Comet Atomic
Author's posts
Nov 22 2025
Miguel Covarrubias: Caricature, Harlem, Bali & a World of Modern Art
Miguel Covarrubias seemed capable of turning almost anything he encountered into a new field of study. In 1920s New York, he became one of the Jazz Age’s most celebrated caricaturists and drew dancers, writers, actors, musicians, politicians, and the nightlife of Harlem. In Bali, he moved beyond travel sketching to study dance, religion, ritual, costume, …
Nov 19 2025
Esta Nesbitt: Fashion Illustration, Xerox Art & the Machine as Creative Partner
For roughly two decades, Esta Nesbitt worked inside the polished world of American fashion illustration. Her drawings appeared in publications including Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and The New York Times Magazine, where elegance, line, clothing, and the idealized human figure were central to the job. Then, during the 1960s, she began moving in an entirely different …
Nov 17 2025
Walter Peregoy: Color, Modernism & the Bold New Look of Disney Animation
Walter Peregoy did not seem particularly interested in making animation look safe. His backgrounds could be rough, angular, brilliantly colored, and deliberately incomplete. A building did not need every brick carefully rendered. A tree could become a collision of shapes and lines. Colors did not have to remain neatly contained within outlines, and the painted …
Nov 16 2025
Shigeru Miyamoto: Mario, Zelda & the Art of Designing Play
Few people have changed popular entertainment as profoundly as Shigeru Miyamoto. The Japanese designer helped create characters and worlds that have become recognizable far beyond video games: Mario leaping across the Mushroom Kingdom, Link exploring Hyrule, Donkey Kong throwing barrels, Pikmin carrying objects many times their own size, and families gathering around a television to …
Nov 15 2025
Robbert Flick: Los Angeles, Sequential Views & the Photography of Movement
Robbert Flick does something unusual with landscape photography: he refuses to pretend that we experience a place in a single frozen moment. We walk through it. We turn our heads. We drive past it. Buildings disappear behind other buildings, roads carry us toward something and then away again, and landscapes change according to where we …
Nov 14 2025
Alan Crane: Lithography, New England & the Quiet Poetry of Everyday Places
Alan Horton Crane could transform an ordinary harbor, snowy road, village street, fishing boat, crowded market, or stand of bamboo into an image filled with atmosphere. His lithographs rarely depend upon dramatic events. Instead, their power comes from looking carefully at places where people live and work and then translating those observations into remarkably controlled …
Nov 11 2025
Webley Edwards: Hawaii Calls, Radio & the Sound of Waikiki
For millions of radio listeners who had never crossed the Pacific, Webley Edwards made Hawaiʻi audible. His weekly broadcasts carried steel guitars, ukuleles, vocal harmonies, hula songs, and the sound of the surf from Waikīkī into homes thousands of miles away. At the height of its popularity, Hawaii Calls reached audiences around the world and …
Nov 10 2025
Louis le Brocquy: Irish Modernism, Human Heads & the Search for Inner Presence
Louis le Brocquy spent more than seventy years trying to paint something that could not easily be seen. Faces, bodies, families, travellers, writers, poets, and mythological figures appear throughout his work, yet straightforward portraiture was rarely enough for him. He wanted to reach beyond surface resemblance toward something more elusive: the presence of another person, …
Nov 09 2025
Winston Vargas: Washington Heights, Dominican Identity & Street Photography
Winston Vargas did not set out to create a sixty-year photographic history of one of New York City’s most important immigrant neighborhoods. He began by photographing what was around him: friends, children, storefronts, barbershops, school activities, families, people talking on sidewalks, and the ordinary streets of Washington Heights. Time transformed those photographs into something larger. …
Nov 01 2025
Hello Kitty: Kawaii Design, Global Culture & the Power of a Simple Bow
Born on November 1, Hello Kitty has one of the most unusual birthdays in pop culture because the character herself has remained essentially timeless. She began with a white face, two black eyes, a yellow nose, whiskers, and a red bow, yet that remarkably simple design grew into one of the most recognizable visual identities …
