Word: autodidacts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...artist to capitalize on traditional-with-a-twist. After years of holding down a day job as a graphic designer, Hisashi Tenmyouya's paintings now fetch $50,000 or more. Unlike Matsui or Kumi Machida, who graduated from Tama Art University, Tenmyouya is self-taught, and he brings an autodidact's passion to his work. At his spartan studio on the northeastern outskirts of Tokyo, he kneels placidly on the floor, surrounded by works in progress, many of them featuring the stylized samurai that have become his trademark. He feels a kinship to their uncompromising independence. "[Famed samurai] Musashi Miyamoto...
...York City, 1928. Sir Thomas Beecham, the prickly British baronet and conductorial autodidact, was making his American debut in a concert with the New York Philharmonic. So was Horowitz. Beecham was apparently not about to let some upstart, unknown Russian steal his thunder, even if the piece was Tchaikovsky's thunderous Piano Concerto No. 1. Horowitz was unable to speak English, but it was clear from the rehearsals that even a translator would be no help. "Beecham thought I was of no importance," the pianist remembers. At the concert, the conductor adopted an even more ponderous tempo than during...
...once trumpeted. A couple of years ago, says a Labor colleague, "he was into matched savings accounts, nest egg accounts, employee share ownership and corporate social responsibility. And where has all that gone? Nowhere." Prolific Latham can also appear flaky and insincere, with some of the weaknesses of an autodidact...
...result is that Knightley has the ethic of an artist and the unaffected energy of an autodidact. "Sometimes I put my head into a character's head and go really simplistically and think, like, What's the character's favorite color?" she says of her attempts at technique. "But I don't see how that helps so much." She has also tried listening to loops of Jeff Buckley and Nirvana to get into the right frame of mind to play an alcoholic Vermont waitress, opposite Adrien Brody, in the recently completed independent film The Jacket. "Oooh! I tried...
...eclecticism?if he is like the Buddha, then he is a decidedly Renaissance Siddhartha?stems from an autodidact's caprice. As an artist, he has felt his way to artistic nirvana through experimentations in brushwork, ink tones, language and the magic that happens when all three are harmoniously combined. He graduated with a degree in English literature from Singapore's Nanyang University before becoming an artist and holding his first exhibition at the city-state's National Library in 1973. He converted to Buddhism that year, and his spiritual epiphany made him give up painting for four years, when...