Category: people

“There was, on occasion, an unwarranted backlash against the conceptual extravagance of Hadid’s practice and force of her personality that continued unabated throughout her life, but many of her relentless critics and detractors missed the essence of the work: a celebration of nature mated to technology, an all-encompassing way of life as lived by Zaha herself—an ascetic aesthetic, a rare notion in such a materially obsessed world.”

“Again and again [in his astounding life story] what we see in Cervantes is that his wit, intelligence and optimism stepped in to save him. No one that I can think of has made lemonade out of life’s lemons as sweetly as he did.”

“Diane Arbus was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. In 1956, she tearfully dissolved the decade-long fashion-photography enterprise that she had been conducting successfully but stressfully with her husband, Allan. Her misery was longstanding. Fashion photography is built on artifice. Diane needed, temperamentally and philosophically, to poke through pretensions and masks to expose the hidden truth.”

“Probably no one will ever be sure what the purpose of Sismanidis’s building was, but the appellation ‘Aristotle’s Tomb’ will no doubt stick, and that will decide the issue. This is how modern archaeology most resembles medieval relic-hunting. Give a site a name and you give it instantaneous mythology.”

“Aristotle was born in Stagira in 384 BC and died in Chalcis, Evia, at 322 BC. The great philosopher was originally believed to have been buried at Chalcis, however, archaeologists are now certain that the tomb they have found belongs to Aristotle.”

“In simple, childlike cartoons, she illustrates the origins of her art practice – her realization, at a young age, that ‘Japan’s view of pussy is really weird.'”

Modell, who just died at age 98, “had no illusions about the role his cartoons played at The New Yorker, well known for its long articles: to break up ‘great slabs of type,’ as he put it.”

“When the 34-year-old rapper and actor, who grew up in Oakland, Calif., moved here about two and a half years ago for a little show called ‘Hamilton,’ he probably figured there would be plenty of time for exploring. He was wrong.”

“The Windsor Beauties were chosen to be immortalized because they were the most alluring and powerful women at the court of Charles II, who became king of England, Ireland, and Scotland in 1660. Being selected for a Windsor Beauty portrait meant becoming a celebrity pin-up; copies of the portraits and engraved prints of the women circulated among admirers.”

“On his cross-country trips chasing butterflies and researching Lolita, the Russian-born novelist saw more of the United States than did Fitzgerald, Kerouac or Steinbeck.”