerranée)
"Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was one of the most acclaimed artists working in France during the first half of the twentieth century. The critic Clement Greenberg, writing in The Nation in 1949, called him a 'self-assured master who can no more help painting well than breathing.' Unbeknownst to many, painting had rarely come easily to Matisse. Throughout his career, he questioned, repainted, and reevaluated his work. He used his completed canvases as tools, repeating compositions in order to compare effects, gauge his progress, and, as he put it, 'push further and deeper into true painting.'"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Matisse: In Search of True Painting – At The Met New York
Left Bank Art Blog
amazon
YouTube: The Woman in Blue, An Experiment in Deformation, The Beach at Étretat

Stormy Six

Wikipedia - "Stormy Six were an Italian progressive and folk rock band founded in Milan in 1966. They performed and recorded until 1983, mostly as a sextet but occasionally as a quartet, a quintet and a septet. Although their line-up changed considerably over the years, founding member Franco Fabbri remained with the group for its entire duration. In May 1993 they performed at a re-union concert in Milan, which was recorded and released on a CD, Un Concerto (1995)."
Wikipedia
Italian Prog
YouTube: Stalingrado, Morti di Reggio Emilia, Dante Di Nanni, Gianfranco mattei, Settembre, Le lucciole, Carmine, Cancion Del Poder Popular (Inti-Illimani), Quando S'era Diplomato, 1789, Reparto Novità

The Art of Scent 1889-2012

"The Art of Scent 1889-2012 is the first major museum exhibition to recognize scent as a major medium of artistic creation and fifteen artists who work in this medium. The exhibition focuses on twelve works made between 1889 and 2012, and will include Jicky, created by Aimé Guerlain in 1889; Ernest Beaux’s Chanel N° 5 from 1921; Jean-Claude Ellena’s Osmanthe Yunnan from 2006; and Daniela Andrier’s Untitled, created in 2010."
The Art of Scent 1889-2012
NYT: Fragrances as Art, Displayed Squirt by Squirt
WSJ: The Smells of Commercial Success
YouTube: The Art of Scent: Ralf Schwieger, Daniela Andrier, Céline Barel, Jean-Marc Chaillan

Lewis Klahr

"Called the 'reigning proponent of cut and paste' by critic J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, master collagist Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic experimental films and cutout animations which have been screened extensively in the United States and Europe. Klahr's work is in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art and has been included in the Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Musuem of American Art (1991 & 1995)."
cal arts
ARTFORUM: The Illustrated Mad
Village Voice: Culture Consumer Lewis Klahr
Lewis Klahr : Chris Stults
LUX: Collection / Lewis Klahr (Video)
vimeo: Studio Visit with Filmmaker Lewis Klahr
YouTube: Altair (1995), Pony Glass (1998), The Allusions - Gypsy Woman (1996), The Diptherians Episode Two, LA - Gabriel Kahane, PRETTY TALK by Rachel Kann,GARAGE SCREEN: message from Director of The Pettifogger Lewis Klahr (2012)

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live Forever: The Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA

"Recorded 30 years ago while Marley was touring in support of his album Uprising, Live Forever is Bob Marley's last recorded concert. This never before released audio collection offers an incredible snapshot of one of music's most influential performers. Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live Forever: The Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA, September 23, 2010 is a 2CD/3LP/digital collection that features many of Bob's most cherished songs, and is now available."
Bob Marley & the Wailers Live Forever
amazon
YouTube: Bob Marley "Live At The Stanley Theatre: Pennsylvania, USA" (Complete Concert)

Tom Johnson In Los Angeles

"On Friday, February 22 the week-long 2013 residency of Tom Johnson in Los Angeles was capped off with a concert of his music at the wulf, an experimental performance space deep in the gritty heart of industrial downtown. Featured was the Los Angeles premiere of ’Clarinet Trio’ and four other works, plus the occasion was also marked by the release of a new CD of Tom’s works titled ‘correct music’ from Populist Records. About 50 people crowded into the reclaimed factory loft to attend the event and what the wulf lacks in amenities was more than compensated by the enthusiasm of the young audience."
Sequenza21 (Video)
the wulf
Past Exhibition: Tom Johnson
The Tom Johnson Paradox
YouTube: Eight Patterns for Eight Instruments (1 to 5), Tom Johnson - ARTefacts ensemble

2011 February: Tom Johnson
2012 May: Rational Melodies

Laura Owens

"In an era when many younger artists struggle with issues of heroism and the weight of achievements past, Los Angeles-based painter Laura Owens seems to have opened her umbrella and floated over the art historical baggage collecting on the tarmac. Owens borrows where she pleases—from modernist movements past such as Color Field, Op Art, and Pattern and Decoration, from European painters like Rousseau and Toulouse-Lautrec, from anonymous mediums such as textile and embroidery. Art historical references and any sort of imagery, high or low, that Owens feels like incorporating are co-opted with finesse and a clear-eyed sense of no-fuss entitlement, in service to a larger goal: her own precise vision for what makes a painting pleasurable to behold."
The Believer
Laura Owens, vimeo
W - Laura Owens
MAKERS: Laura Owens
vimeo: Untitled Edition for the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, The Finley, January 29 - April 8, 2012
YouTube: 12 Paintings by Laura Owens at 356 S. Mission Road, Laura Owens at Crown Point Press, Laura Owens

"Last Kiss" - J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers

Wikipedia - "J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers were an American 1960s group, best remembered for their 1964 million selling record, 'Last Kiss'. The Cavaliers formed around 1955 with leader and guitarist Sid Holmes, bassist Lewis Elliott, saxophonist Rob Zeller, drummer Ray Smith and vocalist Alton Baird. Baird was drafted shortly after the group formed and the band brought in J. Frank Wilson, after his discharge from Goodfellow Air Force Base (San Angelo, Texas) and Sid Holmes subsequent mental deterioration in 1962."
W - J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers
W - Last Kiss
W - Teenage tragedy song
YouTube: Last Kiss

Street Against

"Escif is not an artist or a group of artist. Escif is a project that involves a lot of people. Hundreds… maybe thousands of people. Also everybody who try to understand it, in his own way, are making it happens. Not sure I´m understood it!!! On this site there is only a little selection of works. If you are hungry about more just check some walls here and a few videos here…. or go paint the fence in front of your house."
Street Against

Of Ministers and Merchants, Sinners and Saints - Alexander Henry

"Though getting settled in New York City has never been easy, it was a good deal harder in 1747, when my first Brooklyn relative, Ulpianus Van Sinderen, arrived. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was an unmarried forty-year-old Dutch minister ordained in his native Friesland, a province near the German border. His father, a minister and tutor to a noble family, had discouraged Ulpianus from entering the church, so scarce were full-time jobs in the ministry. But Ulpianus, showing signs of the stubborn, foolhardy will that would make him a perfect American, went to seminary anyway and found himself in exactly the pickle his father had predicted. After fifteen years roaming around rural Holland as an assistant minister, unable to find a permanent post or meet the right girl, he leapt when the Dutch Reformed Church announced an opening on Long Island and gave him the job."
Of Ministers and Merchants, Sinners and Saints

Chinese Dub (2009)

"Jah Wobble is one of the great English originals. Thirty years ago, his rumbling bass-playing defined the sound of Public Image Limited, and since then he has used his love for dub reggae to transform anything from avant-garde jazz-rock to English folk songs. Now, influenced by his wife, Zi Lan Liao, an exponent of the guzheng (Chinese zither), he has turned his attention to far eastern styles, with startling results."
Guardian
YouTube: Jah Wobble Chinese Dub Live - No No No, Mask Changers, Happy Tibetan Girl (remix)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov. Vertical Paintings and Other Works

How Can One Change Oneself?, 1998
"Under the title Vertical Paintings and Other Works, the show will encompass a wide selection of work that, through different techniques, makes references to art history and literature. Their work is deeply rooted in the Soviet sociocultural context in which they lived during their youth; however, their pieces approach themes that are universally meaningful, such as utopia, fantasies, and human fears and dreams. In the exhibition, which will be open until 18 May, visitors to the gallery will find works produced from the late nineties to the present day."
ivorypress
Contemporary Art Daily
Kabakov’s Moscow Conceptualism
YouTube: The appearance of the collage - May 31 2012, A RETURN TO PAINTING 1961 - 2011

2009 May: Ilya & Emilia Kabakov

NYC Past

"Large-format historical photos of New York City."
NYC Past
MashKulture

Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of North African Literature

"In this fourth volume of the landmark Poems for the Millennium series, Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour present a comprehensive anthology of the written and oral literatures of the Maghreb, the region of North Africa that spans the modern nation states of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania, and including a section on the influential Arabo-Berber and Jewish literary culture of Al-Andalus, which flourished in Spain between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Beginning with the earliest pictograms and rock drawings and ending with the work of the current generation of post-independence and diasporic writers, this volume takes in a range of cultures and voices, including Berber, Phoenician, Jewish, Roman, Vandal, Arab, Ottoman, and French. Though concentrating on oral and written poetry and narratives, the book also draws on historical and geographical treatises, philosophical and esoteric traditions, song lyrics, and current prose experiments."
University of California
amazon
Hamid Skif
‘Poems for the Millennium 4′: On Choosing Work for a New Maghreb-focused Anthology
Ron Silliman

James Brown - Soul Train

"Hot Pants
Get Up (I Feel Like A) Sex Machine 2:36
Get On The Good Foot 4:06
Soul Power 6:51
Make It Funky 9:53
Cold Sweat 11:07
Try Me 14:22
Please Please, Please 17:21
Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud 17:57
Super Bad 23:53
Papa Don't Take No Mess 26:18
My Thang 29:57
Hell 33:33
The Payback 35:57

Fred Wesley & the JB's
Damn Right, I Am Somebody 40:25"
YouTube: Soul Train

Frank Halmans

"dutch artist frank halmans explores themes of domesticity and memory through his sculptural installations. his series 'built of books' employs vintage publications - the selected titles have no particular meaning and are not exceptional literary works - which he arranges into stacks. lining them up along shelves, he carving windows and doors through each, creating sets of imaginary buildings and interiors in each section of volumes. in a way these spaces which he slices through the books, stand as a metaphor and the idea of moving through something, whether it be a literary passage, or a physical expanse."
designboom
Frank Halmans
Frank Halmans' ‘Hoover Buildings' Made From Vacuums Are A Metaphorical Model For Clutter (PHOTOS)

Instagr/am/bient: 25 Sonic Postcards

"Photos shared with the popular software Instagram are usually square in format, not unlike the cover to a record album. The format leads inevitably to a question: if a given image were the cover to a record album, what would the album’s music sound like? Instagr/am/bient is a response to that question. The project involves 25 musicians with ambient inclinations. Each of the musicians contributed an Instagram photo, and in turn each of the musicians recorded an original track in response to one of the photos contributed by another of the project’s participants. The tracks are sonic postcards. They are pieces of music whose relative brevity—all are between one and three minutes in length—is designed to correlate with the economical, ephemeral nature of an Instagram photo."
disquiet (Video)
soundcloud (Video)

2012 June: Listening to Instagram

Slim Harpo

Wikipedia - "Slim Harpo (January 11, 1924 – January 31, 1970) was an American blues musician. He was known as a master of the blues harmonica; the name 'Slim Harpo' was derived from 'harp,' the popular nickname for the harmonica in blues circles. Born James Moore in Lobdell, Louisiana, United States, the eldest in an orphaned family, he worked as a longshoreman and building worker during the late 1930s and early 1940s. He began performing in Baton Rouge bars under the name Harmonica Slim and later accompanied his brother-in-law, Lightnin' Slim, both live and in the studio."
Wikipedia
allmusic
amazon: Slim Harpo
YouTube: Baby, Scratch My Back, Shake Your Hips, Boogie chillun, I'm a King Bee, My Home Is a Prison - Slim Harpo & Lazy Lester, My Baby, She's Got It, SHAKE YOUR HIPS, Something Inside Me, Yeah Yeah Baby, Hey, Little Lee

Volga trade route

Viking trade routes included Baghdad, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Russian cities
Wikipedia - "In the Middle Ages, the Volga trade route connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad. The route functioned concurrently with the Dnieper trade route, better known as the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, and lost its importance in the 11th century."
Wikipedia
Nova (Video)

Ed Ruscha - Books & Co.

"The artist Ed Ruscha was standing in the middle of Gagosian’s 24th Street gallery in Chelsea on a cool fall day, surrounded by paintings of books he has created over many decades. There were canvases that mimicked old tomes he found in flea markets and secondhand shops, and paintings of marbleized endpapers. There were renderings of open books more than 10 feet long with blank sheets of paper, ravaged with wormholes and water stains. 'They’re a bit ominous,' he said, perhaps because of what many believe is the inevitable end of the printed word."
NYT: Conceptual Inspiration, by the Book
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery: Ed Ruscha, Books & Co.
YouTube: Gagosian Gallery West 24th Street

2009 October: Ed Ruscha
2012 April: Twentysix Gasoline Stations

Vincent Segal & Ballaké Sissoko - Concert à emporter

"Both musicians have displayed an aptitude for defying expectations – the list of trip-hop cellists is pretty short, after all. And Ballake Sissoko has become a familiar name on the world music scene through his work with American blues legend Taj Mahal and Italian minimalist Ludovico Einaudi, among others. But perhaps the combination of kora and cello works so well because there are no expectations for it."
YouTube: Concert à emporter