Friday, July 31, 2020
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 Academ…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Dancers are auto-erotic and have no conversation.”
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on dancers at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 30, 2020
“Taste is knowing what you don’t like.”
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on taste at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 29, 2020
A 1965 BBC interview with the British painter Francis Bacon. This was the pilot for a TV series that did not go into production, and the interview was never broadcast. The interviewer is Jul…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“The test of whether a picture is any good—that is to say any good for you, which is the only thing that counts—is not whether it thrills you but whether you can remember it.”
Mauric…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 28, 2020
My latest Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, in which I talk about D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: Company, is now on line. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Fifty years ago…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:04AMIn my latest Wall Street Journal drama column, I review the Irish Repertory Theatre’s webcast revival of Conor McPherson’s The Weir. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
With a handful of ex…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMA new episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or d…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMFrom 2005:
The exaggerated scale of the building swamps the art it contains, and the austere décor is so rigidly uniform in its self-conscious simplicity as to make the museum seem even big…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“The approach he adopts may be a form of Impressionism, or even of Abstraction, depending on his age group and education, but it will necessarily be a familiar one. He is interested in pla…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 27, 2020
“Glenn Gould: On the Record,” a 1959 CBC documentary in which Glenn Gould is seen recording Bach’s Italian Concerto at Columbia Records’ New York studio:
(This is the latest in a se…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Reading the writings of a friend one often says, ‘I can almost hear him talk.’ But no one, looking at a picture, can possibly say, ‘I can almost see him paint.’ The art of the pai…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 24, 2020
“How to Use the Dial Phone,” a silent informational short made by the Bell System in 1927:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Continue reading Almanac: Saul Bellow on imagina…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 23, 2020
“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 22, 2020
Cathy Berberian performs her own Stripsody, for solo voice:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“If you don’t think about the future, you cannot have one.”
John Galsworthy, Swan Song
Continue reading Almanac: John Galsworthy on the future at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 21, 2020
From 2006:
Art doesn’t have to be true to life to be good, but when a work of art is true to your life, it strikes a special chord. On occasion music has this effect on me: I can think o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“That is why education seems, to me, so important: it actualizes that potentiality for leisure—if you like, for amateurishness, which is man’s prerogative. You have noticed, I hope, t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 20, 2020
Dan Duryea is Jack Benny’s guest star in “Death Across the Lunch Counter,” a spoof of the opening scene of Robert Siodmak’s The Killers. This clip is an excerpt from an episode of …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“You’re only allowed three great women in your lifetime. They come along like the great fighters, every ten years.”
Chazz Palminteri, screenplay for A Bronx Tale
Continue reading Alma…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, July 17, 2020
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review American Players Theatre’s webcasts of Arms and the Man and Julius Caesar. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Of the artistic havocwrought by the co…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMMilton Berle is the guest on This Is Your Life. This episode, hosted by Ralph Edwards, was originally telecast by NBC on June 6, 1956:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head.”
H.L. Mencken, “A Time to be Wary”
Continue reading Almanac: H.L. Mencken on bureaucracy at About Last Night.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 16, 2020
“Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything—real feelings, true happiness, real joy.”
Albert Brooks, screenplay for Defending Your Life
Continue reading Alm…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 15, 2020
Mikyung Sung and Jaemin Shin play Hindemith’s Double Bass Sonata:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“How come in former lifetimes everybody’s somebody famous?”
Ron Shelton, screenplay for Bull Durham
Continue reading Almanac: Ron Shelton on reincarnation and human vanity at About La…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 14, 2020
From 2010:
Somebody compared me to a Holocaust denier the other day for having spoken ill of Elie Wiesel. While I wouldn’t dream of dignifying such a remark by responding to it, I was st…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AMNUKE That was great, huh?
CRASH Your fastball’s up, your curveball’s hanging. In the Show, they would’ve ripped you.
NUKE Can’t you even let me enjoy the moment?
CRASH The moment…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 13, 2020
Stan Kenton and his big band make their TV debut on Toast of the Town (later renamed The Ed Sullivan Show). The trumpet soloist is Maynard Ferguson and the drummer is Shelly Manne. This ep…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“He measured all his fellow workers by the test of professionalism, and a professional is a man who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it.”
Alistair Cooke, Six Men
Continu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
