CR Newsmakers Interview: Ben Towle, Craig Fischer

"I was looking for ways to throw a spotlight on this weekend's HeroesCon in Charlotte -- an extremely well-liked, much-lauded show -- when Ben Towle contacted me to remind that he and Craig Fischer were doing an ambitious panel this weekend on comics and music. That's a good subject for a big panel at a comics show, particularly one where Ed Piskor and Peter Bagge are in attendance. I'm also sort of interested in comics programming right now as its own thing -- it has improved across the board in recent year due in no small part to people like Ben and Craig doing ambitious presentations like they will be this weekend. ..."
Comics Reporter

The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966

Wikipedia - "The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966 is a set of recordings from 1965 and 1966 by Bob Dylan, released in November of 2015 on Legacy Records. It compiles mostly unreleased session demos and outtakes from recording sessions for the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Three different versions of the set were released simultaneously: a two-disc Best of edition in the packaging and format standard to the rest of the series after the first installment; a six-disc box set Deluxe edition similar in packaging to its counterpart from the previous Bootleg set; and an 18-disc limited Collector's Edition available exclusively by order from Dylan's official website. Stated on the website as being limited to 5000 copies total in manufacture ever, the Collector's Edition is unique as it includes "...every note recorded during the 1965-1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric.' ..."
New Yorker: Bob Dylan and the “Hot Hand”
Salon - Bob Dylan’s “electric trilogy” masterpieces: I played all 18 discs and 357 tracks. Here’s why you should
NPR - Review: Bob Dylan (Video)
YouTube: Visions of Johanna, Just Like a Woman - Take 1, It Takes a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry - Take 1, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again - Take 13, Sitting On a Barbed Wire Fence - Take 2, Subterranean Homesick Blues (alternate music video)
YouTube: The Story Of The Cutting Edge, UPDATED unboxing Bob Dylan's The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965 - 1966

Life After God - Douglas Coupland (1994)

Wikipedia - "Life After God is a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, published in 1994. The stories are set around a theme of a generation raised without religion. The jacket for the hardcover book reads 'You are the first generation to be raised without religion.' The text is an exploration of faith in this vacuum of religion. The stories are also illustrated by the author. Several critics have suggested that this publication marks an early shift in the stylistic vocabulary of Coupland and, according to one critic, he was 'excoriated presumably for attempting be serious and to express depression and spiritual yearning when his reviewers were expecting more postmodern jollity'. However, the short story would later come to garner more praise (see below) though critics and academics have paid little attention to the publication in terms of academics' articles and commentary. ..."
Wikipedia
amazon
Douglas Coupland’s Life After God: A Case of Style Over Substance - by Dan Geddes
Life After God? No Answers from Gen-X Guru
Interview with Douglas Coupland

Deloris Ealy & The Roadrunners Band

"This 45 captured my attention not only for its extended title, but also for its fetching ebay price of nearly $1,000. 'Deloris is Back (To Blow Your Mind) with Jerome and His Band' has one of the funkiest, most primal drum grooves on vinyl. That's an even more impressive feat if you're to believe Deloris when she wails that her drummer is only thirteen years old! It's three minutes of simple reel-to-reel recording technology, but therein lies the charm behind the most expensive mp3 file in my collection. Enjoy!"
Deloris Is Back With Jerome & His Band- Deloris Ealy
YouTube: It's About Time I Made A Change, Honeydripper, In Your Town, How I Wish You Were Mine, Traveler In Space, Kenyatta's In Your Town

The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now

New Orleans–style group photo in painter Wadsworth Jarrell’s backyard, c. 1968
"The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now links the vibrant legacy of the 1960s African American avant-garde to current art and culture. It is occasioned in part by the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a still-flourishing organization of Chicago musicians whose interdisciplinary explorations expanded the boundaries of jazz. Alongside visual arts collectives such as the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA), the AACM was part of a deep engagement with black cultural nationalism both in Chicago and around the world during and after the civil rights era. Combining historical materials with contemporary responses, The Freedom Principle illuminates the continued relevance of that engagement today. ..."
The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now
artsy
Guardian: The Freedom Principle review – an astounding fusion of jazz and art
YouTube: The Freedom Principle

American Qur'an

"A project to hand-transcribe the entire Qur'an according to historic Islamic traditions and to illuminate the text with relevant scenes from contemporary American life. Nine years in the making, the project was inspired by a decade of extended travel in Islamic regions of the world. ... Collected together and grouped generally according to length (rather than chronologically), the 114 chapters ('suras') form a collection of sermon-like 'revelations' that are the fundamental text of Islam, the fastest growing religion in America. At a time when the United States was involved in two wars against Islamic nations and declared itself to be in a cultural and philosophical struggle against Islamic extremists, American artist Sandow Birk’s latest project considers the Qur’an as it was intended – as a universal message to humankind. ..."
Sandow Birk
Atlantic: American Qu’ran Makes a Sacred Text Familiar
GOOD
amazon

Ruth & Marvin Sackner

Miami Beach, 2005
"Concrete! Ruth and Marvin Sackner share their love of words and images with an intimate tour of their Miami Beach home/museum -- the worlds largest private collection of concrete/visual poetry from such twentieth century art movements as Italian Futurism, Russian and Eastern European Avant Garde, Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Ultra, Tabu-Dada, Lettrisme, and Ultra-Lettrisme. Over sixty-thousand objects from around the word speak volumes about a compulsive and joyful life of collecting art, poetry, and artist books. with art by Guillaume Apollinaire, Allen Ginsberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Matta, Bob Cobbing, Tom Phillips, Katharina Eckhart, Gertrude Stein, Ben Vautier and many, many more... and with music by Terry Riley, Arnold Dreyblatt and more. Ruth and Marvin Sackner founded the Archive in Miami Beach, Florida in 1979. Its initial mission was to establish a collection of books, critical texts, periodicals, ephemera, prints, drawings, collages, paintings, sculptures, objects, manuscripts, and correspondence dealing with precedent and contemporary, internationally produced, concrete and visual poetry. ..."
UbuWeb (Video)
Ruth Sackner R.I.P.
The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
Encounters with Concrete and Visual Poetry (Video)
The Miami Rail
A Human Document: Selections from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
Collecting Art, Without Knowing What Kind of Art You're Collecting

Politics by Other Means - Arundhati Roy

"Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of the work we do, I would like to add the National Award for the Best Screenplay that I won in 1989 to the growing pile of returned awards. Also, I want to make it clear that I am not returning this award because I am 'shocked' by what is being called the 'growing intolerance' being fostered by the present government. ... Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come. ..."
Jacobin

2008 May: Arundhati Roy, 2010 April: "Walking With The Comrades"

The Instruction Manual: How to read John Ashbery.

"John Ashbery wrote his first poem when he was 8. It rhymed and made sense ('The tall haystacks are great sugar mounds/ These are the fairies' camping grounds') and the young writer—who had that touch of laziness that sometimes goes along with precocity—came to a realization: 'I couldn't go on from this pinnacle.' He went on, instead, to write poems that mostly didn't rhyme, and didn't make sense, either. His aim, as he later put it, was 'to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.' It worked. Early on, a frustrated detractor called him 'the Doris Day of Modernism.' Even today a critic like Helen Vendler confesses that she's often 'mistaken' about what Ashbery is up to. You can see why: It simply may not be possible to render a sophisticated explication de texte of a poem that concludes 'It was domestic thunder,/ The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched/ His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.' ..."
Slate

Philippe Decouflé

Autour de Panorama
Wikipedia - "Philippe Decouflé (born October 22, 1961) is a French choreographer, dancer, mime artist, and theatre director. As a child he travelled extensively around Lebanon and Morocco, before learning his skills as a teenager at the Annie Fratellini Ecole du Cirque and the Marceau Mime School. While frequenting Parisienne nightclubs he discovered and was attracted to contemporary dance, and he eventually moved to the Centre National de la Danse Contemporaine in Angers to study under choreographer Alwin Nicolais. After briefly working as a solo dancer, he formed the Découflé Company of Arts in Bagnolet in 1983, moving it to a former electrical works in the Parisienne suburb of Saint-Denis in 1995. ..."
Wikipedia
Philippe Decouflé
UbuWeb: Shazam (2001), 2 Iris (2005)
YouTube: Octopus, 3 Boys Dance fight, Panorama, Abracadabra (1998), Contact

New York City's Mail Chutes are Lovely, Ingenious and Almost Entirely Ignored

Glorious example at the exquisite Fred French building.
"If you have ever worked in an old building, the chances are you will have at some point walked past a small mysterious brass box . Located about halfway up the wall, it is notable for a flat length of glass leading both into and out it, disappearing into the ceiling and the floor below. Often painted over, ignored and unused, they are a relic of the golden age of early skyscrapers called the Cutler mail chute. ..."
Atlas Obscura
W - Mail chute

Prime Time - James Blood Ulmer (1981)

"After cultivating a huge underground reputation both as a sideman in Ornette Coleman's Prime Time band and as an increasingly influential musician among the more experimental edges of the New York City punk and noise scenes, James Blood Ulmer was finally, in 1981, given a major-label contract by Columbia. Free Lancing was the first of three albums for the label before he, like many before and after, was unceremoniously dropped. It opens explosively with 'Timeless,' a ripping instrumental showcasing Ulmer at his best, all jagged angles, raw blues feeling, and chainsaw guitar shards. ... But it's Ulmer's stinging guitar lines -- rough-hewn, corrosive, and scrabbling -- throughout this recording that make it one of his finest."
allmusic
W - Prime Time
YouTube: Free Lancing Full Album 47:37

New Order - True Faith (1987)

Wikipedia - "'True Faith' is a song by New Order, produced by Stephen Hague. It was the first New Order single since their debut Ceremony to be issued in the UK as two separate 12" singles. The second 12" single features two remixes of "True Faith" by Shep Pettibone. ... The release of 'True Faith' was accompanied by a surreal music video directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and produced by Michael H. Shamberg. In it, bizarrely costumed dancers leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music; while a girl in dark green makeup emerges from an upside-down boxer's speed bag and signs the lyrics. The video has often been voted amongst the best music videos of its year. ..."
Wikipedia
W - 1963
YouTube: True Faith, 1963

2009 February: New Order, 2011 May: Movement, 2011 October: Low-Life, 2011 December: Brotherhood, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division, 2012 September: Power, Corruption & Lies (1983), 2015 June: Believe In A Land Of Love: New Order's Low-Life 30 Years On.

The Crack-Up - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)

Wikipedia - "The Crack-Up (1945) is a collection of essays by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It consists of previously unpublished letters, notes and also three essays originally written for and published first in the Esquire magazine during 1936. It was compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after Fitzgerald's death in 1940. ... As an example of this 'truth,' he cites the ability to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. However, in modern decision theory, this quote has been used by some to explain the bias shown in many experiments where subjects gather information to justify a preconceived notion. These experiments suggest that the mental ability described by Fitzgerald (being able to see both sides of an argument) is more uncommon than many assume."
Wikipedia
'The Crack-Up' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
New Yorker: As Big as the Ritz
PBS - Essay: The Crack-Up
YouTube: Spoken Essay | "The Crack-Up" F. Scott Fitzgerald 1/3, 2/3, 3/3

Lucinda Williams - NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

"She came to the Tiny Desk a little unsure, and left singing 'West Memphis' with intensity and passion. Lucinda Williams has a voice like no other, and it shines in these intimate moments. Williams is on a roll with a new double album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, which is filled with fresh and beautiful songs — all this from a songwriter known for working at a deliberate pace. Hearing her perform these new songs with her brilliant band was a rare and exciting treat. -- BOB BOILEN"
YouTube: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Something Wicked This Way Comes - Cold Day In Hell - Protection - West Memphis

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 2013 August: Essence (2001).

Inventory of digitized magazines

"Supplementing the flowing content that characterizes the Jacket2 interface, Reissues offers a stable archive of digitized journals and magazines primarily focused on poetry and poetics. This landing page will feature updated links to the full Reissues inventory as it continues to grow. Reissues is inspired by archival platforms ranging from Eclipse and UbuWeb to The Modernist Journals Project and The International Dada Archive. Just as Jacket2 is built upon the preservation of forty issues of John Tranter’s Jacket magazine, Reissues seeks to re-present periodicals in conversation with contemporary issues in poetics. We publish fully searchable facsimile PDF editions, scanned in high resolution and organized with bookmarked content for easy navigation to individual works within each magazine. ..."
Jacket2

Janis Joplin at Woodstock festival, 16 August 1969

"Joplin’s Shooting Star 1966-1970 - In the rock ‘n roll firmament of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was a shooting star who burned white hot for five short years. She died of a heroin overdose at age 27. Joplin sang her own brand of the blues in an incendiary style. Yet in her short time — between 1966 and 1970 — she carved out a piece of music history that was distinctly her own. During these years, she traveled from the conservative community of Port Arthur, Texas to the expansive and unpredictable world that was the drug/hippie/music scene of 1960s San Francisco — and mostly in the glare of national stardom. ..."
Pop History (Video)
YouTube: Try (just a little bit harder), Can turn you loose, Work me lord, Ball and chain

2008 May: Janis Joplin, 2010 October: Janis Joplin: 1962-1965, 2012 December: "Little Girl Blue"

George Bellows, narrated by Ethan Hawke (2012)

Shipyard Society, 1916
"Narrated by Ethan Hawke, this film was made in conjunction with the exhibition George Bellows. Bellows arrived in New York City in 1904 and depicted an America on the move. In a twenty-year career cut short by his death at age 42, he painted the rapidly growing modern city—its bustling crowds, skyscrapers, and awe-inspiring construction projects, as well as its bruising boxers, street urchins, and New Yorkers both hard at work and enjoying their leisure. He also captured the rugged beauty of New York's rivers and the grandeur of costal Maine. This documentary includes original footage shot in New York City and Maine; examples of Bellows' paintings, drawings, and prints; and archival footage and photographs."
NGA Part 1 (Video), Part 2 (Video)
amazon

Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980)

Wikipedia - "Love of Life Orchestra was created by Peter Gordon (sax, keyboards, composition) and David Van Tieghem, a talented, smart-aleck avant-garde percussionist with ties to new music composer Steve Reich. Both have gone on to greater fame as elder statesmen of the downtown music scene in New York, but these early works stand as an important developmental chapter. — Mark Fleischmann. Collaborators on their recording Extended Niceties have included Arto Lindsay and David Byrne. Early members of the band included Laurie Anderson (electric violin), Blue Gene Tyranny (keyboards), Ken Deifik (harmonica), Scott Johnson (guitar), Rhys Chatham (flute), Peter Zummo (trombone), Arthur Russell (cello), Kathy Acker (vocals), and Jill Kroesen (vocals)."
Wikipedia
Discogs
YouTube: Extended Niceties, Beginning Of The Heartbreak / Don't Don't

Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson (2012)

Wikipedia - "Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 American film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola. Described as an 'eccentric, pubescent love story', it features newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward in the film's main roles and an ensemble cast. ... In September 1965, on a New England island called New Penzance, 12-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky is attending Camp Ivanhoe, a Khaki Scout summer camp led by Scoutmaster Randy Ward. Suzy Bishop, also 12, lives on the island with her parents, Walt and Laura, both attorneys, and her three younger brothers in a house called Summer's End. Sam and Suzy, both introverted, intelligent and mature for their age, met in the summer of 1964 during a church performance of Noye's Fludde and have been pen pals since then. Having fallen in love over the course of their correspondence, they have made a secret pact to reunite and run away together. Sam brings camping equipment, and Suzy brings her binoculars, six books, her kitten, and her brother's battery-powered record player. ..."
Wikipedia
Moonrise Kingdom
NY Times: Scouting Out a Paradise: Books, Music and No Adults (Video)
Moving Storyboards And Drumming: Wes Anderson Maps Out The Peculiar Genius Of "Moonrise Kingdom" (Video)
YouTube: Moonrise Kingdom Official Trailer #1 - Wes Anderson Movie (2012)

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013), 2015 January: Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe, 2015 July: Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles.

The old-school soda sign of a Brooklyn grocery

"As mom and pop delis and luncheonettes disappear from the five boroughs, so do the wonderful 'privilege' signs affixed to them. But one continues to hang on in Brooklyn at the leafy, brownstone-beautiful corner of Lafayette Avenue and Cumberland Street. 'Lafayete' Grocery & Dairy is a bodega that maintains a vintage Coca-Cola sign. There’s no word on exactly how old the sign is, but oddly, it was spelled correctly back in 2009 before the place underwent a renovation. Much older signage can be seen on facade of the building, which likely went up in the 1870s (and once served as home base of the New Diamond Point Pen Company): the names Lafayette and what looks like Cumberland carved in the corner. These corner-cut street signs can be seen all over New York’s oldest neighborhoods."
Ephemeral New York

The Clash of Italian Neorealism and Classical Hollywood

"'What is neorealism?' asks the filmmaker kogonada in this excellent video essay, created for the May 2013 issue of Sight & Sound magazine. He examines two 1952 films that resulted from the collaboration of Vittorio De Sica, a master of Italian neorealism, and David O. Selznick, the Hollywood producer behind Gone With The Wind. It's the same movie material, created in two different styles. He explores De Sica's lingering shots that are archetypal of neorealism and juxtaposes them with Selznick's cuts of the same scenes, where the in-between moments are seen as gratuitous or distracting. 'A cut reveals what matters and what doesn’t. To examine the cuts of a filmmaker is to uncover an approach to cinema,' kogonada says. ..."
The Atlantic (Video)
W - Vittorio De Sica
W - Terminal Station
Italian Neorealism
NY Times: Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953)
YouTube: Indiscretion of an American Wife (trailer) - Montgomery Clift - Vittorio De Sica

2009 February: Italian Neorealism

FiveThirtyEight’s 2015-16 NBA Forecast

"Here at FiveThirtyEight HQ, we’ve been pretty excited about the upcoming 2015-16 NBA season. OK, that’s a bit of an understatement. For starters, we rolled out CARMELO,¹ our system for predicting the career of every NBA player, and we’ve been encouraging all who will listen to check out their favorite player’s projection. (Yes, our friends and families have asked us to stop.) We also used CARMELO to preview all 30 NBA teams. ..."
FiveThirtyEight
FiveThirtyEight: 2015-16 NBA Previews

Mars - The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978

"There’s a section in Marc Masters’ excellent No Wave book that lists the bellicose reactions to Mars from the late-'70s music press. New York Rocker’s Andy Schwartz rallies against the 'total absence of any human feeling save a kind of neurotic violence,' while an anonymous critic declares them 'empty and arty.' But the vacuous barbarity of the Mars sound is exactly what made them tick. They were a band perfectly capturing the essence of downtown New York while living in the belly of a bankrupted city. This album collects all 11 studio recordings the band made during its two-year lifespan. Mars resolutely practiced a brand of nonmusic that was atonal, out of standard tune, and leaned heavily on unconventional song structure. For a band that started from a deliberately limited palate, it’s fascinating to hear how they slowly chipped away at their influences. The key to Mars was to devolve, not evolve. ..."
Prefix
Pitchfork
W - Mars
YouTube: The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978Z, Live At Irving Plaza, Live, Live At Artists Space, 78+

Magnus Plessen – nineteen hundred fourteen

Untitled (16), 2014
"Magnus Plessen (*1967 in Hamburg, lives and works in Berlin) has recently engaged with the topic of what was then known as the 'great' war 1914 – 1918, with devastation and its victims – a topic that has, until now, and quite probably for the foreseeable future, unfortunately been relegated to the realms of anthropology. Starting in 2014, and continuing until 2018, Plessen has placed his focus on creating images that draw visual attention to facial and bodily disfiguration. In his paintings, he transposes and translates through the medium of art in a way that renders the humanity behind them visible once more, directing the gaze to the circumstances and thus allowing room for critique. He eschews all attempts at sarcasm or grotesquerie. Mai36 gallery has been hosting the work of Magnus Plessen in solo and group exhibitions since 2003."
Artsy
Galleries Now
White Cube
Brooklyn Rail
artnet
ARTFORUM
White Cube: Riding the Image
YouTube: At BARBARA GLADSTONE GALLERY

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

"This Walker-organized exhibition, assembled with the assistance of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, examines the intersections of art, architecture, and design with the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. A time of great upheaval, this period witnessed a variety of radical experiments that challenged societal and professional expectations, overturned traditional hierarchies, explored new media and materials, and formed alternative communities and new ways of living and working together. During this key moment, many artists, architects, and designers individually and collectively began a search for a new kind of utopia, whether technological, ecological, or political, and with it offered a critique of the existing society. ..."
Walker Art (Video)
What Killed the 1960s Struggle For Utopia?
amazon

Eric Dolphy His Life and Art

"'Eric Dolphy His Life and Art is a dream project for the artist Keith Henry Brown, an illustrator, writer and Art Director who served from 2001 to 2004 as the design director at Jazz at Lincoln Center working under Wynton Marsalis. My aesthetic at that time was the wonderful old art of jazz record covers, which I wanted all of JALC'S branding to reflect. I think Wynton felt the same.' Even after leaving Lincoln Center, Brown still continues to use the look of the old Blue Note covers and the wonderful drawings used on the Norman Granz Jazz at The Philharmonic records as an inspiration when designing record covers for many well-known jazz artists. 'I was really thinking about those records when I did Christian McBride's cover for his album Kind Of Brown, for example.' This 'labor of love' is a graphic novel about the influential multi-instrumentalist Dolphy, who's known for his work with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus as well as his own brilliant recording efforts as a leader. Through colorful drawings, narrative and dialogue, Brown tells the story of his favorite musical artist. ..."
Eric Dolphy His Life and Art (Video)
Keith Henry Brown

2013 August: Out to Lunch! (1964), 2014 October: Outward Bound (1960)

Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern

Chapel of the Palau de la Generalitat in Barcelona.
"This major retrospective of Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan, 1874–1949) features works ranging from the late 19th century to the 1940s, including drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures, and original artist notebooks and rare publications. The exhibition combines a chronological display with a thematic approach, structured in a series of major chapters in the artist’s career, with emphasis on two key moments: the period from 1923 to 1933, when Torres-García participated in various European early modern avant-garde movements while establishing his own signature pictographic/Constructivist style; and 1935 to 1943, when, having returned to Uruguay, he produced one of the most striking repertoires of synthetic abstraction. Torres-García is one of the most complex and important artists of the first half of the 20th century, and his work opened up transformational paths for modern art on both sides of the Atlantic. ..."
MoMA (Video)
NY Times: An Avant-Gardist Who Bridged the Archaic and the New

America a Prophecy - William Blake (1793)

Wikipedia - "America a Prophecy is a 1793 prophetic book by the English poet and illustrator William Blake. It is engraved on eighteen plates, and survives in fourteen known copies. It is the first of Blake's Continental prophecies. Only a few of Blake's works were fully coloured, and America was one of the few works that Blake describes as 'illuminated printing', those of which were either hand coloured or colour printed with the ink being placed on the copperplate before printed. There were 17 copies of America created with 4 of them coloured. The work contained 18 plates, and were 23 x 17 cm in size. The lines of poetry included in the work were organized into septenaries. Henry Crabb Robinson contacted William Upcott on 19 April 1810 inquiring about copies of Blake's works that were in his possession. On that day, Robinson was allowed access to Europe and America and created a transcription of the works. ..."
Wikipedia
[PDF]AMERICA: A PROPHECY
amazon
YouTube: America a Prophesy

2008 April: The Notebook of William Blake, 2009 April: William Blake, 2010 December: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 2011 June: The Ghost of a Flea, 2012 August: Isaac Newton (1795).

Bill Bernstein's Disco Utopia

Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, 1979
"At its zenith, disco had evolved beyond a music genre to become a glitzy, sweaty, frenzied subculture whose adherents congregated in a wholly new breed of club. There was Studio 54, of course, but also Xenon, Paradise Garage, Hurrah. Anything or anyone strange was welcome, and so was everyone else. The disco scene was dark in its underground nature, diverse in its devotees, and an endless, manic party. And photographer Bill Bernstein was its dutiful visual biographer. ..."
Paddle8
Bill Bernstein
Bill Bernstein Photography
vimeo: Bill Bernstein Photography/Video
YouTube: DISCO: The Bill Bernstein Photographs

2013 November: Studio 54

Reggae Revival: Meet the Millennial Musicians Behind Jamaica’s New Movement

"It’s 4:00 in the morning on a Sunday in Jamaica and I am standing on the edge of Plantation Cove, an open field in St. Ann, the parish along the northern coast where you can find the shore where Columbus landed, and where Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley were born. I am six hours into my second night at a reggae festival called Rebel Salute. Though dancehall has dominated Jamaican radio for going on three decades, reggae festivals are still held year-round, and Rebel Salute is considered the most legit. Jamaicans speak of it the way they might describe a tincture or an extract, as though it contained a higher concentration of some magical, ineffable ingredient than other festivals do. 'Rebel Salute?' the hotel manager back in Kingston had told me, eyebrows raised. 'There you will see real reggae. I mean, real, real reggae.' He scrunched up his nose as if he were a Frenchman describing a pungent cheese. 'I mean real, real, real, roots, roots music.' ..."
Vogue (Video)
YouTube: On Tour With Jamaica’s Reggae Revival

The Case for Bad Coffee

"Standing at my kitchen counter, I measure out two teaspoons of Maxwell House instant coffee into my favorite mug, pour in 12 ounces of hot water from a tea kettle, and stir for a moment. I look toward the automatic drip maker to my left and feel a pang of sympathy for its cold carafe that once gurgled and steamed each morning with the best coffee money could buy. On top of the refrigerator, my old friend the French press has gathered dust. When I notice a dead housefly decomposing inside it, I wonder what the hell has happened to me. I wasn't always like this. ..."
Serious Eats

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo.

A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982

"Why did punk implode so rapidly? Why did its bands flare up and fade out? And how did this movement resist yet revamp the hippies they rushed to replace? In A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982 Nicholas Rombes, a professor of English, assembles a collage in the spirit of Walter Benjamin, a 'montage and passageway of quotes' alphabetically arranged. He integrates primary sources, illustrations, his own fictional and factual stories. He constructs an alternative history: 'In your dream, punk stayed a secret forever.' He emphasizes punk’s ephemeral arc, which failed to sustain its own outbursts of anger, shards of melody, and frustration with the malaise of the 'post-Watergate, pre-Reagan' years when its earliest audience grew up. ..."
A Punk Collage in the Spirit of Walter Benjamin
Google: A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982
LA Times - Punk's not dead, and this is your guide: Q&A with author Nicholas Rombes
amazon

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Brian Eno / David Byrne (1981)

Wikipedia - "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a 1981 album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, titled after Amos Tutuola's 1954 novel of the same name. ... The 'found objects' credited to Eno and Byrne were common objects used mostly as percussion. In the notes for the 2006 expanded edition of the album, Byrne writes that they would often use a normal drum kit, but with a cardboard box replacing the bass drum, or a frying pan replacing the snare drum; this would blend the familiar drum sound with unusual percussive noises. Rather than conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist. Musicians had previously used similar sampling techniques, but critic Dave Simpson declares it had never before been used 'to such cataclysmic effect' as on My Life. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
Spotify
YouTube - America is waiting (Live), Home, Strange Overtones, Very Very Hungry (bootleg), Les Hombres Ne Le Sauront Jamals, The Jezebel Spirit (bootleg)
YouTube: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts 59:55

2008 September: Talking Heads, 2011 June: Talking Heads: 77, 2011 August: More Songs About Buildings and Food, 2011 October: Fear of Music, 2012 January: Remain in Light, 2012 April: Speaking in Tongues, 2012 June: Live in Rome 1980, 2014 December: "Road To Nowhere" (1985), 2015 May: And She Was (1985), 2011 August: David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve, 2012 January: The Knee Plays.

Made in Holland: The Chanel of Africa

"A small town factory in the Netherlands might not seem like the obvious birthplace for African haute couture. Helmond is a place most people (Dutch or African) wouldn’t be able to point out on a map and yet, this unassuming little town is where one of the most iconic fashion brands of West and Central Africa was created. As the main supplier of fashion prints to nearly half a continent, the textile company has continued to dominate that fashion scene there for almost 170 years. How’d that happen? Rooted in European colonialism and a testament to African ingenuity, creativity, and cultural pride; it’s a surprising story…"
Messynessychic
NY Times: Africa's Fabric Is Dutch
Vlisco
YouTube: Dutch Profiles: Vlisco

New York State of Mind

"Mugged, mugging. I remember hearing those words all the time growing up. Always aware that it could happen, that it would happen. When it did, getting mugged didn’t mean you’d be killed, just that someone would take your shit, probably beat you up, too. That is mind, here’s David Freeman’s 1970 New York magazine story, 'Mugging as a Way of Life'. ..."
The Stacks
"Mugging as a Way of Life" By David Freeman (1970 - New York Magazine)

Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs

"Gram Parsons didn’t grow up living the hardscrabble life of most country singers. The man originally named Cecil Ingram Connor III was born into a wealthy Florida citrus family and spent a semester at Harvard before dropping out to concentrate on his burgeoning interest in country music. After stints in the Shilos and the International Submarine Band, he joined the Byrds in 1968 for a five-month spell that resulted in the landmark ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo‘ album. He then formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, recording two albums with them before being fired in 1970 due to his increasing drug habit. As a solo act, Parsons released ‘GP’ in 1973, which featured three members from Elvis Presley‘s TCB band and a beautiful young folk singer with a voice to match, Emmylou Harris. A second album, ‘Grievous Angel’ was released in 1974, four months after his death on Sept. 19, 1973, at age 26 at Joshua Tree National Monument from an overdose of morphine and alcohol. ..."
Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs (Video)

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), 2015 April: The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (Gram Parsons Vocals).

The Morning of the Poem - James Schuyler (1980)

"When James Schuyler's extraordinary 60-page poem 'The Morning of the Poem' appeared in 1980, it marked the advent of his exceptionally long line: by the time the poem was halfway through, the lines had swelled to virtually two lines each. Although he clearly wasn't counting beats or syllables, there seemed to be a reason, however unstatable, for every break – not only the official breaks but, remarkably, the runovers as well. In other words, the lines were two lines each, as well as being single lines long enough to pass for prose. Within this roomy framework, which recalled Whitman, Schuyler established his own permissions to do pretty much as he pleased, traveling smoothly and confidently on the strength of his associations from one image or memory or aperçu to the next. ..."
EPC: Charles North - Schuyler's Mighty Line
Jacket2: Days and nights with James Schuyler
[PDF] The Morning of the Poem
amazon

2008 January: James Schuyler, 2009 October: James Schuyler: Six New Recordings Added, 2011 March: Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, 2011 December: An Anthology of New York Poets, 2012 July: A Schuyler of urgent concern, 2013 July: In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine, 2014 November: Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler 1951-1991.

Nas: Time is Illmatic (2014)

"American social ills get the expensive treatment in artist-turned-film-maker One9’s documentary about Illmatic, the classic 1994 album by rapper Nas. A chronicle of the effects of poverty and poor housing on a generation of New York’s black kids, Illmatic was a scouring exposé. One9’s film, shot on high-end kit, flirts with glamorising the rags-to-rap-to-riches story, but in doing so stays true to its subject. It’s a touch too laudatory. It’s at its best when the gloss falls away. After talking amiably about life in the hood from the comfort of recording studios and loft apartments, Nas takes a trip into the Queensbridge housing project where he grew up. The old neighbourhood welcomes him, but there’s a disconnect. The local boy made it out. He’s a beloved alien to the locals. The world is his. Theirs hasn’t changed much."
Guardian
W - Nas: Time is Illmatic
Why You Must See the ‘Nas: Time Is Illmatic’ Documentary (Video)
Soundcloud: Official Pete Rock - Time Is Illmatic
YouTube: Nas: Time Is Illmatic 2014 Official Trailer

2015 October: Illmatic (1994)

Decasia - Bill Morrison (2002)

"... Bill Morrison's Decasia is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal, occasioning two separate features so far in The New York Times. Morrison is not the first artist to take decomposing film stock as his raw material, but he plunges into this dark nitrate of the soul with contagious abandon. Few movies are so much fun to describe. Heralded by a spinning dervish, Decasia's first movement seems culled from century-old actualités: Kimono-clad women emerge from a veil of spotty mold, a caravan of camels is silhouetted against the warped desert horizon, a Greek dancer disintegrates into a blotch barrage, the cars for an ancient Luna Park ride repeatedly materialize out of seething chaos. Decasia is founded on the tension between the hard fact of film's stained, eroded, unstable surface and the fragile nature of that which was once photographically represented. ..."
Voice: J. Hoberman
W - Decasia
NY Times: Symphony of Compositions From Decomposition
"Decasia" named to 2013 National Film Registry (Video)
MoMA: Bill Morrison: Old Films, Contemporary Music, Timeless Themes
YouTube: Decasia excerpt 1, Decasia excerpt 2, Decasia: Excerpt Three
vimeo: Bill Morrison: The film archaeologist

Holiday for Soul Dance - Sun Ra (1970)

"This collection is somewhat of an oddity in that there are no original compositions from Sun Ra. That said, cornet player Phil Corhan contributes 'Dorothy's Dance.' As the album initially surfaced in the early '70s, many presumed the recordings reflected Ra's concurrent combo and sound, which couldn't have been further from the truth. Scholars have since placed 1960 or 1961 as a closer estimation of when these sides were documented, using the rare inclusion of Ricky Murry (vocals) as sonic evidence, coupled with the fact that the effort was cut prior to the band's relocation to New York City from Chicago at the beginning of the decade. ..."
allmusic
W - Holiday for Soul Dance
New Yorker: The Sun Ra Centenary
Spotify
Discogs
YouTube: Holiday for Soul Dance

The Soviet Photobook 1920-1941

"The Soviet Union was unique in its formidable and dynamic use of the illustrated book as a means of propaganda. Through the book, the U.S.S.R. articulated its totalitarian ideologies and expressed its absolute power in an unprecedented way—through avant-garde writing and radical artistic design that was in full flower during the 1920s and ’30s. No other country, nation, government or political system promoted itself more by attracting and employing acclaimed members of the avant-garde. ... The Soviet Photobook 1920–1941 presents 160 of the most stunning and elaborately produced photobooks from this period and includes more than 400 additional reference illustrations. The book also provides short biographies of the photobook contributors, some of whom are presented here for the first time."
Steidl
artbook
amazon

Noam Chomsky: Electing the President of an Empire

"At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Prof. Chomsky comments on the presidential primary 'extravaganza,' the movement for Bernie Sanders, the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, modern-day libertarianism and the reality of 'democracy' under capitalism."
Occupy (Video)

The Rolling Stones - "Let's Spend the Night Together" / "Ruby Tuesday" (1967)

Wikipedia - "'Let's Spend the Night Together' is a song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and originally released by The Rolling Stones as a double A-sided single together with 'Ruby Tuesday' in 1967. ... Johns recounts that while mixing 'Let's Spend the Night Together', Oldham was trying to get a certain sound by clicking his fingers. Two policemen showed up, stating that the front door was open and that they were checking to see if everything was all right. At first, Oldham asked them to hold his earphones while he snapped his fingers but then Johns said they needed a more wooden sound. The policemen suggested their truncheons and Mick Jagger took the truncheons into the studio to record the claves-like sound that can be heard during the quiet break at one minute 40 seconds into the song. ..."
W - "Let's Spend the Night Together"
W - "Ruby Tuesday"
YouTube: "Let's Spend the Night Together", "Ruby Tuesday"

2015 August: Exile on Main Street (1972)

rohdesign

"Hello, I'm Mike Rohde. I'm a designer, author, illustrator and sketchnoter, living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I have a passion for simple and usable design solutions. I believe it's important to share thoughts, ideas and process, so others can draw insight from my experiences. I've been writing here since February, 2003, covering design, sketching, drawing, sketchnotes, technology, travel, cycling, books and coffee. ... I'm an author, having written two books on sketchnoting: The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook. I speak at events and present workshops that teach people sketchnoting techniques. ..."
rohdesign (Video)

Ursula Le Guin

Wikipedia - "Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography. ... The Left Hand of Darkness, along with The Dispossessed and The Telling, are novels within Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, which employs a future galactic civilization loosely connected by an organizational body known as the Ekumen to consider the consequences of contact between different worlds and cultures. Unlike those in much mainstream science fiction, Hainish Cycle civilization does not possess reliable human faster-than-light travel, but does have technology for instantaneous communication. This allows the author to hypothesize a loose collection of societies that exist largely in isolation from one another, providing the setting for her explorations of intercultural encounter. ..."
Wikipedia
Ursula Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin's Website
Paris Review: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction No. 221
Le Guin’s Anarchist Aesthetics
NPR: Ursula K. Le Guin Steers Her Craft Into A New Century (Video)
amazon: Ursula K. Le Guin
YouTube: Bill Moyers interview with Ursula K. LeGuin about "Lathe of Heaven", Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Killjoy - Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers On Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, Avenali Chair in the Humanities

Criterion at Thirty

"I’d always thought that designing new packaging for a classic film was like designing a jacket for a new edition of a well-known book: both are associated, in the popular imagination, with familiar, even beloved, graphics. If the designer strays too far from the original vision, the potential for public outcry is high. But where a book offers visual freedom—our minds are free to imagine the scenes and the various characters—a movie comes with a profusion of visual material that’s not soon forgotten. There’s the original theatrical poster, and then, of course, there’s the very film itself, and all the iconic images we associate with it. For designers, translating a director’s vision is hard enough the first time. How do you do it again? The Criterion Collection is known for its impeccable taste in classic and contemporary films, and for the artful packaging that puts these films in a much-needed new light. ..."
Paris Review

Soldier-Talk - The Red Crayola (1979)

Wikipedia - "Soldier-Talk is the third studio album by American experimental rock band The Red Crayola. It was released in 1979 by record label Radadr. By this time, Thompson had moved the project to London and expanded the band for this album to include Lora Logic of X-Ray Spex and Essential Logic and all the members of Pere Ubu. ... Since the release of God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It, Steve Cunningham had left the project to pursue his own musical ambitions and had been replaced by Jesse Chamberlain. In 1978, this incarnation of the band was touring regularly and had been signed to Radar Records. Despite the presence of Pere Ubu, the music is a close continuation of the sound previously established by The Red Crayola. Soldier-Talk was conceived as a concept album dealing with the issues of militarism and Soviet communism. Chamberlain wanted to veer the music towards a more pop-oriented direction while Thompson opted to keep the sound experimental. ..."
Wikipedia
Perfect Sound Forever
allmusic
Pitchfork
YouTube: The Red Crayola - Soldier-Talk (Full Album)

Next From Christo: Art That Lets You Walk on Water

A drawing and collage rendering of 'The Floating Piers' project for Italy’s Lake Iseo.
"It’s been a decade since those 16 days in February 2005 when the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed 7,500 gates along Central Park’s walkways, each adorned with shimmering saffron-colored panels creating what Christo described as 'a golden river appearing and disappearing through the branches of the trees.' It was a spectacle like no other in the park’s long history. The $20 million project, financed by the sale of Christo’s artworks, pumped nearly $250 million into the city’s economy and attracted four million visitors. ..."
NY Times

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, 2015 April: New Christo Work to Temporarily Bridge Italy’s Lake Iseo.