Deep Art Nature

30 years - Kronos Quartet

"For more than 30 years, the Kronos Quartet — David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola), and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello) — has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. ... Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Aleksandra Vrebalov, John Adams, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther afield (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, multimedia performer Meredith Monk)."
Kronos Quartet, Nonesuch, amazon

YouTube: Kronos Quartet live (a film by Jean-Marc Birraux) - 1/8, 2/8, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 8/8, Foxy Lady, Jimi Hendrix, Four For Tango, Astor Piazzolla, Sesame Street - What is a String Quartet?, Wu Man and Kronos Quartet Perform Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, Uniko, Kronos Quartet & Alim Qasimov Ensemble, Noam Chomsky, MIT, Gamelan Electrika

vimeo: Jon Rose / Music From 4 Fences, "Lullaby" live at Barbican Hall's Ramadan Nights Festival, Alim Qasimov Ensemble - Getme, Getme (Said Rustamov, Azerbaijan), Ram Narayan: Alap from Raga Mishra Bhairavi

2009 January: Wikipedia

"The American Folk Art Museum is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of traditional folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad. The museum preserves, conserves, and interprets a comprehensive collection of the highest quality, with objects dating from the eighteenth century to the present."
The American Folk Art Museum, The New Yorker: The American Folk Art Museum: Don’t Blame the Architects, Wikipedia, Google

The High Priestess

Wikipedia - "The High Priestess (II) is the second trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination. In the first Tarot pack with inscriptions, the 18th-century woodcut Marseilles Tarot, this figure is crowned with the Papal tiara and labelled La Papesse, the Popess. Some say that it referred to the legend of Pope Joan."
Wikipedia

Richard Brautigan

Wikipedia - "Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – ca. September 14, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America."
Wikipedia, Richard Brautigan, the brautigan pages, Literary Kicks, NYT: A Homecoming for Richard Brautigan, Poetry Foundation, YouTube - Richard Brautigan in a hammock

Artists' Books Online

"Artists' Books Online is designed to promote critical engagement with artists books and to provide access to a digital repository of metadata, scans, and commentary. The project serves several different communities: artists, scholars and critics, librarians and curators, and interested readers."
Artists' Books Online

We Are Devo!

"With staggeringly catchy electro-pop riffs, Devo carved a niche that set them apart from the mish-mash of rock, punk, and new wave that surrounded them in the late 1970s..."
We Are Devo!, amazon, YouTube - Jocko Homo, Secret agent man, Mongoloid, Uncontrollable Urge, Peek-A-Boo!, Beautiful World, Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth, Pink Pussycat

2009 December: Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube - Whip It, [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction

Piece By Piece

Wikipedia - "Piece By Piece is a documentary film directed by Nic Hill. The film documents San Francisco's graffiti culture from the early 1980s to 2004. It is narrated by San Francisco graffiti artist Senor One, better known as Renos."
Wikipedia, Piece By Piece, YouTube - Piece By Piece, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Saul Leiter

Wikipedia - "Saul Leiter (born 1923) is an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as The New York School."
Wikipedia, lensculture, Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast, artnet, YouTube - Saul Leiter/Miles Davis

Willie Dixon

Wikipedia - "William James 'Willie' Dixon (July 1, 1915 – January 29, 1992) was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer.[1] A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. Dixon is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicago blues sound."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Bassology, Sittin' and Cryin' the Blues, I got my mojo working, Crazy For My Baby

Fela Soul by Amerigo Gazaway

"What do you get when you put together afrobeat legend Fela Kuti and rap pioneers De La Soul? You get Fela Soul; a musical tapestry created by Gummy Soul artist Amerigo Gazaway. More than just a clever title, Fela Soul is an 8-track, 33 minute journey into the world of afrobeat rhythms, funky horn riffs,and classic hip-hop gems. Using dozens of hand-picked samples from the Nigerian instrumentalist and political figure Fela Kuti, and 8 carefully-chosen acapellas from the Native Tongue rap trio De La Soul, Amerigo seamlessly intertwines the two into something completely new and original."
Soundcloud (Video), YouTube - Gummy Soul Presents: "Fela Soul" by Amerigo Gazaway

Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni

Wikipedia - "Red Desert ... is a 1964 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra and starring Monica Vitti with Richard Harris. This was Antonioni's first color film. The working title was Celeste e verde (Sky blue and green). Il deserto rosso was awarded the Golden Lion at the 25th Venice Film Festival in 1964."
Wikipedia, amazon, Movie Poster of the Week: “Red Desert”, YouTube - RED DESERT Trailer (1964)

The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925

"The Ransom Center has the web exhibition The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925. The exhibition uses a door from a book shop owned by Frank Shay in Greenwich Village in the early 1920s as an entryway into the lives, careers, and relationships of New York bohemians of that era. The door is signed on both sides by more than 240 artists, writers, publishers, and other notable 1920s Village habitués, and the web exhibition uses the signatures to reconstruct the intersecting communities that made Greenwich Village famous as an epicenter of Modernism."
Cultural Compass, U. Texas: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925

Hang

Wikipedia - "A Hang (pronounced [haŋ], with vowel sound between those of the words hot and hungry) is a musical instrument in the idiophone class created by PANArt in Switzerland. The Hang is made from two deep drawn nitrided steel sheets that are attached together creating the recognizable 'UFO shape'. There is nothing inside the Hang but air. The top ('Ding') side has a center 'note' hammered into it with seven or eight 'tone fields' hammered around it." (Erik B.)
Wikipedia, Odd Homepage (Video), HapiTones, Hang Drum/Pan Drum, Dennis Havlena
YouTube - Hang Drum Solo, Amazing Hang Drum in Amsterdam, hang insomniac jam, hang cousin's best of hang duo 2009, Hapi Drum, E Akebono Scale solo, Hang solo concert by Severin Berz, Street musician with unbelievable instrument!

Beauty, Morals and Voluptuousness in the England of Oscar Wilde

Thomas Armstrong, The Hay Field
"This exhibition explores the British "aesthetic movement" that, in the second half of the 19th century, set out to move away from the ugliness and materialism of the time, by proposing a new idealisation of art and beauty. Painters, poets, decorators and designers defined an artistic style freed from the principles of order and Victorian morality, and allowing the expression of sensuality."
Musée d'Orsay

Lesley Gore

Wikipedia - "Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein; May 2, 1946) is an American singer. She is perhaps best known for her 1963 pop hit 'It's My Party', which she recorded at the age of 16. Following the hit, she became one of the most recognized teen pop singers of the 1960s."
Wikipedia, YouTube - It's My Party, Judy's Turn To Cry, Maybe I Know, She's A Fool, Maybe Now, 6 x Lesley Gore

Lettrism

Gil J Wolman, Métagraphie, 1954
"Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots in Dada and Surrealism."
Wikipedia, W - Letterist_International, Lettrism, A Man of Lettrism, at the Intersection of Visual and Textual Language: Gil J Wolman, "Why Lettrism?", Guy-Ernest Debord, Google.
YouTube - "Lettrisme, letterism, letrismo, poesia sonora", Orson Welles, Lettrisme Centre Pompidou, Lettrisme, Nevada (Lettrism).
"Venom and Eternity", 1951 (UbuWeb, Isidore Isou. Stan Brakhage.)

Hobo nickel

Wikipedia - "The hobo nickel is a sculptural art form involving the creative modification of small-denomination coins, essentially resulting in miniature bas reliefs. The nickel, because of its size, thickness, and relative softness, was a favored coin for this purpose. However, the term "hobo nickel" is generic, as carvings have been made from many different denominations."
Wikipedia, Original Hobo Nickel Society, Google, BuzzFeed, History of The Hoboes of America, Jeff Davis, YouTube - Creating the Modern Hobo Nickel

The End

"Modern cinema can be so obsessed with realism that it leaves questions unanswered, tangential storylines half-told and characters in more-or-less the same situation you found them in. Just like real life. Not so in the halcyon days of the silver screen; back then your character would follow a strict plot and inevitably find love, after which they’d have the good grace to let you know that everything had been happily resolved by dissolving into a giant 'The End' sign, usually with a trumpeted fanfare thrown in for good measure. The End is a beautiful archive of final credits that lets you relive those golden days of predictable storytelling. Ah closure, I’ve missed you old friend."
It's Nice That, Guardian: And finally ..., flickr

1979, Germany - Patti Smith

"4/22/1979 Patti Smith Group at Rockpalast TV"
YouTube - Frederic, Gloria, Because The Night, Rock N' Roll Nigger, 25th Floor, Revenge, 7 Ways Of Going, Dancing Barefoot, Redondo Beach, So You Want To Be A Rock and Roll Star, My Generation, Jailhouse Rock

You? Me? Us? - Richard Thompson

Wikipedia - "You? Me? Us? is an album by British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson released in April 1996 via Capitol Records. It was Thompson's fourth album for the label, his fifth with Mitchell Froom producing and his second to be nominated for a Grammy Award. Thompson's son from his first marriage (to Linda Thompson) Teddy sings backing vocals on disc 2."
Wikipedia, BeesWeb, YouTube - The Ghost of You Walks, Put It There Pal, Cold Kisses, Woods of Darney, Burns Supper, Dark Hand Over My Heart, Hide It Away, Baby Don't Know What To Do With Herself, She Cut Off Her Long Silken Hair

The Participatory Art of JR (in the Bronx)

"French street artist JR partnered with Bronx’s Hunts Point Alliance for Children to present 'Through A Mother’s Eyes,' a community art project which involves inhabitants of Hunts Point in South Bronx, in images taken by and of themselves. Participatory art at its finest."
charles le brigand, Gothamist

The Blues Project

Wikipedia - "The Blues Project is a band from the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City that was formed in 1965 and originally split up in 1967. While their songs drew from a wide array of musical styles, they are most remembered as one of the earliest practitioners of psychedelic rock, as well as one of the world's first jam bands, along with the Grateful Dead."
Wikipedia, amazon, The Blues Project and Seatrain, YouTube - Flute Thing , Steve's Song (Live), I Can't Keep From Crying, Wake Me, Shake Me, Cheryl's Going Home, No Time Like the Right Time, You'll Go, I'll Go With You

Michelle Stuart

Paradisi, 1986
Wikipedia - "Michelle Stuart through her art has created complex, multifaceted investigations of the relationship between nature and culture for over four decades,. Her artworks range in scale from monumental earthworks to intimate talismanic sculptures. In the seventies, Stuart became known as a pioneer in the use of nontraditional materials, introducing into her art earth, seeds, plant parts, ash, fossils and archaeological shards. Her body of work is informed by her interest in archaeology, anthropology, cartography, botany, biology, exploration, literature and history. It addresses the metaphysical while remaining profoundly rooted in its own materiality."
Wikipedia, Michelle Stuart

Angola Soundtrack: The Unique Sound Of Luanda (1968-1976)

"Samy Ben Redjeb, founder of the famed German label Analog Africa, is yet another man who couldn't resist the undeniable allure of vintage Angolan popular music. Part of a larger, and growing, trend that has seen popular Angolan music featured in such widely known media outlets as NPR, Portuguese film festival IndieLisboa, and of course Maianga's 2009 realease Comfusões 1, Redjeb's release is one of the most complete and original compilations of the golden era of Angolan music that money can buy, up there with such well known classics as Soul of Angola and Angola - The Greatest Songs from the 60s and 70s."
Caipirinha Lounge, The Quietus, YouTube - Jovens do Prenda, Farra na madrugada, Alliace Makiadi -Passeio por luanda, Jovens do Prenda,Ilha Virgem, Ferreira do Nascimento, Maconga Me Chiquita, Os Bongos : Pachanga Maria

Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin

SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey
Wikipedia - "Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (Ankara, 1957 - Istanbul, 2007) was an artist, writer, educator and curator. He studied aesthetics and the philosophy of art and sociology in Istanbul and Paris-I Sorbonne. Alptekin worked as a press photographer and an art, media and design critic."
Wikipedia, Walker Art, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, frieze, vimeo - Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin Sergisinden

Frippertronics

Wikipedia - "Frippertronics was a specific tape looping technique used by Robert Fripp. It evolved from a system of tape looping originally developed in the electronic music studios of the early 1960s that was first used by composers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros and made popular through its use in ambient music by composer Brian Eno."
Wikipedia, Fripp & Eno, Signs & Symptoms, Interview with Robert Fripp in Guitar Player, YouTube - Robert Fripp: Frippertronics, Interview, Fripp & Eno - The Heavenly Music Corporation, Eno & Fripp - Air Structures (Live Paris Olympia May 28th 1975), Eno/Fripp - An Index Of Metals, SoundCloud: Frippertronics - Soundscapes - Bleeping & Droning (Video)

Christian Wolff

Wikipedia - "Christian G. Wolff (born March 8, 1934) is an American composer of experimental classical music. Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S. in 1941, they helped found Pantheon Books along with other European intellectuals who had fled Europe during the rise of fascism. The Wolffs published a series of notable English translations of mostly European literature, as well as an edition of the I Ching that would prove influential upon John Cage after Wolff gave it to him as a present."
Wikipedia, vimeo - Roulette TV: CHRISTIAN WOLFF, vimeo - Changing the System, part 1: discovering the possibilities

San Francisco Renaissance

Kenneth Rexroth, 1957
Wikipedia - "The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others (e.g., Alan Watts, Ralph J. Gleason) felt this renaissance was a broader phenomenon and should be seen as also encompassing visual and performing arts, philosophy, cross-cultural interests (particularly those that involved Asian cultures), and new social sensibilities."
Wikipedia, University of Virginia - The Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance, City Lights, A Brief Guide to the San Francisco Renaissance, amazon - San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, 1955-1960, amazon - The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century, Google - The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century

Jerome Bel - Veronique Doisneau (2005)

"A woman stands onstage at the Paris Opera. She talks with a quality that is soft, open, a bit hesitant. A light pink rehearsal sweater, reminiscent of little girl dance tights, frames her 42 year-old woman’s body. This uneasy relationship between girl and woman is one of the elements that choreographer Jerome Bel elicits so naturally and poignantly in Veronique Doisneau (both the name of the performer and the name of the performance). In his piece, seen in a film version at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Sunday, Mr. Bel literally gives voice to an artist whose primary job has been to be beautiful and quiet, not drawing attention to herself."
Reflections on Dance, YouTube - Veronique Doisneau, 1, 2, 3, 4

The War of the Worlds - Orson Welles

Wikipedia - "The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds."
Wikipedia, YouTube - War Of The Worlds radio spoof by Orson Wells

Decaying Yusuf Hawkins memorial mural renewed by Gabriel Specter

""In the wake of the 22nd anniversary of Yusuf Hawkins’ brutal murder, Gabriel Specter acts to ignite the teen’s memory, once more, in New York City’s collective consciousness. On August 23, 1989, a racially motivated mob murdered 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. A mural in his honor has stood in Bedford-Stuyvesant since then, but years of neglect, vandalism and aging paint have left it unrecognizable. The murder shook modern race relations in New York City and is linked to the undercurrents that sparked the Crown Heights Riots and the election of New York’s first black mayor, David Dinkins."
Wooster Collective, Wikipedia, NYT: The Death of Yusuf Hawkins, 20 Years Later

Bascom Lamar Lunsford

Wikipedia - "Bascom Lamar Lunsford (March 21, 1882 - September 4, 1973) was a lawyer, folklorist, and performer of traditional (folk and country) music from western North Carolina. He was often known by the nickname 'Minstrel of the Appalachians'."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Dogget's Gap, Bascom Lamar Lunsford Minstrel of Appalachia Festival, Step Stones, Lost John Dean, Swannanoa Tunnel

Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

"Why does folk music collector Alan Lomax have a copyright interest in 'Takeover' by Jay-Z? I learned the answer from Creative License: The Law And Culture Of Digital Sampling by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola. It’s a companion book to the invaluable documentary Copyright Criminals. The story of Jay-Z and Alan Lomax isn’t quite as epic a copyright fail as the Biz Markie lawsuit or the story of 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' but it’s still pretty absurd. So here’s Jay-Z’s 'Takeover.' As you might expect, it contains salty language."
Ethan Hein's Blog (Video)

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Angela Davis
"The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an incredible documentary with an equally incredible story behind it. The film, which opens in New York this week, is constructed entirely from hundreds of hours of archival footage of the black power movement, footage that’s not just rare, but unseen; it was shot by a Swedish news crew in the 1960s and 1970s, then left untouched in a Swedish TV station’s cellar for 30 years, where it was discovered by documentary filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson."
Trove of Unseen Footage Revives History in ‘The Black Power Mixtape’ (Video), NYT: Power to the People, but Quietly, Netflex, IMDB: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Video), Angela Davis: The Black Power Mixtape, Democracy Now: Interview with Danny Glover