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In 1965, SHIRLEY MULDOWNEY (born 1940) beat down the doors of the National Hot Rod Association and became the first licensed female drag racer. And despite the signature pink cars monogrammed with her nickname, “Cha-Cha” […]
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Perhaps JÜRGEN HABERMAS (born 1929) is most dear to us for developing and elaborating over the course of decades an intricately woven Grand Theory founded in the notion that sincere, earnest public discussion is the […]
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It’s never been easy to like Eric Reed Boucher, better known as JELLO BIAFRA (born 1958). In my New Jersey high school, the mainstream kids were offended the very idea of the Dead Kennedys, while […]
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While it’s conventional to call Oliver Hardy a “straight man,” it would be more accurate to think of the character created by British comic actor STAN LAUREL (1890- 1965) as the duo’s “curved man.” Though […]
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The 1960s-80s comic series Corto Maltese, by Italian-born cartoonist HUGO PRATT (1927-95), was — on the surface — a 1930s-style pulp adventure that improved on Terry & The Pirates and the like through its attention […]
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The name MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE (1904-71) conjures up an image: a woman with a camera balanced atop one of the chromed, art-deco eagles that guard the upper reaches of New York’s Chrysler Building. Though she didn’t […]
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You can grok many modernists through the forms of tradition they undermine and idolize. While Irish lore loomed mighty for WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939), the more scandalous tradition which beguiled the poet was the practical […]
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EGON SCHIELE (1890-1918) was the best thing about the blizzard I spent in Vienna. I had gone to see the remnants of a nervous splendor, expecting well-behaved aesthetic souvenirs from a once-hypermodern past. But when […]
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In more than 120 television specials JACQUES-YVES COUSTEAU (1910–97) portrayed a floating utopia in which perfectly tanned, massively skilled argonauts roamed the seven seas in search of beauty and danger, supported by donations and calendar […]
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What did it take to be the most scandalous performer in Weimar Berlin? ANITA BERBER (1899-1928) had a penchant for going out in public naked under her sable wrap, affairs with married women and judges, […]
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Called by collaborator Moss Hart “the greatest amateur I ever met,” COLE PORTER (1891-1964) treated the plots and characters of his Broadway shows and Hollywood films as shim-thin pretexts for his brilliant, brittle, notably frank […]
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NANCY SINATRA (born 1940) was everywhere in the mid-1960s: dressed in tight leather as a motorcycle mama in The Wild Angels, blowing minds with Lee Hazlewood and Sammy Davis, Jr. on her Movin’ With Nancy […]
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Filmmaker CHANTAL AKERMAN (born 1950), the arthouse precursor to Charlie Kaufman, Jem Cohen, and even Sam Mendes, took one small step for a woman, and one giant leap into interstitial space, with her investigations of […]
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PANCHO VILLA (born Doroteo Aranga Arámbula; 1878-1923) was an outlaw with a world-class strategic intelligence who became a general during the chaotic and unending Mexican Revolution. John Reed was present in the Governor’s palace in […]
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With his casual athleticism and big white teeth, with his good-looking features that somehow fail to coalesce into good looks, BRUCE DERN (born 1936) is the dropout personified — the kid who had every advantage […]
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