Category: people

Andrew Vicari is the offical court painter to the royal Saudi family. “Goya, van Dyck and Holbein were all court painters, and so I am just following in a great tradition. Some people sneer at the thought of court painter, I don’t know why. It’s a great privilege. Some of the best paintings in the world were done of kings and princes.”

Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer was attacked on Thursday at her home in South Africa, according to local authorities. Gordimer, who is 83, was not seriously injured when burglars broke into her home and made off with cash and jewelry.

Ralph Steadman’s name will probably always be irrevocably tied to that of his fellow counter-culture anti-hero, Hunter S. Thompson. “But where indeed is Steadman these days, that co-creator of early 1970s drug- and booze-drenched gonzo journalism as the artist who sketched Watergate-Middle America grotesqueries to accompany Thompson’s words, and who decades later helped to shoot Thompson’s ashes out of a 150-foot cannon? Where’s Steadman when we need his satire the most? Comfortably at home in England, thank you.”

Author Alice Munro is beloved by countless readers, but has always maintained an iron barrier between her private life and the invasive culture of literary celebrity. But her latest collection of stories is “as close as Munro has come to turning her family’s life into stories,” and she seems slowly but surely to be letting the world into her life.

Alice Munro has declared that her new collection of short stories will be her last, saying that, at age 75, she simply has nothing more to say…

His political ordezal in Turkey changed him as a person and as a writer. “The case that was brought against me, and the political quandaries in which I then found myself, turned me into a far more ‘political’, ‘serious’ and ‘responsible’ person than I wanted to be.”

“He’s not, if you ask people, ‘Who are the major living composers who are alive?,’ on that list. People would say, ‘John Adams, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, William Bolcom.’ There’s a slew of people, but I don’t think they’d mention him. The reason, I think, is that there is something in his temperament and in his vision of what great music is that has made him not exactly a team player.”

“Hambro, a concert pianist who served as Victor Borge’s comedic sidekick during a decade-long collaboration and was also known for his ability to commit to memory a huge repertoire, has died.”

“Centennial celebrations for the political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) are springing up from Lucerne to Lima and Sydney to Seoul. Forthcoming gatherings in Germany, Paris,and New York will successively retrace the geographical arc of this prodigious Jewish émigré scholar’s flight across Europe to America. Arendt probed the roots of totalitarianism, examined reasons for revolution, and showed how evil could wear an ordinary face.”

“Maybe, by poking a hole in his Picasso, he’s let some air out of the wildly inflated balloon of modern art prices. After the mishap Wynn decided to get “La Rêve” repaired and hold on to it for himself. The record-breaking deal was off. Seen that way, Wynn’s Picasso fiasco is a satisfying, even cheering anecdote. Money doesn’t always have to triumph. The ultra-rich can be klutzily human, modest and self-aware.”