Both spiritual father and sustaining mother to an infant art, D. W. Griffith expanded the artistic horizons of audiences, safely shepherding cinema into adulthood and nurturing its unique language. Malcontent as a mere film actor, Griffith joined Biograph Studios in 1908 as a writer and director, del

Classic hollywood, Epic, Grand, Mythic, Pioneering, Political, Silent film

Hans Richter's breakthrough studies of movement made the artistic leap between abstract painting and abstract film. A major figure in the development of Expressionism, Dada, De Stijl, Constructivism, and Surrealism, Richter was the creator (along with Viking Eggeling) of the Abstract Cinema -- the sp

Dada, Pioneering, Playful, Political, Representational, Surreal, Surrealist film

French critic and novelist Simone de Beauvoir reinvented the feminist debate with her shocking text, "The Second Sex" (1953), which has become a theoretical bible for those interested in Existentialist and Marxist analysis of women's societal subservience. Since the arrival of Postmodernism at the ce

Existentialist literature, Existentialist theory, Feminism, Feminist, Pioneering, Smart, Social revolution, Women's literature

Richard Wurman has used his experience with city planning to form theories on information organization that fundamentally question how organization impacts our use of resources. In the 1960s, Wurman saw how urban renewal efforts faltered -- despite massive government funding -- because planners lacke

Clean, Info architecture & theory, Mathematical, Pioneering