• 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 / 2020 / February / Archives for 5th

Archives for February 5, 2020

Papa Dada

February 5, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about an important museum exhibition devoted to the work of a pioneer of modernism. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Surrealism is a word with which most of us are on speaking terms—but it’s also a near-dead metaphor. To describe something as “surreal” is now little more than a fancy way of calling it “weird,” and my guess is that only people familiar with art history will know that the term refers to a specific branch of modernism.

Part of the reason why this is so is that the fantastic visions of surrealist art and Dada, its immediate ancestor, have long since woven themselves into the fabric of everyday life so tightly that we take them for granted. If you’ve ever laughed at the non sequiturs of a “Monty Python” skit, or listened to the oddly tilted yet strangely beautiful music of Erik Satie while relaxing in a spa, you’ve tasted the fruits of surrealism. From the once-revolutionary “theater of the absurd” of Samuel Beckett to the wildly askew farces of David Ives, modern theater has been deeply informed by the governing premises of surrealism. Like all the great avant-garde ideas of the past, it is now part of the air we breathe.

And where did it come from in the first place? New York’s Morgan Library & Museum is answering that question with “Alfred Jarry: The Carnival of Being,” an exhibition on display through May 10. I can’t imagine that “The Carnival of Being” will draw large crowds, since Jarry is mostly unknown by name in this country. Yet he deserves more credit than anyone else for divorcing Western art from Western rationalism, replacing it with a kind of logic—or anti-logic—of the absurd….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

Snapshot: Charles M. Schulz is interviewed by Charlie Rose

February 5, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, is interviewed on TV by Charlie Rose in 1997:

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

Almanac: Dr. Johnson on consoling a mourner

February 5, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson

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

February 2020
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
242526272829  
« Jan   Mar »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Stumbling down memory lane
  • Replay: Ginette Neveu plays Chausson’s Poème
  • Almanac: Mary Renault on love and hate
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on mixed feelings
  • Snapshot: Rudyard Kipling speaks about writing and truth

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