“[He] always insisted that the sculptures should, like poetry or music, be thought of as superb pieces of human artistic endeavour, and regretted the role they had come to play in what today is termed contested history. He devoted many hours of research to them, reconstructing their original arrangement. This was harder than might be thought, as only about half survive, and he was quietly pleased … that some of his ideas had been incorporated into the displays at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.” – The Guardian
Category: people
How Nikki Giovanni Has Remained A Household-Name Poet (!) For 50 Years
“Her staying power over half a century comes from a stream of acclaimed work, her proclivity for a punishing schedule of tours and readings, and a fearlessness born of not caring what foolish people think.” – The New York Times
Controversial Korean Filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk, 59, Dead Of COVID
“[He] was known as the bad boy of Asian art-house cinema and made his name with a series of visually stunning but extremely violent films, including The Isle (2000) and Bad Guy (2001). … Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter … and Spring (2003), .. a sharp contrast with Kim’s previous work, was an international art-house hit. Pieta (2012), a story of redemption featuring a loan shark mobster (and more of Kim’s trademark visceral violence), won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Kim’s directing career was derailed in 2018 when three women came forward accusing him and his Bad Guy star Cho Jae-hyun of rape and sexual assault.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Ann Reinking, Tony-Winning Dancer-Actor-Choreographer, Dead At 71
“She was perhaps best known as a performer for playing Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago. It was the role that she stepped into in 1977 at 26, and which helped make her a star. And it is the role that she returned to triumphantly nearly two decades later in the hugely successful 1996 Broadway revival — which she also choreographed.” (It was the latter which won her a Tony Award after three previous nominations.) – The New York Times
The Cost Of Being Charley Pride
Ultimately, Pride was rewarded by the country music business — by the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, he was one of the genre’s central, crucial performers, a part of the firmament. But he was also, naturally, the exception that proved the rule — even with his success as an example, the country music industry remained largely inhospitable to Black performers. He was a one of one. – The New York Times
Ben Bova, Science Fiction Writer And Editor Of Prominent SF Magazines, 88
Bova was a “hard” science fiction writer – that is, no fantasy, but a lot of space travel and the science that might ensue. He edited Analog magazine and published new generations of writers there and at Omni, where he was the first editor. He won many Hugos and a lifetime achievement award from the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer space.” – The New York Times
Carol Sutton Of Steel Magnolias, Queen Sugar, And Hundreds Of Other Projects, 76
Sutton died of complications from Covid-19. The New Orleans native – who never relocated from her home city – acted in her first movie with The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974, but she had “honed her acting abilities beginning in 1968, when she joined one of the rare African-American theatrical troupes in the Deep South. The Dashiki Project Theatre, founded by students at Dillard University and other historically black colleges and universities in Louisiana, was based in New Orleans and mounted plays that reflected the complexities of African-American life.” – NPR
Anthony Veasna So, Whose First Book Was The Subject Of A Bidding War, Has Died At 28
The young Cambodian-American writer died suddenly and unexpectedly at home. He was on the brink of literary stardom as “the author of crackling, kinetic and darkly comedic stories that made vivid the lives of first-generation Khmer-Americans.” His book Afterparties will be published next year. – The New York Times
John Le Carre, Chronicler Of The Internal And External Vicissitudes Of Spy Life, Has Died At 89
Le Carré, the pen name of David Cornwell, worked for the British Foreign Service, running his own spies, in the 1940s and 1950s. Then came the George Smiley books, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and le Carré’s career rocketed up. He best “explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.” – The Guardian (UK)
Noah Creshevsky, Composer Of ‘Hyperreal’ Work, 75
Creshevsky studied composition with some modern legends, but he “found his calling in the studio-bound world of electronic music. Using the prevailing technologies of the day — at first cutting and splicing magnetic tape, later using samplers and digital audio workstations — he made music that was dizzyingly complex in its conception and construction. But because he built his works from everyday sounds as well as voices and instruments, his compositions felt accessible, engaging and witty.” – The New York Times