Wednesday, August 19, 2020
"We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselv…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 18, 2020
From 2007:
Six months ago, I bought a Fairfield Porter lithograph. Two weeks ago, I stood at the edge of a rocky cove near the southern tip of a remote island off the coast of Maine, looking…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one"the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Continue r…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Monday, August 17, 2020
I wrote a review-essay for Saturday's Wall Street Journal book section occasioned by the publication of Straighten Up and Fly Right, Will Friedwald's important new biography of Nat Kin…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AM[SHARE]Immediately after I heard of the death of Julian Bream last Friday morning, I wrote an obituary about him that appeared on The Wall Street Journal's website later that day. Here's an exce…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM[SHARE]Mabel Mercer sings Cole Porter's "Where, Oh Where" (from Out of This World) in an undated video clip of a live performance:Â
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-relat…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be."
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Continue reading Almanac: C.S. Lewis on pretense at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 14, 2020
The greatest classical guitarist of the twentieth century died today. I reviewed one of his New York solo recitals for the Daily News back in the Nineties, and have never forgotten how wo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:45AM[SHARE]In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I write about William Friedkin's 1970 screen version of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band. Here's an excerpt.
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You can count…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM[SHARE]Art Carney and Garson Kanin are interviewed on The Bill Boggs Show in 1979:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wed…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 13, 2020
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I consider the New York Philharmonic's plan to renovate the interior of David Geffen Hall, its home, and suggest an alternative. Here's an …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:08AM[SHARE]"Only the skilled can judge the skilfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result."
C.S. Lewis, "Is Criticism Possible?"
Continue reading Almanac: C.S. Lewis on what c…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Julie Andrews sings "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" (from My Fair Lady) on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961. Because she was replaced by Audrey Hepburn in the screen version, his is the only sur…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."
C.S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves, February 1932
Continue reading Almanac: C.S. Lewis on rereading books at About …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 11, 2020
From 2010:
To be gratuitously nasty in public discourse is like relieving yourself in a swimming pool. Even if nobody knows you did it, you still made the pool a dirtier place for everybody"…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said."
C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
Continue reading Almanac: C.S.…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Monday, August 10, 2020
Jim Hall and Larry Goldings play Hall's "All Across the City":
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Frid…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken."
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (courtesy of Brenda Becker)
Continue reading Almanac: C.S. Lewis on the tragic natu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Friday, August 7, 2020
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a PBS webcast of Kenny Leon's 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing. Here's an excerpt.
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PBS continues …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM[SHARE]Pablo Picasso paints for the camera in 1949 in a scene from Visit to Picasso, directed by Paul Haesaert:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things."
G.K. Chesterton, interview, New York Times (November 21, 1930)
Continue reading Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on pur…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 6, 2020
"Music is essentially useless, as life is."
George Santayana, The Life of Reason
Continue reading Almanac: George Santayana on music at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra perform Ellington's "Afro-Bossa" at a 1965 concert in Baghdad:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"Its beauty comes from the fact that nothing you see was built before 1900."
Marcel Duchamp (quoted in Virgil Thomson, Virgil Thomson)
Continue reading Almanac: Marcel Duchamp on the Manh…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 4, 2020
From 2004:
I'm not funny, and wish I were. Witty, yes, sometimes, and I'm pretty good at making an audience laugh when lecturing (a situation in which the prevailing standards are admittedly…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"I have never known an artist of any kind who didn't do better work when he got properly paid for it."
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on artis…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Monday, August 3, 2020
Charles Coburn appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This episode w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE]"Journalists are plentiful everywhere and entertaining too, full of jokes and stories. Only their jokes are not very funny and their stories not quite true. Their information is always incom…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM[SHARE]Friday, July 31, 2020
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the PBS webcast of the 2016 Broadway revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter. Here's an excerpt.
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PBS has telecas…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM[SHARE]The "overture" to Mark Morris' staging of the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts, featuring the Mark Morris Dance Group and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM[SHARE] 
