Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (1875)

"Fertile Destabilization" by John Ashbery: "What are the Illuminations? Originally an untitled, unpaginated bunch of manuscript pages that Arthur Rimbaud handed to his former lover Paul Verlaine on the occasion of their last meeting, in Stuttgart in 1875. Verlaine had recently been released from a term in a Belgian prison for wounding the younger poet with a pistol in Brussels two years earlier. Rimbaud wanted his assassin manqué to deliver the pages to a friend, Germain Nouveau, who (he thought) would arrange for their publication. This casual attitude toward what would turn out to be one of the masterpieces of world literature is puzzling, even in someone as unpredictable as its author. Was it just a question of not wanting to splurge on stamps? (Verlaine would later complain in a letter that the package cost him '2 francs 75 in postage!!!') More likely it was because Rimbaud had decided already to abandon poetry for what would turn out to be a mercantile career in Africa, trafficking in a dizzying variety of commodities (though not, apparently, slaves, as some have thought)...."
Poetry Foundation
Wikipedia
NY Times: Rimbaud’s Wise Music By Lydia Davis
Guardian
amazon: Illuminations, John Ashbery
YouTube: John Ashbery - "Promontory"

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

Revolutions On Air: The Golden Era of New York Radio 1980 - 1988

"New York Radio from 1980 to 1988 was a hotspot where DJ culture, sampling, remixing, and new musical forms mixed and melded, a sonic tidal wave that still reverberates today. In advance of our new documentary, Revolutions on Air, Vivian Host investigates how Shep Pettibone, Mr. Magic, Tony Humphries, and Latin Rascals made the airwaves sing from the Boogie Down to Bed-Stuy to Berlin. New York City between 1980 and 1988 was a crucible of musical styles: hip hop (then brand new) melting together with boogie and electro, disco and funk dancing elegantly towards their doom, New Wave and punk making way for the first strains of house music and freestyle. Nowhere was the intertwining of these threads more obvious than on the radio, where a handful of DJs – themselves producers and remixers in their own right – were creating a conversation between the underground sounds of the clubs and the streets and the mainstream. ..."
Revolutions On Air: An Introduction (Video)
YouTube: Revolutions On Air: The Golden Era of New York Radio 1980 - 1988

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instantly Discovered His Artistic Style

"As Nancy Reagan and my junior high school health teacher will tell you, LSD is illegal and illegal drugs are bad. Unlike other drugs, however, LSD can blow open – as Aldous Huxley described it – the doors of perception and remove the filters of conventional thought. It has pushed some of the 20th century’s most creative minds into making important cognitive leaps. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Francis Crick famously first imagined DNA’s double-helix structure after dropping acid. Steve Jobs described his first trip as one of the most profound experiences in his life. And in June 20, 1970, Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter (or so the legend goes) while tripping on a preposterously large dose of the stuff. Let’s see you do that on meth. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2008 August: Robert Crumb, 2010 October: Comics No. 1, 2011 October: Pioneers of Country Music Trading Cards, 2012 August: R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection

China: Through the Looking Glass

"The Costume Institute’s spring 2015 exhibition, China: Through the Looking Glass, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 7 through August 16, 2015. Presented in the Museum’s Chinese Galleries and Anna Wintour Costume Center, the exhibition explores the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion and how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries. In this collaboration between The Costume Institute and the Department of Asian Art, high fashion is juxtaposed with Chinese costumes, paintings, porcelains, and other art, including films, to reveal enchanting reflections of Chinese imagery. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Select Images
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Video
Vogue: A Preview of “China: Through the Looking Glass”
Inside the Met's Spring Exhibit, 'China: Through the Looking Glass'
amazon
YouTube: China: Through the Looking Glass, Met Reveals 'China: Through the Looking Glass'

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.03.15

Balu and his portrait of Malcolm X
"We’ve been seeing an increase in the number of politically charged pieces showing up in the street lately. It is no surprise given the rise in marches and demonstrations and discussions in our city and country about topics like racism, police brutality, and rising economic inequality.  Street Art has a tradition of addressing socio-political topics, sometimes gently, sometimes yelling at the top of its lungs. This comes at a time where the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is banning all political speech and religious ads in the advertisements it runs. 'Hateful speech is not harmless speech. Only a fool or rogue would argue otherwise,' said Charles Moerdler, an MTA board member and Holocaust survivor who voted for the new policy. Of course any time you start to ban speech you don’t like, you are risking someone banning yours."
Brooklyn Street Art

Acnalbasac Noom - Slapp Happy and Faust (1973)

Wikipedia - "Acnalbasac Noom (also known as Slapp Happy or Slapphappy) is an album by German/British avant-pop group Slapp Happy, recorded in Wümme, Germany in 1973 with Faust as their backing band. It had a working title of Casablanca Moon but was never released at the time because it had been rejected by their record label, Polydor. Slapp Happy later re-recorded the album in 1974 for Virgin Records, who released it in 1974 as Slapp Happy. The original 1973 recording of Casablanca Moon, was released as Slapp Happy or Slapphappy by Recommended Records in 1980, and reissued as Acnalbasac Noom in 1982. The title Acnalbasac Noom appears in the lyrics of the song "Casablanca Moon", and is Casablanca Moon with the words written backwards. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Slapp Happy (album)
1973: Slapp Happy / Faust: Slapp Happy (aka Acnalbasac Noom)
Clouds and Clocks
YouTube: Casablanca Moon, Charlie 'n Charlie, The Secret, A Little Something, Mr Rainbow

2012 October: Faust, 2013 January: Desperate Straights - Slapp Happy / Henry Cow

10 Galleries to Visit on the Lower East Side

"The Lower East Side was once frontier territory, where new immigrants settled alongside poets and artists, punk musicians and anarchists, everyone needing rock-bottom rent. In the 1980s, the neighborhood soaked up some of the limelight trained on the East Village art scene, and began the slow creep toward gentrification. A decade or so ago, when art dealers started to set up shop below East Houston Street, a vague hope beat in the hearts of some observers that the neighborhood might be an alternative, in art and attitude alike, to Chelsea. I doubt anyone harbors that hope today. Mostly, the Lower East Side gallery scene is Chelsea with more storefronts and cheaper retail. Still, it has a certain margin of flexibility, and sometimes it uses it. And that’s good to see. ..."
NY Times

The Spinster Hall of Fame: Yes, Cut-out dolls of five pioneering women writers

"In honor or Kate Bolick’s new books Spinster, Crown has created what everyone needs on a Friday afternoon: spinster cut out dolls. ... 'My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night…' America’s first rock-star poetess, Edna St. Vincent Millay toured the country after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, bringing her revolutionary lyrics and bohemian lifestyle to the masses. Millay’s work, including the poem 'First Fig,' was definitive and revolutionary for her generation, yet her lyrical voice is timeless."
Literary Hub
Spinster By Kate Bolick
W - Spinster

Public Enemy - Give it up (1994)

"Aight, aight, aight, aight, aight, aight, aight / I'm aight if you aight, I'm aight / I be better, get some of that bass / Word / You know what I'm sayin' / Give it up / Aight, yeah / Booty twinkin' body shakin' / Nuffattackin', brain's a rackin' / Clock tockin', chuck shockin' / Flavor flavor, ain't never shavin' / One, two, three, four // It's another record, check it, mad methods / To put my brothers and sisters on a deathbed / You know he cheated, took what he wanted but now you blunted / Suckin' up to the devil, steppin' down a level /"
YouTube: Give it up

2009 May: Public Enemy, 2011 July: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 2012 February: Fear of a Black Planet, 2012 August: Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black, 2012 December: A Dozen Pivotal Moments in the 30 Year Career of Public Enemy, 2014 June: "Prophets of Rage" (2011), 2015 February: The Noise And How To Bring It: Hank Shocklee Interviewed.

21 Grams - Alejandro González Iñárritu (2003)

Wikipedia - "21 Grams is a 2003 American drama film directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu from a screenplay written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Danny Huston and Benicio del Toro. Like Arriaga's and González Iñárritu's previous film, Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams interweaves several plot lines, around the consequences of a tragic automobile accident. Penn plays a critically ill mathematician, Watts plays a grief-stricken mother, and del Toro plays a born-again Christian ex-convict whose faith is sorely tested in the aftermath of the accident. As the second part of Trilogy of Death, 21 Grams is presented in a nonlinear arrangement where the lives of the characters are depicted before and after the accident. The three main characters each have 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' story threads, which are shown as non-linear fragments that punctuate elements of the overall story, all imminently coming toward each other and coalescing as the story progresses. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times
Roger Ebert
YouTube: 21 Grams Trailer

2011 June: Babel, 2012 September: Biutiful.

One of These 4 Radical, Badass Women Could Be on the $20 Bill

"Since the dawn of our great nation, there’s one thing United States citizens can count on: seeing white guys everywhere. In spite of women outnumbering men in the U.S. and our ever-growing racial diversity (37.4 percent of non-Hispanic Americans identified as a race other than white in 2013), white guys dominate our media, our history books, our government, and (especially) our money. You probably have some white guys in your wallet right now. The organization Women on 20s has been working to bring more diversity to your wallet by getting a woman on the $20 bill in place of Andrew Jackson."
Yes Magazine
Women on 20s (Video)
New Yorker: A Campaign to Put a Woman on the Twenty-Dollar Bill
In Nod To Zionist Control, Woman On New $20 Bill To Be Golda Meir
W - Emma Goldman

Gordon Parks- Segregation Story

"... In 1956, Life magazine published twenty-six color photographs taken by staff photographer Gordon Parks. The photo essay, titled The Restraints: Open and Hidden, exposed Americans to the effects of racial segregation. Parks focused on the everyday activities of the related Thornton, Causey, and Tanner families in and near Mobile, Alabama, capturing their everyday struggles to overcome discrimination. Parks's photo essay served as crucial documentation of the Jim Crow South and acted as a national platform for challenging racial inequality. However, rather than focusing on the demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that characterized the battle for racial justice, Parks emphasized the prosaic details of one family's life. In particular, his ability to elicit empathy through an emphasis on intimacy and shared human experience made the photographs especially poignant."
High
amazon
Artworks

2015 January: Gordon Parks

50th Day of the Year - Fred Frith Trio

"Frith returns to his deep roots in this improvising trio with the classic lineup of guitar, bass and drums. Playful, intimate, and bound together by a dark and delicate interplay, the group reminds us what listening is all about. After a lifetime of experience across almost every field of musical endeavor, Fred stretches out in the company of two stalwarts of the vibrant Bay Area music scene, drummer Jordan Glenn and bassist Jason Hoopes. The trio is set to embark on its first European tour in mid-February 2015."
YouTube: Live @ Teatar &TD 19.2.2015. Zagreb (Croatia), Live at Schlachthof, Wels, Austria, 2015-03-01 01. Part01, 02. Part02, 03. Part03, 04. Part04, 2015 02 23 - Bolzano, Carambolage

Magic Sam - All Your Love / Love Me With A Feeling (1957)

"No blues guitarist better represented the adventurous modern sound of Chicago's West side more proudly than Sam Maghett. He died tragically young (at age 32 of a heart attack), just as he was on the brink of climbing the ladder to legitimate stardom, but Magic Sam left behind a thick legacy of bone-cutting blues that remains eminently influential around his old stomping grounds to this day. ... Sam's tremolo-rich staccato fingerpicking was an entirely fresh phenomenon when he premiered it on Eli Toscano's Cobra label in 1957. Prior to his Cobra date, the guitarist had been gigging as Good Rocking Sam, but Toscano wanted to change his nickname to something old-timey like Sad Sam or Singing Sam. No dice, said the newly christened Magic Sam (apparently Mack Thompson's brainstorm). His Cobra debut single, 'All Your Love,' was an immediate local sensation; its unusual structure would be recycled time and again by Sam throughout his tragically truncated career. Sam's Cobra encores 'Everything Gonna Be Alright' and 'Easy Baby' borrowed much the same melody but were no less powerful; the emerging Westside sound was now officially committed to vinyl."
allmusic
YouTube: All Your Love, Love me with a feeling, Everything Gonna Be Alright, Look watcha' done, All Night Long, All My Whole Life
YouTube: The Essential Magic Sam: The Cobra and Chief Recordings 1957-1961, Chicago Blues 1957 to 1960 (Full Album)

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks

"Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat filled numerous notebooks with poetry fragments, wordplay, sketches, and personal observations ranging from street life and popular culture to themes of race, class, and world history. The first major exhibition of the artist's notebooks, Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks features 160 pages of these rarely seen documents, along with related works on paper and large-scale paintings. A self-taught artist with encyclopedic and cross-cultural interests, Basquiat was influenced by comics, advertising, children's sketches, Pop art, hip-hop, politics, and everyday life. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks emphasizes the distinct interplay of text and images in Basquiat’s art, providing unprecedented insight into the importance of writing in the artist’s process."
Brooklyn Museum
NT Times: The Unknown Notebooks of Jean-Michel Basquiat
NY Times: Review: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Unknown Notebooks’ at the Brooklyn Museum
Basquiat's Rarely Seen Notebooks Open At The Brooklyn Museum
amazon
YouTube: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks at the BROOKLYN MUSEUM

2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian, 2015 February: Now's the Time

Ocean of Sound - David Toop (1995)

Wikipedia - "Ocean of Sound is a compilation album compiled and produced by English musician and author David Toop. The two-disc, cross-licensed 'various artists' compilation contains 32 tracks culled from a variety of musical sources, including dub, exotica, free jazz, and field recordings. Toop compiled the recordings to serve as both a historical survey of ambient music and an aural companion to his 1995 book Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. Ocean of Sound was released in January 1996 by Virgin Records. It was well received by music critics and finished fourth in the voting for The Village Voice‍ '​s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. The album later went out of print."
Wikipedia
[PDF] Ocean of Sound - David Toop (1995)
Ambient Techno: Peter Namlook, Mixmaster Morris, Scanner & David Toop
Perfect Sound Forever: David Toop - Interview by Jason Gross (August 1997)
amazon
vimeo: David Toop - Making Sounds
podomatic: Transmission 33: Ocean of Sound

Blank Generation (1980)

"If you like your cinema extra-awkward and incoherent, Blank Generation (1980) is the film for you. Not to be confused with the ragged and ultimately better documentary of the same name from a few years earlier, this narrative feature was helmed by future horror-schlock director Ulli Lommel, who at the time was most famous for being a member of the circle surrounding ultra-prolific German auteur Reiner Werner Fassbinder. Starring Richard Hell and Carole Bouquet, Blank Generation suffers from an extreme lack of focus — at times, it seems as if each member of the production was under the impression they were working on a different film than the rest of their collaborators."
Tiny Mix Tapes
W - Blank Generation (1980)
MMMMM Movies
YouTube: Richard Hell - Blank Generation
Fandor: Blank Generation (1980) 78 Min.

A Droning In The Eire: Jennifer Walshe On The Irish Avant-Garde

Zaftig Giolla (right middleground), Galway, 1929.
"There was this guy I went to school with, lived about a mile away from us. His grandfather was the principal of one of the three parish schools, back in the days before they were amalgamated into a single, yet still tiny, entity. That was in the late 70s I think, or around then. He wasn't that old then; 60, maybe 65, but a venerable civil servant all the same. Like many a civil servant in Ireland, he had things going on outside of the job that few people at the time really knew about. I guess his family knew, some of the parish probably did, but there were only ever hints of it publicly. He kept it mostly to the shed at the back of their house, itself a picturesque country home next to the parish hall, two storeys with a tall roof, cubic, squat but somehow elegant under the unnecessary shade of tall Douglas fir trees that dominated the front yard. Ivy was growing up the front of the house when I knew it, by which time it had been sold to a couple of German retirees. Master Madden was dead by then, and I never met him. ..."
Quietus (Video)
Aisteach Institute Ireland (Video)
Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde By Jennifer Walshe
amazon
YouTube: Jennifer Walshe's Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde, #JenniferWalshe

An Empty Stadium in Baltimore

"When the Baltimore Orioles host the Chicago White Sox at Camden Yards on Wednesday, it won't really feel like a baseball game. There will be no cheering, and no booing. Nor will there be heckling, hot dogs, or beer. There will be no fans in the stadium at all, in fact. After riots in the city forced the postponement of games for two straight days, Major League Baseball announced that the Orioles will play on Wednesday, but the game will be closed to the public. ..."
Atlantic
ESPN: White Sox-Orioles game will be played Wednesday, closed to public (Video)
ESPN: This too is Baltimore
NY Times: Taking to the Baltimore Streets, but for Peace and Progress (Video)
ABC: Baltimore Riots 'Not Going to Happen Tonight,' Governor Says (Video)
After Riots, Orioles Play To An Empty Stadium In Baltimore
UEFA punishes CSKA Moscow for racist, violent fans with Champions League stadium closures
TIME: A Japanese Soccer Team Plays to an Empty Stadium Because of Racist Fans
NPR: Mexican Soccer Teams Play To Empty Stadiums

David Lynch Creates a Very Surreal Plug for Transcendental Meditation

"While fans wait with increasing dour moods on the future of the Twin Peaks reboot, David Lynch is busy doing…something. When the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards honored the director for his work as founder and chairman of the David Lynch Foundation, it turned out Lynch couldn’t make the evening. Instead of the usual apology email, the man who once turned some test footage into a weird short film made a quick video to screen at the award show. It’s…Lynchian. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2014 September: David Lynch: The Unified Field, 2014 December: David Lynch’s Bad Thoughts - J. Hoberman, 2015 March: Lumière and Company (1995).

Last Days in Vietnam

"Explore the Last Days Experience site here. Academy Award® Nominee for Documentary Feature. In April of 1975, the North Vietnamese Army was closing in on Saigon as South Vietnamese resistance was crumbling. Approximately 5,000 Americans remained with roughly 24 hours to get out. Their South Vietnamese allies, co-workers, and friends faced certain imprisonment and possible death if they remained behind, yet there was no official evacuation plan in place. Still, over the last days in Vietnam, with the clock ticking and the city under fire, 135,000 South Vietnamese managed to escape with help from a number of heroic Americans who took matters into their own hands, engaging in unsanctioned and often makeshift operations in a desperate effort to save as many people as possible."
PBS
PBS: (Video)
IMDb: Trailer (Official Trailer)

Jerry Saltz on the New Whitney Museum

"Part I: The Museum as Fairy Tale. I’ve spent much of my life in and in love with museums. When I was 10 years old, there was no mention of art in my home. But then my mother began driving me from the suburbs to the Art Institute of Chicago. There, she looked at art on her own for hours, leaving me to do the same. At the time, I liked being alone but hated museums. I felt they were old and dead, places where people just stood and stared. But one day, waiting, bored, brooding, I found myself absorbed by two beautifully colored adjacent old paintings. On the left, a pair of men standing outside a jail cell talk to a haloed man, inside the cell, while an incredible leopard guards nearby. ..."
Vulture
W - Jerry Saltz
twitter, facebook

Chelsea Piers: New York City in the Age of the Ocean Liner

"The Chelsea Piers were once New York City’s portal to the world, a series of long docks along the west side of Manhattan that accommodated some of the most luxurious ocean liners of the early 20th century. Passenger ocean travel became feasible in the mid 19th century due to innovations in steam transportation, allowing for both recreational voyages for the wealthy and a steep rise in immigration to the United States. The Chelsea Piers were the finest along Manhattan’s busy waterfront, built by one of New York’s greatest architectural firms as a way to modernize the west side. Both the tragic tales of the Titanic and the Lusitania are also tied to the original Chelsea Piers. But changes in ocean travel and the financial fortunes of New York left the piers without a purpose by the late 20th century. How did this important site for transatlantic travel transform into one of New York’s leading modern sports complexes? ..."
The Bowery Boys: New York City History
W - Chelsea Piers
Chelsea Piers History 101

Whiplash (2014)

Wikipedia - "Whiplash is a 2014 American drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle based on his experiences in the Princeton High School Studio Band. Starring Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons, the film depicts the relationship between an ambitious jazz student (Teller) and an abusive instructor (Simmons). ... Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) is a first-year jazz student at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York. He has been playing drums from a young age and aspires to become one of the greats like Buddy Rich. Famed conductor Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons) walks in on Andrew practicing in the music room late one night and eventually invites him into his studio band as the alternate for core drummer Carl Tanner (Nate Lang). Fletcher is abusive toward his students, mocking and insulting them; when the band rehearses the Hank Levy piece 'Whiplash' and Andrew struggles to keep his tempo, Fletcher hurls a chair at him, slaps him, and otherwise humiliates him in front of the class."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: “Whiplash” Gets Jazz All Wrong
Atlantic: The Uncomfortable Message in Whiplash's Dazzling Finale
YouTube: Whiplash TRAILER 1, Terence Fletcher The Insults

The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (Gram Parsons Vocals)

Wikipedia - "... Released at a time when The Byrds' surprising immersion in the world of country music coincided with their declining commercial appeal, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was certainly an uncommercial proposition at the time of its release. However, the album has proved to be a landmark, serving not only as a blueprint for Parsons' and Hillman's The Flying Burrito Brothers, but also for the entire nascent 1970s Los Angeles country-rock movement. The album was also influential on the outlaw country and new traditionalist movements, as well as the so-called alternative country genre of the 1990s and 2000s. Among fans of The Byrds, however, opinion is often sharply divided regarding the merits of the album, with some seeing it as a natural continuation of the group's innovations, and others mourning the loss of the band's trademark Rickenbacker guitar jangle and psychedelic experimentation."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (Gram Parsons Vocals) (full album)

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970), 2014 May: GP (1973), 2014 September: Grievous Angel (1974).

Dike Blair

Untitled, 1990, gouache, pencil, and spray paint on paper
"New York–based artist Dike Blair explores the relationship between sculpture and painting, solidity and light, in mixed-media installations. His gouache still lifes and landscapes on paper are photorealist (painted from his own snapshots) and show objects such as Coke cans, VHS tapes, sci-fi paperbacks, eyes, and botanical forms. These more traditional, personal works are contrasted against sculpture that tends toward post-minimal formality and incorporates industrial elements like carpeting, lamps, and power cords. In recent hybrid sculptures, Blair enclosed framed gouache paintings and other objects within painted shipping crates, which could be unpacked to generate larger, transient works."
Artsy
Google
[PDF] Artforum
Dike Blair: Now and Again - Falk Visiting Artist
inframe: 1/5: How to light sculptures and paintings (Video)

Stagger Lee

Wikipedia - "'Stagger Lee', also known as 'Stagolee' and other variants, is a popular American folk song about the murder of Billy Lyons by 'Stag' Lee Shelton in St. Louis, Missouri at Christmas, 1895. The song was first published in 1911, and was first recorded in 1923 by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. A version by Lloyd Price reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. ... He was well known locally as one of the "Macks", a group of pimps who demanded attention through their flashy clothing and appearance. In addition to these activities, he was the captain of a black 'Four Hundred Club', a social club with a dubious reputation. On Christmas night in 1895, Shelton and his acquaintance William 'Billy' Lyons were drinking in the Bill Curtis Saloon. Lyons was also a member of St. Louis' underworld, and may have been a political and business rival to Shelton. Eventually, the two men got into a dispute, during which Lyons took Shelton's Stetson hat. ..."
Wikipedia
The Song and Myth of Stagger Lee
The Mystery of Stack-O-Lee
A Brief History of Stagger Lee and Billy Lyons
[PDF] The Story of Stagger Lee
YouTube: "Stack O' Lee Blues" Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof, Orchestra Gertrude "Ma" Rainey & Her Georgia Band, Frank Hutchison, Furry Lewis, MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT, Woody Guthrie, Memphis Slim, Lloy Price, Ike and Tina Turner, Professor Longhair, Taj Mahal, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

A tough painter depicts a tender New York

Spring Morning in New York, 1922
"George Luks arrived in New York from Philadelphia in 1896. Passionate and energetic, he was one of many young painters (along with artist friends he met in Philly, like Everett Shinn and William Glackens) whose work focused on the tenderness of the city’s underbelly. 'One of the dynamic, young group of American Realists known as the Ashcan School, [Luks] was a tough character who in art and life embraced the gritty side of turn-of-the-century New York,' states the Brooklyn Museum. Macho and combative, he first worked as an illustrator at the New York World, honing his skills outside of his newspaper job by painting peddlers, poor older women, street kids, and other down and out New Yorkers—as well as impressionist-like scenes of the city at play and at street markets. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Jerry’s Deli (1976)

"... Perhaps most famously, he documented one Jerry Meyers, owner, proprietor, and renowned bully of Jerry’s Deli, once located in Streeterville. The appropriately titled  nine-minute Jerry’s Deli (1976) shows Jerry shuffling customers into his deli, leading them to the counter, then impatiently screaming at them to make up their damn minds already and order! Oddly, his clientele seems to love it. Interviews with Jerry throughout offer some much appreciated expository by way of ‘character development.’ He’s a decent guy and even he isn’t certain whether or not his antics are genuine. Jerry’s Deli, besides being great fun, is a good entrance point for those interested in [Tom] Palazzolo’s man-of-the-people documentary style. If nothing else, his films show a high level of respect for working people."
Facets Features
YouTube: Jerry’s Deli (1976)

Patience (After Sebald) - (2010)

"I came late to WG Sebald, in the early summer of 2010, although I'd known of him for years. He was one of those surname-only authors whose works it seemed everyone else had read – or else he would crop up stuffily in the footnotes of a certain sort of book. So until I heard Will Self praising his work on the Today programme, he was simply a name on my to-do list. A task, you might say. Someone to read in hospital, if and when the time came.
But something about Self's enthusiasm persuaded me to buy The Rings of Saturn that lunchtime. Billed as an account of several days spent walking the Suffolk coast – territory I have known and loved since childhood – it ought to make perfect reading for the journey home to East Anglia that evening. And sure enough, as my train clattered and swayed across the shrinking peatlands, I found myself asking where this reluctant German had been all my life. ..."
Guardian: WG Sebald: Darkness on the edge of Anglia (Video)
New Yorker: Why You Should Read W. G. Sebald
NY Times: In the Company of Ghosts
YouTube: Patience (After Sebald), Adam Phillips on Sebald

2011 July: The Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald, 2015 February: ‘Drowned in a sea of salt’ Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast

The Mechanical Monsters - 1941

Wikipedia - "The Mechanical Monsters is the second of the seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character Superman. Produced by Fleischer Studios, the story features Superman battling a mad scientist with a small army of robots at his command. It was originally released by Paramount Pictures on November 28, 1941. A robot flies into a scientist's secret lair and unloads a pile of cash into a vault. The robot is controlled completely from the scientists command center, and many robots similar to it are lined up along the walls of the lair. The front page of the Daily Planet reports the 'mechanical monsters' robbery right alongside an announcement for the display of 50 million dollars of the world's rarest gems at the local museum. Later, as Lois and Clark are covering the museum's exhibit for the Planet, a robot lands in the street outside. ..."
Wikipedia
"The Mechanical Monsters" (Fleischer Brothers SUPERMAN Cartoon)
YouTube: Fleischer Superman Cartoons: The Mechanical Monsters

2010 August: Superman (1940s cartoons)

BSA Film Friday: 04.24.15

"1. BSA Special Feature: C215 In the Footsteps of His Favorite Painter: Caravaggio. Here is a new short documentary that follows the unique pathway of Caravaggio, as told by one of his biggest fans, the street artist and master stencillist C215 visiting Palermo. He says he is sure Caravaggio would be a street artist if he were alive today. Who would argue? ... Now screening: 2. East London Quick Tour of Street Art of : BUSH 3. Vinz: Feel Free Project (NSFW) 4. Woozy in Athens: Moving Shadows"
Brooklyn Street Art (Video)

New Christo Work to Temporarily Bridge Italy’s Lake Iseo

"ROME – One of Italy’s lesser-known lakes (without American movie stars to stalk) is likely to become considerably more famous after the wrap artist Christo has his way with it. For just over two weeks, in June 2016, floating walkways lined with bright yellow fabric will create a walkway around Lake Iseo, in the Lombardy region, joining the mainland to the lake islands.The fabric will continue on pedestrian streets in two mainland towns. Visitors will be able to walk on the work, atop some 200,000 fabric-lined floatable cubes stretching for almost two miles, but it was also designed to be seen from the mountains above. Titled 'The Floating Piers,' the project was presented by Christo and the Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant in Rome on Wednesday."
NY Times
Wrapped Fountain and Wrapped - Medieval Tower. Spoleto, Italy 1968
Wrapped Monuments. Milano, Italy 1970
The Wall - Wrapped Roman Wall. Via Veneto and Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy. 1973-74

2007 November: Christo & Jeanne-Claude, 2009 November: Jeanne-Claude, 2010 April: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence, 2010 September: Christo and Jeanne-Claude - The Gates, 2010 November: Over The River - Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2012 January: 5 Films About Christo & Jeanne-Claude, 2012 June: The Pont Neuf Wrapped, 2013 January: Wrapped Floor and Stairway, 1969.

Remembering Bernard Stollman: 10 Essential ESP-Disk Albums

"Bernard Stollman died this week at 85. Unknown to most but a legend to many, he was one of the most important non-musicians in the history of the 1960s jazz avant-garde. Stollman, a lawyer, founded the ESP-Disk label in 1964, initially so he could release Ni Kantu En Esperanto, an album of songs and poetry in Esperanto (a language invented in the 1880s and intended to transcend national boundaries and thus foster international peace and understanding). The imprint’s second release, though, turned out to be one of the landmark jazz albums of all time — saxophonist Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity. Scorching and raw, this trio session can still take the top of your skull off. ..."
Stereogum
Stereogum: #10 - Giuseppi Logan Quartet - Giuseppi Logan Quartet (1965). #9 ...
NY Times: Bernard Stollman, Founder of Adventurous Record Label, Dies at 85
W - Bernard Stollman
Pitchfork: ESP-Disk Founder Bernard Stollman Has Died (Video)
NPR: Legendary Record Label Loses Staff In Split
YouTube: ESP RECORDS - BERNARD STOLLMAN TALKS

Type 42: Fame Is the Name of the Game

"In spring 2012 artist Jason Brinkerhoff (born 1974) discovered a collection of around 950 black-and-white Type 42 Polaroids featuring headshots and intimate close-ups of actresses taken from the television screen beginning in the late 1960s. The origins of the series—and, most notably, its creator—remain entirely mysterious, their author's only trace being the scribbles of actresses' names and dates on the Polaroids' edges. Edited by Nicole Delmes and Susanne Zander, and introduced by Cindy Sherman, Fame Is the Name of the Game showcases a selection of 120 works from the extraordinary archive. Capturing such celebrities as Brigitte Bardot, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve, Mia Farrow, Jane Fonda, Sophia Loren, Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor and Tina Turner, the collection wrests the fleeting fame of 1960s cinema into the present, memorializing the fascination it provided for the anonymous photographer. ..."
artbook
Galerie Susanne Zander
Wall Street Int.
amazon

The Rape of Belgium – War Crimes in the Summer of 1914 - Week 5

"During their advance through Belgium, the German Army is committing atrocities against Belgian civilians. The Austro-Hungarian Army is perpetrating massacres against the Serbian civilian population to retaliate against Serbian guerrilla warfare. At the Eastern Front, German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff succeed in one of the most important battles of World War I: The Battle of Tannenberg."
YouTube: The Rape of Belgium – War Crimes in the Summer of 1914 - Week 5

2014 December: The Great War: WWI Starts - How Europe Spiraled Into the Great War - Week 1, Europe Prior to WWI: Allies and Enemies I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 1/3, Tinderbox Europe - From Balkan Troubles to WWI I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 2/3, A Shot that Changed the World - The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 3/3, 2015 January: Germany in Two-Front War and the Schlieffen-Plan I - Week 2, 2015 March: To Arms! Deployment of Troops - Week 3, 2015 March:A New War With Old Generals – Carnage on the Western Front - Week 4

The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky

Robe (detail), ca. 1700–40. Eastern Plains artist; probably Illinois, Mid–Mississippi River Basin.
"This exhibition will unite Plains Indian masterworks found in European and North American collections, from pre-contact to contemporary, ranging from a two-thousand-year-old human-effigy stone pipe to contemporary paintings, photographs, and a video-installation piece. Works of art collected centuries ago by French traders and travelers will be seen together with those acquired by Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition of 1804–06, along with objects from the early reservation period and recent works created in dialogue with traditional forms and ideas.The distinct Plains aesthetic—singular, ephemeral, and materially rich—will be revealed through an array of forms and media: painting and drawing; sculptural works in stone, wood, antler, and shell; porcupine-quill and glass-bead embroidery; feather work; painted robes depicting figures and geometric shapes; richly ornamented clothing; composite works; and ceremonial objects. Many nations, including Osage, Quapaw, Omaha, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, Blackfeet, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche, and Meskwaki will be represented."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Video
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Exhibition Objects

Chris Rock explains how Major League Baseball got so old and white

"Chris Rock recorded a seven-minute monologue on blacks in baseball for HBO's Real Sports. If you still watch baseball, you'll want to watch this. Just a heads up, there's some premium cable language, so put headphones in if you're at work."
SD Nation (Video)

200 Ansel Adams Photographs Expose the Rigors of Life in Japanese Internment Camps During WW II

"... [Actor George] Takei and his family were among over 100,000 Japanese-Americans— over half of whom were U.S. citizens—interned in such camps. Into one of these camps, Manzanar, located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, celebrated photographer Ansel Adams managed to gain entrance through his friendship with the warden. Adams took over 200 photographs of life inside the camp."
Open Culture

Hip-Hop History Tuesdays: Joe Conzo (Born In The Bronx) Amoeblog Interview

"'It's pretty humbling and amazing to see my photos from when I was a sixteen, seventeen year old kid,' Joe Conzo told the Amoeblog - as seen in the above video clip - speaking last week by the wall of photos on display at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise gallery space on Greenwich Street in the Village in New York City. The exhibit is similar in title and theme as well as contributors to the highly recommended 2007 published book Born In The Bronx that he is an integral part of. 'Born In The Bronx: Afrika Bambaataa, Buddy Esquire, Charlie Ahearn’s Wild Style and Joe Conzo - A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop' the exhibit that is curated by Johan Kugelberg (editor of the book) runs through July 26th, 2014 at the downtown gallery space and is well worth visiting - and it is free. ..."
Amoeba (Video)

2012 January: The Hip-Hop Family Tree: A Look Into the Viral Propagation of a Culture, 2012 August: ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’ Comics Explain Genesis of the Genre, 2013 October: The Hip Hop Family Tree, 2014 June: Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop, 2015 April: Hip-Hop Revolution.

Gilbert Sorrentino - The Orangery (1978)

"Sorry about that cheesy orange opening, but since every poem of the seventy-eight collected here in 1978 for the Texas Press Poetry Series and published as The Orangery, purposely (and cleverly) contains a variation or adjective on 'orange' -- coronas, coronets, carillons, crèmes, burnt-orange, blossoms, bustiers, roses, glare, gold, fruit, flavor, flowers, tangelos, juice, ice, orangeades, sponges, sunsets, suns, light, love, stars, moon, Florida, slacks, conflagration, flames, gifts, gaudiness, wallpaper, glitter, groves, orchards, Orange Julius, disingenuousness, drinks, trees, glamour, togas, poppies, poseurs, hair, sombreros, guava, lava, Java, jelly, underbellies, duck's feet, sherbet, wax, marmalade, and perhaps a few other words I've neglected to itemize -- understand that my apology is truly insincere! ..."
Enrique Freeque's Forum
amazon
[PDF] Green Integer

2012 January: Gilbert Sorrentino

Keb Darge – The Man Who Sold His Soul (and funk, and r&b Records)

"The name Keb Darge has been a synonym for vinyl record culture for the past four decades. The outspoken Scotsman, responsible for starting more than his share of music scenes for the past 40 years, knows all too well the ups and downs of a record collector. Having owned and sold many of the world’s rarest records in his lifetime, he has seen the many of these leave his record box more than once, without regrets. Credited for discovering unknown records and bringing them to the public, Mr. Darge has been adamant about one thing: the music. A Northern soul boy at heart, he started dancing at Wigan Casino, the Mecca for Northern soul music and its culture in England. ..."
Dust and Grooves
Interview: Keb Darge
Music More Than Myself: Keb Darge and the History of Northern Soul
1960s darge -- All Categories
YouTube: Keb Darge vol.1/2/3, Keb Darge Interview August 2011 Part 1/3, Part 2/3, Part 3/3

Muddy Waters - The Complete Plantation Recordings (1993)

"At long last, Muddy's historic 1941-1942 Library of Congress field recordings are all collected in one place, with the best fidelity that's been heard thus far. Waters performs solo pieces (you can hear his slide rattling against the fretboard in spots) and band pieces with the Son Sims Four, 'Rosalie' being a virtual blueprint for his later Chicago style. Of particular note are the inclusion of several interview segments with Muddy from that embryonic period and a photo of Muddy playing on the porch of his cabin, dressed up and looking sharper than any Mississippi sharecropper on Stovall's plantation you could possibly imagine. This much more than just an important historical document; this is some really fine music imbued with a sense of place, time and loads of ambience."
allmusic
Swampland
amazon
YouTube: The Complete Plantation Recordings 1:01:43

A New Whitney

"From the west, along the Hudson River, it looks ungainly and a little odd, vaguely nautical, bulging where the shoreline jogs, a ship on blocks perhaps, alluding to one of New York’s bedrock industries from long ago. It’s a glittery emblem of new urban capital, shipping now having gone the way of so much else in the neighborhood. From the north, it resembles something else, a factory or maybe a hospital, with a utilitarian wall of windows and a cluster of pipes climbing the pale-blue steel facade toward a rooftop of exposed mechanicals. And from the east, its bulk suddenly hides behind the High Line, above a light-filled, glass-enclosed ground floor that gives views straight through the building to the water. By moving downtown from Madison Avenue, the Whitney Museum of American Art does more than drop a cultural anchor at the High Line’s base, in the deracinated meatpacking district."
NY Times
The High Line

2015 March: The Whitney Museum, Soon to Open Its New Home, Searches for American Identity

David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene

"Eight years after it aired, the final scene of the final episode of The Sopranos still has people guessing: What happened when the screen suddenly went black? Did Tony Soprano get whacked? Or did he live to see another quasi-ordinary day? Could he really die as Journey sings, 'Don’t Stop Believing?' In a new interview appearing on The Directors Guild of America web site, David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, revisits the making of the final scene. Chase doesn’t directly answer the questions about Tony’s fate. But he does give us some insight into the deeper philosophical questions raised in the scene (watch it above) and how much they’re bound up in the lyrics of Journey’s soundtrack. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2011 June: The Sopranos, 2012 March: The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos, 2013 June: James Gandolfini

291

Wikipedia - "291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally known as the 'Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession', the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The gallery is famous for two reasons. First, the exhibitions there helped bring art photography to the same stature in America as painting and sculpture. Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Kasebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291. Equally important, Stieglitz used this space to introduce to the United States some of the most avant-garde European artists of the time, including Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp."
Wikipedia
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle
Alfred Stieglitz's Gallery 291
291 is Dead. Long Live 295.
Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, 291 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Sandhog

Wikipedia - "Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners, construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City. Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of equipment from tunnel boring machines to explosives to remove material for the project they are building. The term is an American colloquialism.  ... In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Many of these workers are Irish or Irish American and West Indian. Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon to find multi-generations of families to work together on the same job."
Wikipedia
Episode 158: Sandhogs
Long Haul (Video)
Voice: Sandhogs Tunneling Under Second Avenue
YouTube: Documentary clip - The Sand Hogs, SANDHOGS - Award Winning TV Special 1:32:35

Augustus Pablo - Valley of Jehosaphat (1999)

"This may be tantamount to sacrilege in roots reggae circles, but really, don't Augustus Pablo's albums all pretty much sound alike? There's no denying his historical importance as a musician and producer for bringing in the melodica and popularizing, if not introducing, dub techniques into the music. Certainly King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and probably East of the River Nile belong in any serious reggae collection for their crucial musical innovations in mid- and late-'70s Jamaican music. But the fact is, you know what you're going to get on any Pablo disc -- melodica instrumentals with a basic backing band, some dub touches -- and there's only so much mileage you can get out of that combination. There are some different twists on Valley of Jehosaphat, like the dischords Pablo throws into his soloing on 'Lymphatic Time' or the blend of British and Jamaican veterans backing him. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Valley of Jehosaphat [full album] 58:47

2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown

Bitter Lemons - Lawrence Durrell (1953–1956)

Wikipedia - "Bitter Lemons is an autobiographical work by writer Lawrence Durrell, describing the three years (1953–1956) he spent on the island of Cyprus. ... Durrell moved to Cyprus in 1953, following several years spent working for the British Council in Argentina and the Foreign Office in Yugoslavia. Having relinquished government employment, Durrell wanted to plunge himself once more into writing, and was looking to return to the Mediterranean world he had experienced in Corfu and Rhodes. He had hoped that he would be able to purchase a house in an affordable location and write. Although Durrell must have experienced personal difficulties—his wife, Eve, was undergoing treatment for mental illness and had left him in charge of his young daughter, Sappho (born 1951) — the book does not mention these people or incidents, aside from a few oblique references to his daughter."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Bellapais Journal; Bitter Memories of a Love Affair With Cyprus
Transversality - Robert O'Toole
amazon: Bitter Lemons, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (A CSA Word Recording)

2011 December: The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell, 2013 September: Villa that inspired Lawrence Durrell faces demolition, as Egypt allows heritage to crumble, 2014 August: Prospero’s Cell (1945).

Magda Love

"Born in Argentina, Magdalena Marcenaro aKa Magda Love has lived in New York City for more than a decade. Mostly know by her colorful street art and big public works. The artist forms deeply textured, often ferocious, narratives joining nostalgic images with sudden, emotional moments. Her aim is to inspire dialogue about personal experience and prompt a thoughtful pause in the roller coaster of life. Her work, inspired by her travels is often deeply textured, exposes vulnerability joined with sudden ferocity, and nostalgia linked to sudden joy. ..."
From Argentina With Love- Magda Love! (Video)
Street Art NYC