Pipilotti Rist

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of popular music. He wrote around 700 songs, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and "Who?", a 6-week number 1 hit for George Olsen & his Orchestra in 1925. His career spanned dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films from 1902 until his death. Although Kern wrote almost exclusively formusical theatre and musical film, the harmonic richness of his compositions lends them well to the jazz idiom (which typically emphasizesimprovisation based on a harmonic structure) and many Kern melodies have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.

In 1930, Kern was placed under contract by Warner Brothers to produce a series of musicals. The first product of that contract was Men of the Sky which was released in 1931 but largely ignored due to public backlash against the early glut of film musicals that greeted the advent of film sound. Consequently, Warner Bros. bought out his contract and he returned to the stage.

In 1935, when musical films had become popular once again, Kern relocated to Hollywood, although he continued working on Broadway productions as well. This second phase of Kern's Hollywood career was greeted with considerably greater artistic and commercial success, including the 1936 film version of Show Boat. For Swing Time (starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire), he wrote "The Way You Look Tonight" (with lyrics by Dorothy Fields), which won the Academy Award in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in the film include "A Fine Romance", "Pick Yourself Up", and "Never Gonna Dance". In 1940, Kern and Hammerstein wrote "The Last Time I Saw Paris", in homage to the French city just recently occupied by the Germans. Originally a hit for Tony Martin, the song was used in the film Lady Be Good (1941) and won another Oscar for Best Song - the only time a song not written for the film it appears in won the Oscar. (It would later inspire the title of the 1954 film The Last Time I Saw Paris.) In 1944, Kern teamed up with Ira Gershwin to write the songs for one of his best-remembered film musicals, Cover Girl, starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. It featured the classic song "Long Ago (and Far Away)", and an unusual instrumental musical number in which Kelly, throughtrick photography, danced with himself. That same year Kern also wrote the music for songs in Universal Pictures' Deanna Durbin musical comedy, Can't Help Singing.

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954, in Nuremberg, Germany) is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century. Her Body Art is imbued with political significance, undermining the traditional erotic representations of women by male artists, and often exposes the inner biological systems of females as a metaphor for hidden social issues. Her work also often includes the theme of birth and regeneration, sustenance, and frequently has Catholic allusions. Smith has also been active in debate over controversies such as AIDS, gender, race, and battered women.

Smith began sculpting in the late 1970s. She is best known for her sculptures; however, she creates pieces in a variety of media. She was an active member of the artist's group Colab