Pure Pleasure Paul Potts
Paul Potts is a British pop opera tenor who won the Britain's Got Talent in 2007, singing an operatic aria, \dorma\store who also performed in amateur opera from 1999 to 2003. Potts first sang opera in 1999 in a karaoke competition, dressed as Luciano Pavarotti. That same year, he appeared in a music alquiz show. Although he did not take first place, he was selected to perform in front of Pavarotti.Potts broke his collarbone and suffered whiplash in a bicycle accident in 2003, which prevented him from pursuing opera as a career. The mishap and financial difficulties that followed led him to enter Britain's Got Talent despite not having sung in years. (126)
Susan Boyle
Susan Margaret Boyle is a Scottish singer w ho came to international public attention in 2009 after she appeared as a contestant on Britain's Got Talent. Boyle became known when she sang \ Dreamed a Dream\ in the competition. In the final of the third series of the show, Boyle finished in second place. When she appeared on the Britain Got Talent stage for the first time, the audience and judges appeared apprehensive and
judgmental of her frumpy appearances. Upon finishing her song, she received a standing ovation from the live audience and unanimous praise from the judges. Simon Cowell is reported to be setting up a contract with Boyle with Sony Music. (113)
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh is today regarded as one of history's greatest, most influential artists, and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Little appreciated during his lifetime, his reputation vastly increased in the years after his death. A central figure in his life was his younger brother Theo, an art dealer who continually and selflessly provided financial and emotional support to the troubled artist. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, is recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from August 1872. By autumn 1882, Theo had enabled him to do his first paintings, but the amount Theo could supply was soon spent. Then, in spring 1883, Van Gogh turned to renowned Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and received technical support from them, as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele. (150)
Salvador Dali
As an art student in Madrid and Barcelona, Dali assimilated a vast number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical facility as a painter. Most importantly, he rejected to follow the rules docilely and appeared a sharp contrast with the conventional painting style. He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. One of his previous mentors who had expected him to be a new rising star in European art became disappointed due to his attitude towards the traditional art. Some of Dali’s bosom friends even discouraged him from being so unorthodox in order to chime in with the taste of the mainstream and to keep the pot boiling, but Dali refuse that all and continued to bring up images from his subconscious mind. He induced hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as “paranoiac critical”. Once Dali hit on this method, his painting style matured with extraordinary rapidly, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced the painting that made him the world’s best-known artist. (179)
Beethoven
Beethoven, the German Composer, began to lose his hearing in 1801 and was entirely deaf by 1819. However, this obstacle could not keep him
from becoming one of the most famous and prolific composers in art history. His music, including 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, several senates and so on, forms a transition from classical to romantic composition. (58)
Leonard Bernstein
Contrary to legend, the golden boy did have some lean times. In 1942, Bernstein moved to New York City armed with glowing references, but couldn’t find work. Lyricist Irving Caesar happened to hear him play the piano and thought he resembled his former collaborator George Gershwin. Bernstein told him that he needed $10 a week to stay alive. “What!” Caesar exclaimed. “You, a genius, starving? Ten dollars a week for a genius? I’ll get you fifty!” and promptly got him a job transcribing music. Within two years Bernstein had published his first symphony, written a successful ballet, and had a hit Broadway show. Though he had become white-haired and craggy, he retained the passion and quickness of a wunderkind and more importantly, maintained a golden friendship with Caesar till Caesar died. (131)
James Cameron
James Cameron is a Canadian film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and inventor. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts made him one of the highest-grossing directors of all time. Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time. Avatar is composed almost entirely of computer-generated animation, using a more advanced version of the \ capture\ James Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for Avatar in 1995 and originally intended Avatar to be 3D-only. So important is technology in Cameron's films that he waited years for the technical tools of the craft to advance sufficiently to realize his vision for Avatar, for which he had special 3-D cameras developed. The film went on to break the record for highest-grossing film ever, beating Cameron's previous film Titanic. Avatar also became the first movie to ever earn more than $2 billion worldwide. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. (112)
J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling is a British author best known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million