Damien Hirst’s “The Bilotti Paintings: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”
January 21-March 26, 2006, at the Norton Museum of Art.

These awesome evocations of the Four Evangelists set the artifacts of writing — pens, phrases, manuscripts — within the cosmic context of infinite space and colorful nebulae. Butterflies symbolize the universal evangelism of those who wrote the Gospels and carried their message to all mankind: “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

Artblog believes that “the eternal verities have to get hauled out in support of his work” because “as objects, they fail loudly and obviously.”

A few of Beckett’s associates reminisce about him in the Guardian.

I rather like actor Peter Woodthorpe’s report about the performance of a Beckett play: “On the first night there was only one curtain call and there were boos and cat-calls. But then the whole atmosphere changed - dramatically changed - after the Sunday reviews by Hobson and Tynan.” Makes you think a bit, doesn’t it, about what good a critic can occasionally do?

And then there’s writer Martin Esslin who remembers his first meeting during which he was supposed to find out more about Beckett: “He opened a bottle of whiskey and I thought, my goodness, what a wonderful man. Then I thought, my God, can I ask him ‘Are you married?’ or ‘What about women?’ He was so scathing about this article in The Observer that I thought he would get furious and throw me out. And so I was in this Racinian conflict of conscience, between my duty as a researcher and my duty as a potential friend. In the end my friendship won and I didn’t ask him.” Good for him.

Maud Newton provides a link to the Beckett centenary.