“Architecture is also the stuff of construction, engineering, maths and science. Of philosophy, sociology, Le Corbusier and who knows what else. It is also, I can’t help feeling, harder to create great buildings now than it was in the past. When Eridu or the palaces and piazzas of Renaissance Italy were shaped, architecture was the most expensive and prestigious of all cultural endeavours. Today we spread our wealth more thinly.”
Tag: 02.12.12
Is The Time Of Gay Literature Over – Thanks To The Internet And TV?
Novelist Christopher Bram: “Even when gay books were the only game in town, there were plenty of gay people who didn’t read. For them being gay was about sex and going to bars and dancing. There’s still gay culture around and it takes different shapes and forms. Gay bars don’t play the same role in gay life they once did 10-15 years ago. The Internet has changed that too. I miss the gay bookstores, but I like the difference and the variety.”
Drunk Drawing, Not A Problem In Glasgow
“The name of the pub is the Flying Duck. The name of the night is All The Young Nudes. It is a life-drawing club. Every Tuesday, for two hours, around 50 people gather here in a back room down a back lane with sketchpads and cans of cider. This is, perhaps, the only bar in Glasgow where a Stanley knife taken out and laid on the table implies not a threat of violence but an intention to sharpen one’s pencils.”
If You Think Chick-Lit Insults Women, Maybe That’s Your Problem
Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic books: “You can be highly intelligent, and also ditzy and klutzy. You can be unable to cook, you can like lipstick. And I think it’s more realistic to represent women having all these facets, than to say, OK, you’re intelligent, so I’ve got to write you as all competent, which I think is an unfair ideal.”
Finishing An Unfinished Symphony (Not *The* Unfinished Symphony, But Still A Schubert)
The BBC’s Radio 3, during a an eight-day stretch entirely devoted to Schubert, will “finish” one of the several symphonies the composer left unfinished at his death.
Who Won At The British Film Awards? They’re Not Talking
The Guardian‘s Xan Brooks live-blogged the BAFTAs from the top rows of the Opera House at Covent Garden. “Up steps Stephen Fry to welcome us all: ‘lords and Iron Ladies and media scum’. Fry, it transpires, is deeply proud of British cinema, whether it be represented by James Bond or little Harry Potter.”
Who Made The Rubik’s Cube, Defining Game Of A Generation?
Erno Rubik, of course. And it all started as foam.
Who Is Elizabeth McGovern? (Aside From Lady Grantham On ‘Downton Abbey’)
“The English approach to show business and their work is more — and this is a big generalization, I hasten to say — but it’s more, they work on it as a craft job. There’s not the expectation that any minute they’re going to take over the world, the way show business is set up in L.A., for instance. I feel comfortable with that.”
Portrait Of Mary Todd Lincoln A Hoax – And So Is Its Poignant Story
The portrait, which has been hanging in the Illinois Statehouse, isn’t of Mrs. Lincoln at all. “Bauman identifies the culprit behind the scam as Ludwig Pflum, who rechristened himself Lew Bloom and was given to the kind of self-invention that America became famous for during the industrial era. He worked as a jockey, circus clown, boxer and vaudevillian before settling on art collecting.”
Sondheim’s ‘Merrily’ Is Rolling Back Toward Broadway – Maybe
“On Wednesday night, a semi-staged ‘Merrily’ was presented at New York’s City Center, placing the problematic show closer to Broadway both in spirit and location — only four blocks from its original theater — than it’s been in 30-plus years. How did ‘Merrily’ get here after all its drama — it was the ‘Spider-Man’ of its season, with postponements, creative replacements and plenty of ill will — and after all these years?”