According to the The Cleveland Plain Dealer (published July 12, 2010):

Harvey Pekar’s life was not an open book. It was an open comic book.

Pekar chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic-book series, “American Splendor,” portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive “flunky file clerk” engaged in a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety.

Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, wrote “Our Cancer Year,” a book-length comic, after Pekar was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1990 and underwent a grueling treatment.

Read the full article here

We highly suggest reading Pekar’s 1986 masterpiece American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar and/or watching the 2003 movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti.

Watch some of Pekar’s infamous appearances on Letterman here, here and here

posted by: Harold Johns III

Michigan Central Station

Statement:

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry. Until the 50′s, its population rose to almost 2 million people. Detroit was the fourth most important city in the United States. It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods. Increasing segregation and de-industrialization caused violent riots in 1967. The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew. Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states. Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.

Since the 50′s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population.

Untied Artists Theater

William Livingstone House

Fisher Body 21 Plant

See more photos from this project here

Look for The Ruins of Detroit book out sometime this August via Steidl

posted by: Harold Johns III

From the publisher (Thames and Hudson):

Instant Light is a beautiful, elegiac collection of sixty polaroid photographs by the late, great Soviet film director, Andrey Tarkovsky, best known for densely metaphysical films like Solaris (original), The Mirror, Stalker and Nostalghia.

Composed of sixty luminous polaroids taken by Andrey Tarkovsky in Russia and Italy between 1979 and 1984, this beautifully produced series of cameos from the director’s life reveals him to be a master of the still as much as of the moving image.

“Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and this is precisely what he wanted: to stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots … These images leave us with a mysterious and poetic sensation, the melancholy of seeing things for the last time. It is as though Andrey wanted a swift way to pass his own enjoyment to others. They are something to be shared, not only a method of making his own wish to stop time come true. And they feel like a fond farewell” – Tonino Guerra, from the Introduction to Instant Light.

The photos in the first section, taken in Russia, have the radiant melancholy of lengthening shadows and trees looming through misty dawns near Tarkovsky’s country dacha, together with portraits of his wife, son and dog, loaded with nostalgia by quotations from his later diaries. Those taken in Italy portray exquisite still lifes and glimmering ruins. The book concludes with photographs from Tarkovsky’s personal collection.

See more of Tarkovsky’s Polaroids on this Russian website (click on the photo to the right)

Learn even more about Tarkovsky’s life and work here

posted by: Brent Carter

The latest project from artist Zak Smith is a collaboration with several other artists: Sean McCarthy, John Mejias, Craig Taylor, Shawn Cheng, and Matt Wiegle. “Six Versions of Blood Meridian” offers illustrations of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. The story follows a teen runaway as he travels across the American West during the mid 1800′s and rides with some of the most colorfully depraved fictional characters ever put to paper.

The work is ongoing, and so far offers a couple dozen pages in several styles with a corresponding passage from McCarthy’s book below each image.

Page 82, “When all the chambers were loaded she capped them and looked about… A group of fowl in the corner of the courtyard that had been pecking in dry dust stood nervously, their heads at varied angles.” Illustration by Zak Smith

To see more of this ongoing project click here

posted by: Brent Carter

With Banksy recently making TIME‘s 2010 Most Influential People, everyone knows that street art is a big deal. But street artists and longtime fans must now face the ever-present and ironic cultural dilemma, where can an underground movement go once it’s no longer underground? Searching through the good, the bad, the originators and the impostors can become overwhelming with increased popularity, especially if you’re new to the scene. Steven P. Harrington and Jamie Rojo, authors of Brooklyn Street Art and founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com, provide newcomers and street art buffs with a vibrant look at the urban art revolution happening on the streets of New York today in their new book  Street Art New York.

New York is a street art Mecca, boasting a vast outdoor gallery which encompasses walls, fences, sidewalks, and just about any other available surface. Featured in this dynamic collection are approximately 200 images of works by exciting newcomers and “old masters,” including New Yorkers Swoon, Judith Supine, Dan Witz, Skewville, and WK Interact, LA’s Shepard Fairey, Brazil’s Os Gemeos, Denmark’s Armsrock, France’s Space Invader, C215, and Mr. Brainwash, Germany’s Herakut, and London’s Nick Walker and the infamous Banksy. Quotes from the artists provide fresh insights into the cultural history and impact of this art form. Their observations show how older artists are providing inspiration to a younger generation and reveal how the establishment is taking notice of street art’s appeal as the advertising world, and visual culture in general, cull ideas from these images. A foreword by Carolina A. Miranda, author of the blog C-Monster.net, rounds out this compelling portrait of the state of urban art in one of its most important and supportive communities.

With Street Art New York, Harrington and Rojo provide a comprehensive guide to street art for both longtime fans and those new to the art form. The pages are filled with large, color images collected off the beaten path since 2001. Which lets you know, these guys aren’t just jumping on the newly popular street art wagon, they’re the real deal.

176 pages with 200 color illustrations
Hardcover
7 ¾ in. x 9 ½ in
Prestel

Swoon

by: Brent Carter and Tricia Rock

“Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as A People’s History of the United States, inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

“His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

“As he wrote in his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994), ‘From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than “objectivity”; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.’” (source: Boston Globe)

“Born in New York in 1922, Professor Zinn was the son of Jewish immigrants who as a child lived in a rundown area in Brooklyn and responded strongly to the novels of Charles Dickens. At age 17, urged on by some young Communists in his neighborhood, he attended a political rally in Times Square.

“‘Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people,’ he told The A.P. ‘I couldn’t believe that.’

“‘And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant.’

“War continued his education. Eager to help wipe out the Nazis, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943 and even persuaded the local draft board to let him mail his own induction notice. He flew missions throughout Europe, receiving an Air Medal, but he found himself questioning what it all meant. Back home, he gathered his medals and papers, put them in a folder and wrote on top: ‘Never again.’

“He attended New York University and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in history. In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women’s school in segregated Atlanta.

“During the civil rights movement, Professor Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. He also published several articles, including a rare attack on the Kennedy administration, accusing it of being too slow to protect blacks.

“He was loved by students — among them a young Alice Walker, who later wrote The Color Purple — but not by administrators. In 1963, Spelman fired him for ‘insubordination.’ (Professor Zinn was a critic of the school’s non-participation in the civil rights movement.) His years at Boston University were marked by opposition to the Vietnam War and by feuds with the school’s president, John Silber.

“Professor Zinn retired in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses’ strike. Over the years, he continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket lines.” (source: New York Times)

One of Professor Zinn’s last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president–which means, in our time, a dangerous president–unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction,” Zinn wrote.

Learn more about Howard Zinn here

posted by: Brent Carter