The nebbish persona of Woody Allen's early 1960s stand-up shtick proved to be the springboard that took this most unlikely New York neurotic into a serious career as a leading auteur of international cinema. In his first film, "What's New, Pussycat?" which he wrote and acted in, Allen presented the i

Anxiety, Contemplative, Moody, Neurotic, Parody, Perverse, Urban

From an early age, Joyce disdained what he saw as the shabby Philistinism of his birthplace, Dublin, rejecting the Catholicism that dominated Irish culture in favor of a literary faith and a rebel's stance. Absolutely convinced of his genius, Joyce left for self-imposed exile in Europe in 1904, and b

Composed, Excessive, Expansive, Formless, Layered, Modernist literature, Moody, Playful, Postmodern fiction, Profane, Religious, Sprawling, Subtle

Diane Arbus is called the "Wizard of Odds" because her photographic subjects have included circus freaks, nudists, mentally retarded adults, eccentrics, homeless people, orgiasts, and outcasts. Her work has been dubbed "grotesque," "hateful," and "in bad taste." Norman Mailer stated the prevailing se

Confessional poetry, Dense, Documentary photography, Expansive, Grotesque, In-your-face, Intimate, Moody, Pathos, Perverse, Sublime

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