Ninety years ago, Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Like a 20th-centurymystic, Kerouac sought spiritual enlightenment in the two-lane temple of the roadleading to the American West. Kicked out of college, wrecked by illness, divorced and looking at… More—
The woman’s slender frame is packed with an unimaginable energy: Not only does she possess nearly unlimited potential as an artist—she is also supporting the next generation of creative minds. More or less unbeknown to the public, Sofia Coppola has established a Los Angeles talent factory together with her brother, Roman. The year 2011 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the foundation of the Directors Bureau, a think tank between commerce and art. This bold combination is More—
This story of Charles Mingus begins with the story of his best friend in Los Angeles. Buddy Collette (1921–2010) was one of jazz’s greatest multi-instrumentalists and spent his whole life in LA. Both men grew up in the suburb of Watts with people from many different ethnic backgrounds—white, black, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and despite a sharp separation between different ethnic groups they moved between all of these worlds, which stimulated their creativity and had More—
“He was only forty-five when he died. It would have been better for this sensitive man that he had never come to Hollywood, never heard the shrill trumpet of success and the canned laughter of this desperate insecure society.” More—
A casual gallery-goer could be forgiven, perhaps, for passing it by without much thought. Surrounded by what looks like nondescript warehouses, the building lies in a small knot of streets behind the greasy spoons and cornershops of Bethnal Green Road. Beside the dove-grey door a buzzer with discreet capitals reads ‘MAUREEN PALEY’. Like many (but by no means all) private galleries, the former light factory is a quiet, esoteric space. And yet this almost unnoticable outpost, located in what not very long ago was a commercial backwater of the British capital, wields formidable clout over the art world—
“I feel more strength now than ever before, but this strength, this driving energy, shall be carefully bridled and directed with wisdom … My ambition is everything‚ pleasure, physical sensations mean nothing compared to great accomplishments.
The above quote comes from a series of letters written by American photographer Bob Mizer, following his arrest and subsequent imprisonment in the spring of 1947. He spent one year at a work camp—
