“He liked to say, with the false modesty that is permitted to great successes, that his career was a series of disasters. As well as his failure to enter art school, he failed to make the grade in his first choice of career, as a game warden in Africa. His second choice was to work on the buses. Before he embarked on this, however, he put his artistic ambition and love of African wildlife together, to create the singular success by which he is known.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.21.17
Guest Columnist: Ken Burns’ Vietnam
Much of the nation has been debating the latest Ken Burns documentary, which I – the son of a Marine officer nearly killed in 1967 – have not yet had the stomach to watch. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-09-21
Upstairs & Downstairs at the Royal National Theatre
It’s said … that the auditorium of the 1,100-seat Olivier Theatre (upstairs at the Royal National Theatre) is modelled on the amphitheatre at Epidaurus. … read more
>AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-09-21
Pete Turner, Eminent Jazz Photographer, Dies
Pete Turner, the photographer whose work became cover art for dozens of memorable jazz albums, has died at 83. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-09-21
Inside The Head Of A Guy Really Listening To John Cage’s 4’33” For The First Time
John Haskell has a very Cagean – or Beckettian, or Joycean – experience: “I was craning my ears, or pricking up my ears, or opening the metaphorical doors of hearing, and we don’t have a word for what the mind does, the way it turns from object to object, turning from the moment in front of it to another moment, to a past or a future, and having heard the subway sounds and the voices behind the wall, I expected to hear a candy wrapper being opened, the crinkling cellophane echoing through the audience like music, or ‘music,’ but there was no cellophane wrapper. But in thinking about the cellophane wrapper I was hearing the music, which was part of the let’s-make-art-out-of-anything spirit that was in the air in 1952, when Cage composed 4’33”.”
When Roald Dahl’s Publisher Decided He Was Too Much Of A Prick To Publish
Emily Temple recounts the time that Robert Gottlieb had finally had enough. (And “prick” is probably too mild a word.)
Not Even Degenerate – The Miraculous Mondrian That’s Not A Mondrian At All
An untitled canvas that had been in the Nazis’ notorious “degenerate art” exhibition and thought lost seemingly turned up at a show in Brussels last year. No such luck. “What started out as a potentially major cultural discovery now turns out instead to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of presenting works of art owned by private collectors that have not been systematically vetted.”
When Languages Collide: How Creoles Are Born
In this “Lexicon Valley” podcast, linguist John McWhorter talks about how pidgins arise and gradually develop into new languages.
Why Bellini’s Norma Is The ‘Mount Everest’ Of Opera Roles
As Renata Scotto once said, “You want to climb the mountain. You know you are supposed to climb the mountain. But it is so difficult.” What makes it so difficult? James Jorden gives a thorough breakdown of the part’s challenges, musical and dramatic, with audio and video examples.
Jeff Bridges Is Fine With Being The Dude Forever
“It’s been nearly two decades since The Big Lebowski, a tale about an emphatically nonchalant man named Jeffrey ‘the Dude’ Lebowski who gets forced over the precipice of chalance, transformed Jeff ‘the actor’ Bridges into an unwitting pop cult leader. … Jeff Bridges isn’t turned off by this, as some already famous actors might be – by the fanatical, undying popularity of a weird thing he did once, back in 1998, that no one has ever forgotten, that people quote at him ad nauseam. He’s too imperturbable, too Dude for that.”
Why The New York Times Will Recommend A Play With A Dirty Word In The Title But Won’t Print That Title
When Ben Brantley reviewed a revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Fucking A (a take on The Scarlet Letter), he wrote, “since I am not a character in this work but an employee of The New York Times, I shall be referring to this play only as ‘A.’ (The full title places an Anglo-Saxon adjective before the ‘A,’ one commonly used on cable television but not considered fit for print here.)” Commenters were not impressed: “Given the rather grisly subject matter, I’m wondering if the people who might attend the play would get the vapors if they were to see the name in print.” So the standards editor for the Times explains why the paper won’t print “Fucking A.” (The commenters remain unimpressed.)
The Incredible New Theater At Chicago’s Navy Pier
“The public won’t get in to Chicago Shakespeare’s $35 million, 33,000-square-foot one-of-a-kind new space until Sept. 19, when James Thierree’s The Toad Knew opens. But you don’t have to wait to see the Yard – a theater where the seats can literally float in midair and the stage can morph into just about any shape imaginable. Crain’s has obtained exclusive images of the Yard’s interior, designed by Chicago’s Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and the UK’s Charcoalblue.”