When Vladek Spiegelman took his son Arthur aside one day to teach him about the Holocaust, it was more than a history lesson; it was a survival lesson. He drew diagrams of the shelter in which he had hidden his family -- not pictures, but simple, urgent drawings that mapped out, in the father's mind,

Anxiety, Avant comic art, Dark, Dramatic, Egalitarian, Expansive

Tackling the history of nations and colonies from the perspective of the "liminal spaces" between dominators and dominated, Homi Bhabha insists that all cultural identity is essentially and originally hybrid. By "liminal space," Bhabha means the site of conflict, interaction, and mutual assimilation

Deconstructive, Egalitarian, Political, Post-colonialism, Power, Repetition

If Paul Rotha was going to be fired, he was going to be fired by the best. In the early years of his career, while working as an assistant designer for Hitchcock, Rotha published a scathing article on the stagnation of British film. The future master of suspense was not impressed. Hitchcock canned Ro

British documentary movement, Egalitarian, Gritty, Political, Sincere

William Morris saw the art world through the idealistic lens of socialism. He and the like-minded designers who clustered around him wanted nothing less than to redefine art by restoring "craft" to a place of value. True art for them was based in time-honored, populist traditions; the sometimes raw b

Arts & crafts furniture, Decorative, Egalitarian, Organic, Political, Subtle, Surface