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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 21, 2016

Silent partners

November 21, 2016 by Terry Teachout

27-katz-northern-landscape-bright-lightIt doesn’t happen all that often these days, but I found myself home alone in New York last Friday night. Mrs. T was in Connecticut. I had no show to see that evening, nor was a pressing deadline hanging over my head, so I sent out for sushi, read a novel while I ate it, watched a movie I’d seen a half-dozen times before, lit a candle and watched it burn, and enjoyed the pleasant sensation of having nothing in particular to do.

As I walked into the kitchen to throw away an apple core, my eye happened to fall on one of the two dozen pieces of art that hang on the walls of our New York apartment, Alex Katz’s “Northern Landscape (Bright Light),” a delicate print made in 1992 that bears a striking resemblance to a Japanese woodcut. “Bright Light” is so soft-spoken that it doesn’t make much of an impression at first glance, and even though I pass by whenever I go into or leave the kitchen, I tend not to look at it anymore. For some reason, though, “Bright Light” caught my eye that night, and all at once it came to life and filled my heart with unexpected joy.

A year after I started collecting art in 2003, I wrote an essay in which I observed that “the only good reason to buy a piece of art” is “so that you can look at it every day, as often as you want.” Nowadays I’d put the same thought somewhat differently: the wonderful thing about living in an apartment full of art is that you are constantly re-encountering it. Sometimes—fairly often, truth to tell—I’m too distracted to think more than casually, if at all, about what I’m seeing, but the art is always there, waiting to be noticed, and sooner or later I notice it.

16-frankenthaler-grey-fireworksMrs. T and I have chosen the pieces that we own with great care, and so far none of them has “gone dead on the wall,” as longtime collectors say. While we each have our particular favorites, I can honestly say that I love every work in our collection. That doesn’t mean, however, that I look at each and every piece whenever I’m home. A few of our prints, Helen Frankenthaler’s “Grey Fireworks” in particular, are so large and spectacular that they’re hard not to notice, while others, like “Northern Landscape (Bright Light),” are easy to overlook, rather like a shy child who never speaks up in class. And you know what? It doesn’t matter, not in the least.

All this puts me in mind of a poem by W.H. Auden that has deep personal meaning for me:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Like Auden, I’ve loved that way in the past, and I’m glad I don’t anymore. I’m glad, too, that the “stars” on the wall of our apartment are indifferent to the pleasure that they give, and to the mysterious fact that some of them give it more freely than others. When you live with art, it’s perfectly all right, even inevitable, that you’ll take it for granted from time to time. The art doesn’t care. It just is.

Just because: Richard Diebenkorn on painting

November 21, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERARichard Diebenkorn talks about starting work on a painting in an undated interview:

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

Almanac: Dorothy Parker on fashion

November 21, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated—as anything once fashionable is dreadful now.”

Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956)

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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