Van Gogh admired Katsushika Hokusai and studied prints of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Did it influence Starry Night? From a visual standpoint, that seems probable: “The similarities between the thrust of the wave and the swirling of the sky; that they are both striking studies in blue; and the fact that Van Gogh admired The Great Wave so much all point to a loose inspiration.”
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Margo Jefferson On Being A Critic And The Many Forms Of Codeswitching In Her Memoir
Jefferson’s memoir Negroland won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, partly because of its ability to be personal and critical at the same time. Jefferson says, “I’d spent my writing life as a critic. My initial feeling was that those kinds of tones and voices had to go; this was memoir. But then, I realized, no, that was as much a fixed part of my identity as other things. I realized I had to include the critic who is diagnosing, who is assessing, who is judging against a kind of backdrop that is aesthetic, cultural, political.”
Joe Masteroff, Playwright Of ‘Cabaret,’ Has Died At 98
Masteroff, who adapted Cabaret from Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the stage adaptation of that book, hit a timely nerve (not that performances have ever stopped at colleges, high schools, and community theatres – or even on Broadway, where it was revived in 2014). “Cabaret, produced and directed by the Broadway legend Harold Prince, pushed boundaries with provocative depictions of homosexuality, bisexuality, ménages à trois and abortion” – and the growing Nazi threat.
Leonard Cohen’s Notebooks In The Freezer (And His Final Poems)
Leonard Cohen’s son says that even talking about his father’s process of writing feels like an invasion. “My father was very interested in preserving the magic of his process. And moreover, not demystifying it. Speaking of any of this … is a transgression,” Adam Cohen says. But a final book of poems “is what he was staying alive for.”
Unconvincing
Really, Metropolitan Opera and New York Phil, is this your updated classical music marketing?
Austria Has A Provocative Contemporary Art Festival, But Is Anyone Seeing It?
In far-right governed Austria, the Steirischer Herbst “appointed its first non-German-speaking director and is now redefining itself as an international art event. The Russian-born curator Ekaterina Degot, working with a collective of other exhibition makers, has used the historically loaded title ‘Volksfronten’ (People’s Fronts) for an exploration by more than 40 artists of what she describes in her catalog introduction as today’s ‘alarming déjà vus of the 1930s.'”
Propwatch: The Handkerchief In ‘Othello’
Mark Rylance uses, and abuses, several handkerchiefs (not just that one) as Iago, and it’s all part of revealing the villain.
Where Are All The British Working-Class Writers?
In Scotland, of course. “Scotland has an incredible wealth of working-class writers, thanks to a strong community and tradition of support from established authors.” But really, there are English, Welsh, and Northern Irish working-class writers as well, but the working-class writers and their publishers need to see interest from the public.
Weekend Extra: Ray Bryant
Warning: This piece may get stuck in your head.
Women In Hollywood Who Work Behind The Scenes Also Want – And Deserve – Equal Pay
A Pay Equity Summit was billed as “the first step” in getting women pay equity with men. One of the craft guilds “published a study this year arguing that female-dominated crafts are often paid less than male-dominated jobs of similar responsibility level. The study equated women-dominated jobs like script supervisors to male-dominated jobs like assistant directors.”