Category: people

“With Ai Weiwei’s arrest, the Chinese government has clearly demonstrated what the future holds for others who follow the artist’s example. Ai was merely the most prominent victim of the regime in recent weeks — he wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the last.”

“We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.”

“His method, Lessac Kinesensic Training, is a holistic, almost spiritual approach encompassing speech, singing and movement. … In 1999, American Theatre magazine called him ‘one of the three or four most significant figures in modern American voice training..”

“Born in Los Angeles and diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic when he was in his teens, he was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital, escaped to the hippie scene of the Esalen Institute, hooking up with Ken Kesey’s magic bus and … before migrating to the Seattle music scene,” where he gave poetry readings as an opening act for Nrivana and Soundgarden.

In remarks to the newsroom, Smee lauded the newspaper’s editors for holding to “a belief that the arts matter, and that good writing about the arts is going to be an important part of newspapers as they evolve.”

Speaking to France’s Le Nouvel Observateur, the author decried “our state of moral decrepitude: a huge reward for no effort. You can have no talent, no ambition, and you win all the same. … Celebrity is the new religion.” (Yet he says he “adores” the English as a people.)

“Following his father’s advice, Marx became a writer instead of an actor, producing a novel and several screenplays before concentrating on scripts for such popular television shows as McHale’s Navy and My Three Sons and writing biographies of such classic Hollywood figures as Samuel Goldwyn, Red Skelton, Bob Hope and Mickey Rooney.”

“[He] played an influential role in American experimental dance as a leading member of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company and as a teacher of Merce Cunningham’s technique.”

“About his life, no less than home ­décor, he has a restless meddler’s urgency. He says he has always been a “looker,” incapable of not noticing things and not great at prioritizing them either.”

“Remember when a publicist was called a ‘press agent’? Now, to quote the legendary Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley, “suppress agent” might be a better term. In the new era of social media, any celebrity with a half-baked idea and a laptop — or any fan with a cellphone camera — can quickly undo years of careful image crafting.”