“Since Lennon’s death, she has been hounded for exploiting his memory; just last week she was castigated for including Lennon’s blood-stained clothes in a New York exhibition, a decision she justifies as a work of political art. […] Even at the height of her grief, she went on with her work … ‘[B]ut nobody really noticed,’ she says without rancour. ‘I was like a prisoner drawing on the walls or someone doing cave paintings. I was laying things for the future, for the next prisoner who might notice it.'”
Tag: 05.29.09
What’s The Opposite of Repugnance?
“What is interesting about repugnance is how it shifts over time. My favorite example is life insurance. Until the mid-19th century, this concept was widely held to be repugnant – it meant placing a bet, after all, on the untimely death of a loved one. … [But there’s] something that’s perhaps even more interesting: the opposite of repugnance … ‘transactions that, as a society, we often seek to promote, for reasons other than efficiency or pure political expediency.'”
Dick Cavett Just Loves Jonathan Miller (Guess He Never Had To Listen To The Whingeing About Opera Houses)
“The thing about Jonathan is that his comic gift is accompanied by another trait … He is one of the most formidable intellectuals in captivity. In that capacity he has fathered many books and articles in scholarly publications on science, physics, religion, politics, the arts, medicine, psychology, mesmerism and just about everything else.”
In Pop History, Do Mess With Mr. In-Between
The history of pop music “fixates on origins and breakthroughs, magic years of transformation, cusp points when undergrounds go overground. It gives far less attention to those stretches of time between the upheavals – years of drift and diaspora, periods without an easily discernible ‘vibe,’ zeits devoid of geist.”
The Next Oxford Poet – A Bad Boy (Girl)?
“Now our poets are mostly good guys. They go for long walks. They think about how much people have suffered. They try to heal the world with their language. The exceptions are incredibly rare.”
Boston’s MFA Wins Lawsuit For Painting
“The Museum of Fine Arts has won a lawsuit it filed to establish its legal title to a valuable 1913 painting by Oskar Kokoschka. The judgment in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts seemingly settles a dispute that began in 2007, when attorneys for Claudia Seger-Thomschitz, an Austrian woman, demanded the return of the work from the museum.”
Charles Russell, 93, Helped Revive Noel Coward’s Career
“The theatrical impresario Charles Russell, who has died at the age of 93, worked for many years with Noël Coward. He made his entry into showbusiness in Coward’s 1942 film In Which We Serve, and was responsible for reviving the playwright’s postwar fortunes, acting as his New York business manager from the mid-1950s until the two had a final, disastrous falling out in the early 1960s.”
Missing From Today’s Art – Sex?
“There isn’t enough sex in the arts today. Look back at the 20th century and the whole point of modernism was to liberate the carnal.”
Declining Book Sales Have Publishers Gloomy
“Publishers sold 3.08 billion copies in 2008, down 1.5 percent from the 3.13 billion copies sold the previous year, according to Book Industry Trends 2009, an annual report that analyzes sales in the United States. Higher retail prices helped to lift net revenue just 1 percent, to $40.3 billion from $39.9 billion. The numbers confirm a litany of dreary news that has emerged from the publishing industry since last fall.”
CBC Pink-Slips 158, Including Some Familiar Names
Among those to take retirement packages are some of CBC’s most experienced reporters, including Brian Stewart, of The National, Steve Finkelman, a municipal affairs reporter in Edmonton, and John McGrath, who covers Queen’s Park in Toronto.