Archives for July 2020

A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings: 

This week the critics return, and some theatres are starting to return as well. These include Berkshire Theatre Festival, Barrington Stage, and American Shakespeare Center in Virginia. The third has been listed as “do not work” by Actor’s Equity. The critics discuss these shows, the ethics of covering them, and the response—and responsibility—of unions. They also respond to listener emails on theatrical gatekeeping and Zoom despair, and talk about their picks for the week…

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

From 2005:

The exaggerated scale of the building swamps the art it contains, and the austere décor is so rigidly uniform in its self-conscious simplicity as to make the museum seem even bigger than it is. As if to compensate—which it doesn’t—most of the galleries are as overstuffed with paintings as they are overcrowded with people, making it impossible to concentrate on any one work with anything remotely approaching ease. And while I’m hardly the first person to remark on the mall-like character of the new MoMA, I found it even more oppressive this time around. I came away feeling that visitors were intended not to commune with the art on the walls but to pass by it briskly on the way from the food court to the museum store, sped on their hasty way by the endless banks of escalators that in retrospect strike me as the building’s most memorable feature….

Read the whole thing here.

“The approach he adopts may be a form of Impressionism, or even of Abstraction, depending on his age group and education, but it will necessarily be a familiar one. He is interested in playing a fascinating game, not in making up new rules. He is visiting a world already explored by other painers rather than creating and imposing a world of his own. His real originality has already found its expression elsewhere. Otherwise he would long ago have quit his own profession for that of painter, as Gauguin gave up a career on the stock exchange in his pursuit of art. The price of originality is undivided love.”

Maurice Grosser, Critic’s Eye

“Glenn Gould: On the Record,” a 1959 CBC documentary in which Glenn Gould is seen recording Bach’s Italian Concerto at Columbia Records’ New York studio:

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

“Reading the writings of a friend one often says, ‘I can almost hear him talk.’ But no one, looking at a picture, can possibly say, ‘I can almost see him paint.’ The art of the painter is too private for this, so private as to seen a skill of hand rather than what it really is, a skill of mind.”

Maurice Grosser, The Painter’s Eye

“How to Use the Dial Phone,” a silent informational short made by the Bell System in 1927:

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

“Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World