John Powers: “My job was simple: Paint by numbers. The most intricate sections required miniature brushes, sizes 0 and 00, their bristles no longer than an eyelash. The goal was to hand-fashion a flat, seamless surface that appeared to have been manufactured by machine, which meant there could be no visible brush strokes, no blending, no mistakes.”
Tag: 08.17.12
Tipping – It’s Destroying Democracy
Or maybe the ubiquity of tip jars is more an example of how the U.S. is deeply failing its workforce – and its understanding of its founding ideals.
Watching A Dance Film? You’ll See Some Politics For Sure
Dance movies “have long been silent vehicles for politics, delivering revolutionary morals to unsuspecting dance fans for years.”
Remembering Martha Graham, Just In Case You’d Forgotten
“Nothing was simple about Martha Graham–the life or the work.” A new biography highlights both the contradictions and the threads of connection.
Harry Harrison, 87, The Man Who Invented Soylent Green
“Flights of fancy were Harrison’s stock in trade. A coal-fired flying boat? A submarine to Mars? No problem. He imagined taking a time machine to the future and finding no one there. In his 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!, which was translated to the screen as Soylent Green in 1973, he painted a dystopian nightmare of too many people scrambling for too few resources.”
Thomas Hardy Comes To The Opera, But The Adaptation Was Violent
“There are times when murdering someone else’s darlings is a more harrowing process than murdering one’s own. Adapting for the opera stage probably involves more blood-shed than usual, but the nature of that transformation does require – and therefore offers – greater freedoms.”
Nope, Apple TV Won’t Disrupt Cable
“Analysts thrilled by the idea that Apple wants to get into TV have convinced themselves that they can untie the cable bundle, and give us when-we-want-it-how-we-want-it video the same way it changed the music industry 12 years ago. But they are missing something important.”
Champion Of Print Upsets Balance Of Literary Universe By Writing For iPad
“Devotees of the old-fashioned printed book who are distressed by the onrushing digital future — and there are more of them out there than you might think — cherish William H. Gass’s 1999 essay, ‘A Defense of the Book.'” Now Gass has produced a piece that’s only available on the iPad. What the living hell?
Did The Days Of The Macho Art Critic Die With Robert Hughes?
“The macho was the antidote to the fear. It is inherently scary to be exposed to your fellow human being and Hughes, like [Clement] Greenberg before him, exposed himself again and again. … The macho was a tool, a weapon in his arsenal.”
Transparent Playwriting – In A New York Shop Window
“Bettis said that she often wrote from midnight to 5 a.m., and that certain common activities — like ‘pacing around in my underwear’ or picking up a violin to play her way through a bit of writer’s block — would not be on display.”