Charles Mingus was one of the most distinguished and colorful personalities in jazz. He is a virtuoso of the bass who is credited with expanding the instrument's melodic function. When New Orleans jazz moved indoors, the bass replaced the tuba and helped hold down the rhythm of a musical piece. In a

Free/avant-garde, Hard bop/post-bop, Improvised, Moody, Primal, Sublime

The poet Karl Shapiro, in his introduction to the 1961 American publication of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," said, "Morally I regard Miller as a holy man'Gandhi with a penis." This was Miller's first book, and its pages were rife with full, frontal descriptions of sexual joy and despair. He ha

Beats, Bombast, Ebullient, Ecstatic, Erotic, Improvised, In-your-face, Manic, Modernist literature, Overflowing, Perverse, Post-war literature, Sincere

Much has been made about Fiona Rae and her fellow British New-Wavers. Rae is both celebrated and criticized for her habit of copping the trademarks of American Abstractionists and Pop artists, but at the heart of her second-generation appropriation is an analytical concern for technique. Her canvases

Abstract painting, Citational, Ebullient, Fleeting, Improvised, Young british artists

Rachel Rosenthal spent her early childhood in pre-war Paris among the Monets, Chagalls, and Pissarros in her family's art collection. Her parents, frustrated artists themselves, gave her ballet and painting lessons, and when the war struck, they sent her to the High School of Music and Art in New Yor

Catastrophe, Collage, Improvised, Political, Solo performance