Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Tributes: 89-Year Old Actor & Screenwriter Buck Henry Has Died

From a Hollywood Reporter online release:

Buck Henry Saturday Night Live 1970s“Turman, Nichols and I related to The Graduate in exactly the same way,” Henry told Vanity Fair. “We all thought we were [the book’s protagonist] Benjamin Braddock. Plus, it’s an absolutely first-class novel, with great characters, great dialogue, a terrific theme. Who could resist it? I read it and I said, ‘Yes, let’s go.'”

Henry landed his first Oscar nom for the screenplay (he came up with the word “plastics” and had a small role in the film) and received a second nom for co-directing (with Warren Beatty) the reincarnation comedy Heaven Can Wait, a remake of the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

Buck Henry, the impish screenwriter whose wry, satirical sensibility brought comic electricity to The GraduateWhat’s Up, Doc?To Die For and TV’s Get Smart, has died. He was 89.

Henry, a two-time Oscar nominee who often appeared onscreen — perhaps most memorably as a 10-time host (all in the show’s first four years) on Saturday Night Live — died of a heart attack Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital, his wife, Irene, told The Washington Post. He had suffered a stroke in November 2014.

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Video Interviews: 69-Year Old Photographer Steve McCurry (Bloomberg)

Jan.08 — Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin kicks off Season 8 on board the Singapore Flyer with the man who shot the “Afghan Girl”. Steve McCurry has spent a lifetime focusing on conflict and culture creating some of the world’s most iconic photos.

Steve McCurry Master Photographer Bloomberg High Flyers Video Interview January 8 2020

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Exhibitions: 74-Year Old Artist John Alexander – “Landscape And Memory” (Berggruen Gallery)

JANUARY 9 – FEBRUARY 15, 2020

 

John Alexander The Temptation 2019 Landscape and Memory Berggruen Gallery January 2020Berggruen Gallery is proud to present John Alexander: Landscape and Memory, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Texas-born, New York-based artist John Alexander. This show marks Alexander’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view January 9 through February 15, 2020. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, January 16 from 5:00 to 7:00pm.

John Alexander’s most recent body of work presents a detailed collection of landscapes, botanicals, sea life, and animals – each subject an emblem of the artist’s own mind and memory. Alexander grew up between the bayous and the wooded wilderness of East Texas, enjoying camping and fishing trips within the lush, diverse landscape that would ultimately become so influential to him. Moreover, Alexander’s understanding and appreciation for the natural world was fortified by his father’s environmentalism. For Alexander, developing an environmental acuity, especially for his native Texas, was familial. Today, the artist creates work in reference to the nature-based consciousness he developed in his youth.

Berggruen Gallery San FranciscoThe introspective nature of Alexander’s work is revealed through the artist’s keen observations of his surrounding environment and the vivid way in which he paints it. Employing bold, painterly strokes, Alexander maintains an acute sensibility of his subject matter – whether it be the detailed rendering of the spiny lobster, an expressive portrayal of grackles and ibises perched in branches, or more expansive, floating florals. The artist also injects elements of whimsy; the playful monkeys he paints peer out of their canvases to almost directly engage the viewer. And thus each work is imbued with an authentic, raggedly pristine, emotional sense of the earth we all inhabit. In this way, Alexander creates scenes that are deeply personal, yet also shared…nostalgic yet ongoing…exotic yet familiar…of the world yet otherworldly. Saturating his landscapes with humor, sentimentality, and veneration, Alexander reveals as much about himself as he does about nature.

John Alexander: Landscape and Memory is comprised of nine paintings and four drawings, work that comes together in reverence for the formal tradition of landscape painting. Paying homage to an Impressionist Master, Claude Monet, Alexander paints dreamy hollyhocks. Invoking the more recent Hudson River School, Alexander carefully creates bucolic scenes of both reality and idealization. Perhaps most unexpectedly, Alexander also nods to the Abstract Expressionists, applying thick strokes of paint in a gestural, emotional meditation. In turn, Alexander’s work pays tribute to the long and varied legacy of landscape painting before him while simultaneously remaining true to his own, very personal, connection to nature. Through the amalgamation of art historical context, environmental conservation, and the integration of a more intimate narrative, Alexander produces a body of work that is raw, compelling, and perhaps above all else, natural.

John Alexander was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1945. He received his B.F.A. from Lamar University in Beaumont in 1968 and his M.F.A. from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1970. Following graduate school, Alexander taught at the University of Houston. Though the artist’s Texas roots influence much of his work, to solely categorize Alexander as a “Texas” artist would be inaccurate. In 1979, having established himself in Houston as a prominent local artist, Alexander moved to New York City. Today the artist divides his time between his SoHo studio loft and home in Amagansett, East Hampton. Alexander’s work has been widely exhibited at such prestigious institutions as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, both in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work is featured in the permanent collections of several leading institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Dallas Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; as well as many other public and private collections worldwide.

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Lyrical Essays: “Return To Tipasa” By Albert Camus (Poetry Channel Podcast)

Albert Camus’ lyrical essay… where he found In the midst of winter, there was, within himself, an invincible summer.

Excerpt from “Return To Tipasa” by Alber Camus

Albert Camus Lyrical and Critical Essays Return To Tipasa bookYou have navigated with raging soul far from the paternal home, passing beyond the sea’s double rocks, and you now inhabit a foreign land.

–Medea

For five days rain had been falling ceaselessly on Algiers and had finally wet the sea itself. From an apparently inexhaustible sky, constant downpours, viscous in their density, streamed down upon the gulf. Gray and soft as a huge sponge, the sea rose slowly in the ill-defined bay. But the surface of the water seemed almost motionless under the steady rain. Only now and then a barely perceptible swelling motion would raise above the sea’s surface a vague puff of smoke that would come to dock in the harbor, under an arc of wet boulevards. The city itself, all its white walls dripping, gave off a different steam that went out to meet the first steam. Whichever way you turned, you seemed to be breathing water, to be drinking the air.

Photography: “2019 Nikon Small World Competition – Photomicrography”

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1st Place Fluorescent turtle embryo 

Teresa Zgoda & Teresa Kugler

Location: Campbell Hall, New York, USA; Technique: StereomicroscopyFluorescence; Magnification: 5x (Objective Lens Magnification)

For microscopy technician Teresa Zgoda and recent university graduate Teresa Kugler, microscopy is a discipline that allows them to blend their dual passions of art and science. The 2019 winning image is a spectacular example of that, featuring a colorful turtle embryo captured using a combination of fluorescence and stereomicroscopy.

The pair captured this image while assisting in the Marine Biological Laboratory’s embryology course. It was here they learned the precise technique required to properly prepare various types of embryos to be observed and photographed. Creating this image was a unique challenge, largely due to the size of the sample. Over an inch long, and thick, it took time and precision to ensure the entire subject was photographed completely. What’s more, the magnification used meant only a small part of the turtle could be imaged on the focal plane. The final image is a compilation of hundreds of images that had to be stacked and stitched together.

When they are not taking photos through the microscope, both women enjoy being creative (for Kugler, that means cosplay, and for Zgoda it means photographing the landscapes, plants, and animals she sees on her hikes). Zgoda has recently started a job in a Boston hospital in a lab focused on neurology, while Kugler is excited to see what the world of science has in store for new Rochester Institute of Technology graduate.

“Microscopy lets us get a better look at the small things in life,” said Kugler, “It allows me to do science with a purpose.”

“We are inspired by the beautiful images we see through the microscope,” added Zgoda, “It’s amazing to be able to share that science with other people.”

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Top New Exhibitions: “Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades” (Fisher Museum)

 

USC Fisher Museum Of Art Charles Arnoldi Four Decades Exhibit January 21 - April 4 2020

USC Fisher Museum of Art proudly presents Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades, a survey of the versatile and prolific Venice Beach artist, which traces the evolution Charles Arnoldi Artof the artist’s expansive and materials-focused practice from the 1970s to the present.

USC Fisher Museum of Art proudly announces Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, a survey of Venice Beach artist Charles (Chuck) Arnoldi. The exhibition, organized by the USC Fisher Museum of Art with the generous support of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and curated by Bruce Guenther, author of Charles Arnoldi: Paper (2017), opens January 21, 2020 and runs through April 4, 2020.

USC Fisher Museum of Art logoCharles Arnoldi was a young man from Dayton, Ohio who had seen little of the world when he arrived in Southern California in the mid 1960s. Following stints at a local community college and Chouinard Art Institute, Arnoldi won LACMA’s New or Young Talent Award in 1969 and thus began his ever-evolving career which continues to this day in his sprawling Venice studio.

For close to 50 years, Arnoldi’s work has reflected a passion for the material world, a commitment to experimentation, and a tireless focus on studio production. Charles Arnoldi | Four Decades is drawn from the holdings of the collector Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.

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New Photography Books: “Michael Wolf | Paris”

MICHAEL WOLF | PARIS

Michael Wolf Paris Five Continents Editions book January 2020Michael Wolf achieved fame when he won the 2005 World Press Photo with his China, Factory of the World project, and the 2010 World Press Photo with his Tokyo Compression. The present book offers his personal take on the French capital. Singling out typical architectural features of the Parisian landscape he renders the seemingly banal immortal, as only he knows how.

Roofs, chimneys, and lights provide the pictures with rhythm, with their colours, shapes, and above all their volumes. Wolf invites the reader to enter his highly distinctive visual world and let his gaze follow the snaking lines of walls and gutters, dwelling on unexpected details lovingly picked out. The photographer’s underlying desire is to encourage us to consider the environmental and architectural context that provides a framework for all these rigorously rectangular features.

Michael Wolf Paris Five Continents Editions book January 2020 CoverThis dreamlike journey into a Paris viewed from the rooftops is underlined in the second part of the book. The shadows of trees decorate the façades of various buildings, creating a visual poetry and prompting an intimate dialogue where, in the absence of all human presence, nature and architecture blend into one another.

 

Michael Wolf (1954-2019) lived in Europe, America, and Asia, spending his last years in Hong Kong. A German photographer specialized in urban shots, he graduated in photography from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, where he studied under Otto Steinert. Among his most noteworthy projects are the “beehive” skyscrapers in Hong Kong. The focus of his research is city life, especially in overpopulated contemporary metropolises, and their inhabitants’ loss of individuality. Wolf’s work has been displayed in a variety of locations, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Aperture Foundation Gallery in New York, the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. His works are also present in many permanent collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt.

Johan-Frederik Hel Guedj, a French writer, has published two novels (Le traitement des cendresL’amour grave), a collection of short stories (De mon vivant), an account of polar exploration (Chercheurs d’éternité), and an essay on Orson Welles (La règle du faux). He lives in Brussels and writes on contemporary art in the daily newspaper L’Echo/De Tijd.

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Fine Art: 79-Year Old Renowned Stage Director Robert Wilson On Monet’s “Water Lilies” (Video)

Musée d'Orsay logoHailed as “a towering figure in the world of experimental theater” by the New York Times Waco, Texas-born Robert Wilson has created singular works in the realms of opera, performance, video art, glass, architecture, and furniture design since 1963. Prolific yet exacting in his approach to staging, light, and direction, Wilson has been honored with numerous awards for excellence including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, and an Olivier Award. He is also the founding director of The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the arts and humanities in Water Mill, New York.

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Interviews: 63-Year Old Author John ‘Rick’ MacArthur On His Book About Graham Greene

On Meet The Writers this week, Georgina Godwin talks to John ‘Rick’ MacArthur about his new book ‘Graham Greene: The Last Interview’. 

Rick is the scion of a great American philanthropic family but, in his own right, a veteran journalist, author and president of ‘Harper’s Magazine’, the second oldest continuous publication in the US. We take a look at how Graham Greene traversed the space between journalism and fiction and brought truth into sharp focus through his storytelling.

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