February 25, 2013
The Kit-Cat Klock is an art deco novelty style wall clock in the shape of a grinning black cat with cartoon eyes that roll horizontally in sync with a pendulum tail that wags beneath. The clock is traditionally colored black, but models in other colors/styles are available. It first appeared during the 1930s. The clock is an iconic symbol of kitchens in pop culture. Having changed very little in the intervening years, the first clock was made in 1932 by the California Clock Company in Portland, Oregon.
The first generation of clocks, manufactured in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, have two paws, while newer models have four paws and a bow tie. The words ‘Kit-Cat’ were added to the clock face in the 1980s. The original clocks were plug-in, but most models sold since the late 1980s use batteries. The manufacturer estimates that the clock has sold on average at the rate of one every three minutes for the last 50 years.
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February 25, 2013
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first character from animation to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences. Felix’s origins remain disputed. Australian cartoonist/film entrepreneur Pat Sullivan, owner of the Felix character, claimed during his lifetime to be its creator.
However, American animator Otto Messmer, Sullivan’s lead animator, has also been credited as such. What is certain is that Felix emerged from Sullivan’s studio in NYC, and cartoons featuring the character enjoyed success and popularity in 1920s popular culture. Aside from the animated shorts, Felix starred in a comic strip (drawn by Messmer) beginning in 1923, and his image soon adorned merchandise such as ceramics, toys and postcards. Several manufacturers made stuffed Felix toys. Jazz bands such as Paul Whiteman’s played songs about him (1923’s ‘Felix Kept On Walking’ and others).
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February 18, 2013
‘Harlem Shake‘ is a song recorded by American DJ and producer Baauer. It was released as a free digital download by Mad Decent imprint label Jeffree’s in 2012. The song incorporates samples of growling-lion sounds and Plastic Little’s 2001 song ‘Miller Time,’ specifically its line ‘then do the Harlem shake.’
In 2013, a user-submitted video set to ‘Harlem Shake’ became a viral hit on YouTube. The song features an undulating synth, harsh snares, and a mechanical bassline. It is categorized by Resident Advisor’s Andrew Ryce as a hip hop and bass song, while David Wagner of ‘The Atlantic’ describes its music as trap, a sub-genre with stylistic origins in EDM and Southern hip hop.
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February 15, 2013
A hi-top fade is a style of haircut where hair on the sides is cut off or kept very short and hair on the top of the head is very long (in contrast, a low fade is when hair on the top is kept shorter). The hi-top has been a trend symbolizing the Golden Era of hip hop and urban contemporary music during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The hi-top fade was common among young African Americans between 1986 to 1993 and to a lesser extent in the mid-1990s (1994-1996).
The style fell completely out of fashion by 1997, though it has slowly made a return in the public eye in the late 2000s. In the hip hop community throughout the mid-1980s, young African-Americans leaned towards Jheri curls or simple haircuts without tapers or fades of any sort.
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February 15, 2013
The Zeitgeist [tsahyt-gahyst] (spirit of the age or spirit of the time) is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time. For example, the Zeitgeist of modernism typified and influenced architecture, art, and fashion during much of the 20th century. The German word ‘Zeitgeist’ is often attributed to the philosopher Georg Hegel, but he never actually used the word. In his works such as ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of History,’ he uses the phrase ‘der Geist seiner Zeit’ (‘the spirit of his time’)—for example, ‘no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit.’
Other philosophers who were associated with such ideas include Herder and Spencer and Voltaire. The concept counters the ‘Great Man theory’ popularized by Thomas Carlyle which sees history as the result of the actions of heroes and geniuses.
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February 13, 2013
Chet Helms (1942 – 2005), often called the father of San Francisco’s 1967 ‘Summer of Love,’ was a music promoter and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in the late Sixties. Helms was the founder and manager of Big Brother and the Holding Company and recruited Janis Joplin as its lead singer.
He was a producer and organizer, helping to stage free concerts and other cultural events at Golden Gate Park, the backdrop of San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967, as well as at other venues, including the Avalon Ballroom. He was the first producer of psychedelic light-show concerts at the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom and was instrumental in helping to develop bands that had the distinctive San Francisco Sound.
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February 10, 2013
Naked Lunch is the 1991 film adaptation written and directed by David Cronenberg, of William S. Burroughs’ novel of the same name. Rather than attempting a straight adaptation, Cronenberg took a few elements from the book and combined them with elements of Burroughs’ life, creating a hybrid film about the writing of the book rather than the book itself. Peter Weller starred as William Lee, the pseudonym Burroughs used when he wrote ‘Junkie.’
Lee is an exterminator who finds that his wife Joan is stealing his insecticide (pyrethrum) to use as a drug. When Lee is arrested by the police, he begins hallucinating because of ‘bug powder’ exposure. He believes he is a secret agent whose controller (a giant bug) assigns him the mission of killing Joan, who is an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Lee dismisses the bug and its instructions and kills it. He returns home to find Joan sleeping with Hank, one of his writer friends. Shortly afterwards, he accidentally kills her while attempting to shoot a drinking glass off her head in imitation of William Tell.
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February 7, 2013
In the summer of 2008 conceptual artist Steve Powers presented a work that came to be known as the Coney Island waterboarding thrill ride. As originally conceived Powers saw the public watching volunteers undergoing actual waterboarding.
‘The Washington Post’ reported that Powers brought in Mike Ritz, a former US official experienced in administering waterboarding, for a one time demonstration of waterboarding on volunteers. This demonstration was not open to the general public, but rather for an invited audience. Powers himself was one of the volunteers.
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February 7, 2013
Steve Powers (b. 1968) is a New York City artist who at one time wrote graffiti in Philadelphia and New York under the name ESPO (‘Exterior Surface Painting Outreach’). Powers is from Philadelphia’s Overbrook neighborhood; he graduated from Robert E. Lamberton High School in 1987 and took classes at The Art Institute of Philadelphia and the University of the Arts. In 1994, he moved to New York with fellow writer and designer Ari Forman, in order to expand the reach of his magazine, ‘On the Go.’
ESPO’s work often blurred the lines of legality. For example, pieces like ‘Greetings from ESPOLand’ utilized the style of the Asbury Park Billboards and appeared to be a legitimate billboard. In 1997 ESPO began his most ambitious non-commissioned art. He painted on storefront grates in Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, TriBeCa, and the South Bronx, covering the entire grate with white or silver paint and then using black to make each grate into a letter in his name.
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February 7, 2013
XVALA is an art project created by Jeff Hamilton (b. 1970). XVALA typically focuses on pieces that address celebrity and popular culture and he refers to this as ‘Tabloid Art.’ XVALA collaborated with sculptor Daniel Edwards on ‘The Brangelina,’ a house located in Oklahoma. In 2010, Jeff Hamilton walked away from his art and the name XVALA. Hamilton passed the name on to unnamed, upcoming artist.
‘Fear Google’ is the first street art sticker designed for the Post-PC era and was launched in 2010, the same year as Apple’s iPad and other Post-PC devices. The stickers fear message shows society’s growing inability to disconnect from the internet. First distributed by friends of the artist and some Apple Store employees the first stickers appeared on the California city streets.
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February 6, 2013
Marc Quinn (b. 1964) is a British artist and one of a loose group known as the Young British Artists. He is known for ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ (a sculpture of Alison Lapper, an English artist who was born without arms) and ‘Self’ (a sculpture of his head made with his own frozen blood). Quinn has used blood, ice, and faeces to make sculptures; his work sometimes refers to scientific developments.
Quinn’s oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual. Quinn’s sculpture, paintings and drawings often deal with the distanced relationship we have with our bodies, highlighting how the conflict between the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ has a grip on the contemporary psyche. In 1999, Quinn began a series of marble sculptures of amputees as a way of re-reading the aspirations of Greek and Roman statuary and their depictions of an idealized whole.
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February 6, 2013
Daniel Edwards (born 1965) is a contemporary artist whose pieces address celebrity and popular culture in ways that have often stirred controversy. His work is generally accompanied by press releases. He includes the idea of promotion and associative fame in his own marketing of his art. His work includes a sculpture of the disembodied head of Ted Williams, a life-sized statue of Britney Spears giving birth while nude on her hands and knees on a bearskin rug (Edwards titled the piece ‘Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,’ explaining that it symbolized Spears’ decision to put childbirth ahead of her career; Britney Spears actually had a caesarean section), a bust of Senator Hillary Clinton, and a 25-foot (7.6 m) bust of Fidel Castro.
In an Associated Press interview, Edwards asserted that he incorporates celebrity stories because: ‘You’re bombarded with these stories. And there’s a thread that winds back to the art. That’s not a bad thing. People are interested in sex, and it works for art as well.’
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