American Revolutionaries

Cable television can be a big ol' time-waste sometimes.

But then again, sometimes it can help me fill in the gaps on some areas I might have missed out on during my formal education growing up. It was hard to focus some days while I was busy trying to think through the Braves starting line-up ("Why move Dale Murphy to center field? Let's face it, Biff Pocaroba is not really fit for the big leagues") or trying to subtly get noticed in homeroom by Kim Markovich ("Hey, Kim. Check out how tight this paper football is. I made it in 1st period."). I think after The History Channel and the Military Channel I've got most of my wars covered...with the exception being the Civil War. Must not've had enough video or photos.

Anyway, cable's also been helpful in the area of art. In particular, there's a channel called Ovation that will run life stories of artists from whatever area of art they were in. They ran an entire series called "American Revolutionaries"...and here are as many of the folks they picked that I could glean from their website:

Jackson Pollock
Elvis Presley
Andy Warhol
Jack Kerouac and the Beats
Allen Ginsberg
Martin Scorsese
Melvin Van Peebles
Chuck Berry
Ella Fitzgerald
John Coltrane
Leonard Bernstein
Mark Rothko
Arthur Miller
John Adams
Dizzy Gillespie
Johnny Cash
Woodie Guthrie
James Dean
Grandmaster Flash
Cindy Sherman
Matt Groening
Maya Lin
Tony Kushner
Desi Arnaz
Annie Liebovitz
Madonna
Phil Spector
Julie Taymor
Kurt Cobain
Frank Lloyd Wright

Now, naturally, the list reflects their availability to grab shows that have already been produced cheaply and they made no bones about the reality that they were titling the series along pop culture, rather than "serious" art...and let's assume that everybody on their list is worthy.

I'd like to add a few that affected me regarding "pop art":

Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee & Tommy Ramone: How could any list of American Revolutionaries of pop art not include The Ramones?

Stephen King: A brilliant story-teller who could scare the wits out of you if you were sitting alone in a chair in your house at night. Or during the day.

John Hughes: The brat-pack early movies about high school/early college life were coming out right when I was the same age. At the time, he was my view of filmmaking genius.

...and...

Walt Disney: How does this list leave him off? I think they did a documentary on one of the artists behind the scenes in Disney's early years, but I think Walt himself would be on that list.

So...

...who would you add to the list?