Category: people

“The scene belonged in one of his plays. Famous dramatist encounters burglar in his home, assumes the intruder is a house guest, smiles benignly and wanders past. Bemused criminal says quiet prayer of thanks before stealing jewellery worth thousands of pounds.”

“An independent thinker whose work is often described in terms of voluptuous curves and sensuous surfaces, Kauffman worked in a self-styled aesthetic territory that has been called a seductive strain of Minimalism or an abstract version of Pop art.”

He “was a formidable Romanian-born Israeli artist, art historian and curator whose talent helped him escape a Nazi concentration camp for the safety of Palestine; eventually he settled in Paris, where he became a close friend of the writer Samuel Beckett.”

Recounts the actor, “During the dress rehearsal of Godot, I crouched by the stage door of the Comedy Theatre [in Melbourne], getting some air, my bowler hat at my feet [and] seeing an unkempt old man down on his luck, a passer-by said, ‘Need some help, brother?’ and put a dollar in my hat.”

“The scandals may be coming thick and strong from the Vatican at the moment, but the Church has always waged a losing battle with its own vice-ridden staff. … political skullduggery and a corrupt election process thrust one improbable candidate after another into the position as god-fearing believers looked on in impotent horror.”

“We don’t do cultural boycotts,” said Atwood, who is a vice president of International PEN. “I would be throwing overboard the thousands of writers around the world who are in prison, censored, exiled and murdered for what they have published.”

“She couldn’t sing about the penthouse [described in the song ‘Penthouse Serenade’] because she couldn’t live there–and that was that. Obviously, this tells us much about the racist policies of that unenlightened era, but it tells us even more about Horne as an artist: If she couldn’t believe in something, and make it real for herself and her audiences, then she wouldn’t sing it.”

“The nearly 250-lot auction at Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York, was the first sale of Salander property since the art dealer pleaded guilty on March 18 to grand larceny and fraud in New York State Supreme Court. Salander, 60, was ordered to pay restitution of $120 million.” The sale “of the contents of Salander’s Upper East Side townhouse” netted $472,067.

“The spectacular home at 70 Willow St. in Brooklyn Heights – on the market Monday for just the third time in 70 years – is likely to break sales records in the borough and become the most expensive townhouse in its history.” The $18 million price tag is breathtaking, anyway.

“Dame Julie Andrews’ long-awaited return to the UK stage in a special concert performance at London’s 02 Arena has been met by a furious backlash from fans and critics, who accused the Mary Poppins star of “barely” singing at all during the show.”