Category: people

“Even more astounding than Hendricks’s astute color sense, and his intricate handling of his subjects’ sartorial choices, was the almost-preternatural skill he had for crafting portraits that exude psychic states.”

“The billionaire Campbell Soup Co. heiress … has given support, much of it quite substantial, to the University of the Arts, the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Main Line Health, the Morris Arboretum, WHYY, the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” and numerous educational endeavors.

“I miss art terribly. I’ve never really talked about my work to anyone. In my writing, I’ve occasionally mentioned bygone times of once being an artist, usually laughingly. Whenever I think of that time, I feel stabs of regret. But once I quit, I quit; I never made art again and never even looked at the work I had made. Until last month, when my editors suggested that I write about my life as a young artist.”

“Philanthropy has changed greatly from the days when wealthy people donated to a museum or hospital and got their name on the wall (though that still happens). The big money now is going to a battle over ideas shaping political discourse, education policy, health care research and more.”

The Catcher in the Rye, which spent thirty weeks on the New York Times’ best-seller list, had generated immeasurable publicity and adulation for Salinger, who wanted none of it. Among his new suitors were such Hollywood bigwigs as Samuel Goldwyn and David O. Selznick, both vying for the screen rights to Catcher. They failed to secure Salinger’s approval, as did many others, in turn—but that didn’t stop Bill Mahan, an unemployed former child star and devoted fan from Los Angeles, from giving it a shot. In the early sixties, he resolved to claim the film rights himself, even if it meant disturbing Salinger at home.

“I am the peer of whoever I’m talking to. If I am talking to a 15-year-old, that’s who I am. If I’m talking to a 50-year-old, that’s who I am. I see too many 75-year-olds who seem much older than I feel. I’m aware I’m an older person, and I wish my back didn’t hurt and my legs didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds. But I go to bed at night and can’t wait for the first taste of coffee in the morning.”

When the Frosts moved into their building, the Village was still a thriving creative enclave. The neighborhood became a sort of engine for Western culture after World War II, with Beats, artists, musicians and oddballs flooding the cheap, drafty rooms in rundown brownstones. On Ninth Street alone lived Dawn Powell, Marianne Moore, Astor Piazzolla, Barbra Streisand, Maurice Sendak and Jimi Hendrix.

“Much of the visual dynamism associated with Fassbinder and Scorsese must be credited also to Ballhaus. There are the complicated but elegant compositions in Fassbinder, for example, where closeups, reaction shots and the simultaneous movement of actors are often incorporated into a single frame without recourse to cutting … There are the accelerated zooms and dolly shots in Scorsese’s films, where the camera rushes toward a face or an object to afford it special emphasis.”

“The successful completion of the [difficult and troubled] project was due in no small part to Morahan’s tenacity and dedication. Tall and commanding, on set his directorial cry of ‘why wasn’t this done earlier?’ could make the most hardened crew member tremble.”

“Now 47, and a new kind of public figure thanks to the Sugar Baby, Walker remains suspicious of herself, and of the world, however much it has come to celebrate her, expressing to me the bewilderment of a thinker for whom no level of success can stamp out a phobia of personal self-satisfaction — or, worse, infidelity to craft.”