Category: people

Ai: “When I see your earlier work, the models that look like you crumpled up a piece of paper that you were going to throw out, I think that’s a breakthrough.”
Gehry: “You know, I grew up in the art world — this was the way I wanted to work, more hands-on, sort of like the way you work.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

“It became clear they were doing an exhibition on Surrealism…,” writes Eric Idle in his book. “Pretentious nonsense. We’re nothing to do with Dalí or Duchamp… Python has always been about comedy. That is the art.” – The Art Newspaper

“Soundies” were three-minute musical films meant to be played on jukeboxes, and Lee starred in more than 100 of them. In a career that stretched from the age of nine to this past summer, she achieved dance stardom after graduating from the Apollo Theater’s chorus line, was part of the first all-black USO tour, starred in the national tour of Bubbling Brown Sugar, and took part in the tap-dance revival that started in the 1980s, teaching the likes of Michelle Dorrance. – The New York Times

All of it was gone. Five decades of artwork, tools and texts — crucial components of Liz Albuquerque’s archive and artistic legacy. Within a few hours, reduced to ash-covered rubble. – Los Angeles Times

Koyama covered jazz in Japan throughout the 1960s and 1970s, was an avid interviewer of New York jazz musicians in their homes and wherever they played, and then he became a producer of jazz albums. “By the end of his life, Mr. Koyama’s personal archive included close to 30,000 vinyl albums and CDs. He also retained a copy of nearly every issue of Swing Journal, hundreds of books, and cassette tapes of his interviews. He recently donated the archive to New York University.” – The New York Times

Winter made the city’s architecture come alive for the people he taught (at Occidental) and those he took on quirky, packed bus tours of the city he adopted. “Winter’s gift to the city was An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, a field guide of sorts that identified, cheered and occasionally mocked L.A.’s diverse architecture. The book, now in its sixth edition, was embraced as a bible by many.” – Los Angeles Times

The man with expert knowledge on everything in the company’s past has died at 78. “In an industry that’s notorious for neglecting its past, Smith stood out as perhaps the most respected, if unheralded, member of a small group of in-house studio historians. Smith is credited with helping Hollywood understand the cultural value of its past, starting at Disney in 1970 when rival studios were auctioning or dumping their histories.” – Los Angeles Times

Cardinale’s voice was “too husky” and also too French (she grew up in Tunisia) for Italian cinema when she started. But then came 8 1/2. – Los Angeles Times

Levy didn’t start writing until she was in her 30s, but her fourth novel, 2004’s Small Island, won the Orange Prize and made her a household name in Britain and the U.S. – The Washington Post

Yes, his angry Hitler from 2004’s Downfall was memed millions of times, but many of us remember him best as the angel Damiel from Wim Wenders’ 1987 masterpiece about divided Berlin, Wings of Desire. The actor “made his film debut as a hotel employee in The Man in the Black Derby (1961), a Swiss comedy, and was still busily making films in his late 70s.” In 2018 alone, he starred in five movies. – The New York Times