The French Revolution (1789–1799)

The storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789, an iconic event of the French Revolution.
Wikipedia - "The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights."
Wikipedia, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, French Revolution, Google

Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009)

Helen Adam
"We at PennSound were devastated to learn of the passing of Robin Blaser yesterday morning, weeks shy of his 84th birthday. Charles Bernstein paid tribute to the late poet in a blog entry reposting his afterword to The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser yesterday afternoon. That essay begins by noting, 'Robin Blaser's poems are companions on a journey of life, a journey whose goal is not getting someplace else, but, rather, being where you are and who you are — where you is always in the plural.'"
PennSound, The Vancouver Sun, EPC, Golden Handcuffs Review, Jacket Magazine, Wikipedia, Griffin, Berkeley Daily Planet, Dooneys Cafe - Robin Blaser, 1925-2009: Death’s Duty, The Globe and Mail - ‘Showing us things both marvellous and horrific', The incomparable Robin Blaser, "The hippest guy in the room:" Poet Robin Blaser at 83, Belladodie, UCTV, MP3 - Lunch Poems: Robin Blaser, Atwater Library and Computer Centre - Poetry Project: Robin Blaser March 14, 2008, YouTube, (1), YouTube - Blaser interview pt 1, Blaser interview pt 2, Blaser interview pt 3

Katharina Grosse

"Her site-specific design engages the lobby's architectural features and uses every available surface, including the floor and windows. In this installation, Grosse places eight cubic meters of coarse dirt and fine top soil over Styrofoam to form a large hill, which she sprays with white acrylic before coating it in a Technicolor mist."
Contemporary Arts Center, Katharina Grosse, artnet

Ida Applebroog

"Applebroog has been making pointed social commentary in the form of beguiling comic-like images for nearly half a century. She has developed an instantly recognizable style of simplified human forms with bold outlines."
PBS, Ida Applebroog, artnet, Google

Western swing

Carl Cole & his Flint Hill Boys
Wikipedia - "Western swing is a style of popular music that evolved in the 1920s in the American Southwest among the region's popular Western string bands. Fundamentally an outgrowth of jazz, much Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka, and folk music, New Orleans jazz, or Dixieland, and blues blended with a jazzy 'swing' and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar."
Wikipedia, Westerns Swing, Western Swing 78

Kitty Kraus

"Standing amid Kitty Kraus’ installations, you find yourself in the presence of things that wouldn’t normally take up much space – panes of glass, items of clothing, light bulbs – but which have suddenly expanded by means of the artist’s crafty, hand-crafted interventions."
Frieze, e-flux, Art In America Magazine

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show

Wikipedia - "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show is the collective name for two separate American television animated series: Rocky and His Friends (1959 – 1961) and The Bullwinkle Show (1961 – 1964). Rocky & Bullwinkle enjoyed great popularity during the 1960s."
Wikipedia, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)

Shiva Ahmadi

Oil Barrel #4
"I have always been very fascinated by oil politics and the role it plays in Iranians’ lives. I think the source of conflicts, such as the Revolution and the war with Iraq, also lie in our resources, which have made Iran very important to the industries of major world economies."
Chelsea Art Museum, College for Creative Studies

Eric Elliott

Artist’s Studio: View from Easel (2008)
"In past work, the artist's attention was turned towards any number of random objects available in his studio-paint cans, a teapot, and a myriad of vessels. In his current exhibition, Elliott presents six paintings, each organized simply around a single plant. Using this common theme, the artist makes evident his interest in both interconnectedness and difference, and the balance between the two."
James Harris Gallery, Eric Elliott

A Humument

Wikipedia - "A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is an altered book by British artist Tom Phillips, first published in 1970. It is a piece of art created over W H Mallock's 1892 novel A Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original title: A Human document. First page of A Humument, 1970 edition Phillips drew, painted, and collaged over the pages, while leaving some of the original text to show through."
Wikipedia, Tom Phillips, A Humument

Jimmy Piersall

Wikipedia - "James Anthony Piersall (born November 14, 1929 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is a former center fielder in Major League Baseball. Between 1950 and 1967, he played for the Boston Red Sox (1950, 1952-58), Cleveland Indians (1959-61), Washington Senators (1962-63), New York Mets (1963) and Los Angeles/California Angels (1963-67). While he had a fairly good professional career as a center fielder, Piersall is better known for his well-publicized battle with bipolar disorder that became the subject of the movie Fear Strikes Out."
Wikipedia, The Piersall Place, BNET, ESPN - A Hall of Fame personality, YouTube, (1), (2)

Ancient Maps

"Geographic entities here do not correspond well with those in a modern atlas:
Ancient maps of Rome (or the Roman Empire) include much of what we think of as Europe, parts of Asia, and Northern Africa; the geographic borders of Asia fluctuated with the dominant empires; Sudan and Egypt belong in both the Near East and Africa."
About.com

The Animals

Wikipedia - "The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s known in the United States as part of the British Invasion. Known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature songs 'The House of the Rising Sun' and 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place', the band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-oriented album material."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2), (3)

Duke Riley

"My work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy. I am interested in the struggle of marginal peoples to sustain independent spaces within all-encompassing societies, the tension between individual and collective behavior, the conflict with institutional power."
Duke Riley, Huffington Post

Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen

"Informal portrait of Leonard Cohen. The film begins with Cohen delivering a comic monologue about his visit to a friend in a Montreal mental hospital. Later he is seen reading poetry to rapt audience and also alone, or relaxing with family and friends, walking the streets of the city, eating in a popular night spot, sleeping in his three-dollar-a-night hotel room, even taking a bath."
Leonard Cohen Files, Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen

Catchin' Up With Raquel Sakristan

"After painting big size with many artists (mainly boys), I am beginning a serial of collaborations with women that don´t work on the streets or whose regular lives are very far from art circuits."
Wooster Collective

‘Fela!’ Broadway? Dance!

"'MOVE!' Bill T. Jones commanded. 'Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm!' He was airborne, being lifted and carried across the stage of the Eugene O’Neill Theater by four dancers, perfecting their timing in a climactic ritual scene."
NYT

Third Decade of the History

"Titus Livius (Livy) was born in Patavium (modern Padua) in the north of Italy in 59BC. He died in AD17. He began writing his History of Rome when he was about 30 years old, in around 29BC."
University of Glasgow

Easy Rider

Wikipedia - "Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom."
Wikipedia, IMDb, Road Blogging Route 66 and Life on a Harley-Davidson

Jörg Immendorff

Café Deutschland, 1978
Wikipedia - "Jörg Immendorff (June 14, 1945 in Bleckede near Lüneburg – May 28, 2007 in Düsseldorf) was one of the best known contemporary German painters; he was also a sculptor, stage designer and art professor."
Wikipedia, Saatchi-Gallery, artnet

Samuel Beckett

Wikipedia - "Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist."
Wikipedia, The Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources, The Modern Word, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5),

Jeanne-Claude

"Jeanne-Claude, who collaborated with her husband, Christo, on dozens of environmental art projects, notably the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin and the installation of 7,503 vinyl gates with saffron-colored nylon panels in Central Park, died Wednesday in Manhattan, where she lived. She was 74. A statement on the couple’s Web site, christojeanneclaude.net, said the cause was complications of a brain aneurysm."
NYT, Telegraph, Wikipedia, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, YouTube, (1), (2)

Todd Hido

"The very talented Todd Hido will be giving a lecture tonight at Aperture. Todd consistently produces images that are uncanny and haunting, but never foreboding. Much like Hopper his work propagates the kind of mystery that invites you into the scene instead of warning you to keep a safe distance."
Amy Stein Photo, See Saw, artnet

Massive Cut up Collage

Abraham Lincoln Being assassinated at Ford's Theater, 2009
"The piece is a burroughs style cut-up poetry collage which forms the picture of Abraham Lincoln's Assassination at Ford Theater. The piece was made over the course of 3 years."
Massive Cut up Collage

Clifford Ross

"Well, I’m uncomfortable trying to put together the state of my emotions and the Sublime in one neat package, but I do know that from very early on, when I looked at art, I liked having my socks knocked off. I liked being overwhelmed and finding myself slightly giddy. Both abstract and realistic paintings were able to deliver the sensation—Rothko’s and Rembrandt’s could both do it. It was the effect and the content of the art that ultimately counted, not its form."
Clifford Ross, artnet, Wikipedia

The Future Sounds Like This: 10 Magnificently Modern Musical Instruments

"The study of musical instruments (’organology’ – no, really) is the study of the human condition. Every culture is defined by its own distinctive set of trills, whistles, parps, honks and beats, and every corner of the world has evolved its own location-specific indigenous instrument to renew a sense of cultural identity through noisy self-expression."
Web Urbanist

The Society of the Spectacle

Wikipedia - "The Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle) is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Situationist and Marxist theorist, Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France."
Wikipedia, BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS, SI, Society Spectacle, Google, Ubu, Welcome to Hyperreality, amazon

Abigail Uhteg

"Somehow Abigail Uhteg managed to not only edition a book and take some of the sweetest photos ever during her residency here at WSW, but she also managed to put together over 3000 of her photos to make a fabulous video of the process."
WSWORK, Abigail Uhteg

Douglas Sahm

Wikipedia - "Douglas Wayne Sahm (November 6, 1941 – November 18, 1999), was a musician from Texas. Born in San Antonio, Texas, he was a child prodigy in country music, but became a significant figure in blues, rock and other genres. Today Sahm is considered one of the most important figures in what is identified as Tex-Mex."
Wikipedia, Laventure, YouTube, (1), (2)

Shahzia Sikander

The Illustrated Page Series #1, 2005-6
"Sikander specializes in Indian and Persian miniature painting, a traditional style that is both highly stylized and disciplined. While becoming an expert in this technique-driven, often impersonal art form, she imbued it with a personal context and history, blending the Eastern focus on precision and methodology with a Western emphasis on creative, subjective expression. In doing so, Sikander transported miniature painting into the realm of contemporary art."
PBS, Shahzia Sikander, Cooper Hewitt

One From The Archives: Sir X

"Sir X has just launched his website. You can check it out here."
Wooster Collective

Grunge

Grunge texture #1174
Wikipedia - "Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song dynamics, and apathetic or angst-filled lyrics. The grunge aesthetic is stripped-down compared to other forms of rock music, and many grunge musicians were noted for their unkempt appearances and rejection of theatrics."
Wikipedia, Abrams, YouTube, (1)

Calvin and Hobbes

Wikipedia - "Calvin and Hobbes was a syndicated comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic stuffed tiger. The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th-century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th-century English political philosopher."
Wikipedia, Go Comics, Google, Progressive Boink

Khosrow Hassanzadeh

Faneshe / Prostitutes, 2002
Wikipedia - "Khosrow Hassanzadeh (born 1963 in Tehran) is an Iranian painter. He is known for his 'Terrorist' collection. Hassanzadeh lives and works in Tehran, where he works as an actor and visual artist. His work featured in many exhibitions in Europe and the Middle East. Hassanzadeh works primarily with painting, silkscreen and mixed media. His works often deal with issues that are considered sensitive in Iranian society and therefore he is frequently referred to as a 'political' artist."
Wikipedai, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Google, artnet, Lightstalkers

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

"This, it seems to me, also nicely sums up what Gonzalez-Foerster achieves in her solo filmic experiments, which are some times displayed in dark theaters on a screen but just as often branch out to envelop architecture, public space, and even whole cities--be they the artist's native Paris or distant metropolises in Asia or Latin America."
BNET, Dia, TimesOnline, ada