Emanuel "Manny" Farber (February 20, 1917 – 18 August 2008) was an American painter, film critic and writer. Often described as "iconoclastic", Farber developed a distinctive prose style and set of theoretical stances which have had a large influence on later generations of film critics;Susan Sontag considered him to be "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country has ever produced."

Farber's writing was distinguished by its "visceral," punchy style and inventive approach towards language; amongst other things, he is credited with coining the term "underground film," and was an early advocate of such filmmakers as Howard Hawks, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, William Wellman, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, Michael Snow, Chantal Akerman, George Kuchar and Andy Warhol.

Farber's painting, which was often influenced by his favorite filmmakers, is held in equally high regard; he was dubbed the greatest still life painter of his generation by The New York Times.

Later in life, Farber focused more on art and teaching. He often worked in close collaboration with his wife, Patricia Patterson, also an artist.

File:Kelsey-brookes-rvca-600x904.jpg Kelsey Ross Brookes (born 1978) is an artist who resides in San Diego, California. He is currently associated with RVCA, Pictures On Walls in London, Lazarides Gallery in London, as well as a number of other ongoing projects.

Born in 1978 in Denver, Colorado to a stockbroker and a schoolteacher Kelsey Brookes attended Lakewood High School in the suburbs of Denver. He went on to attend Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. He graduated from CSU in 2000 with a B.S. in Biology and an emphasis in Microbiology. He received a fellowship in 2001 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC) where worked on tracking West Nile Virus.

Kelsey spent 2002 surfing and living out of a car in Australia. It was during this period that he developed his interest in drawing. Upon returning from Australia he moved from Colorado to San Diego, California where he continued working in the bioscience industry.

In 2005 Kelsey Brookes left the science industry to pursue a full time career in art. He began to develop a unique style of figurative art.

Don Suggs is an American artist (born March 16, 1945) based in Los Angeles, California. Described as polymorphic and stylistically variable, his oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures and is recognized for its use of color.

Don Suggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up in San Diego. He received a B.A. in 1969 from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), having studied psychology, film, and art. He received both an M.A. in 1971 and an M.F.A. in 1972 from UCLA.

Suggs taught drawing, painting, sculpture and color theory from 1972-1984 at Florida State University at Tallahassee, Franconia College in New Hampshire, University of Southern California, and Otis Art Institute. Since 1983 he has been teaching painting and drawing at UCLA. Over the years, he has been co-editor with Paul Vangelisti of several non-profit art and literature publications: Boxcar, Forehead, and Ribot. He has published four art and poetry books, collaborating with Paul Vangelisti and Martha Ronk.

Robert Polito (born 1951) is an American academic, critic and poet. He has been Director of the Writing Program at The New School since 1992. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award and an Edgar Award for Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson.

Polito is from Boston, Massachusetts, and lives in New York City. He received a Ph.D. in English and American Language and Literature from Harvard University.

Polito is working on Detours: Seven Noir Lives, a nonfiction book. He is editing an anthology of Manny Farber’s film and art criticism.

Doubles (a book of poems); A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover; and At Titan's Breakfast: Three Essays on Byron's Poetry. Editor of the Library of America volumes Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Essays and poems in Best American Poetry, Walk on the Wild Side: American Urban Poetry Since 1975, O.K. You Mugs, and Communion; also in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, ArtForum, BOMB, Black Clock, Verse, Pequod, Open City, Ploughshares, New York Times Book Review, and VLS, among other magazines. Fellowships from the Ingram Merrill and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundations. Contributing editor of BOMB and The Boston Review. Has taught at Harvard, Wellesley, and New York University.

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862– February 6, 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism—nowhere is this more apparent than in his numerous drawings in pencil (see Mulher sentada, below).

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary, the second of seven children—three boys and four girls. All three sons displayed artistic talent early on. Klimt's younger brothers were Ernst Klimt and Georg Klimt. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, formerly from Bohemia, was a gold engraver. Ernst married Anna Klimt (née Finster), whose unrealized ambition was to be a musical performer. Klimt lived in poverty for most of his childhood, as work was scarce and economic advancement was difficult for immigrants.

In 1876, Klimt was awarded a scholarship to the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule), where he studied until 1883, and received training as an architectural painter. He revered the foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart. Klimt readily accepted the principles of a conservative training; his early work may be classified as academic. In 1877 his brother Ernst, who, like his father, would become an engraver, also enrolled in the school. The two brothers and their friend Franz Matsch began working together; by 1880 they had received numerous commissions as a team they called the "Company of Artists", and helped their teacher in painting murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Klimt began his professional career painting interior murals and ceilings in large public buildings on the Ringstraße including a successful series of "Allegories and Emblems".