Archives for May 2004

I watched the tail end of Master and Commander after I got home from a dinner party in Washington Heights last night, then read myself to sleep with the last chapter of David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln. That, I regret to say, was that. Outside of a late-morning session at the gym, Tuesday went up in the smoke of a freelancer’s chores and an afternoon nap. I didn’t have time–or, rather, I didn’t make time–to experience any art, save for the Chopin nocturnes and Mozart arias playing in the background at the dinner party. Not only did I see no plays or ballets, but I didn’t listen to any music, nor did I read any new Isaac Bashevis Singer stories in between returning phone calls, answering e-mail, and fussing with my schedule. I wouldn’t say it was a wasted day, but neither can I say that I stopped very often or smelled many roses. Saddest of all, I didn’t even remember to knock off for a half-hour in the afternoon, sit down in my living room, and look at the contents of the Teachout Museum.

Why am I telling you all this? To remind myself that each day offers a new chance to strike a better balance. I have to write a Wall Street Journal review this morning and plan to make a start on another piece in the afternoon, and I’m taking Steph, my research assistant, to an early-evening meeting of jazz archivists (I’ll tell you about it tomorrow). All that will surely keep me jumping from breakfast to bedtime, but I hope I remember to leave at least a little time in between for spiritual refreshment.

I live and work in an apartment crammed full of books and CDs and works of art. Outside my office window is a beautiful green tree, and a half-block east of my front door is Central Park. How can I possibly spend a whole day with my face turned from such things? I don’t know, but I’ll try not to do so, at least not today. Tomorrow can take care of itself.

“When Photoplay asked him in 1975 if he was ‘fulfilled,’ the buzz word of the era, he snapped back, ‘Whether you like it or not, when you’re sixty-two you’re fulfilled.'”

Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster: An American Life

I lunched with Supermaud at our preferred downtown hangout, La Palapa Rockola (this time we played it smart and stayed out of the sun!), and spent most of the evening at a banquet. Nevertheless, I managed to quaff a good-sized portion of art before, in between, and after those two meals:

– I paid a visit to the press view of The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, the first of three planned exhibitions of paintings, sculpture, and drawings left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Henri Matisse’s son, a noted New York art dealer who died in 1989, and his wife, who died three years ago. Alas, it didn’t do much for me, which isn’t to say that it doesn’t contain a number of beautiful pieces, most of them by Matisse the elder. But even the Matisses (most of them works on paper) didn’t really gain from being shown as a group, while the more distinguished items by other artists seemed oddly familiar. “Tall Figure,” for instance, is a first-class Giacometti bronze, but I’ve seen plenty of Giacometti bronzes that are just as good and look pretty much the same as this one. In any case, most of the really memorable pieces aren’t even from the so-called Matisse Collection: they were purchased from Pierre Matisse’s gallery long ago, either by the Met or by private collectors, and were already part of the Met’s permanent collection. As for the “new” pieces by artists other than Matisse p

“Carl Ender’s criterion for buying a picture was that it should repel his senses and his intelligence. Only then could he be sure of having bought a valuable modern work. Long years of practice had brought him to the stage that he would be automatically impressed by anything he disliked, and would react to anything he liked with indignant suspicion. It was by such a method that he had secured his reputation of having an

The sales rank of the Teachout Reader took a sharp upward tick on amazon.com yesterday, suggesting that it was probably reviewed in a big-city Sunday paper–favorably, I hope!

A reader wrote to ask if I’d consider posting a list of books and other works of art that had served as “turning points” in my life as a critic. I’ve never drawn up such a list, though I once wrote an essay for the New York Times Book Review called “I’ve Got a Crush on You” (it’s in A Terry Teachout Reader) in which I talked about several authors whose styles I’d emulated at different times in my life. But what gave me the idea to become a critic–and what inspired me to become the kind of critic I became?

I’m now into the sixth day of hewing to my “About Last Night”-related resolutions (no weekend blogging and no computer after eleven p.m.). Did you know that going to bed at a reasonable hour is refreshing? Or that it’s fun to take a walk on a warm summer afternoon? Who knew? And weirdly enough, our traffic on Saturday and Sunday barely declined from its usual level, even though there were no new postings. Go figure….

“Few things pay off better in prestige and hard cash–granted you present it in an entertaining way–than safe fearlessness.”