Edward Albee calls his work "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen

Absurd, Deconstructive, Minimal, Neurotic, Off-broadway, Open-ended, Social protest, Theater of the absurd

Ray's primary thematic concerns center around containment, integration, isolation, and self-sufficiency. A leader in Conceptual Realism, Ray's best work offers a metaphor for the gap between the literal and the symbolic (or the known and the unknown). His art is compelling in its representation

Grotesque, Homoerotic, Minimal, Modern sculpture, Perverse, Phallic, Quirky, Surreal

Wary friend of Existentialism and gentle foe of nature's illusions, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright Samuel Beckett is one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most influential. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969 against his more modest wishes, Beckett specializ

Absurd, Depressive, Existentialist literature, Minimal, Modernist literature, Repetition, Repetitive, Theater of the absurd

The bleakest, filthiest junkhouse in the mansion of rock 'n' roll serves as a crash pad to the memory of this band, which romanticized every deadly vice and self-destructive habit known to man. Founded in the early 1960s by Lou Reed, an educated Jewish junkie, and the classical violist John Cale, the

Agitated, Anxiety, Distorted, Fuzzy, Minimal, Moody, Noise rock/art rock, Psychedelic, Religious, Spare, Tense