Jana & Js "Who Said It Was Better Before"

"Next week, Jana & Js will be releasing a new stencil edition via Pretty Portal. 'Who Said It Was Better Before' is an edition of 10, Indian ink, watercolors, acrylics, spray and stencil on old music paper, they measure 30,5 x 47cm and comes signed and numbered by the duo."
StreetArtNews
flickr

Brian Eno - Textures (1989)

"An unreleased album of ambient cues and themes from Brian Eno, pressed as a promo-only CD for The Standard Music Library – an organization that licenses music for television programming and films. ... You can pretty much imagine any of this stuff floating behind barren landscapes on the BBC, or some National Geographic slo-mo underwater exploration, which are the types of clients this CD was designed to attract. You can’t buy this in stores. There’s more Eno in the archives."
UbuWeb (Video)
Wikipedia
YouTube: Textures (Whole Album)

Mink DeVille

Wikipedia - "Mink DeVille (1974–86) was a rock band known for its association with early punk rock bands at New York’s CBGB nightclub and for being a showcase for the music of Willy DeVille. The band recorded six albums in the years 1977 to 1985. Except for frontman Willy DeVille, the original members of the band played only on the first two albums (Cabretta and Return to Magenta). For the remaining albums and for tours, Willy DeVille assembled musicians to play under the name Mink DeVille."
Wikipedia
W - Willy DeVille
allmusic
YouTube: Spanish Stroll, Love and Emotion, Hey! Joe, She's so tough, Demasiado Corazon, I Broke That Promise, Just To Walk That Little Girl Home

Félicie de Fauveau. The Amazon Sculptress

"Félicie de Fauveau (1801-1886) was a figure as emblematic as she was unique. Nostalgic for an era that she had not lived through, a royalist, a catholic, a single woman and a feminist, this sculptress committed her life and her art to defending a political utopia, expressed principally through images of History. After supporting the Duchesse de Berry and organising uprisings in the Vendée with the Countess de La Rochejaquelein, she agreed to go into exile, and settled in Florence."
Musée d'Orsay
Musée d'Orsay - 1, 2, 3, 4.

A Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana

"Because his poems are so overstuffed with references to proper names, movies, books, small-scale historical events, and famous or not-so-famous friends, people who love and teach Frank O’Hara’s work often talk about how useful it would be to have an annotated version of his work, with explanations, images, and links to the myriad things, people, and places he mentions."
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets
Modern American Poetry: On "The Day Lady Died"
Poetry Foundation: Frank O’Hara, "The Day Lady Died"

2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, 2011 July: "Poet Among Painters" by James Schuyler, 2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966).

Bowery

On the Bowery, 1957
Wikipedia - "The Bowery (/ˈbaʊ.əri/ or New York English /ˈbaʊər.i/), sometimes referred to simply as Bowery, is a street and neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street runs from Chatham Square in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north,[1] while the neighborhood's boundaries are roughly East 4th Street and the East Village to the north; Canal Street and Chinatown to the south; Allen Street and the Lower East Side to the east; and Little Italy to the west."
Wikipedia
NYT: Behind the Facades, a Seedy Past Endures (Video)
NPR: 'Bowery Boys' Are Amateur But Beloved New York Historians (Video)
W - On the Bowery
On the Bowery
YouTube: On the Bowery THEATRICAL TRAILER
YouTube: On the Bowery, Lionel Rogosin (1956)1:05:13

Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition

Wikipedia - "Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition is a 2012 feature length documentary film about the Rock in Opposition movement of the late 1970s, the music genre it spawned, and the influence it has on experimental groups across the world. The film was written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder, and was released by Zeitgeist Media."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Romantic Warriors - Trailer - 9:52 (Video)
YouTube: Romantic Warriors Progressive Music Documentary - Trailer 2 6:44, Romantic Warriors II - Trailer - About Rock in Opposition 5:01

Minnie and Moskowitz - John Cassavetes

Wikipedia - "Minnie and Moskowitz is a film by John Cassavetes, starring his wife, Gena Rowlands, and actor Seymour Cassel in the title roles of Minnie and Moskowitz, respectively. Following a break-up, Minnie Moore, a museum curator, becomes disillusioned by love and meaningful relationships. But after a seemingly chance encounter, she meets Seymour Moskowitz, a parking-lot attendant. After this event, Moskowitz falls in love with Minnie, trying desperately to get her to love him back."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Cassavetes' Works: Minnie and Moskowitz
notcoming
YouTube: Minnie and Moskowitz, Gena Rowlands, John Cassevettes, Minnie and Moskowitz - 1, A touching declaration of love

2008 September: John Cassavetes, 2010 December: Shadows (1959), 2011 June: A Woman Under the Influence (1974), 2012 February: His Life and Work, 2012 July: A Constant Forge

Konono Nº1

Wikipedia - "Konono Nº1 is a Grammy nominated musical group from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. They combine three electric likembé (a traditional instrument similar to the mbira) with voices, dancers, and percussion instruments that are made out of items salvaged from a junkyard. The group's amplification equipment is equally rudimentary, including a microphone carved out of wood fitted with a magnet from an automobile alternator and a gigantic horn-shaped amplifier."
Wikipedia
Crammed: Konono Nº1
Robert Christgau
amazon
YouTube: Konono Nº1, Lufuala Ndonga, Makembe
vimeo: Yaya Mikolo (live in St. Nazaire)

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