An arresting photo essay about the city of Janesville, Wisconsin, published in Mother Jones, serves as a stark illustration of the troubling numbers released in the new national poverty reports. For nearly four generations, the town was home to one of the oldest General Motors factories in the country. The plant abruptly halted its assembly line in December 2008.

The somber photos, taken by Danny Wilcox Frazier, capture Janesville’s remaining residents living like ghosts amid the ruins of a once-booming company town, where a defunct strip club has become a venue for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and empty hotels don’t bother leaving the light on for anyone.

Source: Mother Jones 

Art history text books are often expensive, heavy, and boring tomes that don’t capture the creative and conversational experience of a good trip to a museum. Knowing that, Beth Harris, the Director of Digital Learning at the Museum of Modern Art, and Jeff Zucker, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, gave art history an upgrade on smARThistory.org.

The free website incorporates videos, podcasts, and a ton of image and descriptive texts, into a “web-book” of art history. Unlike a normal text book, visitors can browse by date, author, style or themes. The podcasts and videos also capture the fun, conversational elements of museum-going, as Harris and Zucker argue and crack jokes with each other while imparting their vast knowledge of art. 

(Thanks, OpenCulture.)

Image by  F Delventhal , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Sources: smARThistory 

New Yorkers are notoriously provincial, or so the stereotype goes. Here are two charming projects that attempt to explain the devotion:

Jason Polan asked people to name their favorite thing about New York, then did his best to draw each one. Esopus published the results of the collaboration in its latest issue. The sketches capture the city’s quiet, day-to-day movements, celebrating the humble things—from pigeons to a row of discarded chewing gum—that make New York a great place to live. 

Fred Argoff publishes a zine called Brooklyn! (not available online). Argoff posesses an encyclopedic knowledge of his favorite borough, and his zine proffers seemingly endless reasons to love it. Recent issues have featured guides to Brooklyn slang, the history of a famous local rollercoaster, and a great collection of aerial photos.

You don’t have to like New York—or even know it—to enjoy the drawings or the zine. The hometown love is infectious. It’ll leave you composing local paeans of your own.

Source: Esopus, Brooklyn! (for more info, write Fred Argoff at Penthouse L, 1170 Ocean Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11230-4060)

I feel like I should hold my breath around Vasco Mourao’s illustrations. His teetering, lopsided buildings look as though they’d be toppled by the slightest breeze. To say they’re shaky, though, doesn’t mean they’re messy: Mourao realizes his labyrinthine structures meticulously, with an almost obsessive attention to detail. It’s partially this tension—between the precariousness of the subjects and the sureness of his hand—that makes the drawings so compelling. Check out more of his work here.

 (Thanks, Lost at E Minor.)    

In a fog of photographs and video footage showing Palestinians bloodied and bandaged in Gaza, the arts community of Gaza has effectively been disappeared with countless other indicators of a thriving human community interrupted by unthinkable violence. Maymanah Farhat specializes in modern and contemporary Arab art and has written a compelling piece about Gaza's artists which we've reprinted here with the permission of Electronic Intifada.

"I am working under the voices of fire, Israeli warplanes ... I still breathe, take some pictures everyday"
- Shareef Sarhan, Palestinian artist, 12 January 2009

Israel's vicious attack on Gaza has already claimed more than 1,200 lives and has injured thousands while destroying the infrastructure of the tiny coastal territory, including the handful of nonprofit venues that make cultural life possible. Even before the invasion, the combination of 41 years of Israeli occupation, frequent military incursions and attacks, infighting among Palestinian factions, and a dwindling economy created a difficult, if not impossible, environment to sustain an art scene. Yet, with the determination that has defined Palestinian art for decades, artists in Gaza have continued to create and organize, including establishing artistic associations and collectives and organizing frequent exhibitions both at home and abroad. A look at some of Gaza's seminal artists reveals an artistic tradition that has survived years of conflict while contributing greatly to Arab culture.

Born in Lydda in 1930 and forced to live in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in 1948, Ismail Shammout was one of Palestine's leading modernist painters. He organized his first exhibition in Khan Younis in 1953 and lived in exile throughout most of his career, residing in Kuwait, Jordan, and Lebanon with his wife and colleague, Palestinian painter Tamam al-Akhal. Often incorporating local folklore and history in portraits of women and children amidst scenes of expulsion and conflict, his monumental compositions and expressionist style became an important part of Palestinian visual culture, influencing generations of artists seeking to articulate their collective narrative. In addition to creating an impressive body of work and exhibiting across the region, Shammout produced Art in Palestine (1989), one of the first English-language texts on Palestinian art.

Returning to Lydda after a 50 year absence, Shammout found his ancestral home occupied by Israeli settlers. The experience launched him into creating a large-scale series of paintings with the hope of having it on permanent display in Palestine. "Palestine: the Exodus and the Odyssey" (1997-2000) contains some of his most memorable work -- several mural-size canvases chronicling the Palestinian existence from the Nakba, or expulsion in 1948, to the first and second Palestinian intifadas with the visual prowess and historical magnitude found in the work of those he admired such as the Mexican Muralists. In "Life Prevails" (1999), a woman stands as an anthropomorphic representation of the Palestinian spirit -- defiant and stoic above dozens of children while the mosques and churches of Jerusalem and shores of Gaza are shown in the background. In an inscription accompanying the work Shammout stated that "The Israeli occupation was oppressive and ruthless. But we struggled to survive, to assert our presence, to preserve our traditions, and sustain our dreams." He died in 2006, just days before Israel's assault on Gaza and Lebanon, which devastated the neighborhoods near his Beirut home.

The pen and ink drawings of Abdel Rahmen al-Mozayen have become synonymous with Palestinian liberation struggles. Born in Kubyba in 1943, al-Mozayen's mother was an expert in the art of embroidery and while serving as a resistance fighter with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) he produced a number of political posters in the 1970s and 1980s, iconic works that incorporate a unique combination of embroidery, ancient history, and stylized figures. Using the complex symbolism found in Palestinian embroidery to communicate steadfastness, his references to Canaanite heritage testify to the ancestral roots and longevity of Palestinian art, an element that is paramount to combating the co-option of local culture by Israelis and the near erasure of historical evidence by the occupation. Simultaneously, his employment of embroidery is significant -- with occupational forces often clamping down on the displaying of flags or material related to the resistance, the art form evolved into an intricate coded language of signifiers used as an act of defiance.

In "Children of the Intifada" (1988), al-Moyzen depicts two young children dressed in traditional Palestinian garb sitting atop a horse. The horse is adorned with an embroidered tapestry that reads "December" in Arabic and "1987" in English -- the month during which the first Palestinian intifada erupted. From the horse's bridle hangs a key, a familiar symbol for Palestinians, as many took the keys to their homes when forced out by Zionist militias in 1948, expecting their expulsion to be temporary. The children have slingshots in their hands and a supply of stones nearby, a reference to the rock-throwing youth that were essential to the protests of the uprising. In mid-journey, the horse takes the children over a bed of rocks, perhaps suggesting the Jordan River as they enter to liberate Palestine or a metaphorical road that is paved with the very tools needed for their resistance.

In contrast, the pensive and morose paintings of Fayez Sersawi underscore the psychological and physical effects of the Israeli occupation. Working to document the brutal tactics used by Israeli forces, he paints images capturing the daily experiences of Palestinians under widespread violence. Concurrently, he has created such works as "Two Men" (2001), an introspective portrait of two figures, presumably a father and son. The positioning of the men, as they lean against each other, occupies the foreground and center of the composition, leaving little room for an identifiable setting. Instead, the same expressionist brushstrokes that detail the age and wear of their faces appear in the background, unifying the figures with their surroundings. Rendered with aggressive markings that suggest chaos, the violence of the background continues on the bodies of the figures as though consuming their entire beings. The intimate posturing of Sersawi's subjects is also of interest, as it resembles that of Christian icon painting. Tracing its roots to early examples of icon painting near pilgrimage sites such as Jerusalem -- an observation brought to light by painter and scholar Kamal Boullata -- much of contemporary Palestinian art can be viewed within this artistic practice. Resembling compositions of the holy mother and child, the artist's iconification of Palestinian men under siege is a bold take on the tradition with weighty political inferences.

Sersawi has also greatly contributed to art education in Gaza. Using a YMCA facility equipped with the workings of a university-level classroom, he taught dozens of artists, many of who are now actively taking the reigns of the cultural scene. Today this new generation continues the movement formed by these visionaries. Unlike the Western model, in which commercial venues and public and private institutions shape artistic output or at least determine what is shown, the Palestinian art scene, which transcends Israeli checkpoints, Israel's wall in the West Bank and the continuous annexation of land, has relied on a dynamic community-based system of nonprofit galleries and art spaces that remains in line with the everyday political realities of its surroundings.

Artist organizations play an important role in providing a much-needed environment for creation and the furthering of art through public events and education. Two leading Gaza organizations comprised of young and emerging artists are Eltiqa Group and Windows From Gaza. Boasting a variety of artists working in photography, sculpture, new media and painting, these groups regularly produce exhibitions and workshops open to the public.

Among its eleven members, Eltiqa Group includes painters Rima al-Muzayen and Mohamed Dabous. Al-Muzayen's colorful compositions explore the experiences of Palestinian women. Dabous teaches visual arts at Gaza's al-Aqsa University and creates striking abstract ink and pastel works on paper. In 2008, Eltiqa hosted a number of noteworthy events for its members including the solo exhibitions of al-Muzayen and Dina Matar at the French Cultural Centre and a group show of Palestinian art featuring Abdel Nasser Amer, at the Rashad Shawwa Cultural Center. Outside of Gaza, Eltiqa was part of an impressive lineup of events such as Without Preparing -- From Gaza, a joint exhibition with artists from Windows From Gaza at Makkan House gallery in Amman, Jordan and Morceaux Choisis Gaza, a group show at the Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.

A number of Windows From Gaza members concurrently work in video, installation, photography and painting such as Basel al-Maqousy, an art instructor at the Jabalia Rehabilitation Centre who was recently featured in the AM Qattan Foundation's inaugural London exhibition Occupied Spaces, and Shareef Sarhan, whose art comments on the destruction of Palestine under the Israeli occupation. Sarhan has been photographing the damage, turmoil and civilian toll of Israel's current assault on Gaza.

The impact of Israel's latest act of barbarity on Gaza's cultural infrastructure has yet to be fully assessed. Reports have circulated that the Rashad Shawwa Cultural Centre has been bombed and the Institute for Palestine Studies has confirmed the destruction of the newly founded Gaza Music School, which taught children aged seven to 11, the majority of whom were girls. Located in a building owned by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Music School was hit in the first wave of shelling on 27 December. The fate of such important venues as the French Cultural Centre, the Municipality of Gaza's Arts and Crafts Village, al-Karam Center for Cultural Arts or the YMCA in Gaza City is unknown. Even if these centers were to sustain little or no structural damage, their futures are still uncertain as the cultural workers whose dedication they depend on are sure to be facing dire circumstances.

Images: Ismail Shammout, "Life Prevails" (1999). (Image courtesy of Al Jisser Group); Abdel Rahman al Mozayen, "Children of the Intifada" (1988). (Collection of Souha Xochitl Shayota, New York)

David Klein was an illustrator and art director best known for his Broadway window cards and TWA travel advertisements in the 1950s and '60s. His work has been adopted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a recent Klein Estate auction at Tepper Galleries yielded tremendous results: More than 90 percent of the 300 works brought to the block were sold.

His website allows you the opportunity to browse his collections of vibrant posters, window cards, and illustrations that fit perfectly into the current popularity of retro images. For those who contend that graphic design isn’t art (a hot debate in recent years), they need only look at his playful work to see evidence to the contrary.

To see more classic graphic design, check out Utne Reader's story on WPA posters.

Image courtesy of the Estate of David Klein.

Flipping through channels a while ago, I stopped on an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, revamped with menacing faces and mega muscles. Their newly designed image, devoid of the friendly smiles characteristic of the late-eighties version, made me question why 4Kids Entertainment, the owners of said turtles, felt the urge to modernize these much-loved reptiles with ‘tude.

The Ninja Turtles aren’t the only ones to get a makeover. American Greetings Co. has glammed up Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears. D.A. Kolodenko, writing for San Diego CityBeat, describes the new, slimmed-down, cell phone-toting Strawberry Shortcake as a “ripe and sexy little 21st-century confection.” The Care Bears were redesigned in 2007 with “less belly fat and longer eyelashes.” Sleek and sinister, slim and sexy—are these the characteristics that are emblematic of our modern culture? If anything, I think the eco-conscious Captain Planet deserves a comeback.

So why are companies reinventing old cartoon characters instead of designing new ones? According to Kolodenko, playing off of parents’ nostalgia has proven to be a safer investment than creating unknowns in our poorly functioning economy—Strawberry Shortcake has brought in $2.5 billion since 2003.

In an attempt to get ahead of the game, Kolodenko rounded up some lesser-known characters to see how their modern selves could lend some big bucks to corporations. Among forgotten favorites like the Wuzzles and the Herculoids, the heartrending story of the Biskitts comes to light:

Biskitts—Hanna-Barbera’s “smallest dogs in the world” guarded a treasure in a castle in a swamp on a tiny island. The island was swallowed up by Hurricane Katrina, and most of the Biskitts drowned. The only remaining Biskitt, Mooch, lives on the streets of New Orleans, mooching biscuits and mumbling to himself about the “g*ddamn Smurfs.”

Won't somebody give that sad mutt a makeover?

Image by  johntrainor , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

 

If you are a fan of vintage photography, dive into Square America, an intriguing web gallery of “vintage snapshots & vernacular photography” curated by Nicholas Osborn. He divides his treasure trove into categories that reveal how photographer's favorite subjects haven't changed much over time. My favorites: On the Limits of Memory, The Book of Sleep, and Guns, Guns, Guns.

(Thanks swissmiss.)

For anyone who ever has picked up an unfamiliar photograph and pondered its meaning, LA-based arts magazine X-Tra runs a captivating column. “1 Image 1 Minute,” curated (so to speak) by visual/performance artist Micol Hebron, always features two images, each one complemented with a one-minute narrative from an artist or writer describing the significance therein.

Sometimes the narratives are straight-forwardly analytical; in the Summer 2008 issue, for example, writer Chas Bowie responds to photographer Bill Thomas’ disturbing self-portrait Rats and Syringes. Other narratives are more personal, poignant peeks into the lives of others. In the Spring 2008 issue, writer Paul Minden describes deciphering a photograph taken of his father in Romania in 1939 (article not available online):

“What’s interesting about this picture,” my father asked. This was clearly a quiz, and I was failing. At 86 he was sharp as a tack, found these old photos much more compelling than his stomach cancer, and had no intention of leaving this world till I understood why this literally pedestrian photo struck him as monumental.

As it turns out, the photograph was taken just hours before Hitler attacked Poland. “Five teens with time for a campy snapshot,” Minden reflects, “with no clue how drastically life was about to change…. This was the calm before the storm troopers.”

Image by freeparking, licensed under Creative Commons.