Toni Morrison, arguably the most famous living African American author, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Ohio. As a child, she was an avid and precocious reader, and her family of masterful storytellers raised her on a steady diet of tales and legends. She studied literature at Howard and Co

African american fiction, Dense, Feminine, Layered, Melancholy, Pathos, Religious, Southern gothic, Spectral, Women's literature

Born in 1925 in Montbrison, France, Pierre Boulez attended university to study mathematics -- a subject that proved crucial to the theories that would serve as the foundation for his music. In 1943, he left math for his new calling, studying with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire until 1945. He pre

20th-century music, Dense, Layered, Saturated

Bernard Herrmann wrote scores for over 40 movies, providing music for films by Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. From his first film, "Citizen Kane," to his last, "Taxi Driver," Herrmann heightened psychological nuance and dramatic tension with sound, often using

Dense, Polychromatic, Sophisticated

In 1960, Lawrence Weiner used explosions to make a series of craters in Mill Valley, California. A few years later he realized he was spending more time talking about paintings than painting them, so, in keeping with the conceptual aesthetics that strive for direct and non-objective transmission of i

Dense, Event, Open-ended