An honest portrait of Karsh

8 Dec. 2007
Montreal Gazette, Canada
LOUISE ABBOTT, Freelance

Ottawa photographer focused on history-makers

Years ago, a friend gave me a second-hand copy of Portraits of Greatness, a 1959 coffee-table book by renowned Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh. The portraits featured the likes of artist Georgia O'Keeffe, composer Igor Stravinsky, writer Ernest Hemingway, physicist Niels Bohr and Queen Elizabeth II.

The accompanying anecdotes described each sitting - how, for instance, Karsh had plucked a cigar out of Winston Churchill's mouth and thus caught the defiant expression that characterized the British prime minister during the Second World War.

I found much in Karsh's black-and-white photos to be admired, including his Rembrandtesque mastery of chiaroscuro. Nonetheless, I preferred more natural environmental portraits to the formally posed images that the Ottawa-based photographer produced with a large-format camera and dramatic artificial lighting.

In the intervening years, I have seen more of Karsh's work in print and in exhibition, and I have remained ambivalent about it. Reading Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh did not change my opinion, but it did deepen my understanding of the man behind the camera and the era that shaped his photography - an era in which, author Maria Tippett notes, "the public was hungry for visual images of its heroes."

When Tippett proposed a biography in 1998, Karsh was uninterested in cooperating, "convinced that he had already told his story in his many autobiographical writings." After his death in 2002, however, the cultural historian was granted full access to his archives; interviews with family members, friends, and former employees; and permission to reproduce images by and of Karsh. She spent four years researching and writing her manuscript.

Of necessity, her narrative begins slowly. Karsh was born in Turkish Armenia in 1908, and to understand him means understanding his roots and the atrocities that befell Armenians during his childhood.

Members of Karsh's extended family became part of the Armenian Diaspora, and that was how Karsh ended up at 15 in Sherbrooke under the tutelage of his uncle, George Nakash, a portrait photographer.

Karsh had originally hoped to study medicine, but once he opted for photography, he pursued it single-mindedly. At 19, he began an apprenticeship with Boston portraitist John Garo, who taught him more about the art of photography and about "the necessity of being well attired and well educated in order to win the respect and inspire the complicity of his subject." Karsh "came to share the belief that the face could express the soul (and) ... that it was the achievers in society who, more than anyone else, possessed an innate goodness, which the photographer could expose by illuminating the soul."

Karsh read voraciously, improved his spoken English, and socialized with Garo's artist friends. In 1931, he moved to Ottawa to establish his own studio; the Canadian capital, he reasoned, "would attract the most interesting people." His first choice had been Washington, but "the (American) immigration quota for Armenians was nil."

With the assistance of Solange Gauthier, his first wife and business manager, as well as the patronage of Canadian government officials, Karsh rose to international fame in a remarkably short number of years. He did so by working relentlessly (and demanding equally long hours of his staff), seeking out and fastidiously researching famous "achievers," and then using "old-world charm" and "gentle bullying" to photograph them. In time, celebrities sought him out, eager to be "Karshed."

Tippett chronicles Karsh's more than 60-year career thoroughly. She highlights the portrait commissions for media and corporate clients that took him and his cumbersome equipment around the world and made him a wealthy man. She incorporates accounts of his lesser-known journalistic work, too.

In tracing Karsh's life, Tippett has created an honest portrait. She doesn't shy away from revealing the often contradictory facets of Karsh's character: "When he spoke, he mixed courtesy and flattery with scorn and boastfulness. He exuded an air of prosperity yet also of insecurity."

She also acknowledges the art establishment's mixed reactions to Karsh's work, citing those who praised his portraiture as beautiful and compassionate, and those who dismissed it as fuddy-duddy hero worship.

Although Karsh was sometimes offended by criticism, he knew that his portraits would live on. They are, after all, a roll call of history-makers - they include every U.S. president from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton. "Karsh frequently compared himself to an historian," Tippett concludes, "and this, ultimately, is what he was. He recorded faces and gestures for posterity as much as for publication in the press."

Louise Abbott is a writer-photographer in the Eastern Townships. Her latest book, The Heart of the Farm, will be published by Price-Patterson in 2008.

PORTRAIT IN LIGHT AND SHADOW: THE LIFE OF YOUSUF KARSH

By Maria Tippett

House of Anansi Press,

427 pages, $39.95

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Rockumentary rages against genocide machine

June 8, 2007
Globe & Mail
QUESTIONING: CARLA GARAPEDIAN
By R.M. VAUGHAN

Before I watched Screamers, a new documentary by the BBC's Carla Garapedian, I thought the film was just another concert documentary - this time about the U.S. prog-punk band System Of A Down, who sound a lot like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and look a lot like Rage Against The Machine, two bands I cannot stand.

Screamers, however, is much more than a backstage-pass movie. The members of SOAD are Armenian-American, and have dedicated themselves to educating the world about the Armenian genocide and the Turkish government's continued denial of the crime.

Remember the good old days, when concert films were all about Jack Daniels, bouncy groupies named Candy and the purple haze at the back of the bus?

A rockumentary about the Armenian genocide must be a first.

One idea was definitely to reach a younger market, because who's going to want to go to the movies to see a genocide film? But what impressed me when I first went to a SOAD concert, and I wasn't a fan, was the number of human-rights groups camped out around the concert area. The young fans knew all about Armenia, Rwanda, Darfur - I was shocked by this. I guess I was rather cynical about the next generation.

I'm not questioning the sincerity of the band, but isn't there a danger, especially when you're talking about pop music and kids, that the discussions about genocide will become just another part of their PR package?

I would say yes, of course. But in the case of this band, if you look at their record, they are very publicity-shy. They shy away from the usual trappings of publicity that surround rock stars. Their message is: We are our performance. They don't really even talk publicly, and they were very reluctant to do the film. The only reason they agreed to do it was because they knew of my record with human-rights films - but it took a lot of persuading. They were afraid the concert aspects of the film would detract from the politics. They were worried about exactly what you describe, so this was an act of faith on their part.

The other danger was that the film would end up being too serious and po-faced, so I included some tour humour, and really needed to show the kids at the concerts having a good time. Part of talking about genocide for the band is also talking about survival, about enjoying life and saying I'm here, I'm making noise, I am here because my grandparents survived the horror.

The band comes across as fun-loving. They don't seem to suffer from Bono-itus.

They are. They don't take themselves seriously. They never tell their audiences that they should feel only sorrow or pity, but that they should be passionate about life.

Are you in danger now if you visit Turkey?

Well, looking at the evidence - one of the contributors to our film, the journalist Hrant Dink, was assassinated after he gave an interview to us. I don't attribute his death to our film, but I've been told, unofficially, that all the people who are Turkish citizens in our film are on a hit list, are considered traitors. I don't know if that's true, because authoritarian states often create these rumours to frighten people into censoring themselves, but there's certainly a climate of fear. To answer your question directly, I have not received any threats, and I'm touching wood here. I would very much like to go to Turkey to show the film, but I'd like that to happen without the cinema owner being arrested.

Your film posits that all genocides are interrelated. I have to admit, I get a bit queasy when the specificity of historical events is diminished.

This is my answer: The semantics and linguistics of this phenomenon are important to consider and are part of the problem. When we used to say the word holocaust, it meant a specific event, but it also meant the most horrific thing you can imagine. And I think that word has become devalued. But the policy is always the same - it is the policy of systemic extermination by a government. If one wants to make a distinction with numbers or scale, that's a fair argument, but part of the problem is that the Jewish community, in general, has not wanted to get involved with the Armenian genocide because Israel is an ally of Turkey. In Los Angeles, where I live, however, a group of rabbis have publicly supported the film and called for the recognition of the Armenian genocide. So, the answer to your question is, yes and no.

And who am I to argue with rabbis? So, you've made a film about the Armenian genocide, and a film about Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian journalist murdered in Iran - after all that, don't you want to relax and make a film about doll collecting or baby animals?

I was just at Cannes, and I kept asking myself, Why can't I make a gentle little film about wine, in the south of France?

See review of Screamers, R20

rmvaughan@globeandmail.com

Painful stories, powerful work from Egoyan and Ataman

June 5, 2007
Globe and Mail
LIAM LACEY

AURORAS/TESTIMONY Created by Kutlug Ataman and Atom Egoyan at Artcore in Toronto until June 10

In Atom Egoyan's films, there's often a scene when a character is interrogated, required to offer their version of the truth and convince someone else. Specifically, he used such a scene, between a customs inspector and a young man suspected of importing drugs, as the pivotal moment in Ararat, his 2002 film about the Armenian genocide.

He approaches that same legacy in a fresh way in the new collaborative video installation, Auroras/Testimony, with Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman. Presented at Artzone in the Distillery District as part of the Luminato Festival (in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario), this world premiere piece explores opposite responses to the legacy of the Armenian genocide.

In the first room, Atom Egoyan's Auroras, seven different young women, projected on video screens, tell the same story. In the second, Testimony, a 105-year-old nanny shot in her own kitchen with a video camera can't remember a central event in her life.

The story behind Egoyan's Auroras starts with a moment in early Hollywood history. In 1917, a teenaged Armenian girl named Aurora Mardiganian arrived in the United States looking for her brother, her only surviving relative after the Armenian genocide of 1915. Her story hit the press and she was encouraged to write a book about her experiences, which was adapted into a play and then a movie,Ravished Armenia (also known as Auction of Souls) in 1919. These events were chronicled in Anthony Slide's 1997 book Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian, which was Egoyan's source material.

One detail in the story that seems to have twigged the imagination of Egoyan. On the eve of a promotional tour for the movie, Mardiganian had an emotional breakdown. Since she couldn't promote the film, the producer hired seven Aurora look-alikes to go around the country.

In a sense, to recreate these seven emissaries of catastrophe, Egoyan cast seven women (Sarah Casselman, Tammi Chau, Robyn Thaler Hickey, Isabella Lauretano, Mina James, Assumpta Michaels and Amelia Sirianni) across the racial-ethnic spectrum, to tell a portion of Aurora's story.

Each woman's face appears, projected from a DVD image, on seven panels on three sides of the room. (The fourth side features a text account of Mardiganian's life.) Initially, they begin reciting sentences from the monologue in apparently random order, then complete each other's sentences and occasionally overlap with an almost musical design.

Their story begins on June 8, 1915, when 15,000 women and children were ordered to march. After chronicling deaths from the heat and abuses by local villagers, the narrative culminates on the evening of that day, when Turkish soldiers attack, leading to the rape of a girl and the death of her mother.

Throughout, the readings are dispassionate, except for those of one actress (Casselman), who begins to perform the material emotionally, and at the end (after about seven minutes) brings up a green shawl and covers her face.

The textual material is horrific, even through there is a certain purple quality to the language. But as long as the performers sound detached, Auroras has the quality of a vigil, a solemn witness to lost lives and suffering, recited in a constant loop like a prayer cycle. Casselman's emotional performance is jarring: Is it wrong to wring emotions out of horrors? Or, on the contrary, is it legitimate to remain dispassionate about them? All this, of course, is by design. Egoyan's films are filled with questions of the legitimacy of different kinds of testimony, and how the legacy of loss is passed on. But his piece doesn't achieve its full impact until you make the trip into the interior room of the gallery to see Ataman's Testimony.

If Auroras is an excess of horror, of emotion, of detail, Testimony is a void, a complete failure of knowledge caused by denial and secrecy. Ataman is a Turkish video artist with an international reputation who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004. He met Egoyan through Bruce Ferguson, the Art Gallery of Ontario's director of exhibitions, and the idea of Auroras/Testimony was hatched.

Testimony is apparently a simple thing: a video of the artist's now 105-year-old nanny, who had also been Ataman's father's nanny. Ataman, who was born in 1961 (a year after Egoyan), discovered in the 1970s that the woman who was his nanny, named Kevser Abla ("Abla" means "older sister"), was "Ermeni" or Armenian. He was told by his mother never to talk about it.

In the video, he visits his nanny and brings old family photographs to ask her about the past. She remembers some pictures but others seem to confuse her. Questions about her Armenian background seem to be deliberately ignored.

"God knows when I'll remember," she says amiably.

In his artist statement, Ataman says: "Testimony expresses my own darkness, with the voice of Kevser Alba guiding me. It is about me as much as it is about her."

As you watch the old woman looking in confusion at the pictures, the voices from the Auroras gallery leak in, detailing the kinds of atrocities that she cannot or will not remember.

The paradox is acute: In one room, we have a surfeit of simulated testimonies, with one woman's story splintered out in seven directions. In another, we have a living witness to history who cannot remember anything.

Auroras/Testimony continues at Artcore in Toronto until June 10 and will be shown at the Istanbul Biennial in September.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Q & A: Violinist Sergey Khachatryan

28 Apr 2007
Playbill Arts

The remarkable 22-year-old violinist, set to make his New York recital debut on April 30 at Zankel Hall, talks about his connection to the music of Shostakovich and Khachaturian and his love of fast cars.


Following his recent debut with the New York Philharmonic and a return engagement with the Cleveland Orchestra, the young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan returns to the Big Apple at the end of April to make his New York recital debut. Joined by his frequent recital partner (and sister) Lusine Khachatryan, Sergey will play two personal favorites, sonatas for violin and piano by César Franck and Dmitri Shostakovich. The recital, on Monday, April 30 at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, will also feature a touchstone work, the Chaconne in D minor from Bach's Partita No. 2 for unaccompanied violin. The Khachatryan siblings have plans to record the Franck and Shostakovich Sonatas later this season, for future release on the Naïve label.

Khachatryan made his American recital debut in September 2003, and a critic for The Kansas City Star called it "some of the most beautiful violin playing I've heard in a very long time." The review went on to say, "From the first notes of Beethoven's ‘Spring' Sonata for violin and piano ... Khachatryan had us listening on the edges of our seats ... [He] plays with the suavity of a snake charmer. Yet there's nothing slick about him." The New York Times was enthusiastic about his recent Philharmonic debut, for which he played the Sibelius Concerto: "He is trim and boyish, but he plays with assurance, depth, and a flexible, strikingly beautiful tone ... technique to spare and a feeling for the music's passions."

A 2004 recital by the Khachatryan siblings in Edinburgh prompted this response in The Scotsman: "The two frequently perform together, and have a perfect awareness of the balance between their two instruments, subtly enhancing each other's performance."

Just after the April 30 recital, the 22-year-old Sergey heads north for another important debut, playing Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Bernard Haitink (May 3-5).

Looking further ahead, Khachatryan will play Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly (May 31-June 2) and with the same orchestra on tour in Paris (June 11) and at the BBC Proms in London (September 5). He performs the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra at the Mikkeli Festival in Finland (July 1) and returns to the U.S. later this summer, for performances of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

In the interview below, Sergey Khachatryan discusses, among other things, his deep connection with Shostakovich's music and his love of fast cars.

You just had an important debut here with the New York Philharmonic and you'll be back in April for your New York recital debut. How are you enjoying your time in New York City?

Sergey Khachatryan: My debut with the New York Philharmonic in February was only my second time in New York City. The last time was in the summer when I had my Mostly Mozart debut. Of course it's a great city! Maybe not the best city for me to live in, but for a visitor really a crazy city! It never sleeps — there's so much happening here. I've been staying with friends, which is what I prefer to do when I travel, as it's a lot more fun than staying at hotels. While I was in town this time I went to the Blue Note to hear some Brazilian jazz and it was lots of fun. Having a busy nightlife is tough when you have concerts to perform. I don't do much else on days that I give concerts.

You're increasingly appearing in concert halls across the U.S., but have you already played in South America? There's definitely a lot of exciting classical music activity going on down there.

Actually, I've played in Ecuador twice and also in Brazil. I stayed at the Copacabana Hotel on the famous beach in Rio. Unfortunately the weather wasn't so great — lots of rain — but still, we went twice to swim (I was with my father). There were great waves and we were enjoying doing some body surfing!

Tell us about your upcoming program at Carnegie Hall. How did you select this particular repertoire?

The first thing I can say is that two of these works — the Bach Chaconne and the Franck Sonata — have been among my favorites works since I was born. I love Bach, especially the solo Sonatas and Partitas. He's a composer who stays with you no matter how much you change as a person. His music is really sacred, and when you play Bach it really cleans your soul and makes you feel more pure. I feel this personally when I play his music, especially the Chaconne. I think it makes a wonderful beginning for a recital.

Overall, it's a program built on contrasts, between Bach and his Baroque aspects and the Romantic elements in Franck's work. My sister and I have played the Franck Sonata frequently and it's one of his most wonderful pieces. It was written at the time of Romanticism in music, but there are hints of impressionism in it too.

And the Shostakovich Sonata?

Well, Shostakovich is my favorite composer in general. Lusine and I discovered the sonata together last season — we didn't know it before. Each time we've played it my opinion of it has grown. The performance at Carnegie will be only the fourth time we've played it, but still, we already feel very deeply connected to this music. We feel like we've been playing it for many years!

What is it about Shostakovich that you connect with so deeply?

When I was playing in the finals of the Queen Elizabeth Competition I chose to play Shostakovich's First Concerto. During rehearsal there was a man in the hall, and he came to me afterwards and said to me, "Do you know why he feels so near to your heart?" I said no. He said it has something to do with my country — with Armenia's tragic history, especially the massacre in 1915. It remains in our genes. Shostakovich's music has tragedy in its soul. It's the tragedy of humanity that keeps me near to him. And dramatic music is nearer to my soul.

Shostakovich is also on the program for your Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in May.

Yes, it's my first time playing with the orchestra as well as the first time I've worked with Bernard Haitink and I'll be doing the First Concerto. We hadn't met before but he apparently listened to a live broadcast of me playing Shostakovich — actually, a TV broadcast from the Proms last year — and he immediately requested me to play!

And you'll be in Los Angeles for the first time this summer.

Yes, I'll be playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. We have some great friends there and I'm looking forward to it. Although an outdoor performance where people are having a picnic before the concert isn't necessarily the best environment to listen deeply to classical music, it's good for people of a younger generation to feel more comfortable about coming.

Some people were surprised by the pairing on your debut release for Naïve. The Sibelius Concerto is such a warhorse, whereas the Khachaturian Concerto is more of a rarity. Were you using the attention that the Sibelius often receives to shed some light on a composer from your home country?

Well, Khachaturian is really my composer. As an Armenian he is very near to me and in my blood. I feel so free because I understand the emotion, and that emotion has to be right to really connect with his work. There are specific details from Armenian folk music in his works that are hard for a non-Armenian to understand. This is music that I feel deeply and that I really adore — especially the second movement.

How do you feel about playing contemporary music?

I've not played much contemporary music yet, but this fall I will play the first piece written for me. It's by Arthur Aharonyan, who lives in Paris and recently won a big composing competition. He's a very interesting composer and I'll play his new concerto in November in Nice.

How will he approach the writing of this piece? Will you be collaborating with him from the outset?

Yes, we'll be working closely on the piece. He showed me some of the details already and I've freed up time in October to prepare it. I'll never be able to work with Shostakovich, but it's great to have this opportunity to work with a living composer. To have the composer's thoughts and ideas there to help guide you is a wonderful thing. Perhaps I'll even record the piece.

After the opening night of your recent performances with the New York Philharmonic there were many young girls in the green room afterwards asking for an autograph — and even a hug or a kiss. Does this happen all the time at your concerts?

Well, there are unfortunately not enough young people at many of my concerts, but some of the young ones who are there often come back to say hi afterwards. Thankfully, in Armenia there's a lot of interest in classical music from the younger generation, and I go to the capital every year to play. It's important for me, and it's my duty to go to my country to share with them some of the success I've achieved — to give part of it back to them. Whenever I'm playing it's a special occasion. The young people make up 50% of the hall and many are musicians from the conservatory. They are even starting to make shows especially for young people. I think concerts at the university are very important. Curious students definitely might have an interest in classical music that we can connect with. For me it's easier because I'm young: since I have more direct contact with them they feel more connected than if they see someone from an older generation.

What do you do when you're not making music?

Cars are my hobby — my second life actually! I'll tell you something about myself: I'm really two persons! The first is in the music, my "real" self. The other part is really a "normal" person. And this is the part that really loves cars. I tune them myself, and car tuning — as well as designing — is my big hobby. I have two cars and I've designed the spoilers for them! My new car is an A-4 Audi, with a V8/4.3 liter engine. It's fast.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

The Art of Edmund Yaghjian

04/18/2007 - 04/24/2007
Freetimes
BY MARY BENTZ GILKERSON

Artist Had Key Role in Development of S.C. Art

When Edmund Yaghjian left New York in 1945 to come to Columbia to head the USC Art Department he gave up more than an urban lifestyle. A national reputation was difficult for an artist to sustain outside of the center of the art scene.

While his national reputation may have diminished, Yaghjian had an enormous impact on the developing art scene in South Carolina. His students include artists like J. Bardin, Jasper Johns, Blue Sky and Sigmund Abeles, among others.

Viewers can see a major retrospective of Yaghjian’s work at the S.C. State Museum through Sept. 16. Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective features approximately 100 of Yaghjian’s paintings and sketches.

Born in Armenia, Yaghjian came with his family to America in 1907. After finishing at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1930, he moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League. He quickly established a reputation, with his work being included in such exhibitions as the Portrait of American show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Painting in the United States at the Carnegie Institute.

Yaghjian’s time at the Art Students League was instrumental to his development. The influence of John Sloan and the Ashcan School permeates both his early work in New York and his later work in South Carolina. It is reflected in his focus on the vernacular, on the commonplace objects and scenes of everyday life.

Pieces like Subway at 57th St. are typical of the early New York period and show a continuation of the Ashcan School’s interest in daily life and the new modern urban reality.
Many of his earliest paintings in New York have the muted somber color associated with work by artists like Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh. Like Marsh, he applied oil paint in thin washes like watercolor, with more emphasis on drawing.

57th Street from My Window from 1933 is a full frontal view of the street’s dull red brick façade stretching from one end of the canvas to the other. The long horizontal row is punctuated by the bottom-floor storefronts along the street and the draping arcs of the utility lines.

Yaghjian’s later New York work is less muted and deeper in color. In Times Square, he depicts all the hustle and bustle of urban nightlife. Under a dark night sky, pools of light falling from the competing neon lights illuminate the cars and pedestrians below. The juxtaposition of the sepias and umbers of the street and buildings with the intense colors of the signs gives a sense of the vitality of the city.

Yaghjian’s concern with the everyday continued after coming to Columbia; the influence of the Ashcan School can still be seen in his focus on the working class and the commonplace. But his style also began to shift.

Pieces like Corner House for Sale, 1950, show a more abstracted, flattened space. The color has intensified and begun to veer away from the local. The movement and energy in the painting comes from a thick calligraphic black line that encloses and defines the various shapes.

Orange Sky on Park Street, circa 1970, has many of the same characteristics — flat areas of intense color and the strong graphic black contour line. It captures the feel of the old Park Street neighborhood, a sense of the specific place, but also maintains its modern feel.

In many of his later paintings, Yaghjian seems to come full circle stylistically. The color, motion, light and crowds of the South Carolina State Fair provided a recurring source of subject matter, but in Night at the Fair, 1970, you can see a stylistic break, actually a return.

The flat areas of color in Orange Sky are replaced by the thinned wash technique of his early New York work. The black contours are gone. A carefully defined space is created through his use of value, color and tone.

Retrospectives should cover a large span of an artist’s career, just as this one does. It proves that most artists don’t develop in a linear progression, but in a spiral that returns to the point of origin and then expands.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.