“Six Crimee comprises three panels that present six haloed black male heads against a background of energetic green brushstrokes. The work’s visual vocabulary is paradigmatic of Neo-Expressionist painting of 1980s New York, while its schematic lines and symbols are reminiscent of the graffiti Basquiat scrawled on building façades throughout lower Manhattan when he was involved with that movement” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles)
Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.
Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.
1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
Resources:
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read | September 22-28, 2013
Kenneth Noland, Spread. 1958. Oil on canvas. 117 x 117 in. (297.2 x 297.2 cm). Grey Art Gallery, New York Univ., New York NY.
Kenneth Noland’s art can be categorized as Color Field painting, or as part of Clement Greenberg’s “Post-Painterly Abstraction” movement, but Noland’s body of work demonstrates so much more. After studying under the likes of Bolotowsky and Albers, and working alongside fellow second-generation abstractionists like Frankenthaler and Louis, Noland created several signature styles of abstract imagery. These styles were comprised of targets, chevrons, striped patterns and shaped canvases. Noland’s paintings are characterized by reduced, minimalist and strikingly simple compositions of line and color. In this regard, Noland’s art has influenced a wide range of contemporary abstractionists who continue to experiment with ultra-simplified forms in order to tap into basic human emotions.
“Eugene Martin (1938-2005) is best known for his imaginative, complex mixed media collages on paper, his often gently humorous pencil and pen and ink drawings, and his paintings on paper and canvas that may incorporate whimsical allusions to animal, machine and structural imagery among areas of “pure”, constructed, biomorphic, or disciplined lyrical abstraction. Martin called many of his works straddling both abstraction and representation ‘satirical abstracts’.”
© Estate of Eugene J. Martin
Selected works by Eugene J. Martin
(© 2013 Estate of Eugene James Martin. All Rights Reserved)
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References
“My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn’t live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.”
-Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann, The Acrobats, 1939. Oil on canvas, Center panel, 78 1/2 x 67″, Side panels: 78 1/2 x 35 1/2″. Private collection, St. Louis, Missouri
Louis Valtat (1869-1952), Young Women in the Garden, c. 1898. Oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
“Valtat belongs to a generation of artists in between the Impressionists and post 1900 revolutionaries. It could have been said about him that he represents the indispensable link that accounts for the transition from Monet to Matisse.”
~ Georges Peillex in the text for the supplement of the exhibition catalog entitled Louis Valtat; Retrospective Centenaire (1869-1968), Genève: Petit Palais, 1969.
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References:
Paris The Luminous Years: Towards The Making Of The Modern
Paris The Luminous Years is the first television program to look at the city from a new and fresh perspective — the importance of a particular place in artistic creation. The film tells the story of Paris as magnet; the catalyst and the transforming force that attracted the finest talents of the era, molding the lives and work of two remarkable generations.
Through intriguing back stories of crucial relationships and of major turning points in the trajectory of the modern arts,Paris The Luminous Years reveals why breakthroughs like Picasso’s radical “Les Desmoiselles D’Avignon” that initiated Cubism and Stravinsky’s violent “The Rite of Spring” that pioneered modern music, could only happen in the international, fervent atmosphere of early twentieth century Paris.
A production of THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, The Eloquent Image LLC, INA, and ARTE France in association with YLE Teema, Paris The Luminous Years is written, directed and produced by Perry Miller Adato. Margaret Smilow is executive producer; Junko Tsunashima and Kristin Lovejoy are producers; Kris Liem is editor.
“My mother was bein’ carried away on this camel. And there was a big caravan, she’s sayin’, ‘Well, I’m gonna see you now,’ and she’s goin’ under these trees, you could see the shade, you know, the leaf patterns across her face when she was goin’ under … She’s sayin’, ‘Well, I won’t be seein’ you too much anymore, you know. I’ll see you.’ And then about two years after that she dies, you know. And I said, ‘Yeah, but where are you goin’?’ and all that, you know. I remember that. I will always remember that. I never did forget … there are some dreams you never forget.” ―Hendrix in a December 1967 interview conducted by Meatball Fulton
Angel came down from heaven yesterday, She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me. And she told me a story yesterday, About the sweet love between the moon and the deep blue sea. And then she spread her wings high over me, She said she's gonna come back tomorrow. And I said "Fly on my sweet angel, Fly on through the sky. Fly on my sweet angel, Tomorrow I'm gonna be by your side." Sure enough, this morning came unto me, Silver wings silhouette against the child's sunrise. And my angel, she said unto me, "Today is the day for you to rise. Take my hand, you're gonna be my man, you're gonna rise." And then she took me high over yonder, lord. And I said "Fly on my sweet angel, Fly on through the sky. Fly on my sweet angel, Forever I will be by your side."*Originally recorded under the name ‘Little Wing’
References
“I don’t follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.”
-Raoul Duffy
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