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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 8, 2013

TT: Restoration

July 8, 2013 by Terry Teachout

Mrs. T and I moved to a new apartment in upper Manhattan two and a half years ago, but we’ve spent so much time on the road since then that we’re still living out of boxes and have yet to buy more than a few essential pieces of furniture. As a result, we never got around to rehanging the Teachout Museum (the tongue-in-cheek title of our collection of works on paper by American midcentury modernists) until this weekend, when we gritted our teeth, rolled up our sleeves, and hung twenty-one pieces in a row.
These are the five that are now on view over the living-room couch:
LIVING%20ROOM%20SUITE.jpg
Clockwise from lower left, they are:
• Milton Avery, March at a Table (drypoint, 1948)
• Richard Diebenkorn, #32 (etching, 1965)
• Joan Mitchell, Composition Jaune/Grise: Fields (lithograph, 1990)
• Hans Hofmann, Woman’s Head (undated etching)
• John Marin, Downtown. The El (etching, 1921)
Seen from another angle:
0707131550.jpg
Hanging between the windows:
• Jules Olitski, Forward Edge (lithograph, 1995).
Hanging behind the chair:
• Fairfield Porter, Broadway (lithograph, 1972).
On the dining-room wall:
0707131346.jpg
Clockwise from upper left:
Wolf Kahn, untitled (monotype, 2001)
Jane Freilicher, Late Afternoon, Southampton (color hard ground etching with spit bite aquatint and drypoint, 1999)
Nell Blaine, “Jestina’s Reds” (lithograph, c. 1990)
Neil Welliver, Night Scene (woodcut, 1981-82)
* * *
Here’s something that I wrote about “Downtown. The El” in an essay called “Living With Art” that appeared in Commentary in 2004:

I look lovingly at my copy of “Downtown. The El” each time I pass by, marveling at the chain of coincidence by which this exquisite specimen of prewar American modernism passed from Marin’s hands to mine. How many people have owned it? Did the last owner care for it as much as I do? Or was it hung in a dark hallway, there to be ignored and gather dust? Whatever its provenance, it has taught me a priceless lesson, which is that living with a work of art is the ultimate test of its quality–and the ultimate way of appreciating its beauty. I am lucky to own “Downtown. The El,” and luckier still to have wanted to own it. I hope someone else will want it as much, someday.

It shames me to confess that these beautiful objects have been propped and stacked against the walls of our apartment for months and months, gathering dust and going unseen. What an unalloyed joy it is to have brought them back to life at last!

TT: Finally!

July 8, 2013 by Terry Teachout

In addition to hanging most of the Teachout Museum over the weekend, I also got around to updating the top-five and “Out of the Past” modules of the right-hand column with fresh picks. Look, read, buy, enjoy.

TT: Just because

July 8, 2013 by Terry Teachout

An extremely rare 1946 BBC telecast of an excerpt from Frederick Ashton’s Façade, featuring Ashton, Margot Fonteyn, and Robert Helpmann. The score is by William Walton:

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

TT: Almanac

July 8, 2013 by Terry Teachout

“If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I’m convinced, don’t think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they’re carried out feet first.”
Philip Larkin, letter to J.B. Sutton, Oct. 30, 1949

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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