Remembering Kurt Vonnegut on his birthday 🎂
📷 Inge Morath, 1986
"He laughed a lot and was kind to everyone."
- Dan Wakefield
Jill Krementz took this picture of herself & her husband Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt and me at the end of the evening.
In Kurt’s words: ”When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’”
Kurt Vonnegut
"I would just as soon have skipped it all", 2006 @smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
Kurt Vonnegut by Gil Friedberg for Life magazine, 1969
"I let the dog out, or I let him in, & we talk some. I let him know I like him, & he lets me know he likes me."
Kurt Vonnegut, hard at work in a typical Jill Krementz author shot. Vonnegut & Krementz were married from 1979 until his death in 2007. This was the photo the @NYTimes used in Vonnegut's obituary.
He called her "Jillio".
From Kurt Vonnegut's interview @ParisReview, 1977
INTERVIEWER
There were some bad reviews?
VONNEGUT
Only in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The New York Review of Books, The Village Voice & Rolling Stone. They loved me in Medicine Hat.
Kurt Vonnegut with the cast of his play Happy Birthday, Wanda June
📷 Jack Mitchell, 1970
"The bicycle was so full of magic & innocence, hiding there. It might have been a unicorn."
- Kurt Vonnegut
📷 Herbert List, Hamburg, 1930
Kurt Vonnegut by Ulf Andersen, 1988
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer & cold in the winter. It’s round & wet & crowded. At the outside, you’ve got about 100 years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you’ve got to be kind'."
Kurt Vonnegut by Santi Visalli, 1972
"For a book about surviving a massacre, Slaughterhouse-Five makes you laugh an unreasonable amount. Not least through the repetition of three short words that have inspired a thousand bad tattoos: 'So it goes'."
- @MBJack
Kurt Vonnegut by Douglas Elbinger, 1992
"Vonnegut managed to combine an exceptional humanity with a remarkably blasé pessimism, & presented his despair at human life in such engagingly simple terms that even Charlie Brown would have found it persuasive."
- Phil Baker
Kurt Vonnegut by David Levine, 1976 @smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
"His sheer amiability could light up all the cathedrals in America."
- J. G. Ballard
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Remembering Roland Barthes on his birthday 🎂
📷 Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1963
"Among the brand-name French theorists of the mid-20th century, Roland Barthes was the fun one. (Foucault was the tough one, Derrida was the dreamy one, Lacan was the mysterious one...)"
- Sam Anderson
Roland Barthes by Jean-François Bauret, 1980
A portrait from the philosopher's final year.
Another portrait by Jean-François Bauret of Barthes, from 1980. This must have been one of the last photographs of Barthes, since he died on March 26th of that year. @MAPatrimoine
Remembering Édouard Vuillard on his birthday 🎂
Self-Portrait with Waroquy @metmuseum, 1889
"Nothing is important save the spiritual state that enables one to subjectify one's thoughts to a sensation and to think only of the sensation, all the while searching to express it."
Édouard Vuillard
The artist's sister with a cup of coffee, 1893 ☕️
Oil on cardboard @FitzMuseum_UK
Édouard Vuillard
The Green Interior (Figure Seated by a Curtained Window)
1891 @metmuseum
"I don’t do portraits. I paint people in their surroundings."
Remembering Paul Signac on his birthday 🎂
A portrait by Georges Seurat, 1890
"The Neo-Impressionist does not stipple, he divides. And dividing involves... guaranteeing all benefits of light."
Paul Signac
Evening Calm, Concarneau, Opus 220 (Allegro Maestoso), 1891 @metmuseum
On Paul Signac's birthday, download the free PDF of Signac, 1863–1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, from the 2001 @metmuseum exhibition. metmuseum.org/art/metpublica…
Remembering Carlos Fuentes on his birthday 🎂
📷 Christopher Pillitz, London, 1994
"We cannot fathom a debate on Mexican literary and humanistic traditions in which his name and work are absent."
- Rubén Beltrán
Carlos Fuentes was a member of the Cannes jury in 1977. What a fascinating group!
Roberto Rossellini, Anatole Dauman, Benoîte Groult, Carlos Fuentes, Jacques Demy, Marthe Keller, Pauline Kael, Youri Ozerov & N'sougan Agblemagnon
📷 Patrice Picot, May 20
Carlos Fuentes & Gabriel Garcia Marquez were close friends
📷 Dario Lopez-Mills, 2008
Fuentes inscribed one of his books to "Gabo" with fabulous drawings of the two authors.
Remembering Mose Allison on his birthday 🎂
📷 Jack Vartoogian, 1998
"In the South, I’m considered an advanced bebop type. In New York, I’m considered a country blues-folk type. Actually, I don’t think I’m either. Maybe I’m a little of both."
Mose Allison by Ebet Roberts, 1989
"He established himself playing & singing in a gentle, understated way, in a narrow range & using a bouncing, jigging rhythm that was closely related to the so-called 'swamp music' that Jimmy Giuffre was playing."
- John S. Wilson
Mose Allison by Michael Wilson
"There's a lot of terrible things goin' on all the time, but you gotta try and have some fun in the end."
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