About Last Night

In my latest “Sightings” column, which appears in the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I pay a visit to a new kind of art exhibition. Here’s an excerpt.

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What would happen if it suddenly became possible to make perfect copies of paintings of the past? To begin with, the purpose of art museums would change dramatically. It is by going to museums, after all, that most of us discover how different it is to stand in front of a great painting instead of seeing it reproduced on a poster or in a book. I still remember the life-changing thrill I felt when I first saw Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Not only was it much bigger—three feet wide—than I’d previously imagined from “seeing” it in the family encyclopedia, but the colors were richer and more intense than any photo could suggest….

Four decades later, I drove to the King of Prussia Mall, located 25 miles from Philadelphia, to see a “pop-up show” of life-sized three-dimensional reproductions of nine celebrated Van Gogh paintings. The originals are owned by Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, which put the show together and sent it on a tour of U.S. malls (most of the actual paintings are now too fragile to travel). The reproductions are on display in a pavilion set up outside Lord & Taylor, where you can see them for $5….

As I looked, I wondered: Is anyone here having the same kind of experience that I had when I first saw “The Starry Night” 40 years ago? And if not, why bother to put nine Van Gogh reproductions on display in a mall? For you don’t have to go to Amsterdam to see his paintings: Museums in 21 states own at least one. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has six, two of which are currently on display—and while admission to the PMA is $20, children get in free. Nevertheless, I’m told that roughly a thousand people are visiting the pop-up show each weekend….

What are they seeing? The reproductions resemble very skillfully executed hand-painted copies of Van Gogh’s original paintings. (The colors seemed just a bit bright to me, but that could have been the fault of the lighting.) Not only do they give you a surprisingly clear impression of what the real paintings look like, but their presentation is simple, straightforward and ballyhoo-free…

Looking at them felt rather like attending a movie-house simulcast of a live performance by the Metropolitan Opera: It’s not as good as being there, but it’s not bad, either.

But as they say in the infomercials, wait…there’s more!…

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Read the whole thing here.

The original theatrical trailer for Lust for Life, Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 screen version of Irving Stone’s 1934 novel about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, starring Kirk Douglas as the painter. The screenplay is by Norman Corwin and the score is by Miklós Rózsa:

Gregor Piatigorsky plays William Walton’s Cello Concerto, a work that he commissioned in 1956. He is accompanied by Malcolm Sargent and the BBC Symphony. This performance, the work’s British premiere, was originally telecast live by the BBC on February 13, 1957:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, virtually all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, nearly all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Days to Come (drama, G, not suitable for children, closes Oct. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Be More Chill (musical, PG-13, closes Sept. 30, reviewed here)
• Heartbreak House (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 29, reviewed here)

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

Thomas Sowell, “Big Lies in Politics” (syndicated column, May 22, 2012)

Otto Preminger is the celebrity guest on To Tell the Truth. The panelists are Orson Bean, Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle, and Tom Poston, and Bud Collyer is the host. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on November 8, 1965. Preminger’s segment stars at 16:25:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Put differently, religion is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant.”

Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

From 2008:

In private life Dick was as dapper as his playing, and old-fashioned in all the best ways. He liked Chicago-style jazz, British tailoring, black-and-white movies, Marmite, and The New Yorker before Tina Brown got her hands on it. Not surprisingly, he was more than a little bit at odds with much of the modern world, and I suspect that he would have been vastly happier had he been born in 1908 instead of 1938. He was also a pessimist by nature, but like many such folks, he gave more pleasure than he got–and, I suspect, got more pleasure than he usually cared to admit….

Read the whole thing here

“Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty

Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back to talk about Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground on his latest episode. Our hour-long chat is now available on line.

Titus and I spoke at length and in detail about the 1951 film, produced by John Houseman, which starred Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino, and Ward Bond, was written by A.I. Bezzerides and Ray, and features a sublime musical score by Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Hitchcock’s close collaborator. While it was only modestly successful on its original release, On Dangerous Ground is now widely regarded by English-speaking critics as one of Hollywood’s film-noir masterpieces.

Here’s part of Titus’ summary of our conversation:

Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, the best Robert Ryan noir…moves between social criticism and romanticism effortlessly, the tragic story of a man who believes in justice and who learns to believe in innocence, too. We talk about the many attractions of the movie—Ida Lupino, the Bernard Herrmann score, George Diskant’s cinematography, Ward Bond’s remarkable portrayal of a father mad to avenge his daughter’s murder—and we also talk about noir, genre pictures, social criticism, how America learned about tragedy in World War II, and the new depth of character in story-telling this ushered in.

To listen to or download this episode, go here.

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The original theatrical trailer for On Dangerous Ground:

A scene from the film, featuring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino and scored by Bernard Herrmann. The viola d’amore heard on the soundtrack is played by Virginia Majewski: