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newagesispage · 8 years ago

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JULY 2017

*****Kathy Griffin lost her CNN NY gig over her Scary Clown 45 severed head gag. Word is that Anderson Cooper wants to replace her with Andy Cohen. Last I heard, he had not talked to her directly either. Jim Carrey wonders about all that The President says and he still has his job. He commented that he has a dream about golfing with Trump and just holding that club and then he wakes up.

*****Chance the Rapper and a few others are calling for Bill Maher to be fired after his comment about working the fields.

*****A federal court upheld a ruling that could free Brendan Dassey. The court said the investigators led the confession and Dassey’s story was involuntary. Wisconsin has 90 days to retry.

*****Better call Saul had its season finale and OMG!! If Michael McKean does not get an Emmy, the world is just wrong!! Actually the show and the whole cast is amazing but come on!!

*****Elon Musk , David Rank and others have resigned from the Trump administration after America was taken out of the Paris climate agreement. The deal took years of negotiation and compromise and clean energy is the economics of the future. Scary Clown said that he represents Pittsburgh, not Paris and seems to see the agreement as a threat to his isolation America first ideas. The mayor of Pittsburgh tells us, “What Trump did was not only bad for the economy but also weakened America in the world.” It will take 4 years before the U.S. can actually quit the deal. Luckily, so many companies in this country are so against Trump that we’ll probably hit our goals anyway.** The mayors of Paris and Pittsburgh have since made their own climate deal.** Others have resigned over the lack of interest the Trump administration is showing AIDS.

*****The Eagles will use Vince Gill and Glenn Frey’s son, Deacon for some NY and LA shows.

*****Word is that the American Idol reboot wanted Randy Jackson for the host gig but he turned it down.

*****Wal Mart insurer, Ohio Casualty is in a dispute against Tracy Morgan who refuses to testify. The company claims he exaggerated his injuries after being hit by the Wal Mart truck. Morgan’s camp say that the 90 million they claim to have paid him is the exaggeration.

*****Do you notice all the home security ads on the ID channel? I guess the true crime scares you into getting more protection.

***** After many of Trump’s minions have tried to convince us that what they have done is not a travel ban, the man himself says it is. They originally claimed that this would only be for 90 days and they would have new things in place and it has been over 90 days. The President tells us that they are extreme vetting anyway so why does he want to take this to the Supreme Court?**The supreme court is letting them do it now!!** His rabid supporters and GOP cohorts are just enablers at this point.

*****The Cosby trial ended in a mistrial. I was at the Red Cross the other day and some employees were watching a news report about the trial. The pig of a man in the group piped when they put up a shot of Cosby’s accuser. “Ooh, she is not a pretty woman. I’d have to drug MYSELF to do her,” he laughed.** Cosby is now going to do a town hall type tour.

*****Anne Rice says that she has been blocked from trump’s twitter site.

*****Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow is so blatant about using donations from his Christian non profit to fund his personal life. Please read the article in the Guardian because the history of this is so far reaching that I can’t even go into it all here. Perhaps these givers don’t care and want to support this guy but they should know where there money is going.

*****The buzz about American crime story is starting even though it won’t be out until 2018. Next up is a look at Versace then hurricane Katrina and the Lewinsky scandal.

*****George and Amal had twins, Alex and Ella.

*****Megyn Kelly didn’t do much hard hitting on her Putin interview. She sure seems to like interviewing the hate mongers.

*****Alice Cooper is coming out with a new album.

*****Jay-Z is upset with the Prince estate. He is quoted as saying, “This guy had ‘slave’ on his face. You think he wanted the masters with his masters?”

*****Elvis Costello is working on a Broadway musical about A Face in the crowd. Hooray! He is also heading out on tour.

*****Forbes is doing its part to expose the Trump’s. They did an in depth story about how Eric Trump’s charity money for kids with cancer was funneled back into the business. There is now an investigation into this claim.

*****Thank you Chicago for the 10 story mural by Eduardo Kobra. The Muddy Waters mural was unveiled on June 8 at 17 N. State Street for the Chicago blues fest. The Muddy Waters legacy gave a free concert.

*****The HBO doc,’ If you’re not in the obit, eat breakfast’ is so inspirational and adorable. Dick Van Dyke is still a sexy beast and who knew that Carl Reiner’s oldest friend is an army buddy known as the greatest harmonica player.

*****Reality Winner has been charged with leaking classified info.

*****The infrastructure plan that Trump told us was” largely complete”, isn’t done at all. He now signed a proposal that is not binding so it means nothing. WTF are they doing?

*****Days alert: Oh, I was so hoping that they would find Tony Dimera on that Island, even though Anna carries around his ashes. It is a soap, everybody comes back. Speaking of that, Chandler Massey, who played the first ‘out’ Will Horton, is returning in September. Rory’s back!!** Where is Paul’s Mom since he is fighting for his life? ** So.. Chloe gives up the baby to Nicole and the court takes it away. Maggie is allowed to see the baby, why wouldn’t she just try to get custody of her grandson and Holly would still be in the house?? ** Thank goodness we are seeing more of Andre!

*****Chris Rock was on the cover of Rolling Stone and is on tour to make money after his divorce. He “jokes” that he had multiple affairs. Many claim that the famous affair he mentioned was with Kerry Washington.

*****The President wants to give 110 billion to Saudi Arabia for weapons.

*****Chris Wray has been nominated for FBI director.

*****Beyonce and Jay Z had twins.

*****Paul McCartney got the companion of honour in the UK.

*****Thank you CBS all access for topping off your latest ad with Matthew Gray Gubler! YES!!

*****Panama is breaking ties with Taiwan and shifting allegiance to China.

*****The director of health and human services in Michigan, Nick Lyon has been charged with involuntary manslaughter over the contaminated water.

*****Congrads to Jill Brummel and Keith and baby Wagner!

*****Check out Blood Orange for some great tunes!!

*****Woodstock has joined the National register of historic places.

*****Intel chiefs like Dan Coates refused to answer questions from their oversight committee in the probe. Rogers, Rubenstein and McCabe all seem to have trouble talking. This cover up is so much worse than Watergate. Former US director of National intelligence, James Clapper says, “Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting.”** The opening statement of James Comey was released the day before his big day. He confirms that Trump wanted him to drop the Flynn stuff and talked about the cloud of the Russian stuff. He transcribed the conversations with the President as soon as they were over.**Ya know, I was mad at Comey for the Hillary crap that he now tells us went public because he did not like the Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch meeting. Most that have worked with him seem to call him an honorable man. I was trying to believe he would do the right thing in the Trump administration investigations. After he was fired, Trump mentioned he may have tapes and Comey had a friend release his version even though some say the leaks were first. The Trump tweet was May 12 and the first news of leaks were May 16. Now, I still try to believe that Comey is an honest man but he sometimes acts like a child (someone does something so he immediately seems to say, ok, well take that!!). But we have to notice that Scary Clown’s stories always change, Comey’s does not. As far as who called who, there must be records.**As Comey was testifying, the house repealed Dodd Frank. C’mon Press, let’s get ALL the news out there!** BTW, there are no tapes, that was just more scary clown BS.** It seems that 38% of this country is trying to run the show and those 38% don’t give a shit about the rest of us.

*****Investigators have found a direct link that puts Putin at the center of the election disruption. The plan was to help Trump and hurt Hillary. Word is that the Obama administration did not take action because they thought Putin might escalate his cyber meddling. John Kerry tried hard to get some action but the White house thought they would be accused of trying to sway things for Hillary. It’s sad but true because the Trump camp would have went nuts. The instability and doubt may have changed this country forever. It seems many do not care as long as they have their guy in power now. **Power outages in the Ukraine have also been linked to Russia. It looks like they are now gunning for us. The centralized system in the Ukraine is not as hard to set right as ours would be. Our power system is more complicated and would be harder to tamper with but also harder to straighten out. Russia appears to have an adaptable and reusable software.** Fox’s Brit Hume says that even if the Trump campaign did collude with Russia, “it’s not a crime.” They all say ‘America first’ but I am beginning to think they would all be happier in Russia.** Over 2000 pages of financial documents have been turned over to the investigation.

*****And WTF is up with John McCain? He was like a dog with a bone about bringing up the Hillary stuff again. And he does not seem to like women asking questions because he keeps interrupting. It is time to retire.** Did you see Sen. Martin Heinrich??

*****Rep. Al Green of Texas and Brad Sherman of California are drafting articles of impeachment because Trump obstructed justice when he fired Comey. Just as this is in the works, Melania and Baron finally move into the White house.** Pence and even Trumps lawyer have hired attorneys.**After 8 years of class and pride, this country sure has taken a big step into the gutter.

*****The Generals seem to have their problems with the new President. A quote from Trump says,” The Lieutenants, the captain, their majors, the colonels- they’re professionals. They love doing it. So I authorized the generals to do the fighting.” I thought he said he knew more than them but now he gives no direction so his hands don’t get dirty. He has no strategy and there are so many vacant positions that there are not enough experts to go around. Using U.S. money to follow his family around while they make business deals instead of the government being properly staffed does not seem very safe for the rest of us.

*****Did ya’ll see those relaxed pics of Obama and Trudeau and their wine in Montreal? Wow.. It all seems so wonderfully normal.

*****Turkey has banned Wikipedia, calling it a national security threat.

*****Kevin Spacey did a great job hosting the Tony’s. His opening number included Whoopi and Stephen Colbert. Spacey later did his Carson and said “admit it, you missed me”. I suddenly felt so sad because I realized I really do miss him. Richard Thomas and Danny Devito were both nominated for The Little Foxes but both lost to Michael Aronov. Foxes did get a win for Jane Greenwood for costume design and featured actress, Cynthia Nixon. Nixon gave a fabulous speech about the people of this nation that do not take what is happening in Washington lying down. James Earl Jones won the lifetime achievement but only got a snippet of time on air. Laurie Metcalf won for leading actress in a play for A Doll’s house part 2. Bette Midler looked great and won but would not shut up.** Best Dressed was Sarah Paulson and worst was Carolyn Murphy.

*****Patricia Krenwinkel was denied parole again.

*****Oliver Stone interviewed Putin over 20 hours in 4 visits. Putin drove him around and seemed to convince Stone that he is a pretty great guy. He seemed to take Putin’s word about meddling in the election. Some say it is a love letter to Putin and I see shades of Barbara Walters and Fidel Castro.

*****There was some voter fraud in Alton, Il. An 88 year old election judge pleaded guilty to voting for Trump for her dead husband. She claims he would have wanted her to.

*****Summer Camp 2017 in Chillicothe, Il. had some great artists this year with Claypool Lennon delirium, the Wood brothers and Gov’t. Mule. A few people were taken away after the sudden storm but other than that fun was had by all.

*****Phil Collins had to postpone a London gig after a fall.

*****Dick Gregory is out again making appearances and I wanna go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****Theresa May misjudged her public when she called for an election in the UK. Her conservative party has lost some of its power.

*****The UK has acquired Feud: Bette and Joan to play later this year.

*****OMG: TLC SYTTD UK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****John Oliver is being sued by a great friend of Trump’s, Robert Murray. Murray, the CEO of Murray energy warned him not to do a story on him but he did it anyway. Go John!! Look it up, it’s a story worth seeing.

*****Diedrick Bader just gets hotter

*****The Downton Abbey movie will start production in 2018!

*****An inconvenient sequel, which is out July 28, has added a bit after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord.

*****Ivanka is being ordered to give a deposition in a lawsuit about copying a shoe design. The Italian company that sued is Aquazzura but she claims that she had nothing to do with any of it. Her claim is that she can’t give the deposition because it would be a distraction from her WH duties. Her Fox and friends interview sound bite was :”I try to stay out of politics.”

*****Leslie Jones hosted the BET awards and earned good reviews but she later tweeted about the hotel she stayed in. She suggested that people not stay at the Ritz Carlton because, “they don’t like black people.”

*****Farm Aid is being held in Burgettstown, Pa. with Willie, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and the Avett Brothers among others.

*****Fox news will no longer use the line, “fair and balanced.”

*****Daniel Day Lewis has retired from acting.

*****Tony Bennett is given the Library of congress Gershwin prize.

*****Judd Apatow is making a doc bout Garry Shandling. Can’t wait!!

***** Sean Spicer is interviewing his own replacement including Fox news and Daily mail employees.

*****The U.S. spent 28 mil on uniforms for the Afghan military. They were not field tested and did not work out. An official wanted a specific lush forest motif while most of the landscape is desert. WTF?

*****O.J. is up for parole.

*****The secret health care bill came out and many protested at Mitch Mcconnell’s office. Police were sent in to drag them out, wheelchairs and all. It seems we have not been this divided since the civil war. What is more important than health care for all, than equality? Is a wall more important? Are tax cuts for the rich more important? In the end, the haters always lose but not without hurting so many along the way. It always comes down to equality. It is always about some trying to keep down others and that is never right. It always has to lose in the end. ** The vote has now been delayed. **Good old Mitch who was given treatment for his polio, as a child, because of the kindness of the March of Dimes now refuses to talk to them. They disagree with the health care plan.**More health care insurance providers are bowing out of coverage. The companies blame the uncertainty of Washington. This is just another reason to blame Obama for the senate and house’s own doing. Keep things in chaos and blame the other guy while the rest of the country suffers. ** The Pres now says that the ACA should just be repealed, new plan or not.

*****It is being reported that the CIA health professionals did not just torture detainees during the Bush administration, they performed experiments.. This is like right out of the Nazi playbook.

***** We don’t hear enough about men who are straight and mostly dress masculine but like a little makeup. I find that adorable and they need to be represented

*****Wow!! The NY senate after a decade, still did not vote on the child victims act. The Catholic Church and the Boy scouts lobby so hard because they think it will bankrupt them. The bill would let survivors bring civil cases until they are 50 years old, felonies until 28, and give a 1 year window for both public and private institutions instead of 90 days. Republican majority leader John Flanagan will not even put it up for a vote.

*****Illinois has its fair share of problems right now with the budget crisis, Chicago and Peoria shootings and the Belleville shooter, James T. Hodgkinson.

*****Why do the View and the Tonight show play all these stupid games with their guests? Does the audience enjoy this? It is often so awkward.

*****Jess Session says that Trump has not been in a single briefing about North Korea. I am sure the new South Korean president is reassured by that as he came for a visit. The shuffling of reporters and questions about the idiot in chiefs twitter made him feel welcome too.

*****And now the airwaves explode with the latest scary clown 45 twitter directed at the Morning Joe team. Why do we have to talk endlessly about this crap every time the baby has a tantrum? Unless we find some real evidence or this impeachment march does some real good, we better get used to the fact that our President has no fucking class!

*****Neil Young is reminding us to stand up for what we believe and resist this 4th with a new video.

*****The Presidents team is trying to get personal info on voters like social security numbers and voting history which could lead to voter intimidation.

*****The Frye fest head Billy McFarland has been arrested for wire fraud.

*****Adele has cancelled the rest of her tour because of damage to her vocal chords. It is especially sad for she has hinted that this could be her last tour.

***** If you haven’t seen the 2014 doc ‘ Starring Adam West’, check it out. The Kickstarter film is so honest and a great tribute to a man who will be missed. He also has some hot sons!!

*****R.I.P. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Manuel Noriega, Jimmy Piersall, Roger Smith, Peter Sallis, Modd Deep, Stephen Furst, Rosalie Sorrels, Glenne Headly, Simone Veil, Adam West and Anita Pallenberg.

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dcmaltbie · 8 years ago

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Top Ten Star Wars Legends Storylines

When Star Wars was sold to Disney, the executives had a decision to make. Will we bring the wealth of stories that populated the Expanded Universe (EU) or make new content? The decision was made to ditch the old story lines and create new and more relevant content for the consumers. For those devotees who read the series and plundered the knowledge bases of the EU it as if our world had been taken away from us. Having read all the series and novels, I thought it would be great to rank the Top Ten Legends Storylines.

10. Star Wars Legacy

Legacy is a Darkhorse Comics series by John Ostrander that was released in 2006. It centers around the grandson of Luke Skywalker, Cade. For the first time, a person who could use the Force wasn’t necessarily a Jedi. Cade is an outlaw who uses drugs and thrives off personal attachment. As the Sith make yet another bid to take over the galaxy, Cade must come to terms with his troubled past if he is to save the universe from evil.

9. X-Wing Series

This series was written by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston in 1996. In the initial offering Rogue Squadron, we were shown an entirely new set of characters. Legendary character Wedge Antilles, who flew in the first and second Death Star runs, is given a shot at teaching and leading a new host of Rebels into the fray against the Empire.

8. Knights of the Old Republic

This series by John Jackson Miller gave us our first look into the lives and times of the Jedi Order at its peak in power. Though it only ran for fifty issues this comic series was the first attempt, by then George Lucas, to make the franchise more transmedia. Several references from books, games and the movies all appear. The Zayne Carrick storyline is one of my favorite pieces from all of the Legends line up.

7. Jedi Academy Trilogy

Kevin J. Anderson wrote this trilogy about Luke Skywalker’s quest to rebuild the Jedi Order. As a child, these were the first Jedi books that I read. Luke searches the galaxy for able students to inhabit his new training facility on Yavin 4. When a dark spirit begins to influence one of his young trainees Luke must find a way to save his student and exile the spirit. As a writer, these books are important because later another book, I, Jedi, is written and inserts a new character and fixes problems that the readers had complained about.

6. New Jedi Order

This series of books made me love the EU. Luke has grown his group of students into a flourishing Jedi Order. In perfect timing, because a new and dangerous threat, the Yuuzhan Vong have appeared at the edges of known space. These new beings live outside of the Force, and their technology surpasses those of our heroes. Seeing the protagonists lose everything that they fought for in the Rebellion was a gut punch to fans. While the series has several page-turner novels, there are just as many that make reading them a chore.

5. I, Jedi

Michael A. Stackpole published the first hardcover of this book on Star Wars Day in 1998. I am especially interested in this book because it is written in the first person, making it one of only two drafted in the EU. Corran Horn is a Corellian Security Forces officer who is recruited by Luke at his Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4. Corran goes on to have a significant role in the New Jedi Order war with the Yuuzhan Vong, leading Jedi and New Alliance forces.

4. Star Wars: Republic

In 1998 Darkhorse Comics ran over 40 issues of this closer take on the events that take place between Episode II and III. The writing is fantastic, introducing classic Star Wars characters Quinlan Vos and Aurra Sing, just to name a few. What is most enjoyable about these are the intimate moments you read between Anakin and Obi-Wan. When I saw the films, it made the story more rich and engrossing.

3. The Thrawn Trilogy

During the great speculations on what exactly would transpire in the films to come, I placed my bet on this one. Set in the time after the fall of Empire, a Dark Jedi attempts to turn Leia, her two oldest children, and Luke to the Dark Side. It also introduces some very critical characters in the years to come. Mara Jade is a Force-sensitive assassin sent by the Emperor to kill Luke. The two form a bond and eventually marry, producing a son named Ben. Grand Admiral Thrawn is a tactical genius who was fighting in the Unknown Regions during the rise of the Rebellion. What remains of the Empire falls into lock-step behind him, turning the tide in their struggle against the New Republic.

2. The Darth Bane Trilogy

Drew Karpyshyn wrote these novels starting in 2012, with the release of Path of Destruction. A look at the humble beginnings of the man who would become Darth Bane. It follows his training as a Sith Lord and his eventual destruction of the Sith Order. The following novels, The Rule of Two and Dynasty of Evil, show his search for eternal life and the training of his apprentice Zannah.

1. The Dark Lord Trilogy

James Luceno wrote Labyrinth of Evil as the lead up to the novelization of Episode III. It follows Anakin and Obi-Wan on their search for the kidnapped Senator Palpatine. Luceno does an excellent job of showing the war’s effect on Anakin and how close to the Dark Side he has become. The action is nonstop with Yoda, Mace Windu, Dooku, and General Grievous all playing major parts in the warfare. Normally the novelization of the films are spot on from the script. This time Matthew Stover referenced the previous novel and introduced elements that weren’t in the movie. Possibly my most favorite Star Wars book is Dark Lord Rising by James Luceno. It goes into great depth about the inner turmoil that Anakin goes through as he transcends into Darth Vader. The final chapter shows something I have always been interested in, how did Obi-Wan know Anakin survived Mustafar.

In the years that have followed the demise of the EU, there appears to be great promise. Chuck Wendig has written a trilogy of novels about the events directly after Episode IV and leading into Rogue One. Jason Aaron has taken over the flagship Star Wars comic series and has pushed it into a top seller at Marvel. In the films, I see similarities between characters from the EU and I am excited about the potential of these stories.

REFERENCES

Bricken, R. (2014, May 09). The 10 Best Stories In the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Retrieved January 20, 2017, from http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-10-best-stories-in-the-star-wars-expanded-universe-1574103684

Star Wars Legends: A Look at 10 of the Best Non-Canon Stories. (2015, October 28). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from https://grizzlybomb.com/2015/10/26/star-wars-legends-a-look-10-of-the-best-non-canon-stories/

Star Wars: Great Legends Stories You Should Read. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from http://www.denofgeek.com/us/books-comics/star-wars/246066/star-wars-great-legends-stories-you-should-read

Kamen, M. (2016, May 23). The lost riches of Star Wars' Expanded Universe. Retrieved January 20, 2017, from http://www.wired.co.uk/article/star-wars-expanded-universe-best

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kadobeclothing · 5 years ago

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How 6 Social Media Networks Have Changed in the Last Decade

At the beginning of 2020, millions of social media users took part in a #TenYearChallenge which encouraged them to post one photo of themselves from ten years ago up against a photo of themselves today.

But while the #TenYearChallenge showed us how much our friends have changed, have you ever wondered how much your favorite brands have changed?

As a social media user, looking back to see how the platforms you’ve used every day have changed can feel fun and nostalgic. As a marketer, looking at the evolution of these platforms can also give you insight into how the overall social media industry and internet trends have matured and how they might continue to pivot in the future. In this blog post, we’re going to mark the beginning of a new decade by venturing back in time to 2010 and showing you ten-year comparisons of six of the oldest and most popular social media platforms. While this post might be a blast from the past, it will also show you just how much the way we connect and share online has changed, and give you hints about where it might go next. 6 Social Media Platforms in 2010 vs. 2020 Facebook 2010 At the dawn of the 2010s, Facebook positioned itself as the next big social media platform following the MySpace era. The network, which originally targeted college students, had already reached millions of users in young adult age groups and had just gone through a few major redesigns since it first launched in 2004. In 2010, Facebook grew from 400 million to just over 600 million active users. During this year, the social network also gained huge attention with the October premiere of the award-winning film, The Social Network, which chronicled how co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin launched Facebook and fought for ownership rights in an intellectual property lawsuit. The News Feed The Facebook News Feed was first launched in 2006. Prior to this launch, you’d simply see their profile when logging into the social network. With the addition of this page, you could suddenly see what your friends were up to all in one place. By 2010, Facebook’s News Feed emphasized making connections on the platform as the left sidebar highlights friend requests and friend suggestions while the upper navigation bar included notifications, friends, and message buttons. Here’s a screenshot I dug up of the 2010 News Feed:

Source: CheeseWeaselDay.com Statuses and Updates While the 2010 Feed was similar to what Facebook has today, it was still pretty basic and less intuitive when it came to updating you on your friends’ activities. For example, any time someone did something on the platform — such as playing a game or RSVPing to an event — their activity would pop up on the News Feed along with status updates.

When it came to status updates, you were limited to what you could post. The status bar merely allowed you to type in and share a quick text-only update. Once it was published, the status would show up directly next to your name. This led people to post statuses that began with the word “is.” For example, in 2010, I might have written, “Pam Bump is eating burgers,” or “Pam Bump is doing homework.” Likes In 2010, the same year that The Social Network came out, Facebook also made news when it unveiled its game-changing “Like” button. Before this, you could only interact with a post by commenting on it or sharing it. The “Like” enabled you to quickly communicate with your connections even if you didn’t have time to write a full comment. While you could “Like” updates and statuses from your friends, you could also “Like” a business or fan page which would essentially enable you to follow its updates. Websites also began adding the “Like” icon to their pages, which encouraged users to click it in order to like their content or pages on Facebook. Advertising By 2010, Facebook Ads was still ramping up after being announced in 2007. While brands had started to make pages for marketing purposes, Facebook and Zuckerberg were hesitant about creating too many branded opportunities because they didn’t want a bombardment of ads to negatively impact the user experience. A 2007 press release described the Facebook Ads as a platform with three parts: “a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.” 2020 Despite all the new social media platforms that have emerged in the last decade, Facebook is still (by far) the biggest and most successful with 2.38 billion monthly active users. Aside from the number of users Facebook’s gained, it’s also expanded its demographic. While the platform was originally created for college students and millennial teenagers, it’s now popular among a variety of age groups. For example, when I started using Facebook in high school, my biggest goal was to hide my profile from my parents — who were still heavily suspicious of the internet and social media. Now, my mother texts me daily asking me why I didn’t “Like” her most recent post. I’m not the only one in my generation who’s witnessed this pivot. Facebook is becoming the go-to network where parents and grandparents are connecting with family and friends. In fact, 45% of people over the age of 65 say they regularly use Facebook today — compared to only 20% of the 65+ age group who reported using it in 2012. So, how has Facebook’s design and platform changed with its success? Here’s a look at it today. The News Feed While the shape of the layout hasn’t changed that much, the organization and type of content within it has changed drastically. Some of the more basic additions to the Feed include news ticker that highlights trending hashtags, a sleeker design, and more priority on photo and video posts.

Here are a few other tweaks you might not notice about the current layout. The Notification and Friends icons have moved to the upper navigation bar. Additionally, events have been moved to the side navigation. This simplifies the pages of the site allowing users to focus on the Feed, interesting posts, and other important centrally-located items. Behind the scenes, Facebook has also continued to tweak News Feed algorithms with the aim of showing users content that they’re actually interested in. For example, you now see more statuses, content, and other types of content due to the interests you’ve shown on the platform. Whereas, in Facebook’s early years, you might have just seen an endless stream of your friends’ high scores on the online game Candy Crush. Additionally, although Facebook now offers a wider variety of marketing and advertising options for brands, its Feed now algorithmically prioritizes content from individual users before posting content from brands. Statuses and Updates Instead of the old status bar that would prompt users with text a simple text box, there’s now a text box at the top of the feed that more broadly asks “What’s on your mind.” At the bottom of the text box, you can now also see icons for “Photo/Video,” “Tag Friends,” and “Feelings/Activities.”

So, if you’re on vacation with family and friends, you can post a status that includes images of where you are, captions, a “happy” feelings icon, a geo-tag to show where you want, and tags of all the friends who were with you so their networks can see and react to the photos. This shift makes the News Feed feel much more interesting, visual, and personal for users — which might allow them to surf through its content for a longer amount of time. Likes and Reactions After the success of the “Like,” Facebook launched additional “Reactions” such as a heart, a laughing emoji, a sad face, an angry face in 2016. These tiny tweaks have allowed users to interact with content in a more emotional and personalized way, even if they don’t have time to draft a full comment.

New Features and Platform Extensions Aside from making the News Feed feel more personalized, Facebook, which is now a major social media corporation has also taken steps to expand its original platform and its ownership of other key social networks. To start, Facebook re-launched its direct messaging system as the standalone Facebook Messenger app in 2011. On the desktop site, Facebook also made its Messenger tool accessible on every page of the site. Later, in 2014, Facebook also acquired another popular messenger called WhatsApp. Although WhatsApp wasn’t generating much revenue at the time, Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg acquired the international messaging app because they saw it as an opportunity to reach global audiences that weren’t on Facebook yet, but still wanted to communicate and make connections online. Most recently, in 2017, Facebook launched a Stories bar to its News Feed, following suit of Instagram Stories. This came shortly before Facebook purchased Instagram, in order to mature the Facebook Stories feature while tapping into Instagram’s millennial and Gen Z audiences.

Advertising Facebook Ads is now a robust and incredibly popular advertising platform, in fact, marketers now spend most of their marketing budgets on Facebook Ads, along with Google and Amazon ads. While the early Facebook Ads allowed basic audience targeting and page analytics, the platform now offers more intuitive versions of these features. It also allows you to launch ads around a handful of objectives, including website traffic or ecommerce purchases. For companies that just wish to use a Business Page, Facebook has also improved features related to this, such as Facebook Insights which shows you how your page is performing against potential competitors. In addition to ads on its platform, Facebook has also improved advertising options on platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp. To learn more about changes related to Instagram, keep reading. Instagram 2010 Instagram was launched in 2010 as a social media app for photo-sharing. By 2012, the simple social media app was already seeing over 100,000 app downloads per day. Layout In the app’s infancy, it had a simple layout with a basic photo feed. Similarly to Instagram’s current feed, it showed a user’s name, then a photo, then the photo’s likes, and a description. The below photo shows what Instagram’s main feed and camera looked like in 2010.

Source: Business Insider However, while there were some similarities between the original and current layout, there were a number of crucial differences. For example, the app’s logo was a completely different font and took up the entire top of the feed’s page. Here’s a quick comparison of the logo then and today: Original Logo Banner:

Current Logo Banner:

Additionally, the lower navigation options were also much larger and organized in a slightly different way than they are today. Old Navigation

Current Navigation

Features Aside from the design, Instagram had very basic features. It was primarily meant for posting square photos or short videos on a feed that your followers could see. To learn about other Instagram accounts, you could either search a person or hashtag, tap the Popular feed to see posts from influencers, or you could surf through a Newsfeed that showed posts from major companies and publications. 2020 Layout Similarly to Facebook, the Instagram Feed’s core design is similar, but much sleeker, more intuitive, powered by better algorithms, and additionally has an Instagram Stories bar. It’s camera also still looks similar but has a cleaner, white design.

Within the last decade, Instagram has made its design look less busy by opting for a white background. It has also replaced the giant upper logo banner with a smaller logo and a navigation bar which includes a camera icon for Instagram Story recording, a TV icon which will bring you to IGTV, and a paper airplane icon for your direct message inbox. Instagram has also adjusted its lower navigation, swapping out a Popular post feed with a more robust Search Tab which consolidated the Search bar and popular trending posts. With this adjustment, a user hoping to discover new accounts or content only has to go to one tab of the app.

Once consolidating the News tab into the Search tab, Instagram added a heart icon in the News Tab’s place. This tab now houses a user’s notifications. When it comes to the camera, Instagram now allows video and photo recording, while still enabling the user to upload content from their library. Features Instagram Stories Aside from the standard Instagram camera, there’s also a special camera for recording Instagram Stories, a game-changing feature launched by the platform in 2016. By now, you’ve probably created or seen an Instagram Story. But, in case you haven’t, this feature allows you to film or upload images or video that tells a story about your life or your brand. If you have a verified business account or more than 10,000 followers, you can also link Instagram Stories to your website’s content. When creating an Instagram Story, the app’s camera allows you to take vertical, smartphone-shaped shots or videos. Then, you can use its featured icons to zest up your content with text, sounds, GIF stickers, or color-overlay filters. You can also use a variety of video filters and AR features to zest up your content.

IGTV Instagram’s current app also includes IGTV, launched in 2018. Currently, you can see IGTV content related to your interests by going to the Search tab and tapping the IGTV button.

With this feature, brands and influencers can upload or stream longer-form live content in vertical format. This content can then be highlighted on their accounts under an IGTV tab. Shoppable Posts After Instagram was purchased by Facebook, the app added a new feature that could be utilized by brands with a Facebook Marketplace catalog. The feature, called Shoppable Posts, allows brands to tag posts with product shots with a link to the product listing in their Facebook Marketplace. Unlike Instagram Story swipe-up links, the Shoppable feature can be accessed by any Instagram Business account linked to a Facebook Marketplace catalog — regardless of the business accounts following. Here’s an example of what a Shoppable post looks like on the platform:

Pinterest 2010 When Pinterest launched in 2010, the platform’s purpose was simple. It allowed you to save and store links to websites that you thought were interesting. It was a place where you could save and present a “collection” of web content that you wanted to share with people similar to you. To keep your link collections organized, you could categorize them by creating a Pinterest board around an overarching topic. Layout Since it had a much more basic purpose, the original Pinterest website looked more like a very basic, photo-based blog. You could still add photos, tag posts with specific topics, and create inspiration-styled boards around specific categories, but the design was much busier and not mobile-optimized.

Source: Beebom When the platform first launched, you also had to “Request an invite” to join since it was still in its beta phase. In fact, the platform was still invite-only through 2012, when Mashable described it as the year’s “hottest” social media platform and noted that it generated more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+, or LinkedIn. 2020 The current Pinterest design, and its mobile app, now emphasizes visuals even more than its first design. Because of its visual inspiration board aesthetic, Pinterest has also continued to position itself as a site people visit to find inspiration related to products, home designs, or even life experiences such as travel. Layout The platform is also more compact and mobile-optimized as the social media network’s logo has been minimized and the search bar has become a more natural fit into the upper navigation. Unlike the old design, you can also see notifications when someone shares or engages with one of your posts — also called pins.

Visual Search Features Aside from the text-based search, which you could take advantage of in the original design, you can now also search for pins with a reverse photo search feature. For example, if you see a product you like in real life, you can take a photo of it and search for similar items.

The visual search feature seems like a low-hanging fruit for Pinterest which is a highly visual platform. Aside from allowing people to find products or images they’re interested in, it also might attract visitors who are interested in discovering information related products or images, rather than spending time creating inspiration-themed boards. Advertising and Brand Awareness Features With brands like Target already using Pinterest boards to highlight product lines, the platform has become a natural fit for advertisements. Currently, the Pinterest Ads Manager, launched in 2014, allows you to create PPC ads with its own audience retargeting and A/B testing tools.

To accompany the Pinterest Ads Manager, the platform also recently launched an Audience Insights tool in 2018. This feature gives businesses more data and analytical information about their audiences and how their content is performing. At an event covered by Digiday, Pinterest’s Head of Agency Partners, Yolanda Lam, explained, “Agencies and clients know we have unique insights, but they don’t have easy access to it. … They need to call a salesperson to understand what is available. Now, you can go in there to pull those data sets.” To learn more about how to create and test effective Pinterest ads, check out this blog post with tips from a PPC expert. Twitter Twitter was founded in 2006 with a similar positioning as today. It was a social network where you could fire off short thoughts about trends, topics, or events that were important to you. These thoughts came in the form of text-based tweets under 160 characters. After being presented at SXSW in 2007, Twitter saw its first surge in traffic as it moved from 20,000 to 60,000 users during the event. Also that year, Dell became the first major corporation to join the social media platform, while Twitter was incorporated as a company. After rolling out a number of simple features including follows, replies, and hashtags in 2007 and 2008, Twitter launched its first major redesign in 2010. 2010 Layout Although the brand and platform’s mission hasn’t changed at its core, the layout has certainly come a very long way. Despite being considered one of the hippest social media platforms of its time and pioneering the trending hashtag, its initial 2010 design was actually quite clunky and visually busy. The Twitter layout split the main homepage in half. On one side, you could find a Timeline that was similar to today’s Twitter feed. On the other, you could see details about how many tweets you’d sent, follower suggestions, your follower counts, and a long list of trending hashtags.

Source; Wired Aside from seeing a Twitter feed on one side of the page and your own tweets on the left, you could also click on tabs like @Mentions to see when you’d been tagged in tweets from others, retweets to see when others retweeted you, or searches to see your past searches. Like today’s Twitter platform, you could also add accounts you followed to specific “Lists” and then see their tweets by clicking on the “Lists” tab. 2020 In 2020, Twitter’s main page is a lot easier to navigate. While the feed is placed directly in the center, you can still access its key features, like Lists, and your profile by clicking on clearly marked buttons in the left navigation bar. The website still also prioritizes trends by dedicating the right sidebar to viral topics and hashtags and a “Who to Follow” box.

Similarly to the other social platforms on this list, the Twitter feed now emphasizes photos and videos more than it did in 2010. Aside from the visual changes to the main homepage feed, Twitter has also become more personalized to each user. When you discover, follow, and engage with content or accounts through Twitter’s feed, Explore feature, and Twitter Topics, Twitter’s algorithms take that data into account when prioritizing content that you might enjoy on your feed. A recent blog post about Twitter Topics highlighted Twitter’s mission to make feeds and content more personalized to users: “Previously, all of the work was on you to figure out the best way to keep up with what’s happening by following certain accounts, searching for it, or looking in the Explore tab for the latest. Now, you have the option of seeing the most relevant and interesting Tweets about what you care about with a single tap, and the conversation will come to you.” Reddit Reddit was launched as a discussion-oriented social media network in 2005. However, it didn’t become a viral success overnight. In fact, to make the platform look like it was more popular, thousands of early posts were published by fake accounts created by the Reddit team. “The first thing it did was it set the tone,” Co-Founder Steve Huffman revealed in a VentureBeat post. “We were submitting content that we would have been interested in seeing. That meant the content on Reddit … was good. And when you show up, you know exactly what the site is about.” Despite Reddit’s early, and controversial, fake account strategy, the platform eventually did become popular. In its first two years, discussion communities — called subreddits — began to gain popularity. By 2007, some of the most popular subreddits were “NSFW” — which stands for “Not Suited for Work” “Programming,” and “Science.” 2010 Just before 2010, Reddit moved its website to Amazon Web Services servers which tripled its traffic. By 2010, the platform’s founders claimed that they were seeing roughly 8 million visitors per month. Layout Despite its unique discussion-oriented platform and growing popularity, Reddit’s 2010 platform was pretty basic. The layout was primarily text-based as it encouraged users to discuss topics in subreddits, which were similar to public chat rooms.

Source: Reddit Aside from the main feed that you’d see when logging on to Reddit, you could look at the very top of the page to see trending subreddits. When you were on a subreddit, you could toggle between tabs including, “what’s hot,” “new,” “controversial,” “top,” or “saved” to see different types of posts within the subreddit. On the right of any Reddit screen, you could also see a box that would allow you to post your own links or text to a subreddit. Similarly to today’s Reddit format, you could also “Upvote” posts you enjoyed to help them show up higher on Reddit feeds or “downvote” posts to lower them. If you wanted to participate in a conversation, you could simply reply to a post. 2020 Although Reddit’s formatting has changed a lot, it’s audiences are still interested in similar things. Although the most popular subreddits have evolved to more specific topics, such as “emerging technology,” many of them still loosely relate to the platform’s earliest most-popular topics of “science” and “programming.” Layout Reddit’s current platform now emphasizes a lot more visuals as it includes a Trending stories tab at the top with photos related to each topic, and more capabilities allowing users to upload high-quality photos and videos.

Reddit, which now has 430 million monthly active users, also recently launched a streaming feature that allows users to interact with others while on live video. Aside from its streaming feature, Reddit has also added more advertising options, including native ad blocks in its right sidebar and promotional posts which are located higher in related subreddit feeds. This is part of a play to make Reddit more appealing to brands and marketers.

LinkedIn LinkedIn launched in 2003 as a members-only networking platform that you had to subscribe to with a membership fee. By 2011, the network was free and had become the first and most popular professional social media network. That year, the company drastically increased its funding and brand awareness with an IPO. But, at this point, the website’s platform looked suspiciously nascent. Shortly after its IPO, I had my first experience with LinkedIn as a college sophomore. I suddenly started receiving plain-looking emails saying that my email contacts invited me to a networking site called LinkedIn. After ignoring these emails thinking they were spam, I started hearing more about this site and decided to visit it. When I did, the site looked as basic as the emails I received. Here’s what it looked like:

Source: TechCrunch The original design centered around a search bar and search results feed which you could use to learn about topics in your industry. To help you sift through your search results, the homepage also had a sidebar that offered an expansive list. Aside from the feed and filters, there was also a right sidebar showing off “Trending Content’ related to your searches.. 2020 Ten years later, LinkedIn’s become an online networking necessity with a much more intuitive layout. Not only have I found amazing jobs on this social network, but I now use it almost daily. In fact, my optimized LinkedIn profile even led my HubSpot manager to find and reach out to me for an interview. I’m not the only one who’s found career success with this social networking tool. A recent study found that over 122 million people have received an interview through the social network. It’s also become a vital tool for companies as it hosts over 20 million job listings. With over 660 million users, LinkedIn has followed the similar theme of other platforms on this list by emphasizing more photos and video-based content. It also has continued to embrace trending topics in its right navigation bar, similarly to Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn has also adjusted its design to be more social-media friendly by adding a navigation bar with a Friends and Notifications tab. Additionally, today’s layout includes a messaging feature which is crucial for both social and professional networking. This feature is easily accessible in the upper navigation bar and in a lower box at the bottom of the page.

What Marketers Can Learn from Social Media’s Evolution As you’ve seen, all of these platforms have evolved to become more visual and personalized to users. This represents how social media audiences are interested in interacting with friends, viewing fast-paced feeds with valuable information, and consuming highly visual video or photo-based content. If your marketing strategy hasn’t evolved to fit these strategies yet, you should be working towards tactics that allow you to better connect and communicate with your audience on these platforms. You should also begin to put an emphasis on the creation of shareable multimedia content such as informative blog posts with photos, marketing graphics, or high-quality video content. To learn more about how you can leverage major social media platforms, check out this detailed guide on the five types of social media and the pros and cons of each.

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The 25 Works of Art That Define the Contemporary Age

Three artists and a pair of curators came together at The New York Times to attempt to make a list of the era’s essential artworks. Here’s their conversation.

On a recent afternoon in June, T Magazine assembled two curators and three artists — David Breslin, the director of the collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the American conceptual artist Martha Rosler; Kelly Taxter, a curator of contemporary art at the Jewish Museum; the Thai conceptual artist Rirkrit Tiravanija; and the American artist Torey Thornton — at the New York Times building to discuss what they considered to be the 25 works of art made after 1970 that define the contemporary age, by anyone, anywhere. The assignment was intentionally wide in its range: What qualifies as “contemporary”? Was this an artwork that had a personal significance, or was its meaning widely understood? Was its influence broadly recognized by critics? Or museums? Or other artists? Originally, each of the participants was asked to nominate 10 artworks — the idea being that everyone would then rank each list to generate a master list that would be debated upon meeting.

Unsurprisingly, the system fell apart. It was impossible, some argued, to rank art. It was also impossible to select just 10. (Rosler, in fact, objected to the whole premise, though she brought her own list to the discussion in the end.) And yet, to everyone’s surprise, there was a significant amount of overlap: works by David Hammons, Dara Birnbaum, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Danh Vo, Cady Noland, Kara Walker, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger and Arthur Jafa were cited multiple times. Had the group, perhaps, stumbled upon some form of agreement? Did their selections reflect our values, priorities and a unified idea of what matters today? Did focusing on artworks, rather than artists, allow for a different framework?

Naturally, when re-evaluating the canon of the last five decades, there were notable omissions. The group failed to name many artists who most certainly had an impact on how we view art today: Bigger names of recent Museum of Modern Art retrospectives, internationally acclaimed artists and high earners on the secondary market were largely excluded. Few paintings were singled out; land art was almost entirely absent, as were, to name just a few more categories, works on paper, sculpture, photography, fiber arts and outsider art.

It’s important to emphasize that no consensus emerged from the meeting. Rather, this list of works is merely what has been culled from the conversation, each chosen because it appeared on a panelist’s original submission of 10 (in two instances, two different works by the same artist were nominated, which were considered jointly). The below is not definitive, nor is it comprehensive. Had this meeting happened on a different day, with a different group, the results would have been different. Some pieces were debated heavily; others were fleetingly passed over, as if the group intuitively understood why they had been brought up; a few were spoken of with appreciation and wonder. What came out of the conversation was more of a sensibility than a declaration. This list — which is ordered chronologically, from oldest work to most recent — is who we circled around, who we defended, who we questioned, and who we, perhaps most of all, wish might be remembered. — Thessaly La Force

This conversation has been edited and condensed. The artwork summaries are by Zoë Lescaze.

1. Sturtevant, “Warhol Flowers,” 1964-71

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Known professionally by her surname, Elaine Sturtevant (b. Lakewood, Ohio, 1924; d. 2014) began “repeating” the works of other artists in 1964, more than a decade before Richard Princephotographed his first Marlboro ad and Sherrie Levineappropriated the images of Edward Weston. Her targets tended to be famous male painters (largely because the work of women was less broadly recognized). Over the course of her career, she imitated canvases by Frank Stella, James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein, among others. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his own puckish understanding of authorship and originality, Andy Warholapproved of Sturtevant’s project and even lent her one of his “Flowers” screens. Other artists, including Claes Oldenburg, were unamused, and collectors largely shied away from purchasing the works. Gradually, however, the art world came around to understanding her conceptual reasons for copying canonical works: to skewer the grand modernist myths of creativity and the artist as lone genius. By focusing on Pop Art, itself a comment on mass production and the suspect nature of authenticity, Sturtevant was taking the genre to its full logical extension. Playful and subversive, somewhere between parody and homage, her efforts also echo the centuries-old tradition of young artists copying old masters.

2. Marcel Broodthaers, “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles,” 1968-72

In 1968, Marcel Broodthaers (b. Brussels, 1924; d. 1976) opened his nomadic museum, the “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles,” complete with a staff, wall labels, period rooms and slide carousels. His “Museum of Modern Art” existed in various locations, beginning with Broodthaers’s Brussels home, where the artist filled the space with storage crates for people to use as seats and postcard reproductions of 19th-century paintings. He painted the words “musée” and “museum” on two windows facing the street. The museum, which gently mocked various curatorial and financial aspects of traditional institutions, grew from there, with sections identified as 17th century, folklore and cinema, among others. At one point, Broodthaers had a gold bar stamped with an eagle, which he intended to sell at twice its market value in order to raise money for the museum. Failing to find a buyer, he declared the museum bankrupt and put it up for sale. Nobody was interested enough to make a purchase, and in 1972, he erected a new section of his museum in an actual institution, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. There, he installed hundreds of works and everyday objects — from flags to beer bottles — depicting eagles, the symbol of his museum.

3. Hans Haacke, “MoMA Poll,” 1970

In 1969, the Guerrilla Art Action Group, an art workers’ coalition, called for the resignation of the Rockefellers from the board of the Museum of Modern Art, believing the family was involved in the manufacture of weapons (chemical gas and napalm) destined for Vietnam. A year later, Hans Haacke (b. Cologne, Germany, 1936) took the fight inside the museum. His seminal installation, “MoMA Poll,” presented visitors with two transparent ballot boxes, a ballot and a sign that posed a question about the upcoming gubernatorial race: “Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s Indochina Policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November?” (By the time the exhibition closed, roughly twice as many participants had answered “yes” as “no.”) MoMA did not censor the work, but not all institutions were as tolerant. In 1971, just three weeks before it was set to open, the Guggenheim Museum canceled what would have been the German artist’s first major international solo show when he wouldn’t remove three provocative works. The same year, Cologne’s Wallraf-Richartz Museum refused to exhibit “Manet-Projekt ’74,” which examined the provenance of an Édouard Manet painting donated to that museum by a Nazi sympathizer.

Thessaly La Force: There’s one work here that really looks at the institution of the museum. Rirkrit, you listed Marcel Broodthaers’s piece.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: That’s the beginning of breaking — at least for me — the institution. The beginning, for me, in Western art, to question that kind of accumulation of knowledge. I like the Hans Haacke that’s also on this list. Definitely on my list, but I didn’t put it down.

Martha Rosler: I put it down. Hans showed the audience that it was part of a system. By collecting their opinions and information about who they were, he was able to construct a picture. I thought that it was transformative and riveting for anyone who was interested in thinking about who the art world was. Also because it was totally data driven and it wasn’t aesthetic. It was the revolutionary idea that the art world itself was not outside the question of: Who are we? It gave a lot of space for people to think systematically about things the art world had relentlessly refused to recognize were systematic issues.

4. Philip Guston, “Untitled (Poor Richard),” 1971

Richard Nixon was up for re-election in 1971 when Philip Guston (b. Montreal, 1913; d. 1980) created an astounding, little-known series of nearly 80 cartoons depicting the president’s rise to office and destructive tenure. In Guston’s spindly line drawings, we see Nixon, portrayed with a phallic nose and testicular cheeks, swimming on Key Biscayne and drafting foreign policy in China with caricatured politicians, including Henry Kissinger as a pair of glasses; the president’s pet dog, Checkers, also makes cameos. Guston captures Nixon’s bitterness and insincerity while crafting a poignant meditation on the abuse of power. Despite its enduring relevance, the series languished in Guston’s studio for more than 20 years following the artist’s death in 1980; it was finally exhibited and published in 2001. The drawings were shown most recently in 2017 at Hauser & Wirth in London.

TLF: Back to my larger question: What do we mean by “contemporary”? Does anyone want to take a stab at that?

RT: I think Philip Guston’s series of Nixon drawings became completely contemporary because it’s —

Torey Thornton: A mirror of sorts.

RT: It’s like talking about what we’re looking at today.

TLF: Well, that’s a question I had, too. Do some works of art have the capacity to change over time? Do some get stuck in amber and remain a mirror of that particular moment? What you’re describing is a current event changing the meaning of Guston’s paintings and drawings.

Kelly Taxter: I think that absolutely happens.

MR: It’s all about the institution. When you mentioned the Guston piece, which is great, I was thinking, “Yeah, but there’s at least two videotapes that were about the same exact thing.” What about “Television Delivers People” [a 1973 short film by Richard Serra and Carlota Schoolman]? I’m also thinking of “Four More Years” [a documentary about the 1972 Republican National Convention] by TVTV, which was about Nixon, and “The Eternal Frame” [a 1975 satirical re-creation of the John F. Kennedy assassination by Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco], about the Kennedys.

Read more from T Magazine:

Judy Chicago, the GodmotherFeb. 7, 2018

6. Lynda Benglis, Artforum advertisement, 1974

Lynda Benglis (b. Lake Charles, La., 1941) wanted the 1974 profile Artforum was writing about her to be accompanied by a nude self-portrait. John Coplans, the editor in chief at the time, refused. Undaunted, Benglis persuaded her New York dealer, Paula Cooper, to take out a two-page ad in the magazine (Benglis paid for it). Readers opened the November issue of Artforum and saw a sun-tanned Benglis striking a pose, hip cocked, staring down at the viewer through pointy, white-framed sunglasses. She wears nothing else and holds an enormous dildo between her legs. The image caused bedlam. Five editors — Rosalind Krauss, Max Kozloff, Lawrence Alloway, Joseph Masheck and Annette Michelson — wrote a scathing letter to the magazine condemning the ad as a “shabby mockery of the aims of [women’s liberation].” The critic Robert Rosenblum wrote a letter to the magazine congratulating Benglis for exposing the prudishness of people who considered themselves arbiters of avant-garde taste: “Let’s give three dildos and a Pandora’s Box to Ms. Benglis, who finally brought out of the closet the Sons and Daughters of the Founding Fathers of the Artforum Committee of Public Decency and Ladies Etiquette.” The ad became an iconic image of resistance to the sexism and double standards that continue to pervade the art world.

DB: I’m surprised no one included Cindy Sherman. [Between 1977 and 1980, Sherman made a series of black-and-white photographs of herself posing in various stereotypical female roles, titled “Untitled Film Stills.”]

KT: I had such a hard time with that. It was one of those things that I was like, “This is going to be on other peoples’ lists. It’s so obvious, I’m not going to put it down.”

TLF: No one did.

RT: Well, I have Lynda Benglis’s Artforum ad, which has a relation to photography later on.

MR: I thought that was really good.

KT: I wanted to put Sherrie Levine’s “After Walker Evans” [in 1981, Levine exhibited reproductions of Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans that she rephotographed, questioning the value of authenticity], but didn’t because … I don’t why. I ran out of room in the ’80s.

Read more from T Magazine:

The Feminist Pioneers Making Provocative Art About SexOct. 31, 2017

Why Are So Many Artists Making Work That Lies on the Floor?Aug. 16, 2017

7. Gordon Matta-Clark, “Splitting,” 1974

Gordon Matta-Clark (b. New York City, 1943; d. 1978) trained as an architect at Cornell University. By the 1970s, he was working as an artist, cutting chunks out of vacant properties, documenting the voids and exhibiting the amputated bits of architecture. Abandoned buildings were easy to find at the time — New York City was economically depressed and crime-ridden. Matta-Clark was looking for a new site when the art dealer Holly Solomonoffered him a house she owned in suburban New Jersey that was slated for demolition. “Splitting” (1974) was one of Matta-Clark’s first monumental works. With the help of the craftsman Manfred Hecht, among other assistants, Matta-Clark sliced the whole thing in two with a power saw, then jacked up one side of the structure while they beveled the cinder blocks beneath it before slowly lowering it back down. The house cleaved perfectly, leaving a slender central gap through which the sunlight could enter the rooms. The piece was demolished three months later to make way for new apartments. “It was always exciting working with Gordon,” Hecht once said. “There was always a good chance of getting killed.”

TLF: Why is there no land art?

RT: I have Gordon Matta-Clark.

MR: Is that land art? “Spiral Jetty” [the giant coil of mud, salt and basalt constructed in 1970 at Rozel Point, Utah, by the American sculptor Robert Smithson] is land art.

TT: That’s crazy! The jetty 100 percent has to be on my list.

KT: “The Lightning Field” [a 1977 work by the American sculptor Walter De Maria comprising 400 stainless steel poles staked in the New Mexico desert], “Roden Crater” [the American light artist James Turrell’s still-in-progress naked-eye observatory in Northern Arizona].

TT: I thought, “Who can see it? What does ‘influence’ mean, what does it mean to be influenced through seeing something on a screen?” I was thinking, “Do I list what I’ve seen versus what I’ve obsessed over?” At that point, it’s all a reproduction or a sort of theatrical representation.

MR: Totally.

TT: I put Michael Asher’s show in the Santa Monica Museum [No. 19, see below] but with something like that — once it’s gone, it’s reproduction only. You can’t visit it, it doesn’t move somewhere else.

TLF: Are the questions that the land artists were asking — are they no longer questions we’re asking today?

TT: There’s no more land.

MR: It’s a really interesting question. It’s mainly that, because of the move to the cities, we’ve become urban-obsessed. The pastoral question — which also applies to the cities, though we’re not that aware of it — has receded. But am I wrong that the land-art stuff was also in Europe? There were Dutch artists and English artists.

RT: Yeah, there were. Still are.

MR: Land art was international in an interesting way, which coincided with the Blue Marble [an image taken of Earth in 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17].

TLF: The Whole Earth Catalog.

MR: Sure. The idea of the whole earth as an entity made up of actual stuff rather than a social space.

RT: Maybe it also has to do with this idea of property and wealth, too. The value of land and what it’s used for has changed. It used to be you could just go out in Montana and probably —

MR: Bury some Cadillacs.

RT: — dig a big hole. I mean, Michael Heizer still does stuff, but it’s only interior now. He’s just doing big rocks inside a space. Then again, that’s why Smithson is interesting, because it’s almost like the non-site now [Smithson used the term “non-site” to describe works that were presented outside their original context, such as rocks from a New Jersey quarry exhibited in a gallery alongside photos or maps of the site where they came from].

TLF: Then why did you include Gordon Matta-Clark?

RT: There are many references for me, but I feel like “Splitting” hits all the other things that I’m thinking about. With “Splitting,” it’s like a comic ending. Also, the idea of the house divided and what’s happening with domesticity — people aren’t able to sit together at Thanksgiving anymore.

8. Jenny Holzer, “Truisms,” 1977-79

Jenny Holzer (b. Gallipolis, Ohio, 1950) was 25 years old when she began compiling her “Truisms,” more than 250 cryptic maxims, terse commands and shrewd observations. Culled from world literature and philosophy, some of the one-liners are judgmental (“Any surplus is immoral”), others bleak (“Ideals are replaced by conventional goals at a certain age”), and a few echo the half-baked platitudes found in fortune cookies (“You must have one grand passion”). The most resonant are the political ones, none more so than “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.” After printing them as posters, which she pasted among real advertisements throughout downtown Manhattan, Holzer reproduced them on objects, including baseball caps, T-shirts and condoms. She projected them on the enormous Spectacolor LED board in Times Square in 1982, with smaller scrolling signs to evoke the digital clocks and screens through which we are continuously fed information (and told what to think) in urban environments. Holzer continues to use the “Truisms” today, incorporating them into electronic signs, benches, footstools and T-shirts.

DB: Thessaly, when you asked earlier if Trump was in the room, that’s why I went to Jenny Holzer. In their original iterations, “Truisms” were these kind of street posters that people were marking up —

MR: But they were never not art-world things.

DB: I agree. They came out of the Whitney Independent Study Program. But I think this is where the work takes on such a different resonance now. The original intention behind them was that these codes are free-floating and, of course, unconscious. But I think now the idea that one is constantly assembling these truths, that it isn’t a list of unconsciousness, is really alive in that work.

MR: It’s an interesting hypothesis. The reason I chose Barbara Kruger [No. 11, see below] instead was that I thought she did an interesting collision of fashion-world typography with this kind of punk street-postering. She actually enunciates things people might cleverly say but would never say in the art world: “Your gaze hits the side of my face.” Or all kinds of feminist stuff: “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” Who says stuff like that? Who expects to be rewarded by capitalism for saying things they don’t want to hear? When Barbara joined a high-profile gallery, it was a change in strategy just when the market recaptured all that dissonant stuff that they had no idea what to do with. Finally the market figured it out. Just let the artist do it, and we’ll say it’s art and it’s O.K.

Read more from T Magazine:

The Man Who Taught a Generation of Black Artists Gets His Own RetrospectiveSept. 28, 2018

A Blind Publisher, Poet — and Link to the Lower East Side’s Cultural HistoryFeb. 9, 2018

11. Barbara Kruger, “Untitled (When I Hear the Word Culture, I Take Out My Checkbook),” 1985; “Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am),” 1987

Barbara Kruger (b. Newark, 1945) briefly studied at the Parsons School of Design in 1965, but her real education was in the world of magazines. She dropped out early on to work at Mademoiselle as an assistant to the art director, rapidly became head designer, and then switched to freelance, conceiving layouts for House & Garden, Vogue and Aperture, among other publications. Through these projects, Kruger learned how to command the viewer’s attention and manipulate desire. A close reader of Roland Barthes and other theorists focused on media, culture and the power of images, Kruger brought her professional life and philosophical leanings together in the early 1980s with her iconic works: agitprop images of terse, satirical slogans in white or black Futura Bold Oblique type on close-cropped images primarily from old magazines. They confront gender roles and sexuality, corporate greed and religion. Several of the most well-known indict consumerism, including 1985’s “Untitled (When I Hear the Word Culture, I Take Out My Checkbook),” in which the words slash across the face of a ventriloquist’s dummy, and “Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am),” from 1987.

12. Nan Goldin, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” 1985-86

When Nan Goldin (b. Washington, D.C., 1953) moved to New York City in 1979, she rented a loft on the Bowery and embarked on what would prove to be one of the most influential photographic series of the century. Her subjects were herself, her lovers and her friends — drag queens, fellow drug addicts, runaways and artists. We see them fight, make up, have sex, apply makeup, shoot up and nod off in the several hundred candid images comprising “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.” Goldin first shared the pictures as slide shows in downtown clubs and bars, partly out of necessity (she lacked a darkroom to print but could get slides processed at a drugstore), partly because these haunts were part of the world of the photographs. Cult heroes and neighborhood stars, including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and John Waters, appear in some frames, but the focus is on Goldin’s intimates, including her glowering boyfriend Brian, who beat her nearly blind one night: “Nan One Month After Being Battered” (1984) is one of the most haunting portraits in the series. Goldin edited and reconfigured the series repeatedly, eventually titling it after a song in Bertolt Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera” and setting it to a playlist that has included James Brown, the Velvet Underground, Dionne Warwick, opera, rock and blues. A version appeared in the 1985 Whitney Biennial and the Aperture Foundation published a selection of 127 images as a book in 1986, which includes some of Goldin’s fiercely honest writing. A decade later, most of the people pictured in the book had died of AIDS or drug overdoses. In a recent exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Goldin concluded the sequence of nearly 700 photographs with a nod to these losses — a snapshot of two graffiti skeletons having sex.

KT: Nan Goldin continues to have a very prominent role in the discourse, whether that’s about the art itself, like what she’s making, or the problems that we’re dealing with in the culture of the art world and beyond. That body of work made visible a whole realm, a whole social structure, a whole group of people who were invisible in a lot of ways. It talked about the AIDS crisis. It talked about queer culture. It talked about her abuse. It was like a confessional, laying bare things that are still really relevant issues.

MR: It has the word “sexual” in it. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

KT: It has a lot to do with her relationship to sex and love, and her friends’ relationships to sex and love, and the unraveling of it. There’s a lot of dirt and degradation in it, and yet there is a lot of celebration in it, too, I think: being able to see what one might see as dirty or wrong as right. I saw it when I was a kid. Her prints are super gorgeous, but sometimes they are just snapshots in the freedom of the work itself, the freedom that she took with it.

Read more from T Magazine:

Nan Goldin Survived an Overdose to Fight the Opioid EpidemicJune 11, 2018

13. Cady Noland, “Oozewald,” 1989; “The Big Slide,” 1989

The work of Cady Noland (b. Washington, D.C., 1956) probes the dark corners of American culture. Many of her installations, including “The Big Slide” (1989), involve rails or barriers — allusions to the limits on access, opportunity and freedom in this country. (To enter Noland’s debut exhibition at New York’s White Columns Gallery in 1988, visitors had to duck under a metal pole blocking the door.) “Oozewald” features a silk-screened version of the famed photograph of President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he’s being shot and killed by the nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Eight oversize bullet holes perforate the surface — an American flag is wadded up inside one, where his mouth would be. Noland disappeared from the art world around 2000, a move that has become as much a part of her oeuvre as her work. While she can’t stop galleries and museums from displaying old pieces, disclaimers noting the artist’s lack of consent often appear on the exhibition walls. In recent years, Noland has disowned some works entirely, roiling the market. She has become known as the art world’s boogeyman, but she might be its conscience.

TT: I started having this thing happen where years later, after thinking about an artist a lot, I started seeing how they’ve influenced other artists. I realized Cady Noland is so everywhere in a weird way. Particularly within installation art and sculpture. I’ve seen a lot of work recently that feels like it’s really leaning on something she’s made. Sometimes, something is made in a certain time and then it loops back, and it’s relevant again. There’s this overarching criticism or analysis of Americana in her work. Her name came back in, and it’s around and around and around.

MR: Isn’t that the way the art world always works? Everyone hated Warhol. Even after he was famous, the art world said, “No.” It’s why we got minimalism.

KT: I think Cady occupies a place of resistance, too. I think Cady’s character — both her resistant character and approach to her work — is part of the mythmaking of her practice. She’s an elusive Hammons-type figure. She’s not speaking on the work. Everybody else is.

DB: So much of the work has to do with conspiracy and paranoia, which feels way too “right now.” These things that have this immediate conjuring, like the Oswald figure being shot, or with Clinton and the Whitewater stuff that she does, with just the quick image of the figure and a line from a newspaper article. It’s her ability to distill the information, to get to that paranoid tendency in American culture. To your point, Kelly, when she’s come up, it’s been through lawsuits.

MR: Really?

DB: Yeah, she’s suing people for how her work is treated. This is a total guess on my part, but even if you think about that as being a mode of communication — that if she’s going to function publicly, it’s going to be through the legal system — you see, even now, I’m making a conspiracy out of it!

KT: You’re paranoid!

DB: I think we all are.

Read more from T Magazine:

From Claude Monet to Banksy, Why Do Artists Destroy Their Own Work?March 11, 2019

14. Jeff Koons, “Ilona on Top (Rosa Background),” 1990

Jeff Koons (b. York, Pa., 1955) rose to prominence in the mid-1980s making conceptual sculpture from vacuum cleaners and basketballs. When the Whitney Museum of American Art invited him to create a billboard-size work for an exhibition called “Image World,” the postmodern provocateur submitted a blown-up, grainy photograph, printed on canvas, of himself and Ilona Staller — the Hungarian-Italian porn star he would later marry — in campy coital ecstasy, advertising an unmade film. The series that followed, “Made in Heaven,” shocked viewers when it debuted at the Venice Biennale in 1990. With descriptive titles such as “Ilona’s Asshole” and “Dirty Ejaculation,” the photo-realistic paintings portrayed the couple in every conceivable position. They appeared at a moment when the country was divided over propriety in art, with religious and conservative forces rallying against sexually explicit work. Koons has claimed it is an exploration of freedom, an examination of the origins of shame, a celebration of the act of procreation, even a vision of transcendence. “I’m not interested in pornography,” he said in 1990. “I’m interested in the spiritual.” Koons destroyed portions of the series during a protracted custody battle with Staller for their son, Ludwig.

TLF: Money defines the art world, too. There are certain artists who reflect that but who no one named.

KT: I thought it was super interesting that we all didn’t go to that. There are many different art worlds. The one you’re referring to is one of them.

MR: What’s your argument for keeping more commercial artists off the list?

KT: In my opinion, because art is so much more than that. The artists who are at that level are such a small percentage of the art being made. I didn’t grow up revering that work.

TT: I think there are a lot of younger artists now who are subliminally or quietly trying to find a way in between, of being like, “Oh, I’m really interested in the production of this type of studio, but I also want to be more rigorous and hands-on with my practice.” Or maybe they’re secretly obsessed with Jeff Koons, but it’s not something they would ever say for a New York Times interview. I’m not going to name any names, but I’ve heard it enough to where I’m like, “This is for real.”

MR: Could you name one or two artists you’re talking about?

TLF: Name names.

TT: Is Damien Hirst an example?

TLF: Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami …

KT: Yeah, we left off Jeff Koons. We left off Damien Hirst.

MR: We did.

TT: I brought Jeff.

KT: I think they’re present. I would like the conversation to be about some other artists. I could have put in Damien.

MR: A more legitimate artist, in my opinion, than Jeff Koons. But that’s just me, sorry.

TLF: Well, who would you want to talk about, then, if we could?

KT: I would have picked “Equilibrium” [a series of works in the mid-1980s that included basketballs suspended in tanks of distilled water], if it were Jeff Koons. If it were Damien Hirst, I would have put “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” [a 1991 piece consisting of a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde in a vitrine]. I think it’s a really good piece that influenced artists on this list, as did “Equilibrium.” Maybe they should be on the list. Maybe we’re being disingenuous. I’m totally fine with that. They’re on my long list. I just took them off. I wanted to talk about some other people for a change, and some more women, frankly.

TT: I hear you. I agree with that.

Read more from T Magazine:

The Artists Who Defined the East Village’s Avant-Garde SceneApril 17, 2018

15. Mike Kelley, “The Arenas,” 1990

After dabbling in Detroit’s music scene as a teenager, Mike Kelley(b. Wayne, Mich., 1954; d. 2012) moved to Los Angeles to attend CalArts. In each of the 11 works of “The Arenas,” originally exhibited at Metro Pictures gallery in 1990, stuffed animals and other toys sit alone or in eerie groups on dingy blankets. In one, a handcrafted bunny with a scraggly pompom tail is positioned on a crocheted afghan before an open thesaurus, appearing to be studying the entry on “volition,” as two cans of Raid threaten from a distance. In another, a stuffed leopard is splayed atop an ominous lump beneath a black-and-orange coverlet. The works summon up themes of perversion, shame, dread, vulnerability and pathos. Kelley used toys because he felt they revealed far more about how adults see children — or want to see them — than they do about kids. “The stuffed animal is a pseudo-child,” a “cutified, sexless being that represents the adult’s perfect model of a child — a neutered pet,” he once wrote. But the toys in Kelley’s arrangements are faded, soiled, grubby and worn in sordid ways.

KT: I think that a lot of Mike Kelley’s work is about class but also about abuse and other things that kids, at least when they’re teenagers, begin articulating and thinking about. That series of work was so abject. There are layers of revelation in it that were pivotal for me personally, and then as I got older, I realized it had a bigger impact. And I see it in the work of some of the younger artists today.

Read more from T Magazine:

Mike Kelley’s Underground Afterlife March 8, 2017

16. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (b. Cuba, 1957; d. 1996) came to New York City in 1979. When he created “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) in 1991, he was mourning the loss of his lover, Ross Laycock, who had died of AIDS-related illness that year. The installation ideally comprises 175 pounds of candies, wrapped in bright cellophane, an approximation of the body weight of a healthy adult male. Viewers are free to take pieces from the pile, and over the course of the exhibition, the work deteriorates, just as Laycock’s body did. The candies, however, may or may not be routinely replenished by the staff, evoking eternity and rebirth at the same time as they conjure mortality.

DB: The work engages where we are today, this idea about the participatory and the experiential. Gonzalez-Torres also makes the point about responsibility, that an onus comes with this kind of taking. The idea, too, that it’s referencing one person as the ideal body weight, that the participatory element is not just this generalized mass thing, that the referent is just one other person, I think is very profound.

RT: I was thinking about AIDS. I almost put the Act Up logo as an artifact. We should talk about works of art that are more than just art, addressing all those other conditions. I find it very beautiful in that way.

KT: That work, in a metaphorical sense, is a virus. It dissipates and goes into other people’s bodies.

RT: I don’t even know if the audience really understands. That’s the thing. They are just taking candies.

TLF: I certainly just thought I was taking candies.

DB: There’s also the idea of replenishment. He comes back the next day. The obligation to restore is so much different than the obligation to take. The person is surviving. The institution is refilling. You could go away one day and not know that this returns to its own form. This idea of who knows and who doesn’t, I think, is important to it.

Read more from T Magazine:

A Colossal New Show Revisits a Conceptual Art IconMay 11, 2017

17. Catherine Opie, “Self-Portrait/Cutting,” 1993

In her photograph “Self-Portrait/Cutting,” Catherine Opie (b. Sandusky, Ohio, 1961) faces away from the viewer, confronting us with her bare back, on which a house — the kind a child might draw — and two stick figures in skirts have been carved. The figures hold hands, completing the idyllic domestic dream, which, at the time was just that — a dream — for lesbian couples. This work and others responded to the national firestorm surrounding “obscenity” in art. In 1989, Senators Alfonse D’Amato and Jesse Helms had denounced “Piss Christ,” a photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in urine by Andres Serrano, which was part of a traveling exhibition that had received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. A few weeks later, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. opted to cancel a show featuring homoerotic and sadomasochistic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, whose exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania had also received federal funding. In 1990, the N.E.A. denied funding to four artists because of their explicit themes of frank sexuality, trauma or subjugation. (In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that the N.E.A.’s statute was valid and did not result in discrimination against the artists, nor did it suppress their expression.) By creating and exhibiting these works when she did, Opie openly defied those looking to shame queer communities and censor their visibility in art. “She is an insider and an outsider,” wrote the Times art critic Holland Cotter on the occasion of Opie’s 2008 Guggenheim midcareer retrospective. “[Opie is] a documentarian and a provocateur; a classicist and a maverick; a trekker and a stay-at-home; a lesbian feminist mother who resists the gay mainstream; an American — birthplace: Sandusky, Ohio — who has serious arguments with her country and culture.”

DB: This question of intimacy — who’s trying to police what I do with my body and how I choose to constitute what a family is — all these issues are one, if we’re thinking about how some of these works resound now. These are still things that we are urgently dealing with. The presence of motherhood and parenting are profound in the work. The vulnerability of presenting oneself to one’s own camera like that, which I think is also incredible in Goldin’s work — the question of who is my world, and who do I want to be a part of it?

MR: In both their cases, it’s about me and them, which is a huge thing that women brought. With the AIDS crisis, there were a lot of works about “me” in the same way, but it was really a huge change for Cathy and Nan to be the subject.

KT: Also, with Nan, this idea of a community in some sense of collaboration. As opposed to a photographer taking a picture of you, you’re taking a picture withyou.

18. Lutz Bacher, “Closed Circuit,” 1997-2000

Lutz Bacher (b. United States, 1943; d. 2019) is an anomaly in an age of easily searchable biographies and online profiles. The artist used a pseudonym, one that has obscured her original name. Few photos of her face exist. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that so many of Bacher’s works focus on questions of exposure, visibility and privacy. After Pat Hearn, the famed downtown art dealer who represented her, was diagnosed with liver cancer on January 22, 1997, Bacher installed a camera above Hearn’s desk, filming continuously for 10 months. We see Hearn sit, make phone calls, meet with artists; Hearn is featured in the frame less and less as her illness worsens. Bacher edited 1,200 hours of footage into 40 minutes of video stills upon the dealer’s death in 2000, forming an unusual window into the inner workings of a gallery, as well as an intimate record of an influential woman as she stares down death.

TLF: Here’s something that I’m wondering: Cady Noland, Lutz Bacher and Sturtevant are — elusive is one word, anonymous could be another — people. It’s interesting that they resonate in a time when there is so much celebrity.

KT: I don’t think Lutz was ever elusive.

MR: I don’t think so either.

TLF: Well, never really named.

MR: Pseudonymous.

KT: She had a name. It was Lutz.

TT: But there’s only two images of her online versus a hundred of someone else. The pressure to be so present in order for the work to live properly is something I hear a lot.

MR: Look what happened when Jackson Pollock wound up in Life magazine. The Abstract Expressionists definitely didn’t want to be turned into brands. More recently, curators started asking crazy things, like, “Put your picture up with your label.” No thank you. The Times reporters now even have little pictures in their bios — everybody’s been personalized because we don’t remember that the work is supposed to stand for itself.

19. Michael Asher, “Michael Asher,” Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2008

Michael Asher (b. Los Angeles, 1943; d. 2012) spent his career responding to each gallery or museum space with site-specific works that illuminated the architectural or abstract qualities of the venue. When the Santa Monica Museum of Art (now the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) approached the conceptualist in 2001 to mount an exhibition, he tapped into the history of the institution, recreating the wood or metal skeletons of all of the temporary walls that had been built for the 38 previous exhibitions. The result was a labyrinth of studs that effectively collapsed time and space, bringing multiple chapters of the museum’s history into the present. That work characterized his unique practice over more than 40 years: In 1970, Asher removed all the doors of an exhibition space at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., to allow light, air and sound into the galleries, calling viewers’ attention to the ways such places are usually closed off — both literally and metaphorically — from the outside world; for a 1991 show at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, he searched all the books filed under “psychoanalysis” in the museum’s library for abandoned paper fragments, including bookmarks; in 1999, he created a volume listing nearly all of the artworks that the Museum of Modern Art in New York had deaccessioned since its founding — privileged information rarely made public.

20. A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, “Community Action Center,” 2010

“Community Action Center,” a 69-minute erotic romp through the imaginations of artists A.K. Burns (b. Capitola, Calif., 1975) and A.L. Steiner (b. Miami, 1967) and their community of friends, is a celebration of queer sexuality as playful as it is political. We watch as a diverse, multigenerational cast engage in joyfully hedonistic acts of private and shared pleasure involving paint, egg yolks, carwashes and corn on the cob. Although the video opens with the cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond reading lines from Jack Smith’s experimental film “Normal Love,” there is otherwise little dialogue. Instead, the focus is on the dreamlike visuals — captured with an offhand intimacy on rented and borrowed cameras — and the visceral sensations they evoke. “Community Action Center” is the rare ribald work that doesn’t refer to male desire or gratification, which is partly why Steiner and Burns, who are activists as well as artists, describe it as “socio-sexual.” Radical politics needn’t come at the cost of sensuality, however. The piece is meant to titillate.

KT: It’s a really important work, too.

TLF: I haven’t seen it.

KT: They spearheaded this project to essentially make porn, but it’s much more than that, with all kinds of people from their queer community. It includes so many artists that we know and that are making work now, and very visible, but it was all about figuring out how to show their body, show their sexuality, share their body, share their sexuality, make light of it, make it serious, collaborate with musicians. It’s a crazy document of a moment that opened up a conversation.

21. Danh Vo, “We the People,” 2010-14

Danh Vo (b. Vietnam, 1975) immigrated to Denmark with his family after the fall of Saigon in 1979. “We the People,” a full-size copper replica of the Statue of Liberty, may be his most ambitious work. Fabricated in Shanghai, the colossal figure exists in roughly 250 pieces, dispersed throughout public and private collections around the world. It will never be assembled or exhibited as a whole. In its fragmented state, Vo’s statue alludes to the hypocrisy and contradictions of Western foreign policy. A gift from France to the United States, dedicated in 1886, the original monument was billed as a celebration of freedom and democracy — values both nations proved willing to overlook when dealing with other countries. At the time of the dedication, France possessed colonies in Africa and Asia, including Vietnam, where a miniature version of the statue was installed on the roof of the Tháp Rùa temple (or Turtle Tower) in Hanoi. Later, the United States financially supported the French military in Vo’s home country, waging war in the name of protecting democracy from Communism. By then, of course, the Statue of Liberty had welcomed millions of immigrants to the United States and had become a symbol of the American dream. In the wake of current violent crackdowns on immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Vo’s fragmented icon has never felt more darkly apropos.

DB: I chose this because it totally takes away the masterpiece idea. It’s the one statue, with many meanings embedded within it, but totally distributed. The sections are made in China, right?

RT: Yes.

DB: So it’s also the idea that this object, which is synonymous with the United States, is now made in what will be the superpower of the future. It’s signaling what other futures will be, and it gets back to this idea that “contemporary” is a total unknowingness. We don’t know what the hell the “contemporary” is, and I think in some ways, these works affirm that that unknowingness is where we begin.

KT: That work had so much violence and anger in it. Anger is a big part of the work that’s being made by artists now — everyone’s feeling it — specifically the anger of a displaced person. This idea of what we’ve done as a country, all over the world.

Read more from T Magazine:

An Artist’s Pho, Inspired by His Childhood in VietnamJune 12, 2018

22. Kara Walker, “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby,” 2014

Ever since 1994, when the 24-year-old Kara Walker (b. Stockton, Calif., 1969) first astounded audiences with cut-paper installations depicting plantation barbarism, she has plumbed this country’s long history of racial violence. In 2014, Walker created “A Subtlety,” a monumental polystyrene sphinx coated in white sugar. The piece dominated an enormous hall of the Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn, shortly before much of the factory was demolished for condominiums. In a reversal of her black-paper silhouettes of white slave owners, Walker gave the colossal white sculpture the features of a stereotypical black “mammy” in a kerchief, the sort of imagery used by molasses brands to market their product. Walker’s sphinx also conjures up forced labor in ancient Egypt. “In my own life, in my own way of moving through the world, I have a hard time making a distinction between the past and the present,” she has said. “Everything is kind of hitting me all at once.”

MR: “A Subtlety” made lots of people furious because it was about the history of labor and sugar in a place that was already about to be gentrified. It was this gigantic, mammy-like, sphinxlike, female object, and then it had all these little melting children. “A Subtlety” is part of a very longstanding tradition that began in the Arab world that had to do with creating objects out of clay but also out of sugar. So it’s the impacted value of extractive mining, but it’s also the impacted value of the labor of slaves. And it’s also on the site where wage slavery had occurred — sugar work was the worst. The Domino Sugar factory was once owned by the Havemeyers, and Henry Havemeyer was one of the main donors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sugar king was the art king. So it had all of these things — and then there’s the idea of all these people taking selfies in front of it. It was extremely brilliant without having to say a thing.

TLF: Martha, you wrote to me in an email that you are against the idea of the game-changing masterpiece. I thought we should put that on the record.

MR: I’m happy to say that it makes no sense in a contemporary era to talk about a work in isolation, because as soon as a work is noticed, everybody then notices what the person did before or who was around them. Art is not made in isolation. This brings me to the “genius”: The masterwork and the genius go together. That was one of the first things women artists attacked. As much as we revere the work of Mike Kelley, he always said that everything he did depended on what the feminists in L.A. had done before. What he meant by that, I believe, was that abjection and pain and abuse are things that are worth paying attention to in art. And that was something no man would have done at that point, except Paul McCarthy, maybe. The masterpiece idea is highly reductive.

KT: This brings up a good point about how there’s a responsibility to question this. Is that how it’s going to be?

TT: No, but listing a work that “defines the contemporary age” doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a masterwork.

MR: Well, it could be a bad masterwork. You could say Dana Schutz [the painter of a controversial 2016 work based on a photograph of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, lynched, in his coffin]. But the questions of ownership go back to Sherrie Levine and the Walker Evans work. What’s ownership of an image? What’s reproduction of a photo? The culture wars of the ’80s all depended on photographs, whether it was “Piss Christ” or Robert Mapplethorpe’s work — and we’re still fighting these things. We don’t want to talk about them. Nobody here named Mapplethorpe — interesting.

KT: Thought about it.

MR: Nobody mentioned William Eggleston because we really hate photography in the art world. Nobody named Susan Meiselas. We always want photography to be something else, which is art, which is actually what you said about Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills.” We know it’s not really photography. I’m always interested in the way art is always ready to kick photography out of the room unless called upon to say, “Yeah but this was really important for identity, formation or recognition.” It’s always thematic. It’s never formal.

Read more from T Magazine:

William Eggleston, the Pioneer of Color PhotographyOct. 17, 2016

23. Heji Shin, “Baby” (series), 2016

Birth is the subject of “Baby,” seven photographs by Heji Shin (b. Seoul, South Korea, 1976) that capture the moments after crowning. Shin illuminates some of the undeniably gory scenes with a scorching red light. Other pictures are barely lit at all, and the puckered faces of the almost-born emerge from menacing black shadows. While these photographs might remind us of our common humanity, they are hardly sentimental or celebratory — several are downright scary. This complexity is at the core of Shin’s practice, from pornographic photographs of chiseled men dressed as beefcake cops to colossal portraits of Kanye West that debuted shortly after the rapper’s inflammatory conversation with Donald Trump. (Two Kanye portraits and five of the “Babies” were in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.) At a time when political art is everywhere, with young artists telling predictably left-leaning audiences exactly what they want to hear, Shin is an outlier. Her photographs do not answer any questions. Instead, they ask a lot of their audiences.

TT: I was obsessed with the “Baby” photos. I mean, I wanted one myself. But then my partner was like, “Well what’s the … ” Like, “I’ve seen pregnancy, what’s the difference?”

KT: “A kid could do that?”

TT: Or not quite that, but: I understand it aesthetically and I’m interested in the photo, but what’s it saying and what’s it doing?

KT: No one wants to look at that work. No one wants to look at that act. No one wants to talk about motherhood. No one wants to look at women like that. No one wants to see a vagina like that. No one wants to see a human being that looks like that. I think there’s something gross and revolting and very brave about that work.

24. Cameron Rowland, “New York State Unified Court System,” 2016

In a much-discussed 2016 exhibition titled “91020000” at the New York nonprofit Artists Space, Cameron Rowland (b. Philadelphia, 1988) exhibited furniture and other objects fabricated by inmates often working for less than a dollar an hour, as well as heavily footnoted research on the mechanics of mass incarceration. The New York State Department of Corrections sells these commodities under the brand name Corcraft to government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Artists Space was eligible to acquire the benches, manhole cover rings, firefighter uniforms, metal bars and other objects comprising the exhibition, which Rowland rents to collectors and museums instead of selling them. The spare installation recalled those of the Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, while Rowland’s politically driven approach to Conceptualism and focus on racial injustice garnered comparisons to Kara Walker and the American light and text artist Glenn Ligon. The New Yorker traced Rowland’s artistic ancestry back to “Duchamp, by way of Angela Davis.”

TT: Cameron Rowland’s work is further out on the edges of what’s considered art. You apply to get a catalog in order to purchase prison goods. A lot of the work he makes, I don’t even understand how. I still have a lot of questions, and we’re friends. There’s this unraveling of a new sort of sideways information that I find really interesting and confusing at the same time.

25. Arthur Jafa, “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death,” 2016

At a moment when the volume of images — from pictures of suffering to bathroom selfies — threatens to preclude empathy, Arthur Jafa’s seven-and-a-half-minute video, “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death,” is a profoundly moving antidote to indifference. Through film clips, TV broadcasts, music videos and personal footage, Jafa (b. Tupelo, Miss., 1960) portrays the triumphs and terrors of black life in America. We see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Miles Davis; Cam Newton racing to score a touchdown; a Texas police officer slamming a teenage girl onto the ground; Barack Obama singing “Amazing Grace” at the Charleston church where nine people were murdered by a white supremacist; and Jafa’s daughter on her wedding day. The film made its official art-world debut at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Harlem just days after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016. Jafa set the images to Kanye West’s gospel-inflected anthem “Ultralight Beam.”

TLF: Jafa strikes me as more popular, in a sense, if I can use that word. He crosses over into other worlds.

TT: This goes back to David Hammons because — I threw away my [Adidas Yeezy] sneakers Kanye made. [West alienated many of his fans when he made a visit to the White House in October 2018, offering his verbal support of President Trump and wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap.]

KT: How do you justify that work, then? You still put Arthur Jafa on the list, which is what I’m really curious about.

TT: Because it’s not my list. In my head, I thought, “This is contemporary.” And I think that a good artwork can be problematic. Art is one of the few things that can transcend or complicate a problem. “Love Is the Message” can still be a very good artwork and I can disagree with Arthur Jafa’s approach to it. No one else has done that. No one else in history has produced a video like that. It’s still moving things forward, even if they’re moving back a little bit.

DB: I think Arthur Jafa is coming out of a lineage of collage and photomontage artists — from Martha Rosler, sitting right here, to early artists coming out of the Russian avant-garde — this idea that you don’t have to agree or adhere to a singular point of view. Each image or piece of music doesn’t mean something on its own; it’s in the juxtaposition where meaning comes together. What’s so interesting about the piece is how seductive it can be, and also, in some ways, it begs for us to resist that seductive quality because of the violence of some of the imagery.

LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. Braddock, Pa., 1982) was raised in an economically ravaged suburb of Pittsburgh, where she began photographing her family at the age of 16. In arresting pictures of her terminally ill grandmother, dilapidated homes, shuttered businesses and air thick with pollution, Frazier exposed the effects of poverty and political indifference on working-class African-Americans. Using her camera as a weapon of social justice, Frazier highlights the effects of trickle-down economics, union busting and other policies that have widened the wealth gap across the nation. Frazier’s series was published as a book, “The Notion of Family,” in 2014. Since then, she has pursued her blend of art and activism, embedding herself in Flint, Mich., and other marginalized communities.

MR: I am surprised not to see LaToya on this list. Maybe she’s too young?

TLF: Why don’t you state the case for why you’d like to see her?

MR: Because she’s not only a sharp, clear and intelligent observer of black life but specifically of female-centered, working-class, black life in a small city in the Rust Belt. Most of the African-American artists we think about deal with urban-centered questions and relationships. But she knows how to put together activism with social critique in a way that many other people have been afraid to deal with — not just with black identity but also class identity. She documented the closure of the hospital in Braddock, Pa., and called attention to the fact that the residents’ physical conditions resulted from living in a town polluted by industry and waste dumping. I think she’s pushed the boundaries of photography in the art world.

Source photographs and videos at top, in order of appearance: copyright Estate of Sturtevant, courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Paris, Salzburg; courtesy of Dara Birnbaum, Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Marian Goodman Gallery; courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York/Rome; Studio Danh Vo; courtesy of Barbara Kruger; © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, and courtesy of Through the Flower Archives; courtesy of Arthur Jafa and Gavin’s Brown Enterprise, New York/Rome; courtesy of collection M HKA/clinckx, Antwerp; David Seidner; copyright Lutz Bacher, courtesy of Greene Naftali, New York and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; courtesy of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner; the Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York; Juergen Frank/Contour RA by Getty Images; © Dawoud Bey, Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco; Patrick Piel/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

The Art World Is Easy to Dislike. Here Are Some Reasons Not to.For T’s inaugural online art issue, we’ll be highlighting some of the things that give us hope in an often-derided industry.June 11, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/t-magazine/most-important-contemporary-art.html

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flauntpage · 6 years ago

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Do the Eagles Need to Get Younger? An Investigation…

Do the Eagles need to get younger?

I’ve seen this topic floating around on social media, which I think is just a byproduct of the Eagles bringing back 32 year old DeSean Jackson and 37 year old Jason Peters for the 2019 season and perhaps beyond.

Tack on the extensions for 31 year old Jason Kelce, 30 year old Brandon Graham, and the one-year deal for 31 year old Andrew Sendejo, and the intensity of that “narrative” amplifies.

Is Howie Roseman putting too much trust in guys who are getting up there in age?

My gut tells me no, I don’t think so, since the Super Bowl winning team got contributions from 32 year old Chris Long, 31 year old LeGarrette Blount, and 30 year old Malcolm Jenkins.

But I thought it might be a good idea to go down the list and see who exactly Howie is targeting, then determine if we can draw any conclusions. I cobbled together free agents, trades, and players who were extended while still under contract (like Isaac Seumalo, but not Rodney McLeod, since he didn’t get additional years, just a re-work.) I did not include fringe guys who bounced to and from the practice squad, or who never had much of a chance to make the roster in the first place.

I also didn’t include the draft, or undrafted free agent rookies, because obviously all of those former college players are bringing up your bottom end age number. You’re naturally getting younger through the draft, which adds balance to your free agent pursuits and probably justifies the targeting of affordable veterans on shorter deals, which has been the Eagles’ strategy for some time now.

This exercise identifies the player, his age, and how they were acquired:

2019 free agents, extensions, trades

(T) Jason Peters: 37 (one-year re-negotiation)

(WR) DeSean Jackson: 32 (three-year deal)

(G) Isaac Seumalo: 25 (extended before hitting final year of rookie contract)

(CB) Ronald Darby: 25 (one-year deal)

(DE) Brandon Graham: 30 (three-year extension)

(LB/ST) L.J. Fort: 29 (three-year deal)

(S) Andrew Sendejo: 31 (one-year deal)

(DT) Malik Jackson: 29 (three-year deal)

(K) Jake Elliott: 24 (one-year deal)

(LS) Rick Lovato: 26 (one-year deal)

(LB) Paul Worrilow: 28 (one-year deal)

That’s where we’re at right now. Peters is back for another year, DeSean returns on a three-year deal, and you’ve got the extensions for Kelce, Graham, and Seumalo. Malik Jackson replaces Haloti Ngata and/or Tim Jernigan on the defensive line and you’ve got Darby and Worrilow back on one-year deals as they come off of injury.

Elliott and Lovato are specialist no-brainer signings, so I wouldn’t even really count them into this exercise. For our purposes, let’s go with with offensive players, defensive players, and other special teamers.

Average age of extended/traded for/free agent players thus far (no Elliott or Lovato):

29.7 years.

That seems high, but there will be more additions. Right now, this list includes five guys who are age 30 or older.

2018 free agents, extensions, trades

(LB) Nigel Bradham: 29 (signed five-year contract extension)

(S) Corey Graham: 33 (returned on one-year deal)

(RB) Darren Sproles: 35 (returned on one-year deal)

(LB) *Corey Nelson: 25 (signed one-year deal, released before season)

(DT) Haloti Ngata: 34 (one-year deal)

(WR) Mike Wallace: 32 (one-year deal)

(LB) Paul Worrilow: 27 (one-year deal)

(TE) Richard Rodgers: 26 (one-year deal)

(WR) Markus Wheaton: 27 (one-year deal)

(CB) Cre’Von LeBlanc: 24 (claimed off waivers)

(TE) Josh Perkins 24 (two-year deal)

(QB) *Joe Callahan: 24 (two-year deal)

(RB) *Matt Jones: 25 (two-year deal)

(LB) LaRoy Reynolds: 27 (one-year deal)

(WR) DeAndre Carter: 25 (one-year deal)

(WR) Kamar Aiken: 29 (one-year deal)

(QB) *Christian Hackenberg: 23 (one-year deal)

(DE/DT) Michael Bennett: 32 (Seattle trade)

(CB) *Daryl Worley: 23 (Carolina trade)

(WR) Golden Tate: 30 (Detroit trade)

(WR) Jordan Matthews: 26 (one-year free agent deal)

I put asterisks next to some of the more notable players who did not make the 53-man roster. Of those guys, Worley and Nelson were the only two that were expected to be on the squad, and maybe Jones as well. Nelson disappointed in training camp and Worley had the legal troubles. They were 25 and 23 years old, respectively.

You see a slew of one-year deals on here though, so even though the Eagles brought in a lot of guys who were in their late twenties and early thirties, none were given contracts that would constrict the salary cap moving forward. Bradham’s contract, which was justified, takes him to age 34. Tate was a free agent on an expiring contract and the Eagles ended up swinging Bennett to New England. Corey Graham returned on a one-year deal to add secondary depth and is now a free agent.

Average age of extended/traded for/free agent players:

27.6, if you include LeBlanc as a free agent, who was claimed off waivers and became a starter in the secondary.

That’s not bad at all.

Average age of Eagles’ final 53-man roster, plus IR list:

26.4 years

The oldest players on the 2018 roster were Peters, Sproles, Ngata, and Bennett, while the youngest was Josh Sweat, at age 21. The Birds had five 22 year olds in Avonte Maddox, Chandon Sullivan, Sidney Jones, Derek Barnett, and Josh Adams.

2017 free agents, extensions, trades

(QB) Nick Foles: 28 (two-year deal)

(CB) Patrick Robinson: 29 (one-year deal)

(WR) Alshon Jeffery: 27 (one-year deal, later extended)

(DE) Chris Long: 32 (two-year deal)

(RB) LeGarrette Blount: 31 (one-year deal)

(T) Jason Peters: 35 (one-year contract extension)

(CB) Dexter McDougle: 26 (Jets trade)

(G) Stefen Wisniewski: 28 (three-year deal)

(WR) Torrey Smith: 28 (three-year deal)

(RB/KR) Kenjon Barner: 27 (one-year deal)

(LB/ST) Bryan Braman: 30 (one-year deal)

(TE) Trey Burton: 26 (one-year RFA tender)

(LB) Najee Goode: 28 (RFA, one-year deal)

(CB) Jaylen Watkins: 25 (RFA, one-year deal)

(G) Chance Warmack: 26 (one-year deal)

(QB) *Matt McGloin: 27 (one-year deal)

(DT) Tim Jernigan: 25 (Baltimore draft day trade)

(CB) Ronald Darby: 23 (Jordan Matthews/Buffalo trade)

(RB) Jay Ajayi: 24 (Dolphins trade)

They got three Super Bowl contributors age 25 and younger via trade, two which were made before the season and one in the middle of the season. Alshon came in on a one-year “prove it” deal and was later extended. Torrey Smith and Stef Wisniewski got three-year deals that would have carried them to age 31.

Otherwise, the pattern was the same – short deals for free agent veterans, three or four trades, and then a smattering of smaller transactions.

Average age of extended/traded for/free agent players:

27.6 – the exact same average number of the players they targeted in this fashion in 2018.

Average age of Eagles’ final 53-man roster, plus IR list:

26.6 years, just 0.2 different from the Eagles’ 2018 roster.

The oldest players on the roster again were Peters, Sproles, 37 year old Donnie Jones in his final year, and 32 year old Will Beatty, who didn’t play a single snap. The youngest rostered players were Sidney Jones and Derek Barnett at age 21.

Findings

If you go through the Eagles roster as it stands right now, Peters, Jaccson, Sendejo, and Kelce are four of the five oldest guys on the squad. If Chris Long returns, he’s the 5th. Beyond them, it’s Malcolm Jenkins, Brandon Graham, and Alshon Jeffery.

It’s a little on the high end, but the Eagles are not an NFL outlier. Jimmy Kempski over at Philly Voice looks into the average age of each roster at the beginning of the season, when the 53-man cutdown takes place, and the Eagles actually had the 11th youngest squad in 2018, an average age of 25.7 when the season began. That spiked by 0.7 as roster moves were made throughout the year.

In 2017, the Eagles averaged 26.4 at the 53-man cutdown, which was 23rd in the league, so a big difference there, but also predicated on the moves made by other teams. They also won the Super Bowl, so yeah.

It should also be noted that the #1 youngest team in the NFL last year was the Browns, at 25.2, while the #32 team was the Raiders, at 27.4. It doesn’t seem like much of a difference between ceiling and floor, and it’s not, but as Jimmy explains in his story, that’s an average gap of 2 years for each of the 53 players, which extrapolates to more than 100 combined years of experience that you’re missing out on, shared throughout the entirety of the team. Something to think about there.

The Eagles have seven draft picks this year, which should result in 5-7 young players, depending on how they want to use those assets. Last year, they only drafted five players, compared to eight in the previous year. This will help swing the age balance down to that average of 26, where they’ve been for the last few seasons.

In conclusion, yeah, it does seem like the Eagles are targeting some older guys this offseason, but the pendulum will swing them back towards where they typically are in the age department.

(If I missed any roster moves, let me know and I’ll add them in)

The post Do the Eagles Need to Get Younger? An Investigation… appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Do the Eagles Need to Get Younger? An Investigation… published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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auburnfamilynews · 7 years ago

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The roller-coaster ride that is Auburn football didn’t begin with Gus Malzahn’s arrival on the Plains. While fans, myself included, are frustrated by the ups and downs of being an Auburn Tiger, it has been a part of life for generations.

Still, Auburn’s struggles on offense both this year and previous years under a coach who has been called by superlatives such as “innovator” and “offensive genius” have at times driven wedges in the fan base as well as between the fan base and the administration.

Football, in general, is called the single greatest team sport, but it is hard to put a finger on any single reason why a team rises or falls. If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be fun, and it wouldn’t be the life-blood of the south. Of course, that rings hollow at Auburn because Auburn is the in-state rival of the single greatest football dynasty in the history of college football, just ahead of the second greatest dynasty in college football, also the University of Alabama. The Iron Bowl is the greatest rivalry game in college football, if not in sports.

Auburn’s attempts to keep pace with Alabama led to Gus Malzahn’s hiring to bring his offense to combat Nick Saban’s defensive prowess. It seemed like the aforementioned single reason when it came to “how a team can beat Alabama.”

Right or wrong, Malzahn’s hire led to both high water marks and to the depths of despair, almost always revolving around his Hurry Up, No Huddle offense. Those who don’t follow this program might ask, how is it that a coach who makes $49 million a year based on his offense is under fire over his offense? That’s really the question. And, again, if it were that easy to correct the woes on offense, someone would have done it, right?

There are a few common thoughts that surround Auburn’s offensive struggles. The first is speculation that Malzahn needs a mobile, run-first quarterback. Second is the idea that Gus cannot recruit or develop quarterbacks and has had to rely on transfer quarterbacks in order to win.

This conversation typically begins with Cam Newton and ends with Jeremy Johnson because each represents a side of the equation. Jarrett Stidham should be the defining player in this conversation as he is a transfer that has been under Malzhan’s tutelage for two years And, he is a pass-first QB that was not only a top recruit but is also a potential first-round draft pick, surrounded by Malzahn recruits and what may be one of the best Auburn defenses of all time.

I crunched some basic numbers for the first eight games played by the quarterback in the nine years from 2009 through 2018 (excluding 2012) (not always consecutive games). As you might envision, it’s hard to name a best and worst because of things not under a quarterback’s control, such as defense. The common denominator is the coach, who happens to be the man running the offense itself, from recruiting to development to calling plays. Let’s take a look at each player through eight games and try to rank them based on passing statistics only.

This Auburn quarterback started his career as a starter and threw for 1,460 yards, which ranks fourth. He did so by attempting no less than 14 attempts per game and was asked to chunk the ball as many as 32 times, averaging 24 attempts per game. He had 12 touchdowns and three interceptions through his eight games, and his 4:1 ratio is tied for the best among the nine QB’s while the 12 scores ranks second.

This player threw for 1,364 yards, 13 TD’s, and five picks, a 2.6:1 TD to INT ratio, one of the best. He attempted more than 20 passes just twice in his run. His pure production of touchdowns ranks him second on my list.

This quarterback didn’t have the number of TD tosses of the first two, but his 4:1 TD to INT ratio, along with his 1,511 yards, ranking third on the yardage list of the nine QB’s, sets him apart. The 4:1 ratio is shared only by this player and quarterback number one. His lowest pass attempts in a game saw him toss the ball just six times in a blowout, and he was asked to hurl it a maximum of 27 times. Still, he averaged over 20 attempts per game. His team was 6–2 after eight games.

In terms of pure yardage production, this player leads the way. His 1,728 yards for eight games ranks him first, and he posted a TD to INT ratio of 2.67:1, ranking third on the list. However, he threw just eight touchdowns, tied for second fewest of any Malzahn QB through eight games. This quarterback attempted no fewer than 16 passes per game while maxing out at 37.

Checking in just under quarterback No. 4, this QB’s team had an eerily similar year, posting almost identical stats of 1,714 yards, eight TD’s and four INT’s. The 2:1 TD to INT ratio puts him slightly above mid-pack. He threw 11 passes in a blowout, but attempted no less than 22 in meaningful games and had a high of 45 attempts.

This Auburn quarterback has the second fewest yards (1,248) through eight games, but he still managed to toss 11 TD’s, which ranks him fourth on the list, while his 1.83 TD to INT ratio ranks him sixth on the list. His lowest number of passing attempts was eight in a game where he played only a half. However, he attempted at least 18 passes per game with a high of 28, averaging well over 20.

Ranking this player is difficult because his 13 TD,s ties him for the lead in scores, but his 13 INT’s is almost three times as many as the second-ranked QB’s interceptions mark (5). His 1,357 passing yards ranks near the bottom. He had a low of 14 attempts per game with a high of 35.

This quarterback threw for 1,266 yards, seven touchdowns and four interceptions. His stats, save for the number of interceptions, give him a 1.75 TD to INT ratio and rank at the bottom of Auburn quarterbacks. He attempted at least 17 passes with a high of 34.

Someone has to be last, and this quarterback bears that distinction. His 1,043 passing yards are 200 yards from the next lowest quarterback. His 1.28 TD to INT ratio is second to last, but because he only tossed nine scores, just below the average, it ranks him last on the list. Aside from a game where he attempted just three passes, he was called upon to throw the rock at least 17 times with a high of 32.

Who are these players?

Chris Todd (2009) 5–3, 8–5

Cam Newton (2010) 8–0, 12–0

Sean White (2016) 6–2, 8–5

Jarrett Stidham (2017) 6–2, 10–4

Jarrett Stidham (2018) 5–3, ??

Barrett Trotter (2011) 5–3, 8–5

Nick Marshall (2014) 7–1, 8–5

Nick Marshall (2013) 7–1, 12–2

Jeremy Johnson (2015) 4–4, 7–6

Quarterback is easily the most important position in football. What does this tell us about Gus Malzhan’s offense and who is in the driver seat? Does it offer any definitive looks at what is going right or wrong with the Gus Bus or explain the volatility of the Auburn program?

If this list of teams were to be ranked based on total offensive performance, it would easily show that Malzhan’s best offensive squads are led by a run-first trigger man with passing ability being at worst inconsequential and, at best, a bonus to get the Tigers over the top. And yet, Malzhan’s late struggles at Auburn have been defined as recruiting and developing a pocket-oriented, pass-first quarterback. Whether it is a five-star transfer or a three-star gamer, this offense is not at its best with Malzhan’s recruiting and development of a pass-first player, Period.

It goes back to the comment that is made by anyone who has watched a minute of the HUNH offense under Gus Malzahn. This offense thrives with a run-first quarterback. There is almost no relationship between a quarterback’s ability to pass and the number of wins to be had.

While the reasons for total wins and losses in many of the years in question can be subjective, affected by factors such as recruiting, turnover, and defense, 2018 in particular shows that no matter how good the defense, no matter how many the stars, nor the predraft rankings, Auburn cannot reach its goals under Malzahn with a pocket passer.

In a game where pointing to one single reason of a team’s rise and fall is impossible, maybe at Auburn it is really that simple.

The post Apples to Apples: A Deeper Look at Gus Malzahn’s Auburn QB’s appeared first on Track 'Em Tigers, Auburn's oldest and most read independent blog.

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s0022091a2film · 8 years ago

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Post T- Creative Investigation First Draft

Creative Investigation

For my creative investigation I will be focusing on the director John Hughes and whether or not he can be considered an auteur. Using theorists such as Andrew Sarris’s auteur theory, which I will use to decide whether John Hughes meets the criteria set by Sarris in the three focal films I have studied. I will also use the other theorists such as; Daniel Chandler’s genre theory and Richard Dyer’s star theory. I will also use articles and books to help support my theory or disprove it. The following films I will focus on are; The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986) and Uncle Buck (John Hughes, 1989) to help provide evidence to answer my hypothesis.

Hypothesis: Can John Hughes be considered an auteur?

Sub-topics:

- Were the style and themes John Hughes used in his films unique to him and add more to his films?

- Did The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Uncle Buck represent the coming of age genre and if so, how?

- Are the stars of John Hughes films or the audience watching them the sole reason behind their success?

Primary Research Texts:

Filmography

Item 1: Hughes, John, 1985, The Breakfast Club, Universal Pictures

This is a coming of age film, reflecting upon a day for 5 students in detention. This film discusses and displays the issues that teenagers suffer with during their youth, which was a new concept in the 80’s, as teens in films had never been portrayed in this way before.

Item 2: Hughes, John, 1987, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Paramount Pictures

This is another coming of age film by John Hughes that shows the main skipping school with his friends and having an adventure whilst avoiding running into his parents and principle who wants to catch him out.

Item 3: Hughes, John, 1990, Uncle Buck, Will Packer Productions, ABC Studios, Universal Television

This film is different to other films by John Hughes as it is about an uncle having to take care of his nieces and nephew whilst dealing with his oldest niece who is resistant to him as her parents are away.

Secondary Research Texts:

Books

Item 4: Driscoll, C. (2011) Teen Film- A Critical Introduction. Sydney: Berg Producers.

This book talks about the influence and impact on teen films from the 80s and how different people also agree with Catherine about what a great director of teen films he is but also how his views are only partial and only talk about one kind of teenager in the 80s.

Item 5: Shary, T. (2005) Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen. Columbia: Wallflower Press.

The small section I have chosen talks in depth about Hughes’s teen films and the characters that feature in them including how they are all quite similar across the different movies he directs. It also briefly mentions his past before becoming the famous director with a massive influence that he became.

Articles

Item 6: Iddins, M, J. (2010) John Hughes May Be onto Something: Anti-Authoritarianism in Education, Film and Policy.

The writer of the article uses two popular anti-authoritarian films to explore options about issues regarding educational public policy. John Hughes is used a lot as an example in this article because of his influence in films showing how public education has developed from his time and what is the same.

Item 7: Scott, O, A. (2009) The John Hughes Touch.

The article talks about the influence and impact on teen films from the 80s and are still having influence on teen films now. It discusses how much of an effect John Hughes had and how it’s hard to deny him as an auteur.

Item 8: Gilbey, R. (2009) Obituary: John Hughes.

The article sums up the life of John Hughes and everything he accomplished; using quotes from interviews he said and quotes from stars featured in his films.

Item 9: Meroney, J. (2010) Molly Ringwald’s Revealing Interview on John Hughes, Not Being Lindsay Lohan, and More.

This article is an interview with Molly Ringwald discussing her times working with John Hughes on multiple films together.

Item 10: John Hughes Breaking the forth wall (N/A)

This article talks about the forth wall and why it is sometimes broken in films. Using John Hughes as an example of how and why he broke the forth wall including how effective it was.

Item 11: Perno, S, G. (2016) Directors’ Trademarks: John Hughes.

This article talks about the themes and stylistic techniques that an audience would expect to see in a John Hughes movie for example locking eyes between characters using a close-up and split screen.

Item 12: Campbell, C. (2009) 8 Things in John Hughes Movies you won’t see in today’s teen movies.

This article talks about styles and techniques but also conventional things an audience expected to see in a John Hughes film like controversial romantic pairings.

Item 13: Williams, C. (2017) ‘Uncle Buck’ A shining example of John Hughes’ take on adulthood.

The part of the article I looked at discussed the success of Uncle Buck as a film that told two different perspectives-adults and teenagers.

Item 14: Burnish, C. (2010) John Hughes #1.

This is an interview with John Hughes where he talks about the way his films were interpreted and how his films were meant to be. Talking about what he included in his films and the effect it had on the audience.

Item 15: Vangopoulos, K. (2015) Club Kid: John Hughes and “The Breakfast Club”.

This is an article about what The Breakfast Club really meant using quotes from a John Hughes article. It also considers whether the issues addressed in John Hughes teen films are still relevant in today’s society.

Were the style and themes John Hughes used in his films unique to him and add more to his films?

My first point is about how popular music from the year his films were made were always used which made the soundtracks of each of his films memorable to the audience, having one main song that made the film. I know that music was important as one of my article sources from indiewire, 2009 agrees “Everyone recognises how important music was to Hughes’ teen movies…” This quote helps to back up my point that music was important and the music Hughes used tended to make specific scenes along with other micro elements.

One of the most memorable uses of music by John Hughes is from ‘The Breakfast Club’ at the end of the film to show that everything has come full circle in the film and that resolutions have been made.

This shot from the film is when the beginning of the song ‘Don’t You (forget about me)’ by Simple minds starts playing. The lyrics also start to play at this point and continue until the end of the scene. The impact of the music choice is that it is quite peaceful and makes it seem like the characters have all had revelations about themselves and are all walking out together instead of separately.

In one of my other focal films ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ the most memorable song used was ‘Oh Yeah’ by Yello. The song was used during the Ferrari scene of the film where Ferris is borrowing Cameron’s dad’s car. The song starts playing when Cameron starts describing the car to Ferris and then it shows a wide shot of the whole car for a couple of seconds so the audience can appreciate the car before doing multiple close-ups of different parts of the car. The song has such an impact on the scene because the lyrics are “Oh Yeah” with a beat which would represent what the audience would say if they were face to face with such a car. The use of having a red Ferrari and then a plain black car in the background to the right and a plant to the left the whole frame is full but the red car stands out the most since of the way its been framed and how the colour of it is the most vibrant thing on the screen making the audience want to be the ones face to face with the car.

The final of my focal films that have music to accurately represent a scene and also make it very memorable is the party scene from ‘Uncle Buck’ when he goes looking for Tia.

This is scene is makes Buck feel like an actual adult which hasn’t been a common theme throughout the film. The use of this song with the shots showing Buck trying to make it through all the teenagers and the cuts of POV shots from Buck showing teenagers expressions as to wondering why he is at the party. The lighting in this scene is low-key making it fit more with the party theme but also because Buck is wearing a lighter coloured shirt which makes him stand out in the room even more than he already does.

My second point is about the similar stylistic techniques and themes that feature in most to all of John Hughes films to determine if he has specific stylistic elements in all of his films , which can be backed up from a quote (Item 11) “He uses a lot of similar structural elements in his films, including montages, breaking the forth wall, and similar music…”. A stylistic element that features in all three of the focal films is freeze-frame endings. This became a recognisable element that was well known and expected by the audience as how his films ended.

This screenshot is from the ending of The Breakfast club after the footage has frozen. The freeze-ending in this film was the perfect way to end the film since they all had a successful day in detention and got out of it with revelations about their own lives and those around them. The ending frames Bender’s character at the front of the frame walking away from the school scene in the background and heading towards the foreground where the pole covered in tape is, him walking towards this makes it seem as if he is walking towards his comfort zone since the mise-en-scene matches how Bender dresses. The way he throws his hand up into a fist makes it seem like a win for him personally and also his way of reacting to the fact he has won the attention of the schools ‘princess’ Claire.

The use of the freeze-ending in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off reinforces Ferris’s cheeky attitude and how he has gotten away with skipping school again without being caught out by his parents and that Rooney his principal has no tangible evidence that he wasn’t ill the entire day. The use of having an Ariel shot showing him on in his bead with his arms relaxed behind his bed shows further to the audience how confident he is with himself and how he knew he wouldn’t be caught all along no matter how close he was to and how much he has enjoyed the day he had with his friends. The song ‘Oh yeah’ kicks in again after Ferris finishes the line “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around for a while, you’ll miss it”.

The use of the freeze-end in this film makes the film come full circle and have a peaceful ending where all of the characters are at peace with each other and have come to resolutions. The lead up to this freeze-frame is also quite heart-warming as it is close-up shot reverse shots between Buck and Tia as they wave each other farewell. The non-diegetic music that plays in the background is also peaceful and is quite in the scene showing it is just there so it’s not silent and adds to the scene as a whole.

My last point is about the type of teen that John Hughes represents in his films. “The Hughes teen is white, suburban, and normatively middle-class…” (Item 4). This further shows that Hughes did have a specific style as his cast was always white and middle-class meaning that even though he showed teens in films in a way that had never been done before he still showed a restrictive view. I think that Hughes’s characters were mostly white and middle class because that was his target audience since they were the age category he aimed at with the most disposable income to spend on seeing the film. Another reason that his characters fit this type is because it is how John Hughes grew up, in the suburbs with his family probably living in a nice big house meaning it was the easiest thing for Hughes to write about since he lived it. Hughes however did also include some working-class characters in his films (Bender in The Breakfast Club) and some of upper class (Cameron in Ferris Bueller) to balance out his films and make sure that there is a character everyone can relate to making them want to go and see the films he creates.

In conclusion I have found out that John Hughes does have a specific style and he uses these styles as a way to show his themes in his films. I think this sub-topic does show that John Hughes can be considered an auteur in terms of Andrew Sarris’s auteur theory as John Hughes does meet technical competence with his various stylistic elements and he also meets the criteria of a distinguishable personality since his films are recognised by many as a film by him because of the elements he has included in his films. The final part of Sarris’s theory is that the director must show interior meaning in their films which I think John Hughes does meet this because Hughes does have the ability to communicate messages to his audience especially the teen audience but also to Hughes’ generation that teenagers do deal with personal issues in their lives.

Did The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Uncle Buck represent the coming of age genre and if so, how?

My first point is to show some common themes in the coming of age genre for example; act of rebellion. To prove that each of my focal films fit into this genre I will use screenshots. This sub-topic will help me to determine how much the genre of the film had on how the film was made since genre conventions could be an argument against true authorship.

An act of rebellion in The Breakfast Club is the smoking scene after the montage of them running throughout the halls of the school with weed on them. The scene where they smoke the weed is an act of rebellion as weed is an illegal substance but all of them are smoking in the school library as well which would get them kicked out.

This screenshot shows that even the schools ‘princess’ is getting involved, this scene makes all of the characters more connected since it is an activity that they can all be involved with and makes it seem like they are similar people instead of polar opposites. Most of the shots in this scene are close-ups of the characters faces showing them smoking, doing this makes it more of an outrageous thing to see than if it were mid shots.

This scene also shows them sat all together and sat separately showing they haven’t all fully connected as potential friends yet. However this scene defiantly shows acts of defiance in the teenagers which is a convention expected to be seen in teen films.

An act of rebellion in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is basically the entire film since they skip school, ring the principal pretending to be someone else, join a parade and so on. One scene I have picked out as an act of rebellion is when Ferris and Cameron take Cameron’s dad’s car. In the scene where they steal the car to use for the day Cameron is trying to convince Ferris not to take the car as his dad loves the car more than him and “he knows the millage”. However, Ferris continues to take the car as he knows Cameron will give in eventually. This screenshot shows Ferris driving off in the car from behind. The camera stays in the same position as the car is driven out and it takes the scene a while to cut during this, this could have been done by John Hughes to make the scene more exaggerated of what they are actually doing.

The song ‘Oh Yeah’ by Yello plays in the background to make the scene more intense to the audience but also to downplay what is happening a bit as the music makes the scene funny when in reality they are borrowing a very expensive car without permission, making this scene probably one of the biggest acts of rebellion in the film.

Finally an act of rebellion in Uncle Buck would be when Tia leaves her younger siblings at home by themselves after promising Buck she would look after them to go to a party for the weekend with her boyfriend.

This screenshot shows Tia leaving her house leaving her siblings at home. This is a serious act of rebellion by Tia as she shouldn’t have left them alone as they are too young. The audience also knows they are alone as it then cuts to Buck sitting at Tia’s school waiting for her before driving home and finding them alone. The shot of her leaving is a wide shot showing the kids walking up the stairs and her down all dressed up and with a bag probably full of things shed need over the weekend. While this scene is going on there is no music playing on in the background the only sound is the characters talking to each other, having no non-diegetic music makes the scene more serious than it would have been and making it more adamant to the audience that Tia is leaving them alone.

Other conventions an audience would expect to see in a coming of age film is issues with home life. This is shown in all three of my focal films since it is a big issue that most teenagers go through since there growing up an being more independent and voicing their opinion which parents don’t always like causing conflict. In The Breakfast Club it is made evident that all of the characters have problems at home especially Bender who makes the comment that his dad hits him.

During this scene when Bender I telling the other characters about his home life there is no non-dietetic music showing how serious the scene is and that music isn’t needed to make the scene more complete. In the scene Bender talks about how his dad calls him “stupid. Worthless. No good god damn freeloading son of a bitch” and that his mum describes him as “Ugly, lazy and disrespectful”. The scene escalates as Bender becomes angrier describing what happens. Then his talk ends when he acts out his dad hitting him and a large bang sound happens to act like a hitting noise and then non-diegetic music begins. The whole time this scene is going on Bender moves to different part of the frame as it stays as a mid-shot and the camera never cuts or changes angle until he is done talking which makes it more real to the audience and has a big impact as the audience can’t look away.

In Ferris Bueller Cameron struggles with his home-life and it is inferred that neither of his parents really care about him or what he does. During the Ferrari scene Cameron states that his father “never has, never will” trust him which shows how difficult and bad their relationship is. The scene where the car goes out the back window is also when Cameron is talking about how his dad loves the car more than him and how “his old man pushes him around” further reinforcing to the audience that Cameron’s dad doesn’t really care about him or love him and that make Cameron angry which is why he takes it out on the car his dad loves so much. This scene shows that Cameron is finally standing up for himself and is making decisions for himself.

Finally in Uncle Buck Tia also experience problems with her parents especially her mum. In the short period of time that the mum is in the film at the beginning she and Tia just seem to argue. When Tia describes her mum she calls her “our mother figure” to which her brother responds “I’m sick of you calling her that” revealing to the audience that Tia refers their mum to that often and also showing that Tia and her mum clearly don’t get on well.

It then cuts to them having dinner as a family showing a close-up of takeaway boxes and then a wide shot of them all eating dinner. There is no non-diegetic music making the scene appear really tense when all that can be heard is forks colliding with the plates. Tia makes a snide remark to her mum to which her mum ignores her showing they don’t have a good relationship. As the scene continues it becomes tenser until Tia makes another remark t which her mother responds “I’ve had enough of your ugliness… We’re all just a little tired of the act” whilst she is saying this there are close-up shot reverse shots of Tia and her mums face showing even more that they aren’t really fond of each other.

In conclusion of this sub-topic I have found out that all of my focal films conform to conventions of a coming of age film which could mean that Daniel Chandler’s genre theory could be an argument against the director being the auteur since to fit into the genre a film has to meet certain conventions in order to be under that and as Daniel says “genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings)” this could mean that some of John Hughes decisions that would class him as an auteur don’t really count since he has to meet conventions. However, in John Hughes case he had shown teens in films in a way that had never been done before which could make out that he created the new conventions to this genre.

Are the stars of John Hughes films or the audience watching the sole reason behind their success?

For this point I am going to discuss whether stars in John Hughes films or the audience watching had a bigger impact of the success of the film more than he did. My first point is about the choice of actors used in his films “The Hughes teen is white, suburban, and normatively middle class.” (Item 12) The whiteness of the cast could be down to the audience if the type of teenager he represents in his films are white and middle class which would make his films appeal more to an audience since they can relate to the characters a lot and they have the most disposable income to go and see the film in cinema which would guarantee success. However, to bring even more of an audience and appeal to a mass audience John Hughes also included working class characters like Bender and upper class characters like Cameron to bring all types of teenagers to see his films. My second point is about how stars are sometimes considered more important and memorable in the audiences mind than who the director was. This is something that is recognised as something that happens on a regular basis for example; Morgan Freeman’s performance in Shawshank redemption is more well-known than who directed the film making it seem like the film becomes theirs as that’s who the audience remembers. This could be something that is relevant with John Hughes as John Candy’s performance in Uncle Buck makes the film so memorable in an audiences mind and he probably had a big impact on the film’s success as a stars with a big following tend to bring in a big audience more than John Hughes being the director. Overall, I believe that John Hughes can be considered an auteur since his films were all big hits in terms of audience during the 80′s but also his continued impact on how teen films are made today. I think that I have answered my hypothesis successfully using my sub-topics to structure the essay.

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miamibeerscene · 8 years ago

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6 Craft Beer Bars That Changed Their City’s Beer Scene

The Avenue Pub is a cornerstone in Louisiana’s craft beer scene. (Credit: Donavon Fannon)

June 6, 2017

Breweries and craft beer bars have a symbiotic relationship. Pubs have been community centers of social activity for hundreds of years.

Over the past 30 years or so, a growing number of bars and pubs have focused on bringing beer drinkers a better variety of beers, especially those from small and independent brewers.

The connection between beer bar and community is stronger than ever, be it a showcase for beers made steps from the bar, or a place where beer geeks from all over the world can come together to drink and discuss the newest trend to classic styles.

(READ: Brewers Association Releases 2017 Beer Style Guidelines)

In cities with passionate local beer scenes, you’ll often find a craft beer bar that’s anchored the scene, be it for five, 10, 20, or 30 years. The longer the beer bar has been around, the earlier that community of brewers, publicans and drinkers came together as a cohesive community enriching everyone.

Here are six iconic U.S. craft beer bars which have strengthened beer communities in the cities where they operate, from oldest to newest.

The Toronado | San Francisco

As a brewer, Jesse Friedman from Almanac Beer Co. says being able to say you’re on tap at the Toronado is a big deal – a life goal. As a customer, he adds, the gruff demeanor of the Toronado bartenders is part of the whole experience.

Dave Keene opened the now-iconic Toronado about 30 years ago in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood on August 5, 1987. The service is no-nonsense, the beer is cash-only, and the bathrooms are well known for being small and grungy. It’s also one of the most prestigious and well-respected beer bars in the world.

Friedman says that while the pioneering Toronado cares about freshness and cultivates relationships with breweries, hype doesn’t really matter to Keene & Co. “They set their own path and invariably it works out their way.”

Vinnie Cilurzo, co-founder of Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, California, notes that the Toronado is one of the oldest craft beer bars in the United States.

“I think it goes without saying that Toronado has influenced the San Francisco and Bay Area beer scene more than any other establishment,” Cilurzo says. “It really means something to a brewer or brewery to have their beer on tap at the Toronado.”

(READ: Great American Beer Festival 2017 Ticket Sales Announced)

San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewing co-founder Nico Freccia jokes, “I love to talk about the Toronado. It’s one of my favorite subjects and where I asked my wife to scatter my ashes.” (He notes that Keene does not know about this plan.)

When Freccia started going to the Toronado regularly in 1994, he describes it as primarily a neighborhood bar, but also one of the few places anywhere where Belgian beer was available. He also points to the bar’s Barleywine Festival, which started as an annual event in 1993 until 2015, as evidence of Keene’s beer-forward thinking.

“People didn’t know what a barleywine was [in 1993]and most breweries didn’t brew one,” Freccia says. But the Toronado found more than 30 examples in those early years, and as the festival progressed over time, added multiple verticals, which helped people understand how beer ages.

The cash-only bar only sells two things, beer and t-shirts, which Cilurzo sees as one of the reasons for the Toronado’s success. “Because of this, they can focus on selection, inventory and clean lines.”

Hopleaf | Chicago

Michael Roper, owner of the 25-year-old Hopleaf beer bar in Chicago, remembers that in 1992, there wasn’t much of a local beer scene in the area.

“It was a very small, very troubled scene,” he says. Chicago city leadership did not issue one permit for breweries or taverns in the 12 years Richard M. Daley was mayor (1989-2011). That’s why Three Floyds opened in Indiana, Roper says, and all the employees live in the Chicago area and commute.

Chicago’s Hopleaf beer bar opened in 1992. (Credit: Michael Roper)

Hopleaf opened in February 1992 with eight beers on tap and 35 bottles. Roper refused to carry the popular standard macro lagers of the day. Early customers who walked through the door were always surprised.

“Why do I have to carry beer that I’m not passionate about?”

Of the bar’s 65 taps, 15 are reserved for Belgian beers and 15 for Chicago breweries. He believes carefully curating your beer list is the key to staying relevant.

“Our draft list changes every day,” he tells us. “I print out 250 menus every day. It’s a full-time job just to keep up with the thousands of beers available now.”

The Hopleaf has supported the legacy breweries like Firestone Walker, New Belgium and Sierra Nevada from the very beginning.

“Because of that loyalty we get a lot of special releases from those breweries,” Roper says.

Gabriel Magliaro founded Half Acre Brewery in 2006, and prior to that (and since then) visited the Hopleaf frequently.

“It had the best selection of Belgian beer, and early on provided a true, authentic publican experience,” he says. As soon as Half Acre was incorporated, he started working with Roper. “It’s a great example of a place we’d love to have our beer sold.”

(LEARN: Take CraftBeer.com 101 Course)

Falling Rock Tap House | Denver

Falling Rock Tap House’s 20th anniversary is June 2017 and owner Chris Black has scheduled a week of celebration. He’s flown all over the country to brew collaboration birthday beers with some of the breweries that have come to think of Falling Rock as a second home, especially during the Great American Beer Festival (GABF).

GABF is a big part of why Black opened Falling Rock Tap House in 1997. He’d moved to Denver from Houston, following a career in beer, working for beer bars like the Ginger Man, breweries and distributors. He moved to Denver to do something with beer, and although the Wynkoop Brewpub was popular at that time and Great Divide was making local beer for the market, there were no beer bars.

Falling Rock Tap House in Denver (Credit: Adam Bruderer/Creative Commons)

“During GABF, bars would put up banners, and sell a bucket of Sam Adams longnecks for $20, but that was the extent of it,” he explains. “I thought if I opened a place and put on a whole bunch of cool beers, no one else is doing that and I had all these contacts going back 10, 15 years. That would appeal to the uber beer geek coming out to the festival.”

Lauren Limbach (formerly Salazar), the specialty brand manager and wood cellar blender at New Belgium Brewing in nearby Fort Collins, says, “During GABF, we share [the Tap House]with the entire beer drinking community. It’s the maddest of all madhouses. Tappings every hour on the hour. Everyone comes out of the woodwork.”

Last year at GABF, the Falling Rock Tap House held 31 events in six days, with special brewery offerings being tapped almost every hour. Although during the high season of the Great American Beer Festival, rare kegs are plentiful.

(LEARN: Our Big List of Beer Schools)

“We were the only game in town for a decade. Then things exploded. Now, there are three or four places in Denver I really like to go. Great Divide is my local haunt if I don’t want to be at the Tap House.”

Brian Dunn from Great Divide verifies this, adding that his staff are regulars at Falling Rock. “Chris comes to our taproom bar, he’s a big supporter of local breweries. We go there all the time, and he brings his crew to brewery events.”

“We’re lucky to have them in Denver,” Dunn says. “And after 20 years frequenting the Tap House, there are so many stories I can never tell.”

J. Clyde | Birmingham, AL

The Birmingham scene was bleak when Jerry Hartley opened the J. Clyde on April 13, 2007.

“There was nothing here. No place to get craft beer, and only one brewery in the state,” Hartley says.

He moved to Birmingham in 2004 after living in Germany for several years and tried to find quality beers in his city, like the ones he loved overseas.

The J. Clyde craft beer bar is a staple in the Birmingham, Alabama, beer scene. (Credit: J. Clyde)

Originally, Hartley wanted to open his own brewery, but Alabama’s restrictive laws regarding breweries and beer at the time made it too difficult. Instead, he opened the J. Clyde, a beer bar and restaurant and worked to help change state laws and the local beer culture.

“If there were people like me looking for quality beer,” Hartley says, “I knew there would be others.”

The J. Clyde started with 40 taps, which Hartley filled with imports and quality craft he could find under the state’s legal ABV limit. He worked with the legislative advocacy group, Free the Hops, to change the antiquated beer laws and the group used the J. Clyde as a meeting place and rallying point.

In 2009, the ABV limit was raised from 6% to 13.9% and in 2011, The Brewery Modernization Act was signed into law, allowing breweries to open taprooms and sell their beer on site.

“As taprooms opened in 2012, that ignited people’s interest in local beer,” Hartley says. “We remodeled our back bar with 13 taps exclusively for Alabama beers and four more to pour at cellar temps.”

(LEARN: Details on 75+ Popular Beer Styles)

The J. Clyde helped Good People, Birmingham’s first brewery, in their early days with “research and development.”

“Whatever they brewed, we’d tap it and give them the feedback we heard,” he says.

Michael Sellers, Good People Brewing co-founder, says that both the brewery and the J. Clyde started around the same time, which created a common goal between the two businesses to promote craft and local beer.

“You could get beer there you couldn’t get from other bars and you were exposed to different styles of beer,” Sellers says “There’s so much more craft now, so the impact is lessening but for years, it was the place to be for craft beer in the area.”

ChurchKey | Washington, D.C.

Greg Engle worked at the Brickskeller in Dupont Circle before joining the Neighborhood Restaurant Group as a partner and beer director. The Brickskeller first opened in 1957 and was the site of the first tasting that Michael Jackson held in the United States, due to its strong Belgian beer program.

The owners of the Brickskeller, the Coja family, also worked to change import and distribution laws so that the District of Columbia could serve beer from all 50 states.

Inside ChurchKey in Washington, DC.

Although the Brickskeller closed in 2010, its owners set into motion a progressive beer culture, which is directly responsible for the current success of all beer bars in Washington, D.C. The legendary beer hall, Engel says, continues to influence DC beer culture due to the pioneering vision of the Cojas.

Engle and his partners opened ChurchKey in 2009, the group’s first property in Washington, D.C. The concept, as overseen by Engle, includes a five-engine cask program, heightened levels of service, and a temperature-controlled draft system. The 24 beers on tap are carefully sourced. The attention to service means menus are always updated, the food menu complements the beer, educated staff is at the ready, and proper glassware will be deployed.

(COOK WITH BEER: Hundreds of Recipes)

“ChurchKey has provided a lot of consumer education – for example, breaking the menu down into approachable style categories with descriptors,” DC Brau founder Brandon Skall says. “Now it’s an educated populace.”

DC Brau, the first distributed brewery in Washington, D.C., opened in 2011, two years after ChurchKey.

“The city’s been purveying great beers since the 1950s,” Engle says. “We were a city of beer bars before having a brewing community.”

The Avenue Pub | New Orleans

Polly Watts turned the Avenue Pub into the beer bar you know today. (Credit: Johan Lenner)

Polly Watts took over her father’s neighborhood bar on St. Charles Avenue knowing nothing about beer. Now, she’s the local leading expert.

The Avenue Pub converted to a craft beer bar in 2009, the same year that NOLA Brewing began producing beer. At that time, the only other local option was Abita, Watts says.

“The only other breweries we had access to were Rogue, North Coast, Harpoon and Brooklyn. That was it,” she tells us. “There was very little out there.”

National breweries and local distributors were unwilling to take a risk and send specialty styles to the untested New Orleans market. But Watts began talking to her connections with importers, and they would go through their list line by line with her.

“We started turning people onto sours, Belgian pale ales, saisons and barrel aged imperial stouts,” Watts says. “And all the beers were exceptional – they blew people away. You do that a few times and you get a beer person.”

She transformed the beer selection.

“No one had heard of anything on the menu before, and that was a deliberate strategy. If you put on a bunch of new beers and one familiar, people will gravitate toward the familiar,” Watts says. “This way, at that time, chances were that no one knew anything about the beers or the styles and they had to talk to the bartenders to learn about them. It got people to be more experimental in the city.”

“The Avenue proved that there was safety in showcasing the higher end, experimental beers – and they could really shine there,” says Dylan Lintern, COO of NOLA Brewing.

The Avenue Pub is a cornerstone in Louisiana’s craft beer scene. (Credit: Donavon Fannon)

Watts says after a while, American breweries started to trust her, so they started sending her special beers.

Over the past five years, the number of breweries in Louisiana has tripled, and working with the Avenue Pub has helped local breweries succeed.

(FOOD: Craft Beer and Cheese Guide)

“Part of our job is to champion the best local beer. And I always give new breweries a chance,” Watts says. “At first, if they brewed it, we’d tap it — but now we have to be more selective.”

“She changed the game and there are still no other places like it,” Lintern says. “She brought a new element to the beer world here.”

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Nora McGunnigle

Nora McGunnigle is a freelance beer and food writer living in New Orleans, focusing and the unique food and beer culture of Louisiana and the Gulf region. Her work can be found in Beer Advocate, All About Beer, and Louisiana Kitchen and Culture and is a regular contributor to Southern Brew News, Alcohol Professor, Eater NOLA, and the New Orleans alt-weekly, The Gambit. Keep up with her work at NOLAbeerblog.com. Read more by this author

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