Category: people

“The director of a Thailand museum who was indicted as part of a federal investigation into looted antiquities has been found dead at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac — apparently from natural causes.”

“The conductor is as far removed from pipe-and-slippers reflection on the past as you could imagine. That past has been illustrious, and last week was acknowledged with an award for Male Artist of the Year by the Classical Brit Awards.”

“He was one of those people–quick as a comedian, deft and knowing–who seem to be effortlessly inventive, spinning off ideas and techniques like droplets of water from a lawn sprinkler, and there is hardly an artist working today who doesn’t owe him something. To Rauschenberg, almost anything could be art, and art could be almost anything.”

“Rauschenberg’s art was instrumental in reintroducing representational imagery into common usage. Until then, avant-garde art on both sides of the Atlantic was most closely identified with pure abstraction, which the general public regarded with skepticism.”

“Beginning in the early to mid-1950s, Mr. Rauschenberg extended the vocabulary of painting, which had been more or less fixed since the Middle Ages, by combining pigment with real objects such as stuffed birds, fabrics and household appliances, and photographs reproduced from newspapers… He’ll be remembered as a genuine trailblazer, someone who opened up several pathways beyond abstract expressionism that many artists continue to follow.”

Robert Rauschenberg was far more than just the creator of his famous Combines. “The truly great Rauschenbergs that really get me excited, and that may have the most leverage on our cutting edge, were made before the Combines came to be.”

“This is such an interesting time of life, being this age. Because you literally can find yourself thinking one minute about dance steps and the next about where you’d like your ashes spread. And not abstractly, in either case.”

“Will Rachel Whiteread, unshowy as she is, be the Britartist who stands the test of time? Whiteread was always regarded as the serious-minded one among the Britart pack. While the work of Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas screamed for attention, Whiteread’s tended to whisper – despite its scale. It also caused huge controversy.”

“Craig Boyko was already famous in that semi-famous Canadian literary way even before his debut, a collection of stories called Blackouts, was published this year to universal acclaim. Actually, make that Canadian acclaim: Boyko’s agent is still looking for a U.S. deal, always a tough sell, but especially so for a book of stories by a novice from Canada.”

Cartoonist Lynda Barry isn’t nearly as visible as she once was, but at a two-day workshop in Pittsburgh this month, her philosophy of life and art was on full display. “It involves using a random word, like “cars” or “breasts,” to summon a memory in unexpected, filmic detail; writing about it by hand for a set time period; and then not reading it or talking about it for at least a week.”