Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933

"A team of international scholars discusses Calder's many innovations during this period in Paris, chief among them his abstract, motorized, and mobile works. They analyze the extended cast of Calder's animated Circus, made in Paris between 1926 and 1931, and include previously unpublished photographs by Brassaï and Kertesz of Calder and this beloved performative sculpture."
Whitney, Daily Icon, Art/Museums

Egypt's Golden Empire

"Over 3,500 years ago, Rome was no more than a soggy marsh and the Acropolis was just an empty rock, but Egypt was on the brink of its greatest age - the New Kingdom."
Egypt's Golden Empire - PBS, Video - Google, (1), (2)

Vasily Smyslov

Wikipeia - "Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov ... (born March 24, 1921, in Moscow) is a Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958."
Wikipedia, chessgames.com, Chessville

Christine Alicino

VOICE - "That wistful, entrancing New York cityscape is far more romantic than Thursday Afternoon, an impressionistic image of a nude woman filmed in San Francisco in 1984. That woman is Eno's friend Christine Alicino, and though she is beautiful, Thursday Afternoon seems strangely impersonal, almost anatomical, a collection of pixels floating in slow motion."
VOICE, Christine Alicino, Wikipedia

CoEvolution Quarterly

Wikipedia - "CoEvolution Quarterly (1974 - 1985) is a descendant of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. It eventually became the Whole Earth Review."
Wikipedia, Whole Earth Catalog

Peter Blake

Wikipedia - "During the late 1950s, Blake became one of the best known British pop artists. His paintings from this time included imagery from advertisements, music hall entertainment, and wrestlers, often including collaged elements."
Wikipedia, TATE Collection, EYESTORM, artnet

The Feelies

Wikipedia - "The Feelies are a rock band from North Haledon, New Jersey. They formed in 1976 and disbanded in 1992 after having released four albums. The band reunited in 2008. The Feelies rarely worked with outside producers and created shimmering soundscapes with multiple guitar layers that set them apart from most of the punk/new wave bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s."
Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube, (1), (2)

Peter Fischli & David Weiss

Ben Hur, 1984-85
Wikipedia - "Peter Fischli (8 June 1952 in Zurich) and David Weiss (21 June 1946 in Zurich), often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, are an artist duo that have been collaborating since 1979. They are among the most renowned contemporary artists of Switzerland."
Wikipedia. Matthew Marks Gallery, YouTube, (1), (2)

Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575–1725

Marcantonio Franceschini (1648-1729), Birth of Adonis
"Ludovico Carracci (1555–1619) and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino (1557–1602) and Annibale (1560–1609) Carracci, together brought about a revolution in the study and practice of painting that forever changed the history of art."
artadox, Getty

Lindsay Anderson

Wikipedia - "Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was an Indian-born English feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film if...., which won the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival."
Wikipedia, Lindsay Anderson, Lindsay Anderson - 1, Fandango

Conlon Nancarrow

Wikipedia - "Conlon Nancarrow (born October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was a U.S.-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955. Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano. He was one of the first composers to use musical instruments as mechanical machines, making them play far beyond human performance ability."
Wikipedia, A Conlon Nancarrow Web Page, YouTube, (1), (2), (3)

Anas Al-Shaikh

"When at a meeting with artists in Dubai, we mentioned that we were traveling to Bahrain they said that we absolutely must meet Anas Al-Shaikh."
Nafas, (1), Universes in Universe

John Sebastian

Wikipedia - "John Sebastian (born John Benson Sebastian, Jr. on March 17, 1944, in Greenwich Village, New York City) is an American songwriter and harmonica player. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin' Spoonful, a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. His tie-dyed denim jacket is prominently displayed there."
Wikipedia, (1), John Sebastian, allmusic, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4)

Caribbean views: personal selections by Mike Phillips

A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade, 1734
"The British Library holds a wealth of material relating to the British West Indies, as showcased in the Caribbean views online exhibition. We asked author and historian Mike Phillips to interpret and respond to this collection."
The British Library Board

Fyodor Vasilyev

Wikipedia - "Feodor Alexandrovich Vasilyev (1850-1873) was a Russian landscape painter who introduced the lyrical landscape style in Russian art."
Wikipedia

Peter Doig

Grasshopper (1990)
"Broadly coloured yet intricately detailed, this device appears to mimic the geological strata which construct the earth. The top band contains the abstraction of the sky, created from the thin veils of vivid blue masked with successive layers of dragged and dabbed paint."
Saatchi-Gallery, Wikipedia, Tate Britain

Sun Records

Wikipedia - "Sun Records is a record label founded in Memphis, Tennessee, starting operations on March 27, 1952. Founded by Sam Phillips, Sun Records was known for giving notable musicians such as Elvis Presley (whose recording contract was sold to RCA Victor Records for $35,000 in 1955 to relieve financial difficulties they were going through), Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash their first recording contracts and helping to launch their careers."
Wikipedia, Sun Records, Sun Sound, PBS, npr, MyMusic

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus

LaToya Ruby Frazier
"The sweet bird of youth, alert as a robin, hungry as a gull, alights once again in Manhattan with the inauguration of “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” at the New Museum, the latest local survey of contemporary art — this one a triennial — to challenge the pre-eminence of the Whitney Biennial."
NYT, New Exhibitions Museum, (1), Hankblog, jameswagner.com

Roadside Architecture

54 Diner, Buena, NJ - Diner City
"Most of my sections are organized by state which should make it easy to find things that are near you or that are in areas you might be traveling to. If you are looking for a particular thing or place, you may want to try the search box above or at the main page of most sections."
Roadside Architecture, Roadside Art Online

Kurt Schwitters

Merzbild
Wikipedia - "Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art."
Wikipedia, Kurt Schwitters, The Artchive, Cut & Paste, MoMA

The Beats

"When the country still considered literary writers and poets important public figures, these were literary writers and poets who came with luridly colorful lives, full of sex and drugs and cars, 'the best minds of my generation,' 'the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,' cultural avatars who were often linked more by lifestyle considerations than by writerly ones."
NYT, Amazon, Graphic Novel Reporter

Coney Island

"The Coney Island History Project, founded in 2004, is a not-for-profit organization that aims to increase awareness of Coney Island's legendary and colorful past and to encourage appreciation of the Coney Island neighborhood of today."
Coney Island: History Project, YouTube, (1), CardCow, VintageViews of Coney Island, Nathans, PBS

Romare Bearden

Return of the Prodigal Son, 1967
Wikipedia - "Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911–March 12, 1988) was an American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage."
Wikipedia, Romare Bearden Foundation, Metropolitan Museum, NGA, npr

Frederick Sommer

Max Ernst
"Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities. The smallest modification of tonality affects structure. Some things have to be rather large, but elegance is the presentation of things in their minimum dimensions."
Frederick Sommer, Wikipedia

Henry David Thoreau

Wikipedia - "He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state."
Wikipedia, VCU, The Thoreau Reader, Google

Jules Dassin

Night and the City, 1950
Wikipedia - "Jules Dassin, born Julius Dassin (December 18, 1911(1911-12-18) – March 31, 2008), was an American film director. He was a subject of the Hollywood blacklist, and subsequently moved to France where he revived his career."
Wikipedia, Films as director, Film Forum

Amedeo Modigliani

Le Jeune Apprenti, 1918-1919
Wikipedia - "Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian artist of Jewish heritage, practising both painting and sculpture, who pursued his career for the most part in France."
Wikipedia, WebMuseum, Google

Fred Frith

Wikipedia - "Fred Frith (born February 17, 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor. Probably best-known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-garde rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew."
Wikipedia, Fred Frith, last.fm, Discography of Fred Frith, Paris Transatlantic, all music, Dailymotion, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8)

Luca Pignatelli

"The approach of Luca Pignatelli to the world is through architecture. His paintings evoke the Roman temples, Pompeii and ancient art, of which the artist suffers the charm. Archaeological survey on the flanks of modern architecture and in particular industry, are represented in his works by war planes, trucks and locomotives, but also in the choice of media such as tarpaulins rail."
Art Books International, Google

Mira Schendel

"During the tempestuous '60s and '80s, conceptual artists León Ferrari (Argentina) and Mira Schendel (Brazil) took on a similar, linguistics-focused approach, and the many textual drawings, sculptures, and paintings that materialized make up Tangled Alphabets."
flavorpill, Google, BNET, jameswagner.com

Anselm Kiefer

20 Jahre Einsamkeit, 1998
"Anselm Kiefer was born March 8, 1945, Donaueschingen. He is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials like straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac."
Wikipedia, WebMuseum, Paris, Google, The Met Museum

Hernan Bas

Floating in the Dead Sea with Ghost Ship Pirated by Hedi Slimane, 2003
Rubell Collection - "His work indulges in the production of romantic, melancholic and old world imagery, and makes reference to Wilde, Huysmans and other writers of the Aethetic and Decadent period in literature."
Wikipedia, The Saatchi Gallery, Google, BOMB

Ingram Marshall

Wikipedia - "Ingram Marshall (born May 10, 1942 in Mount Vernon, New York) is an American composer and a former student of Vladimir Ussachevsky and Morton Subotnick. Though the composer uses the term "expressivist" to describe his music, he is often associated with post-minimalism."
Wikipedia, Ingram Marshall, New Albion, New Music Box, Other Minds, last.fm

Romanywg / Jeremy Gibbs

Least Wanted - 'Chicago 1221'
"JUSTICE is a concept show based on themes of Law and Order that all five artists (C215, Dan23, Bruno Leyval, Least Wanted and MC1984) have been committed to for the past three months, and have been working very hard to make it a special show."
flickr, (1)

Loris Cecchini

"Comprised of thousands of plastic balls surrounding an internal framework of aluminum ladders, the work continues Cecchini's investigation of how space is defined. Utilizing a formal vocabulary and lines of inquiry reminiscent of architects like Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Cecchini creates a nearly abstract, voluminous mass, evoking a weightless body of epic proportions."
P.S.1, BNET, Galleria Continua