East Village Eye

"This website has been created to tell the story of the East Village Eye magazine and present as much archival material as possible. Currently, while we work on the East Village Eye Book, our plan is to present a revolving selection of PDFs of issues from the archive. ... From May 1979 to January of 1987, the East Village Eye, a monthly magazine of popular and avant garde culture, exerted a profound influence that eventually reached across the entire world. Coverage in the Eye resulted in development of several key 'scenes' that eventually evolved into movements felt all over the planet. ..."
East Village Eye: ABOUT US
East Village Eye
East Village Eye: Six Most Wearable Eyes
Peep This! Original Copies of East Village Eye Up For Sale
98Bowery

Ballet Mécanique

Wikipedia - "Ballet Mécanique (1923–24) is a Dadaist post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy (with cinematographic input from Man Ray). It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil. However, the film premiered in silent version on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna presented by Frederick Kiesler. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking."
Wikipedia
Le Ballet Mécanique: The Historic Cinematic Collaboration Between Fernand Legér and George Antheil
Film Reference
Antheil, Léger, Murphy, Man Ray: The “Ballet Mécanique” (Video)
YouTube: Fernand Leger - Ballet mecanique (1924) 16:10
YouTube: Fernand Léger - Topic
YouTube: Univers Zéro at the Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City on April 20, 2013

Beautiful sailing ships at the South Ferry station

"If you’ve ever taken the 1 train to its last, lovely, looping stop at the South Ferry/Whitehall Street station, you’ve probably seen them—15 beautiful terra cotta plaques depicting a sailing ship on the water. The officials in charge of building the first New York City subway line in 1904 did a lot of things right. Not only did they hire brilliant engineers and planners, but they brought in designers to create inspiring decorative features on platforms. Ceramic plaques like these were installed in the earliest stations. Each plaque reflects something about the station’s neighborhood or history: a sloop for South Ferry, a beaver at Astor Place, a steamboat at Fulton Street."
Ephemeral New York
W - South Ferry – Whitehall Street (New York City Subway)
Google
YouTube: IRT Subway Special! Re-Opened Old South Ferry (1) Station [w/ Minor Tour], New York City's Abandoned Old South Ferry Loop Subway Station to Reopen

Luaka Bop 10th Anniversary: Zero Accidents on the Job (2000)

"Luaka Bop 10th Anniversary: Zero Accidents on the Job celebrates a decade of releases from David Byrne's innovative global music label. The album features Byrne's own 'God's Child,' and includes songs from world music luminaries like Irakere, Paulo Braganca, Vijaya Anand, Lenine, and Amigos Invisibles. ... Tracks from King Chango, Susana Baca, Jorge Ben, and many others round out this extensive, affectionate look at Luaka Bop's impressive roster."
allmusic
Discogs
W - Luaka Bop
YouTube: Luaka Bop 10th Anniversary: Zero Accidents on the Job

Slaperoo Percussion Intros The Electric Spring Doorstop

"Slaperoo Percussion, creators of the Slaperoo Electric Tuned Percussion Instrument, released this video demo of the Electric Spring Doorstop. The Electric Spring Doorstop is built around a standard spring doorstop, modified with a custom SlapStick S-100 pickup. At this point, it’s an experiement, but Slaperoo says that they may turn it into a product, if there’s a demand."
Synthtopia (Video)
YouTube: Slaperoo Percussion - The Electric Spring Doorstop

Art on Screen: A Conversation with Agnès Varda

"For over 50 years, Agnès Varda, the grandmother of the French New Wave, has reimagined the possibilities of cinema. Using her personal history, relationships, and travels as inspiration, Varda expands the documentary genre beyond the screen to the gallery and museum. Join this extraordinary artist for a rare and intimate conversation about her films and latest installations. In recent years, Varda has created a series of exhibitions that combine photography, film, and media installation to explore memory, tactility, and the passage of time."
Getty (Video) 1:38:26

August 2010: Agnès Varda, May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000), 2013 September: Cinévardaphoto (2004), 2014 July: Black Panthers (1968 doc.).

Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art

"The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. Until now, paintings this old had been confirmed in caves only in Western Europe. Researchers tell the journal Nature that the Indonesian discovery transforms ideas about how humans first developed the ability to produce art. Australian and Indonesian scientists have dated layers of stalactite-like growths that have formed over coloured outlines of human hands. Early artists made them by carefully blowing paint around hands that were pressed tightly against the cave walls and ceilings. The oldest is at least 40,000 years old."
BBC

Jackson Pollock's Mural

"... Mural came to the Getty in July 2012 for study and conservation, providing a rare opportunity to look closely at the painting's material structure, and to explore the paints Pollock used and how they were applied. The study reveals an artist who combined traditional materials and methods of application with more-unconventional ones. It is one of the artist's largest paintings, and the scale of Mural allowed Pollock to develop innovative methods of paint application that would later become the hallmark of his style."
Getty (Video)
Mural - University of Iowa Museum of Art
LA Times: Rebirth of Jackson Pollock's 'Mural'
CBS: Jackson Pollock's painting, "Mural," emerges from restoration brighter, more colorful
YouTube: See The Getty Restore Jackson Pollock's "Mural", Jackson Pollock's "Mural"

Outward Bound - Eric Dolphy (1960)

"The late multi-reed player/composer Eric Dolphy, one of the most pivotal figures in jazz, was a fiercely lyrical, imaginative musician at the forefront of the changes the music underwent in the 1960s. Dolphy, unlike some of his contemporaries, never totally abandoned the bebop approach of soloing over chord changes, but instead took his solos to fresh, expressive heights. Outward Bound, a quintet session from 1960, shows Dolphy in a somewhat transitional phase, his music closer to the hard bop of the late '50s than the free jazz of the '60s."
allmusic
W - Outward Bound
all about jazz
popmatters
YouTube: Outward Bound (1960)

Marianne Faithfull - Broken English short film by Derek Jarman (1979)

"... Along with the original studio album, the reissue will also includethe original 'lost' band sessions recording, a selection of bonus tracks and the Derek Jarman directed short film of 'Witches Song', 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan' and 'Broken English'. We were sent the following background information: On its release in late '79 'Broken English' was an instant critical and commercial success bringing Marianne a new image, an international following, a Grammy nomination and the confidence to record more of her own compositions. The beautiful blonde muse, the wistful teenager who whispered of tears going by, was reborn. The Marianne who roared out of the traps on 'Broken English' was a different animal altogether: wild, and feral, with a voice ravaged by experience and betrayal."
Antimusic
YouTube: Marianne Faithfull - Broken English short film by Derek Jarman

2008 June: Marianne Faithfull, 2010 November: Marianne Faithfull - 1, 2013 January: Broken English: Deluxe Edition, 2013 November: Before the Poison (2005), 2014 August: Kissin' Time (2002).

Pop International Galleries Showcases UR New York’s New Works in “Product of UR Environment”

Intersection
"UR New York has fashioned an amazing array of works in a range of media for their newest exhibit, Product of UR Environment, that opened this past Thursday evening. On view at Pop International Galleries at 473 West Broadway in SoHo,  Mike Baca’s (aka 2Esae) and Fernando Romero’s (aka Ski) pieces on a range of surfaces — from spray cans to found objects to canvases — brilliantly reflect NYC’s distinct grit and the passion that it rouses. Here are a few more..."
Street Art NYC
Pop International Galleries

The Hermit - John Renbourn (1976)

"John Renbourn's first post-Pentangle (or nearly post-Pentangle) solo album, joined briefly by fellow guitarist Dominique Trepeau and featuring further contributions by John James, is one of his most beautiful recordings, and also among his most spare guitar instrumentals. ... The mood of much -- though not all -- of Hermit is one of serious introspection, as Renbourn stays generally within a classical guitar mode. He has fun with the material, and the CD booklet also includes musical transcriptions of some of the tunes on the record, for the benefit of Renbourn's fellow guitarists."
allmusic
YouTube: The hermit, Three Pieces By O'Carolan, Faro's Rag, Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home, Goat Island, Bicycle Tune

2011 September: Faro Annie, 2011 April: Cruel Sister (1970) - Pentangle, 2012 November: John Renbourn - Sir John Alot, 2013 May: The Lady and the Unicorn, 2014 February: Bert & John (1966).

Electric Guitars Made from the Detritus of Detroit

"When Frank Norris plays a guitar made by Wallace Detroit Guitars, he says it 'feels like home.' And maybe that’s because Wallace Detroit Guitars are made with reclaimed wood from abandoned Detroit homes. Following the financial crisis of 2008, perhaps no American city fared worse than Detroit. The city found itself with 10,000 vacant homes. And eventually the city purchased entire blocks and razed the houses to the ground. According to the Detroit web site Model D, a lot of the wood [from these structures] hasn’t gone to waste."
Open Culture (Video)

Houston Street

Houston Street, George Luks (1916)
Wikipedia - "Houston Street (/ˈhaʊstən/ HOW-stən) is a major east-west thoroughfare in downtown Manhattan, running crosstown across the full width of the island of Manhattan, from Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive (FDR Drive) and East River Park on the East River to Pier 40 and West Street on the Hudson River. It generally serves as the boundary between neighborhoods, with Alphabet City, the East Village, NoHo, Greenwich Village and the West Village lying to the north of the street, and the Lower East Side, most of the Bowery, Nolita and SoHo to the south. The numeric street-naming grid in Manhattan, created as part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, begins immediately north of Houston Street with 1st Street at Avenue A, although the grid does not fully come into effect until 13th Street."
Wikipedia
Houston Street: river to river

Last Year at Marienbad - Alain Resnais (1961)

Wikipedia - "L'Année dernière à Marienbad (released in the US as Last Year at Marienbad and in the UK as Last Year in Marienbad) is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The film is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The dream-like nature of the film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics; some hail it as a masterpiece, others find it incomprehensible."
Wikipedia
Criterion (Video)
Roger Ebert
NY Times: Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Possession: A Romance - A. S. Byatt (1990)

Wikipedia - "Possession: A Romance is a 1990 bestselling novel by British writer A. S. Byatt that also won the 1990 Booker Prize. ... The novel follows two modern-day academics as they research the paper trail around the previously unknown love life between famous fictional poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Possession is set both in the present day and the Victorian era, pointing out the differences between the two time periods, and satirizing such things as modern academia and mating rituals. The structure of the novel incorporates many different styles, including fictional diary entries, letters and poetry, and uses these styles and other devices to explore the postmodern concerns of the authority of textual narratives."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Unearthing the Secret Lover
The New Canon
amazon

Fripp & Eno - Live In Paris 28.05.1975

"As a historical document, this release takes some beating. Recorded during the short – and only – tour that Fripp & Eno undertook as a duo, it captures a pivotal moment, not only in the development of both players, but in the live music experience itself. Here was a 'rock concert' (or 'superstar show' as the poster for the less glamourous Tunbridge Wells gig had it) where two of the leading lights of the art prog scene sat in near darkness improvising a series of dronic, ectoplasmic mood pieces for an hour and a half. No hits, no big riffs, no exotic costumes. In 2014, that description could be analogous to any number of live electronica events, but in 1975, it led to booing, walkouts and open hostility."
The Quietus‎
amazon: Live In Paris 28.05.1975
‘Lost’ Fripp & Eno Album, Live In Paris 28.05.1975 Now Available
YouTube: "Even Spaces" Live Paris Olympia May 28th 1975 Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4, Evening Star (FULL ALBUM), No Pussyfooting - Swastika Girls Part 1, Part 2, The Heavenly Music Corporation, John Peel's Fripp and Eno - No Pussyfooting (played backwards)

Annie Kevans

Dorothea Tanning, 2014
"Annie Kevans’ paintings reflect her interests in power, manipulation and the role of the individual in inherited belief systems. It is important for the artist to examine the duality of truth and falsehood throughout her work, which she does by creating 'portraits' which may or may not be based on real documentation. She believes that a person’s identity is not preset but is a shifting temporary construction and her work questions our verdicts on history and perceptions of intellectual solidity. Kevans uses people’s familiarity with portraiture to imbue her works with truth and to explore difficult ideas."
Annie Kevans - Works
W - Annie Kevans
Young Dictator Portraits: Annie Kevans' Paintings Of Hitler, Mao And Mussolini (PHOTOS)
Guardian: Why were so many female artists airbrushed from history?
Annie Kevans: Women and the History of Art
YouTube: Saatchi Gallery, London

Welcome to Twin Peaks

Honey Kennedy
"Welcome to Twin Peaks was launched on January 20, 2011. Not coincidentally David Lynch’s birthday and 20 years since I consciously watched Mark Frost and David Lynch’s show for the first time in my life. ... Inspired by the show’s ever-growing influence on today’s art, fashion, music, film, television, design or just about any other aspect of popular culture, Welcome to Twin Peaks aims to demonstrate that even though more than two decades have passed, Twin Peaks is still relevant. Maybe even more than ever. If you want to learn more about my ever-lasting obsession with Twin Peaks, please refer to Dr. Jacoby. He has all my tapes. Twin Peaks wasn’t my first encounter with the work of David Lynch."
Welcome to Twin Peaks

2008 September: Twin Peaks, 2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama, 2011 October: Twin Peaks: The Last Days.

Lars Lerin - Arkiv / Archive

"... With an iconography that to some extent is new to [Lers] Lerin, we find ourselves in front of stern filing cabinets, dioramas and vitrines. With transparent layers of paint and characteristic technical brilliance, Lerin evokes images of human recollections and the physical manifestations thereof. Binders, folders, book spines and magazine files – the messy and the arbitrary, supposedly comprehensible and organized in apperance. Binders, folders, book spines and magazine files – iterations in the severe austerity of the filing cabinets. The pale umber of the aged folders indicate the passage of time as they stand next to the brightly coloured crimson red binders. The past and the present gazing into the future. Or, the sometimes washy colours of the binders that seem to imply that the very information of the archive is about to fade."
Lars Bohman Gallery
Lars Bohman Gallery: Lars Lerin Arkiv / Archive
Lars Lerin Museum

Bad News Beards

"Baseball. Hot dogs. Apple pie. Facial hair? Lots and lots of facial hair. Epic hair. We’re talking Grizzly Adams meets Nordic god-type hair. A tradition that is believed to have started in professional hockey as a show of team unity — or laziness, depending on who you ask — playoff beards have been trending in baseball. Those Boys of Summer oft look like the Mountain Men of Fall by the time the Series rolls around. Of course, not all ballplayers are suspected of using performance-enhancing shampoos or waxes to cultivate their burly growths. ... How do we know all this, you ask? The Washington Post combed through more than 1,000 photos between Sept. 20 to 28. Yes, by the time we were done with the analysis we had the facial hair to show for it."
Washington Post

Walker Evans: The Magazine Work

LABOR ANONYMOUS November 1946
"One of the pivotal figures of 20th-century photography, Walker Evans’s austere and formally precise images of the American vernacular helped define a stylistic approach to photography that continues to resonate with contemporary artists. His work received critical acclaim during his lifetime, and in 1938 he was the subject of the first solo photography exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. But he also spent a large portion of his creative life working for magazines, both small avant-garde publications like Hound & Horn and Dance Index, and mainstream commercial outlets like Fortune, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. And while individual works within this magazine corpus have appeared in anthologies and exhibitions since his death, the work has largely been ignored or, worse, as in the case of his later work at Fortune, dismissed as the work of an artist past his prime."
Brooklyn Rail
TIME - Walker Evans: A Rebel Rises at Fortune (Photo)
Guardian - Life, Time and Fortune: how Walker Evans mastered magazine photography
amazon
vimeo: David Campany: Photography Between Page and Wall - March 11, 2014

2011 June: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 2011 May: A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, 2013 June: Cotton Tenants: Three Families, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981),

The Distortion of Sound

Wikipedia - "The Distortion of Sound is a 2014 documentary film about the decline of sound quality for recorded music, narrated by various artists who explain the decline in the sound quality from the last two decades. It was directed by Jacob Rosenberg, written by Michael Abell and Kevin Gentile, and produced by Hana Lasber, Dennis McKinley, and Suzanne Hargrove. The film features interviews with vocalists, guitarists, producers, writers, rappers, film composers, mixing engineers, mixers, music journalists, acoustic researchers, loudspeaker engineers and chief engineers—including such artists as Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Slash, Quincy Jones, Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki."
Wikipedia
The Distortion of Sound
YouTube: The Distortion of Sound | Official Trailer
YouTube: The Distortion of Sound [Full Film] 22:02

J.B. Lenoir - Natural Man

"This collection of J.B. Lenoir's mid-'50s tenure at the label -- originally issued in the '70s -- duplicates two songs from the Parrot collection (a label which Chess later acquired), but the rest of it is more than worth the effort to seek out. The rocking 'Don't Touch My Head,' the topical 'Eisenhower Blues' and the sexually ambiguous, chaotic and cool title track are but a few of the magical highlights aboard. Either this or the Parrot sides will do in a pinch, but after hearing this, you won't be able to imagine being without either one."
allmusic
YouTube: Natural Man, Don't Touch My Head, Eisenhower Blues, Man Watch Your Woman, Let Me Die with the One I Love, Talk to Your Daughter, If I Give My Love to You, Five Years, I've Been Down For So Long, Korea Blues, Everybody Wants to Know

2011 May: J.B. Lenoir

UNEDITED HISTORY, Iran 1960-2014

Kamran Shirdel (video projection)
"The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is presenting UNEDITED HISTORY, Iran 1960-2014 at ARC. Comprising over 200 works for the most part never shown in France before, the exhibition brings a fresh eye to art and visual culture in Iran from the 1960s up to the present. Its survey of the contemporary history of the country is arranged in sequences; the years 1960–1970, the revolutionary era of 1979, the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) and the postwar period up until today. Bringing together twenty artists from the years 1960–1970 and representatives of the new generation, the exhibition focuses on painting, photography and cinema, as well as key aspects of Iran's modern visual culture: posters and documentary material ranging from the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of the Arts to the revolutionary period and the Iran-Iraq war."
MAM Musée d'Art (Video)
Universes in Universe
artforum
NY Times: Rare Glimpses of Iran’s Lost Underworld
Dailymotion: 50 years of Iranian contemporary art on show in Paris (Video)

Louis Faurer

Wikipedia - "Louis Faurer (August 28, 1916 – March 2, 2001) was an American fashion photographer and a master of candid or street photography. ... It is Faurer’s personal work from the '40s, '50s, and '60s for which he is best remembered. He photographed the streets of New York and Philadelphia, capturing the restless energy of urban life. His sensitive lens probed the great variety of the city's human face, especially 'the lonely Times Square people for whom Faurer felt a deep sympathy.' Faurer experimented with blur, grain, double exposures, sandwiched negatives, reflections, slow film speeds, and low lighting to achieve the effects he was seeking. As exacting in the darkroom as he was in the field, he was notorious for being a tireless perfectionist when it came to cropping and printing his work."
Wikipedia
NY Times: The Streets, Frozen in Neon
The Art Institute of Chicago
amazon: Louis Faurer
NY Times: 'Time Capsule' (Video)

Danielle Mastrion

"Danielle Mastrion is an NYC-based Artist: a painter, muralist, and street artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, New York, Danielle gained a B.F.A in Illustration at Parsons School of Design. Her specialty is portraiture, and she works regularly on public and private commissions. Danielle has painted walls all around NYC, the US and abroad. Her murals in NYC include the recently painted Beastie Boys tribute on Ludlow & Rivington Street in the LES; the mural was featured in Mass Appeal, Rolling Stone, Spin Magazine & Billboard Magazine. She is currently painting a series of commemorative murals for The Yankees at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx along with Lexi Bella. Her other mural work in NYC can be found at The Bushwick Collective (Biggie Smalls) , Welling Court Mural Project in Astoria Queens (Bring Back Our Girls Wall); Centrefuge Public Art Project, the Myrtle-Broadway intersection wall, and was on the historic 5POINTZ building."
Danielle Mastrion (Video)

Lola - Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1981 BRD Trilogy)

Wikipedia - "Lola is a 1981 West German film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and is the third in his BRD Trilogy. ... In 1957–1958 in Coburg, in post-World War II West Germany, Schuckert (Mario Adorf) is a local construction entrepreneur whose methods of gaining wealth include shady business practices such as bribing the local officials. His latest scheme is endangered with the arrival of von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a high-minded building commissioner. Von Bohm tries to institute gradual change of the system from within, rather than exposing the participants. Meanwhile he falls in love with a beautiful woman named Lola (Barbara Sukowa). They are attracted to each other, and von Bohm starts thinking of marriage. Von Bohm finds out that she is a cabaret singer and prostitute in the town brothel, where most of von Bohm's adversaries are her clients, and that she is the 'personal toy' of Schuckert, and he collects evidence against Schuckert to expose the corruption."
Wikipedia
W - BRD Trilogy
Mirroring History: Fassbinder’s The BRD Trilogy
Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy
Looking Back: The BRD Trilogy (1979/81/82)
Candy-colored decadence: Fassbinder’s ‘Lola’ (1981)
TCM: Lola (1981) The Soul Is Sad, Your Mother's A Leprous Whore, Ten Years Of Peace
YouTube: Lola (1981) 1:55:02

2014 May: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 2014 June: Effi Briest (1974), 2014 July: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), 2014 September: A Little Chaos: A Short Crime Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Enfant Terrible of New German Cinema.

Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843)

Wikipedia - "Fear and Trembling ... is an influential philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard, published in 1843 under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio (John of the Silence). The title is a reference to a line from Philippians 2:12, '...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.' - itself a probable reference to Psalms 55:5, 'Fear and trembling came upon me...' (the Greek is identical). Kierkegaard wanted to understand the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when 'God tested [him] and said to him, take Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering on the mountain that I shall show you.' Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to forget it. He resigned himself to the three and a half day journey and to the loss of his son."
Wikipedia
Fear and Trembling by Sören Kierkegaard

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard.

Money - Henry Hills (1985)

"Money (1985) is an historical document of the early days of 'language poetry' and the downtown improvised music scene. A manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated. Filmed primarily on the streets of Manhattan for the ambient sounds and movements and occasional pedestrian interaction to create a rich tapestry of swirling colors and juxtaposed architectural spaces in deep focus and present the intense urban overflowing energy that is experience living here. ..."
Henry Hills
PennSound: Money

2012 May: Henry Hills