“Hoyland himself disliked being labelled ‘abstract’. He was, he said, a painter full stop – one who expanded the scale and palette of English painters, who took the canvas off the easel, like Pollock, and used the floor as a base to make paintings measured in yards not feet.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Chief Of Sydney’s Top Art Museum Steps Down After 33 Years
Since he became director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1978, Edmund Capon “has overseen huge increases in visitor numbers, doubled the gallery’s exhibition space and significantly increased its collection. He has been described as the most successful gallery director in Australia.”
Agnes Varis, 81, Philanthropist
A chemist who made her fortune in pharmaceuticals, Varis was a revered supporter of jazz and opera as well as animal welfare and liberal political causes. Among her best-known arts initiatives is the $20 rush tickets program at the Metropolitan Opera.
Who’s Getting This Year’s $40 Million From The NEH
“A documentary on the influence of American rock ‘n’ roll on the Soviet Union’s collapse and a traveling exhibition about the King James Bible are among 249 recipients of $40 million in grants announced by the National Endowment for the Humanities. … Digital humanities, a discipline that barely existed a decade ago, has been winning additional financing from the endowment.”
Dangerous Satire: New Afghan TV Series Mocks Government Corruption
A mockumentary titled The Ministry “sends up the nepotism, payoffs and sheer incompetence that are commonplace in the Afghan government. The Ministry of Waste in the imaginary country of Hechland, which means ‘nothing land,’ is inhabited by a weak minister and his hapless entourage.”
iPod Theatre On A London Night Bus
“In the wee small hours of the morning, London’s streets, artificially lit, empty bar the odd straggler or clump of smokers, easily accommodate fictions heard through headphones. You hone in on the appropriate elements: shivering women and urban lighting or armed police and arguments.”
Making A Dance Piece About Vancouver’s Stanley Cup Riot
Edmond Kilpatrick on his new work, Party Boys: “I was working on a humorous piece, but the day after the riot, it somehow didn’t seem funny any more. I kept thinking about what had just happened, and ended up taking the original construct I had built and reimagining it as a response.”
Bringing Comedy Central To Brazil
The Viacom exec in charge of setting up the new network talks about the sudden flowering of stand-up comedy in Brazil and the mix of local and imported programming he plans to air (including Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and South Park, all in English with subtitles).
Walking On The Best Artwork In Edinburgh
“The best art at this year’s Edinburgh festival is not in a gallery. It is under your feet. You walk up and down it and you may, if you like, look at it as a work of art; but no one is forcing you to experience it that way. … Martin Creed has created a work of art so perfectly integrated into the world that you feel a bit of a fool for making a fuss over it.”
Actor Richard Pearson, 93
“Pearson was the kind of actor on which the British theatre has always relied: utterly dependable and totally distinctive. His particular forte, with his slightly fluting voice, was for revealing the chink in the armour of middle-class respectability” – particularly on television. He is also “remembered for his role in one of the most famous theatrical failures of modern times: what you might call a flop d’estime.”