In 1927, jobless and distraught over the death of his daughter five years earlier, Richard Buckminster Fuller contemplated suicide. Instead of killing himself, he decided to live the rest of his life as an experiment for the benefit of humankind. He re-christened himself "Guinea Pig B" (B stood for B

Cyberpunk fiction, Hi-tech, International style, Mathematical, Open-ended, Organic, Pioneering, Spiritual

In his heyday, Robert Venturi was more theorist than architect. With a grasp of subtle architectural concepts, Venturi sought to define a Pop architecture for an American society that he claimed was bored by orthodox Modernist architecture. His building designs during the 1960s and 1970s exhibited a

Absurd, Deconstructive, Pioneering, Postmodern architecture, Wise assy, Witty

As a dancer, teacher, and choreographer of almost mythic stature, Martha Graham loomed over American dance. She created a technique that married energetic force to form; an entire new dance vocabulary resulted from her study of the dynamics of breath. Calling her dance creations "a graph of the heart

Biomorphic, Geometric, Moody, Mythic, Pioneering, Religious, Spare, Tense

No composer made more of an effort to immortalize the epic quality of America than Aaron Copland. Though he studied music under conservative German and French teachers in his youth, Copland was constantly tempted to experiment with innovative, contemporary musical styles. Born during the first year o

20th-century music, Epic, Expansive, Grand, Pioneering