The wide appeal of the music of the Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone, who wrote for spaghetti western films such as “Fistful of Dollars,” Brian de Palma’s “The Untouchables” and hundreds of other films, is evidenced by the wide array of artists who pay homage to him. They range from the producer Danger Mouse, who...
For four years, Taryn Simon traveled the world photographing 18 family bloodlines and their related stories. The resulting images document victims of genocide in Bosnia, a polygamist family in Kenya, the alleged body double of Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, Filipino farmers and miners, children with no known bloodline from a Ukrainian orphanage, and many...
A lifelong lover of chocolate, Yael Rose is as happy sipping a cup of hot chocolate as she is nibbling sea-salted caramel or cocoa nibs. “To be honest, I think it’s an addiction,” she said. “There’s something about the smell and colors of chocolate I simply can’t resist every single time.” Ms. Rose has...
London did not make USA Today’s “10 Great Places for City Cycling” list this July. But the city did earn a top-20 mention in a more European-focused Danish report on the best bicycle-friendly cities. Combined with local efforts to promote cycling in anticipation of the upcoming 2012 Olympics, some would argue that London’s cycling...
When the Memphis design group turned up at the 1981 Milan Furniture Fair with their plastic laminated, brightly colored and highly patterned furniture, the exhibition was reportedly mobbed and streets were blocked as people tried to cram into the tiny exhibition space. In an effort to explore how this and other examples of postmodernism...
Because of the million or more people who attend it, the Notting Hill Carnival, an annual celebration of Caribbean culture, can feel overwhelming to say the least. Sprawling over roughly 20 miles of West London, the carnival is often cited as one of the largest street festivals in Europe. This year’s festival takes place...
Evan Parker, a saxophonist from Bristol, England, who helped shape the improv-heavy sound of European free jazz through the ’60s and ’70s, told an interviewer in 2003 that “you can make just as bad a mistake when you think you are doing absolutely the right thing as you can when you just make a...
When I ask my university journalism students why exactly they want to be journalists, a majority tell me it’s because they “like to write.” Considering most of them are in their 20s and grew up with the Internet, this response always surprises me. With a seemingly endless supply of emerging technology and digital storytelling...
The Barbican Art Gallery is offering a glimpse of life in downtown Manhattan in the early 1970s — at least through the eyes of a particular group of artists. The “Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” exhibition, at the gallery through May 22, features sculptures, drawings, photographs, documentation of performances, and mixed-media...
It’s been 20 years since Vincent Ahehehinnou and his bandmates in the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou could afford to spend their days playing music. Back then, the band from Benin — formed in the late ’60s following the country’s independence from France — was busy spreading the joys of Afrobeat, a blend of soul,...