Lee Friedlander - Mannequin

New York City, 2011
"In one mesmerizing, vertigo-inducing composition, a female mannequin seems to stand proudly in a ruched evening dress. Her back arches, her hip juts, her chin reaches, and her neck is as long and lean as the vertiginous skyscrapers behind her. Busybody city-dwellers humming below remind the viewer that the image came from a real, not an imagined, world.
SF Examiner
artnet

2010 August: Lee Friedlander
2010 November: Lee Friedlander: America By Car

Saul Fletcher

Untitled, 2010
"Saul Fletcher's work compresses issues of human existence into intimately scaled photographs brimming with psychic energy. Moody, intense, and hermetic in nature, these photographs use a time-honored vocabulary of subjects, ranging from religious symbols to common objects, from abstract expressionist marks to posed models, in order to grapple with complex issues of mortality, sexuality, spirituality, and redemption."
CMOA
Alison Jacques Gallery

Balanescu Quartet

Wikipedia - "The Balanescu Quartet is an avant-garde string quartet founded in 1987 by Alexander Bălănescu that achieved fame through the release of several complex cover versions of songs by German experimental electronic music band Kraftwerk on their album 'Possessed'. The driving force behind the quartet has always been main composer and founder Alexander Bălănescu. Clare Connors, violin, has also played a great part. The quartet are mainly notable for their very distinctive style of music, which encompasses odd time rhythms, sound dissonances and complex arrangements."
Wikipedia
Balanescu Quartet
YouTube: The young conscript and the moon, Turning Wheels, Kovács Ferenc, Waltz (The Dying Swan), Meryl Tankard's POSSESSED, Insomnia, Mother, David Byrne and the Balanescu Quartet - Model

Pet Shop Boys - "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk"

Wikipedia - "'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk' is a single by UK electronic music group Pet Shop Boys, released as the third and last single from their album Nightlife in 2000."
Wikipedia
YouTube

Ten Women Who Use Film

Imogen Stidworthy, I Hate, 2007. Installation view, Documenta 2007
"In the summer of 2010, while lecturing on UbuWeb in London, I met Jennifer Higgie, co-editor of Frieze. Jennifer enthusiastically told me that she had been using Ubu extensively in her teaching. As I frequently do when I hear that someone has been engaging deeply with UbuWeb, I asked her how it could be better. She swiftly replied, 'UbuWeb could use more women filmmakers.' She's right. Ubu's film & video collection is based on the historical avant-garde, a genre overwhelmingly male. With the exception of a Marie Menken or Maya Deren -- and then later a Carolee Schneemann or Yvonne Rainer -- it isn't until the 1980s that women filmmakers' numbers increase, and even then, it's far from the norm."
Ubu Web

Reverend Gary Davis

Wikipedia - "Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica. His finger-picking guitar style influenced many other artists and his students in New York included Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Woody Mann, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Winslow, and Ernie Hawkins."
Wikipedia
Reverend Gary Davis
YouTube: Slow Drag / Cincinnati Flow Rag, Death Dont Have No Mercy, Lord, I Feel Just Like Going On, Rev Gary Davis pt 1, pt 2, Hesitation Blues, Two Step, I Am The Light, Cocaine Blues, Cross And Evil Woman Blues, I Heard The Angels Singing

The Historical Box

"'The Historical Box', currently on view at Hauser & Wirth Zürich, is a group exhibition curated by Mara McCarthy, director of The Box, a Los Angeles gallery whose ambitious programme focuses on presenting artists that have previously had little formal recognition in the American art world. The exhibition features sculpture, drawing and photography by influential American artists including John Altoon, Judith Bernstein, Simone Forti, Wally Hedrick, Robert Mallary, Barbara T. Smith and Stan VanDerBeek, and is accompanied by artist talks, performances and film screenings. 'The Historical Box' brings together a collection of works created during some of the most turbulent political and social times in American history."
Hauser & Wirth, Zürich
YouTube: The Historical Box. Curated by Mara McCarthy

Peter Tosh

Wikipedia - "Peter Tosh, born Winston Hubert McIntosh (19 October 1944 – 11 September 1987), was a Jamaican reggae musician who was a core member of the band The Wailers (1963–1974), and who afterwards had a successful solo career as well as being a promoter of Rastafari. Peter Tosh was born in Grange Hill, Jamaica, and was raised by his aunt. He began to sing and learn guitar at an early age, inspired by American radio stations. After a notable career with The Wailers and as a solo musician, he was murdered at his home during a robbery."
Wikipedia
The Talking Drum
amazon
YouTube: The Wailers - You Can't Blame The Youth, Equal Rights, Bush Doctor, Captured,Legalize it, Stepping Razor, Downpressor man, Pick Myself Up, Don't look back (Mick Jagger), Wanted Dread & Alive

Invisible Cities - MASS MoCA

Diana Al-Hadid, Spun of the Limits of My Lonely Waltz, 2006
"Titled after Italo Calvino's beloved book - which imagines Marco Polo's vivid descriptions of numerous cities of a fading empire to Kublai Khan - the exhibition features the work of ten diverse artists who re-imagine urban landscapes both familiar and fantastical. Like Marco Polo's poetic imagery, which leaves the reader wondering if the cities he describes are real or perhaps all different versions of his own Venetian home, the works in the show explore how our perceptions of place are shaped by personal influences as diverse as memory, desire, and loss, as well as by cultural forces such as history and the media."
MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA: Invisible Cities
Diana Al-Hadid

Continuumix #13 – Transwonderland

"Named after Noo Saro Wiwa’s book Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, published by Granta in 2012. Artwork after Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, as reconstituted at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 2011."
Continuo (Video)

Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight

"Over the past several years, Gertrude Stein’s war time record has been subjected to a stream of misinterpretations, distortions, and disinformation in the mainstream press. Most of these articles are written by authors who are hostile to Stein's literary works and who admit to their inability (and unwillingness) to read her work, including the works by Stein that directly address the issue at hand. In this Stein dossier, key documents are provided that refute the sensational tabloid accounts of Stein's activities, views, and affiliations during the war years, when she and Alice B. Toklas lived in Bilignin, France (near Lyon and Geneva). Stein's connection to the Vichy government is complex and these complexities are fully explored in the essays and articles linked here."
Jacket2
Jacket2: Edward Burns, Gertrude Stein: A complex itinerary, 1940-1944


In Which Gertrude Stein And Alice B. Toklas Cuddle To Keep Warm

2007 November: Gertrude Stein
2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons"
2012 March: The Steins Collect

Old Ideas - Leonard Cohen

"Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour. Born in Montreal in 1934 of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cohen was first a modestly successful poet."
Slate: Hallelujah for Leonard Cohen
amazon
YouTube: Show Me The Place, Crazy To Love You, Going Home<, Banjo, Amen

2008 September: Leonard Cohen
2009 November: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen
2011 June: I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen

Underworld - Don DeLillo

Wikipedia - "Underworld is a novel published in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, was a best-seller, and is one of DeLillo's better-known novels. ... Underworld is a non-linear narrative that has many intertwined themes. A central character is Nick Shay, a waste management executive, who leads an undirected existence in late 20th century America. His wife, Marian, is having an affair with one of his friends. The events of the novel span from the 1950s through the 1990s. The characters in the book respond to several historical events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear proliferation."
Wikipedia
amazon
NYT: A Prescient Novel Retains Its Power
Grantland: Director's Cut: Q&A With Don DeLillo


Director's Cut: Underworld by Don DeLillo
"For the 60th anniversary of the Shot Heard 'Round the World, an excerpt from Pafko at the Wall, the prologue to DeLillo's American epic."
2010 October: Pafko at the Wall

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations

"The Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias's 'Impossible Interviews' for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Met Museum: Images
Met Museum: Audio and Video
NYT: Dream Dialogue Between Schiaparelli and Prada

From a Secret Location to the White Cube

"... Brion Gysin famously said, 'Writing is fifty years behind painting.' Well, paradoxically the mimeo revolution is in some respects years behind vinyl records, science fiction, and comic books. Case in point, digital documentation. YouTube is just one of the many topics Kugelberg takes on in his book. Go to YouTube and you can find the most obscure garage classic from the 1960s in a variety of sets and settings. This is to say nothing of all the videos of comic book, science fiction, or vinyl collectors obsessively documenting their collections and finds."
Mimeo Mimeo (YouTube)

Hannah Höch - Brushflurlets and Beer Bellies

Anonyme, Hannah Höch et ses poupées, 1920, collection Galerie 1900-2000, Paris.
"Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was born in Gotha. Her father was the director of an insurance company, her mother a hobby painter. Hannah studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) in Berlin between 1912 and 1915. She finished her studies under Emil Orlik, concentrating on collage techniques. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for the Ullstein publishing house, designing dress and embroidery patterns for Die Dame (The Lady) and Die Praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman)."
Weimar
Sophie Taeuber Arp// Dada Puppets & Surreal Geometry
Hanna Höch “DaDa Dolls” 1916
NGA: DADA - Hannah Höch
DaDa in Zürich
History of Radical Puppetry

2009 April: Hannah Höch

Ritchie Valens

Wikipedia - "Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela; May 13, 1941 – February 3, 1959) was a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and guitarist. A rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement, Valens' recording career lasted only eight months. During this time, however, he scored several hits, most notably 'La Bamba', which was originally a Mexican folk song that Valens transformed with a rock rhythm and beat that became a hit in 1958, making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement."
Wikipedia
Ritchie Valens
YouTube: La Bamba, Come on Let's go, Donna, Cry Cry Cry

The Cartoon Crier

"The word 'comic' has always been a bit of a misnomer and The Cartoon Crier hopes to set the record straight. Sorrow and woe is the focus of this free 36-page newspaper tabloid that highlights the work of The National Cartoonists Society members and of The Center for Cartoon Studies’ community."
The Cartoon Crier: Read It and Weep
The Cartoon Crier (Issue 1)

Pedrito Martinez Group

"The Pedrito Martinez Group has its roots planted firmly in the Afro-Cuban Rumba tradition and in the bata rhythms and vocal chants of the music of Yoruba and Santeria. Ben Ratliff summed it up aptly for the New York Times (June 15, 2010) calling it, 'complex, blenderized Africa-to-the-New-World funk.' With its formation in the current lineup in 2008, the group has developed into an extraordinarily tight and creative unit."
Pedrito Martinez Group
YouTube: La Luna, Live at Guantanamera in New York City, Que Palo, Foundation, Richmond Folk Festival 2011

George Bellows

Dempsey and Firpo
Wikipedia - "George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 - January 8, 1925) was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, 'the most acclaimed American artist of his generation'."
Wikipedia
Google
National Gallery: An American Experiment, George Bellows and The Ashcan Painters
NGA

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts

"As a prelude to the 2012 exhibition, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hatje Cantz are publishing a series of notebooks, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, that is comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations. A note is a trace, a word, a drawing that all of a sudden becomes part of thinking, and is transformed into an idea."
dOCUMENTA (13)
Documenta 13: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts
Leftloft

CDM & The Verge on Disquiet.com Projects

"The Disquiet-commissioned projects Junto, LX(RMX), and Instagr/am/bient got some great attention this past weekend when both createdigitalmusic.com and theverge.com covered them."
disquiet (Video)
Music Making, Shared: Communal Ambient Tracks Explore Instagram Photos, Lisbon, and More - CDM’s Peter Kirn (Video)
Ambient Music Community Finds Inspiration in Instagram and Ice Cubes by Jeff Blagdon (Video)

Van Gogh Up Close

"Vincent van Gogh was an artist of exceptional intensity, not only in his use of color and exuberant application of paint, but also in his personal life. Drawn powerfully to nature, his works--particularly those created in the years just before he took his own life--engage the viewer with the strength of his emotions. This exhibition focuses on these tumultuous years, a period of feverish artistic experimentation that began when van Gogh left Antwerp for Paris in 1886 and continued until his death in Auvers in 1890."
Philadelphia Museum of Art
NYT: In the Eye of His Storms (Multimedia)
amazon
YouTube: Introducing Van Gogh: Up Close - the National Gallery of Canada's 2012
YouTube: Power Of Art - Van Gogh part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Sonic Arts Union

Wikipedia - "The Sonic Arts Union was a collective of experimental musicians that was active between 1966 and 1976. The founding members of the group were Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, all of whom had worked together in the instrumental performances of the ONCE festivals. They initially toured under the name Sonic Arts Group, until, at Ashley's suggestion, the name was changed to Sonic Arts Union."
Wikipedia
UbuWeb: THE SONIC ARTS UNION. LP, Electric Sound, Mainstream, LP, 1971 (Video)
Sonic Arts Union Retrospection
Sonic Arts Union Retrospective Takes a Look Back at Electronic Music
YouTube: Re-interpretation of Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" 1972, David Behrman - On the Other Ocean (excerpt), Gordon Mumma - 1978 Santa Cruz Saw Festival

2008 March: Robert Ashley
2011 November: Perfect Lives - Robert Ashley
2009 February: David Behrman
2010 October: Roulette TV: David Behrman
2009 March: Alvin Lucier

Classic Country Cuties

Patsy Cline
"A lovely look back. Here are the honeys: Anita Carter, Goldie Hill, Jean Shepard, Maxine Brown, June Carter, Mimi Roman, Lorrie Collins, LaDell Sisters, Brenda Lee, Wanda Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline."
YouTube

Wrapit-tapeit-walkit-placeit

Kindskopf (Head of a Child), State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
"There’s only one thing I love more than art installations. And that’s watching an art installation come together. This past year, I had the pleasure to work on a number of complex art installations and learned so much about the works, their structure, the artists’ thinking. Every art lover should have this opportunity."
wrapit-tapeit-walkit-placeit

Lewis Baltz

Wikipedia - "Lewis Baltz (born September 12, 1945 in Newport Beach, California) is a visual artist and well known photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographic movement of the late 1970s. ... He is now living in Paris and Venice. His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz images describe the architecture of the human landscape, offices, factories, and parking lots. His pictures are the reflection of control, power, and influenced by and over human beings."
Wikipedia
George Eastman House
NGA: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit
artnet
vimeo: CONTACTS Vol.2 Lewis Baltz (Video)

Gregorian chant

Wikipedia - "Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services. It is named after Pope Gregory I, Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, who is traditionally credited for having ordered the simplification and cataloging of music assigned to specific celebrations in the church calendar, although it is known now that he could not have done it as a system for notating music had not been established at the time. The resulting body of music is the first to be notated in a system ancestral to modern musical notation."
Wikipedia
Chant Links
Gregorian Chant
YouTube: Deum verum, Canto Gregoriano, Chant of the Early Christians

The Naked City - Jules Dassin

Wikipedia - "The Naked City is a 1948 black-and-white film noir directed by Jules Dassin. Based on a story by Malvin Wald, the film depicts the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, to find the girl's killer. The movie, shot partially in documentary style, was filmed on location on the streets of New York City and features landmarks such as the Williamsburg Bridge, the Whitehall Building, and an apartment building on West 83rd Street in Manhattan as the scene of the murder."
Wikipedia
Noir of the Week
Classic Noir
Criterion
YouTube: The Naked City (1948), Williamsburg Bridge 1948 from The Naked City

Le Morte d'Arthur

King Arthur lay dying at Avalon. (Painting by Edward Burne Jones)
Wikipedia - "Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for 'the death of Arthur') is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. ... First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White for his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson for The Idylls of the King."
Wikipedia
W - The Once and Future King, T. H. White

Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder

"The launch of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's first West Coast exhibition went off with a bang Saturday night as 40,000 rockets exploded in the sky above the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. In this video uploaded by Sarah St. Clair Renard, a gathered crowd counts down to the rocket launch and then cheers at the massive display of smoke and fire."
Huffington Post (Video)
designboom
Arrested Motion

2008 March: Cai Guo-Qiang
2009 October: Cai Guo-Qiang - An Introduction
2012 March: Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe

#4 Gregg Kowalsky – Battery Townsley (Senufo Editions, 2011)

"For years I have been following the work of Gregg Kowalsky, first under his moniker Osso Bucco and later with his normal name. His break through must have been his first album on Kranky “Though the Cardinal Window” in 2006, after which a stream of releases on Root Strata, Kranky and other labels got released. In the beginning Kowalsky was mainly active with laptop-based music (as far as I know the source of the sound) but after his first one on Kranky he switched to manipulated tape sounds. Which is since end 2006 he has been exploring."
Collecting Records (Video)
SoundCloud: gregg kowalsky - battery townsley (Video)
Gregg Kowalsky (Video)
senufo edition (Video)
YouTube: The Sound of Battery Townsley

Stiff Little Fingers - "Alternative Ulster"

"Jake Burns formed Stiff Little Fingers In 1977 after seeing the Clash play in his hometown Belfast. (The band’s name was taken from a 1977 Vibrators lyric 'If it wasn’t for your stiff little fingers nobody would know you were dead'…) Gordon Ogilvie, a local journalist, caught their live show and was impressed. He encouraged them to write their own songs about what they knew best--life in Belfast."
SLF
YouTube: Alternative Ulster, Suspect Device, Belfast 1980 -1, 2, 3. Tin soldiers.

2009 February: Stiff Little Fingers

Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu

"This site is devoted to Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu- known in English as In Search of Lost Time and Remembrance of Things Past—for an audience of general readers. While my interest in Proust is broad these pages focus on the novel rather than on biography. I believe a genuine homage to Proust, to paraphrase Alain de Botton, means looking at our world through his eyes, rather than looking at his world through ours."
Temps perdu
"The Threat to Proust" by Roger Shattuck
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust - Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff
amazon: In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)
Lydia Davis's version of Swann's Way

2008 June: Marcel Proust
2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Big Bill Broonzy

Wikipedia - "Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1903 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star."
Wikipedia
Big Bill Broonzy
npr - Big Bill Broonzy: History's Musical Chameleon (Video)
YouTube: Hey Hey, 1957: 3 Songs, Just A Dream, Roll Dem Bones, Key to the Highway, Baby Please Don't Go, I Can't Be Satisfied, Good Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down, You Drink Too Much, Sun Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday