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Stunning Nude Photo Series Will Make You Think Twice About The 'Ideal Body' (NSFW)

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When you think about the cultural norm for the "ideal body," odds are the types of skeletal bodies blasted across magazine covers, billboard advertisements and mainstream entertainment come to mind. But rewind a couple centuries and these types of angular physiques were almost nowhere to be found. In the glory days of painters like Peter Paul Rubens and Titian, curvaceous bodies reigned supreme, as artists yearned to capture the soft dimensions of the human form in all its fleshy goodness.

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In her series "Unadorned," German photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten combines classical and contemporary stylings, capturing sharp-edged nude photographs in the style of classical Baroque-era paintings. Her unclothed models are men and women that, by today's standards, don't conform to normative beauty ideals. Yet Fullerton-Batten depicts her subjects, who vary in age, gender and weight, as sumptuous objects of desire, owning their nakedness without hesitation.

"Throughout most of the last few millennia, the most sought-after female forms were represented by curvaceous bodies and in Rubens’ case of outright corpulence," the artist explains in her statement. "It is only in very recent times, since Twiggy and Barbie came to the fore in the 1960s, that our narcissistic society reinforced by the media and advertising now interprets the ideal figure to be ultra-thin, enhanced by eating disorders and plastic surgery."

"By portraying 'overweight' people of both sexes in the nude, I have hoped to illustrate that there are some among us who are perfectly happy in their skin, and acknowledge that it is inner beauty that counts and not the minimal digit size of a
person’s clothing," Fullerton-Batten explained to The Huffington Post. Whether drenched in jewels, cupping fresh fruits, or lounging languidly on mattresses, the subjects harness the sensuality of 15th to 17th century aesthetics, while simultaneously flaunting their individuality. With their forms often contorted, foreshortened, and smushed, the models don't attempt to represent their bodies as anything but what they are, proclaiming their bodily beauty in a contemporary era that tries so hard to manipulate it.

"Unadorned" celebrates the nude form as it was exalted for centuries... prior to the last 50 years. A body that is individual, natural and of course, very sexy. Jamming today's media with yesteryear's aesthetics, Fullerton-Batten challenges viewers to indulge in the beauty of the flesh on its own terms, regardless of the dominating beauty trends. "It intrigued me when shooting this series how relaxed my models were to shed their clothes and be photographed naked," she said, "exhibiting the strength of their individual personalities and their contentment of themselves as they are."

With her charged imagery and heightened drama, Fullerton-Batten expands the category of bodies that deserve to be seen and deserve to be elevated to the status of art. Take a look at the gorgeous series below and see the human form in all its non-starved, non-photoshopped wonder. Spoiler alert: there's nudity, and lots of it.


Artist Makes Papier Mache Versions Of Every Panda Alive... And It's A Depressingly Small Number

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French sculptor Paulo Grangeon has made it elegantly -- and depressingly -- easy to see how endangered pandas really are.

Grangeon's long-running traveling exhibit, Pandas on Tour, features 1600 papier-mâché pandas. That's approximately one for as many as there are left in the world (recent estimates actually place the number slightly below that, at 1596).

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Launched in 2008 in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, Grangeon’s project has traveled to landmarks in more than 20 countries, including the Eiffel Tower. This June marks its first foray into Hong Kong, where the paper bears will visit such hotspots as Hong Kong International Airport and the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island.

The exhibit toured Taiwan previously this year, leading to poignant photo ops as the sculpted creatures spread into city gardens and down sidewalks not far from where the few remaining wild ones actually roam.

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The panda "flashmob" will sweep more than 10 landmarks on Hong Kong Island.


Because pandas are so elusive in the wild, it's difficult to know exactly how many exist. What we do know is that it's very difficult to coax them to mate in captivity. Furthermore, their native habitats are disappearing as global warming and human activities like mining and mass tourism encroach further into Chinese forest land.

And yet, we're suckers for the Ailuropoda melanoleuca. In fact, humans are biologically programmed to love pandas more than other animals. This is partly due to their deceptively large looking eyes and "pseudo thumb," which researchers point out lend them a similarly irresistible (to us) appearance as human babies.

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One of Grangeon's designs seats a panda on a lotus leaf, in reference to the popular imagining of Buddha.


While it's not hard to believe that this ironclad cuteness leads to an imbalance in interest in panda conservation, there are utilitarian reasons to protect the species even beyond basic preservation of the ecosystem. Chinese researchers last year found what looks to be a promising peptide in panda blood that could be used for a "super drug" for humans. That's right, pandas are not only impossibly cute, their blood might be magical.

All of which goes to say, who doesn't want more pandas? We're hoping for the best for Grangeon's project. For more on the nitty gritty of panda conservation efforts, we recommend reading up on the work of WWF and the Smithsonian Institute's Giant Panda Conservation Fund.

Think You Know What Comic Book Fans Look Like? 'We Are Comics' Is Here To Change That

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When you think of a comic book fan, do you picture someone... male? Middle-aged? White? The stereotype of the geeky comic book guy is still pervasive across popular culture (see: Comic Book Guy in "The Simpsons," Kevin Smith's TV show "Comic Book Men"), but it couldn't be further from the truth. The comic book community is actually incredible diverse; but that diversity is often overlooked not only by the world outside comic fans, but by the community itself.

Enter We Are Comics, a blog that's encouraging comic fans of all walks of life to tell their personal stories under the empowering banner "I Am Comics." The site, which only launched two weeks ago, aims to recognize and celebrate the many diverse fans of comics as well as "promote the visibility of marginalized members of our population; and to stand in solidarity against harassment and abuse."

Unfortunately, that harassment and abuse is all too familiar for many fans. We Are Comics founder Rachel Edidin explained to Buzzfeed, "The illusion that comics are only or overwhelmingly straight white dudes between 18 and 49 doesn't just push everyone else to the margins -- it encourages that core target audience to see us as something other, as outsiders and interlopers, when we in fact make up a huge part of the comics community and always have."



That narrow-minded attitude has created a often threatening environment for women people of color and those in the LGBTQ community. African American women like Jay Justice and Chaka Cumberbatch have both been ridiculed for cosplaying traditionally white or Asian characters, and a critique of a "Teen Titans" cover earned journalist Janelle Asselin multiple death and rape threats, apparently simply because she is a woman.

Even industry professionals are not immune. Much-loved Internet comic artist Noelle Stevenson says she constantly deals with sexism and misogyny, even having her own knowledge of and interest in comics questioned -- and she is a professional webcomic creator.

These tales and dozens more come to life on We Are Comics, where people share their stories and photos to create an uplifting collage of the fandom today. The faces span a wide range of ages, genders, races and sexual orientations, far beyond the typical demographics comic book companies supposedly market to. The result? A site that not only highlights diversity but unites people with a pure love for comics.



Fans have flocked to We Are Comics, as have industry professionals including Sara Ryan, Al Ewing, Guin Thompson, Brandon Seifert, Matthew Sturges, Eva Hpokins, Amy Mebberson and Steve Lieber. Seifert didn't shy away from offering a pointed critique of his own industry:

"It infuriates me to see a tiny minority in the fan group acting as though comics are for them, and them only. I'm someone who makes comics. I'm not making them for anyone in specific. I'm making them for EVERYONE."


As more comic creators and fans share their own stories, hopefully everyone else in the comic world will feel the same. Check out more uplifting odes to the art form on We Are Comic's Tumblr.










"It was my mother — Mexican born and raised, just like me — who introduced me to the X-Men, letting me buy those books while she was looking for works by Anne McCaffrey or other sci-fi writers. So the idea of this fandom being for white guys, or that it could preclude me from pursuing other goals in my life, has simply never rung true." -- Arturo Garcia

















"I believe that comics are an extremely effective form of media, perhaps even more so now than ever before. I love that there has been an immense push for diversity in content, particularly since the fan base has always been diverse." -- Morgana












"Those fantastic characters in their bright outfits were my moral compass. They taught me to rise above. To never give in to hate. And, that no matter how bad it gets, good will indeed prevail in time. Comics are indeed for everyone. Like this awesome young lady next to me." -- Aaron













"There is nothing to be gained, and everything to be lost, from making the world of comics unsafe or alienating or exclusionary to anyone, or from permitting it to retain the residual stink of the closed-off clubhouse. Comics are a palace in which anyone can live; the more people add rooms to it, the more beautiful it becomes." -- Douglas Wolk





Shared from We Are Comics using Embeddlr

The 50 Best Songs From 'Now That's What I Call Music!'

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A whopping 992 songs have been deemed among pop music's greatest releases since the first "Now That's What I Call Music!" compilation arrived in the United States in October 1998, but it took only one album for the series' popularity to escalate. Vol. 1 peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard chart, and every one since has debuted in the Top 5. By the sixth volume, in April 2001, they began to premiere regularly at No. 1.

Sixteen years later, we're greeted with "Now That's What I Call Music! 50." Our beloved series, currently a product of Universal Music Enterprises, has reached its semicentennial. Boy, did it grow up quickly. Along the way, we've been treated to more Britney Spears, Rihanna and Justin Timberlake songs than Jive Records could comprehend. Some "Now" tracklists hold up more than others, but each album has at least a few lasting gems. We've selected the best (or, in many cases, one of the best) songs from each of the 50 "Now" CDs for your nostalgic listening pleasure:

Memphis Church Throws A Prom For People With Disabilities, Brings Joy To Community

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For some, it was their very first prom. For others, it was an opportunity to be catered to and pampered.

The idea for the Memphis Joy Prom came to Ashley Parks and Ginna Rauls a year ago in a Starbucks in Memphis, Tenn.

Parks, who has been in the special needs industry for more than 20 years, now holds a role as Christ United Methodist Church's special needs ministry director. While Rauls is also active in Memphis' special needs community. Over coffee, they came up with the idea to throw a prom for 110 people ages 16 and up with special needs .

On April 25, people came from all over to attend the prom which was sponsored by a group of local churches. Among the attendees was a couple in their 60s with disabilities who never attended their high school prom.

"At a certain point people phase out of things but we said, you know what, lets open this up for people over the age of 22 and think of those who may not have experienced an event like this before," Parks told The Huffington Post.

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"We decided we like 'joy' because that's what we hope to bring," Parks said.

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With the help of 350 volunteers and donations, it was possible to provide attendees with all the aspects of a classic prom experience.

Guests arrived in limos and walked down the red carpet with their volunteer hosts as they were greeted by Rick Trotter, the announcer for the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team, according to Yahoo News.

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Each host was given a card with their date's allergies to as well as a checklist of everything they wanted to experience that night, Parks told to HuffPost.

The attendees were able to get their nails and makeup done, and their shoes shined. There was also an ice sculpture and a candy bar with all the sweets you can imagine.

"We didn't miss anything," Parks said.

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It was such a success that they are already in the beginning stages of planning next year's Joy Prom.

"Our whole purpose is to bring glory to God and just love on the special needs community," Parks said. "We wanted to make them feel special. This was their night."

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Lady Gaga's (And Her Fans') Most Ridiculous Outfits From Her New ArtRAVE Tour

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Lady Gaga kicked off her ArtRAVE: The Artpop Ball tour on Sunday, and with it came the latest assortment of alien-like costumes that look like outfits Anna Wintour may have vetoed from the Met Ball. The 21-song set is split into several sections, including one called Rachet, which features "Bad Romance" and "Applause." That means quadruple the pleasure when it comes to bombastic garb. Here are some of the most ridiculous outfits from the tour.

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Gaga isn't the only one dressed to the zany nines for ArtRAVE. Her fans channeled the singer's over-the-top energy as well.

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PS 22 Choir Turns St. Vincent's 'Digital Witness' Into The Kookiest Lullaby

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St. Vincent's "Digital Witness" isn't really the uplifting, tender kind of song that Staten Island's famed PS 22 Choir often covers. As the second single from St. Vincent's self-titled album, "Digital Witness" features funky horns and Annie Clark's somewhat-terrifying lyrics about social media. "What's the point of even sleeping if I can't show it, if you cant see me?" she sings in the chorus.

But PS 22 Choir, the famed elementary school chorus from Staten Island that brought us the best cover of A Great Big World's "Say Something," produced a new take on "Digital Witness." With young voices and pianos in the background, their version almost sounds like a lullaby, albeit one about tossing televisions out of windows. Still, it's beautiful.

'Spring Breakers 2' Plans Prove Spring Break Truly Is Forever

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Look at this ish: As first reported by Screen Daily, production company Wild Bunch is bringing a sequel to "Spring Breakers" to the Cannes Film Festival Film Market. The new film, titled "Spring Breakers: The Second Coming," will focus on what happens when the title partiers encounter "an extreme militant Christian sect that attempts to convert them." Irvine Welsh, the author of "Trainspotting," wrote the script; Jonus Akerlund has plans to direct.

As Wild Bunch's Vincent Maraval told Screen Daily, the new film will not be a "direct sequel" to 2013's "Spring Breakers," but will feature references to that film's original characters. Whether that includes James Franco's iconic Alien is unclear. The ever-quotable "Spring Breakers" breakout dies at the end of the first film (R.I.P.), but Franco did tell MTV that there had been talk of the second "Spring Breakers" film being a prequel.

"When we were making the movie, there was talk of a prequel. My character and Gucci Mane's character were supposed to have been former friends, so we at one time talked about, 'What was that like? Let’s make that movie!'" Franco said. "So there's that. There's a prequel version, or there's the version of Alien's friend or something. I don’t know."

Ashley Benson, Franco's "Spring Breakers" co-star and a survivor from the first film, also discussed the possibility of a sequel earlier this year.




The first film, which was written and directed by Harmony Korine, earned $31 million worldwide and provided us with this moment of pop culture perfection.



For more on the possible sequel, head to Screen Daily.

'Amazing Grace' Sounds Really Dark In A Minor Key (VIDEO)

The New 'Tammy' Trailer Proves Melissa McCarthy Will Win Fourth Of July Weekend

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We saw the first teaser for "Tammy" back in February, but the full trailer shows us so much more. Melissa McCarthy plays Tammy, who robs a fast-food chain while wearing a paper bag, and now we find out she's on the run with her hammered grandmother (hey, Susan Sarandon!). Directed by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone ("Bridesmaids"), "Tammy" also stars Dan Aykroyd, Allison Janney and Kathy Bates. It hits theaters Fourth of July weekend, which is the perfect time to convince a fast-food employee to become your best friend so you can use their hot tub ... and wear crocs with socks.

Skateboarder Chris Martin Turned New York's Famous Auction House Into His Personal Skate Park

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Raise your hand if you've ever wanted to run wild in your favorite art haven, taking in masterpieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat or Christopher Wool like a free wheelin' kid let loose in an amusement park. Well, be prepared for a wave of envy, because skateboarder Chris Martin just got to live your fantasy.

Yes, New York's famed art auction house Christie's let Martin jump and shred his way through its archives, rolling past million-dollar artworks like Peter Doig's "Road House" and Andy Warhol's "Little Electric Chair." The resulting video is part of a marketing campaign for the institute's upcoming contemporary art sale, "IF I LIVE I'LL SEE YOU TUESDAY," set for May 12.

We don't know what we're more surprised by: Martin's cavalier attitude as he speeds and crashes near very, very expensive artworks, or Christie's decision to produce a YouTube video of viral potential. Either way, the video is pretty fantastic -- and will likely never be seen by the people with deep enough wallets to afford the trove of artwork. C'est la vie!

Musician Makes 'Talk Dirty To Me' Sound Good While Impersonating 20 Different Artists

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Anthony Vincent is versatile.

That's the takeaway from his most recent "Ten Second Songs" video, in which he imitates different artists while singing a hit song. This week, Derulo dropped "Talk Dirty To Me" in every voice from Barry White to Slayer.

If you're a fan of music, the video above is a must see.

Artist Paints Michael Vick Pit Bulls, Is 'Grateful To These Dogs For Changing My Life'

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Levity Tomkinson is a Kentucky artist and dog lover who's about a fifth of the way through painting every single one of the 51 dogs seized from Michael Vick's dog fighting operation in 2007.

"One of my main goals is to represent pit bulls as the dogs that I, and many others, know them to be –- loving, humorous, intelligent, forgiving and triumphant," she says, of The Re51lient Project. "These dogs show us the potential that we all have and provide a palpable inspiration and hope that we can change our lives."

Tomkinson's career as a dog portraitist also has some serendipity to it, which is perhaps not a surprise considering that she was named for a license plate.

"While my mom was pregnant with me, she was flipping through a Sports Illustrated magazine and they had some famous Frisbee thrower advertising a car. On the license plate it said 'LEVITY' and the rest is history!" she says.

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Ray was adopted on Valentine's Day in 2014. Credit: Levity Tomkinson




In the summer of 2010, as a new college graduate with no good job leads, she began painting her own dog, a pit bull mix named Rinlee. This led to some commissions, which in time led to seeking out places to advertise her services.

Two years later, in the course of looking for dog publications in which to promote her pet art, Tomkinson happened upon a magazine article about the Vick dogs -- at the time of their rescue, some groups like PETA and the Humane Society argued that the dogs couldn't be rehabilitated and should be put down, but this article showed how many had become loving family dogs. And "it was in that second that the idea for Re51lient came rushing to me all at once," she says.

"I thought of the idea during a time in my life that was really unpleasant, where I was trying to find meaning and happiness and purpose again, and these dogs were absolutely a part of my healing process," says Tomkinson. "They inspired me to be positive, to smile and look at the world and appreciate all different kinds of beauty and to let go of unhealthy emotions. I am forever indebted and grateful to these dogs for changing my life."

Tomkinson certainly isn't the only person to be inspired by what became of the Vick dogs. Stories and photos of some of the dogs' happy endings have been shared over and over in the years since the dogs were taken from the quarterback's infamous Bad Newz Kennels.

Eleven dogs into the project, Tomkinson -- whose blog shows sketches, completed paintings and notes from each of the portraits, which she's hoping eventually to turn into a book -- says she's not just going to tell the stories of the Vick dogs who were adopted. She's also going to paint those dogs who will by court order live out their lives at an animal sanctuary, those who have died at the end of their natural lives and the few who were euthanized.

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Lucas was said to be Vick's champion fighting dog; after Vick's trial, the court ordered that he be released to the no-kill sanctuary Best Friends Animal Society, and never be adopted. Lucas was much-loved at Best Friends; he was described as "the most social and well-behaved" of the 22 Vick dogs who came to live at the sanctuary before his death in June, 2013. Credit: Levity Tomkinson




"Every single dog has importance and a story to tell, something to teach us, and either their passing or not being adopted doesn't lessen their message or them," she says. "If Re51lient can empower one person to choose positivity over negativity, triumph over fear, allow them to let go of past hurt or add one more pit bull lover to this world, then my heart is happy. "

Ben Affleck's 'Live By Night' Bumped To 2016

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Ben Affleck's "Live By Night" won't arrive in theaters for many more nights. As first reported by Deadline.com, Warner Bros. has shifted Affleck's next directing effort from a Christmas Day release in 2015 to Oct. 7, 2016. The film, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane's crime novel, was originally set to begin production this year, but had to be delayed after Affleck was cast in Warner Bros.' "Batman vs. Superman."

As the Los Angeles Times reported last August after Affleck had been cast in "Batman vs. Superman" (he's playing Batman), "Live by Night" has been a top priority for Affleck, so much so that he bowed out of starring in "Focus" with Kristen Stewart.

"Basically I'm doing a movie called 'Live By Night' and I'm trying to meet this schedule in order to do it, in order to meet the back end so that I can have it released at the right time, and I just hadn't gotten enough writing done and it became clear that if I took ['Focus'] and was in Buenos Aires for three months, I was gonna miss the deadline," Affleck told MTV in 2012. "I had to choose between getting the movie out when I want to or doing this one, so reluctantly I chose the [former]. But I love those guys, I love Kristen, I was really excited to work with her, I think the movie's gonna be fabulous, and I'm sure they'll find a great guy for it."

They did: Will Smith replaced Affleck, while Margot Robbie wound up taking Stewart's spot. "Focus" is currently scheduled for a 2015 release.

As for Affleck, he should be very busy in 2016: "Batman vs. Superman" is due out on May 6, 2016, with "Live By Night" set for that October. The last film Affleck directed, "Argo," won Best Picture.

[via Deadline.com]

Here's What Our Smartphone Obsession Looks Like ... In 26 Photos

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One in every five people owns a smart phone. That's more than one billion people. Our devices have become an extension of ourselves; they are company in some of the most monumental, meaningful and intimate experiences of our lives. We bring them to the bathroom. We keep them near us while we sleep. We invite them to dinner. We clutch them tightly when we meet the Pope.

Technology's pervasiveness seems innocuous at first. A five-minute walk with the dog on a nature trail becomes a five-minute window to check email. A couple of scrolls through Instagram while Spike does his thing appears harmless, but we miss the little off-screen moments that make life better and even decrease our stress. (And sleeping with your phones is just a bad idea.)

We're only getting more hooked. Over the past half-decade, smartphone use has increased exponentially. Our reliance on these device has evolved too. Data in a 2012 report produced by the Pew Research Center revealed that 29 percent of American cell phone owners describe their phones as "something they can't imagine living without."

The way we experience all aspects of life -- from the mundane moments to the momentous -- has been changed. Our relationship with phones is a complicated one: They come with us everywhere we go, but they often lead us to be lonely or alone. They record every moment of our lives, but they pull us from living in those moments. We have yet to master the perfect balance of phone as an accessory and phone as a life source. The series of photos below illustrate the juxtaposition of life before phones were a continuation of our social identities and the unromantic present, where they seem to be just that.

President Bill Clinton leaves the White House, 1994
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President Barack Obama speaks at the Women's History Month reception at the White House, 2013
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Passengers ride the subway, 1970
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Passengers ride the subway, 2014
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Pope John Paul II visits St. Peter's Square in Rome, 1983
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Pope Francis visits Guidonia Montecelio near Rome, March 2014
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A woman walks a dog, 1923
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A woman walks a dog, 2014
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Girls catch sight of The Beatles, Los Angeles, 1964
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Girls catch sight of One Direction, London, 2013
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A group of women shares a meal, 1930
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A group of women shares a meal, 2013
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Attendees enjoy a David Bowie concert, 1973
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Attendees enjoy a Beyoncé Concert, 2013
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A man walks through the snow in London's St. James Park, 2007
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A woman walks through the snow in London's St James Park, 2010
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Matt Lauer greets fans outside NBC's Today Show, 1999
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Matt Lauer greets fans outside NBC's Today Show, 2013
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A man dines alone, 1959
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A man dines alone, 2014
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Women sit for manicures and beauty treatments, 1971
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A woman sits for a manicure, 2013
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Fans stake out stars at the premiere of "Seven Years in Tibet," Los Angeles 1996
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Fans stake out stars at the premiere of "The Great Gatsby," 2014
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Malia and Sasha Obama stand together at the Inaugural Parade, 2009
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Malia and Sasha Obamas sit together at the Inaugural Parade, 2013
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Meet The Man Who Wants To 'Grow' The Blackest Color In The World

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Imagine the color black. Perhaps you envision a piece of coal, the ebony stripes of a zebra or the depths of outer space. Now imagine a color darker than black. Darker than that piece of coal, that stripe or the mysterious corners of the world beyond our planet.

This color -- a hue absent of all and any light -- is the Holy Grail, of sorts, for artist Frederik de Wilde. He's the man ambitious enough to help father "blacker-than-black," a material born of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that's turning the color wheel on its head. The nano-engineered wonder is hailed as the "blackest black" in the world, grown from tiny tubes 10,000 times smaller than a piece of human hair and capable of absorbing more than 99% of the light that hits them.

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So what does one do with such a phenomenon? Beyond seeming like a villainous compound destined to haunt the cast of a future sci-fi film, "blacker-than-black" is "better than paint," NASA claims, potentially useful in creating hyper-efficient renewable energy, developing invisible technology and upping the ante of telescopes aimed at looking deeper and deeper into space.

De Wilde has worked with NASA and a team underProfessor Pulickel Ajayan from Rice University in creating the innovation. He expands upon their research, channeling the seemingly limitless possibilities of "blacker-than-black" into the realms of not just science and technology but art and aesthetic, crafting nano-engineered paintings and 3D sculptures so dark their volume disappears.

We had the chance to speak with de Wilde in an ongoing email exchange. From art history to future technologies, the man with a penchant for shadows and obscurity has more than a little something to say about the concept to which he's dedicated much (but certainly not all) his career.

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Let's start with your work exploring the color black. Why this particular challenge -- to create the blackest black? It seems like something out of a science-fiction novel.

My blackest black research and art is very closely related to the art works of Kazimir Malevich. He invented Suprematism, an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on the visual depiction of objects. In a nutshell; Malevich expresses the end of materiality in his abstract art, free from the burden of the object. Nothing is real except feeling. Malevich was also heavily influenced by the ideas of the Russian mystic-mathematician-philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, who wrote of a "fourth dimension" beyond the three to which our ordinary senses have access. Suprematism was an attempt to go "beyond zero."

Malevich artworks are extremely relevant in the beginning of the 21st century. We are living in a time of visual excess, hyper materialism, the polarization of society trapped in the vortex of commerce, celebrity and money, and the psychotic art market where insane prices are being paid for art. I think it's time to puncture this reality.

[Editor's Note: De Wilde is incredibly versed in art history. In answering this question, he went on to further reference Lucio Fontana's "Concetto Spaziale," Stanley Kubrick’s "2001, Space Odyssey," Anish Kapoor's "Non-Object" and the Caves of Lascaux, France.]

What was your initial perception of a color "black than black"?

Blacker-than-black is necessarily something which exceeds the luminous phenomenon. The question arises whether darkness becomes visible. At that stage a funny paradox arrives: you can't produce nothing from nothing as stated in the second law of thermodynamics. I am bound to add something to darken black. It becomes compulsory to add something in order to see nothing. [My] artworks consist of 99.9% air and 0.1% carbon so you really look into nothing. The artworks are made of a relative of carbon, the substance that one finds in charcoal pens or in pencils (graphite).

There is a kind of beauty in trying to realize the blacker-than-black concept. Not just claiming it, but also trying to produce it by trial and error. There is beauty in doubt, to doubt and question perception and reality, simply by asking the poetic question: “Is there is something blacker than black? I see my nano engineered macroscopic art pieces as spaces of refusal, but also as spaces of imagination. In a time where we are over saturated with media and information, it pulls you back to something that is private and personal. Hence the viewer becomes a co-creator, contributes to the final artwork.

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You have "Hostage" and "M1NE #1," both of which test the limits of light, or lack thereof. For a layperson, what general steps go into "nano-engineering" a color like this?

In a nutshell: First, I prepare my substrate, or canvas if you want. In general it's a silicon wafer. The wafer is then placed in an ion sputtering chamber where we "vaporize" atoms from an extremely pure source sample material on the wafer. After this stage I place the wafer in a chemical vapor deposition furnace where heat, gas that contains a feedstock of carbon molecules and the catalyst seeds start to interact and react. One can see the super black material literally growing like a black forest.

You've worked with scientists throughout your research. What is your relationship with those collaborators like? What information do they give you and vice versa?

Generally it takes off with shared interests, ideas, passion, and curiosity to see what will come out of the collaboration. The information depends on the specificities of the project. It's always different depending on the context. Most of the collaborators become friends, hence a strong informal network. As long as you play open cards between each other it's fine.

Your work obviously has implications beyond the world of art. In which realms do you see your research being the most impactful -- visual arts, engineering, industrial design, architecture?

Basically it can have an impact in all of them. The limit is your imagination. Apart from the artistic and philosophical implications -- researching the aesthetics of the void -- I strongly believe that a blacker-than-black can be of great societal and ecological benefit. For example, if no light in the visible and invisible range (infrared, far-infrared, UV) from my blacker-than-black art is bounced back to the atmosphere, then basically it has a positive impact on global warming. Now imagine all rooftops being covered in a blacker-than-black photovoltaic art? Wouldn't that be just amazing? Imagine buildings, clothing being blacker-than-black. That would undoubtably lead to some crazy visual experiences. The world would appear as a cut-out.

Of course, one could use the blacker-than-black to make airplanes and cars invisible. In telescopes to avoid stray light. You could use it on microprocessors to conduct the heat away. There are many many potential applications, and of course this research is not limited to nanotechnology and carbon nanotubes.

But I am one of the pioneers in introducing nanotechnology in the arts, building an artwork from atomic sized particles -- basically out of nothing -- by creating color not by pigments but by the geometry of the nano object, and how this nano object interacts with light and photons. That's a paradigm shift for the arts. Yves Klein worked with chemist to develop a polyvinyl acetate in order to preserve the luminosity of his IKB, I work with chemists and engineers to "grow" my nano black art. In the field of Nano Art I introduced the translation to the macroscopic world. This is the future, and one day we'll be able to "grow" things, structures and surfaces from atoms, just as [Richard] Feynman predicted in his famous lecture at Caltech in 1959.

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You must get a lot of comparisons to Yves Klein and his memorable International Klein Blue. Do you find inspiration in the work of Klein? What other artists serve as inspiration?

Indeed. Being able to create a personal and authentic artistic vision and art that heralds the incredible oeuvre of Yves Klein is my contribution of showing respect and gratitude. Klein's first artwork was drawing in the blue sky, my dream is to draw in deep space, and I am making that dream come true step-by-step.

Of course there's Malevich, but also Fontana, Kapoor, [Ad] Reinhardt, [Mark] Rothko.

I see that you have a background in arts education -- what was it that brought you to the edge of science and nanotechnology to begin with?

Science and technology are changing our world at an ever-increasing rate. The pace of the contemporary art world is different when it comes down to picking-up those changes. In fact, I perceive the fine arts world as very conservative, most likely because it's too busy facilitating and selling art, less supporting emerging art. The contemporary fine art market is undoubtably heading for a collapse. If the current art market doesn't anticipate quickly it will be disastrous. It has to open up, there's no other way.

From my personal point of view, art must raise questions, create new ways of seeing and experiences. It's subversive by nature. It seeks friction to generate information. It's resilient but doesn't always seek the shortest or easiest path. I found that the art world didn't please me enough. It didn't raise enough fundamental questions. It seemed to be trapped in the vacuum of money and self-referentiality. [It] lost the broader and deeper impact on society. Interweaving art, science and technology enabled me to reconnect with society, challenge the art world to create a potentially deeper impact.

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25 Street Artists From Around The World Who Are Shaking Up Public Art

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Take a leisurely walk through your nearest metropolis, and you'll find skyscrapers reaching out to the heavens, innovative housing units sprawling from one space to another, oases of vintage architecture stuffed in unassuming pockets. Urban beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, but -- despite the undeniably stunning forms -- most cityscapes are drenched in a pretty limited color palette. Gray, brown, off-white and a slew of metallic shades; downtowns are not designed with a rainbow of hues in mind.

Perhaps that's one reason we have street artists.

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Italian street artist 'Blu' climbs the facade of a former military barrack as he works on a graffiti piece in Rome on April 24, 2014. (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images)


Equipped with spray paint, wheatpastes, stencils, stickers and more, street artists have a knack for infusing the most dull of urban centers with the most vibrant colors of the visual spectrum. Their work is far from a tag here and there -- today's masterminds adorn massive structures from towers to bridges with their signature aesthetics. From cartoonish to hyperreal to abstract to political, the world of street art is a rich and complex genre that pushes the limits of contemporary art with each explosions of red, blue and yellow.

"Street artists have been part of the conversation on the street for decades now, making powerful suggestions to architects and city planners" Jaime Rojo and Steven Harrington, the minds behind Brooklyn Street Art, write. "So maybe it's worth taking another look at what they've been up to lately."

With that directive in mind, we've compiled a list of 25 contemporary street artists who are shaking up the way we see public art. In an effort to continue our exploration of an art form dominated by big names like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, here's a list of international stars you may or may not worship already. Behold, a trek around the world in street art:

1. Jaz (Born in Argentina)

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Jaz in Baltimore in 2012 (Photo courtesy of Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)


2. Os Gemeos (Based in Brazil)

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Os Gemeos in Boston in 2012 (Photo courtesy Paul Marotta/Getty Images)


3. ROA (Based in Belgium)

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ROA in Rome in 2014 (Photo courtesy of ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images)


4. C215 (Based in France)

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Christian Guemy, aka C215, in Vitry-sur-Seine, France in 2013 (Photo courtesy of THOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images)


5. Reka (From Australia, Based in Germany)

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Reka in Brooklyn, NYC (Photo © Jaime Rojo)


6. Phlegm (Based in London, UK)

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Phlegm in Montreal (Photo © Daniel Esteban Rojas)


7. Escif (From Valencia, Spain)

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Escif in Montreal (Photo © Daniel Esteban Rojas)


8. Aakash Nihalani (Based in New York)

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Aakash Nihalani in Los Angeles, CA in 2013 (Photo courtesy of Facebook)


9. Moneyless (Based in Italy)

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Theo Moneyless and Mark Lyken in London, England in 2013 (Photo courtesy of Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)


10. Ganzeer (Based in Egypt)

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Mohamed Fahmy, aka Gazneer, in Cairo, Egypt in 2012 (Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)


11. Tellas (From Italy)

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Tellas in Italy in 2014 (Photo courtesy of Facebook)


12. Blu (Based in Italy)

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Blu in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2013 (Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)


13. Swoon (Based in Brooklyn, NY)

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Swoon in Boston in 2011 (Photo courtesy of David L Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)


14. Hyuro (Born in Argentina, Based in Valencia, Spain)

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Hyuro in Terracina, Italy in 2013 (Photo courtesy of Facebook)


15. Sheryo (From Singapore)

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Sheryo and Blackfryday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2012 (Photo courtesy of Facebook)


16. Pixel Pancho (Based in Italy)

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Pixel Pancho in Montreal (Photo © Daniel Esteban Rojas)


17. How & Nosm (Born in Spain -- of German heritage, Based in Brooklyn, NY)

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How & Nosm in Philadelphia, PA in 2012 (Photo courtesy of Facebook)


18. Vhils (Based in Portugal)

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Vhils in London in 2012 (Photo courtesy of CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)


19. Know Hope (Based in Tel Aviv, Israel)

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Know Hope in Rochester, NY in 2013 (Photo courtesy Facebook)


20. JR (Based in France)

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JR in Berlin in 2013 (Photo courtesy of JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)


21. Aryz (Based in Barcelona, Spain)

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Aryz in England (Photo courtesy of Getty)


22. Gaia (Based in Baltimore, MD and Brooklyn, NY)

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Gaia in Baltimore in 2012 (Photo courtesy of Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)


23. Interesni Kazki (Based in Ukraine)

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Interesni Kazki in Baltimore (Photo © Jaime Rojo)


24. FAILE (Based in Brooklyn, NY)

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Faile in Manhattan, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)


25. Maya Hayuk (Based in New York)

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Maya Hayuk in Miami, FL in 2013 (Photo courtesy of Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)


For more on the world of street art, check out the Brooklyn Street Art blog here.

Travel Back In Time With An Art Exhibition Dedicated To Surreal 1970s Suburbia

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It's no great surprise that the relationship between artists and the normalized, consumerist fantasy that is the suburbs is a fraught one. For as long as there have been suburbs -- planted, manicured and tucked away from crime and poverty -- there have been artists peering in from the outside, unimpressed.

While most artistic comments on the suburban ideal are scathingly ironic and unrelentingly judgmental, an exhibition entitled "Cutting Through the Suburbs" gives a more nuanced approach to challenging the cookie cutter American dream. The inspired show reveals how the most experimental artists and architects of the 1970s attempted to unravel suburban temples, revealing the beauty of the breaches in their already fractured existence.

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James Wines / SITE, BEST Hialeah, 1979



In the '70s, the suburban pipe dream was put to the test when an economic recession, stratified incomes, gas shortages, violence and unease threatened the sanctity of the suburbanites' boxed and safeguarded lifestyles. Artists were some of the first to catch on to the slight, yet quickly expanding, holes in the suburban promise, eager to expose the contradictions and illusions embedded in the fanciful notions of the upper middle class.

On view in "Cutting Through the Suburbs" is a series titled "Anarchitecture" (1979), in which James Wines and SITE Architects manipulated the omnipresent mold of the suburban shopping mall, transforming uniform consumerist sites into the surreal debris of an impossible dream. Using a store called Best Products, Wines and SITE tore through the pristine exterior of the consumer's mecca, exposing it as the mirage it was all along.

According to Carriage Trade Gallery, "The Best stores combined the site specificity and interventionist approach of land art with the popular imagery of the commercial strip." The atypical store designs offered mutated alternatives to the prescribed sites of happiness, by depicting the building's facade peeling off or housing an entire rainforest ecosystem inside the store space.

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Bill Owens, Suburbia p.20, 1973, 9’’ x 6 1/4‘’, Black & White Print



Also included in the exhibition are Bill Owens' chronicles of a California suburb in the '70s, deadpan portraits that don't parody or ridicule their subjects, but simply present the suburban world as the melding of the banal and bizarre. The black-and-white photos capture tract homes with all their knick-knacks, televisions and Vincent van Gogh replicas, showing how individuality is both suppressed and manufactured.

Finally, Gordon Matta-Clark's iconic 1974 work, "Splitting" fills the ranks as well, literally splitting the idyllic house behind the white picket fence in two, hacking away at a dream home until it transforms from its brochure-ready status into a contemporary ruin, ripped at the seams. After physically hacking away at the American icon until it was irreparably disfigured, a piercing light blasts through the useless remains.

Whether through creative violence or careful observation, humor or desperation, the artists in "Cutting Through the Suburbs" raised questions and worries about our country's prescribed route to fulfillment that are as relevant now as ever. Their playful interventions and documentations illuminate the ruptures that always existed in the happy land of shopping malls and model homes. See a preview below.





"Cutting Through the Suburbs" will run until May 18, 2014 at Carriage Trade in New York.

Eye-Opening Photos Of Door-To-Door Salesmen In A Nairobi Slum

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Mathare is a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, in which approximately 500,000 people live packed into a three-square-mile region.

Many people dwelling in the poverty-stricken neighborhood turn to self-made entrepreneurship in the fight for survival. Filippo Romano's photography series "Nomadic Sellers" captures this population of door-to-door peddlers, pictured with the commodities that form their livelihood on their backs. Romano's eye-opening photos reveal how what began as a mode of survival morphed into something bigger -- a budding economy that's constantly expanding.

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Romano's subjects carry on their person everything from watermelons to sneakers to lampshades to medicine, the colorful consumer goods contrasting starkly with their abject surroundings. The close proximity of poverty and the persisting desire to buy and sell shows that while consumerism is often considered a Western phenomenon, the obsession is now shared by most humans around the world. As Jenna Garrett explained in Feature Shoot, "With SIM cards and mobile phones rapidly becoming hot commodities, Romano hints that be it practical or frivolous, longing for material possessions is a universally human trait."

For his series, Romano combines each portrait with a short survey, a practice that lands somewhere between taking inventory and keeping a journal. Romano asks his subjects questions including how many hours they work a day, how much they make on average, whether they are married or have children. The information, scribbled under each image, adds an additional layer of depth and reality to the works that, when looked at alone, seem almost surreal. Romano's powerful photos don't cast any judgment on their subjects, nor do they ask the viewers to pity the salesmen. Instead he captures from close proximity a self-made community that, despite its distance and difficulties, actually resembles the rest of the world in a surprising number of ways.

Take a look into the slums of Mathare below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Pick Flick: An Oral History Of 'Election,' 15 Years Later

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In April 1999, when "Election" opened in limited release, moviegoers were only just getting to know Reese Witherspoon. "Man in the Moon," "Fear" and "Pleasantville" had provided glimpses of the actress, but it was in March of that year, when "Cruel Intentions" opened, that Witherspoon began to emerge as a household name. And then, along came Tracy Flick, the high-strung high schooler who would stop at nothing to be elected student body president. That character, and Witherspoon, became part of the pop culture lexicon -- despite originally hailing from a novel that almost didn't get published, a director whose first movie failed to gross $1 million at the box office and a marketing campaign that teetered somewhere between ineffective and disastrous.

In spite of all that, "Election" has prevailed as a defining film for millennials as well as major-studio projects that employ indie sensibilities (it was produced by MTV Films and distributed by Paramount). Perhaps it was thanks to Matthew Broderick, who received top billing as the well-liked teacher fed up with Tracy's manipulation and overzealousness. Maybe it was the modesty displayed by Chris Klein and Jessica Campbell, unknown actors cast to play the sibling duo that would challenge Tracy in the heated race. This is to say nothing of Witherspoon, whose manic performance etched itself among the greatest screen characters of the '90s, nor director Alexander Payne, who would soon become one of Hollywood's most respected auteurs. Whatever the concoction was, "Election" has become a modern cult classic.

Witherspoon earned a Golden Globe nomination, Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor grabbed an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and the movie took home Best Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. It's proof that a film's longevity is not inherently tied to big budgets or massive box office receipts. Fifteen years later, and "Election" still ranks among the most memorable releases of the past two decades. HuffPost Entertainment caught up with many of the movie's major players for a look back at how it came together and why it remains a force in pop culture.

Alexander Payne, co-writer/director: The producers, Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger, sent me an unpublished manuscript called “Election.” This was in 1996, I think. I didn’t read it for a long time because there were a lot of high school movies at the time. I couldn’t be less interested in making a high school movie. And then finally I read it and I liked it. It was set in a high school, but it wasn’t a high school story, per se. Also what attracted me was the formal exercise of doing a movie with multiple points of view and multiple voice-overs.

Tom Perrotta, novelist: The book came out of my obsession with the 1992 presidential election. I was unemployed and got caught up in that race. And that was, of course, the Ross Perot year, so there were three main candidates [Perot, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush]. When it was over, I just felt a little bit bereft. I thought I wanted to write a political novel, but I don’t know anything about politics that anybody else doesn’t know.

Van Toffler, executive producer and current president of MTV: That year, the three movies we tried to get made were “Election,” “Go” from Doug Liman and “Being John Malkovich” from Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. “Election” was the one we got made. The whole premise behind MTV Films was that we can make movies differently than everyone else, talk to our audience of young people uniquely and take chances on new writers, new filmmakers, new visionaries, and not go through the Hollywood system. “Election” fit squarely in terms of where the brand was going. No one had done anything like that. Alexander was someone we had all met and felt, based on “Citizen Ruth” [Payne's first film], had a vision and was going to be a force to be reckoned with for many years to go.

Perrotta: I was having trouble getting people to take it seriously as an adult novel. After a while, I just gave up. So it was just sitting in my drawer and I started to write another book called “The Wishbones.” I gave a reading of “The Wishbones” at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. There was a writer named Janet Shapiro in the audience, and she really liked “The Wishbones” and thought it had movie potential. She said I should get in touch with these producer friends of hers, Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa of Bona Fide Productions. I told them it wasn’t done yet but when it was I’d be happy to show it to them. But I said I had another book sitting in a drawer that could be an interesting movie. So I sent it to them, and they were intrigued by it and they went to David Gale at MTV Films.

Jim Taylor, co-writer: As soon as I read it, I knew that it was perfect material for us. I wished I could say that’s happened a lot over the years, but it hasn’t. It’s sort of a unique experience.

Toffler: It was not an easy movie to get made in a major studio system. Let me just say that I remember being called and lectured at home on a weekend about what I was thinking trying to make what [Paramount Pictures] viewed as a hard R movie based in a high school, where pages were read to me like I’m a crazy man. Why would I think of making an R-rated movie in a high school? It wasn’t a typical Freddie Prinze-like high school movie, as you can tell. At that point, if you were going to make a high school movie, it should be PG-13, not R.

Taylor: [The book is] written in a very distinctive form, which is first-person for each of the characters, and I think it’s about 16 characters and their mini-chapters are headed with the characters’ names. There aren’t a lot of movies that do that, and thankfully that was signed off on by people at MTV and Paramount. But we obviously didn’t want to do all those characters, so we just honed in on four.

Those four were social-studies teacher Jim McAllister (aka Mr. M), ambitious Tracy Flick, earnest Paul Metzler and disillusioned Tammy Metzler. [HuffPost Entertainment was unable to get in touch with Jessica Campbell, who played Tammy and is no longer active in show business.]

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Payne: It was my first studio film, and Paramount put me through a number of casting hurdles: Meet this guy, meet that guy. Offer it to Tom Cruise, offer it to Tom Hanks. All these things which are a big time-waster as far as I’m concerned. But one actor we all could agree upon ultimately was Matthew Broderick. I met with him and he was only too happy to do the part, and I’m so glad he did. I never thought Tom Cruise would have been right for the part. Tom Hanks is a wonderful actor, but I knew at the time there was no way in hell he would take the part. It just felt right that we eventually got to Matthew Broderick.

Matthew Broderick, actor (Jim McAllister): Even with scripts that are wonderful, it’s always hard. But I remember reading that and thinking it was an interesting story -- the dialogue and all of it. I didn’t have a job at the time I read it, and I thought, “Shit, I wish I could get jobs like that.” I think my then-manager sent it to me, and it was not an offer, but he was like, “This is really good and you should read it.” I think there were other actors who were still deciding. I loved it, and the next step was to meet with Alexander. I think whoever it was [up for the part] had said no or wasn’t deciding, so they gave it to me.

Perrotta: He’s amazing in the movie, but my first reaction was that he was too sweet because there was something a little bit impish about him in his younger roles. But I learned an important lesson, which is to trust good directors to cast the right actor, because I was a little skeptical about Matthew.

Reese Witherspoon, actress (Tracy Flick): I was frankly very intimated by him. I had done a few movies by then, probably about six, but my career was only just starting to get a little bit of momentum, so this opportunity to work with Matthew was great. We were a little adversarial in the movie, so it wasn’t like we were suddenly chums. We had a good relationship, which is very funny, but it was always a little bit about keeping that tension for the sake of the movie.

Toffler: We had some bigger debates, David Gale and I, who was working for me running MTV Films at the time, about the casting. I guess it’s public about changing Tammy, the sister, who was a newcomer, too. We had somebody else in the part. I think it was Thora Birch.

Payne: I cast Jessica off a tape from St. Louis.

It turns out Witherspoon would have loved to play Tammy, too. The actress told the Los Angeles Times in 1999 that upon entering the audition, she didn't know if she wanted the role of Tracy or Tammy, Paul Metzler's rebellious sister who enters the race just to spite her brother for hooking up with Lisa Flanagan, Tammy's romantic interest. "That speech alone made me want to play Tammy," Witherspoon said of the campaign-speech assembly scene.

Witherspoon: I read the script and I had seen Alexander Payne’s first film, “Citizen Ruth,” at the Sundance Film Festival. I thought it was so hysterical and I loved his perspective. And then I went in to audition for him. I remember he had a suit and tie on, and I said, “What’s the occasion?” And he said, “It’s Tuesday!” But I just remember the audition, and I said, “I don’t know who you’re thinking about for this part, but it’s me.” I think I had a little bit of Tracy Flick going on in the audition, but he ended up casting me.

Payne: Reese Witherspoon, I was somewhat familiar with because of “Man in the Moon” and “Freeway,” and I met her. She came in for a meeting, and I was very, very impressed by her.

Broderick: Reese was already cast in it, and they were very excited about her. I, being a person who just watches old TV, did not know who that was. I think the first time I met her was when we went down to Omaha and started rehearsing. I immediately thought she was wonderful and hilarious and just very original, all in this little cute package. You didn’t expect this terrorist to come out.

Perrotta: Alexander took a slightly different take on the character of Tracy Flick than exists in the book. My Tracy is a little bit more of a sexual manipulator, and Reese’s Tracy is more of a go-getter who’s a little bit over her head when it comes to sexual matters. It ultimately was a good change for the movie.

Chris Klein, actor (Paul Metzler): The principal of my high school, Dr. Rick Kolowski, in Omaha, Nebraska, was a huge, huge proponent of arts education, so we had wonderful opportunities to sing and dance and act. Alexander Payne was scouting our high school as a location for “Election.” Dr. Rick Kolowski made sure that he introduced this Hollywood director to the resident theater guy, and I had made quite a name for myself from all the high school plays and then in the community theater. So he made that introduction, and a couple weeks later Alexander Payne called me up at my folks’ house and brought me in to audition for the movie.

Payne: A couple of months went by, months during which I returned to L.A., auditioned a bunch of potential Pauls, and I didn’t like any of them. When you’re trying to cast teenagers in Los Angeles, they all seem too polished, too old, too sophisticated. They don’t feel like actual kids. So I went back to Omaha and called up the high school. I didn’t remember the guy’s name. I just described who he was. They got him a message, he met me at the office of the Omaha Film Commission, and that’s how we discovered Chris Klein.

Klein: After I read the script, I called Alexander Payne and I told him I couldn’t make the movie. He said, “Why can’t you make the movie?” And I said, “Well, it’s a movie and my grandma’s going to see it, and there’s a scene where my character gets a blow job, and I can’t have my grandma see me getting a blow job.” And Alexander Payne laughed and said, “Okay, kid, listen. We’ll take care of it. Just come and do the movie. Just trust me.”

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Broderick: I remember when we had our first rehearsal thinking how good Chris Klein was. It was nice to see that Alexander had cast somebody who hadn’t done anything and who was so good.

Klein: We get started, and for the very first time, I put two and two together and I said, “Wait a minute. They don’t play the music during the shoot? All the scenes in movies have music. How come they don’t play the music? Oh, shit. They put the music in after. Oh, that means I’m actually going to have to manufacture real feelings without the aid of music.” So that was that revelation: that they actually laid the music in after they shoot the movie. I will be forever grateful to [Alexander] and of course never forgive him for launching me into the zany world of Hollywood.

Payne: I toured almost every high school in Omaha and selected one high school and was forbidden to shoot there because the superintendent of Omaha public schools asked to read the script and was horrified by it. So he forbade my using any high school in the Omaha public-school system because he said we would never have a student and a teacher having an affair and some of the immoral behavior he didn’t want associated. We found a happy home at Papillion La Vista High School, which is in a part of town called Papillion, Nebraska. We shot while school was in session, in the fall of 1997.

Broderick: To me, it was like Mars. I went to a little school in Greenwich Village, so this cavernous place with gyms and football fields was unusual to me.

Toffler: We really liked Alexander and Jim’s take on Tom Perrotta’s book, and he had a very distinct visual style, which you saw in the movie with a lot of the freeze-frame stuff and the voice-over technique.

Payne: Finding the most unflattering [freeze frames], particularly on Reese, just came between [editor Kevin Tent] and me in the cutting room. It’s both funny that you would pick the freeze frame that normally everyone else would reject because it’s so unflattering, and also it seemed appropriate that Jim McAllister would focus on a very unflattering aspect of Tracy Flick.

Witherspoon: [The freeze frames were] news to me. When I saw the movie, I was in shock. I thought, "What?" I didn’t understand. I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was fantastic. By freezing her in isolation, it creates an energy and makes her stronger and more important of a character.

Taylor: Probably the hardest thing was this big backstory between Tracy and her teacher, played by Mark Harelik, the one she sleeps with. So that ended up being this quite long flashback, film-within-a-film thing. Still, we were trying to have some fun. With Tracy in particular, we were seeing how her mother pushes her and gives her some meds when she’s not feeling well.

Witherspoon: We had a really interesting time tearing down the posters. In the scene afterward, Alexander wanted me to make this face like something out of “Psycho.” I go to the bathroom afterward and I’m just scrubbing my hands like Lady Macbeth. And he says, “I want you to lean against the wall and I want you to melt like Janet Leigh in ‘Psycho.’” And all I could think was that it was really funny. I always laughed at his directions because he’s a really funny guy. He made all these animal analogies, like, “Okay, you’re going to walk through the hall like a panther.” And one scene I remember doing was when she realizes she won: The moment was like an eighth of a page and it said, “Tracy realizes that she won and celebrates silently to herself.” And Alexander said, “Why don’t you actually jump up and down?” So I started jumping up and down. “No, no, put your legs together. I want you to jump up and down like you’re a human pogo stick.” And I’m going, “Really?” And in that scene it’s just a hysterical thing.

Payne: We had a couple of different scenes with the all-school assembly. We did that shoot on a Saturday, and I think we did not get enough students to fill it, so we had to use all the students on one side of the gymnasium and then mix them up and put those same students on the other side. I needed one shot that showed all of them together, and that is the first shot of the scene in which the winners are announced, when Matthew Broderick’s eye is already swollen and Tracy mistakenly stands up. So that sequence begins with a very wide shot tilting down from the ceiling and you see both sides of the gymnasium filled. This is, again, how lovely the principal and administration were: They called an assembly during school just so I could get that shot.

Broderick: I remember shooting those big assembly scenes. The awkward thing is that when they get to your coverage or your close-up, that whole crowd is gone. Not for all the shots, but for some angles you have to pretend there are 1,000 people cheering you.

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Perrotta: Of the changes to the novel, [Mr. M’s] bee sting is the one that I get the biggest kick out of.

Broderick: That took a lot of planning. I had three or four levels of how swollen my eye should be. [Cass McClure, a famed makeup technician] figured it all out, and he had three or four latex molds made. They would glue on this swollen eye. I had a slightly swollen one, a just-stung one, et cetera. When it was most swollen, I couldn’t see out of that eye. And it’s uncomfortable to have something over your eye all day. I remember Alexander and I wondering how much it would hurt. Should I be screaming? Or just say, “Ow”? So we tried to find the correct level of a bee sting on the eye. I think my first instinct was to have a huge conniption, and he told me to calm down.

Payne: It’s a physical representation of the moral injury that he’s inflicting upon himself.

Perrotta: The only character who gets the short shrift is Lisa Flanagan, who is Tammy’s girlfriend who becomes Paul’s girlfriend. In the book, a year has gone by. She and Tammy have this affair and she got scared. You have to remember this was taking place in the ‘90s. It’s still not easy to come out, but 20 years ago it was a lot harder. But they’ve had this fling and she backs away and says she can’t do this. And then a year goes by and Lisa starts up with Paul. It’s still a bad thing to do, to go out with your ex’s brother, but in the movie it seems like she’s in bed with Tammy on Tuesday and sleeping with Paul on Wednesday, and it just seems much crueler. But that was just a matter of the compression of narrative time.

Payne: I wanted some degree of Morricone in that score, and indeed we used some actual Morricone. Tracy’s mental scream is stolen from a spaghetti Western. Even Quentin Tarantino told me later, “Oh, I always wanted to use actual spaghetti-Western music.” You hear spaghetti-Western music stolen earlier than you do in any Tarantino film in mine. I got there first. But it was a bit of a difficult situation with the record company that gave us a bunch of the rock songs that are in the film. Between MTV and the record label, they wanted a lot more. I remember the fight I had to go through to have the opening credits have score, not a rock song. It was de rigueur for movies to have some kind of rock song in the opening credits and end credits. I had to tell them I’m making a motion picture, not a jukebox.

By the time principal photography wrapped and the movie went through test screenings, Payne and company had second thoughts about the conclusion.

Perrotta: The thing writers are scared about is that Hollywood is going to defang their story and put a happy ending on something that wasn’t happy. In fact, what happened with “Election” was that a darker ending got put on my material. But what’s important to know is that the original script followed closely the plot of the book, and it was actually filmed. It was only later, when I think they had a test screening -- I don’t know all the details, but people didn’t like the ending. And then it took a long time for Alexander and Jim to rewrite the ending and come up with the one that’s there now. I didn’t feel at all betrayed by that. I was aware of the process and that they’d tried to faithfully film the plot of the book. From what I heard, it just didn’t work.

Toffler: Literally I would read every notecard from every person who went into the screening, and I think they went away and did their best to revamp.

Witherspoon: The original ending was that [Mr. M] worked at a Saturn dealership. I come in from Northwestern and I’m going to buy my first car, and it was the first time that I drive him past my house and show him where I live. He saw that I live in a really bad area of town. He gets out of the car and I ask him to sign my yearbook, and then I go into the house and he kicks a trash can. I don’t know why we reshot it, but I really love the previous ending and I think the ending that we ended up with is fantastic.

Payne: The movie mined [the novel] for more outrageous and subversive humor. I think the audience felt -- and we the filmmakers, too -- that the rather melancholy ending did not seem totally in keeping with the very funny, subversive movie which preceded it. Sherry Lansing at Paramount was good enough to offer a moderately priced reshoot, so Jim Taylor and I got together and rewrote the ending.

Taylor: It was partially motivated by test scores, but it wasn’t really like people didn’t like the movie. It was more a sense on all of our parts, an agreement that we could do better. Sherry Lansing is sort of famous for having reworked the ending of “Fatal Attraction.” That was a case where the movie really wasn’t working, then they redid the ending and it was sensational. People loved it. In our case, it was more about us than about the audience.

Toffler: We probably had a late-night meeting in Sherry Lansing’s office, a handful of us, including Alexander and Jim and probably Ron and Albert, myself and David. For everything to continue to go wrong for Matthew Broderick’s character needed some kind of redemption in a genuine way, like when he throws his cup at the limo. It’s not like everything’s going to be all right for him; it’s not. Alexander wouldn’t have allowed that, but at least there’s some closure other than [Tracy] in some way defeats him or ruins him.

Sherry Lansing, former CEO of Paramount Pictures: My feeling is that Alexander watched the film with an audience and felt that what he wanted to get out there wasn't getting out there. The studio was in love with this movie. I was willing to put the extra money in to allow him to have his vision. It's what makes it the classic it is. The process is always to put it in front of an audience, and you listen to what they say. We were willing to put whatever amount of money was necessary to allow the film to be everything that he and all of us wanted it to be because we believed in it so much, and that belief has been justified. It certainly didn't do $100 million or whatever the magical number is, but it never was supposed to. This was a small film done at a modest price. That money was justified because it's become a classic film.

Payne: We had to wait for Matthew, who was shooting “Inspector Gadget.” That was in the middle of 1998. We had to wait for him to finish that, and then we did our additional shooting in November or December of ’98. And then the film came out in April of ’99.

Broderick: I threw that drink at the car myself and hit it. Boom. I was very happy for it. That was the first try, and I think I never hit it again. Then they tried like 18 more times and I never could manage it. One time we did it and I ran into this park that was across the street from the White House. And Alexander says, “Just keep running! I’ll film it, and maybe that would be a funny ending, just to have this guy running into a park scared. But just run as far as you can.” So I ran and ran, and as I get nearer to the White House, I start to notice homeless guys and dog walkers starting to take notice of me and come toward me because there’s lots of Secret Service in this park who did not like this man running full throttle toward the White House. I think they thought I was going to throw myself at the building.

"Election" opened in limited release on April 23, 1999, following a shaky marketing campaign. It expanded to wide release on May 7 and eventually grossed $15 million at the domestic box office. Critics called it "smart" and "complexly funny."

Taylor: It was a problematic film for Paramount and MTV Films to release because they thought if it was really a teen movie they’d know how to market it. So it kind of went out in a satisfactory way, but there was no big hoopla about it.

Payne: They just did not understand how to market it. Other studio people looked at the film and said Paramount does not know what it has. And, granted, it was early in my career. My previous film had been well reviewed, but Miramax kind of dumped “Citizen Ruth” to some degree. So if “Election” were to come out today, I think it could have a much better reception. But it was a spring release. It wound up being, as I recall, in a couple of measures the best-reviewed film of 1999. But it didn’t make a lot of money.

Toffler: It was really hard for the studio to try to tackle it because it was definitely more complex than a typical high school movie. We tried to focus on the relationships of the characters, so Chris Klein and his sister and his girlfriend, clearly the speech scene seeking the nomination is a great one in the auditorium, the relationship with Reese. For us it was less about the adults in our approach on our own air. And probably less of a focus on Matthew Broderick than the off-channel spots and what went into the trailer. But it was not a big-budget marketing campaign, let me say that.

Payne: I remember they made the worst trailer in the world. The trailer was so atrocious that I made sure it was not on the DVD.

Toffler: At that time, there were campaigns around the ratings system and marketing R movies to kids. They changed a lot of the rules and regulations on TV, so there was a lot of concern. We should have respected the intelligence of the high school audience, but it was tough to market to them directly because of a bunch of the swirl around D.C. that was going on.

Payne: Paramount today, or Fox Searchlight, would know how to package it in such a way, perhaps make it a late-year release and realize its intelligence. Obviously they were proud of it later, in hindsight, when it received a Golden Globe nomination for Reese and an Oscar nomination for Jim Taylor and I on the screenplay. They were very proud of it then. And I always had a very good relationship with Sherry Lansing, but the marketing was not very successful, clearly.

Broderick: I saw a test screening with a little audience, maybe at a studio in L.A. I remember I was watching it and the audience seemed to really be liking the movie. And then at the ending, it felt right, like it was lifting everybody into a nice way to leave the theater. So I remember watching it and thinking it looked right and that it seemed to keep everyone at a high.

Toffler: As I like to say, you put the combustible elements together, and you gotta walk out of the room and occasionally an explosion happens. This had a lot of great elements, from Tom’s book to Alexander as a relatively new, young director, to Reese and Matthew: things that you wouldn’t expect to live side by side, set in a high school.

Perrotta: Tracy Flick has become part of the American political lexicon. Now I hear a lot of comedies and I just go, “Oh, that has an ‘Election’ vibe.” Even just a couple of years ago on TV, you felt like “Parks and Rec” had been heavily influenced by “Election” in the character of Leslie Knope. And the first season of “Glee” had “Election” written all over it. It’s really reverberated. It had a kind of groundbreaking aesthetic impact. Ryan Murphy was pretty open about it. Cory Monteith even looked like Chris Klein, and Lea Michele was very much playing a Tracy Flick-type character in that first year.

Klein: Jason Reitman a couple years ago did a very cool thing: He screened a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Election” double feature. What he said was that this is what happened to Ferris Bueller -- he became a teacher. Now, Alexander Payne will tell you that he’s never seen the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and that was certainly never anything that he thought about. But Jason had a pretty cool take, and I remember doing publicity for the movie years ago when it was coming out and some journalists tried to spin it that way.

Witherspoon: A lot of the women I’ve met in politics say, “Everyone always compares me to Tracy Flick.” And I think, well, isn’t that wonderful in some regards? And then in other regards, why is there only one female political archetype? It was 15 years ago and we have no other really notable women. I guess now we have “Veep,” which is exciting and which I love.

Payne: Barack Obama has told me twice that it’s his favorite political film.

The above interviews have been condensed and arranged based on longer, individual conversations.
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