Big Brother and the Holding Company by Robert Crumb

Crumb illustrated both sides of the Cheap Thrills album in the summer of 1968 for Janis Joplin.
Columbia Records decided to use what Crumb originally intended as the back of the album for its front cover.
The ideia was to represent each music in the album as a single frame.


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Steven Heller - Understanding Graphic Design text
Robert Crumb Interview

The anarchic city

Kowloon Walled City was a densely populated, largely ungoverned settlement in Kowloon, Hong Kong.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, it was controlled by Triads and had high rates of prostitution, gambling, and drug use.
In 1987, the Walled City contained 33,000 residents within its 25,000 m2


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Up There

:: Up There

Shot high above the streets of NY, Up There reveals the dying craft of large-scale hand painted advertising,
and the untold story of the painters struggling to keep it alive.


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official website
ghost signs blog

Nakagin Capsule Tower

::Nicolai Ourossoff : Future Vision Banished to the Past

How old does a building have to be before we appreciate its value? And when does its cultural importance trump practical considerations?

Those are the questions that instantly come to mind over the likely destruction of Kisho Kurokawa’s historic Nakagin Capsule Tower.

A rare built example of Japanese Metabolism, a movement whose fantastic urban visions became emblems of the country’s postwar cultural resurgence, the 1972 Capsule Tower is in a decrepit state. Its residents, tired of living in squalid, cramped conditions, voted two years ago to demolish it and are now searching for a developer to replace it with a bigger, more modern tower. That the building is still standing has more to do with the current financial malaise than with an understanding of its historical worth.

>> full article

Wheatfield - a Confrontation

In 1982, Agnes Denes planted a two-acre field of wheat in a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan.
The Project yielded 1,000 lbs. of wheat in the middle of New York City to comment on "human values and misplaced priorities".


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Frank Rijkaard spits at Rudi Völler’s curly mullet during the 1990 World Cup in Italy

The German shows it to the referee, to which Rijkaard reacts by pulling the German’s hair. This time Völler gets a yellow card.

Afterwards Rijkaard intervenes once again, pulls Völler’s ear and spits again, this time hitting the striker in the neck. After a near punch-up between the two, both are sent off.

On his way to the dressing room Rijkaard runs past Völler - and spits again.
In the catacombs the Dutchman reportedly grabbed the German by the throat and a brief fistfight followed.

Germany, meanwhile, ends up winning the game.

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.
In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world.
A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape


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Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide
The Wow Climax

Disneyland Memorial Orgy

The Disneyland Memorial Orgy is a cartoon illustration created by Wally Wood for satirist Paul Krassner's humor publication The Realist.
Published shortly after the death of Walt Disney, the artwork was commissioned by Krassner to portray the liberated behavior of the cartoon characters featured in many of Disney's animated films.

Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen was born in 1967 in Washington, D.C. and received her BA in printmaking from Colorado College in 1989.

Early experiences as a librarian and bookbinder contribute to her encyclopedic knowledge of signs drawn from American folk tradition, printmaking, and letterpress. Kilgallen has a love of “things that show the evidence of the human hand.”
Painting directly on the wall, Kilgallen creates room-size murals that recall a time when personal craft and handmade signs were the dominant aesthetic. Strong, independent women walking, surfing, fighting, and biking feature prominently in the artist’s compositions.

She died in June 2001 in San Francisco, where she lived with her husband, Barry McGee.

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Margaret Kilgallen at Art:21

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point and line to plane