In March, offensive lineman John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens added to his curriculum vitae by co-authoring the latest of his several peer-reviewed academic articles — “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians” in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. If Urschel can understand, and even advance, tangled, obtuse formulas (which use familiar numbers, e.g., 1, 2, 3, and Greek letters such as phi, lambda, and sigma — lots of sigmas), why is he a football player, he asked himself on the Players Tribune website. “There’s a rush you get when you go out on the field . . . and physically dominate the player across from you.” He added, “I love hitting people.”
The National Gallery of Australia hosted a special series of tours of “James Turrell: A Retrospective” in early April — in which all guests were nude. The tours were staged by Australian artist Stuart Ringholt, who introduced the concept earlier at the Museum of Contemporary Art (and was nude, himself, for the Turrell show, though other gallery staff remained clothed). The post-tour cocktail reception was also in the nude.
The Australian “abstract expressionist” Aelita Andre began painting “professionally” at age 9 months, said her parents, and by 22 months had her own exhibit at Melbourne’s Brunswick Street gallery, and by age 4, the paintbrush-armed toddler had enjoyed a $24,000 sale. She has now also distinguished herself as an “artist” of another type while explaining her approach. In April, the now-8-year-old told News.com.au, “I interpret my style of painting as a magic, abstract universe. It doesn’t sit in one tiny sphere in all realism; it goes out and it explores the world.” She acknowledged seeing things (e.g., “rabbits”) that an 8-year-old might, but pointed out that she also sees “the cosmos.” “I just feel free. I don’t feel locked up in a tiny world.”
A man in France, fired from his job years ago, and who had been receiving unemployment benefits, suddenly found himself being dunned by the national labor agency when a tribunal finally ruled in the employer’s favor and ordered the man’s benefits paid back. The agency ordered the man’s current employer to garnishee his paycheck of the equivalent of $160-$210 per week .
