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Dharpanam

The charm before the storm

Twenty-third of July, the day trouble brewed in the little slice of paradise that is Oslo. The laid-back Norwegian capital and its inhabitants, enjoying their much-awaited blink-and-you-miss-it summer, would have had a general premonition of the weather forecast for the day, but were scarcely prepared for what it had in store for them. Little did they know that shortly after noon a bomb and a gunman would rip through the tranquillity of the city.

My rendezvous with Oslo had taken place a few weeks earlier, much before this serene paradise was still safe to potter about on the cobblestones, lost in thought, without having to cast suspicious glances at every second stranger. My day had begun with a delicious Norwegian breakfast — open-faced ham sandwich, smoked salmon, eggs, bacon, pickled beet and cucumber and a variety of cheese. With my stomach full and a promising schedule to look forward to, I slipped on my coat and boots and set out to explore this city of fjords.

As we drove on, the imposing Akershus Castle loomed ahead with its fortress running along like a faithful aide watching over its master. There was something hauntingly beautiful about this structure from the 13th Century. Maybe it's because it has withstood numerous sieges: several members of the Norwegian royal family now lie buried within the mausoleum, perhaps even now guarding the precinct with their shadowy auras.

We made our way uphill to The Hollmenkollen Ski Jump. The meandering roads offered a panoramic view of the city. If you get lucky you might even see elks languidly helping themselves to plants in people's gardens. It was misty and as a result the starting point of the skiing area was shrouded in a haze, looking like what I thought a stairway to heaven would, if at all it existed. Inside the ski museum were displayed of various types of sleighs, skis and even a reindeer and polar bear. By now it was pouring outside. Given the city’s erratic weather it is considered advisable to keep an umbrella handy. My mother gave me the “I told you so look,” and I sheepishly looked away. To squeeze in an extra pair of footwear in my bag, I had left my umbrella back in Chennai. I regretted it, deeply, when I shelled out 70 Norwegian Krone for a Plain Jane brolly at the museum. But just as we stepped out, the rain stopped.

When the overcast sky cleared up, we thought it was a good time to visit the open-air Vigeland Sculpture Park. I remembered the travel brochure had some fantastic photographs of this place. Even before getting here I had already imagined myself trying out wacky poses with the sculptures. Sprawled across 80 acres, the park, named after sculptor Gustav Vigeland, has around 212 statutes in bronze and granite, all created by him. Each captures a different emotion that depicts the journey

from childbirth to death. A 60-ft monolith structure on a citadel enjoys prime importance. Carved on it are 121 figures of infants, men and women. Another striking feature is the fountain surrounded by 20 structures that represent the tree of life around it. Each in the shape of a tree but beneath the leafy crown stands a man in various stages of his life. The last one shows the man giving in to death. Little children, ironically, were choosing this particular installation to pose in front of.

All the walking around had now made me ravenous. So it was only right that we headed to Karl Johan street, the main avenue of Oslo. It looks nothing like Edvard Munch’s “An evening on Karl Johan Street”, which paints a nearly deserted road, dotted by a few houses and a handful of men in dark coats and tall hats. But that was in 1892, much before the now stylish capital had heard of Gucci’s, Zara’s and McDonalds. Today, the streets are flanked by shops and cafes. The good thing is that no vehicles are allowed here.

It started drizzling, despite which people continued to saunter about on the rain soaked street, some with umbrellas and some oblivious to the rapidly increasing pitter-patter of rain drops. A busker was playing at the crossroads. Children in coloured boots scampered gleefully trying to catch droplets in their mouths, while their mothers herded them to the safety of umbrellas.

It soon got colder and we rushed into a cafe, wrapping our frozen fingers around a steaming cup of coffee, sitting by the glass window and watching the world go by. Cheerful faces in bright outfits lit up the grey backdrop of rain, clouds and thunder — blissfully unaware of the grim tragedy that was lurking around.

a lonely woman

There is a lonely woman in her who cries remembering her long-dead amma and appa, a child who loves chasing aeroplanes and a mom who rushes back home to attend to her children despite a hectic schedule. Meet Rajshree Pathy, who is more than a celebrated businesswoman from Coimbatore.

A sugar baron; the first woman President of Indian Sugar Mills Association; recipient of the Global Leaders of Tomorrow from the World Economic Forum, Switzerland; former Chairperson of CII National Committee on textiles; an avid pursuer of food and agro business; energy; real estate, travel; health; hospitality and arts... Rajshree Pathy dons multiple hats with ease.

Early days

This 54-year-old Managing Director of Rajshree Group of Companies, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, is as chirpy as a 16-year-old even in the midst of a demanding timetable. But, as a child, Rajshree was quiet, nervous and cocooned; awestruck by the happenings at home. Father G. Vardaraj — industrialist, Parliamentarian, educationist and philanthropist — met stalwarts from various fields and young Rajshree was present at these meetings. She recalls, “It made me strong from within and curious about everything.” I also read a lot. My friend named me ‘ encyclopaedia'.”

Rajshree didn't want to go into the family business but wanted to do a degree in architecture from the U.S. but her parents didn't want to send her so far. When 17, she married industrialist S. Pathy. As time went by, Rajshree worked in her father's retail business (selling cars, jeeps and vans, as she defines it) and then moved to textiles. Interestingly, when she got the license for the sugar business, her father wasn't interested, as he wanted to establish a medical college for philanthropic reasons.

But she went ahead coping with both a growing family and the sugar factory. At 25, it wasn't easy. “During the setting up of the factory, I didn't see my children wake up. When Aishwarya grew up, I sent her to a boarding school in the U.S. as Coimbatore didn't have good schools. She didn't want to go but I had to push her. Whenever my children came home on holiday, I would take them to the villages I was working in and my offices. When they needed me urgently, I cancelled my meetings abroad; took the first flight back and rushed to attend to them. They slowly understood how and why their mother worked so hard.”

Creative bent

After setting up teams to take care of her businesses, Rajshree decided to follow her creative pursuits. She opened the Contemplate Art Museum at Coimbatore recently. “My greatest regret is that I am not a performing artiste. So I promote performing arts through Contemplate and feel good,” she says. Her love for architecture saw her design her office and factory.

Success has its own way of scarring its recipients. Rajshree is no exception. The tragic death of her parents and coping with her family and business often drained her emotionally. “My world came crumbling down when I lost my father in 1992. It shocked my mother so much that she became an invalid for 13 years. I was just 32 and it was tough for me to deal with it. I would pray for her death to relieve her of unbearable pain…” her voice chokes.

Keeping happy

The mood is getting sombre. It seems reasonable to cheer her up. So, how does she pamper the woman in her? And how is she always so chirpy? Rajshree wipes away her tears and smiles, “To pamper myself, I shop, dress well and go to an Ayurveda centre for one month every year and detoxify myself. I don't let the child in me die. Whenever I see an aeroplane flying, I go running out of my house to chase it! Like any child, I want to love people, trust them and be generous to them. I know love comes back. I have promised myself that I will not give anyone a chance to make me unhappy.” Did someone say success is the by product of right values?

Writer's room

Author Anita Nair is testing the waters with her next work – a translation of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's magnum opus Chemmeen, which is being published by Harper Collins. It will reach bookshelves in September. After scripting success with her novels, short stories, essays, book of poems, and stories for children, the writer wants to explore new genres in her literary journey.

The idea of a translation took shape in her mind when she was working on her novel Mistress. As its protagonist is a Kathakali actor, her research demanded that she read attakathas (the text of plays in Kathakali) of various plays. “I was struck by the poetry, and sheer beauty of the verses of Nalacharitham. Such a popular play, however, lacked a good translation. I wanted to do that. But, before attempting something so challenging, I wanted to try my hand at translating… something I have never done before,” explains Anita.

The author of passionate, searing and soul-searching novels such as The Better Man, Ladies Coupe, Mistress, and Lessons in Forgetting, wanted to take a break from the intense stories she had been writing for some time and explore new areas.

Need for good translations

“The last translation of Chemmeen was done many years ago. However, we still lack good translations of many of our great works in regional languages of India. If we attempt a literal translation of the native dialect, rustic flavour, and usage, the translation becomes ungrammatical,” she explains. The author points out that leading Latin American and German authors are household names in Kerala and India but we forget that what we read are all adept translations that read so smoothly.

So when the opportunity to work on a translation came her way, she did not think twice before she replied in the affirmative. Before long, she found herself delving into the cadence and rhythm of Thakazhi's characters and their lives.

She made her assistant Mini Kuruvilla read the story aloud to help her get the right tone and feel of the dialogues in the story. But, no, she did not see the movie. “I thought I would see the film as a reward, after the translation was done. In fact, all the while I was doing the translation, ‘Maanasa Maine…,' the iconic song in the movie Chemmeen, kept reverberating in my mind,” she adds, laughing.

As is her habit, in addition to the translation, she has been working on her new novel – a whodunit. It is a psychological crime thriller that has her plotting to set her reader on edge with her new book. “I was commissioned to write a historical novel on the Mammakam of Northern Kerala. That is still on but this thriller just fell into place,” she says. Her book of poems Malabar Mind is likely to be republished later this year, adds Anita who will be in the city for the Hay Literary Festival. Blogs are fine when a writer is talking about personal experiences. But I have reservations when bloggers begin to put on the mantle of reviewers without the experience to do that…

Author’s Notes

E-books of my works are available. But I still prefer the comfort of a book. You can't take your laptop to bed and read!

I am a voracious reader. One of the authors I enjoy reading again and again is Brazilian writer Amado Jorge.

My son, Maithreya, a voracious reader, is the one who gives me the titles of my books. If he feels the title does not sound right, then it usually does not. He has that feel for words and their meaning.

Lessons in management

Anita was in the city for a function organised by UST Global on management education. She is a disciplined writer and seems to be an adept multi-tasker, as she worked simultaneously on the translation and her previous novel Lessons in Forgetting. “I would work on my novel in the morning and on the translation in the afternoon. You can't work on more than three or pages each day,” she says. She had a dictionary by her side, and Mini helped her get the right flavour of a word and its usage in the context of the novel. “Thakazhi's novel uses a dialect that is unique to the coastal region. One has to understand the soul of a writer for a good translation and get a feel of the warp and weft of emotions that Thakazhi weaves in the novel,” she feels

A radio station

S. Pandiyarajan was fiddling around with his shortwave radio set one hot summer evening at Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, when he stumbled upon a strange station.

At first listen, it was a language he couldn't identify. It sounded like Tamil, but spoken in an accent he could not recognise. He listened on, straining his ears. To his surprise, he discovered that the voices were coming from faraway China.

“I could hear two Chinese people speaking in perfect Tamil!” he said. “And this was Sentamizh [classical Tamil], which you never hear anywhere, anymore, even in Tamil Nadu.”

That evening, Mr. Pandiyarajan became the latest member of China Radio International's fast-growing overseas fan base. The station, run by the Chinese government, has, for more than six decades, been tasked with carrying news from China — from politics to arts and culture — to boost the country's image overseas.

With humble beginnings in the civil war-torn China in the 1940s, CRI today is at the centre of a massive multi-billion dollar effort to boost rising China's “soft power” overseas, sending out daily broadcasts in 63 languages, 24 hours a day, from its expansive multi-storey headquarters in west Beijing.

Remarkably, CRI's Tamil station enjoys the widest reach of all its channels. Its popularity underscores the quiet success China's “soft power” push is having in unlikely locations. The Tamil station, which broadcasts every day from a modest 12th floor office, has more than 25,000 registered listeners — besides thousands of others who tune in casually every day — in Tamil Nadu and the rest of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Germany, the United States and Japan.

The Tamil station started broadcasting in 1963. Since then, it has continued to beam its shows uninterrupted, building up an almost cult following overseas, with its fans even organising themselves into a network of listeners' clubs.

Leading the station is Zhu Juan Hua, from Shanghai, who prefers to go by the Tamil name Kalaiarasi. Ms. Zhu has been with CRI Tamil since its launch, among the first group of students in this country who were trained in Tamil.

“When I joined CRI, the situation was far different,” said Ms. Zhu. “We had few speakers. Today, we have 15 highly trained Chinese Tamil-speaking staff, and plan to hire six more this year. We have been growing, and growing.”

Speaking in fluent Tamil, she says the station receives more than 450,000 letters every year, accounting for 30 per cent of all the letters CRI's more than 60 channels receive.

CRI, along with China Central Television and the Xinhua news agency, is now in the middle of an $8.7-billion “soft power” push to boost Chinese media overseas.

The station is on a drive to purchase prominent slots on local AM and FM channels in many countries. Earlier this year, CRI's Urdu channel launched FM broadcasts in Pakistan. CRI Tamil has also launched FM broadcasts in Sri Lanka, and is now in talks with stations in Tamil Nadu. CRI's Tamil shows are currently broadcast in India, on shortwave, every evening for two hours, starting at 7.30 p.m.

This month, the station invited the heads of some of its listeners' clubs in Tamil Nadu to visit its Beijing headquarters, part of an effort to engage more with listeners.

S. Selvam, head of the All-India Listeners' Club, said the station's popularity was driven by its novelty. “The first thing that strikes you is, why are these Chinese people learning Tamil, and speaking perfect Sentamizh?” he said. “You think, if they are making such an effort, we have to reach out to them.”

Mr. Pandiyarajan agreed. “This is something completely new,” he said. “We have Villupuram Tamil, Chennai Tamil, Puducherry Tamil. But I never thought I would discover that there would also be a Cheena [Chinese] Tam

Apple boss Steve Jobs

As of today, Apple boss Steve Jobs is richer than Uncle Sam.

While the world’s most powerful government has just $73.76 billion in its reserves, the world’s top technology company has a neat cash pile of $75.87 billion Thursday.

The US Treasury Department Thursday warned that it has now only this much operating budget as Republicans and Democrats fight over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. With only that much reserve at its disposal, the Obama White House has warned the Republicans that the US government won’t be able to meet its obligations as of Aug 2.

Facing a government default, Mr. Obama can definitely turn to Steve Jobs to give him a very brief breathing space.

The failure by the Republicans and Democrats to come to a compromise to raise the current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug 2 could lead to a hike in interest rates. The already battered dollar may also plunge further.

With its market capitalisation of $363.25 billion, Apple is the second largest company on the planet after American oil giant Exxon Mobil. The Cupertino—based Apple started rising suddenly in 2007 when it entered the smart phone market with the launch of its first version of the iPhone.

Within three years, Apple went on to overhaul BlackBerry company Research In Motion (RIM) which invented the smart phone and dominated the market.

But its fortunes skyrocketed last year with the launch of the iPad tablet which has sold in millions. In fact, the iPhone and the iPad have made Apple the czar of mobile computing technology as rivals play up catch—up.

The stock of the company, which doesn’t pay dividends, has now touched $400.

After Apple, another non—financial company sitting on a huge cash reserve is Microsoft whose own pile is about $40 billion.

a musician

Remo Fernandes will be performing in Kochi this Sunday at JTpac. The maverick musician answered in detail queries relating to his music and career in an exclusive interview. Excerpts:

You were the first big Indian name in English rock and pop music in India, who dared to strike out on your own, with zero support. On looking back, how do you feel?

I'm very happy I did it, and today I'm very happy that people like you recognise it! I had all this music inside me which I needed to let out, and since no record companies were giving me a contract, I started my own small home studio in Goa, and put out my first album.

Then one thing led to another; I scored music for two films, ‘Jalwa' and ‘Trikaal', and my music went national and then international within a couple of years. Totally unexpected.

Were you ever interested in architecture?

My Dad taught me my first musical chords and instruments. He always said music was a great hobby, but that one needed something steadier as a profession. I chose architecture because it involved drawing and design, and I loved both.

But as soon as I completed the course I went full time into music… One's profession is something we have to live with for most of our lives, so we might as well choose the one we love most. Then we never work a day in our lives.

Were you completely self taught? Guitar, flute and other instruments?

Yes, totally. I still cannot read or write music. My father enrolled me in music classes when I was about seven, but was wise enough not to force me when I refused to go back.

What is your idea of fusion music? You started it long before it became a vogue.

To me fusion is anything which is not pure-breed. Pure-breed is great, but can get predictable after a while.

When different music styles and cultures are thrown together, something unexpected and uncharted emerges I must say that nothing is truly pure-breed; everything is inter-related, all music and all musicians are influenced by something or someone else, so in a wide way, all music is fusion. We ourselves are fusion.

How different is the music scene today for beginners from the days you started out?

The computer and the internet have changed everything.

Today a kid with a CPU can record himself in CD quality, and put out a song on YouTube, FaceBook, etc. If it touches people's hearts and fancies, it can spread like wild fire.

Your lyrics are about politics, about corruption, staying away from drugs and you feel deeply about such causes. Today, do you find young musicians caring about such social issues?

My songs still are about such things which touch me strongly. Do check out my last release, “India, I Cry”, on YouTube, and on my website www.remomusic.com.

Frankly, I didn't hear socio-political songs in India back then, and I don't hear them today.

You are known to hold views like outsiders should not be allowed to buy land in Goa. Isn't that parochialism?

No. It is protection for a naturally and culturally unique, precious spot in India. We ruin all our natural paradises – look what we have done to Ooty, Simla, Dehra Dun; the list is endless.

These places are simply too tiny and fragile to accommodate onslaughts of settlers and builders from all over the country.

If we keep turning all our natural resorts into metropolis, where do we go on a holiday then?

What about your shows with A. R. Rahman? What is the common factor?

Besides being stage performers, we are both composers and arrangers who can handle everything from A to Z in a recording studio. I guess that's the greatest common factor between us.

You starred in the Pepsi ad more than 20 years ago, again setting a trend. What are you planning now?

What I'm planning now is a return to square one. I'm going to resurrect the old ones, as well as record and release my earliest songs – those written during my school and college days. That ought to be fun!

Mozhi 1

Story Telling

 

It is the telling of the story that so much of the world is in pursuit of. Perhaps this is why storytelling is the fundamental unit of childhood, and in itself a nuanced art that requires interest and training.

Geeta Ramanujam will tell you that Kathotsava 2011, to be held from July 31 in the city, is almost the grand culmination of the things Kathalaya does.

Kathalaya is a storytelling centre, which trains schoolteachers, both urban and rural, in an attempt to introduce storytelling as a valid part of the curriculum.

“Stories have the potential to be told, to be performed, and this festival celebrates the tradition of live storytelling, which is such an important part of cultures across the world,” says Ms. Ramanujam, founder and director, Kathalaya.

She adds that it is the first time that the storytelling festival is being organised on such a large scale, in five cities: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Vishakapatnam and Chennai.

A special part of Kathotsava 2011 is the Indo-Swedish partnership, which has brought together storytellers, story educators, and puppeteers to entertain and inspire live storytelling.

The line-up includes puppeteers such as Mirella Forsberg Ahlcrona, Buratino and Ola Henricsson, all from Sweden.

This festival will also witness performances of a collage of heritage puppet shows by a Moscow-born puppeteer with his 200-year-old heritage puppets.

The festival begins on July 31 in Bangalore with three shows at the Alliance Française by Mr. Henricsson, Ms. Ramanujam and the Buratino Puppet theatre, who also promise magic.

On August 1 and 2, teachers will be trained in puppetry and storytelling by Ms. Ramanajum, Dr. Ahlcrona and her daughter Amanda and Mr. Henriccson at the Aashirwad community centre, on St. Marks Road.

The workshops and performances are open to teachers, parents, children, professionals, theatre artists, artisans, students and all those interested in knowing what a storytelling fest has in store.

Tickets are available from the café at the venue or email kathalaya@gmail.com or call Kathalaya at 26689856. For details, visit www.kathalaya.org

Lucian Freud, an artist

Grandson of great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the artist, who died on July 20, never wanted to do the same thing twice

The original, unnerving, sustained artistic achievement of Lucian Freud, who died on July 20, aged 88, had at its heart a wilful, restless personality, fired by his intelligence and attentiveness and his suspicion of method, never wanting to risk doing the same thing twice.

The sexually loaded, penetrating gaze was part of his weaponry, but his art addressed the lives of individuals, whether life models or royalty, with delicacy and disturbing corporeality. Freud had a reputation for pushing subjects to an extreme. But unlike the American painters to emerge in the 1950s, his approach was in the western tradition of working from life and brought about with painstaking slowness, rather than unleashed virtuosity. Photographs taken in the studio by his assistant, model and good friend, the painter David Dawson, show Freud working from a roughly sketched charcoal form, the paint slowly spreading outwards from the head. Some canvases were extended, others abandoned while still a fragment. Portraits of his maturity drew comparisons with equally shocking works by Courbet, Titian and Picasso, the feelings exposed registering as both brash and profound.

By 1987, the critic Robert Hughes nominated Freud as the greatest living realist painter, and after the death of Francis Bacon (a fellow artist) five years later, the sobriquet could be taken as a commendation, or it could imply an honour fit for an anachronistic “figurative” artist working in London. Critics since Freud's first shows in the 1940s have had difficulties situating his achievement; the common solution has been to apply adjectives to the painted subjects in a way that reflects little more than personal taste, the writers telling readers whether the person portrayed was bored or intimidated, scrawny or obese, the paint slathered, crumbly or miraculously plastic. Others, however, eschew this moralising tone and are prepared to be startled by his “naked portraits.”

Freud was born in Berlin, to Ernst Freud, an architect and youngest son of the great psychoanalyst Sigmund, and Lucie Brasch. The family lived near the Tiergarten, with summers spent on the estate of Freud's maternal grandfather, a grain merchant, or at their summer house on the Baltic island of Hiddensee.

Realising the Nazi threat to Jews, his parents, Lucian and his brothers — Stephen and Clement — moved to Britain in the summer of 1933. At Dartington Hall, Devon, and then Bryanston, Dorset, Freud was preoccupied by horses and art rather than the classroom. Lucian enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, in January 1939 but found the laid-back atmosphere repellent, and rarely attended classes.

From 1939 to 1942, he spent periods at the unstructured school founded by Cedric Morris, who proved a sympathetic mentor, and Arthur Lett-Haines in East Anglia, first in Dedham, Essex, and then at Hadleigh, Suffolk. In March 1941, Lucian signed on as an ordinary seaman on the armed merchant cruiser SS Baltrover bound for Nova Scotia. The ship came under attack from air and then by submarine, and on the return journey he went down with tonsillitis.

By the age of 18, the charismatic, talented young man with a famous name had attracted friends such as Stephen Spender and the wealthy collector and patron Peter Watson. Freud began visiting Paris, first in 1946 while on his way to Greece, where he stayed for six months, and again in 1947, with Kitty Garman, niece of an ex-girlfriend, Lorna Wishart, daughter of Jacob Epstein and the subject of one of the first major paintings. His connections in Paris extended to people linked to the arts in the 1930s such as the hostess and collector Marie-Laure de Noailles.

The handful of surviving postcards contain no mention of post-war deprivations as he offers Meraud Guinness Guevara witty accounts of the installation of Andre Breton's surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1947 and thanks for her hospitality in Provence. Freud expresses admiration for the “malevolence” the French showed to foreigners.

On familiar terms with Alberto Giacometti and Balthus, and, to some degree, Picasso, the young Lucian, one senses, was marked for life by seeing how single-mindedly, and self-critically, these already famous artists pushed forward their art. When he moved in 1943 to Delamere Terrace on the Grand Union canal, the first of five addresses in Paddington, London, several of his Irish working-class neighbours became models, especially the brothers Charlie and Billy.

Paintings of Freud's two wives — Garman (whom he married in 1948 and divorced four years later) and Caroline Blackwood (whom he married in 1953 and divorced in 1957) — and other intimate friends are filled with suspense and pain, apparent in the strands of hair and a hand raised to the cheek as much as the wide eyes.

By the time of the Venice Biennale in 1954 — Lucian Freud shared the British pavilion with Bacon and Ben Nicholson — the question of prodigy versus an ultimately significant artist was being argued regularly. Freud's only involvement with the art colleges came though accepting William Coldstream's invitation to join the new staff at the Slade in 1949 (he made occasional appearances in the studios until 1954).

By the end of the 1950s, Freud's fraught personal life contributed to a visual restlessness, and he began standing to paint, letting the raked perspective exaggerate the anatomies of his subjects. Superficially less attractive, the paintings exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in London in 1958 and 1963 were harder to sell.

Freud's obsession with gambling on horses and dogs brought on debts and dangerous threats. The journalist Jeffrey Bernard, describing Freud's afternoons in the betting shop and evenings with the rich and distinguished (including “Princess Margaret's set'), wrote admiringly: “He has cracked the nut of how to conduct a double life.” International exposure increased after the 1974 Hayward exhibition, nurtured by Freud's admirers, particularly William Feaver, curator of a Tate retrospective in 2002, and the dealer James Kirkman. The revival of interest in painting that emerged around 1980 led to outstanding British artists being ring-fenced with an inappropriate label, the School of London.

A retrospective organised by the British Council reached Washington, Paris, London and Berlin in 1987-88, and the “recent work” exhibition created by the Whitechapel Gallery in 1993 drew crowds in New York and Madrid as well as the East End. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organised an exhibition with great impact, titled The Painter's Etchings, Freud's place in art history admitted through a side-door rather than placed in the canon.

Noteworthy event

The completion of a single picture turned into a newsworthy event. In 1993, a Daily Mail front-page headline asked: “Is this man the greatest lover in Britain?” A disconcerting recent painting, the artist working while “surprised by a naked admirer,” fed readers' curiosity about the octogenarian's love life. The rather sensational Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) achieved a record auction price for a living artist in May 2008, £17 million, by which time Russian oligarchs had joined the wealthy North American collectors who had already replaced upper-class British patrons. The promotion of pictures at auction sometimes gave unfortunate prominence to the failures, notably the truncated picture of a pregnant Kate Moss.

The artist related his acceptance of honours — the CH (the Order of the Companions of Honour) in 1983 and the OM (the Order of Merit) in 1993 — to his family's debt to Britain, the country that allowed them naturalisation in 1939. Lucian Freud described the move to England as “linked to my luck. Hitler's attitude to the Jews persuaded my father to bring us to London, the place I prefer in every way to anywhere I've been.” When his children (15 or so were recognised) began leading independent lives, most of them came to sit for him and he was proud of their talents. Bella Freud is a fashion designer and four others are successful writers — Annie Freud, Esther Freud, and Rose and Susie Boyt. Contrary to what has been written about anonymity, the identities of at least 168 sitters have been revealed in various interviews, commentaries and published information.

Any biography of the artist that is written with the claim to analyse character or feelings is doomed. Lucian's own, sharp recollections were both exciting and skewed. He recently spoke of how it amused him to hold the heads of schoolmates under water, but his occasional violence was countered by a precise, rather Germanic use of language and good manners.

An admitted control freak who lived alone and liked to use the telephone but not to give out his number, Freud kept relationships in separate compartments. He lived with the same aesthetic as that of his work — fine linen, worn leather, superb works of art (and a few cartoons), buddleia and bamboo in the overgrown garden and the residue of paint carried down from the studio. In this setting, he sustained, until the end, his ability to make portrayals of many of the people and animals who mattered to him, paintings that face-to-face are all-consuming and oddly liberating. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011

Science

NASA’s Wide—field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has discovered a long—hidden companion of the Earth — the first Trojan asteroid circling the sun in the Earth’s orbit.

Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet, locked in stable orbits by a gravitational balancing act between a planet and the Sun. Neptune, Mars and Jupiter are known to have Trojans.

Two of Saturn’s moons share orbits with Trojans. Scientists had predicted Earth should also have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth’s point of view.

"These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see,” said lead author Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada. "But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game—changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth’s surface,” he added.

Connors and his team began their search for an Earth Trojan using data from NEOWISE, an addition to the WISE mission that focused in part on near—Earth objects, or NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. The NEOWISE project observed more than 155,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more than 500 NEOs, discovering 132 that were previously unknown.

The team identified a small asteroid named ‘2010 TK7’ as an Earth Trojan after follow—up observations with the Canada—France—Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The asteroid is roughly 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter. It has an unusual orbit that traces a complex motion near a stable point in the plane of Earth’s orbit, although the asteroid also moves above and below the plane. The object is about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) from Earth.

The asteroid’s orbit is well—defined and for at least the next 100 years, it will not come closer to Earth than 15 million miles (24 million kilometers).

"It’s as though Earth is playing follow the leader. Earth always is chasing this asteroid around,” said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

Day of unveiling

Dharpanam