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Sidney Finkelstein
Sidney Finkelstein (1909–1974) was a writer of music who specialized in jazz and was best known for his books ''Jazz, A People's Music'' (1948) and ''How Music Expresses Ideas'' (1952). Along with Charles Seeger (father of Pete Seeger), Finkelstein is considered "one of two American Marxist musical theoreticians of consequence." He has also been compared to British jazz writer "Francis Newton," pseudonym for British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn. Background Sidney Walter Finkelstein was born on July 4, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York. In 1929, he received a BA from the City College of New York. In 1932, he received an MA from Columbia University. (In 1955, he received a second MA from New York University.) Career In the 1930s, Finkelstein was a book reviewer for the ''Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' while also working for the United States Postal Service. In the 1940s, he joined staff of the ''New York Herald Tribune'' as a music reviewer, while also contributing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behind New York County (Manhattan). Brooklyn is also New York City's most populous borough,2010 Gazetteer for New York State . Retrieved September 18, 2016. with 2,736,074 residents in 2020. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, Brooklyn is located on the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socialist Realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is characterized by the depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat. Despite its name, the figures in the style are very often highly idealized, especially in sculpture, where it often leans heavily on the conventions of classical sculpture. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern, or other forms of "realism" in the visual arts. Socialist realism was made with an extremely literal and obvious meaning, usually showing an idealized USSR. Socialist realism was usually devoid of complex artistic meaning or interpretation. Socialist realism was the predominant form of approved art in the Soviet Union from its development in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles White (artist)
Charles Wilbert White, Jr. (April 2, 1918 – October 3, 1979) was an American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. White's lifelong commitment to chronicling the triumphs and struggles of his community in representational from, cemented him as one of the most well-known artists in African American art history. Following his death in 1979, White's work has been included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. White's best known work is ''The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy'', a mural at Hampton University. In 2018, the centenary year of his birth, the first major retrospective exhibition of his work was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art. Early life and education ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Halfant
Jules Halfant (June 23, 1909 in New York City, New York – May 5, 2001 in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey) was an American painter and printmaker.''The Art of Jules Halfant. 60 Years of American Art", by Deborah Matlack, Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA, 1999 He is notable as a Federal Art Project (FAP) artist during the Great Depression of the 1930s in both mural and easel categories of the New York Works Progress Administration (WPA). While in the WPA, he worked alongside such well-known artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery and Stuart Davis. From 1953 to 1988 Jules Halfant was Art Director of Vanguard Records where he designed albums featuring Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Country Joe and the Fish, Buffy Sainte-Marie and many other musicians. While attending high school in Brooklyn, New York with Jacob Kainen, Jules submitted his drawings to the National Academy of Design in New York at age of fourteen. He was accepted as a student and studied there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels '' Main Street'' (1920), ''Babbitt'' (1922), '' Arrowsmith'' (1925), ''Elmer Gantry'' (1927), '' Dodsworth'' (1929), and ''It Can't Happen Here'' (1935). His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, " fthere was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds." Early life Born February 7, 1885, in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babbitt (novel)
''Babbitt'' (1922), by Sinclair Lewis, is a satirical novel about American culture and society that critiques the vacuity of middle class life and the social pressure toward conformity. The controversy provoked by ''Babbitt'' was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Lewis in 1930. The novel has been filmed twice, once as a silent in 1924 and remade as a talkie in 1934. The word ''Babbitt'' has entered the English language as a "person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards". Plot ''The Smart Set''s review of the novel stated, "There is no plot whatever... Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds." Mencken, H. L., "Portrait of an American Citizen," ''The Smart Set'' 69 (October 1922) pp. 138–139 The first seven chapters follow Babbitt's life over the course of a single day. Over breakfast, Babbitt dotes on his ten-year-old daughter Tinka, tries to dissuade hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Aptheker
Herbert Aptheker (July 31, 1915 – March 17, 2003) was an American Marxist historian and political activist. He wrote more than 50 books, mostly in the fields of African-American history and general U.S. history, most notably, ''American Negro Slave Revolts'' (1943), a classic in the field. He also compiled the 7-volume ''Documentary History of the Negro People'' (1951–1994). In addition, he compiled a wide variety of primary documents supporting study of African-American history. He was the literary executor for W. E. B. Du Bois. From the 1940s, Aptheker was a prominent figure in U.S. scholarly discourse. Aptheker was blacklisted in academia during the 1950s because of his Communist Party membership. He succeeded V. J. Jerome in 1955 as editor of ''Political Affairs'', a communist theory magazine. Biography Early life and education Herbert Aptheker was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest child of a wealthy Jewish family. In 1931, when he was 16, he accompanied his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phillip Bonosky
Phillip Bonosky (March 7, 1916 – March 2, 2013) was an American novelist, journalist, and labor activist. A lifelong Communist, he wrote the Bildungsroman, coming-of-age novel ''Burning Valley'' and worked as cultural editor and Moscow correspondent for the ''People's World, Daily World.'' Bonosky was one of the first U.S. journalists to visit communist China and one of the few to interview Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. Background Bonosky was born in 1916 in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, the fourth of eight children, to Lithuanian people, Lithuanian immigrant parents. Early career As an adolescent he worked in the Duquesne Steel Works, but lost his job in the Great Depression and left home to find work. Norman Markowitz writes, "Bonosky joined large numbers of unemployed youth to ride the rails in the early 1930s, and eventually found himself in Washington, DC, living in a warehouse for transients that the early Roosevelt administration had provided." Social acti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Publishers
International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City, specializing in Marxism, Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. Company history Establishment International Publishers Company, Inc., was founded in 1924 with funds given the project by Abraham A. Heller. Heller was the radical son of a wealthy jeweler doing business in Paris.Trachtenberg, Testimony to the House Special Committee, September 13, 1939, pg. 4882. He expanded his fortune as head of the International Oxygen Company, a welding supply company that operated a trade concession in Soviet Russia during the time of the New Economic Policy in the early 1920s. A lifelong socialist, Heller had previously been a heavy financial donor to the ''New York Call,'' the Socialist Party's New York daily newspaper. He had been instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for the Rand School of Social Science. The company began with a capital stock of $50,000, paid in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
