Category: people

Australian arts groups are losing one of their richest, most generous patrons. Richard Pratt is stepping down from his various roles as arts supporter, as part of a general withdrawal from public life. – The Age (Melbourne)

Germaine Greer was captured by a teenage girl stalker and held captive in the writer’s house until friends arrived and freed her. – The Telegraph (UK)

Poor Rudy. The New York mayor’s wife is starring in a racy play that flies contrary to hizzoner’s conservative tastes. “Now he’s trapped in a perfumed nightmare, his own wife soon performing orgasmic moans off-Broadway and his rival for the U.S. Senate making tsk-tsk noises at him every time he turns around.” – New York Observer

Canada’s Al Purdy dies. “If there’s a heaven and a hell, Al has a foot in both camps as he argues first with God and then with the Devil. I think I know who’s winning the argument or, if not winning, at least breaking even in eternity. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Italian tax officials are after Luciano Pavarotti again.  Three months after the 64-year-old singer – reportedly worth £300m – agreed to pay £1.6 million in back taxes in 36 monthly installments, the Italians want another £3 million in taxes they say the tenor avoided paying by claiming Monaco as his permanent residence. – BBC 

There is no other 20th-century painter quite like Balthus. At the age of 92 he still paints, still in his own way, as always, resolutely ignoring the art-isms of his time – “I was never interested in other modern painters because I had my painting, which preoccupied my mind more than anything else.” – Financial Times

Martin Mull’s first and abiding love is painting. It’s the TV and movie work that pays for the canvases and paint. – Los Angeles Times

• Conservative New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has a reputation for a conservative’s sensibility when it comes to art. Not so his wife, actress Donna Hanover, who is about to star in “The Vagina Monologues,” a play that uses “humor and drama to explore such subjects as sexual fantasies, orgasms, pelvic exams and rape.” – MSNBC

Salman Rushie’s surprise visit home to India last week was an enormous moment foe the author. But it was also an important moment for India. “By granting a visa to Mr. Salman Rushdie to visit India and according him a warm welcome, the government has proved that it is prepared to stand up and be counted in defence of democratic values and the individual’s right to express himself.” – The Telegraph (UK)

August Wilson on his personal odyssey through African American history in his plays: “Before I am anything, a man or a playwright, I am an African-American. The tributary streams of culture, history and experience have provided me with the materials out of which I make my art. As an African-American playwright, I have many forebears who have pioneered and hacked out of the underbrush an aesthetic that embraced and elevated the cultural values of black Americans to a level equal to those of their European counterparts.” – New York Times