The Swingin' Medallions

Wikipedia - "The Swingin' Medallions are an American beach music group from Greenwood, South Carolina. The band was formed as The Medallions in 1962 adding the 'Swingin'' in 1965 possibly as a tribute to the Swingin' Travelers an R&B group popular in South Carolina in the late 50s and early 60s."
Wikipedia, Medallions, YouTube

BBC Documentary: Iran and the West

"Iran Press Watch urges its readers to watch the following three part BBC documentary. This well-funded work analyzes the long struggle of Iran and the West to come together ever since the revolution. The documentary shows interviews with a wide range of world leaders who reveal the inner dealings of all governing adminstrations from the past thirty years, both from within Iran’s own adminstration and from the Western counterparts."
BBC

The Four Elements of Hip Hop

"Hip hop is a phenomenally successful youth-oriented culture that has now reached every corner of the globe, just as rock'n'roll did a generation earlier. Also like rock'n'roll, hip hop emerged in the exuberant decade following a prolonged military conflict, in this case the Vietnam war."
BBC

Pattern in Islamic Art

"This website offers a FREE download of over 4000 images of patterns and other design features drawn from the rich cultural heritage of the Islamic world. Historically, the decorative arts have always formed a major part of Islamic aesthetic expression. Its remarkable achievements in this direction (much of which are represented here) make it an invaluable resource for designers of all kinds as well as for art-historians and art-lovers generally."
Pattern in Islamic Art, npr, Wikipedia

Martin Scorsese

Wikipedia - "Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, and violence. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of his era, directing landmark films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas; all of which he collaborated on with actor Robert De Niro."
Wikipedia, IMDb, Scorsese Films, PBS, senses of cinema, YouTube, (1), (2)

Jorge Luis Borges

"Although honors came late in life to Jorge Luis Borges, his unique worldview had begun to emerge even as a child. This program examines the life and literary career of the charismatic Argentine writer, as well as the thematic, symbolic, and mythological underpinnings of his works."
UbuWeb

Ghost town

Wikipedia - "Medicine Mound is a ghost town in southeastern Hardeman County in West Texas, in the southwestern United States. It consists of two buildings, the former Hicks-Cobb general store and the W.W. Cole Building, a combination bank, drugstore, gasoline station (with rusty pumps still standing), and post office."
Wikipedia, TexasEscapes

Talk to The Times: One in 8 Million

"One in 8 Million is an oral history project in which a different individual among New York City's 8 million residents is profiled each week of 2009."
NYT, One in 8 Million

Film Noir of the Week

"Steve is the Film Noir of the Week editor. The blog was started in 2005 - and has been updated every week since the summer of '05. Steve-O is also administrators the Back Alley Noir message board and is a supporter of the Film Noir Foundation. He's also a frequent contributer to the site posting dozens of articles on the subject of Film Noir."
Film Noir of the Week

John Sloan

Six O'Clock
Wikipedia - "John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 – September 7, 1951) was a U.S. artist. As a member of The Eight, a group of American artists, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window."
Wikipedia, Google

Brothers Quay

Wikipedia - "Stephen and Timothy Quay (born June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators. They are the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs."
Wikipedia, senses of cinema, art+culture, YouTune, (1), (2)

We Five

Wikipedia - "We Five was a 1960s folk rock musical group based in San Francisco, California. Their best-known hit was their 1965 remake of Ian and Sylvia's 'You Were on My Mind', which reached #1 on the Cashbox chart, #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart."
Wikipedia, (1), YouTube, (1)

The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes

"What with all those cataclysmic storms, shipwrecks, sea battles and marauding pirates in 17th-century Dutch marine paintings, it’s a wonder anyone dared venture off land at all. There are periods of calm in 'The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes' at the Peabody Essex Museum here, but the overall impression is harrowing."
NYT, PEM

Roots from the YARD

"This is a blog set up in tribute to my good mate Steve who has over the years blessed me with cassettes and cds of exquisite roots reggae mixes from his collection of classic Jamaican 7" & 12"s. Steve's away right now, but maybe he'll contribute when he's back..."
Roots from Yard

NYC Grid

"NYC Grid is a photo blog dedicated to exploring and discovering The City of New York block by block and corner by corner. Updated every weekday, each post covers a new block with a focus on the mundane and ephemeral."
NYC Grid, flickr

John Waters, "Rear Projection"

Children Who Smoke (detail), 2009
"Since then, he has transposed some of his most provocative themes and motifs concerning race, sex, gender, consumerism, and religion into photographs, montages, and, more recently, sculpture. Editing them from their original context, Waters recombines film stills into 'little movies', as he calls his particular form of narrative sequence."
Gagosian Gallery

Edina Tokodi

"Eco-minded street artist Edina Tokodi is putting a new spin on green guerilla tactics in the trendy art enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tokodi’s site-specific moss installations of prancing animal figures and camouflage outgrowths are the talk of a local urban neighborhood typically accustomed to gallery hype and commercial real estate take-overs."
inhabitat, mosstika, Wooster Collective

jerm IX

"jerm IX is a street artist, activist, emcee and poet from Ontario, Canada. He now resides, with his wife of 13 years, in Vancouver, where over 2000 pieces of their poetry art have decorated the streets in the past 2 years or so. His wife ninja IX is also his partner in his art endeavors. jerm is also a lost soul, if those even exist?"
flickr, jermalism

Capturing Nature's Beauty: Three Centuries of French Landscapes

Landscape with a Bare Tree and a Plowman, Léon Bonvin, 1864
"This selection of over 40 drawings from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute highlights key moments in the French landscape tradition, from its emergence in the 1600s to its preeminence in the 1800s."
Getty

Ron Arad

"The sculptural forms often have an unexpected impact which first emerges during use, and are just as much a result of graphic design as the experimental work that goes on in the workshop."
Design Boom, MoMA, NYT, Google

Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays

"In a dark, northern city in the late 70s, five dreamers built a record label - Factory 3 classic bands - Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays, and Britain's first super club - The Hacienda. Led by Tony Wilson, they created a unique collision between conceptual art and street music."
Quick Silver Screen, Google - Video

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Wikipedia - "Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist, the first African American painter to become an international art star. He gained popularity first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. Basquiat's paintings continue to influence modern-day artists and command high prices."
Wikipedia, Google, John Seed

Arthur Clarke

"This is an amazing video from Arthur Clarke the author of 2001 Space Odyssey, with Benoit Mandelbrot, David Hawkins on the discovery of a fractal universe."
Energy Mandala

Van Morrison

Wikipedia - "His live performances at their best are seen as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are acclaimed as among the greatest ever made."
Wikipedia, Google, last.fm, Rolling Stone, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4)

The Berlin Wall

Wikipedia - "The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a physical barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany) completely encircling West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The longer inner German border demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc."
Wikipedia, Berlin Wall Online, Newseum: The Berlin Wall

STAGES

Tree with yellow flowers, Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang, Andreas Gursky, José Parlá, Tom Sachs, Rosson Crow, KAWS, Raymond Pettibon, Kenny Scharf, Jules De Balincourt, Geoff McFetridge, Lari Pittman, Eric White, Dzine, Yoshitomo Nara, Richard Prince, Christopher Wool, Shepard Fairey, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young. Lance Armstrong joins STAGES in Paris.
STAGES

Andrei Rublev

Wikipedia - "Andrei Rublev ... also known as The Passion According to Andrei, is a 1966 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky from a screenplay written by Andrei Konchalovsky and Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is loosely based on the life of Andrei Rublev, the great 15th century Russian icon painter."
Wikipedia, IMDb, YouTube, (1), (2)

Ruth Orkin

"Ruth Orkin was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft. She grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s."
Ruth Orkin

Acropolis Museum

Goddess Athena, the patron of ancient Athens
Wikipedia - "The Acropolis Museum is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built in order to house every artifact found on the rock and on its feet, covering a large period of time, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece but lies also on the archaeological site of Makrygianni, ruins of a part of Roman and early Byzantine Athens."
Wikipedia, NYT, YouTube, (1)

The End of Bonus Beats?

"The 'Bonus Beats' tracks on 12" singles were used by DJ's to either extend the mix of the main track, or sometimes played within a dj mix on their own. One DJ mourns their passing." - analogue
joshuaIZ, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)

Coffee Cups

henry
"A very cool idea - Boy Obsolete on Flickr ... - using coffee cups as canvas. Most of them are for sale, too. As he puts it: 'they come in a case, with a hand cut name tag and cork base. oh yes, because i am still very 1985.'"
flickr

Kluster

Wikipedia - "Kluster was a German krautrock or experimental musical group whose work often resembles later industrial music. Kluster was short-lived, existing only from 1969 until mid-1971 when Conrad Schnitzler left and the remaining two members renamed themselves Cluster. The band was based in West Berlin."
Wikipedia, YouTube, (1), (2)

Merce Cunningham, Dance Visionary, Dies

"Merce Cunningham, the revolutionary American choreographer, died Sunday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His death was announced by the Cunningham Dance Foundation. Over a career of nearly seven decades, Mr. Cunningham went on posing 'But' and 'What if?' questions, making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography. He went on doing so almost to the last."
NYT, Merce Cunningham - NYT, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company - 1, PBS, Wikipedia, Google, Google - Video, YouTube, (1)

Luis Meléndez

"Luis Meléndez (1715–1780) is now recognized as the premier still-life painter in 18th-century Spain, indeed one of the greatest in all of Europe, though his reputation had long been eclipsed by the achievements of his Spanish contemporary, Francisco Goya."
NGA, Wikipedia, NYT

René Magritte

The lovers
Wikipedia - "René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His intended goal for his work was to challenge the observer's preconditioned perceptions of reality and force the viewer to become hypersensitive to their surroundings."
Wikipedia, Magritte, Google