Category: people

“How does a serious artist work so close to the culture industry of Hollywood?” asks The Guardian in an interview with L.A. artist Paul McCarthy. Simple: Adapt. “McCarthy has created his own alternative movie studio on a scale to compete with the official ones. You might call it BadDreamWorks.”

“[She] joined the American Ballet, George Balanchine’s first American company, in 1935 and also appeared with Ballet Caravan, a troupe organized by Lincoln Kirstein in 1936 to promote American choreography. In 1939 she became a charter member of Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theater).”

“I’m very analytical, I’m very precise. I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible. But every once in awhile I come up with an idea and I think, ‘Mmmm. That just might work.’ And if the next morning it still seems like a good idea, then I try to flesh [it] out.”

“The house was due to reopen a year ago [following a renovation], but in August 2009 fire broke out in a ground floor electrical cupboard. It spread behind the wooden panelling … Firefighters were just in time to prevent the house from being gutted.”

“Lennon and Ono’s seven-day ‘bed-in for peace’ was held in 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal. … The sign (felt-tip pen on foam board), reading Bed Peace, is expected to fetch up to £100,000 at auction.”

“The 13 letters, all written to a single fan [named Don Salter], are being sold separately. They were written over a span of years, from 1960 to 2009. … Five items are for sale at a fixed price, and eight of the letters are up for auction” at an online auction house.

The veteran comic, known for performing in a frumpy dress and pumps, “has plans to become the first transvestite member of British parliament. ‘Or the Mayor of London,’ he adds. ‘By 2020. I feel I have to do it. I don’t like the right wing’.”

“It is very rare for a designer to be as revered in his field as Bass is in film graphics. The titles he devised for directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, Billy Wilder and [Alfred] Hitchcock transformed what were once cursory lists of the cast and crew into thrilling complements to the movies.”

“More than 20,000 people have together contributed at least $840,000 since Tuesday, when tax officials gave Mr. Ai 15 days to come up with an amount that was more than three times the sum he was accused of evading in taxes.”

Ruth Mackenzie took over the U.K.’s Cultural Olympiad after a commentator called the whole concept a bath “in the warm vomit of inclusivity.” Well, at least there was no way to go but up.