Category: people

“He was best known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970), a play based on the case of an Italian railroad worker who was either thrown or fell from the upper story of a Milan police station while being questioned on suspicion of terrorism, and for his one-man show Mistero Buffo (‘Comic Mystery’), written in 1969 and frequently revised and updated over the next 30 years, taking wild comic aim at politics and, especially, religion.”

“As I approach the end of my life,” says the songwriter/poet/mystic, “I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.” But David Remnick, somehow, manages to get him to do it.

“Barely a quarter-century old, Kertess opened Bykert [Gallery] in September of 1966, with the financial backing of his former Yale classmate Jeff Byers … Over the next nine years, Bykert would show a formidable roster of artists associated with Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, and Process Art, including Brice Marden, David Novros, Barry Le Va, Alan Saret, Chuck Close, Bill Bollinger, and Dorothea Rockburne, among many others.”

“Here’s how not to be taken seriously as a woman writer: Use demons and ghosts and other gothic paraphernalia in your fiction. Describe yourself publicly as ‘a practicing amateur witch’ and boast about the hexes you have placed on prominent publishers. Contribute comic essays to women’s magazines about your hectic life as a housewife and mother.”

“Polish cinema burst upon the world in the 1950s with Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy, A Generation, Kanał and Ashes and Diamonds, with the director becoming the voice of disaffected postwar youth. A generation later, [with Man of Marble and Man of Iron,] Wajda … was the voice of Poland again, as the country struggled to survive political and economic turmoil.”

“To retrace his career is to range through 60 years of television history, from [the old] Radiodiffusion française to terrestrial digital television. Like three other Pierres – Desgraupes, Dumayet, Sabbagh – Tchernia was one of the pioneers of this new medium that was tentatively invited into French homes.” (in French; Google Translate version here)

“The critics repeatedly return to the intense humanity of Neel’s paintings—not in the sense of a gentle or genteel compassion, but almost its opposite: Neel’s portraits unflinchingly depict the gamut of human vulnerabilities, emotions and attitudes.”

“Elaine Lustig Cohen, whose prolific graphic design career began — almost accidentally — with signage for the celebrated Seagram Building in Manhattan, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.”

“‘It’s clearly directed at people who are trying to improve the profession,’ she said. ‘For me, it just shows that our profession is totally unwilling to be corrected.'”