"Non-representational painting was one of the most radical artistic innovations of the twentieth century. Abstract painting was created independently by three great pioneers - the experimental innovators Kandinsky and Mondrian, and the conceptual Malevich - virtually simultaneously, in the years...

"Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and other songwriters of the Golden Era wrote popular songs that treated common topics clearly and simply. During the mid-1960s Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney created a new kind of popular music that was personal and often obscure. This shift, which...