Category: The Arts & Media
Gabriel Metsu
Few artists create a style so distinct that it is recognizable to an untrained eye. Johannes Vermeer is one. Meet the now-obscure artist who Vermeer displaced from the pantheon of Dutch Masters.
Marion Mahony Griffin
Frank Lloyd Wright cultivated a mystique of solitary inspiration, ensuring that his accomplishments were regarded as the works of one man’s towering genius. The draftsman who was critical in visualizing much of his early work was a genius in her own right.
Harold Lloyd
In the 1920’s, Harold Lloyd’s silent film stardom outshone Charlie Chaplins. Today, we remember The Little Tramp while The Glasses Character is a cinephile’s trivia question answer.
Helvetica
In a case of collateral damage during the early PC wars, a revolutionary font, alternately loved and hated, is overtaken on the web by an inferior copycat.
Mothra
Did a lepidopteran girl-monster like Mothra ever have a chance against a reptilian guy monster like Godzilla? In the skies over Tokyo, yes. In the teenage brains of testosterone-addled mid-century monster movie fans. Not a chance.
Graham Parker
An angry young man at the vanguard of the post-punk English New Wave, Graham Parker never veered too far from his pub-rock roots while his contemporary Elvis Costello soared to great heights as a musical chameleon.
Flann O’Brien
If Samuel Beckett was literary heir to James Joyce, the one who had studied at the feet of the master, assisted him at his labors, and carried forward the banner of modernism, Flann O’Brien was Joyce’s wayward second cousin, one who hauled the banner further still, into the post-modern absurd, but only after spitting on it, pissing on it, and ripping it to shreds.
Howard K. Smith
A principled broadcast journalist who felt that newsmen should take sides on public issues constantly sparred with his network overseers and consistently lost the ratings battle to “the most trusted man in America”, Walter Cronkite.
Minerva Vano
A now-obscure rival piqued Harry Houdini’s ire when she stole his signature trick. Did he retaliate by trying to blind her?
Georges Braque
In the shadow cast by Picasso’s considerable legend, the artist whose work actually inspired the term “Cubism” is rarely seen as a coequal pioneer of that revolutionary form.
The Also-Rans 