The Atlas of True Names Restores Modern Cities to Their Middle Earth-ish Roots

"I was born in the City of the Flowland People, made my way to Stink Onion upon reaching maturity, then onward to New Yew Tree Village where I have lived for the last 217 moons. Look up some of your key co-ordinates in The Atlas of True Names and you too can have a personal history as mythic-sounding as mine. The maps—for the UK, USA, Canada, and World—replace modern geographical names with the original etymological roots of cities, countries, and bodies of water, translated into English. Their website picks the “Sahara desert” to illustrate the true name selection process."
Open Culture
The Atlas of True Names

Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake

Wikipedia - "Five Leaves Left, recorded in 1969, was the first of three albums by British folk musician Nick Drake. Like Bryter Layter but unlike Pink Moon, this album contains no unaccompanied songs. Drake was accompanied by members of the British folk-rock groups Fairport Convention and Pentangle."
Wikipedia
allmusic: Five Leaves Left
3quarksdaily: The magic, mystery and melancholy of Five Leaves Left
Five Leaves Left
amazon
YouTube: Five Leaves Left, Time Has Told Me, Way To Blue
YouTube: Five Leaves Left (1969) Full Album 41:20

2012 July: Nick Drake

Jennifer Bartlett: History of the Universe — Works 1970-2011

Twins (2005-6)
"Jennifer Bartlett likes to pose questions, then follow them to logical — or occasionally illogical — conclusions. In the late 1960s, when many conceptual artists were using graph paper to chart their ideas, Ms. Bartlett wondered if she could make hard graph paper that could be wiped clean and revised, and that would resist coffee stains and cigarette ashes. Inspired by subway signs, she fabricated 12-inch-square steel plates coated with baked white enamel and silkscreened with a pale grid on which she could paint with Testor enamels."
NYT: Organizing an Organizer’s Life
NYT: Grids and Gardens
amazon

The Graphic Canon

"Araby" by James Joyce
Wikipedia - "The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals (Seven Stories Press) is a three-volume anthology, edited by Russ Kick, that renders some of the world's greatest and most famous literature into graphic-novel form."
Wikipedia
Graphic Canon (Video)
The Most Beautiful Book of 2013 is 'The Graphic Canon, Volume 3'
Nashville Scene
amazon: The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons, amazon: The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray, amazon: The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes

Blue mountains, 1910
"MoMA presents its first major exhibition on the work of Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, 1887–1965), encompassing his work as an architect, interior designer, artist, city planner, writer, and photographer. Conceived by guest curator Jean-Louis Cohen, the exhibition reveals the ways in which Le Corbusier observed and imagined landscapes throughout his career, using all the artistic techniques at his disposal, from his early watercolors of Italy, Greece, and Turkey, to his sketches of India, and from the photographs of his formative journeys to the models of his large-scale projects. His paintings and drawings also incorporate many views of sites and cities. All of these dimensions are present in the largest exhibition ever produced in New York of his prodigious oeuvre."
MoMA (Video)
MoMA: Landmarks
amazon
YouTube: Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes

Arnold Arboretum (Harvard University - Jamaica Plain)

Wikipedia - "The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is an arboretum located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale sections of Boston, Massachusetts. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest 'link' in the Emerald Necklace. ... The mission of the Arnold Arboretum is to increase knowledge of the evolution and biology of woody plants. Historically, this research has investigated the global distribution and evolutionary history of trees, shrubs and vines, with particular emphasis on the disjunct species of East Asia and North America. Today this work continues through molecular studies of the evolution and bio-geography of the floras of temperate Asia, North America and Europe."
Wikipedia
Arnold Arboretum
YouTube: Arnold Arboretum

Bobby Bland

Wikipedia - "Robert Calvin 'Bobby' Bland (January 27, 1930 – June 23, 2013), also known as Bobby 'Blue' Bland, was an American singer of blues and soul. He was an original member of the Beale Streeters, and was sometimes referred to as the 'Lion of the Blues'. Along with such artists as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and Junior Parker, Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Ain't no love in the heart of city, The Way You Treated Me, Further up the road, St James Infirmary, That's the Way Love Is, Aint nothing you can do, I pity the fool, Turn On Your Love Light, Shoes, Honey Child, Getting Used To The Blues, If I Don't Get Involved

Tavern

Tavern Scene, 1658. David Teniers II
Wikipedia - "A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging. An inn is a tavern which has a license to put up guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin taberna and the Greek ταβέρνα/taverna, whose original meaning was a shed or workshop. In the English language, a tavern was once an establishment which served wine whilst an inn served beer and ale."
Wikipedia

Masurca Fogo - Pina Bausch (1998)

"... In 'Masurca Fogo' ('Fiery Mazurka'), which had its United States premiere on Tuesday night, Ms. Bausch turns, as in recent years, to a geographic springboard (Portugal) for still another chapter in her epic examination of life lived by all. By Bausch standards, the piece looks deceptively entertaining, with a quotient of bathroom humor. It has none of the simulated violence and confessional cruelty that shocked so many when her Tanztheater Wuppertal troupe made its New York debut in 1984. Yet 'Masurca Fogo,' to be performed through Sunday afternoon, is not fluff. Its unstated theme has to do with love, lust and desire, and much of it has a northern European view of Latin sensuality."
NYT: Sun, Surf and Sexuality In a Pina Bausch Romp
Masurca Fogo - A piece by Pina Bausch
Guardian
[PDF] Talk to Her! Look at her! Pina Bausch in Pedro Almodóvar’s Hable con ella
Pina Bausch & the Tanztheater Wuppertal
Masurca Fogo - Sadler's Wells
Telegraph: A place where life happens
frieze: Body Language
YouTube: Masurca Fogo - Mazurca Fogo en Teatro a Mil, Santiago, 2007, Lissabon Wuppertal Lisboa (Fernando Lopes 1998)

2008 May: Pina Bausch, 2009 June: Pina Bausch 1940-2009, 2012 August: Pina Bausch Costumes.

Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome

"Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome presents masterpieces of art from ancient Sicily, an island crossroads that forged a distinctive Hellenic identity. Occupying a pivotal position in Mediterranean history, former Greek colonies such as Syracuse, Gela, Akragas, and Selinos emerged as wealthy city-states, where innovation and experimentation flourished. This exhibition celebrates Sicilian culture of the fifth to third centuries BC, when its art, architecture, theater, poetry, philosophy, and science left an original and enduring stamp on both mainland Greece and Rome. Over 150 objects bear witness to the military and athletic victories, religious and civic rituals, opulent lifestyles, and intellectual attainments that shaped the western Greek world."
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Getty (Video)

James Gandolfini

Wikipedia - "James Joseph Gandolfini, Jr. (September 18, 1961 – June 19, 2013) was an American actor best known for his role in The Sopranos as Tony Soprano, a troubled crime boss struggling to balance his family life and career in the Mafia. Gandolfini garnered enormous praise for this role, winning both the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series three times."
Wikipedia
James Gandolfini Movies: 'True Romance,' 'Zero Dark Thirty,' 'Not Fade Away,' 'Where The Wild Things Are' & More
W - Tony Soprano, W - Carmela Soprano, W - Meadow Soprano, W - "A.J." Soprano, Jr., W - Junior Soprano, W - Dr. Jennifer Melfi, W - Soprano crime family

2011 June: The Sopranos

Gentleman - Fela Kuti (1973)

"Gentleman is both an Africa 70 and Afro-beat masterpiece. High marks go to the scathing commentary that Fela Anikulapo Kuti lets loose but also to the instrumentation and the overall arrangements, as they prove to be some of the most interesting and innovative of Fela's '70s material. When the great tenor saxophone player Igo Chico left the Africa 70 organization in 1973, Fela Kuti declared he would be the replacement. So in addition to bandleader, soothsayer, and organ player, Fela picked up the horn and learned to play it quite quickly -- even developing a certain personal voice with it."
allmusic
Time Has Told Me: Fela Kuti – Gentleman (1973)
NYPL: Great Albums You May Have Missed: Fela Kuti's 'Gentleman'
YouTube: Gentleman, Igbe, Fe fe Naa Efe

The New Yorkers - Robert Herman

"The New Yorkers is a collection of my 30 years of color street photography. It is a document of the ever changing New York that I love and want to share with a wider audience. Many of the images were made in Soho, Little Italy, Tribeca, Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side in the 1970’s and 80’s. It documents a New York that has now almost disappeared. At that time, these neighborhoods were a mixture of three distinct groups: the people who had lived and worked there for many years and had their ethnic background in common, the artists who came in search of affordable living and studio space, and finally the more well to-do who instigated the process of gentrification with the seemingly inevitable exile of the original inhabitants. It was a time when graffiti was an integral part of the landscape, and the clash of cultures created a cacophony of voices."
Kickstarter (Video)
Robert Herman
L E N S C R A T C H
NPR - 100 Words: On Photographing 'The New Yorkers'
amazon

The Secret Life Of The Love Song/The Flesh Made Word - Nick Cave (1999)

"This is a stunning recording -- stunning in the sense of its quality and its combination of philosophical soliloquy and heartbreaking music. It's also stunning in its effect upon the listener, rendering him or her mute -- stunned, as it were -- with reflection and awe. Combining two spoken-word pieces, one from the Vienna Poetry Festival and one from a BBC religion program, Cave manages to flesh out the spare poetry that is his songwriting by explaining the font from which it issues."
allmusic
Nick Cave
YouTube: Sad Waters, Sad Waters (Live)
YouTube: Secret Life of the Lovesong - Part 1 ( West Country Girl ), Part 2, Part 3 ( People Ain't No Good ), Part 4, Part 5 ( Sad Water ), Part 6, Part 7 ( Love Letter ), Part 8, Part 9 ( Far From Me )
YouTube: The Flesh Made Word
Soundcloud: The Secret Life Of The Love Song

2008 August: Nick Cave, 2010 November: Henry Lee - Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, 2011 March: The Boatman's Call, 2011 December: B-Sides & Rarities, 2012 January: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - White Lunar, 2013 January: "We No Who U R", 2013 April: No More Shall We Part

Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940–1990

"In the aftermath of Pacific Standard Time (PST), a uniquely successful collaborative project of exhibitions, public programs, and publications which together took intellectual and aesthetic stock of southern California’s artists, art scenes, and artistic production across nearly the entirety of the post-World War II era, the Getty launched an initiative with a tighter focus on architecture during the same era. 'Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.' has as one of its ambitious goals a collective explication of 'how the city was made Modern.' For PST, the Getty partnered with dozens of cultural and educational institutions to offer a diverse and eclectic array of exhibits and programs."
Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940–1990
LA Times: Illuminating the power of change in the L.A. Basin

David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy (Pet Shop Boys Remix)

"The version of the single featured Pet Shop Boys remix as the lead track, not the original album version. In contrast to the original, the single remix was far more disco-oriented and featured additional lyrics sung by Neil Tennant. The introduction was sampled from the opener to Outside, 'Leon Take Us Outside'. Bowie initially expressed reservation about the additions, which referenced and 'cut-up' the lyrics to Space Oddity, but later agreed that they worked well so long as Tennant sung them."
Wikipedia
YouTube: David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy (Pet Shop Boys Remix)

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics

Wikipedia - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) is the second studio album by British New Wave duo Eurythmics, released on 4 January 1983. After almost two years of initial commercial failure for Eurythmics, this album became a commercial breakthrough for the duo on both sides of the Atlantic. The title track became particularly popular and it remains one of Eurythmics' most recognisable songs, and its music video, popular on MTV in the United States, is memorable for Annie Lennox's gender-bending imagery."
Wikipedia
W - Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
YouTube: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Love Is A Stranger, The Walk, This Is the House

2009 August: Eurythmics, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 December: In the Garden, 2013 April: "Missionary Man"

New critical edition of John Ashbery’s “The Skaters”

"Charles Bernstein just made an announcement about an exciting new project that just went live on the web: a 'genetic' critical edition of John Ashbery’s long poem 'The Skaters' created by Robin Seguy. It offers digital versions of earlier drafts of the poem along with the final published edition, so you can follow along and see how the poem as we know it emerged, along with all sorts of other data about it (including an index, word frequency charts, and so on)."
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets
John Ashbery: “The Skaters” [from Rivers and Mountains, 1966]

Field Notes Colors: "Night Sky" Edition

"Countless lines of prose, poetry, and music have been written in hopes of capturing the magic of a summer night, but leave it to FIELD NOTES to take an inexplicably transcendent feeling and distill it down to basic science: it’s the stars. If you live in the city, you may often forget that there are more than a handful of ‘em up there. But if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere without light pollution, seeing the Milky Way stretched across the sky on a moonless summer night never gets old."
Field Notes Colors: "Night Sky" Edition (Video)
Field Notes

The Basement Tapes

Wikipedia - "The Basement Tapes is a 1975 studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band. The songs featuring Dylan's vocals were recorded in 1967, eight years before the album's release, at houses in and around Woodstock, New York, where Dylan and the Band lived. Although most of the Dylan songs had appeared on bootleg records, The Basement Tapes marked their first official release. ... While some of the basement songs are humorous, others dwell on nothingness, betrayal and a quest for salvation. In general, they possess a rootsy quality anticipating the Americana genre. For some critics, the songs on The Basement Tapes, which circulated widely in unofficial form, mounted a major stylistic challenge to rock music in the late sixties."
Wikipedia
allmusic
W - List of Basement Tapes songs
Robert Christgau - The Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan Goes Public
amazon: The Basement Tapes
W - Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
The Genuine Basement Tapes Volumes 1 - 5
allmusic - Bob Dylan & the Band's Basement Tapes Influences: Original Versions of the Big Pink Recordings
YouTube: Bob Dylan and the Band: Please, Mrs Henry, Odds and ends, Don't Ya Tell Henry, Million Dollar Bash, Long Distance Operator
YouTube: Robbie Robertson Talks About Bob Dylan and the Basement Tapes

William Didier-Pouget

ca.1907-1908, Le Matin, Bruyères en Fleurs (Auvergne)
Wikipedia - "William Didier-Pouget (Toulouse 14 November 1864 - Digulleville 12 September 1959) was a French artist, born in 1864, Toulouse, France, known for his landscape paintings. He focused primarily on the countryside of southern France, infusing his landscapes, always painted outdoors (en plein air), with light and color. Didier-Pouget is associated with the later phase of Impressionism, although not actually identified with the group of artists typically known as the Impressionists."
Wikipedia

Cronuts

"It’s just before 7 o’clock on a sunny Thursday morning in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, and dozens of people—a few of them still in pajamas—have lined up outside a sun-drenched bakery. A reporter from a local radio news program roams up and down the line asking why, exactly, they are there. Cronuts, they explain."
The Daily Beast (Video)
Jezebel
Cronut 101

Junior Wells - Hoodoo Man Blues (1965)

"Hoodoo Man Blues is one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s, and one of the first to fully document, in the superior acoustics of a recording studio, the smoky ambience of a night at a West Side nightspot. Junior Wells just set up with his usual cohorts -- guitarist Buddy Guy, bassist Jack Myers, and drummer Billy Warren -- and proceeded to blow up a storm, bringing an immediacy to 'Snatch It Back and Hold It,' 'You Don't Love Me, Baby,' 'Chitlins con Carne,' and the rest of the tracks that is absolutely mesmerizing."
allmusic
W - Hoodoo Man Blues
W - You Don't Love Me (Willie Cobbs song)
Can I Do it Like I Want To? Bob Koester remembers Junior Wells
YouTube: Snatch It Back and Hold It, You Don't Love Me, Baby, Chitlin Con Carne
YouTube: Hoodoo Man Blues (1965) Full Album Plus Bonus Tracks

2011 November: Junior Wells

Fred Frith - Speechless (1980)

"This is one of the most important experimental guitar-based titles from avant guitarist and founding Henry Cow member Fred Frith. Frith's second solo album, Speechless, includes appearances by Etron Fou Leloublan, Massacre, and Bill Laswell. This is a studio Frankenstein of live clips and found sounds. While Frith attests to the occurrence of many 'happy accidents,' the album comes across confidently and more often more coherent than merely challenging. This is often cited as Frith's best solo record, and its inspired manipulations hold up under repeated scrutiny. There is a bit of European folk influence here, too, but not as obvious as on Gravity."
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Ahead in the Sand (Fred Frith, Cover by Paolo Angeli), Domain de Planousset, Speechless, Navajo, Balance, Women Speak to Men; Men Speak to Women

Classical sculptures dressed as hipsters look contemporary and totally badass

"I have just discovered a whole new dimension to classical sculpture. If you dress the sculptures as hipsters it gives them an awesome new look. They become contemporary and totally badass. Needless to say, they look a lot more human. They look like people who we can picture in our lives. This beats Madame Tussauds. I am sold."
Today I Learned
Léo Caillard

Carl Andre

"While best known for his sculptures made from metals, positioned flat on the floor and placed in symmetrical configurations, a rich and significant element of Carl Andre’s practice remains largely unseen and unpublished. Throughout his life, language and poetry have been fundamental to the work of Carl Andre. From the beginning of his career, his poems have functioned as entries into catalogues about his work, appeared alongside his sculpture in exhibitions, formed exhibitions in their own right, been published in strictly limited editions, made appearances in scholarly writings about the artist, been repeatedly cited in relation to the development of avant-garde poetry."
Tate - Carl Andre: The Complete Poems
W - Carl Andre
Delia Solomons on Carl Andre
Carl Andre: Mass & Matter
Phaidon
Google

Walter Robinson

Dallas BBQ, acrylic on canvas, 2001
"Working in a range of materials— wood, epoxy, metal, and found materials— I hand-fabricate and assemble objects, signage and tableaux that investigate the mechanics of cultural and social anthropology. Using text and the strategies of appropriation, conflation, and dislocation, I uncover the subconscious and biological human imperatives hidden beneath social, political, religious, and capitalist packaging."
Walter Robinson
STUFF: Ten Things Walter Robinson Owns and Loves
Art Net: The Life and Times of Walter Robinson
Walter Robinson Studio
YouTube: Walter Robinson "Indulgences" at DORIAN GREY GALLERY, A Walter Robinson and Elizabeth Payton Doubleheader

Mr. Okra

"There's a new toy at my desk that a certain 20-something in the office wants to play with. Press a button, and a voice familiar to many rings out in an amplified sing-song: 'I have blueberries, I have peaches. I have plums. I have the mango.'"
Nola
He's got bananas! He's got okra!
Mr. Okra In Your Pocket
vimeo: Mr. Okra

Bob Marley - "Concrete Jungle"

"No sun will shine in my day today; (no sun will shine)
The high yellow moon won't come out to play:
(that high yellow moon won't come out to play)
I said (darkness) darkness has covered my light,
(and the stage) And has changed my day into night, yeah."
YouTube:The Old Grey Whistle Test 1973, Concrete Jungle, Studio repetition in 1980

Golden Age of Piracy

Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718
Wikipedia - "The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to usually one or more outbursts of piracy in maritime history of the early modern period. In its broadest accepted definition, the Golden Age of Piracy spans the 1650s to the 1730s and covers three separate outbursts of piracy. ... Narrower definitions of the Golden Age sometimes exclude the first or second periods, but most include at least some portion of the third. The modern conception of pirates as depicted in popular culture is derived largely, though not always accurately, from the Golden Age of Piracy."
Wikipedia
W - Piracy in the Caribbean
W - Blackbeard
W - William Kidd
W - Anne Bonny
YouTube: The Pirates - Buccaneer

John Prine Live from Sessions at West 54th

"John Prine won over critics in the early '70s with a string of successful singer/songwriter albums, and won over audiences with his charismatic stage presence. Although live albums have long been available for fans, Sessions at West 54th gave Prine a chance to work his charm on a television audience.
allmusic
YouTube: Live from Sessions at West 54th 1:06:36

2010 February: John Prine, 2011 October: John Prine - 1, 2012 May: Diamonds in the Rough.

Peter Doig - No Foreign Lands

Red Boat (Imaginary Boys), 2003-04
"A major exhibition of the work of Peter Doig (b. Edinburgh 1959), one of the most internationally-renowned painters working today. No Foreign Lands surveys the paintings and works on paper that Doig has created during the past 10 years, with a particular emphasis on the artist's approach to serial motifs and recurring imagery. These works are exotic in their subject matter, formally spare and monumental at the same time, and show Doig working at the height of his extraordinary powers."
National Galleries
Guardian - Peter Doig: a free spirit captured in Scottish National Gallery's retrospective
Saatchi Gallery
YouTube: TateShots Issue 12, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2008)

2009 April: Peter Doig, 2009 June: Compass in Hand.

Alfredo Jaar - Pavilion of Chile

"Alfredo Jaar has developed a critical practice of call and response through alert and advanced invocations to sites of crisis. Whether about violence and poverty, exile and migration, or other conditions of global or ideological conflict, his work prompts observation and thinking that unsettle conventions and complacency. Representing Chile at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia in its temporary pavilion situated in the Arsenale, Jaar’s evocative installation Venezia, Venezia guides visitors along an arching passage—like one of Venice’s iconic bridges—of striking visual and somatic encounters of aridity and liquidity."
MOUSSE
Alfredo Jaar
YouTube: Biennale Arte 2013 - Chile

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity - Mike Brodie

"Mike Brodie's compelling body of work sprang from his journeys walking, hitchhiking and train-hopping across the United States. In 2003, Brodie was a bored 18-year-old living in Pensacola, Florida and working part time in a grocery store when he hopped the wrong train to visit a friend in Mobile - and landed several hundred miles away in Jacksonville. The journey sparked something in Brodie and, with a Polaroid SX-70 camera given to him by a friend (or found behind the seat of an abandoned car, depending which story you prefer), he began an anarchic photographic adventure, documenting the hobos, vagabonds and fellow travellers he met along the way."
Telegraph
amazon
Guardian
photo-eye
YouTube: Mike Brodie: Documenting America's homeless train-jumpers

Etron Fou Leloublan

Wikipedia - "Etron Fou Leloublan ..., also known as EFL, were a French avant-rock band founded in 1973 by actor and saxophonist Chris Chanet. They recorded five studio albums between 1976 and 1985, and released a live album, En Public Aux Etats-Unis d'Amérique recorded during a tour of the United States in 1979. Etron Fou Leloublan were best known as one of the five original Rock in Opposition (RIO) bands that performed at the first RIO festival in London in March 1978. Etron Fou Leloublan's music has been described as a blend of punk rock, jazz, French music hall, comedy satire and 'avant-garde mayhem'."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: nicolas, Batelages [Full Album] 1976, L' enfance de guigou, Le Fleuve Et Le Manteau, Monsieur Blanc