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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Michelangelo’s middlebrow moment

July 15, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about how Irving Stone—and Charlton Heston—introduced Michelangelo to a generation of American readers and filmgoers. Here’s an excerpt.

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Like Shakespeare and Beethoven, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is one of those giants of Western culture who is known by only one name—and not just to highbrows but pretty much everybody. Even those whose awareness of the visual arts is restricted to the Mona Lisa and “The Last Supper” are more than likely to also know that Michelangelo was the sculptor of “David” and the painter of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. That double-barreled fact is the measure of his fame. But how do they know about Michelangelo? And how, for that matter, do they know Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy or the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth? It’s been a long time since you could count on our schools to teach such things, or even to introduce their students to the notion of artistic greatness itself.

For Americans over 50 years old, the answer is a phenomenon called “middlebrow culture” that was fostered by radio, TV, magazines and the movies. From the ’30s until well into the ’70s, high culture was generally portrayed by the media not dismissively but with unironic respect—and in such a way as to suggest that anyone with a public-school education could enjoy it.

In the case of Michelangelo, it was a novelist who made all the difference….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Carol Reed’s 1965 film version of Irving Stone’s novel The Agony and the Ecstasy, starring Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison:

Almanac: Sigmund Freud on neurosis

July 15, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Neurosis seems to be a human privilege.”

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism

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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