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In a 1946 letter to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, poet Charles Olson articulated what has become a quietly influential conception of historiography in poetry circles. “There has been, is too much of everything, including knowledge,” he contended, quite presciently, “because it has not been winno
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The first instance of a space discovery affecting art was likely 1608's Somnium, a novel by astronomer Johannes Kepler about a trip to the moon following a pathway revealed by a demon. Ron Miller includes the curious story in The Art of Space, published this October by Zenith Press, which chronicles
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Dorothy Iannone describes her trip to Reykjavík in 1967 as the “journey which seems to have made all other journeys possible.” It was there she met the artist Dieter Roth, with whom she swiftly fell in love and for whom she left her husband and a comfortable life in the United States.
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The Alps today are different mountains from when the first 19th-century photographers hoisted heavy plate cameras up their craggy sides. Glaciers are in retreat, ski resorts are firmly lodged into slopes, and human infrastructure crawls back and forth steadily up their inclines.
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LOS ANGELES — As he raced against cancer to finish his fourth and final book, Leonardo’s Brain, author/inventor/surgeon Leonard Shlain was motivated by the possibility that his manuscript-in-progress might help answer a very vital question: How can mankind achieve a more creative and peaceful future
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Some photographers take relentless notes in pocket journals, others share their discoveries in real time on Instagram. The two methods are different approaches to the contemporary photographic process, which is the subject of a new book, Photographers' Sketchbooks, by Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formh
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Many great inventions came out of the Victorian era, from the photograph to the electric lightbulb. The elastic opera hat and the anti-cholera belt, however, are not among their illustrious numbers.
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Last month, the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History opened its doors on a clutter of curios in East London.
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Photographer McNair Evans's faith in his father was rattled when the patriarch died and the secret of the family agricultural business being near insolvency was revealed.
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Long brushed off as a horrendous excuse for a film, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’s epic flop Showgirls may have more than meets the eye. Or, at least, its vulgar superficiality may be worth critical re-evaluation
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While visiting Philadelphia a number of years ago, the poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum asked me “Is Trevor Winkfield a real person?”
Books
I overheard a man suggest to another that Father’s Day be renamed. For him, and for so many other Black men he knew, there was or is no biological father to celebrate the holiday with.