• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2016 / July / Archives for 19th

Archives for July 19, 2016

Ten years after: on art and its “meanings”

July 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2006:

Perhaps as a result of my early musical training, I tend not to worry overmuch about what any work of art “means,” except when it insists on its “meaning” so aggressively that you can’t possibly overlook it, in which case I’m likely to find the results tiresome or irritating.

It’s my impression, however, that most people approach art in exactly the opposite way: they view a work of art as an act of symbolic communication whose “meaning” is fully knowable, and they become uncomfortable, even anxious, if they can’t figure it out more or less immediately….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: V.S. Pritchett on the permanence of the classics

July 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“I say ‘the great literature’ not because of its aura of cultural strenuousness, but simply because, in the past, there is only great literature. Only the great stands the racket of time and survives from generation to generation; the rest dies for lack of staying power.”

V.S. Pritchett, My Good Books (courtesy of Patrick Kurp)

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

July 2016
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jun   Aug »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Snapshot: Rudyard Kipling speaks about writing and truth
  • Almanac: Rudyard Kipling on the prevalence of obsessions
  • Lookback: on being sworn in to the National Council on the Arts
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on inhibited families
  • Just because: Flannery O’Connor appears in a 1932 newsreel

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in