Category: people

• Much has happened to Susan Sontag in the past few years – getting caught in a war, getting hit by a car, being diagnosed with cancer – yet Sontag’s new book is remarkably untouched by her personal life, which she talks about in this interview. – The Observer (UK)

Aaron Copland would have been 100 years old this year. “Listeners who think of Copland’s style as bland or ingratiating are relying on the faulty filtering of memory, compounded by an awareness of the composer’s famously warm and congenial personal demeanor.” – San Francisco Chronicle

Never heard of him? Six months ago the 19-year-old invented Napster, the digital music download software that has turned the music recording world upside down. Now he finds himself at the middle of the music upheaval and he’s being sued by his favorite band. – The Observer (UK)

Martin Amis, now 50, wants to be remembered primarily for his fiction. The possibility that a factual book, albeit a sublime essay giving shape and meaning to his chaotic life, could eclipse his reputation as a novelist is too dangerous to contemplate. – National Post (Canada)

“When the bounding, affable Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel made his local debut in 1996, he seemed almost certain bait for the sharks–a great singer and a great entertainer just a little too eager to soak up audience adulation, too ready to overdramatize. Certainly it has worked–his popularity continues to soar. He is one of the biggest tickets in big-ticket opera.” – Los Angeles Times

Andrew Carnegie wanted to preserve his legacy, so he bought it – in the form of setting up some 1,600 public libraries all over America. Scholars meet to talk about how to preserve the Carnegie legacy. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After 43 years as concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, violinist Raymond Gniewek is retiring from the Met and will be giving his final concerts this weekend. – New York Times

Richard Hamilton, whose 1956 collage “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So, So Appealing?” is considered by many to have signaled the birth of British pop art, is still at the top of his game – fascinated by all things modern and by his own paintings’ iconic status. “Perhaps that is why of all living British artists he is the one whose work gets the richest showing in the opening displays at Tate Modern.” – The Guardian

Legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, age 96, has fired his longtime dealer Margo Feiden and filed a suit against her gallery in New York Supreme Court. Hirschfeld alleges she withheld sizable earnings, refused to return drawings, and abused her fiduciary responsibility. – New York Times

Eighty-year-old painter Michael Gross won his country’s highest arts honor last week, the Israel Prize for Art, but kept his distance from the week’s celebrations and publicity. He is widely regarded as one of Israel’s most esteemed living artists – his work is held in the Guggenheim and MOMA, he’s shown at the Venice Biennale and Documenta – yet he’s always chosen to live as an “outsider,” as far as he can from the “theory and chatter” in Israel. “All the writers are little people who read other people’s theories, copy them and talk about them without understanding them. I am against all theories apart from one great one – an artist must be entirely free.” – Haaretz (Israel)