Steal Like Wes Anderson: A New Video Essay Explores How Wes Anderson Pays Artful Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman & Other Directors in His Films

"Although not the debut film of director Wes Anderson, and certainly not of star Bill Murray, Rushmore introduced the world to the both of them. Anderson's first feature Bottle Rocket (an expansion of the short film previously featured here on Open Culture) hadn't found a particularly large audience upon its theatrical release in 1996. But quite a few of the viewers who had seen and appreciated it seemed to run in Murray's circles, and in a 1999 Charlie Rose interview the actor told of being sent copy after unwatched copy by friends and professional contacts alive. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

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, 2015 November: Moonrise Kingdom (2012), 2015 December: Chapter 8: "The Grand Budapest Hotel", 2016 June: Here's pretty much every song used in a Wes Anderson film, 2016 November: Watch Come Together, Wes Anderson’s New Short Film...., 2018 September: Isle of Dogs (2018), 2020 May: Honest Trailers - Every Wes Anderson Movie, 2020 July: Exploring Wes Anderson’s wonderful cinematic commercials

Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa

"This latest image of Jupiter, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020, was captured when the planet was 653 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the Great Red Spot changing colour — again. The new image also features Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. A unique and exciting detail of Hubble’s new snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm moving at 560 kilometres per hour. This single plume erupted on 18 August 2020 and another has since appeared. ..."
Hubble Space Telescope
‘Chaos Terrain’ of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Shown in Crisp Detail in NASA Galileo Images

The above map shows locations where each image, showcasing a variety of features, was captured by Galileo during its eighth targeted flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Maine’s Sublime Canvas of Contradictions

Edward Hopper: Haunted House, 1929
"Every August, the public library in my hometown of Blue Hill, Maine holds a wet paint auction. Local artists, some seasoned, some aspiring, go out in the early morning to find their subjects: the dawn on the mudflats; blue islands slouching across the horizon; the nostalgic white pentagon of the post office. In the afternoon, seasonal residents linger in the Biography section with plastic cups of wine, bidding on studies of water and sky to add to their collections. The landscape of Maine—glacially gouged, furred with pines—precludes other muses, offering up endless variations on its theme with every change of the light, season, and tide. It is relentlessly consumed, reproduced, and sold, albeit in a less extractive way than the mining and lumber industries once used it. The art economy and its bedfellow, tourism, have made nature more valuable unspoiled. ..."
NYBooks

Marsden Hartley: After the Storm, Vinalhaven, 1938-1939

Sweet Smell of Success - Alexander Mackendrick (1957)

"In the swift, cynical Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Burt Lancaster stars as the vicious Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent Hunsecker ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue, in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, Sweet Smell of Success is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan. ..."
Criterion (Video)
W - Sweet Smell of Success
‘Sweet Smell of Success’: A Visceral and Vicious Depiction of the Evil that Power-Hungry Men Do (Video)

From Aksak Maboul to Crammed Discs, Marc Hollander Envisions a Musical Melting Pot

"'Growing up in Belgium, there wasn’t just one dominant scene or style of music,' says Marc Hollander, who founded Aksak Maboul with his friend Vincent Kenis in Brussels in the spring of 1977. ... Described as 'a significant record…way ahead of its time' by Gilles Peterson, Onze danses pour combattre la migraine was a visionary album that incorporated minimalism, fake jazz, avant-pop, world exotica, and proto-techno into something that is still hard to pin down more than 40 years later. Released on Marc Moulin’s short-lived Kamikaze label, the LP would create the template for Hollander’s own Crammed Discs imprint, which he formed in 1980 to release Aksak Maboul’s second LP Un Peu de l’Âme des Bandits...."
Bandcamp (Audio)

2014 November: Aksak Maboul, 2017 July: Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984), 2018 February: Before And After Bandits: Marc Hollander Of Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs, 2020 March: Tout a une fin / Blaue Bleistift (2020), 2020 August: Aksak Maboul ‎– Figures (2020)

Fairfield Porter: An Introduction

The Porch, 1962
"Fairfield Porter is one of those painters I’d never heard of as a kid, but with whose work I became obsessed as soon as he was introduced to me in art school. There’s a directness to his work and a deceptive simplicity. While primarily known today as a figurative painter, he was also an art critic. He wrote passionately in support of Abstract Expressionism, helping the public understand the complexity of abstraction. ... Upon a deeper look at Porter’s work, it’s no surprise he’s a champion of abstraction. His compositions — in their deceptive simplicity — employ many of the strategies and structures found within 20th c. abstraction. Working primarily in three locations — his family home in Maine, New York City, and his home in Southhampton, NY — Porter is a documentarian of everyday life. ..."
Pete Hocking
From The Studio

Farmland, 1959

2008 May: Fairfield Porter, 2010 June: Fairfield Porter - 1, 2011 August: "Respect For Things As They Are" - by John Ashbery, 2013 March: "The Great Spruce" by Alex Carnelevale, 2013 July: In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine, 2020 May: Fairfield Porter: Raw—The Creative Process of an American Master

OP Magazine

'“OP Magazine, based in Olympia, Washington, was a music fanzine published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network (leading to the title, which extends the abbreviation LMN to LMNOP) from 1979 to 1984. It was known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY musicians in the midst of the cassette culture. The magazine was co-founded by Foster, Toni Holm, Dana Squires, and David Rauh. An emphasis of the magazine was ‘articles about music written by musicians’, and regular contributors included Victoria Glavin (Victoria Barreca), Peter Garland, Eugene Chadbourne, and Larry Polansky. ...”
Wikipedia
The Handmade Tale: by Kathleen McConnell
Tape OP

James Clay & David "Fathead" Newman - The Sound Of The Wide Open Spaces (1960)

“Think of the combi’s Johnny Griffin/Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Dexter Gordon/Wardell Gray, Arnett Cobb/Buddy Tate or of the Clifford Jordan/John Gilmore album Blowing In From Chicago. The Sound Of The Wide Open Spaces!!!! (the use of multiple exclamation marks is hyperbolic fancy, but I like the way it looks on the jacket) fits into that high calibre category. Clay and Fathead, two ‘tough’ Texan tenors (and alto’s, flutes) battle it out with the hard-driving support of Art Taylor, Sam Jones and Wynton Kelly. The album was supervised by Cannonball Adderley. Adderley, who had signed with Riverside in 1960 and recorded the highly succesful and influential live album In San Francisco, struck up a good rapport with label owner Orrin Keepnews, immediately getting into fruitful A&R territory. …”
Flophouse Magazine (Audio)
W – The Sound of the Wide Open Spaces!!!!
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: The Sound Of The Wide Open Spaces (1960) (Full Album)

Maps: Fires and Air Quality in California, Oregon and Washington

"California, Oregon and Washington are enduring a wildfire season of historic proportions. More than two dozen people have died since early September, when powerful winds helped spark fires and propel existing ones, leaving millions of acres charred and thousands of structures destroyed. See our live coverage here. Air quality has become a large concern, as clouds of ash and smoke spread across the region. The health effects of wildfire smoke are not fully understood, but it has been linked to serious health problems and research suggests that the effects don’t necessarily go away when skies clear. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - Wildfires Live Updates: Month of Foul Air in Bay Area; Smoke Crosses U.S. (Video)
NY Times - Wildfires

At least 20 people have died in massive fires spreading through parts of California, Oregon and Washington.

The School of Athens: A detail hidden in a masterpiece

Michelangelo as Heraclitus

"In art, it’s always the little things. Take The School of Athens by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, whose death 500 years ago in 1520 is currently being commemorated around the world by major exhibitions and displays from Milan to London, Berlin to Washington DC. Millions of eyes have marvelled at the eternal gathering of ancient philosophers and mathematicians, statesmen and astronomers that Raphael luminously imagines in his famous fresco. Yet it would seem that a small detail near the centre foreground of the painting, from which the true meaning of the masterpiece arguably spills, has gone almost completely unnoticed by historians and critics for half a millennium. ..."
BBC
W - The School of Athens

Bramante as Euclid

Paul Bowles in Exile - Jay McInerney

"As the faithful poured into the mosque for prayer, I searched for the door to a restaurant reputedly just across the street and tried to seem inconspicuous. It was my second night in Tangier. Men in dark robes huddled on the street corners, lowering their voices as I approached. The few women in evidence were upholstered in black from head to foot and looked like bandit nuns. I came upon an entrance gate at which two men in djellabas were either lounging or standing guard. I tentatively pronounced the name of my destination. They looked at each other, nodded, and ushered me inside. ... I recognized the situation immediately. It had all the ingredients of a Paul Bowles story. I never found out what the hissing was about. ..."
Stranger in Tangier: Paul Bowles Under The Sheltering Sky (Video)
Analysis of Paul Bowles’s Novels
amazon: The Stories of Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles

Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Tangier

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here, 2015 October: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists, 2015 November: The Rolling Stone Interview (May 23, 1974), 2016 June: Let It Come Down (1952), 2016 December: Paul Bowles & the Music of Morocco, 2017 July: Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, 2018 July: The Sheltering Sound, 2019 September: Jane Bowles, 2019 December: So Why Did I Defend Paul Bowles?, 2020 June: A Distant Episode (1947)

Jeannine Schulz - Closeness (2020)

Closeness
"Jeannine Schulz is my new favorite ambient musician about whom I know virtually nothing, except that she’s based in Munich, Germany, appears to do work in contemporary dance, and has released numerous albums this year of hypnotic, droning beauty. The second track on Closeness, 'Shimmer,' is a particular favorite. It’s the sonic equivalent of standing very close to a massive painting and getting entranced by the texture. ..."
disquiet (Audio)
Bandcamp (Audio)
Soundcloud (Audio)

Heaven-Sent

The Sopranos - Season 5

"The fifth season of The Sopranos aired on HBO from March 7 to June 6, 2004. The fifth season was released on DVD in region 1 on June 7, 2005. The story of season five focuses on the return of two prominent members of the DiMeo family, Tony Blundetto and Feech La Manna, who are released from lengthy stays in prison and struggle to reintegrate themselves back within the family and the life of crime. Several prominent members of the Lupertazzi family also return from prison, and the subsequent power vacuum caused by the death of Boss Carmine creates a growing rift between the New York and New Jersey crime families. Tony and Carmela adjust to their new lives and each other following their separation, which greatly affects their son, A.J. Uncle Junior's mental health continues to deteriorate, and Adriana's guilt over her role as an FBI informant grows. ..."
Wikipedia
W - List of The Sopranos characters
RecapGuide
Top 5 Episodes: The Sopranos – Season 5 (Video)
The Sopranos: 10 Best Episodes Of Season 5, According To IMDb
The Closing Credits Song For Every Episode of The Sopranos (Season 5)(Video)
YouTube: The Sopranos Season 5, Tony owns Phil, Tony sees his painting at Paulies, Tony's Terrible Things, Ohs and Hos!

2020 July: The Sopranos - Season 1, 2020 July: Season 2, 2020 August: Season 3, 2020 August: Season 4

Humberto Solás - Lucía (1968)

"A breathtaking vision of Cuban revolutionary history wrought with white-hot intensity by Humberto Solás, this operatic epic tells the story of a changing country through the eyes of three women, each named Lucía. In 1895, she is a tragic noblewoman who inadvertently betrays her country for love during the war of independence. In 1932, she is the daughter of a bourgeois family drawn into the workers’ uprising against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. And in the postrevolutionary 1960s, she is a newlywed farm girl fighting against patriarchal oppression. A formally dazzling landmark of postcolonial cinema, Lucía is both a senses-stunning visual experience and a fiercely feminist portrait of a society journeying toward liberation. ..." (Orson Welles Cinema, Wikipedia, Cambridge, Boston. Bill: 1972-75)
Criterion
Interview with Humberto Solás: "Every point of arrival is a point of departure"
W - Lucía
MUBI (Video), Criterion Channel ($)

The B-Side: "Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons," A Record Album Interpretation

Eric Berryman
"... The B-Side: 'Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,' A Record Album Interpretation (streaming through September 14 on the Wooster Group’s website) may consist mainly of men singing along with a record, but it is not a sing-along. It is a channeling of spirits. After briefly explaining his fascination with a 1965 LP titled Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons and a book called Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues, the performer Eric Berryman plays the record almost straight through, only breaking to read from the liner notes or the book and explain, for example, the type of work a song might be sung to or a historical fact about a character named in the chorus—like Jack of Diamonds, a monstrous prison guard said to have challenged the devil for control of hell. ..."
The Paris Review (Video)

Chantal Joffe: For Esme – With Love and Squalor

Poppy, Esme, Oleanna, Gracie and Kate, 2014
"Known for her expressive studies of women and children, these new large panels represent a move away from the intimacy characteristic of Chantal Joffe's previous work, and into a realm where the play between physical reality and imagery becomes more apparent. Her fluid and deliberately disintegrating painting style is carried out on a scale that boldly distorts the familiar figurative elements of her work, and serves to heighten the sense of the physicality of paint and the process of painting itself. ..."
Victoria Miro
Interview Magazine
Arnolfini
Apollo Magazine
W - Chantal Joffe

The Fighting Temeraire - J. M. W. Turner (1838)

"The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil painting by the English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, painted in 1838 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839. The painting depicts the 98-gun HMS Temeraire, one of the last second-rate ships of the line to have played a role in the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed up the Thames by a paddle-wheel steam tug in 1838, towards its final berth in Rotherhithe to be broken up for scrap. The painting hangs in the National Gallery, London, having been bequeathed to the nation by the artist in 1851. ... When Turner came to paint this picture he was at the height of his career, having exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, for 40 years. He was renowned for his highly atmospheric paintings in which he explored the subjects of the weather, the sea and the effects of light. ..."
Wikipedia
National Gallery - J.M.W. Turner: Painting The Fighting Temeraire (Video)
Turner, The Fighting Temeraire

November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014), 2018 November: The Slave Ship (1840), 2018 December: Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape

Best of Perception & Today Records (2012)

"... Perception Productions, a New York based label that ran from the late 60s through until 1974, was a strangely eclectic affair. Its roster stretched from a radical Afro-American poet through to the pop band King Harvest whose hit ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ became a massive hit for the UK band Toploader a couple of decades later. The inbetween points covered jazz, funk, vocal harmony soul and proto-disco. ... When they started up the label their initial signings suggested that the black high arts were their true love. The first year saw Shirley Horn, James Moody and the most famous of them all Dizzy Gillespie signed in quick succession. Gillespie is one of African-American music’s most important figures, who in the 1940s alongside Charlie Parker figureheaded the revolutionary changes in jazz that were labeled Bebop. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: The Best of Perception and Today Records 2:01:13

Trump Called the Coronavirus ‘Deadly’ in Private While Minimizing Its Risks in Public, Book Reveals

"President Trump acknowledged to the journalist Bob Woodward that he had knowingly played down the coronavirus earlier this year even though he was aware it was 'deadly' and vastly more serious than the seasonal flu. 'This is deadly stuff,' Mr. Trump said on Feb. 7 in one of a series of interviews Mr. Woodward conducted with the president for his upcoming book, 'Rage.' The Washington Post and CNN were given advance copies of the book and published details on Wednesday. CNN also provided audio of some of Mr. Trump’s exchanges with Mr. Woodward. ... Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, excoriated the president over the report. 'He knew and purposely played it down,' Mr. Biden said during a speech in Warren, Mich., Wednesday afternoon. 'Worse, he lied to the American people.' ..."
NY Times (Video)
NBC - Meet the Press Blog: Latest news, analysis and data driving the political discussion

Bob Woodward

"I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" - Grace Jones (1981)

"'I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)' is a single by Jamaican singer Grace Jones, released in 1981. The song is a reworking of Astor Piazzolla's 'Libertango'. It has sold 146,800 copies in France. The song juxtaposes 'Libertango', an Argentine tango classic written by composer and bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla (first recorded by Piazzolla himself in 1974), against a reggae arrangement and new lyrics penned by Jones herself and Barry Reynolds. Lyrically, it describes the darker side of Parisian nightlife. The song includes spoken parts in French: 'Tu cherches quoi? À rencontrer la mort ? Tu te prends pour qui ? Toi aussi tu détestes la vie...' which translates 'What are you looking for? For death? Who do you think you are? You hate life, you too...' ..."
W - "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)"
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)

Central Park Birder Turns Clash Into Graphic Novel About Racism

"We’ve all seen the video by now: Amy Cooper, a white woman, lying to police about Christian Cooper, a writer and longtime birder who politely asked her to move her dog out of a part of Central Park designated for birdwatching. Now, he’s written a graphic novel about birdwatching for DC Comics, who just made the first chapter available online (with the rest of the book set to publish next year). It’s a Bird is the story of Jules, a young Black birdwatcher whose binoculars show him the stories of Amadou Diallo, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. ..." (Renata D.)
LitHub
NY Times: Central Park Birder Turns Clash Into Graphic Novel About Racism
W - Central Park birdwatching incident
The Nation - Birding While Black: Just the Latest Bad Reason for White People to Call Police
YouTube: Central Park Birder Turns Clash Into Graphic Novel About Racism

Birder Christian Cooper

Roman Britain - The Work of Giants Crumbled

"Fall of Civilizations tells the story of what happens when societies collapse. A history podcast looking at the collapse of a different civilization each episode. What did they have in common? Why did they fall? And what did it feel like to watch it happen? Each episode, we look at a civilization that rose to glory, and then collapsed into the ashes of history. We ask: Why did it collapse? What happened next? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time? A vast ruined bath house, a fire-damaged poem and a world teetering on the brink of collapse. In this episode, we look at the collapse of Roman Britain. Find out how a great civilization grew up almost overnight on the island of Britannia, how it endured the test of centuries against barbarian invasions and foolish rulers, and what happened after its final dramatic collapse. ..."
Adam Smith (Video)
Soundcloud (Audio)
YouTube: Roman Britain - The Work of Giants Crumbled 1:03:29

VP Records

"VP Records is an independent Caribbean-owned record label in Queens, New York. The label is known for releasing music by notable artists in reggae, dancehall and soca. The VP Records label was founded in 1979 by the late Vincent 'Randy' Chin and his wife Patricia Chin, who owned the Randy's Records store in Kingston, Jamaica (as seen in the 1978 film Rockers), as well as the Studio 17 recording studios. In the mid-1970s, the Chins moved to New York City, setting up a record store in Brooklyn called VP Records in 1975, from which they sold and distributed records. In 1979, they relocated the store to Jamaica, Queens. ..."
Wikipedia
Red Bull: How a Kingston record store powered the Jamaican dancehall culture of today
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: VP 35th Anniversary Pop-Up Exhibit

Vincent and Pat Chin in the 1980s. Image via VP Records

Curtis Mayfield - New World Order (1996)

"In 1990, Curtis Mayfield was struck by a falling lighting rig during an outdoor concert in New York, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. New World Order was the gospel-tinged soul pioneer's triumphant return, his first and final studio release since the incident. In order to record his final album, he positioned his broken body by laying on his back so that he could intake the necessary oxygen to sing, one painstaking line at a time. ... With a team of contemporary R&B producers beside him to do the physical work he was no longer capable of, Mayfield miraculously delivered the album with stunning vocal delivery. The album's lyrical urgency and poetic prowess underscored the album's true musical power - the undeniable persevering power of Mayfield himself. ..."
Soul Music (Video)
W - New World Order
Genius (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: New World Order (Official Music Video), New World Order 13 videos

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975), 2014 September: Back to the World (1973), 2014 October: Omnibus (1995), 2015 March: "Freddie's Dead" (1972), 2019 January: Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go (1970)

‘Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s’ Explores a Vital Chapter in Downtown History

L–R: Ted Daniel, Milford Graves, Frank Lowe, Juma Sultan, Noah Howard, James DuBoise, unknown, Sam Rivers, and Ali Abuwi outside Studio We, 1973
"In the late 1960s and 1970s, with New York City’s socioeconomic scaffolding rickety and near collapse, abandoned industrial spaces in Lower Manhattan were buttressed by artists. Painters, appropriators, and sculptors converted nineteenth-century sweatshops into studios, and dance-happy DJs turned these same buildings into the first cathedrals of disco. One of the most fecund, though least documented, scenes was chiseled out by jazz musicians, most young, black, and with eclectic leanings. These post-Coltrane free players, and free thinkers — shunned by a mainstream in the midst of commodifying the 'counterculture' — lived, rehearsed, and performed in these loft spaces, usually in or around Soho. ..."
Voice
NY Times - Jazz Lofts: A Walk Through the Wild Sounds By Stanley Crouch (April 17, 1977)
W - Loft jazz
new york’s free jazz loft scene, with tom marcello’s photos from studio rivbea
University of California - Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s by Michael C. Heller, amazon

Meet the “artist laureate” of the East River

“Henderson Houses”
"The East River—its bridges, boats, and natural beauty—has inspired centuries of artists. But few have depicted the river with the richness and romanticism of Woldemar Neufeld. Neufeld’s journey to New York City was marked by tragedy. Born in Southern Russia in 1909, his Mennonite family immigrated to Waterloo, Ontario, after his father was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920 following the Russian Revolution, states the Waterloo Public Library. After establishing himself as an artist in 1933, he continued studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Case Western Reserve University. In the mid-1940s, he, his wife, and his young family moved to Manhattan. ..."
Ephemeral New York
Woldemar Neufeld

“East River in Winter”

Today Belongs to Workers

"For most Americans, Labor Day marks a change in the seasons: summer has ended, football is about to begin, and millions of students return to school. Celebrations consist of taking advantage of deep discounts on patio furniture and mattresses. Not that there’s much political enthusiasm for Labor Day on the Left, either. Many depict it as a tokenistic 'gift' from capitalist politicians who wanted a sanitized May Day, that could capture militancy and disperse it into 'responsible' channels. This narrative calls Labor Day a 'bosses’ holiday' that marks the working class’s historic defeat. This not only misrepresents the day’s history, but also forces us to choose one holiday over the other, as if there were not enough room on the calendar for two days that celebrate workers. ..."
Jacobin
W - Labor history of the United States

2015 September: Take a Labor Day Tour of Blue-Collar Art, 2018 September: When Labor Day Meant Something

Battle of Crécy

The Battle of Crécy, from a 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Jean Froissart's Chronicles
"The Battle of Crécy (known in some older English sources as 'Cressy') took place on 26 August 1346 in north-east France between a French army commanded by King Philip VI and an English army led by King Edward III. The French attacked the English while they were traversing northern France during the Hundred Years' War resulting in an English victory and heavy loss of life among the French. ... The English then laid siege to the port of Calais. The battle crippled the French army's ability to relieve the siege; the town fell to the English the following year and remained under English rule for more than two centuries, until 1558. Crécy established the effectiveness of the longbow as a dominant weapon on the Western European battlefield. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Hundred Years' War: Battle of Crecy 1346

Map of the route of Edward III's chevauchée of 1346

Young Marble Giants- Wurlitzer Jukebox (1979)

"Most music – well, unless it is totally experimental and off the wall – has roots. You can see where it has come from, what influences play upon it, what the inspiration is. With the benefit of hindsight you can also see where it was going, what it would lead to. There is none of this with Young Marble Giants. They can’t be compared to anybody else – either in their past or their future. They arrived in 1978, split up in 1980, and released one album and two EPs. YMG were like nothing before and since. Colossal Youth (the album) was their first release i.e. before the EPs and it turned up in 1980, like nothing else at the time, so different, but perfectly formed. It was if they had followed a different path to get where they were; it was just a different kind of music. ..."
Toppermost (Video)

2015 August: Young Marble Giants

Cooking with Italo Calvino - Valerie Stivers

The piecrust Tower of Babel. From the bottom: plain, chocolate almond, rosemary, oatmeal, and mascarpone.
"In the novel The Baron in the Trees, by Italo Calvino (1923–1985), Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, a young man from a noble family, apple of his parents’ eyes, climbs a tree one night during dinner—because he is refusing to eat his dinner—and then never comes down for the rest of his life. It’s a strong stance on a meal. It’s also a strong stance on our world, 'the world as it is,' as Calvino once wrote in a letter. The young baron retreats because he is revolted by the decadence, provincialism, militarism, stupidity, and corruption of his aristocratic family, who serve, among other things, as a stand-in for the Italian Communist Party. ..."
The Paris Review

2020 April: Invisible Cities (1972)