artist
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You Are Not an Also-Ran
The dictionary app on my phone has a word of the day. Today, it’s “also-ran.” What a way to start the day. The app might as well have offered up “existential crisis” or “loser” instead of playing cute with the sports vernacular. Ever since HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” there’s been a pervasive notion…
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Richard Scarry’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ham
Be careful what you read to your children as it may have long term consequences for the shape of their lives. Consider what happened to me, which I only realized today when my three-year-old brought me a new book to read to him. It was a classic, Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? whichI…
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Modigliani: Of Brush and Ego Strokes
On his deathbed, Picasso is alleged to have whispered “Modigliani,” the name of the Italian painter with whom he shared a tumultuous friendship in the Paris of the 1920s. Amedeo Modigliani, known chiefly for his sensual, primitive-looking nudes, succumbed to a lethal trifecta of tuberculosis, addiction and poverty 50 years earlier at the age of…