Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Led Zeppelin Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Episode 4 Of Video Series

As part of its ongoing 50th anniversary celebration, Led Zeppelin has launched a new video series on its official YouTube channel looking at key highlights of the legendary band’s history.

The first episode of the Led Zeppelin History series begins in September 1968, when the band began recording its self-titled debut album at London’s Olympic Studios, starting with “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” and “You Shook Me.”

Using archival footage of the group in concert as a backdrop, and soundtracked by “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” the video goes on to note that the album was self-financed, was recorded in just 30 hours, and cost 1,782 pounds — equivalent of around $2,300 in today’s money.

The clip also offers the following quotes from the band members about the making of Led Zeppelin I:

Jimmy Page: “The group had only been together for two-and-a-half weeks when we recorded it.”

Robert Plant: “We weren’t in a position at that time to be able to block whole studio time.”

John Paul Jones: “We did it in about 15 hours, with another 15 hours for mixing, so it was 30 hours in all.”

Page: “We deliberately aimed at putting down what we could reproduce live on stage.”

Check the Led Zeppelin YouTube channel soon for the second episode of the series.

Exhibitions: “Andy Warhol: Portraits” At McNay Art Museum In San Antonio, TX

From McNay Art Museum website:

McNay Warhol Exhibit San AntonioAndy Warhol: Portraits features over 120 paintings, prints, photographs, and films that depict the artist’s favorite genre: the portrait. This exhibition presents a snapshot of New York’s art and social scene from the 1960s through the 1980s through portraits of Warhol’s friends and patrons, movie stars and musicians, and celebrities of the day that range in style from the pristinely-idealized to the heartbreakingly-raw. Personalities who populated Warhol’s inner circle are represented; some widely recognized names include Joan Collins, Debbie Harry, Dennis Hopper, Mick Jagger, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol himself. The presentation takes a multi-dimensional approach to the work, exploring the formal, conceptual, social, and political implications of portraiture, identity, and fame. Andy Warhol: Portraits invites the viewer into Warhol’s world, by examining the artist’s personal life, studio process, and use of a variety of mediums.

https://www.mcnayart.org/exhibitions/current/andy-warhol-portraits

Exhibitions: 19th Century Graphic Artist Alphonse Mucha’s “Art Nouveau” At The Poster House In NYC

From Poster House NYC website:

Poster House Alphonse Mucha Monaco Monte-Carlo 1897Alphonse Mucha, born in Bohemia, came to Paris in 1887. Over the next 8 years, he emerged from obscurity to become the most celebrated graphic designer of the Art Nouveau movement. His intricate designs and gorgeous subjects were so popular that he produced pattern books for fellow designers and students, and his publishers repurposed his advertisements for hundreds of other products.

“I predict you will be famous”

—Sarah Bernhardt

But his style and status all started when he met the legendary Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress of her day. Mucha’s first poster for her not only launched his graphic design career, but elevated her fame, as the public buzz for the image was completely unprecedented.

To read more:

https://posterhouse.org/exhibitions/mucha

Museum Reviews: Museum Of Modern Art To Debut “New MOMA” On October 21

“Stunning new galleries and spaces for performance and events will transform the Museum. Along with these physical changes, we’ll be showing our collection in new and unprecedented ways to bring more voices and perspectives to our galleries. Every visit will be an opportunity to discover something new and to connect to art and ideas that spark curiosity, debate, and inspiration.”

New MoMA Rendering 2019From our founding in 1929 to the current reimagination of the Museum, MoMA has grown from a bold experiment to New York’s destination for modern and contemporary art. Working with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Gensler, our continued evolution ensures that we always present the most innovative art and meet the changing needs of today’s audiences. To mark this exciting moment, you can explore our history on MoMA through Time, a website with over 100 groundbreaking, controversial, and wild stories from MoMA’s and MoMA PS1’s archives.

To read more click link below:

https://www.moma.org/about/new-moma?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MKT%20-%20Sarah%20Suzuki%20Other%20Voices%2020190708&utm_content=MKT%20-%20Sarah%20Suzuki%20Other%20Voices%2020190708+CID_f3ce14a3dd97f5ca3a7ad74c18e214d5&utm_source=campaignmonitor#an-extraordinary-collection-remixed

 

Road Trips: Mendocino Coast Offers Wind-Washed Cottages, Wine, Redwoods And Artware

From Wall Street Journal article by Ryan Haase:

“With its wind-washed cottages and water towers, the town of Mendocino looks like it was built by a seafaring crowd rather than a tree-felling one, even though forestry was once big business here. After it faded by the 1950s, artists came in and now Mendocino pumps out pottery, paintings, glassware, jewelry and woodwork.”

Mendocino Road Trip

NORTHERN California’s coastal stretches have long lured roadtrippers, even before John Steinbeck, his wife, Elaine, and their peripatetic poodle rumbled down the Pacific Coast in 1960. In “Travels With Charley,” Steinbeck famously enthused about ogling the “ambassadors from another time,” referring to the region’s ancient redwoods. Last summer, as wildfires raged uncomfortably close to those redwood forests, four-wheeled vacationers steered clear. By the year’s end, fires burned more than half a million acres in Northern California alone, but largely spared the coastal woods and villages. Now that the smoke is clear and driving-vacation season is shifting into high gear, we’ve designed a detailed three-night itinerary. You set out from San Francisco, snake through Mendocino County and then on to Humboldt County, with the landscape growing wilder with each mile.

Read more by clicking link below:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-quintessential-california-road-only-better-11558701425

“The Wizard Of Oz” (1939) May Be The Most Influential Baby Boomer Film Of All-Time

From “The Guardian”:

The Wizard of Oz at 80“…from Elton John’s albumGoodbye Yellow Brick Road to the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which owes as much to Oz as it does to Homer’s Odyssey. Joel Coen once said: “Every movie ever made is an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz.” In his 1992 essay about Fleming’s film, Salman Rushdie describes it as his “very first literary influence”. It was one of Derek Jarman’s favourite movies, and among the first he ever saw. (This is the key to its influence: the fact that everyone watches it in childhood. It seeps into your unconscious and stays there.) And there are the spin-offs, sequels and prequels – The WizReturn to OzOz the Great and PowerfulWicked.”

Eighty years ago, in the summer of 1939, 16-year-old Judy Garland appeared on cinema screens as the orphan Dorothy Gale, dreaming of escape from bleak, monochrome Kansas. “Find yourself a place where you won’t get into any trouble,” her aunt beseeches, too busy for poor old Dorothy, who soon breaks into song: “Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue / And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true”. Her wish is soon granted by a tornado that carries her to the gaudy, Technicolor Land of Oz, instilling her as an icon for misfits, migrants, gay kids, dreamers – anyone who has ever wanted to run away.

Read more by clicking the following link:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jun/17/how-the-world-fell-under-the-spell-of-the-wizard-of-oz

New Museum Exhibitions: Metropolitan Museum Of Art Features “The Moon In The Age Of Photography”

Apollo's Muse The Moon In the Age of Photography CatalogOn July 20, 1969, half a billion viewers around the world watched as the first images of American astronauts on the moon were beamed back to the earth. The result of decades of technical innovation, this thrilling moment in the history of images radically expanded the limits of human vision.

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography surveys visual representations of the moon from the dawn of photography through the present. In addition to photographs, the show features a selection of related drawings, prints, paintings, films, astronomical instruments, and cameras used by Apollo astronau

JULY 3–SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Metropolitan Museum of Art

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/apollos-muse-moon-photography

Culinary Arts: The Highly Specialized World Of A Water Sommelier

Water Sommelier Article“How would he describe water, then? It’s the stuff of life. A fantasia of flavour. It is the world in a glass. Riese’s water menus (yes, there are such things) offer everything from water “harvested from icebergs freshly carved off glaciers in the remote fjords” of Norway, to 600m-year-old prehistoric water from Australia. It is also, on occasion, a trifle pricey. A bottle of that glacier water will set you back $150.

He’s not a tap-water man then? On the contrary. To shun tap water is, Riese thinks, a snobbism. He himself drinks a lot of “the tap”. Unless he’s in New York of course. Or California. Or Majorca. And he didn’t much like it in Barcelona, either. Copenhagen, however, apparently has “incredible” tap water. As a general rule of thumb, Riese says, northern taps taste better.”

Specialized Water Menu The Economist 1843 Magazine

Economist 1843 Magazine

Read more in 1843 Magazine: https://www.1843magazine.com/and-finally/firstworldproblems/do-you-know-a-good-water-sommelier

 

 

Books For Boomers: “The Plaza” By Julie Satow Is “Social History At Its Best”

“In this definitive history, award-winning New York Times journalist Julie Satow not only pulls back the curtain on Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball and The Beatles’ first stateside visit — she also follows the money trail. THE PLAZA reveals how, during the Great Depression, it was a handful of rich, dowager widows who were the financial lifeline that saved the hotel, and how foreign money and the anonymous shell companies of today have transformed the iconic guest rooms into condominiums shielding ill-gotten gains — hollowing out parts of the hotel as well as the city around it.”

The Plaza Julie Satow

Read more about the book: http://www.juliesatow.com/the-plaza-wip

Boomers Healthy Sleep: Listen To Stephen Fry Read ‘Blue Gold’ About Southern France (Calm)

Stephen Fry is a national treasure in Britain, an Emmy winner, and the narrator of all 7 Harry Potter books.

About Sleep Stories: Calm created a natural sleep aid, in the form of bedtime stories for grown-ups called Sleep Stories.

Visit the “Calm” website for more information:

https://www.calm.com/narrators/41FcQWqIX/stephen-fry