Alchemy

An Alchemist in his Workshop, depicts alchemy in the 17th century
Wikipedia - "Alchemy (Arabic:al-kimia) (Hebrew:אלכימיה al-himia) is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties. The practical aspect of alchemy generated the basics of modern inorganic chemistry, namely concerning procedures, equipment and the identification and use of many current substances."
Wikipedia, The Alchemy web site, Transforming the Alchemists - NYT

Emory Douglas: Black Panther

"A collectors' series of Emory Douglas serigraph art prints are available now from Station 4 Gallery. Each print is signed by Emory Douglas and numbered on archival cotton rag paper. These are reprinted in collaboration with the artist."
MOCA, newmuseum, SF Gate

George Inness

Evening Landscape, 1863
Wikipedia - "George Inness (May 1, 1825 -August 3, 1894), was an American landscape painter; born in Newburgh, New York; died at Bridge of Allan in Scotland. His work was influenced, in turn, by that of the old masters, the Hudson River school, the Barbizon school, and, finally, by the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism found vivid expression in the work of Inness' maturity. He is best known for these mature works that helped define the Tonalist movement."
Wikipedia, George Inness

Myth of Tarzan under scrutiny at Paris show

"Jungle saviour, noble savage, or green superhero? Tarzan's many mythical faces come under the microscope at a Paris exhibition complete with sounds of the forest, and the hero's distinctive cry."
Google, onculture, BBC, NYT

Eurythmics

Wikipedia - "Eurythmics are a British musical duo, formed in 1980 by Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. ... They are Britain's biggest selling duo, and are noted for their songs that showcase Lennox's powerful and expressive alto voice and Stewart's innovative production techniques."
Wikipedia, Eurythmics, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)

Kick Map

"The Kick Map is designed to get more people to ride New York City's subway system. Created with clarity and ease of use, it allows riders to navigate this vast system easily and without uncertainty. The subway map is the key to understanding this most complex subway in the world, which has 26 separate lines and 468 stations."
Kick Map

Paul is dead

Wikipedia - "'Paul is dead' is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney of The Beatles died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike. The legend hinges on supposed hints among the Beatles' many recordings and presumed to be deliberately placed by The Beatles or others. Hundreds have been cited at various times; they include statements heard when a song is played backwards, symbolic interpretations of obscure lyrics, and ambiguous imagery on album covers."
Wikipedia, Geocities, Turn Me On Dead Man

Gerda Meyer Bernstein

"Gerda Meyer Bernstein’s piece Marginalized consists of a fully deployed military parachute lying on the ground to act as the foundation for the twenty-two burlap-wrapped mannequins that rest on top of it. The mannequins, upon closer examination, are all women and the finger tips that sometimes escape the confining canvas also reveal a spectrum of ethnicity."
art + culture, Gerda Meyer Bernstein

Major League Baseball on the radio

Wikipedia - "During the Golden Age of Radio, television sports broadcasting was in its infancy, and radio was still the main form of broadcasting baseball. Many notable broadcasters, such as Red Barber, Mel Allen, Vin Scully, Russ Hodges, and Ernie Harwell, started in this period."
Wikipedia, Old-time radio - W, Baseball Radio, Pitch Black Baseball, The Digital Deli Online

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