Art History with Labor

Maine Gov. Paul LePage, 36-foot mural depicting the state's labor history
"Can street art murals be simply too hot to handle for the public to view? Are the public funds and corporate subsidies often used to produce it any more disreputable than the same norms that permit corporations to peddle much more insidious ideologies through an invasion of public space through the medium of billboards? The idea of politically correct, and liberty of expression seems to be a flexible and elastic concept depending on the context. And the current social and economic context, does recall the artistic current of realism and social realism of the 1930′s."
Mural mural on the wall…
Revisionist art history as Maine removes labor mural
The Maine Department of Labor Mural

Street Art Street Life: From the 1950s to Now

NYT -"If I say 'street life,' and you think noise-lights-action, you may find 'Street Art Street Life: From the 1950s to Now' at the Bronx Museum of the Arts a puzzling show. There is noise — a pop song, the clatter of metal across concrete — but not much. Lights and action are confined to videos, several of them bleached, grainy, way predigital. The bulk of the work is photography. Some of the pictures are snazzy: Jamel Shabazz’s color portraits of sidewalk supermodels from the 1980s; photomontages by Fatimah Tuggar that transport New York to Africa and vice versa."
NYT: Finding Art in the Asphalt
flavorpill
amazon
Accessible Art

Eight Miles High

Wikipedia - "'Eight Miles High' is a song by the American rock band The Byrds, written by Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn, and David Crosby and first released as a single on March 14, 1966 (see 1966 in music). ... The song was subject to a U.S. radio ban shortly after its release, following allegations published in the broadcasting trade journal the Gavin Report regarding perceived drug connotations in its lyrics. The band strenuously denied these allegations at the time, but in later years both Clark and Crosby admitted that the song was at least partly inspired by their own drug use."
Wikipedia
YouTube: The Byrds - Eight miles high 1966, The Ventures, Lighthouse 1972, Leo Kottke, Roxy Music, Ride, Hüsker Dü, Golden Earring

Milan Kundera

Wikipedia - "Milan Kundera (... born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognised living writer. Of Czech origin, he has lived in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised citizen in 1981. Having written in both Czech and French, he revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works. Kundera is best known as the author of works such as The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His books were banned by the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989."
Wikipedia
Open Democracy: Milan Kundera and the Invisible Tribunal
The Paris Review: Milan Kundera, The Art of Fiction No. 81
amazon: Milan Kundera

The Black Ark

Wikipedia - "The Black Ark was the recording studio of reggae and dub producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry, built in 1973 and located behind his family's home in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. Although the studio itself was somewhat rudimentary in its set-up and particularly basic with regard to some of the dated equipment employed by Perry, it was nonetheless the breeding ground for some of Jamaica's (and arguably the world's) most innovative sounds and recording techniques in the latter half of the 1970s."
Wikipedia
The Black Ark
amazon: Lee "Scratch" Perry-Black Arc Productions, Ten Crucial Lee Perry/Black Ark Albums
YouTube: Lee Scratch Perry - Studio Black Ark, Lee "Scratch" Perry @ Black Ark, Lee "Scratch" Perry in interview, Lee Scratch Perry Guiness Ads

2009 November: Lee "Scratch" Perry
2011 June: The History Of Dub
2012 February: Arkology - Lee "Scratch" Perry

McSorley's Old Ale House

Wikipedia - "McSorley's Old Ale House, generally known as McSorley's, is the oldest 'Irish' tavern in New York City. Located at 15 East 7th Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, it was one of the last of the 'Men Only' pubs, only admitting women after legally being forced to do so in 1970. The aged artwork, newspaper articles covering the walls, sawdust floors, and the Irish waiters and bartenders give McSorley's an atmosphere that many consider, correctly or not, reminiscent of 'Olde New York'."
Wikipedia
McSorley's Old Ale House
YouTube: McSorleys Old Ale House, New York City

Foli: There Is No Movement Without Rhythm

"Life has a rhythm, it's constantly moving. The word for rhythm (used by the Malinke tribes) is FOLI. It is a word that encompasses so much more than drumming, dancing or sound. It's found in every part of daily life. In this film you not only hear and feel rhythm but you see it. It's an extraordinary blend of image and sound that feeds the senses and reminds us all how essential it is."
YouTube

Recovering "Memorial Day"

"Today at PennSound we’re marking the Memorial Day holiday in a distinctly poetic way, by unveiling a long lost recording of Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman’s 'Memorial Day' from a May 5, 1971 reading at the Saint Mark’s Poetry Project. This new addition to the PennSound archives is notable not only because 'Memorial Day' is a landmark collaboration between two of the New York School’s finest poets, but also due to the rarity of the recording. Berrigan and Waldman only read the poem together and in its entirety once — in fact, 'Memorial Day' was composed specifically for their joint reading in the spring of 1971 — and while the event was recorded, it would seem that the tape had been missing for several decades, presumably lost forever."
Jacket2 (Video)

Paul Fussell

Wikipedia - "Paul Fussell (March 22, 1924 – May 23, 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America’s class system. He is best known for his writings about World War I and II, which explore what he felt was the gap between the romantic myth and reality of war."
Wikipedia
W - The Great War and Modern Memory
Slate: Man of War
amazon: Paul Fussell
EVTV1: Brokaw Interviews Veteran Paul Fussell (Video)
Studio 2: Paul Fussell: Lamenting Emotional Immaturity (Video)
C-SPAN: The Great War and Modern Memory (Video)

The Yardbirds

Wikipedia - "The Yardbirds are an English rock band that had a string of hits in the mid 1960s, including 'For Your Love', 'Over Under Sideways Down' and 'Heart Full of Soul'. ... A blues-based band that broadened its range into pop and rock, The Yardbirds were pioneers in guitar innovations of the 1960s: fuzz tone, feedback, distortion, backwards echo, improved amplification, etc."
Wikipedia
The Yardbirds
amazon: The Yardbirds
YouTube: For Your Love, Heart Full Of Soul, Shape of things, I Wish You Would, I'm A Man, Louise, Train Kept A Rollin', Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, Over Under Sideways Down, Stroll On

Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes

Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, Antico (c. 1455-1528)
"The sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari de Bonacolsi (c. 1455–1528) acquired the nickname Antico (the antique one) for his knowledge of ancient art. Born in or near Mantua, he probably trained as a goldsmith. In his youth Antico traveled to Rome, where masterpieces of the distant past were coming to light in excavations. The Renaissance passion for antiquity fostered the collecting of classical Greek and Roman art."
The Frick Collection
The Frick Collection: Exhibition Checklist
NYT: Classics in the Palms of His Hands

Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound

"Many are creative, and most of us are productive in some way, but few people are both creative and productive. Brian Eno is the exception -- a producer known for his creativity, and a musical creator known for his prodigious output. Eric Tamm shows how Eno, the 'non-musician' whose instrument is the recording studio, uses holistic approaches to bring his ideas to audible life. From the 'idiot energy' of his progressive rock to New Wave and "fourth world music," from the 'meta-meta-idea' that became ambient to Robert Fripp's 'catalytic creature,' Brian Eno is one brain."
Fairview Collaborative
amazon
PDF - Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound
Synthtopia

The Sound of Jazz (1957)

Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Gerry Mulligan
"On Wednesday, 4 December 1957, Columbia Records documented one of the most important jazz recordings in the history of the music ('The Sound of Jazz'/CS-8040) with an all-star cast from various record labels. On Sunday, 8 December 1957, in what remains perhaps the most important jazz event in television history, CBS television aired a live broadcast, including most of the musicians from the recording session, as they performed the same music in a recording studio environment."
NYPL
W - The Sound of Jazz
YouTube: The Sound of Jazz CBS 1957 54:05

Postminimalism

Einstein Train, Philip Glass
Wikipedia - "Postminimalism is an art term that refers to work that comes after minimalism in both a chronological and stylistic sense. Post-minimalist works take the logics and rationalities of minimalist work and disrupt them. So Eva Hesse's use of wonky grids and serial difference works against the minimalist purity of the grid and series. This is a way in which post-minimalism is a post-modern style. At the same time, minimalism's emphasis on the contingency and literality of the art object is fundamental to post-minimimalist work like Serra's Casting. In music, post-minimalism refers to music following minimalist music."
Wikipedia
Guggenheim
The Art Story
A Forest from the
Seeds of Minimalism: An Essay on Postminimal and Totalist Music, By Kyle Gann
Minimal Music, Maximal Impact
WNYC: European Postminimalism (Video)

Where's Wally?

Wikipedia - "Where's Wally?, published in the United States and Canada as Where's Waldo?, is a series of children's books created by British illustrator Martin Handford. The books consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Readers are challenged to find a character named Wally hidden in the group. Wally's distinctive red-and-white striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses make him slightly easier to recognise, but many illustrations contain 'red herrings' involving deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects."
Wikipedia
Find Wally?
Where's Wally?
YouTube: Werner Herzog Reads Where's Waldo

Talking Heads - Live in Rome 1980

"Live TV Concert Footage of The Talking Heads. David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Steve Scales, Burnie Worrell, Dolette MacDonald, Buster Jones, Adrien Belew."
YouTube: Live in Rome 1980 - 01 Psycho Killer, 02 Stay Hungry, 03 Cities, 04 I Zimbra, 05 Drugs, 06 Take Me To The River, 07 Crosseyed & Painless, 08 Life During War Times, 09 Houses In Motion, 10 Born Under Punches, 11 The Great Curve

2008 September: Talking Heads
2011 June: Talking Heads: 77
2011 August: More Songs About Buildings and Food
2011 October: Fear of Music
2012 January: Remain in Light
2012 April: Speaking in Tongues

Martin Kippenberger

Wikipedia - "Martin Kippenberger (25 February 1953 in Dortmund – 7 March 1997 in Vienna) was a German artist known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media as well as his provocative, jocular and hard-drinking public persona."
Wikipedia
Martin Kippenberger
NYT: Live Hard, Create Compulsively, Die Young
MoMA - Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective (Video)
YouTube: Martin Kippenberger

Doc Watson

Wikipedia - "Arthel Lane 'Doc' Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded."
Wikipedia
Doc Watson (Video)
NYT: Doc Watson, Blind Guitar Wizard Who Influenced Generations, Dies at 89 (Video)
Doc Watson--American Folk Music Legend (Video)
W - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
YouTube: Nine Pound Hammer, Doc & Merle Watson - Way Downtown, Doc Watson & Earl Scruggs Play At Doc's Home, Doc & Merle - "Make Me A Pallet" and "Streamline Cannonball", Doc Watson pt 1, pt 2, When I Lay My Burden Down - Doc Watson & Merle Watson, The Banks Of The Ohio, Doc Watson on Drop-Thumb Banjo, Down Yonder, I Am A Pilgrim, The Lone Pilgrim, Tennessee Stud, Black Mountain Rag

Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale

"Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects, to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment."
YouTube

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof
2012 March: Rivers and Tides

Juan Genovés

The Embrace (El Abrazo, 1976)
"Trained at the Valencia Art College Genovés was always an inquiring painter, concerned both with the need to renovate Spanish art and also with the function of art and the artist in society. His firm conviction that art was transforming, and his concern for his environment lead him to join several important movements in the post war Spanish art scene: Los Siete (The Seven) 1949, Parpallós (1956) and Hondo (1960). It was in this last group that presented a new approach to figurative painting opposing Informalism, that Genovés developed a style of painting that was expressionist and provocative."
Juan Genovés (Video)
YouTube: Juan Genoves talks about his work, Juan Genoves at Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, New York 2009, Genoves in his studio

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Wikipedia - "Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance. The Brooklyn Academy of Music presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in 1908. Today, BAM has a worldwide reputation as a leader in artistic innovation and has grown into a model urban arts center focused on both international issues in the arts and local community needs."
Wikipedia
BAM
NYT: Brooklyn Academy of Music

Rumble and Whine

"Cosmology Device is a musician of indeterminate geographic origin, based online at soundcloud.com/cosmology-device and with just two tracks to its (his? her?) credit, along with no outbound referential links to, say, Twitter or to a proper home page. The second of those two tracks, posted a few days ago, takes its name from the software that it employs, a synthesizer that takes its name from Blade Runner."
disquiet (Video)

Charlie Patton

Wikipedia - "Charlie Patton (between April 1887 and 1891 – April 28, 1934), better known as Charley Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. He is considered by many to be the 'Father of the Delta Blues', and is credited with creating an enduring body of American music and personally inspiring just about every Delta blues man (Palmer, 1995). Musicologist Robert Palmer considers him among the most important musicians that America produced in the twentieth century. Many sources, including musical releases and his gravestone, spell his name 'Charley' even though the musician himself spelled his name 'Charlie'."
Wikipedia
Charley Patton - Delta School
Charlie Patton – Folksinger
YouTube: Spoonful Blues (Delta Blues 1929), Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, Going To Move To Alabama, I'm Goin' Home, Some These Days I'll Be Gone, Magnolia blues, Banty rooster blues, Hang It On The Wall, Oh Death (C. Patton & Bertha Lee), Heart Like Railroad Steel, High Water Everywhere

The King of Marvin Gardens

Wikipedia - "The King of Marvin Gardens is a 1972 American drama film. It stars Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn and Scatman Crothers. It is one of several collaborations between Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson. The majority of the film is set in a wintry Atlantic City, New Jersey, with the plot and the cinematography by László Kovács."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Criterion Files #550: ‘The King of Marvin Gardens’ Explores What Remains of an Old Hollywood
Criterion: The King of Marvin Gardens, Bob Rafelson
Criterion: The King of Marvin Gardens: A Killing
YouTube: Atlantic City
The Daily Motion: Opening

Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art

"From The Museum of Modern Art's founding by three pioneering women in 1929 to the disruptions and interventions of the 1960s and 1970s by women artists drawing attention to their own lack of representation in the Museum to contemporary work by women of the postfeminist generation, the history of women at MoMA is inextricable from the history of the institution. Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, a groundbreaking examination of the Museum's collection, looks at work over the course of this history, by the modern and contemporary women artists whose diversity of practices and contributions to the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century have been enormous, if often underrecognized."
MoMA
MoMA: Jackie Winsor (Video)
MoMA: Art and Everyday Spaces (Video), Modern Women Through MoMA’s History, Riot on the Page: Thirty Years of Zines by Women
Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art
amazon

The Technology of Tears - Fred Frith

Wikipedia - "The Technology of Tears (And Other Music for Dance and Theatre) is a double album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is the first of a series of Music for Dance albums Frith made, and is sometimes subtitled Music for Dance volume 1. ... Frith composed all the music and plays most of the instruments, with assistance from John Zorn, Tenko Ueno, Christian Marclay and Jim Staley."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Extract of a film by Pierre Hébert with music, dance piece by Rosalind Newman, The Technology of Tears 1:00:21

Influences: Steve Reich

"In preparation for the 2012 Bloc Festival, organizers interviewed the headliners, including pioneering electroacoustic and classical composer Steve Reich. Reich talks about the relationship between West African and Balinese music and his early tape loop music. He goes on to discuss how this affected his early works. Reich’s work has been tremendously influential in electronic music, and is echoed in works by Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield, The Orb and many others."
vimeo

Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

Wikipedia - "Unknown Pleasures is the debut album by the English post-punk band Joy Division, released in 1979 through Factory Records. Martin Hannett produced the record at Strawberry Studios, Stockport, England. The album sold poorly upon release, but due to the subsequent success of Joy Division with the 1980 single 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', Unknown Pleasures is now better known. Factory boss Tony Wilson had so much faith in the band that he contributed his £8,500 life savings toward the cost of producing the initial run of 10,000 copies of the album."
Wikipedia
amazon
Pitchfork
Joy Division Central
YouTube: Disorder, Day of the Lords - Apollo Theatre, Manchester, 28.10.1979, Transmission, She's Lost Control (1979 TV show), Dead Souls, New Dawn Fades, Shadowplay

2008 March: Ian Curtis
2009 August: Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays
2010 November: Love Will Tear Us Apart
An Ideal for Living EP

Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike - John Wieners

"John Wieners’ Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike was printed by Good Gay Poets out of Boston in December 1975. It is described by Wieners on its title page as 'A collection of poetry written by John Wieners in the The United States. Cinema decoupages; verses, abbreviated prose insights.' It feels appropriate to be discussing this book under the heading of craftwork, as so many of its finest attributes, (voice, velocity and variety) have found their way into not just into my own work but also that of my contemporaries."
Poetry Foundation
amazon

2009 December: John Wieners
2011 May: John Wieners: June 21, 1959

Les Mains Noires

"LesMainsNoires.blogspot.net is a project with multiple facets destined to all curious and to music & images lovers. In a society where culture is hidden by a mass education, it seems necessary to me to contribute, to my scale, to preservation and
sharing of world musical patrimony. That's why this place is dedicated to worldwide forgotten musical gems, contemporary music company and people who give their life to find, preserve and share music & culture."
Les Mains Noires (Video)
YouTube: Papa Yankson - Wogye W'enyaado - Obi Pe Wo A Pen Bi (Medley), Kamal Ahmed feat. Noor Jehan - I Am Very Sorry, Ama Maiga - Deny Tologuelen, Robert Loison - Jean Fouillé Pie Foui, Fred Williams & The Jewel Band - Tell Her, L'Orchestre Kanaga De Mopti - Kanaga

Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia

Paul Gauguin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1898)
"The theme of an earthly paradise, or Arcadia, has been popular in theater, poetry, music, and art since antiquity. In France during the early 1900s, this idea of a mystical place of contentment and harmony was especially potent--illustrated in mural-sized paintings which were often commissioned for public viewing."
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Yale: Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse, Visions of Arcadia
ArtFinder

Henry Hills

"Henry Hills has made 22 short experimental films since 1975. ... He received an M.F.A. in filmmaking in 1978 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied with James Broughton, George Kuchar, and Hollis Frampton. His early San Francisco films (Porter Springs 1-3 and the North Beach series) are ornate, intensely rhythmic single-frame silent landscape studies."
Henry Hills
PennSound: Henry Hills - Experimental Video and Film (Video)
amazon: Henry Hills: Selected Films 1977-2008
YouTube: Gotham, SSS

Shemekia Copeland

Wikipedia - "Shemekia Copeland (born April 10, 1979)[2] is an American electric blues vocalist. Copeland was born in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is the daughter of Texas blues guitarist and singer Johnny Copeland. She began to pursue a singing career in earnest at age 16, when her father's health began to decline; he took Shemekia on tour as his opening act, which helped establish her name on the blues circuit."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Never Going Back to Memphis, Beat Up Old Guitar 2001, Shemekia Copeland & Robert Cray - I Pity The Fool, Turn the Heat Up, My own tears, Talking to Strangers, When A Woman's Had Enough, The Other Woman, Lionel Hampton

Beautiful Abandoned Train Stations From All Over the World

Abandoned Station in Abkhazia
"Here at Flavorpill, we’re suckers for gorgeous photographs of abandoned and decaying spaces, and of course, for lovely architecture, no matter what state it’s in. Recently, we showed you some of the most beautiful train stations in the world – but what happens when those gorgeous places run their course? Though much beautiful architecture tends to fall to pieces beautifully, we think there’s something particularly fascinating about looking at a place that was once such a bustling center of activity after it has gone to seed, a specific feeling of lack that imbibes the place with an eerie glow."
Flavorpill

The Gladiators

Wikipedia - "The Gladiators are a Jamaican roots reggae band, most popular during the 1970s. The core was Albert Griffiths (guitarist and singer), Clinton Fearon (bassist and singer) and Gallimore Sutherland rhythm guitar and singer. The two most famous albums are Trenchtown Mix Up (1976) and Proverbial Reggae (1978) with songs as 'Hearsay', 'Jah Works', 'Dreadlocks the Times is Now'. 'Mix Up', 'Music Makers from Jamaica', and 'Soul Rebel' – a song written by The Wailers. Gladiators also cooperated with the toaster U-Roy."
Wikipedia
last.fm
YouTube: The Gladiators recording session, Soul Rebel, Jah Works, Look Is Deceiving, Jah Jah Time has come, The rich man poor man, The Race, Man of Stone, No Wrong Ideas, Get Ready