In the late 1920s, “Calder’s figure sculptures had already gained him a reputation as a troubadour of the giddy high spirits of the Roaring Twenties on both sides of the Atlantic.” (For example, the pictured sculpture of Josephine Baker from 1929.) “What changed? In the years 1930 and 1931 Calder made two life-changing decisions: He became a married man and an abstract artist.”
Category: people
‘#StopMorganLie’ – Morgan Freeman Has Become Russia’s New Favorite Piñata
Kyle Swenson reports on “the Russian reaction that greeted a two-minute online video [Freeman] recorded recently for a group hoping to keep alive concerns over Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Freeman is being portrayed as a tool of the U.S. establishment trying to bring down Trump” – and as everything from a silly, high-strung thespian to a marijuana-addled old man to someone with a “Messianic complex.”
Myrna Lamb, Feminist Playwright Lambasted By Male Critics, Has Died At 87
Her first musical, “Mod Donna,” had its opening at the Public in 1970. One Lamb supporter: “I was at opening night with my then-boyfriend, … a deceptively mild-mannered man who rose out of his chair at the curtain and began to shout that feminism was a sham and that he would tell the awful truth about what wretched liars, manipulators, fakes and so on we in the movement were. I had never seen him in such a rage. Many men in the audience around us were nodding approval at his outburst.”
Colin Firth, Whose Wife Is Italian, Now Has Dual Italian And British Citizenship
Without saying “Brexit,” the actor says Brexit, as his wife gets British citizenship too: “We never really thought much about our different passports. But now, with some of the uncertainty around, we thought it sensible that we should all get the same.”
Charles Bradley, The ‘Screaming Eagle Of Soul’ Who Found Fame Late In Life, Has Died At 68
Bradley’s first album, on the ’60s sound revival label Daptone, was released when he was 62, and his James-Brown-evoking performances became legendary. Daptone’s Gabriel Roth: “Charles was somehow one of the meekest and strongest people I’ve ever known. His pain was a cry for universal love and humanity.”
Ritha Devi, A ‘Consummate Actress’ Who Brought Indian Classical Dance To The U.S., Has Died At 92
She specialized in Odissi, a form of temple dance from the eastern Indian state of Odisha. “By the 1940s and ’50s, Odissi had fallen out of favor in India. But Ms. Devi, who began studying it in 1964, helped revive it through worldwide tours in the 1970s and as a professor in New York University’s dance department from 1972 to 1982.”
Marian Horosko, Dancer And Historian Of Dance, Has Died At 92
The former editor of Dance Magazine, Horosko “was the only dancer who carried an old-fashioned typewriter with her on tour.”
Tarell Alvin McCraney Wrote The Play That Later Became ‘Moonlight’ – Has His Life Changed?
Not really, but he’s OK with that. “I come to make room for the ones coming after. Because these people coming after are going to deliver us something. We just need to watch out. Just look at the luscious, juicy deliciousness that is black art right now. I just feel like we’re only scratching the surface.”
Judi Dench And Maureen Dowd Play ‘Confirm Or Deny’
“MoDo: You love embroidering rude cushions with bawdy language and giving them to your famous friends.
JuDe: I used to do that a lot, but my eyesight doesn’t let me anymore. I found someone to make the cushions for me.”
Albert Speer Jr., 83, Architect Who Tried To Transcend His Father’s Notoriety
“The genial architect in wire-rimmed glasses planned and designed soccer stadiums in Qatar, sweeping roadways in China and entire cities in Algeria, and in a five-decade career was described as one of the finest urban planners in Germany. For all the acclaim, he received few commissions in the German capital. Clients, he said, probably feared the inevitable headline: that Albert Speer – ‘the devil’s architect,’ Hitler’s master builder – was again building in Berlin. Never mind that the builder was in this case his son.”