Mario Vargas Llosa

The Discreet Hero
Wikipedia - "Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (...Spanish: born March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. ... Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; over the course of his life, he has gradually moved from the political left towards liberalism or neoliberalism. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with his policies. ..."
Wikipedia
The Paris Review: Mario Vargas Llosa, The Art of Fiction No. 120
New Yorker: Restless Realism
New Republic: Why Literature?
NY Times: Vargas Llosa Takes Nobel in Literature
amazon: Mario Vargas Llosa
Guardian: Nobel prize for literature goes to Mario Vargas Llosa (Video)

Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

"The story of Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter reads like a parody of the brutal bluesman biography: Kill a man, go to prison — twice — then appeal for a pardon in a song. According to the legend, Lead Belly's undeniable talent convinced Texas Governor Pat Neff to let him go. 'The states all kinda got ticked off when that story came out,' says Jeff Place, an archivist with Smithonian Folkways. 'They said no, no — he really got out both times because his time was up.' With a new box set called Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, Place is hoping to set the record straight on that and other aspects of the musician's legacy. He says the musicologist John Lomax really did 'discover' Lead Belly in the infamous Angola prison in Louisiana — but that Lomax also carefully crafted and exploited Lead Belly's image as a dangerous criminal."
NPR: 'That Blew My Mind': Raiding The Lead Belly Vault (Video)
NY Times
amazon
YouTube: Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (Making Of)

Armand Guillaumin

The Bay And The River
Wikipedia - "Armand Guillaumin (February 16, 1841 – June 26, 1927) was a French impressionist painter and lithographer. Born Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin in Paris, he worked at his uncle's lingerie shop while attending evening drawing lessons. He also worked for a French government railway before studying at the Académie Suisse in 1861. There, he met Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro with whom he maintained lifelong friendships. While he never achieved the stature of these two, his influence on their work was significant. Cézanne attempted his first etching based on Guillaumin paintings of barges on the River Seine. Guillaumin exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. He participated in six of the eight Impressionist exhibitions: 1874, 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886. ..."
Wikipedia
Armand Guillaum - The complete works
Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
YouTube: Armand Guillaumin 1841 1927

Peaks and Valleys: The Career of Sean Penn

"All careers, even the great ones, have their ups and downs. ... Our legends are fallible, but they don’t become legends without the sort of dizzying heights of success we mere mortals can only dream about. A great man once said that life is a highway, and if you really are gonna ride it all night long, you might get a flat tire or two in the process. Sean Penn is many things — gifted actor, humanitarian, party pooper, and troubled man who has been charged with felony domestic assault. He has done some of the best and worst acting of the last 30 years."
Grantland (Video)

2013 June: Colors - Dennis Hopper (1988)

The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (1969)

Wikipedia - "The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, also known by its subtitle Accept No Substitute, is the second studio album by American recording duo Delaney & Bonnie. ... It was recorded with many of the 'friends' that would form the core of their best-known 1969–70 touring band, including Leon Russell, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Rita Coolidge. ... In a contemporary review for The New York Times, Robert Christgau praised the duo's singing and lyrics of 'rich but implicit' sexuality and commonplace truths about love. He was also impressed in how the album appropriates soul music, but asserted that 'it is a white album, and for once that's good. No black singers would record anything so eccentric, so unabashedly baroque, in its celebration of black music.'"
Wikipeia
Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Six Degrees of Swampland
Spotify, facebook
YouTube: Accept No Substitute (1969) Full Album 34:30

2010 August: Derek and the Dominos, 2014 February: Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Copenhagen December 10, 1969, 2014 September: Home - Delaney & Bonnie (1969).

Charles Olson - "In Cold Hell, in Thicket" (1950)

Charles Olson, In Cold Hell, In Thicket. Divers Press / Origin, Palma de Mallorca, 1953.
"Charles Olson reading 'In Cold Hell, in Thicket' (1950) sometime in the mid-60s in Gloucester, MA—late night, recorded for Robert Creeley. Audio courtesy Ron Silliman and PennSound audio archive. Image: Ivan Besse—Britton, SD 1938-39 courtesy Rick Prelinger and archive.org. Text transcribed from The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems edited by George Butterick. Premiered at the Charles Olson Centenary Conference Worcester, MA on 27 March 2010—Fuller Theater."
YouTube: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket"
eNotes
Charles Olson - In Cold Hell, In Thicket

2009 January: Charles Olson, 2009 April: Rockport Harbor, 2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12, 2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957, 2012 April: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester, 2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length, 2013 January: Mass.Charles Olson, 2013 May: The Maximus Poems, 2013 November: A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson .

Roz Chast’s Pysanky

Egg #77, 2010-2013, eggshell, dye, and polyurethane
"Roz Chast does excellent work on paper—and sure enough, her latest memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, has just won a National Book Critics Circle Award—but I think her real medium is the egg. She’s been doing great things with pysanky (i.e. Ukrainian painted eggs) for at least a decade. Her latest efforts will be on display, along with her cartoons and her work in textiles, at Danese Corey Gallery starting this Friday."
The Paris Review
NY Times: The Droll Cartoonist With a Grade-A Obsession (November 26, 2004)

Alaska Through New Eyes

The whaling steamer Belvedere, Cape Lisburne, Arctic Ocean, circa 1886
"In 1886 Alaska had been American for less than two decades, Russian presence had waned, and the whaling industry widely occupied the region. The sole representative of American authority in those waters was the US Revenue Cutter Bear, a 198-foot, reinforced-hull vessel powered by both steam and sail. The ship’s mission was to confiscate illegal alcohol and guns, make observations for nautical charts, offer medical assistance to natives and ships’ crews, pick up explorers from an earlier US Navy expedition, and generally police the area. As a new book, Steaming to the North, shows, the Bear’s cruise that summer also produced some of the first photographs ever taken of that part of the world...."
The New York Review of Books
Steaming to the North - University of Chicago Press

Canal Street

Wikipedia - "Canal Street is a major east-west street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, running from East Broadway between Essex and Jefferson Streets in the east, to West Street between Watts and Spring Streets in the west. It runs through the neighborhood of Chinatown, and forms the southern boundaries of SoHo and Little Italy as well as the northern boundary of Tribeca. ... Tourists as well as locals pack its sidewalks every day to frequent the open-air food stalls and bare-bones stores selling items such as perfume, purses, hardware, and industrial plastics at low prices. Many of these goods are grey market imports and many notoriously counterfeit, with fake trademarked brand names on electronics, clothing and personal accessories (including the fake Rolex watches that have become a Manhattan cliché)."
Wikipedia
RK Chin: Canal Street
nyc: Canal Street
YouTube: Canal Street Hustlers and Street Vendors

Negro league baseball

Satchel Paige, the Kansas City Monarchs - Negro Leagues (Kadir Nelson)
Wikipedia - "The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed 'Negro Major Leagues'. ... On May 2, 1920, the Indianapolis ABCs beat the Chicago American Giants (4–2) in the first game played in the inaugural season of the Negro National League, played at Washington Park in Indianapolis. But, because of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the National Guard still occupied the Giants' home field, Schorling's Park (formerly South Side Park)."
Wikipedia
Seamheads: Negro Leagues Database
MLB: Negro Leagues
NLBM History
Baseball Reference
YouTube: The Negro Leagues: Baseball, America, and Segregation, Extra Innings: Preserving the History of The Negro Leagues

"Town Called Malice" / "Precious" - The Jam

Wikipedia - "'Town Called Malice' is a song recorded by British band The Jam from the album The Gift. ... It was a double A-side single release featuring 'Precious' as the flip side. A 12" version was also available with a live version of 'Town Called Malice' backed by an extended version of 'Precious'. Released as the first single from the album on 29 January 1982, it entered the chart at number one on the British music charts, staying at the top for three weeks, and preventing 'Golden Brown' by The Stranglers from reaching number one. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Town Called Malice, Precious

2009 March: The Jam, 2011 December: Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982.

FOTR: Four Color Zack

"Four Color Zack’s breakout in the last few years has put him near the top of the whole DJ stratosphere. As 2012 Red Bull Thre3style World Champion and an all around great dude, he’s currently out on this year’s Thre3style circuit judging the competitions and flexing a nightly performance. You can keep up with the ongoing Thre3style schedule here. Zack and DJ Scene just dropped a collaborative production project on Fool’s Gold featuring Mad Lion (bo!) and a song with M.O.P. called Slap it Down."
The Rub (Video)
Four Color Zack (Video)
sloane
Soundcloud (Video)
facebook, twitter
YouTube: DJ Four Color Zack (Thre3style Champ) at Turntable Lab, DJcityTV, Tone Pla

Portfolio: Twenty-one Dresses

"A number of years ago, a young painting conservator entered a forgotten storeroom in a fifteenth-century Florentine villa and stumbled on a pile of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks. She opened them and discovered a collection of exquisite dresses, the kind usually seen only in movies, or inside protective vitrines in museums. Closer inspection revealed silk labels, hand-woven with the name 'Callot Soeurs.' In the second volume of 'Remembrance of Things Past,' the Narrator asks his beloved, Albertine, 'Is there a vast difference between a Callot dress and one from any ordinary shop?' Her response: 'Why, an enormous difference, my little man!'"
New Yorker
W - Callot Soeurs
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
House of Callot Soeurs
A Leading Fashion House: The Callot Sisters

ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s

"ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s, is the first large-scale historical survey in the United States dedicated to the German artists' group Zero (1957–66) founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene and joined in 1961 by Günther Uecker, and ZERO, an international network of like-minded artists from Europe, Japan, and North and South America—including Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Manzoni, Almir Mavignier, Jan Schoonhoven, and Jesús Rafael Soto—who shared the group’s aspiration to transform and redefine art in the aftermath of World War II. Featuring more than 40 artists from 10 countries, the exhibition explores the experimental practices developed by this extensive ZERO network of artists, whose work anticipated aspects of Land art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art. ZERO encompasses a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, works on paper, installations, and archival materials such as publications and photographic and filmic documentation."
Guggenheim (Video)
Guggenheim: ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s
ARTFORUM
NY Times: 3 Men and a Posse, Chasing Newness
amazon
YouTube: ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s with V. Hillings, T. Caianiello, J. Robinson 1:00:00

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon - John Joseph

When punk seemed exhausted, a new generation of kids arrived in the East Village to fight for their music.
"When John Joseph returned to New York, in 1981, punk rock was almost dead, and he was determined to help kill it. He had grown up hard in Queens, abandoned by his father and then by his mother. (Eventually, he stopped using his last name, which was McGowan.) He wound up living in a Catholic boys’ home in the Rockaways, which in time came to seem less appealing than a life on the streets. Among the many things he found on the streets was punk, in the form of a wild concert at Max’s Kansas City, the night club on Park Avenue South where such heroes as Sid Vicious and Johnny Thunders liked to debauch themselves. John Joseph had visited Max’s under the influence of a sedative called Placidyl, which may explain why he can’t remember what band was playing, and why he fared so poorly in the fistfight that followed the show. But he liked the mayhem, and he liked the punk-obsessed woman he met a few weeks later, who had a fake English accent and a real heroin addiction."
New Yorker: United Blood - How hardcore conquered New York.
amazon: The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon by John Joseph
John Joseph of Cro-Mags Has the Craziest Stories Ever - Interviews
Spotify
YouTube: Evolution Of A Cromagnon - Meeting the Bad Brains / Definition of modern celebrities

Helter Skelter (1992)

Wikipedia - "Helter Skelter is a 1992 rock opera by Fred Frith and François-Michel Pesenti. It was their first collaborative album and was recorded in Marseille, France in February 1992. The music was composed by Frith, with libretto by Pesenti, and was conducted by Frith and Jean-Marc Montera. Frith does not perform on this album. In 1990, English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith spent six months in Marseille, France working with Que d'la Gueule, a group of young unemployed rock musicians. He composed Helter Skelter for them to perform, a rock opera for two sopranos, one contralto and a large electric ensemble. Their style of playing and abilities varied considerably, but Frith found that this was what contributed to the success of the project."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Fred Frith & Que D'La Gueule - Berlin Jazz Festival, 1992 58:58

San Francisco Renaissance

Robin Blaser
Wikipedia - "The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others (e.g., Alan Watts, Ralph J. Gleason) felt this renaissance was a broader phenomenon and should be seen as also encompassing visual and performing arts, philosophy, cross-cultural interests (particularly those that involved Asian cultures), and new social sensibilities. ... He was amongst the first American poets to explore Japanese poetry traditions such as haiku and was also heavily influenced by jazz. If Rexroth was the founding father, Madeline Gleason was the founding mother. During the 1940s, both she and Rexroth befriended a group of younger Berkeley poets consisting of Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser. Gleason and Duncan were particularly close and read and criticized each other's work."
Wikipedia
The Beats: San Francisco
The Blacklisted Journalist
Howls, Raps & Roars: Recordings from the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance (Video)
Rexroth’s San Francisco (1975)
Reality Studio: Ten San Francisco Poets
amazon: The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century
Poetry Center Digital Archive, (Video)

Life in Crimea - Photographs by Arthur Bondar

"One year ago today, after twenty-three years as an autonomous region within Ukraine, Crimea voted in a referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Russian elections aren’t known for their fairness, and the official reports of eighty-three-per-cent turnout, with ninety-seven per cent voting to join Russia, were widely questioned. Still, it’s clear that many Crimeans truly wanted to become Russian, hoping to be rescued from the uncertainty of post-Maidan Ukraine, to receive higher pensions, and to exit a nation in which they’d never really felt at home. The Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar, who documented life on the peninsula between 2010 and 2014, says that Crimeans have 'celebrated grandly' this past year."
New Yorker
Arthur Bondar
VII Photo
Chernobyl Anniversary: Arthur Bondar Photos Document Life In The Exclusion Zone
vimeo: Shadows of Wormwood, Balaklava: The Lost History
YouTube: Barricade: The EuroMaidan Revolt

Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City - John Dunstan

"My short film 'Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City' has been selected for the Golden Door International Film Festival of Jersey City, Wildlife Vaasa in Finland and Village Docs in Milan. ... A film I am very much looking forward to about the plight of bees and the fascinating people involved with them in Weehawken, New York, Colarado and across the country. My short film, around 17 mins should be an eye opener for many area residents, touching on the unprecedented Snowy Owl irruption of this past winter, hawks, falcons, over wintering herons, Raven Snowy Owl interaction all in the most unlikely of environments and on the big screen, this is not your modern multiplex, a real movie palace, admission is a reasonable 10 dollars, a family friendly program."
facebook
vimeo: "Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City"

Archie Shepp - Attica Blues (1972)

"Refining his large-ensemble experiments of 1971, Attica Blues is one of Archie Shepp's most significant post-'60s statements, recorded just several months after authorities ended the Attica prison uprising by massacring 43 inmates and hostages. Perhaps because Shepp's musical interests were changing, Attica Blues isn't the all-out blast of rage one might expect; instead, it's a richly arranged album of mournful, quietly agonized blues and Ellingtonian swing, mixed with a couple of storming funk burners. Of course, Shepp doesn't quite play it straight, bringing his avant-garde sensibilities to both vintage big band and contemporary funk, with little regard for the boundaries separating them all. ..."
allmusic
W - Attica Blues (1972)
amazon
YouTube: Attica Blues, Attica Blues 8:44
vimeo: Archie Shepp's new Attica Blues Band Project
YouTube: Attica Blues 39:30

Life in Hell - Matt Groening

Wikipedia - "Life in Hell was a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, which was published from 1977 to 2012. The strip featured anthropomorphic rabbits and a gay couple. Groening used these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death. His drawings were full of expressions of angst, social alienation, self-loathing, and fear of inevitable doom. ... Groening photocopied and distributed the comic book to friends. He also sold it for two dollars a copy at the 'punk' corner of the record store in which he worked, Licorice Pizza on Sunset Boulevard. Life in Hell debuted as a comic strip in the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978, to which Groening made his first professional cartoon sale."
Wikipedia
Life in Hell Archives
13 Of The Best "Life In Hell" Comics By Matt Groening
amazon: Matt Groening

Jeff Greinke - Lost Terrain (1992)

"This 1992 entry from Jeff Greinke is strongly suggestive of some of the works of Harold Budd and the cooler ambient pieces of Brian Eno. The often opaque shades of 'Changing Skies,' his previous release, give way here to culturally flavored hues that drift through dreamlike states with similar theme variations. A journey into night, Lost Terrain has the feeling of exploring forgotten landscapes of both inner and outer worlds. The first cut, 'Terrain of Memory,' will strike a sympathetic chord with those who like Budd's The White Arcades in its cool, dark ambience. ..."
allmusic
Hypnos
Spiderbytes
BestBuy: Lost Terrain - CD (Video)
YouTube: Veiled

2009 December: Jeff Greinke, 2012 September: Cities in Fog, 2013 May: Timbral Planes.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Henry David Thoreau (1849)

Wikipedia - "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is a book by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). It is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, that Thoreau took with his brother John in 1839. John died of tetanus in 1842 and Thoreau wrote the book, in part, as a tribute to his memory. ... While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, this is deceptive. The actual trip took two weeks and while given passages are a literal description of the journey — from Concord, Massachusetts, down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, to the Merrimack River, up to Concord, New Hampshire, and back — much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history. Thoreau relates these topics to his own life experiences, often in the context of the rapid changes taking place in his native New England during the Industrial Revolution, changes that Thoreau often laments."
Wikipedia
The Walden Woods Project
Prezi (Video)
amazon (Audible Audio Edition)

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden.

27 hilariously bad maps that explain nothing

10 - Whole Foods reshuffles Europe
"Maps can illuminate our world; they can enlighten us and make us see things differently; they can show how demographics, history, or countless other factors interact with human and physical geography. But, sometimes, maps can be utter disasters, either because they're wrong or simply very dumb. Here are a collection of maps so hilariously bad that you may never trust the form again. Tellingly, the bulk of the collection comes from cable TV news."
Vox

Freedom Tunnel

Wikipedia - "The Freedom Tunnel is the name given to the Amtrak tunnel under Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City. It got its name because the graffiti artist Chris 'Freedom' Pape used the tunnel walls to create some of his most notable artwork. The name may also be a reference to the former shantytowns built within the tunnel by homeless populations seeking shelter and freedom to live rent-free and unsupervised by law enforcement. ... Over the tunnel's years of disuse, its isolated nature allowed graffiti artists and street artists to work without fear of arrest, leading to larger and more ambitious pieces. The tunnel has unique lighting provided by grates in the sidewalks of Riverside Park above the space. The descending shafts of light allow graffiti art to be seen in the gloom, and artists would often center their projects under the light to take advantage of the spot-lighting effect, as if in a gallery."
Wikipedia
Chris Pape's Freedom Tunnel
NYC Underground: A Journey To The Freedom Tunnel
Exploring an Active Amtrak Tunnel Under the Upper West Side
W - Dark Days (film)
vimeo: Freedom Tunnel - Filmed and cut by Charles le Brigand
YouTube: How to get to the Freedom Tunnel, Marc Singer - Dark Days Documentary (first 10 minutes)

Au Pairs - "Inconvenience" / Pretty Boys (12")

"Blasting into the post-punk consciousness with a tremendous debut album, the Au Pairs, fronted by lesbian-feminist Lesley Woods, played brittle, dissonant, guitar-based rock that shared political and musical kinship with the Mekons and (especially) the Gang of Four. The music was danceable, imbued with an almost petulant irony, and for a while, very hip and well-liked by critics. Unlike many bands of the day, however, the Au Pairs (at least initially) backed it up with searing, confrontational songs celebrating sexuality from a woman's perspective. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Inconvenience / Pretty Boys (12")

2008 May: Au Pairs, 2012 October: Au Pairs @ Pinkpop 1982, 2014 August: Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology (2006).

"That's A Pretty Good Love" - Big Maybelle (1956)

"Baby my love is deep (How deep?)
Deep as the bottom of the ocean (How pure?)
Pure as the new born baby (How bright?)
Outshine's the sun above
That's a pretty good love."
Wikipedia
YouTube: That's A Pretty Good Love

Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia

La Loge, 1908, Huile sur toile
"After the Bonnard exhibitions held the world over, the Musee d'Orsay, which manages the artist's output, owed it to itself to devote a retrospective to him that is representative of all his creative periods. Practicing art in its multifarious forms - painting, drawing, prints, decorative art, sculpture, photography - Bonnard advocated a basically decorative esthetic, fuelled by sharp, humorous observations drawn from his immediate surroundings. From the small picture to the large format, from the portrait to the still life, from the intimate scene to the pastoral subject, from the urban landscape to the ancient setting, Bonnard's work reveals an instinctive and supremely sensitive artist. His palette of bright, luminous colors makes him one of the leading exponents of modern art and an eminent representative of the Arcadian movement."
Musée d'Orsay
Les Hôtels Paris Rive Gauche
MoMA: Dining Room Overlooking the Garden (The Breakfast Room), The Bathroom

2012 January: Pierre Bonnard

Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori

"In August 2002, I drove from Los Angeles to Calgary, Canada to film Phantom Orchard recording their first record in the home studio of the fascinating David Kean, founder of The Audities Foundation, an organization committed to the preservation of rare electronic instruments (www.audities.org). This footage was shot for what eventually evolved into the feature documentary 'The Reach Of Resonance,' though this footage was not actually used in the film."
Steve Elkins
YouTube: Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori in the studio, Live @ Teatro Fondamenta Nuove

2011 January: Zeena Parkins, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2012 December: Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins / sound. at REDCAT, 2013 October: Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival, 2014 October: Janene Higgins & Zeena Parkins (2000), 2012 October: Ikue Mori.

Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector

A collection of elephant figurines in the studio of Sir Peter Blake
"What a delightful exhibition Magnificent Obsessions proves to be. Bursting at the seams with bizarre and beautiful objects, collected over decades by 15 famous post-war and contemporary artists, it is by turns amusing, surprising, illuminating – and always engrossing. The idea behind the show is simple: why not explore some of the idiosyncratic personal collections built up by well-known artists to see whether they can shine light upon those artists’ work? After all, artists have obsessively collected things for centuries: Rembrandt’s habit was so extreme he eventually went bankrupt. ..."
Telegraph
NY Times

‘Remote New York,’ a Tour From Brooklyn to Greenwich Village

"On a rainy afternoon this week, passers-by may have paused to wonder about a headphone-wearing group assembled in front of a guardhouse at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, staring at a nondescript commercial strip outside the gates before suddenly bursting into applause. They weren’t mourners, but both actors, after a fashion, and audience for 'Remote New York,' a 'pedestrian-based live art experience' that, starting on Saturday, will take 50 people (the script calls them a 'horde') per performance along a carefully planned route that wends, on foot and by subway, from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village. 'It’s a kind of invisible architecture,' Stefan Kaegi, part of the German-based arts collective Rimini Protokoll and the piece’s creator, said in a post-rehearsal interview. 'We’re setting up a precise geographical structure, like a tunnel through the city that nobody sees.' ...”
NY Times
NYU Skirball
Rimini-Protokoll

"Little Wing" - Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

Wikipedia - "'Little Wing' is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967. It is a slower tempo, rhythm and blues-inspired ballad featuring Hendrix's vocal and guitar with recording studio effects accompanied by bass, drums, and glockenspiel. Lyrically, it is one of several of his songs that reference an idealized feminine or guardian angel-like figure. At about two and a half minutes in length, it is one of his most concise and melodically-focused pieces. ..."
Wikipedia
In Deep Lesson with Andy Aledort: How to Play "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix (Video)
Spotify
YouTube: Little Wing (Live in London)

2010 September: Jimi Hendrix, 2013 November: Watch Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’, the New PBS Documentary, 2014 July: Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock: The Complete Performance in Video & Audio (1969), 2014 October: Live at Monterey (1967).

Bill Watterson talks: This is why you must read the new ‘Exploring Calvin and Hobbes’ book

"The wait was worth it. Bill Watterson, that master of timing, waited decades to give a truly in-depth interview. As he did with his beloved strip, the 'Calvin and Hobbes' creator knows when and how to aim for, and deliver, the exceptional. ... For years, the cartoonist didn’t make public comments. Now, in a single wide-ranging and revealing and illuminating and engrossing and self-deprecating and poignant and, of course, deeply funny interview, Watterson has proved more generous than we perhaps could have ever hoped for. Bill Watterson has delivered a gift, a trip down memory lane that is populated densely on each side with personal and professional insights — some grippingly specific, some that ring universal, many that resonate as both. ..."
Washington Post
Washington Post - Read: Here’s an excerpt from Bill Watterson’s rare new ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ interview
amazon

2011 January: Calvin and Hobbes

Habibi funk: Listen to this rare vinyl mix of incredible Arab songs from the 60s/70s

"'I got to travel a lot in North Africa in the last years through touring with Blitz the Ambassador,' Jannis writes on his Soundcloud page, and the studio session with Oddisee for Sawtuha in Tunisia. While being there, I did some digging and found some incredible music from the ’60s and ’70s. Some of the music in this mix has zero info on the Net, was never sold on eBay, and has not been ‘rediscovered’ yet. Others are somewhat classics in the field of ‘Arabic groove.’ The music in this mix comes from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, and Syria.”
Your Middle East (Video)
Soundcloud: Radio Jakarta 001: Jannis of Jakarta Records - "Arab 60s/70s Vinyl Mix", Radio Jakarta 007 (Video)
Sawtuha by Various Artists (Video)

Martin Mull

Viewing Room
Wikipedia - "Martin Eugene Mull (born August 18, 1943) is an American actor who has appeared in many television and film roles. He is also a comedian, painter, and recording artist. ... Mull has been a painter since the 1970s, and has had his work appear in group and solo exhibits since that time. He participated in the June 15, 1971 exhibit 'Flush with the Walls' in the men's room of the Boston Museum of Art to protest the lack of contemporary and local art in the museum. His work often combines photorealist painting, and the pop art and collage styles. He published a book of some of his paintings, titled Paintings Drawings and Words, in 1995."
Wikipedia
Samuel Freeman
artnet
YouTube: The Humming Song, KPCS: Martin Mull #64

Hooking Up

In 2009, all eyes were on Kanye West and his crew, in Paris to attend the men's fashion shows.
"Hip-hop has always had a way of asserting its domain — it shows up, it makes a scene, it seduces and cajoles, it is embraced, it takes over. Which makes it all the more vexing that, for decades, men’s fashion managed to resist its charms. I don’t mean style — hip-hop has always had signature style, defining looks that changed practically every year. But the higher end of men’s fashion long kept its nose in the air, old money letting new money know exactly where it wasn’t welcome. Since the days when Dapper Dan was cooking up flamboyant luxury knockoffs out of a Harlem storefront, hip-hop had its sights set on infiltration, and it’s finally making headway as an influence on the runway. But the silk ceiling was real, and so hip-hop made do, writing its own fashion codes, doing what it could with what was around. ..."
T Magazine: NY Times

Two-Lane Blacktop - Monte Hellman (1971)

Wikipedia - "Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 road movie directed by Monte Hellman, starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird. Esquire magazine declared the film its movie of the year for 1971, and even published the entire screenplay in its April 1971 issue, but the film was not a commercial success. The film has since become a counterculture-era cult classic. ... Two-Lane Blacktop is notable as a time capsule film of U.S. Route 66 during the pre-Interstate Highway era, and for its stark footage and minimal dialogue. As such, it has become popular with fans of Route 66. Two-Lane Blacktop has been compared to similar road movies with an existentialist message from the era, such as Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, and Electra Glide in Blue."
Wikipedia
The Making Of TWO LANE BLACKTOP
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP | UNDER THE HOOD OF THE EPIC 1971 ROAD FLICK
Behind The Camera: Two-Lane Blacktop
YouTube: Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) - Trailer, Critics' Picks | The New York Times, (1978) James Taylor Interview

Twenty-two on 'Tender Buttons' - Gertrude Stein

"For the 100th anniversary of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, published in a corrected centennial edition by City Lights Books in 2014, Jacket2 invited a number of writers to pen 'microreviews' — short, impressionistic, discursive, or momentary reflections on the book which first appeared in 1914 in a print run of 1,000 by Claire Marie and has been republished since by Green Integer, Gordon, Sun and Moon, and others. Tender Buttons has come to be understood as one of the most important and challenging texts of twentieth-century literary modernism, what Charles Bernstein has called 'the fullest realization of the turn to language and the most perfect realization of ‘wordness,’ where word and object are merged.'”
Jacket2
W - Tender Buttons (book)
Bartleby: Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein

2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 January: The Making of an American by Edward White.

How the impressionists found a new way of capturing the remarkable in everyday life

Degas, Dance Foyer of the Opera at rue le Peletier (1872)
"Here are some chairs I noticed. An empty chair at the natural optical centre of Degas’s Dance Foyer of the Opera at rue le Peletier (1872), occupied by a fan and a puddle of white cloth. It is waiting – and the viewer is waiting, subliminally – for its occupant to return and claim the fan. It is reserved. Someone has bagged it. Not a circumstance you often see painted, though common enough in real life. Nor is the violinist playing. He is pausing, his bow at rest on his trouser leg. Degas has painted a pause. A thing that hasn’t been painted before. In the same picture, a dancer to the right, in the foreground, is sitting on another chair, her legs stiffly out front – ungainly yet graceful, resting. The upright back of the chair is invisible because it is under her unmanageably stiff tulle skirt, lifting the skirt up and slightly out of alignment. All her fatigue is there in the mistake, the carelessness of her plonking down."
New Statesman
Inventing Impressionism
amazon: Luncheon of the Boating Party - Susan Vreeland
YouTube: Inventing Impressionism | The National Gallery, London

In New Exam for Cabbies, Knowledge of Streets Takes a Back Seat

"The trip from Kennedy Airport to La Guardia is a straight shot on the Van Wyck Expressway, with a little jog on the Grand Central Parkway at the end. Canal Street may be the shortest route from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan Bridge, but traffic can make it feel like the longest. And all even-numbered, one-way streets in Manhattan run west-to-east, except for the handful that do not. Knowing how to get around the five boroughs of New York City — understanding not just the geography, but the nuances of timing and the endless exceptions to every rule — is part of driving a yellow cab here. And as part of their training, New York cabbies have long had to face a rigorous set of geography questions on the 80-question test they must pass to get a license. Landmarks and popular destinations were on the test, but so were less familiar streets and alternate routes. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Who Needs a GPS? A New York Geography Quiz

2012 June: Taxicabs of New York City

"Freddie's Dead" - Curtis Mayfield (1972)

Wikipedia - "'Freddie's Dead' is a song by Curtis Mayfield. It was the first single from his 1972 soundtrack album for the film Super Fly. The single was released before the Super Fly album, and in fact before the film itself was in theaters. ... The song laments the death of Fat Freddie, a character in the film who is run over by a car. Like most of the music from the Super Fly album, 'Freddie's Dead' appears in the film only in an instrumental arrangement, without any lyrics. The song's music is featured prominently in the film's opening sequence and also recurs at several other points. Because of this usage the song was subtitled 'Theme from Superfly' on its single release (but not on the album). It is not to be confused with 'Superfly', a different song and the second single released from the Super Fly album. The arrangement is driven by a strong bass line, wah wah guitars, and a melancholy string orchestration."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "Freddies Dead" (Live)

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975), 2014 September: Back to the World (1973), 2014 October: Omnibus (1995).

Lumière and Company - David Lynch (1995)

"Lumière and Company (1995, original title 'Lumière et compagnie') was a collaboration between 41 international film directors in which each made a short film using the original Cinématographe camera invented by the Lumière brothers. Shorts were edited in-camera and abided by three rules: A short may be no longer than 52 seconds; No synchronized sound; No more than three takes."
UbuWeb (Video)
#147: David Lynch's Lumière Short (David Lynch, 1995)
Open Culture: What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Camera and 52 Seconds of Film (Video)

2014 September: David Lynch: The Unified Field, 2014 December: David Lynch’s Bad Thoughts - J. Hoberman.

Richard Estes: Painting New York City

"From March 10 to September 20, 2015, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) presents Richard Estes: Painting New York City, the first exhibition of the art of Richard Estes to focus on the artist’s technique and process, through an examination of his New York City paintings, prints, and photographs. Spanning from the mid-1960s to the present and featuring over forty paintings and works on paper, the exhibition is Estes’ first New York City museum survey. It is also the first solo painting show in the history of the Museum of Arts and Design. ..."
Madmuseum
Madmuseum: Richard Estes
NY Times - From Snapshots Come Paintings: Work by Richard Estes
W - Richard Estes
NPR: Painting Or Photograph? With Richard Estes, It's Hard To Tell (Video)
amazon: Richard Estes' Realism (Portland Museum of Art)
vimeo: PMA presents: Richard Estes' Realism
YouTube: Not photos...paintings !!!, An Evening with Richard Estes - Smithsonian American Art Museum 1:09:11

Revisiting Selma

"Growing up as a person of African descent in Sweden made me hungry for role models, so I read about the fight for civil rights in America with fascination. As I took photos around the world, I saw that I was not alone. Blacks and other minorities I met in Europe, South America and the Middle East looked toward leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as beacons of hope. When I moved to the United States in 2003, I felt that I was stepping into that history. Being black here means that one stands on the shoulders of those who fought for freedom. Before I visited Alabama, the American South blended together for me, as I imagine it does for many outsiders, but the photographic landscape of the civil rights movement, and in particular the march from Selma to Montgomery, was much more familiar. ..."
NY Times

2015 January: Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery March by Stephen Somerstein, 2015 February: Spider Martin’s Photographs of the Selma March Get a Broader View.

In Which Berthe Morisot And Claude Monet Exchange Winter Letters

Monet, Snow Scene
"Seasonal depression affected the most talented artists. The more talent they had, the more likely they were to be felled to their knees by this phenomenon. Then as now, it was the worst winter in recorded history. People always have the tendency to exaggerate the horrors of the most recent snow. The letters of Berthe Morisot and her friend Claude Monet during this period are unmistakably gloomy. It was the dark surroundings that moved the two artists to write to each other at all, for if the weather was at all better, they would have seen one another in person. ..."
This Recording

Blu goes black, buffing his own work in Berlin

"Last week, Blu shocked Berlin by orchestrating the removal of two of his own iconic murals, including a mural that was at one point a collaboration with JR. The murals were located in the city’s famous Kreuzberg neighborhood, which was once home to squatters and artists, but is now undergoing significant and swift gentrification. The squatters in the buildings Blu had painted were recently evicted, and a real estate developer is about to build on the empty lot in front of the murals. Apparently, the new condos would have had a great view of the murals. So, one night last week, a team with two lifts painted the walls black, and they did it with Blu’s support. ..."
Vandalog
Blu

Delta 5

Wikipedia - "Delta 5 were a post-punk band from Leeds, England. The original members of Delta 5, Julz Sale (vocals/guitar), Ros Allen (bass) and Bethan Peters (bass), formed the band 'on a lark', but soon became a part of the thriving Leeds post-punk scene, and later added Kelvin Knight on drums and Alan Riggs on guitar. Combining feminist politics with a two-bass funk-punk sound (much in the style of another, more famous Leeds band, Gang of Four), they released their debut single in 1979, 'Mind Your Own Business'. ... Delta 5 were also important figures in the Rock Against Racism movement, and were the subject of a highly publicized assault at the hands of a right-wing group affiliated with rival movement Rock Against Communism."
Wikipedia
Perfect Sound Forever
allmusic/a>
amazon
YouTube: Anticipation, Mind Your Own Business, You, Now That You've Gone, Journey, Shadow, Train song (BBC radio session) 1981, Make Up (John Peel Session), Triangle (John Peel Session)
Live Berkeley Square 9:27:80 47:35

Dagmar Krause - "The Ballad of Bougeois Welfare", "The Ballad of The Sackslingers", "Pavel's Prison Song", Etc.

"... Radical in both music and politics, the band relocated to London in the early '70s, eventually joining forces with progressives Henry Cow. After Cow's demise in 1980, Krause teamed up with former-bandmates guitarist Fred Frith and drummer Chris Cutler in the wonderfully anarchic Art Bears, who disbanded after three excellent records.  ... As a vocalist, Krause is arguably something of an acquired taste. Her husky, vibrato-laden alto can suddenly swoop into a breathtaking upper register with a power that belies her small, frail physique. Her English singing retains a heavy German accent, but whether she sings in German or English (which she often does on the same record), she retains her impeccable phrasing and ability to inject the most oft-heard lyric with almost palpable emotion."
SoundHound
YouTube: "The Ballad of Bougeois Welfare", "The Ballad of The Sackslingers", "Pavel's Prison Song", "Genevieve", "Surabaya Johnny", "Song of a German Mother"

2010 January: Dagmar Krause, 2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht / Weill & Eisler, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2013 February: Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler.

Art+Feminism

Cuban Feminist Poster Art “Lipstick” — Artist José Gómez Fresquet (Frémez), circa 1970
"Art+Feminism is a campaign to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s content and community skews male, creating significant gaps in an increasingly important repository of shared knowledge. We invite you to address this absence by organizing in-person, communal updating of Wikipedia’s entries on art and feminism."
Art+Feminism (Video)
W - Meetup/ArtAndFeminism
Feminism & Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum - Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base
facebook: Art+Feminism

Albert Maysles, Pioneering Documentarian

"Albert Maysles, the award-winning documentarian who, with his brother, David, made intensely talked-about films, including 'Grey Gardens' and 'Gimme Shelter,' with their American version of cinéma vérité, died Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 88. His death was confirmed by K. A. Dilday, a family friend. Mr. Maysles (pronounced MAY-zuls) departed from documentary conventions by not interviewing his films’ subjects. As he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 1994, 'Making a film isn’t finding the answer to a question; it’s trying to capture life as it is.' That immediacy was a hallmark of the Maysles brothers’ films, beginning in the 1960s, when they made several well-regarded documentaries. But it was 'Gimme Shelter' (1970), about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 American tour, that brought them widespread attention. It included a scene of a fan being stabbed to death at the group’s concert in Altamont, Calif., and the critical admiration for the film was at least partly countered by concerns that it was exploiting that violence.”
NY Times
MAYSLES FILMS (Video)
W - Albert and David Maysles