#Alfred Barr

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Museum of Modern Art opened its new building (the one we know today) on May 10, 1939. This timeline infographic (although they didn't use the word then) was drawn by Alfred Barr, the museum director, three years earlier for the cover of the catalog of an exhibit of Cubism and abstract art.

Photo: The Art Story

[gregdotorg]

In 1958 MoMA bought four works from the first solo show of an unknown, 27yo painter, Jasper Johns. Two years later, the Museum backdated the credit line for Target with Four Faces (1955) to say that it had been a gift of the collectors Ethel & Robert Scull. Johns protested this distortion of the painting's history at the time, he told me in an email, but he was ignored.

[dcbinges]

Batman: Full Circle (1991) by Mike Barr & Alan Davis

[comicbooksaregood]

Batman: Bride of the Demon

Volume: 1

Issue: 1

Writers: Mike W. Barr

Pencils: Tom Grindberg

Inks: Tom Grindberg

Colours: Eva Grindberg

Covers: Tom Grindberg

DC

[arturodfabela]

[mendingmusic]

Alfred H. Barr Jr., Cover of the Exhibition Catalogue ‘Cubism and Abstract Art’ MoMA, 1936. The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. MA143, DIGITAL IMAGE © 2023, The Museum of Modern Art/Scala, Florence.

(Source)

[ptumminello]

Alfred H. Barr - Cubism and abstract art

[queer-ragnelle]

Hi-Lo Arthuriana

Have a high interest in Arthurian Legend but low readability?

Here's a collection of adapted or abridged books to help ease you into the literary tradition. This list is ordered from simplest to most complex, beginning with picture books and ending with "translations" of Middle English texts into modern English or abridged versions of longer texts such as the Vulgate. Books in a series are numbered.

As always, if the book is still in print, I link to where you can legally purchase the book. Supporting living authors is very important! Otherwise, enjoy a PDF, on me, to keep the legacy of these authors alive.

Picture Books

Young Merlin (Young Series #1) by Robert D San Souci & Jamichael Henterly (1989)

Tales From the Mabinogion Gwyn Thomas, Kevin Crossley-Holland, & Margaret Jones (1992)

Sir Gawain and The Loathly Lady by Selina Hastings & Juan Wijngaard (1985)

The Quest for Olwen by Gwyn Thomas, Kevin Crossley-Holland, & Margaret Jones (1988)

The Kitchen Knight by Margaret Hodges & Trina Schart Hyman (1990)

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight by Selina Hastings & Juan Wijngaard (1991)

The Tale of Taliesin by Gwyn Thomas, Kevin Crossley-Holland, & Margaret Jones (1992)

Young Guinevere (Young Series #2) by Robert D San Souci & Jamichael Henterly (1992)

The Knight with The Lion by John Howe (1996)

Young Lancelot (Young Series #3) by Robert D San Souci & Jamichael Henterly (1996)

Young Arthur (Young Series #4) by Robert D San Souci & Jamichael Henterly (1997)

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight by Michael Morpurgo & Michael Foreman (2004)

Perceval: King Arthur's Knight of The Holy Grail by John Perkins & Gennady Spirin (2007)

Comics

Prince Valiant by Hal Foster & many others (1937-present)

Camelot 3000 by Brian Bolland and Mike W. Barr (1982-1985)

Arthur, King of Time and Space by Paul Gadzikowski (2004-2014)

Tristan & Isolde: The Warrior and The Princess by Jeff Limke (2008)

Muppets King Arthur by Paul Benjamin & Patrick Storick (2010)

Gradalis WEBTOON [carrd] by @kochei0 (2021-present)

Chivalry by Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran (2022)

Children's Chapter Books

The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great (The Knights' Tales #1) by Gerald Morris (2009)

The Adventures of Sir Givret the Short (The Knights' Tales #2) by Gerald Morris (2009)

The Adventures of Sir Gawain the True (The Knights' Tales #3) by Gerald Morris (2013)

The Adventures of Sir Balin the Ill-Fated (The Knights' Tales #4) by Gerald Morris (2013)

The Legends of King Arthur: Merlin, Magic, and Dragons (#1-#10) by Tracey Mayhew (2020)

Intermediate Retellings

The Idylls of The King by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1859)

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (#1) by Howard Pyle (1903)

The Story of the Champions of The Round Table (#2) by Howard Pyle (1905)

The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions (#3) by Howard Pyle (1907)

The Story of The Grail and The Passing of Arthur (#4) by Howard Pyle (1910)

Hero Myths & Legends of the British Race by M. I. Ebbutts (1910)

The Squire’s Tale (The Squire’s Tales #1) by Gerald Morris (1998)

The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady (The Squire’s Tales #2) by Gerald Morris (1999)

The Savage Damsel and The Dwarf (The Squire’s Tales #3) by Gerald Morris (2000)

Parsifal’s Page (The Squire’s Tales #4) by Gerald Morris (2001)

The Ballad of Sir Dinadan (The Squire’s Tales #5) by Gerald Morris (2003)

The Princess, The Crone, and The Dung-Cart Knight (The Squire’s Tales #6) by Gerald Morris (2004)

The Lioness and Her Knight (The Squire’s Tales #7) by Gerald Morris (2005)

The Quest of The Fair Unknown (The Squire’s Tales #8) by Gerald Morris (2006)

The Squire’s Quest (The Squire’s Tales #9) by Gerald Morris (2009)

The Legend of The King (The Squire’s Tales #10) by Gerald Morris (2010)

Abridged Medieval Literature Translations

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (Unrepresented #1) by Jessie Weston (1889)

Tristan & Iseult (Unrepresented #2) by Jessie Weston (1899)

Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, Bisclaveret (Unrepresented #3) by Jessie Weston (1900)

Moriaen (Unrepresented #4) by Jessie Weston (1901)

Sir Cleges, Sir Libeaus Desconus (Unrepresented #5) by Jessie Weston (1902)

Sir Gawain At The Grail Castle (Unrepresented #6) by Jessie Weston (1903)

Sir Gawain & The Lady of Lys (Unrepresented #7) by Jessie Weston (1907)

The Story of Sir Galahad by Mary Blackwell Sterling & William Ernest Chapman (1908)

The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of The Round Table by Alfred W Pollard & Arthur Rackham (1917)

Le Morte d'Arthur by Keith Baines (1962)

The Lancelot-Grail Reader by Norris J. Lacy (2000)

Lancelot and The Lord of The Distant Isles by Patricia Terry, Samuel N. Rosenberg, & Judith Jaidinger (2007)

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell by David Breeden (????)

Informational Resources

Warriors of Arthur by John Matthews, Bob Stewart, & Richard Hook (1987)

The New Arthurian Encyclopedia by Norris J. Lacy (1991)

The Arthurian Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr (1997)

The Arthurian Name Dictionary by Christopher W. Bruce (1999)

[bruciemilf]

Adding onto the ask about smoking/vaping— I like your hc that Bruce tried it once and didn’t like it

Instead, I hc that Bruce and Harvey would do acid sometimes in college <3 along with the occasional psychedelics

+ their first time on shrooms went something like this:

*Bruce and Harvey, laying on the grass in the garden of Wayne Manor at midnight*

Harvey: the Barr test is like a bar I have to test with the law and I test the law… with a bar. Oh my god I literally teststin’ the law with a bar. A solid pipe would be better. Maybe a wrench. Jesus. Holy shit. Brucie. Sweetheart. I gotta be trainin’ harder for this thing. Babydoll. We gotta hit the gym together. Can you buy out the gym? We gotta gym the law with a bar. Get Jim to help us. Your father work/ed with him, right? Goddamn. Jim is hitting the law. With a gor on the din. Hm. We betta’ catch that Penguin bastard. Quackity fuck. ‘Ll see if he can “Wha Wha!” his way out of charges for fuckin’ tax evasion. What a bastard. Hm. His shrooms are greaaatt tho... Brucie, honey, we gotta pile up on these before taking his ass down-

Bruce, eyes wide: Gothnmam ha,s neve,,,r been so colorful ^~^ It’sssssss so.v many colors ^•o•^!,¡¡!! Tttaht’s so nice |! >#<

*Meanwhile, in the manor*

Alfred, watching the two with the clearest line of sight from his bedroom window, sighing with reluctant fondness : the boy is just like his mother

Dude I love this but fun fact: I LITERALLY headcanon Thomas took Bruce to a recovery center, which was as ethical as anything else in Gotham, and went “you can do what you want :) but are you sure you want to end up here :) are you really sure :))”

Either that or simply asks Gordon to show him Drop houses. Sure, it’s harsh, but it’s a reality Bruce will have to look in the eye. Unless Thomas FIXES it, which of course he will (spoiler alert: he didn’t)

(PS this is NOT an effective parenting method and Thomas slept in the attic for a week after Alfred found out)

[boyfridged]

I think an really interesting thing about when they have the character's say that Bruce was saving Jason a life of crime or teaching Jason to be good is that it not only isn't true, it directly contradicts other canon.

We have at least two separate alternate time lines (caused specifically by time travel events where the consequences included no Bruce adoption) both of which were Jason was still a moral person. In Flashpoint he is a priest who believes in helping people not matter if they are church goers or not. A world without young justice has AU Jason die trying to do the right thing.

On top of that Jason is at the very least strongly implied to have taken care of his sick mother and the more recent portrayals of him meeting people from his pre-Bruce life also portray him as a caring person.

This adds up to although the writer means for the character to be right, and that Bruce is so noble for helping (failing) this poor child. They are actually being canonically classist towards Jason as what they are saying is an untrue assumption based on his background.

Selina in Gotham War saying he taught Jason to be good is her being classist. Alfred treating Jason like he was just a bad seed Bruce couldn't save is classist. Bruce and his whole reasoning that it is okay for Jason specifically to be endangered because of his background is classist.

Obviously that isn't the intent but when writers who are less classist about Jason write him these classist things aren't be true. It doesn't matter if Zdarsky retcons Jason being such a 'bad kid' when there are a bunch of other writers who didn't do that.

(Zdarsky: Look at this 'bad kid' before Bruce taught him morals. Ignore all the times he was portrayed as a good kid, those aren't canon anymore. Bruce is the source of all his morality. Bruce is actually less classist than Jason. This is definitely not classist writing.)

you summarized it excellently. i think it is also related to bruce projecting both his own trauma and his own worldview on jay and his background. i have written a very long post about this exactly, with receipts too. you can find it here. oh and another one, in which i explain why it would be more interesting to allow bruce to be wrong too.

and as i cited it in the above post – bruce is wrong and that fact is quite evident in-text, at least in the early versions of the story. this is also what i love so much about barr’s detective comics run – because barr calls bullshit and gets leslie to tell bruce his reasoning behind putting jason in field are unbecoming and that he is “doing it for himself.”

of course, post jay’s death that awareness has evaporated and instead we got revised versions of the story that were more than ever deadset on proving that jason did possess some fatal flaw, a violent seed that bruce did not manage to eradicate (like the issues of gotham knights, which again, i have no idea as to why they are so popular, given how malicious they are in the evaluation of jason’s fate). the latest retcons such as zdarsky’s work also fall into the trap of attempting to justify bruce’s decisions irt jason & his role as robin by diminishing jay and rewriting his story to be tainted with inevitability. even a death in the family (2020, the animated movie) provides the audience with plenty alternative endings, all of which are to make a murderer or a villain out of jason.

that is not to say that i think there should not be a sense of inevitability of jay’s tragedy at all – but its source is stubbornly misplaced for bruce’s benefit despite even the actual aditf storyline and barr’s run before placing the responsibility for it in bruce’s inability to compartmentalise his parental and vigilante duties (the chapter of aditf titled choices relates to bruce’s decision to go after the joker instead of jason; it does turn out it did not matter as jason has long been tied up in that family-vs-heroics conflict.)

bringing up the alternative versions of jay is a good way to illustrate it; in the world in which he does not meet bruce, he is not damned to participate in the cycle of abuse forever. i’m not gonna lie, i also wish countdown went in that direction and has given us more glances at realities like that. because i do believe that jason’s resolve to stop at nothing when faced by crime, the sense of obligation to do so that leaves his hands bloody, is something that was cultivated in him primarily by the robin training.

[zahri-melitor]

Hey, sorry to bother you but I was wondering, based on your latest post, if you have any Leslie Thompkins recommend reads? I'd like to read more about her but I don't really have the time to read everything she has been on and those are the only reading guides I seem to able to find. Thank you in advance.

Oooh, Leslie recs. Leslie is a Dennis O'Neil creation, which means a lot of her best stories are actually found in the period when O'Neil was head of the Bat office. A lot of his characters got expanded, made more complex and given more importance because Bat writers were suck ups respected Denny and liked to acknowledge his impact on the broader narrative.

Recs can be a bit hard, as she's often in the middle of other stories, and the additional context adds a lot, but for my mind, here's a bunch of suggestions (with explanations beside them):-

A bunch of the earlier stories are sort of repetitive, and pre-Crisis Leslie is not quite the same character as post-Crisis Leslie. If you want a taste, Batman #457, "There is No Hope in Crime Alley" gives you the initial premise of Leslie as the woman who was there to comfort Bruce immediately after his parents were shot, and who is a committed pacifist interested only in helping the community.

However, a better start would probably be Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #21-23. Mike Barr's essentially the creator of the concept of Leslie Thompkins' Clinic (it first features in the last page of his Batman Year Two), and this story both retells Leslie and Bruce's history together, but also wrestles with how Leslie sees both Bruce and Batman and their violence, and her desire to help fix the city in a pacifist, hands-on manner.

There's some good stuff in Knightquest actually but extracting it is a bit of a mess: you want Batman #505 and Batman: Shadow of the Bat #26 & 27. I'm a big fan of the Abattoir arc in Knightquest, which this forms part of, and this is about Leslie's work helping underprivileged kids in Gotham - in this case counselling some traumatised Wayne Foundation kids.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #118: This is a No Man's Land story set in Leslie's refugee camp where Alfred comes to tell stories to the kids. Just a good look at the work Leslie was doing.

Batman Chronicles #18 "Spiritual Currency": this is one of the stories I referenced. Set during No Man's Land, it's an argument between Leslie and Bruce over her treating Zsasz, who is badly injured. Probably my favourite encapsulation of Leslie's personal philosophy.

Gotham Knights #7: part of the 'Bruce interrogates his psyche and connections to those he's close to' arc that ends in Transference. This one's about Leslie and Alfred's feelings over caring for Bruce.

Detective Comics #791-793: I wouldn't say these are the best Leslie Thompkins stories in existence, but I will say the discussions between Leslie and Bruce in them are on point, and are part of the lead in to where War Games ends up. Enjoy them for Leslie's philosophy, sigh deeply at the inherent racism.

War Games, in particular War Crimes, are a massive part of the Leslie narrative but also where a lot of problems arise. War Games in and of itself would be okay, and her fight with Bruce while she's treating Steph is quite in line with the story immediately above; it's War Crimes that really contains the massive retcon that does a lot of harm to Leslie's character.

As far as post-return to Gotham preboot stories, I think the best ones are actually her appearances in the Hit List of Red Robin #15-16. Leslie's got the Cavalier working for her to protect the clinic! Her comments to Tim when he protests it are so Leslie.

New 52 Leslie is essentially a different character; she's premised as a social worker who works with Julie Madison and is assigned to Duke Thomas among others.

In Rebirth she's returned to being the Leslie of preboot. Her better stories are the following:-

The Victim Syndicate in Detective Comics #943-947: The first victims of various villains want to remove the Bats from Gotham. Leslie, Steph and Harper Row are quite interesting in this in terms of a narrative over different ways to help Gotham.

Detective Comics #964 "Dystopia": Leslie is involved in Lonnie Machin's premised underground anarchist commune for the underprivileged. Follows up on the earlier story.

Punchline #1 and The Joker #1-15: this is a long arc about Leslie and the Rows working to have Punchline tried properly in court as complicit in her actions. It's the backup story to the Joker and it's been published separately as a trade.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Edward Hopper, Manhattan Bridge Loop, 1928. Oil on canvas.

Describing his aims in Manhattan Bridge Loop, Hopper explained that the painting’s horizontal composition was an attempt to give “a sensation of great lateral extent” and bring attention to the cityscape beyond the frame; “I just never cared for the vertical,” he later quipped. His depictions of the wide spans of the city’s bridges, its industrial landscapes, and its low-slung buildings elevate the quotidian and prosaic over the iconic, offering a powerful counterpoint to the awe-inspiring views of the New York skyline celebrated in the news and in works by many of his contemporaries. Alfred H. Barr observed of Hopper’s work in 1933: “His indifference to skyscrapers is remarkable in a painter of New York architecture.”

Photo & text: Whitney Museum of American Art

[fotos-art]

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, Elizabeth Catlett, artist, Dorothy Miller, associate curator of painting and sculpture, and Charles White, artist, having tea in the Museum’s penthouse, 1943.

Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

[dcbinges]

Detective Comics #573 (1987) by Mike Barr, Alan Davis & Paul Neary

[comicbooksaregood]

Batman: Son of the Demon

Volume: 1

Issue: 1

Writers: Mike W. Barr

Pencils: Jerry Bingham

Inks: Jerry Bingham

Colours: Jerry Bingham

Covers: Jerry Bingham

DC

[roseworth]

what was jason like as robin? like personality wise and behavioral wise?

I've seen a lot of fanon stuff that really contradicts canon, but also some stuff in canon that contradicts other canon. I'm just curious to know what the most accurate idea of robin!jason is

tbh there isnt really an easy answer to this!! theres no completely accurate interpretation bc nothing in comics is allowed to be simple </3 (also before i continue id like to add a little disclaimer that ive never read any pre-crisis robin jason SORRY so this is all based on post-crisis)

i honestly think that we've all overcorrected by saying that jason was just a sweet little ray of sunshine during his robin years bc thats not really accurate :( he wasnt the Angry Robin that a lot of comics say he was but he wasnt constantly happy

really he was only harsher (harsh isnt really the right word but i cant think of a good word to describe it) in the beginning and in the end of his time as robin bc when he was starting out he was kinda coming to terms with everything (not to mention like his second arc was finding out that two-face murdered his father #lol) so it wasnt easy for him

then in the end (it was all starlin's fault but for the sake of this post we're gonna look at this from a watsonian perspective) he was getting more comfortable with bruce & alfred so he was able to mourn his parents for the first time

(twice for size)

and honestly even in barr's run (certified Little Guy Jason run) he had some similar moments

(twice for size again bc i just really like this whole page lol)

HOWEVER i think its very important to mention that every time jason was really upset they SPECIFICALLY said that it was different than usual

but for the most part! he was just a guy hanging out :)

so. yeah. in conclusion usually he wasnt angry and mostly had his bouts of anger at his lowest moments, but they were still there and they still mattered <3 and in the end they were all that mattered i guess (<- said while screaming and crying)

i hope that at least kind of answered your question lol, also i would strongly recommend reading jason in barr's tec run (detective comics #568-582) bc its just so fun fhdfkjahdfa hes just a kid having a good time (apparently barr has said before that he was just writing dick and putting jasons name on it but shhhh dont take this from me)