Why Black Men Tend To Be Fashion Kings

Hide caption Tell Me More intern Azmi Abusam is dressed in designs by Guess, Aldo and H&M. He got his handmade leather bag from a street dealer in Khartoum, Sudan. Abusam says his style changes every six months, but it's usually based on comfort, quality and personal taste. Hide caption NPR Washington Desk Assistant Editor Brakkton Booker. Hide caption NPR Digital Media's Matt Thompson shows off a plum-colored Express shirt with a lavender DKNY silk tie, charcoal wool vest by Indochino and wool pants by Calvin Klein. He says he keeps things simple for the most part, usually wearing muted colors with one bold accent. Hide caption Tell Me More's Barbershop guy Jimi Izrael wears a Kenneth Cole shirt, Inc jacket and Ray Ban glasses. He says he mostly has his wife's taste in clothes, but also likes unconventional takes on conventional clothing items. Hide caption Kevin Langley of NPR's Operations team dresses in a navy blue pin-striped Calvin Klein suit. Made of cashmere, wool and polyester, the suit has an athletic fit. Langley says his overall style is "business attire," and he's drawn to ties that look expensive and professional, but are cheap and accentuate his shirt or suit. Hide caption Republican strategist Ron Christie wears a tailored three-piece suit from Lord Willy's in New York City. He says the style is bespoke British with irreverent flair. And when Christie isn't dressed for business, he turns to casual Lucky Brand jeans and a sweater. Hide caption Victor Holliday, associate producer of NPR's on-air fundraising, wears a light gray wool suit (DKNY Essentials) under a black vintage overcoat with fine English stitching (Regis Rex). He considers his style "easy elegance." Hide caption NPR Senior Producer Walter Watson pairs his blue Banana Republic sweater with golden brown Lands' End slacks. He calls his style "nothing too fancy office casual wear." Hide caption Tell Me More's Barbershop and political chat contributor Corey Ealons is outfitted in a Joseph Abboud black velvet jacket with a ticket pocket and pink silk handkerchief. Ealons says real men can wear pink with confidence, and that his style is classic and clean with a little edge. Hide caption Maxwell Ealons, 4, enjoys dressing like his father, Corey. His dressy clothes usually come from Children's Place, H&M, Target and Zara. He actually dresses himself for school with Spider-Man, Batman and Redskins shirts, plus jeans or sweat pants.

For many, style is much deeper than articles of clothing; it's a statement of identity. Black men have a unique relationship with fashion, one that can be traced all the way back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

Monica L. Miller, the author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, spoke with Tell Me More's Michel Martin about the past, present and future of black men's fashion.

Miller, an associate professor of English at Barnard College, explains that African-American men have used style as a way to challenge stereotypes about who they are. "Sometimes the well-dressed black man coming down the street is asking you to look and think."

Victor Holliday, associate producer of on-air fundraising at NPR and one of the resident kings of style, tells Martin that he learned about the importance of fashion at an early age. "When I was 5 years old, I knew exactly how I was going to look," he says. "And that was the year I got my first trench coat and my top hat."

Holliday's style icon is his father, who taught him that the main object of dressing up is winning respect. "Because as you present yourself seriously, people tend to take you seriously."

Holliday is one of the men featured in Tell Me More's Kings of Style slideshow.

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Diana Vreeland's Rise To 'Empress Of Fashion'

Diana Vreeland had a troubled childhood; her mother often told her she was ugly. But she later became editor-in-chief of American Vogue and one of the country's most revered fashion icons. Her life is captured in the new biography, Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland. Host Michel Martin talks with author Amanda Mackenzie Stuart.

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Hopper's Lonely Figures Find Some Friends In Paris

Edward Hopper is well-known in the U.S. for paintings such as Nighthawks (1942) — pensive, lonely portraits of people sitting together yet alone. He was less well-known in France, but an exhibit of his work at the Grand Palais has drawn impressive crowds.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection/Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Earlier this summer, I looked for Edward Hopper's Morning Sun at its home in the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. In the painting, a woman sits on a bed with her knees up, gazing out a window. She's bare, but for a short pink slip. The iconic Hopper is a must-see, but on the day I visited, it was on loan to an exhibition in Madrid.

Edward and Josephine Hopper met as young students in art school in New York and married in 1924. Josephine was his only female model, and posed for his 1952 work, Morning Sun.

Columbus Museum of Art/Howald Fund Edward and Josephine Hopper met as young students in art school in New York and married in 1924. Josephine was his only female model, and posed for his 1952 work, Morning Sun.

Columbus Museum of Art/Howald Fund

I finally caught up with Morning Sun in Paris, where it is on display as part of a Hopper show at the Grand Palais. When I first walked in, the gallery was empty, but not for long. The room quickly filled — as has the whole exhibition — since it opened in October.

Curator Didier Ottinger says the crowds for the Hopper show rival the crowds for Picasso or Monet exhibits — and that surprised him. He never expected his exhibition of the American realist's work to become such a phenomenon. Though Hopper is a favorite in the U.S., French museums don't own his work, so the French don't know the painter very well. Now that they've been introduced, they like him quite a bit — they like his colors, his people and his light.

Hopper shows men and women, bathed in light from open windows, or under fluorescent light — those figures drinking coffee from hell in a nighttime diner. They all seem isolated and lonely. The fact that the images are based on the lives of ordinary people is very American, Ottinger says, but the French still see themselves in these paintings. "Each of his works is a kind of screen where everybody ... is able to project his own feelings, his own emotions," Ottinger says.

Hopper painted Room in New York (oil on canvas) in 1932. It was around the same time his wife, Josephine, started writing in her diary about her frustrations with her husband becoming a famous artist.

Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust. Hopper painted Room in New York (oil on canvas) in 1932. It was around the same time his wife, Josephine, started writing in her diary about her frustrations with her husband becoming a famous artist.

Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust.

Hopper never painted narratives; it's up to us to impose our own stories on his images. But, says Ottinger, there are autobiographical elements in the paintings. In Hopper's 1932 painting Room in New York, a man and a woman sit together but alone. The man is engrossed in his newspaper; the woman seems lost in thought, one finger placed on the key of a piano. They're so removed from one another.

"And this is precisely the time when his wife, Josephine, was starting to write her own diary where she expressed her frustration because he was becoming a famous painter," Ottinger says.

Edward and Josephine Hopper met as young students in art school in New York and married in 1924. "And very, very fast he became one of the key figures in realism of this period, and she was left behind," Ottinger says.

At her insistence, she became his only model. That way, Jo felt that she played a part in the creation of his paintings, and Hopper encouraged this interpretation. Jo had wanted to be an actress, but that never worked out, Ottinger explains, so her husband "gave her this kind of chance to be his only actress, and every single painting is a kind of small play."

So that's Jo in the pink slip, sitting by the open window in Morning Sun. "More than solitude, more than melancholy, this painting is expressing a kind of awakeness," Ottinger says. The woman staring out that window is aware of what the day and her life are really about.

"She's awake ... ," Ottinger says, snapping his fingers. "There is something higher, there is something bigger, there is something more cosmic than this sad and ordinary life which is expressed by this gloomy room. ... I think this is precisely what is always interesting — something which can be depressing, but at the same time, there is always hope."

Edward Hopper, seen in a new light in Paris. (A friend says Hopper — himself a Francophile — would be thrilled to find his works on view so near the Louvre.) Ottinger's exposition of this major 20th-century American painter remains at the Grand Palais until the end of January.

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Remembering A Rock Star: Photographer Ken Regan

Hide caption Elvis Presley, early 1960s, with Nancy Sinatra. "I knew I would have to hustle in this competitive business if I wanted to make a name for myself .... But I had to make it to this one: Sgt. Elvis Presley, stationed for two years in Germany, was flying in to meet with the media at Fort Dix, N.J., on the eve of his discharge." Hide caption The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, 1964. "The audience in the 703-seat theater shrieked nonstop. This was at the deafening dawn of Beatlemania. You couldn't hear a thing. Some fans just seemed to be in shock, staring ahead, tears running down their cheeks." Hide caption "When The Beatles returned to America in August, 1965 ... I got one of my favorites. Walking the aisles, one audience member caught my eye: an older man sitting with his fingers plugged in his ears to mute the high-pitched squeals. As I moved in for this terrific shot, I got a closer look and realized I was photographing the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein." Hide caption The Rolling Stones on Saturday Night Live, 1978. Bill Murray blow-drying Ron Wood's hair. Hide caption Sonny and Cher, 1966. "I truly lucked out with the kind of access that almost no longer exists. 'I Got You Babe' had been a number one hit in the summer of 1965, but the sassy, animated couple — Sonny was 34, Cher was 19 — couldn't have been more cooperative, friendly, and open." Hide caption Woodstock, 1969. "Woodstock was not just the mother of all rock festivals, it was a photographer's paradise." Hide caption Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger confer at a benefit played in Tarrytown, N.Y., for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., 1969. "He's the son of populist folk pioneer Woody Guthrie, but Arlo Guthrie, when he was only twenty-two, had found his own voice with his sardonic, counterculture anthem, 'Alice's Restaurant.' " Hide caption Mick Jagger's 29th birthday party. "At the party I photographed Mick and Keith with Bob Dylan at a time when Dylan sightings were extremely rare. Why was he there? Maybe the folk-rock icon was curious to meet up with rock 'n' roll's greatest icons-in-the-making." Hide caption "Once ... I thought, God, that smells really good, like eggs or something. I went into the kitchen — this was still midday — and there was Keith, standing over a frying pan at the stove, without a shirt on, cooking up some eggs. I had to do a triple take: he never got up much before six or 7 p.m. Thank God I had my camera because this was a one-in-a-million shot." Hide caption Tour of the Americas, on the plane between San Antonio and Kansas City,
June 1975, (left to right) Bianca Jagger, Ron Wood, Charlie Watts and Keith Richards. Hide caption In the fall of 1977, I did a home take and a People cover (with Mick and Keith) of a very mellow, domesticated Keith Richards with his girlfriend of ten years, Anita Pallenberg, and their eight-year-old son, Marlon." Hide caption Westbury Music Fair, January 1970, Jim Morrison and The Doors Hide caption Bob Dylan checking a Halloween mask in the mirror, Plymouth, Mass., Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975. Hide caption "Merry players" on the beach, Bob playing trumpet. Thanksgiving, 1975, Sturbridge, Mass. Hide caption Joan Baez and Bob Dylan practicing backstage, Rolling Thunder Revue tour, 1975. "Rolling Thunder was unlike any tour before it or since — an antic, in-the-moment carnival of impromptu happenings starring an ever-shifting cast of offbeat characters. Bob had given me free rein to shoot it all — onstage, backstage, offstage, dressing rooms, parties, trailers, whatever was going on." Hide caption Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Montreal, 1975. ' "What's with the whiteface?" I asked Bob as he was being made up before a show. Nobody could figure that out. He said, "Well, I'm playing these halls and it's really dark. I want the people way in the back to be able to see my eyes." Okay. Whatever." Hide caption Iggy Pop in New York for the Dec. 10, 1984, issue of People magazine. "By the time I shot Iggy for People in late 1984, he had calmed down quite a bit. He was 37, and a cool, terrific, and very amenable subject." Hide caption "In 1970, Time sent me down to Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville, for a story on Johnny Cash. I spent a couple of days with Johnny and his wife, June Carter Cash, photographing them at their home. The shoot was both a challenge and a thrill." Hide caption "In 1977, Peter Frampton was filling 90,000-seat stadiums as a good-looking songwriter and fluid, blues-rock guitarist who made upbeat lollipop rock. I shot him in several situations ... [including] at a sold-out concert in Philadelphia's JFK Stadium."

If you've been around longer than me, perhaps you were already familiar with Ken Regan's photography.

I'll admit: I didn't discover him until just the other day, under somber circumstances. A colleague forwarded this obituary in Rolling Stone, advising simply: "He's a big deal." The music photographer died of cancer one week ago.

Photographer Ken Regan with the Rolling Stones, 1977

Courtesy of Ken Regan/Camera 5 Photographer Ken Regan with the Rolling Stones, 1977

Courtesy of Ken Regan/Camera 5

So I got a hold of his book, All Access, which was published one year ago this month; and after only a few minutes with his photos, I was enamored. I pored over his first-person anecdotes: Stories of his first important shoot — with Elvis Presley, who had just returned from Army service in Germany; of catching Leonard Bernstein plugging his ears at a Beatles concert; of accidentally drinking hallucinogenic punch backstage at a Rolling Stones concert; of his exclusive access to one of Bob Dylan's tours.

Granted, there's no shortage of Rolling Stones photos in the world. But how often does Mick Jagger write personal book introductions for photographers?

"As Ken would accompany us on our tours, it just so happened that I would end up accompanying him on his gigs as well," Jagger writes.

Regan's reputation was such that, with his kind of access, even the Rolling Stones would call on him for favors.

There's too much to say and too little space here, so I'll leave you with Regan's photos, captioned in his own words from the book.

I didn't know him personally, and regret that I missed the chance to ask him about his experiences. But the beautiful thing about being a photographer is that you're not just a witness to your time, but you also leave behind a visual legacy of your life.

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Spain's Infamous 'Art Restorer' Hits EBay

Cecilia Gí­menez's handiwork: the Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man") fresco of Christ, left, and the "restored" version, dubbed Ecce Mono ("Behold the Monkey") at right. Now, the artist is trying her hand at selling her own art work.

AP Cecilia Gí­menez's handiwork: the Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man") fresco of Christ, left, and the "restored" version, dubbed Ecce Mono ("Behold the Monkey") at right. Now, the artist is trying her hand at selling her own art work.

AP

Cecilia Gímenez strikes again.

She's the 80-something Spanish woman who grabbed headlines last summer for what's purported to be the worst art restoration in history. The well-meaning retiree volunteered to touch up a 19th-century Ecce Homo — a painting of Jesus Christ — at her local church in the village of Borja, near Zaragoza in northeast Spain. But the result prompted horror from arts experts, and laughter from just about everyone else.

In Spain, the Ecce Homo — Latin for "Behold the Man" — has now been dubbed Ecce Mono — "Behold the Monkey."

Undeterred, Gímenez is at it again. This time, she's selling an original oil painting on eBay. The rustic cobblestone street scene entitled "The Bodegas of Borja" has fetched bids of more than $800 as of this writing — double the starting bid. The auction closes next week, on Tuesday, Dec. 18.

But Gímenez won't get the money. Instead, she's donated the painting to the Roman Catholic charity Caritas, to sell off as part of a Christmas fundraising drive by a church-affiliated radio station.

The elderly artist has already tried to cash in on her work, however: She's waging a legal battle against her church, for a share of the cash it's raised by charging admission to see her "restoration." Thousands of curious gawkers have made pilgrimage to the church — and its infamous fresco — since August.

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Architect Oscar Niemeyer, Who Designed Brazil's Capital, Dies

Architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1960

Frank Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1960

Frank Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed Brazil's capital and is known for some of the world's most famous modernist buildings, has died. He was 104.

The cause was a respiratory infection, said a spokeswoman for the hospital in Rio de Janeiro where he died. He'd been hospitalized for several weeks with kidney problems, pneumonia and dehydration.

Here's more from The Associated Press:

"In works from Brasilia's crown-shaped cathedral to the undulating French Communist Party building in Paris, Niemeyer shunned the steel-box structures of many modernist architects, finding inspiration in nature's crescents and spirals. His hallmarks include much of the United Nations complex in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Niteroi, which is perched like a flying saucer across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro."

In an interview with NPR in 2010, he recalled what it was like in 1956, when Brasilia was on the drawing board.

"Niemeyer says he went with President Juscelino Kubitschek to Brazil's vast, dry savanna, the so-called Cerrado region, where Brasilia is now located, and thought it was too far away, too empty.

"But Kubitschek, Niemeyer recalls, wanted to build no matter what.

"And so in four years, Brasilia was built from scratch, with Niemeyer designing its audacious buildings: the Brazilian foreign ministry with its slender arches rising from reflecting pools; the Cathedral of Brasilia, shaped like a giant orchid; the National Congress, with its two bowl-like structures, one up-turned, the other dome-like.

"These and others are all considered modernist masterpieces that capture the meaning of Brasilia: a new city, unburdened by history.

"'We wanted to do it differently' in Brasilia, Niemeyer says. 'Architecture is invention.'

"He didn't just want buildings that worked, but to create a different kind of architecture."

Brasilia's Cathedral was inaugurated in 1960.

Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images Brasilia's Cathedral was inaugurated in 1960.

Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

Niemeyer, who began his career in the 1930s, was known for a distinctive style marked by sweeping curves, which he once famously said were inspired by Brazilian women.

"When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution," he said. "I once wrote a poem about the curve. The curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean and on the body of the beloved woman."

The lifelong communist won the Pritzker Prize, his profession's top honor, in 1988.

Here's more about the early part of his career from the BBC:

"After graduating in the mid-1930s, he joined a Rio architectural firm run by a man who would become one of his great collaborators, Lucio Costa.

"Having won wide praise for a number of buildings in Brazil, he was chosen in the early 1950s to be part of an international team given the task of designing the UN buildings in New York.

"It was led by the great Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, who was 20 years older than Niemeyer."

Niemeyer was working until the end. His most recent projects include a culture center for Aviles, Spain. A slideshow of some of his work can be seen here.

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Big Gator Head Premieres At Miami Art Fair

One of the nation's largest art fairs is Art Basel Miami Beach. It's a city-wide event that has spawned dozens of satellite shows. The large alligator celebrates the artist Christo who used the power of art to cleanup Biscayne Bay.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Now to a hundred-foot-long alligator in Miami. Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the nation's largest art fairs, opens today. It's a citywide event that has spawned dozens of satellite shows and art happenings that have transformed the area with gigantic installations, including, as NPR's Greg Allen tells us, a very big alligator.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Actually, it's just a mechanical alligator head mounted on a barge. But when the body is added, the entire artwork will measure nearly 300 feet, snout to tail. It's a huge project involving more than 100 people, from publicists to steel workers, and it began with one man's vision.

LLOYD GORADESKY: My name is Lloyd Goradesky. I'm the artist for "Gator in the Bay."

ALLEN: Goradesky is a photographer and artist who says he's never done anything approaching this size before.

GORADESKY: This is a large alligator to celebrate an artist, Christo, who used the power of rockets to help us clean up Biscayne Bay.

ALLEN: It was 30 years ago that Christo surrounded 11 islands in the Biscayne Bay with pink polypropylene fabric. Goradesky, now 54, was in junior high at the time, and it made an impression. He says it also helped jumpstart the cleanup of Biscayne Bay. Goradesky has modeled much of his project after Christo's work.

"Gator in the Bay," he says, is intended to raise awareness about the Everglades. It's also environmentally conscious. Almost all of the materials are used or recycled, beginning with the gator's skin, which is made from recycled, plastic fabric.

GORADESKY: The teeth are roofing material, and the steel is all used metal. If you step back and you check out the eyes, the frame of the eye is made from a spool. And so we really had a lot of fun assembling the materials and making the piece.

ALLEN: Inside the gator's mouth last week, workers were putting last-minute welds on the intricate steel frame. "Gator in the Bay" is not just an art project. It's also a serious piece of engineering and steel construction.

VERN NIX: I'm Vern Nix, the owner of V&M Erectors. We're a steel-erecting company, primarily on bridges. Anything that has to do with steel is what we do.

ALLEN: Nix's crew took time off from building bridges to make the frame for the nearly 100-foot-long gator head. The top of the gator's mouth is attached to the arm of a Caterpillar excavator, which is part of the barge. As the gator head sails around Biscayne Bay, its mouth - controlled by the excavator - will open and close. But this is just the first phase of the project.

Next May, on the actual anniversary of Christo's surrounded island work, comes phase two, when Goradesky, Nix and others with the project add the gator's 200-foot-long body and tail.

NIX: The tail will be floating on four-foot-by-eight-foot Styrofoam panels that's got all these images on them that really looks like the skin of a gator. It's got, like, 6,400 photographic images that Lloyd took and came up with the procedure, I guess, of knowing how to put these in a color scheme of sequences so when you look at it from a distance, it all looks like alligator skin.

ALLEN: But that comes next year. Over the weekend, after workers put finishing touches on the gator head, the crew stood by while the mouth was opened for the first time.

NIX: Ready? Power's on.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)

ALLEN: Warren Fronte is the owner and operator of the barge that's now topped by the steel and fabric gator head. Fronte's another important partner in an art and media project that he compares to an orchestra.

WARREN FRONTE: You have a conductor, and you have all your musicians. So look at this, you have an artist who's doing what he's doing, and then you've got a good ol' boy network who's doing what we're all doing.

ALLEN: "Gator in the Bay" is expected to make a splash at Art Basel beginning tonight, when it has its official premiere with a party at a Miami marina. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.

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One Photo, 126 Frames, 2 Billion Leaves, 247 Feet

Cloaked in the snows of California's Sierra Nevada, the 3,200-year-old giant sequoia called the President rises 247 feet. Two other sequoias have wider trunks, but none has a larger crown, say the scientists who climbed it. The figure at top seems taller than the other climbers because he's standing forward on one of the great limbs.

Michael Nichols/National Geographic

Those numbers represent this giant sequoia. Oh, also: The tree is more than three millennia old, and contains about "54,000 cubic feet of wood and bark," according to National Geographic magazine.

 

A few years ago, photographer Michael Nichols photographed a 300-foot giant in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The magazine's December issue has a follow-up: a huge tear-out of the "President," a snowy monolith in the Sierra Nevadas.

"It's not quite the largest tree on Earth," the magazine article reads. "It's the second largest. Recent research by scientist Steve Sillett of Humboldt State University and his colleagues has confirmed that the President ranks number two among all big trees that have ever been measured — and Sillett's team has measured quite a few."

The giant sequoia is a snow tree, says scientist Steve Sillett, adapted for long winters in the Sierra Nevada. But it's a fire tree, too. Thick bark protects it from burning in lightning-caused fires, which open cones and clear the understory, allowing saplings to find light and prosper.

Michael Nichols/National Geographic The giant sequoia is a snow tree, says scientist Steve Sillett, adapted for long winters in the Sierra Nevada. But it's a fire tree, too. Thick bark protects it from burning in lightning-caused fires, which open cones and clear the understory, allowing saplings to find light and prosper.

Michael Nichols/National Geographic

Sillett and his team are carefully measuring trees like the President by climbing them — and they're making interesting discoveries in doing so.

What they have found, the article explains, is that despite popular belief, sequoias continue to grow rapidly even in old age. In fact, the yearly output of wood produced by a tree like the President is greater than that of younger trees. This research might overturn the long-standing premise that "has justified countless management decisions in favor of short-rotation forestry," the article reads.

There's more over at National Geographic — including a video about how the photograph was made and more photos.

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Mark Rice-Ko: Where Food and Rothko Meet In Delicious Harmony

Back in 1958, when Mark Rothko was commissioned to do a series of murals for The Four Seasons restaurant in New York — a place he believed was "where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off" — his acceptance of the assignment was subversive at best. He hoped his art would "ruin the appetite of every son of a [beep] who ever eats in that room," according to a Harper's magazine article, "Mark Rothko: Portrait Of The Artist As An Angry Man."

His distaste for the social elite led to a series of paintings that continue to captivate art enthusiasts of different backgrounds, tastes and generations. His painting, Orange, Red, Yellow 1961, sold on May 8 this year for $86.9 million at Christie's.

Rothko eventually abandoned The Four Seasons project. Instead, he gave some of the pieces to the Tate Modern museum in 1969, just before committing suicide.

"We do these projects out of love for creating beautiful or interesting work out of a medium that is unexpected," Levin says.

Henry Hargreaves "We do these projects out of love for creating beautiful or interesting work out of a medium that is unexpected," Levin says.

Henry Hargreaves

But the murals that were meant to ruin the appetite of wealthy patrons inspired chef/stylist Caitlin Levin and photographer Henry Hargreaves to interpret Rothko's collection using rice.

"We had been doing a project about gradient food dye using several kinds of food like bananas, bread and rice and we thought, how about using rice to recreate Rothko's paintings?" says Levin. Although dyeing rice is time consuming, Levin said it is an easier medium to work with than other foods when recreating the depth of color found in Rothko's pieces.

After coloring, styling and photographing the rice, chef and food stylist Caitlin Levin made coconut rice. "It taste the same," she says.

Henry Hargreaves

This collaboration between Hargreaves and Levin took three days to complete, each piece taking two to three hours. Levin said her two greatest challenges were mixing the food colors to match Rothko's original work and to feather the edges of the rice art as seen on the paintings.

After Mark Rice-Ko was completed, the colorful rice faced a new fate, "We made coconut rice with it. It turned an Army green color but it tastes the same," Levin says of the dyed leftovers.

Check out the slide show above to view more of Levin/Hargreaves' rice art.

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Battle Lines Drawn Over Old 'Miami Herald' Building

The Miami Herald's old headquarters on Biscayne Bay have been sold to a developer who wants to tear it down. Historic preservationists are working to stop the demolition, saying the hulking, boxy building is a prime example of Miami modernism architecture from the 50's and 60's. Demolition proponents — which include some prominent architects — say it's a clumsy building with no sense of style and not a "MiMo" design worth saving.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Now to Miami and a debate over one of the city's most recognizable buildings. It houses the Miami Herald. And for nearly 50 years, it has stood as a testament to the newspaper's importance. But now, the Herald is moving to smaller offices, a sign of the times, as papers cut back.

And Miami is deciding whether to tear the building down or declare it a historic landmark, as we hear from NPR's Greg Allen.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Every city, including Miami, has its beloved buildings. The Miami Herald building is not one of them.

ERIC KURZMAN: I don't have much appreciation for it.

ALLEN: Eric Kurzman owns a gallery and design firm not far the Miami Herald.

KURZMAN: I don't like the small windows, the boxiness of it. But my biggest issue is just the shape.

ALLEN: Since it was completed in 1963 on a prime piece of land overlooking Biscayne Bay, the structure has dominated the north end of the city's waterfront. It's a large rectangular structure, with the emphasis on large. Seven stories high, it covers an entire city block with space for offices, a printing plant, and room on the roof for six helicopters to land simultaneously.

Today, most of it is wasted space; an unpleasant reminder of the decline of the newspaper business and the downsizing of the Herald staff. The building has been sold and the new owner, a Malaysian developer, wants to tear it down.

Becky Roper Matkov says that would be a mistake.

BECKY ROPER MATKOV: Lots of people, years from now - if this building is totally leveled - will say, how did we let that building be destroyed?

ALLEN: Roper Matkov is the head of Dade Heritage Trust, a nonprofit group that's seeking a historic designation for the building that would prevent its demolition. She's used to fighting uphill battles to preserve historic buildings, but admits this battle is tougher than most.

On the sidewalk outside of the Herald, Roper Matkov points out elements of the building's midcentury modern design. There are enough tropical elements, she says, to identify it as Miami Modern, a distinctive style used in the design of the Fontainebleau, the Eden Rock, and other Miami Beach landmark hotels built in the '50s and '60s.

You can find some of that flamboyance and interesting design in the Miami Herald building, Roper Matkov says, only if you take the time to look.

MATKOV: Most people have only seen the Herald from blocks away. Or else they're driving too fast on the causeway. But once you focus on it, it really does have a lot of appeal.

ALLEN: On a walking tour around the building, she points out what she considers the high points: the metal sun grills that shade the windows, the mosaic tile detailing. Also, the dramatic porte-cochere, a three-story tall covering over the front drive.

MATKOV: And, of course, in that era of the '50s and '60s, you had this great canopy welcoming people to drive up a dramatic entry.

ALLEN: Dade Heritage Trust spent months preparing a study of the Herald building and presented it recently to Miami's Historic Preservation Board. It describes the design and chronicles the importance of the Herald and Knight Ritter in shaping the city's modern history. The board wasn't won over but agreed to consider the proposal.

The developer's architects, also at the meeting, called the Herald building an example of the dark ages in U.S. urban planning. It's not surprising that a developer would oppose historic designation. Less expected was the opposition to preserving the Herald building that came from other important voices in the neighborhood.

MIKE EIDSON: The Miami Herald building, to us, was always a misplaced factory in the middle of what we were tying to build, which was a vibrant cultural corridor.

ALLEN: Mike Eidson is chairman of one of the Herald building's closest neighbors, the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Since the Arsht Center was completed several years ago, this part of town - once desolate at night - has begun a transformation. A Spanish company is planning a big new commercial and residential development. A new art museum and a science museum are currently under construction.

Eidson says he and others involved in revitalizing the neighborhood always assumed the Herald building would eventually be torn down, and be replaced by a structure that would give the public access to the bay. Eidson calls himself a preservationist, but says the Herald building is not worth saving.

EIDSON: This was built in the '60s. We don't feel this like this makes an important architectural statement. If you stand back and look at it, it looks kind of like a Kmart. It's just a big square box.

ALLEN: That's part of the challenge of preservation in Miami - deciding what to save in a young city where history and the architectural legacy is measured not in centuries, but in decades.

Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.

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If Edward Hopper Had Been A Photographer

Photographer Gail Albert Halaban spent her childhood summers in Gloucester, Mass., a small seaside town where her father was born. "I never thought it was that interesting of a place," she says. "The beach was beautiful, but I was interested in getting to know it better."

So she was somewhat surprised to learn that Edward Hopper, the beloved American realist painter, had also spent his summers there decades earlier; for whatever reason, Halaban says, people in town rarely talked about it when she was growing up. Still more curious was that although Gloucester is a town of picturesque coastal scenes, Hopper mostly painted houses.

"Hopper was playing with modernism," Halaban explains. "And he was really looking at the light and the shadow — and how that formed shape, so his work was really about form in these pictures. He was also really interested in the working-class neighborhoods, not the wealthy."

Halaban initially set out to create exact photographic copies of Hopper's paintings. Then, she says, "I realized he already did such a great job, why would I need to do that? So I went back again and thought — I'm going to stand in the same place, but I want to make them my own."

Mansard Roof, 1923, by Edward Hopper (left), which is now at the Brooklyn Museum, compared with Mansard Roof by Gail Albert Halaban (right). Though the building is the same, Halaban photographed it at night.

Brooklyn Museum and Gail Albert Halaban

So, for example, she photographs at different times of day than when Hopper painted, poses people in the pictures and uses higher contrast — something seen in Hopper's later work.

Hopper was still relatively unknown when he was painting the Gloucester watercolors and hadn't yet developed his signature high-contrast oils, like in Nighthawks, for which he is better known.

Many years later, Halaban says, very little has changed in Gloucester. "If anything, I'd say certain houses have become even less fancy," she says. "They've been divided into multifamily homes or put aluminum siding on."

But Hopper might have seen beauty in aluminum siding. And some 90 years later, the shadows and forms on mansard roofs that so impressed Hopper are still there, available to whoever might pass to admire.

Halaban's photos of Gloucester are now on display at New York City's Edwynn Houk Gallery. She also has a new book out, called Out My Window.

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Street Art Brings Life To A Miami Neighborhood

One of the nation's largest art fairs, Art Basel, opens this week in Miami. But days before the fair launches in Miami Beach, the party had already started across the bridge, in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood.

At a trendy lounge and art gallery, a couple of hundred people are watching artists at work. The event, sponsored by Heineken, features six street artists putting their own spin on the beer maker's logo. Heineken also commissioned the artists to paint a series of murals on buildings in Wynwood, a neighborhood now famous for its street art. In fact, street art has become so common that some artists say finding good wall space can be difficult.

"For Basel, I started looking for my walls as early as last February," says Trek 6, who prefers to be called a writer — as in writing graffiti — rather than a street artist. (Though he doesn't like the term "graffiti" either.)

Trek 6 started putting his art on walls in Wynwood back when it was a rough neighborhood of warehouses and shoe factories. Over just a few short years, and with help from Art Basel, it has become the center of Miami's art scene, known for its many galleries, studios and street murals.

"I saw this get transformed from a place where you don't want to ever get caught ... to a place where now everybody at all hours of the night with family and everything are out here looking at murals, going into alleys, looking for artwork," he says.

Tony Goldman's Wynwood

For those who come to Wynwood for art, the first stop is often a grassy courtyard with walkways, tables and a restaurant surrounded by 40 large, colorful, arresting murals. It's called Wynwood Walls, a public art space created by developer Tony Goldman, who died earlier this year.

Tony Goldman's son, Joey (far left), and daughter, Jessica (center), pose with artist Shepard Fairey and their mother, Janet Goldman.

Greg Allen/NPR Tony Goldman's son, Joey (far left), and daughter, Jessica (center), pose with artist Shepard Fairey and their mother, Janet Goldman.

Greg Allen/NPR

Long before Wynwood, Goldman was known for preserving and developing New York's SoHo neighborhood and the art deco district in Miami Beach. His daughter, Jessica Goldman Srebnick, says her father envisioned Wynwood Walls as the developing neighborhood's town center.

"You feel the breeze in your hair and it's not intimidating," Goldman Srebnick says. "You can see children running around or you can see people with sketchbooks sitting on the grass and sketching something that inspires them."

But art was here long before Wynwood Walls. Two well-known private art collections have public galleries in the neighborhood and, as Tony Goldman used to say, street art is in the community's DNA. Unlike SoHo or South Beach, Wynwood's architecture isn't particularly remarkable, but the blank walls of the neighborhood's boxy warehouses and factories did draw artists to the area. Goldman's idea was to use art to help promote the neighborhood. He took a gravel parking lot between some of his buildings, planted it with grass, prepared and lit the walls, and then invited great street artists in to collaborate.

Many of the walls are repainted after a year or two, but Goldman Srebnick says some of the murals are so distinctive and powerful that it's hard for her to imagine replacing them. Ron English's mural is one of those. It's a painting of giant toy creations in bright greens, reds and blues. The colors appear to bleed off the wall onto the pavement and nearby rocks.

"It's kind of something where you would close your eyes and you could imagine this whole image of beautiful color and vibrancy and energy and kind of wacky creativity," Goldman Srebnick says.

There's also a mural by Shepard Fairey, who's best known for his iconic Obama "Hope" poster. Fairey revisited Wynwood in the weeks before Art Basel to repaint a mural of his that was deteriorating. At the center of his new painting, there's a portrait of Tony Goldman, whom Fairey refers to as a friend and supporter. He says Goldman was someone who appreciated the value of creativity.

"Creativity is a really important part of making communities vital, and the ripple effect from what Tony's done here in Wynwood is extraordinary," Fairey says. "I think the whole neighborhood owes a ton to Tony for having that vision."

A Budding Art Community

Throughout Wynwood, in an area that just five years ago was desolate, there are now galleries, coffee shops, restaurants and visitors. And much of it, Goldman Srebnick says, is because of the seeds her father planted with Wynwood Walls.

"Anyone that has this passion and excitement for creativity, they want to come here," she says. "And I think that Wynwood is really kind of settling into its personality."

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Mom And Pop And Hoboken: Portraits In Mile Square City

Dorothy's parents opened Schnackenberg's Luncheonette in 1927; she has worked there since she was a kid.

John Delaney

Exactly 97 years ago today, Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken. A few decades later, On the Waterfront, starring a young Marlon Brando, was filmed there. The small New Jersey city, which sits on the Hudson just across from Manhattan, has a storied past of which locals are fiercely proud.

That's what photographer John Delaney is trying to capture in his series Hoboken Passing: Mile Square City's history, as told by its longtime business-owners. What started as a digital photography masters thesis has turned into an ongoing documentary project. And having worked with legendary photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Delaney knows how to make a portrait.

Hide caption Chickie, owner of Chickies Luncheonette, which has been closed since Hurricane Sandy. Delaney says this local haunt is "one of those places where you walk in, and everyone turns around and says, 'Who are you?' " Hide caption Dom at Dom's Bakery. His claim to fame, Delaney says, is that Frank Sinatra would have his bread flown out to Hollywood every week. Hide caption Ivan, a baker at Antique Bakery, claims that their oven hasn't been turned off for more than 100 years, according to Delaney. Hide caption John, owner of Fiore's Deli, which claims to have the best "mutz," or mozzarella Hide caption Patty, cook and owner at Piccolo's Clam Bar, standing in the "Sinatra room" Hide caption Miguel, cobbler at Giovanni D'Italia Shoe Repair. This room, Delaney says, was completely underwater after Hurricane Sandy, and the business had to relocate. Hide caption Emma has worked at Chickies Luncheonette for 25 years; it has been closed since Hurricane Sandy. Hide caption Stefan, owner of Babylon Comic Books, which closed after Hurricane Sandy Hide caption Giovanni, cobbler at Giovanni D'Italia Shoe Repair. Their claim to fame, Delaney says, is that they haven't dusted in 50 years. Hide caption Norberto, cobbler at Giovanni D'Italia Shoe Repair

"I kind of fell in love with these little multigenerational, old businesses that were ... community centers," Delaney says on the phone. "I realized that because this town is transforming so fast into a commuter town, a lot of these places can't afford the rent, so I wanted to capture that."

Delaney quickly learned that this effort is a race against the clock. Many of Hoboken's small businesses — even ones he had just photographed — didn't survive Hurricane Sandy, let alone the economy.

Giorgio Pasticcerie Italian bakery is owned by a father-and-daughter pair: Giorgio, who moved to Hoboken from Italy, and his daughter, Mary Grace, a first-generation American.

John Delaney Giorgio Pasticcerie Italian bakery is owned by a father-and-daughter pair: Giorgio, who moved to Hoboken from Italy, and his daughter, Mary Grace, a first-generation American.

John Delaney

"I gained a lot of weight doing this," Delaney says. Which would be hard to avoid if you're spending time with John at Fiore's, who claims to have the best "mutz" (or mozzarella) around. Or with Ivan at Antique Bakery, who claims their oven hasn't been turned off in 100 years. Or with Dom of Dom's Bakery, who used to literally fly fresh bread out to Sinatra in Hollywood.

Each of these business owners has a source of pride. At Giovanni's D'Italia Shoe Repair, Delaney says, they bragged about how long they had gone without dusting. But then Hurricane Sandy came along and washed all that dust — and that claim to fame — away. Giovanni's managed to stay open but has since relocated. Other shops and delis were not as lucky. And whatever happens moving forward, Delaney hopes to capture it.

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