Category: people

He went on to become the outstanding player of his generation, developing a warm, flexible sound that made extensive use of vibrato, particularly in the lower register, and inspired many new compositions.

Well, “boyfriend” may not exactly be the right word, as Jacob Mikanowski explains. But the evidence (a census and some 368-year-old gossip) indicates that young Francesco Buoneri lived and studied with Caravaggio for years, and his face appears in quite a few of the painter’s works.

A Canadian professor discovered the clip – 77 seconds from the wedding of two of the author’s friends – in France’s national film archives. (includes video)

“The hand-painted card he had received showed a procession of pre-Raphaelite maidens worshipping at his shrine, his noble profile floating on a banner among the trees over their heads. It had been sent anonymously, but he knew instantly who it was from: May Morris, the daughter of his great friend William Morris, the socialist author, artist and designer.”

“No matter how hard Americans tried to regard Anna Nicole Smith with apathetic dismissal, they couldn’t hide their fascination – and still can’t. Why? Was she just another model, another B-lister, another early casualty of reality TV? Or did she show us something about ourselves, about our country, that frightened us more deeply than we could ever admit?”

He may tire quickly and need a live-in nurse, but he’s still present and lucid – and how many people have a stroke at 80 and live another 20 years? He’s even published a new book, his 12th. Hadley Freeman pays a visit.

“The neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins started at the most basic level they could think of – the ‘Who painted this?’ test, which she pretty much failed. Her semantic memory about art and artists, her primary area of expertise, was significantly impaired. Remarkably, though, when the scientists included some of her own artworks in the testing, she correctly flagged every one as hers. Even more surprising, when the researchers added drawings done in a style somewhat similar to Johnson’s, she picked them out as artworks she might have produced. To do so, she had to be drawing on some sort of memory.”

“Mr Taniguchi was widely praised for the gentle manner in which he approached subjects that were often unique for Japan’s manga consumers. His works such as The Walking Man, The Summit of the Gods and The Magic Mountain, stood apart in a genre sometimes seen as rooted in extreme violence and pornography.”

“Although he made his initial mark in the jazz world, Mr. Jarreau’s style, and his audience, crossed stylistic barriers. His music incorporated elements of pop, soul, gospel, Latin and other genres. It was a mark of his eclecticism that he won six Grammys across three different categories.”

It’s a tale of arts and gentrification, investment and marketing, failures and ultimate successes: “When Mr. Lichtenstein arrived at the academy in 1967, its stately building on Lafayette Avenue, erected in 1908, needed extensive and costly renovation. Portions of it had been rented out, and there had even been talk of tearing down the building and using the site for tennis courts. Many members of Mr. Lichtenstein’s target audience, especially Manhattanites, viewed the neighborhood — the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn — as undesirable.”