David Hockney is 79 today.

As a painter, he is famous for his vibrant color scheme (blues and yellows) and honest portraits. I am fond of his paintings, and the fact that he is still a vital and active artist (in recent years he attracted notice for his “iPad paintings“), but I have long been fond of a project he called his “joiners.”

The “joiners” were a photo-collage idea that he explored in the 1970s and ’80s. The one at top, called “Sun on the Pool,” was made in 1982. It is made of seventy-seven Polaroid photos of a swimming pool taken as the sunlight shifted through the day, photos taken over the period of time that it would take to make seventy-seven Polaroid photos with one camera and one artist. Pretty as a sunset but with time added as a design element as important as color in the image. It is a Cubist sunset. It is a beautiful attempt at one.

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Allen Ludden died on this date in 1981, leaving a widow, Betty White.

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The late Oliver Sacks was born on this date in 1933. Bon Scott would be 70 today.

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Ed Ames is 89 today. For many years, this clip was the most popular unscripted moment on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson:

 
(Ames played a Native American character on a television show, Daniel Boone.)

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Donald Rumsfeld is 84. James Hampton is 80 today. Brian Dennehy is 78 today. Dean Koontz is 71. Chris Cooper is 65 today. Tom Hanks is 60 today. (I was friends with a person who got to meet Tom Hanks and his family and even visit them at home, and I was happy to learn that every positive attribute one thinks Tom Hanks embodies, he really does. He really is like that.) Kelly McGillis is 59 today. Kevin Nash is 57. Clive Stafford Smith is 57 today. Fred Savage is 40.

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