NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked. Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Last Good Campaign
[via the current issue of Vanity Fair] In 1968, with the country divided over the war in Vietnam, the Democratic Party struggled to rally behind a candidate. Amid this political turbulence, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, guided by a set of principles and his burning opposition to the war, entered the race. The party establishment reacted with dismay, but his candidacy, coming just five years after the assassination of his brother John F. Kennedy, filled the electorate with hope — a hope that met a violent end just a few months later. By Thurston Clark Two months after John F. Kennedy’s […]
EDITORIAL: Lifting The Veil On Black Islam In The 215
BY JEFF DEENEY Back at the beginning of April I spent an afternoon hanging out with Saddiq Abdul Jabbar and Tunji Turner from the Germantown Masjid which, according to the Daily News, has become embroiled in an international controversy over its decision to not provide a burial service for a Muslim man killed during the botched bank robbery that left police officer Stephen Liczbinski dead. The City Paper was doing a three part series called “Politics Lost” focusing on what impact the impending Pennsylvania primary election might be having on some of the more isolated neighborhoods in the city. They […]
EVERY TUESDAY: The Afterlife Of A Statistic
The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather and share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. Look for it every Tuesday on Phawker! Why? Because we love you!
UPDATE: China Quake Death Toll Hits 10,000
[Photos via STUCK IN CUSTOMS] NEW YORK TIMES: BEIJING — A powerful earthquake struck a mountainous region of western China on Monday, reportedly killing more than 8,700 people, including as many as 5,000 people in a single county, and trapping more than 900 students beneath a collapsed high school as tremors shook buildings throughout China and were felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam, according to interviews and reports in China’s state media. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon, and the death toll steadily increased throughout the evening, raising concerns that the number could […]
NO JOKE: Let’s Invade Burma And Save A Million Lives!
TIME: The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur. So what is the world doing […]
SPIKOL: You Say I’m Crazy, Like It’s A BAD Thing
HUFFINGTON POST: Yesterday the New York Times explored the burgeoning “mad pride” movement, which aims to fight the stigma of serious mental illness like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and even, in some cases, celebrate it. [C]heck out the mad pride movement’s most hilarious, if unofficial, spokesperson Liz Spikol’s blog The Trouble With Spikol, which chronicles her struggle with bipolar disorder. Or watch two of Liz Spikol’s many YouTube videos: First, she tells an abbreviated version of her life story. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: In the YouTube video, Liz Spikol is smiling and animated, the light glinting off her large hoop […]
SHILLING: Tim & Eric For Absolut Vodka
With Zack G., he’s the guy in the wig.
HEAR YE: Duffy Rock Ferry
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Gorgeous voice, soulful eyes, and the ‘Second Coming of Dusty Springfield’ and ‘New Amy Winehouse‘ hype is more than earned. From Wales. She plays the Apollo tonight. Sigh. We are officially in love.
ARTSY: The Filth & The Fury
THE INDEPENDENT: John Currin is a shooting star of American figurative painting whose trajectory to fame and riches peaked gloriously five years ago with a retrospective at three major world museums. But he has some explaining to do. The 46-year-old has since controversially switched galleries, performed a curious vanishing trick and now… well, his latest flesh-on-canvas efforts would make Hugh Hefner blush. Indeed, he now acknowledges that several factors contributed to what was indeed a long dry period after the retrospective – a time when, he says, he was also depressed and experiencing a disconcerting “impotence with the brush.” Currin […]
HILLARY: My Biggest Supporters Are Dumb Bigots
FINANCIAL TIMES: Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coal miner would vote Republican. Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls. West Virginia is hostile territory for Mr Obama because it has few of the African-Americans and affluent, college-educated whites who provide his strongest support. The state has the […]
THE BEATDOWN: Victims’ Lawyer Says Cops Are Lying
DAILY NEWS: AS A NEWS video of police beating and kicking three shooting suspects is seen around the world, attorneys for the battered men are claiming that Philly cops concocted their story to cover up for a case of mistaken identity — an allegation police vehemently deny. The attorneys said their clients — Brian Hall, 23, Dwayne “Lionel” Dyches, 24, and Pete Hopkins, 19 – were not involved in a shooting. But rather, police chased down their car and beat them because they mistook Dyches, a passenger in the car, for accused cop-killer Eric DeShawn Floyd, the attorneys said. At […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
EVERYBODY DANCE NOW: Broadzilla DJs, One, Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]