Tenney, James (1934–2006)
American composer James Tenney produced a wide range of innovative works, including computer music, Fluxus-inspired text scores, and chance-based instrumental pieces founded on the overtone…
American composer James Tenney produced a wide range of innovative works, including computer music, Fluxus-inspired text scores, and chance-based instrumental pieces founded on the overtone…
(Previously published as 'The Experience of Aboriginality in the Creation of the Radically New' in Ross, S. (ed.) (2014) Modernist World, Abingdon: Routledge.)1
Abstract Expressionism was a movement initiated by a group of loosely affiliated artists that came together during the early 1940s, primarily in New York City.…
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
There were different directions and forms connnected to Dada but an important element within it was a position of critique of established art and society.…
Born in Zimbabwe in 1949 to Malawian parents, Cuthbert (Cuthy) Mede grew up on Likoma Island, Lake Malawi. Internationally, Mede is considered the most well…
Members of the Dada cultural and artistic movement began to experiment with film as a means to disseminate their stylistic partialities and cultural values through…
Gilberto Ambrósio Garcia Mendes was born in Santos (São Paulo state), on 13 October 1922. Despite his unorthodox musical career — he did not start…
Kazuo Shinohara was born in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Architecture, Tokyo Institute of Technology, in 1953. That same year, he…
Adolf Hitler was the dominant political figure in German Nazism. He became chairman of the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or…
The architect Héctor Velarde was born in Lima, Peru, on May 14, 1898. His father was a diplomat and Velarde passed his childhood and adolescence…
In a dance career spanning over 40 years, Rex Nettleford was perhaps the most influential choreographer to shape Jamaican dance theatre as it is known…
Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister twice during his eventful political career. Churchill initially served the British Empire as a soldier in the Caribbean, India,…
Ernst Krenek, twentieth-century composer, was born in Vienna in 1900. Krenek composed over 240 works from 1917 until 1989, and his career includes works in…
One of the twentieth century’s most influential dancers and choreographers, Merce Cunningham re-defined the genre of modern dance. He began his professional career as a…
Both Dada and Surrealist writers and artists experimented with “automatic” creative production. Dadaists including Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Kurt Schwitters wrote “automatic”…
Hans/Jean Arp is an Alsatian poet and artist, who was a founding member of Dada and an active participant in Constructivism and Surrealism. Arp grew…
Krzysztof Kieślowski was a highly influential Polish filmmaker in the tradition of auteur cinema. Kieślowski tackled the tension between the political, spiritual, and ethical, and…
A leading figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, John Cage was a prolific composer, writer, and artist. His early works show Schoenberg’s influence in their use…
William Gladstone was a British politician who served as prime minister four times during his career, his first premiership lasting from 1868 until 1874. He…
Khien Yimsiri was a pioneer of modern Thai sculpture and an influential teacher of sculpture at Silpakorn University, Bangkok. Born in Bangkok, he graduated from…
The Weimar Republic (1918/1919–1933) is a term used to describe the German Reich (Deutsches Reich) after the end of World War I and after the…
The Hogarth Press was a publishing company run by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. A small independent publisher, the Press produced works by modernist thinkers and…