Category: people

That E. Ethelbert Miller is a major mover in the African American literary world is undeniable. That he is considered by many to be an outstanding poet is indisputable. “I can’t think of an African American writer whose life I haven’t affected.” So why is Howard University – his alma mater – going out of its way to ignore him? – Washington Post

Vanity Fair is said to be publishing a story claiming that painter Francis Bacon, who died in 1992 aged 82, was a tax dodger. The magazine alleges that Bacon avoided paying tax in Britain by failing to declare payments made by his dealers Marlborough Fine Art to a Swiss bank account. – London Evening Standard

The art world loathes Thomas Kinkade’s precious paintings. But America’s mall-goers can’t buy them fast enough and have made Kinkade a wealthy man.  Reviled by the critics and scorned by galleries and agents, his work has been described as everything from ‘pseudo’ to ‘a damning indictment of our society’. Some question whether what he does is art at all.” Now Kinkade’s taking his show to England. – The Telegraph (UK

The hip new opera in London last season was – of all things – a piece about soccer. Mark-Anthony Turnage, the “Silver Tassie’s” composer, “has emerged as one of the great hopes of English classical music – a natural extension of an extraordinary line that runs through such fertile counties as Elgar, Walton, Bridge, Britten and Tippett.” – Sequenza 21

Artist Katherine Sherwood was always an artist. But a debilitating stroke at the age of 44 transformed her career.  “Critics see a huge change in Sherwood’s work. From the restricted, analytical style of the art professor she once was, she has been transformed into a vibrant, free-flowing painter. She has just finished a show at New York’s prestigious Whitney Museum, and her abstracts sell for $10,000. “I have sold more paintings in the past few months than in 25 years as an artist,” she says with a smile. – The Times (UK)

Composer Astor Piazzolla’s distinctive tango music has become a world-wide phenomenon. But “while his music won an enthusiastic following in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, Piazzolla was not widely appreciated in his native Argentina until a decade before he died in 1992. Instead, his tampering with a native form as sacrosanct as the tango earned an intensity of contempt from the music’s old guard that may be difficult to fathom in this country, where disagreements over style and genre exercise only a handful of artists and critics.” – The New Republic

Richard Feigen is one of the foremost dealers in Old Master paintings – and a famously difficult personality. His new book illuminates some of the more shadowy corners of the art world. “There is, for example, a scathing account of the shenanigans several years ago at the Barnes Foundation, the fabled museum outside Philadelphia, when trustees attempted to sell off holdings in violation of its founder’s will – an attempt Feigen all but single-handedly scotched. Or there’s his comparing the exhibitions policy at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, with its ‘random mixture of box-office frivolity with serious art,’ to ‘a nice girl of good family who just once in a while goes out and turns tricks for some pocket change.’ ” – Boston Globe

By the time he died in 1992, author Alex Haley had amassed boxes of research for another novel in the tradition of his “Roots” epic. His estate went searching for a writer to take over the project, and came up with a novelist who writes in the supernatural suspense genre and is a former Miami Herald feature writer. – Chicago Tribune

At the age of 69, after a full career, Alfred Brendel could certainly afford to ease up a bit. But he’s just discovered Mozart. “He still plays around 90 concerts a year – 90 repetitions of the experience he once described as ‘the sudden burst of sweat in a spasm of anxiety’. Last year saw him performing in 53 towns and cities from Tokyo to Minnesota, from New York to Plush, Dorset.” – The Guardian