Tag: 03.23.05

Up Short: Bobby Personified An Era, City

“Bobby Short came to personify what he sang about. He was that miraculous instant when Ginger Rogers takes Fred Astaire’s hand and whirls toward him, white gown alight. He was every bulb in the Chrysler Building’s crown, every first grown-up kiss, every Tiffany box hidden in a pocket. When Bobby Short entered the small spotlight in that Upper East Side hangout, depression large and small dissolved into the champagne; history’s headlines and your own true stories were gladly left at home. When his job was over, you strolled into the New York night, succored. Of course we knew it was fool’s gold, but the glamour and potential that the big city offered us when we were young became real again in the Cafe Carlyle, at the other end of a voice.”

National Gallery’s Best Day Ever?

The DC museum’s East Wing opening of “Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre” draws more than 9000 visitors its first day. “Museum guards with clickers stationed at the entrance to the 10-room exhibition — a kind of tour of Paris night life in the late 1800s — counted 9,230 visitors. That easily surpasses the 6,190 who attended the opening of “Treasure Houses of Britain” in 1985 and the 3,340 who came for the first day of “Johannes Vermeer” in 1995. The West Building’s attendance record was set in 1963 when an average of 19,205 visitors a day saw Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.”

Authentication Committee Set Up For Canadian Artist

Fakes of famed Canadian First Nations painter Norval Morrisseau abound. So a new official committee has been set up to authenticate work. “The committee, composed of five Morrisseau experts, will function much like the famous four-member Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, which has been the sole arbiter of genuine Warhols since the pop-art master’s death in 1988: If you think you have a real Morrisseau but want to know for sure, you’ll have to submit it to the committee for determination. And once you do, you’ll have to sign a contract by which you absolve Morrisseau, his family and Milrad of any liability if the committee comes back and says, ‘It’s not a Morrisseau.”

Is Mariss Jansons The World’s Best Conductor?

“Everyone who has heard this burly Latvian conduct the two orchestras with whom he has spent the most time (the Oslo Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony) has witnessed that rare alchemy whereby a good ensemble—as if galvanized by a collective will the players didn’t know they had—becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In this regard, Mr. Jansons’ only peer may be Sir Simon Rattle, who brought his provincial City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to New York a few years ago and played a Mahler Third Symphony that had the man sitting in the box next to me—the New York Philharmonic’s then music director, Kurt Masur—glowering in disbelief at the spell cast by these nobodies from the English Midlands.”

Can Gourevitch Mend Paris Review?

The appointment last week of New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch as new editor of The Paris Review seems to have quieted some critics of the magazine. “I’d never thought it would be fun to edit a huge magazine, it was never something that I aspired to. But the idea of having a small magazine, a writer’s magazine that was really about writing—I started to think about it, and I thought, I’d love to do this.”

Dan Brown Fans Flock To Vatican To Check Out Mystery

Tour groups are flocking to the Vatican in search of the clues in Dan Brown’s murder mystery Angels and Demons. “The book uses his sculpture as clues pointing to a dastardly plot led by a secret society against the Roman Catholic Church – a threat to blow up the Vatican as the church elects a new pope. Surely this is an opportunity for [the Church] to show they are not an occult force shrouded in mystery. Dan Brown’s implication that Bernini was part of an anti-religious conspiracy has left some art historians fuming. Others though are more pragmatic.”

Expert: “Fake” Cezanne Is Real

An expert says a painting recently declared a fake is in fact a real Cezanne. “He based his assessment on the unsigned work, purported to have been painted by Paul Cezanne, being riddled with secret “signatures” left behind by the renowned French impressionist. The piece, Son in a High Chair, was among notable works said to have been taken from the home of eccentric NSW art restorer John Opit in February last year.”