Composer, pianist, and avant-garde musician, John Cage was a member of that rare breed of artists who invent their own artistic tradition. Philosophically linked to Dadaism, Futurism, and Zen Buddhism, his music amplified the unpredictable and accidental possibilities of sound, always provoking cont

Chance, Collage, Musique concrete, New york school music, Silence

The spiritual, the sublime, infinity itself: all seem to hover beneath the translucent surfaces of Mark Rothko's blurred and veil-like rectangles. The brilliantly colored blocks of his best-known works, distillations of all that this Lithuanian-born immigrant had learned during his first 15 years of

Abstract expressionism, Abstract painting, Dense, Depressive, Monochromatic, Post-painterly abstraction, Saturated, Silence

Identity formation, the limits of linguistic signification, gender difference, and the possibility for political solidarity: Julia Kristeva has addressed them all. She serves up some of the most nuanced batches of critical theory to date, with all of the passion and rigor -- and often all of the enig

Dense, Feminism, Feminist, Poststructuralism, Severe, Silence, Structuralism

The music of Estonian-born German composer Arvo Part is often labeled with the rather meaningless term Minimalist. His work can be situated within the lineage of Erik Satie, John Cage, and Henryk Gorecki on the one hand, and Philip Glass, Brian Eno, and Laurie Anderson on the other. Part's is a music

20th-century music, Citational, Collage, Dissonant, Minimal, Minimalist music, Religious, Silence