Vargas Llosa “has replaced Gabriel García Márquez” as the South American novelist North American readers must catch up on, Updike wrote in 1986, four years after García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature and 24 years before Vargas Llosa himself would. - The New York Times
Riefenstahl, who was full member of the Nazi propaganda machine, spent her entire very long post-WWII life using every tool she had “to deflect from her ideological affinity with nazism.” - The Guardian (UK)
As a baby, Adiarte was imprisoned by the Japanese during WWII. After his family moved to the U.S., he played a little prince and, eventually, the crown prince of Siam to Yul Brynner in The King and I, on both stage and screen. - The New York Times
“Her most recent film, The Cowboy and the Queen (2023), examined the unlikely friendship that blossomed between a Texas cowboy and Queen Elizabeth II after she learned of his unconventional approach to rearing horses.” - The New York Times
Davis wrote for The Atlantic for more than three decades, from 1984 to 2016, and was a contributing editor for much of that time. He also had a high-profile stint at The Village Voice, where he originated an annual jazz critics’ poll that continues today elsewhere and now bears his name. - The Atlantic
“(Her) bold paintings of male nudes challenged ideas about feminism, art and sexuality — although, like many of her peers, she was not recognized as a pioneer until her later years.” - The New York Times
For more than 200 years it has been believed that Shakespeare left his wife in Stratford-upon-Avon when he travelled to London and that a decision to leave her almost nothing in his will meant he probably felt bitterness towards her. - BBC
Since 2020 there have been 32 exhibitions of his work, staged everywhere from the National Gallery in London to Washington DC, Tokyo, California, Ontario, Istanbul and across Europe. The world is currently Hockney mad. - New Statesman
Artist Ogechi Chieke sued under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, filing the day before the window closed. The suit claims that Wiley committed a “crime of violence motivated by gender” which “would not have occurred if Plaintiff was male.” (Wiley is an openly gay man.) - Artnet
“(He was) known for his thick applications of paint and his furious brushstrokes … (and) an uncompromising personality; (his) paintings depicted scenes like Noah’s Ark breaking apart in a storm and a huge candy-cane-colored funnel cloud looming over a rural landscape.” - The New York Times
“Lindsey Halligan, 35, is a Trump attorney who seems to have tasked herself as a sort of commissioner — or expurgator, according to critics — of a premier cultural institution.” In fact, the executive order appears to have been her idea. - The Washington Post (MSN)
The movie, described by one outlet as The Big Short meets The Bridge of Spies, was a bit, let’s say, intensified. But the real guy’s “story is especially notable as Tetris continues to thrive.” - The Verge
Known for his work at The Village Voice and The Atlantic as well as for an influential annual critics poll, he, “more than many of his contemporaries, peered beyond the given framework of any musical subject, keen to consider the context, both cultural and commercial.” - NPR
“A scintillating principal dancer for the Paris Opera and New York City ballet companies, (he) took an unexpected leap by taking on yet another career-defining role, as artistic director of a fledgling program in Charlotte that he would help to massively transform over two decades” with his wife, Patricia McBride. - The Charlotte Observer
“He was the cellist of the Juilliard Quartet from 1974-2016, and a renowned teacher at New York’s Juilliard School. … His passion for contemporary music led to him giving premieres of works by composers including Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe and Charles Wuorinen, among others.” - The Strad
