Posts filed under 'Art Obits'

Judith Hoffberg (1934-2009)

Judith Hoffberg (1934-2009)

Add comment January 29th, 2009

John Updike

Prolific US author John Updike dead at 76
41 mins ago AFP/File – Pulitzer Prize-winning author

NEW YORK (AFP) – Prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning US novelist John Updike, whose books and short stories chronicled small-town American life, has died at age 76, his publisher Knopf said.

“It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning at the age of 76, after a battle with lung cancer,” Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer said in a statement.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Updike published at least a dozen short story collections and 25 novels.

His most famous books were in the Rabbit series, including “Rabbit, Run” and “Rabbit Redux.” He also wrote hundreds of short stories, poetry, literary criticism and reviews in The New Yorker magazine.

“He was one of our greatest writers and he will be sorely missed,” Latimer said.

The Washington-based Academy of Achievement described Updike as “one of America’s premier men of letters.”

Updike recounted how a sickly childhood on a farm in Pennsylvania prepared him for a cerebral life.

“He suffered from psoriasis and a stammer, ailments that set him apart from his peers. He found solace in writing, and won a scholarship to Harvard,” the Academy of Achievement noted.

Updike went on to edit the famous Lampoon humor magazine at Harvard and then published a poem and fiction in the New Yorker soon after graduating.

“My mother had dreams of being a writer and I used to see her type in the front room. The front room is also where I would go when I was sick so I would sit there and watch her,” Updike said.

Add comment January 27th, 2009

Art Obits – Fukuda, Yoshida

Shigeo Fukuda (1932-2009)

Ray Yoshida (1930-2009)

Add comment January 21st, 2009

Andrew Wyeth dies

American painter Andrew Wyeth dies at 91

By PATRICK WALTERS, Associated Press Writer Patrick Walters, Associated Press Writer – 3 mins ago

PHILADELPHIA – Artist Andrew Wyeth, who portrayed the hidden melancholy of the people and landscapes of Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine in works such as “Christina’s World,” died early Friday. He was 91.

Wyeth died in his sleep at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Chadds Ford, according to Hillary Holland, a spokeswoman for the Brandywine River Museum.

The son of famed painter and book illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyath gained wealth, acclaim and tremendous popularity. But he chafed under criticism from some experts who regarded him as a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator.

A Wyeth retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006 drew more than 175,000 visitors in 15 1/2 weeks, the highest-ever attendance at the museum for a living artist. The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, a converted 19th-century grist mill, includes hundreds of works by three generations of Wyeths.

It was in Maine that Wyeth found the subject for “Christina’s World,” his best-known painting. And it was in Pennsylvania that he met Helga Testorf, a neighbor in his native Chadds Ford who became the subject of the intimate portraits that brought him millions of dollars and a wave of public attention in 1986.

___

Associated Press Writer JoAnn Loviglio contributed to this report.

 

Add comment January 16th, 2009

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