Deborah Solomon: “Do you think you’re a plastic-surgery addict?” Rivers: “No. I think I’m in a business where you have to look good, and it’s totally youth-oriented.” Solomon: “I prefer the aging bohemian, Georgia O’Keeffe look.” Rivers: “That’s great if you’re Georgia O’Keeffe and each painting is $5 million and they’re sitting at your feet. But if Georgia O’Keeffe were waiting at a bus stop, nobody … would have pulled over and said, ‘Hey, baby, want a lift?'”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Picasso, Matisse, Braque Pieces Stolen In Berlin
More than 30 works, worth about €180,000, were taken from the Fasanengalerie in central Berlin over the New Year’s holiday. “The etchings, prints and sculptures included Profil au fond noir, a 1947 work by Picasso; Nude in a rocking chair, a Matisse print from 1913; and Le Boupeut, a 1962 color print by Georges Braque.”
The Man Who Midwifed 20th-Century Dance
This May 18 is the centennial of Serge Diaghilev’s first evening of Russian ballet in Paris. “At this moment, audiences were shown a future for ballet far from the sterility of Europe’s opera houses and music halls. The next year came Diaghilev-inspired creations: Bakst’s parrot-cry colours in Scheherazade and the new theatre-music of Stravinsky’s Firebird.”
Carl Orff’s Dirty Secret (And How Much It Matters)
The composer of Carmina Burana is often written off as a crypto-Nazi who turned out cheesy crowd-pleasers. He did, in fact, have a dirty wartime secret, and he was generally a selfish piece of work. But, points out Martin Kettle, his preoccupation with “music for use” and his pioneering music education methods have touched many millions of lives.
Daniel Nagrin, ‘The Great Loner Of American Dance,” 91
“Mr. Nagrin’s choreography and performing were craggily innovative, drawing on jazz movement and music as well as traditional modern dance and classical music in pieces that incorporated words and images well before mixed media became popular in American dance.”
Dancing About A Mine Disaster
A young Welsh company called The Ballet Pod has created a 31-minute piece called The Ballad of Edward Owen, Miner, a “docu-ballet” about an 1880 mine explosion that killed nine men.
Reviving The Columbus Symphony
After the Ohio orchestra’s near-death experience last year, new chairman Martin Inglis is recruiting board members, pushing fiscal prudence and repairing relations with demoralized musicians. “We’re all bruised. There are still a lot of raw emotions out there and differing views, and they’re probably irreconcilable. My comment is, ‘Fine, we can’t go backward; we’ve got to chart our own course.'”
Thomas Quasthoff Uses His Rage
“When I was little and waiting for my mother outside a shop, sometimes passers-by would say I was cursed by a witch. And that stays with you. But now I use that in my singing, so it’s actually a plus.… I am not here as some sort of role model. Of course, maybe at first people would come to see a freak. But they come a second time so then I know it’s for my singing.”
Recession Could Be Good For Design
During the recent boom, “[f]orm followed frivolity. Function was left off the guest list.” But with the bust, “[t]he pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two – and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process.”
‘The Tap Goddess Of The Lower East Side’
Claudia La Rocco meets Jane Goldberg, the “frizzy-haired Jewish girl” who, with a mixture of persistence, chutzpah and comedic charm, pushed the 1970s and ’80s revival of a then-fading dance form dominated by older African-American men.