It is not often that we consider how other people see the world. We invade, impose, talk over, hover and seek to dominate others and they in turn do the same thing. Most times it is just equal push back. Nobody wins and or loses, except when we play the same game with children.
In his “Where the Wild Things Are” Maurice Sendak, who passed away in 2012, reminded many of us about how changeling is to be child.
A Big Thanks To Max!
I really thought I was raising whatever back in the day when I graduated from “kitten” or “Cuban” heels to a 2 incher. Of course, seeing women prancing around on sky high stilettos today has put me in my place. I don’t /won’t wear them, but I think 6 inch needle heels are fierce and fascinating. The folks at the Brooklyn Museum think so too evidently. They’re putting on a show: ”Killer Heels: The Art of the High Heeled Shoe” until February 15, 2015.
“Killer Heels explores fashion’s most provocative accessory. From the high platform chopines of sixteenth-century Italy to the glamorous stilettos on today’s runways and red carpets, the exhibition looks at the high-heeled shoe’s rich and varied history and its enduring place in our popular imagination.”
Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
Discovery is what Spotify has been all about for me. I’m finding musicians and music that I’ve not heard before or music that I thought I would never hear again.
Listening to Joe Cuba brings visions and memories of Hunts Point Palace, in the Bronx, where both Latin and Jazz bands performed almost every weekend. For 3 to 4 dollars we got to dance and listen to Coltrane, Miles, Tito Puente live like they were our neighbors and friends.
Music and Musicians where so accessible, they didn’t have an entourage or handlers, they weren’t rock stars. Spotify has made the world a better place.
Read more“The vision of the Harlem Book Fair is to partner with local and national leadership organizations under the banner of literacy awareness…”
“Now Playing: Hand-Painted Poster Art from the 1910s Through the 1950s”
At the beginning of the last century, posters that hung in the lobby of the old neighborhood movie palaces were simple black and white drawings. Very quickly, theater owners realized that these cardboard advertisements brought in customers.
The posters then became more artful and sophisticated – pretty, or dramatic (Valentino), or scary (“King Kong”), or, just high style (Gloria Swanson rendered in Art Deco), to the lurid “Noir” films of the 50’s.
These examples of movie art have been collected into a nice coffee table book.
“Now Playing: Hand Painted Poster Art from the 1910s Through the 1950s”
(Academy of Motion Pictures/Angel City Press – hardcover, 14″ x 11″, 160 pages)
The Studio Museum in Harlem offers an installation that looks at visions of prospects to come thru art. “The Shadows Took Shape is a dynamic interdisciplinary exhibition exploring contemporary art through the lens of Afrofuturist aesthetics. Coined in 1994 by writer Mark Dery in his essay “Black to the Future,” the term “Afrofuturism” refers to a creative and intellectual genre that emerged as a strategy to explore science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and pan-Africanism. With roots in the avant-garde musical stylings of sonic innovator Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, 1914–1993), Afrofuturism has been used by artists, writers and theorists as a way to prophesize the future, redefine the present and reconceptualize the past.”
“The twenty-nine artists featured in The Shadows Took Shape work in a wide variety of media, including photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture and multimedia installation. Participating artists include Derrick Adams, John Akomfrah, Laylah Ali, Edgar Arceneaux, Sanford Biggers, Edgar Cleijne + Ellen Gallagher, William Cordova (in collaboration with Nyeema Morgan and Otabenga Jones & Associates), Cristina De Middel, Khaled Hafez, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Kira Lynn Harris, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Wayne Hodge, David Huffman, Cyrus Kabiru, Wanuri Kahiu, Hew Locke, Mehreen Murtaza, Wangechi Mutu, Harold Offeh, The Otolith Group, Robert Pruitt, Sun Ra, RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Larissa Sansour, Cauleen Smith, William Villalongo and Saya Woolfalk.”
The Shadows Took Shape
The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, NYC