Elvis Presley was the first real rock and roll star. A white southerner who singing blues laced with country. Presley brought together music from both sides of the color line. Presley performed this music with a “natural hip swiveling sexuality” that made him a teen idol and a role model for generations of “cool” rebels.…
Maurits Cornelis Escher is widely acknowledged for his extensive use of distorted geometrical shapes, tessellations and spatial illusions creating a unique art form that was admired by artists and mathematicians. Through these works of art he contributed to the world of math without having any extensive training or high academic achievements, but yet and still…
Cinema was first introduced to Japan in 1896 when the Kinetoscope, invented by Thomas Edison three years earlier, was imported to Kobe. The first public showing of a film was held on 25 November. This was soon followed by showings in Osaka, Tokyo and the rest of Japan. In February 1897, the Cinematographe, invented by…
The “king of instruments” has a long history, one which can arguably be traced to the concept of a collection of “fixed-pitched pipes blown by a single player (such as the panpipes)” (Randel 583). The first examples of pipe organs with the basic features of today can be traced to the third century B.C.E. in…
Elia Kazan, his Turkish name “Kazanjoglous,” was born in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey to Greek parents. At the age of four he moved with his family to the United States and settled in New York City. Elia Kazan attended formal education at Williams College in Massachusetts; he later studied at prestigious Yale University’s Drama school.…
We want more than a mere photograph of nature. We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity. An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one’s innermost heart.” (E.M.)…
Domenikos Theotokopoulos was the last and perhaps the greatest mannerist of all time. Born on the island of Crete, Domenikos Theotokopoulos acquired the name El Greco, the Greek, in Italy and Spain. He was first trained in the Venetian School by an unknown Cretanian artist still working under the Byzantine tradition. After working as an…
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are stories of inhumane beings causing destruction and agony for the main characters until the time of their defeat. These two classic horror stories possess similar character types which contrast in key elements. Each story includes a protagonist, villain and secondary character. The manner in which these characters…
In 1941, war loomed around every corner of America. It lurked like a plague, taking the lives of innocent people and instilling hatred and mistrust in the American society. Homes were broken, careers were lost, and hope soon faded as tension grew overseas. It was during this time when Theodore Seuss Geisel decided to battle…
Born on May 26th 1895 in New Jersey, Dorothea Lange had a rough childhood. Contracting polio before the age of eight, she walked with a limp for most of her life. Instead of studying and working on an education, Lange spent most of her time wandering the streets on New York. Finding pictures along these…
Standing on a cliff overlooking the River Wear in England, Durham Cathedral began construction in 1093 A.D. and was finally completed in 1133. It was intentionally built just to the south of Durham Castle, so that the two buildings together would present a formidable defensive position against attacks from the north. Because of the constant…
De-Stijl(The Style),also called ” Neoplasticism” is recognizable by the use of straight horizontal and vertical lines as well as the use of the primary colors red, yellow and blue. They also used the colors black, white and gray. It is a style that went back to the fundamental elements of the art: color and form,…
The movie, Do the Right Thing, by Spike Lee is a hard hitting drama that deals with violence and racism in today’s society. This film is set in a primarily black neighborhood in close to the present time. Right in the center of this neighborhood stands a pizza parlor that is owned and operated by…
The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller that was first produced in 1953, is based on the true story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Miller wrote the play to parallel the situations in the mid-twentieth century of Alger Hiss, Owen Latimore, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, and Senator McCarthy, if only suggestively. (Warshow 116)…
Rudolph Diesel was a German engineer who in 1892 created the diesel engine, a type of internal combustion engine. He was born on the 18th of March, 1858 in Paris. Rudolph was born into a poor family and was surrounded by poverty almost all of his life, making for a very unhappy childhood. Diesel started…
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, and directed by Robert Weine. It was produced in 1919 by Erich Pommer for Decla-Bioscop. 1919 was a year in which the movie industry was transformed into a giant industry. Although the movie was produced in 1919, it was not released in…
The film Since You Went Away was released in 1944. This epic film attempted to relate to the American audience that was dealing with the war foreclosing and the flux of soldiers coming home at the time. The Hollywood studios were constantly trying to do their part for the war buy making films about the…
The motion picture Dead Man Walking provided a non-fiction insight into the world of crime, justice, and capital punishment. The film cast several characters from different backgrounds and opinion sets in direct conflict with one another. Several small topics and one major topic, capital punishment, were explored over the duration of the movie. While the…
In Cool Hand Luke, the movie begins with the word, VIOLATION, across the screen. The word is from a parking meter and sets the tone for the entire movie. Luke Jackson, the title character, is arrested for cutting off the heads of the town’s parking meters while drunk, or in legal terms, for destroying municipal…
In Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, King Lear, the issue of sight and its relevance to clear vision is a recurring theme. Shakespeare’s principal means of portraying this theme is through the characters of Lear and Gloucester. Although Lear can physically see, he is blind in the sense that he lacks insight, understanding, and direction. In contrast,…
