According to Lotte Lenya, longtime leading lady and intermittent wife of collaborator Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht was a brilliant and shameless appropriator of other writers' material. Whether a brilliant reinterpreter or shrewd plagiarizer -- the critics have been divided -- there's been no debate
Wary friend of Existentialism and gentle foe of nature's illusions, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright Samuel Beckett is one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most influential. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969 against his more modest wishes, Beckett specializ
While it may seem like a contradiction to speak of chaos and precision in the same sentence, the work of Jackson Pollock demands it. At the same time that his paintings depict disorder, frenetic abandon, and a turbulence of nearly cosmic proportions, they demonstrate perfect balance. The manner in wh
According to photographer Cindy Sherman, "The male half of society has structured the whole language of how women see and think about themselves." In "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), Sherman featured herself in various guises that resemble stock characters from Hollywood melodramas, providing a Po