Warhol Painting Could Fetch $25m+

“An Andy Warhol painting of Dame Elizabeth Taylor is expected to sell for more than $25m at an auction in New York. The 1963 portrait, called Liz, is one of 12 paintings of the actress which Warhol created while Dame Elizabeth was recovering from an illness. According to reports, the portrait belongs to British actor Hugh Grant.”

The Original Art Xerox

It’s largely a lost art these days, but woodcutting was one of the most respected artistic trades in earlier times. “The baroque woodcut industry didn’t just produce pictures for the walls. It also made frontispieces for books, pages for Bibles, sacred images for home altars and technical illustrations for academic texts.” Most important, it made the wide distribution of great works of art possible centuries before modern duplication technology had been conceived.

Surprise Pick To Head CBC

The Canadian government has appointed “Hubert T. Lacroix, a Montreal corporate lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions who has a background acquiring radio stations and other media assets,” to run the CBC, replacing Robert Rabinovitch. “Some observers are surprised that neither Richard Stursberg, the head of CBC English television, nor his French counterpart, Sylvain Lafrance, got the job, and it’s unclear whether they were even in the running.”

Salander Files Bankruptcy, Delays Lawsuits

“Lawrence B. Salander, the embattled Manhattan art dealer whose gallery was ordered locked by a State Supreme Court justice last month, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday. Mr. Salander and his Salander-O’Reilly Galleries — which operated from a town house on East 71st Street, around the corner from the Frick Collection — had been facing a barrage of lawsuits alleging that customers or business partners had been defrauded.” The bankruptcy will effectively delay those suits.

Viewers Won’t Feel Strike Effects Immediately

One of the tricky parts of the Hollywood writers’ strike is that many of the prime time TV shows that are being struck will be able to continue airing for as long as a couple of months, thanks to a backlog of episodes already filmed. “If a strike extends into January, however, viewers should expect some shake-ups in prime-time line-ups.” That would likely mean a lot more dreaded (but popular) reality TV shows.

Rescuing The Music That Sounds Like Music

Samuel Barber’s lush, beautiful opera, Vanessa, was a hit with critics when it first opened in 1958, but it was quickly blasted by the modernists who ruled the musical/intellectual roost at the time. Now, it’s being restaged by New York City Opera, and Anthony Tommassini says that “it’s hard to imagine today what anyone found so objectionable in the opera.”