In addition to my weekly drama column, I have a book review in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s of Daniel Goldmark’s Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon:

“Tunes for ‘Toons,” says Mr. Goldmark, an assistant professor of music history at Case Western Reserve University, is “a set of case studies rather than an all-encompassing history,” for which reason he devotes whole chapters to Carl Stalling of Warner Bros. and Scott Bradley of MGM, who between them scored most of the major non-Disney animated shorts and thereby “helped establish the public’s notion of what cartoon scores should sound like.” Their sharply contrasting styles are described with well- informed clarity: Stalling used recycled pop songs in the collage-like manner of a silent-movie accompanist, while Bradley preferred through-composed scores with unmistakable touches of modernism….

As usual, no link. You know what to do.

“Imagine a Nazi masterpiece, if you can. At the bottom of that pit lies some truth, about art and life. But it is an elusive truth.”

Tom Stoppard (quoted in the New York Times, Feb. 20, 1984)

Our ArtsJournal colleague Tyler Green is excited about the upcoming Sean Scully show at Washington’s Phillips Collection. I recently stumbled on a Journal of Contemporary Art interview with the artist and was absorbed. He has many provocative things to say and says them with eloquence and urgency.

Click through to see some of his luminous paintings as well as the full interview:

When I was young I was extremely political. We talked about this the other night. I don’t think there is such a thing as effective political art. There is only art that is politicized. You either do politics or you do not. I wasn’t interested in pretending to be political while I was an artist. There is another aspect to it. I came from an Irish background and started out life as an immigrant. I went to a convent school and I was yanked out because my parents had a big argument with them and I was put into a state school, which was full of emptiness and violence. In other words, I moved from something very exotic and difficult, but rich and full of mystery and the belief in another reality, in a reality that we couldn’t see, that we could only imagine, into something that dealt with just what you could see. What you could imagine did not even seem to be a question. I found the banality of it crushing and the shock profoundly disturbing. I think at that point, taking all of those things into account, at some early moment in my life I decided I was going to be an artist.

Reminds me of Mary McCarthy’s romance with her Catholic schooling. There’s also this:

Davis: Did Warhol ruin art?

Scully: No, I don’t think Warhol ruined art because I don’t find Warhol that important. You have to be very important to be able to ruin art.

After the Phillips, the Scully show goes to Fort Worth, Cincinnati, and the Met.

So far, this week’s schedule has proved to be a bit more than I can chew without choking. I’ll try to blog today, but you probably won’t see me again until tomorrow.

Sorry.

– Weekly alimony paid to Mary McCarthy by Edmund Wilson in 1945: $60

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $630.29

(Source: Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson)

SEPTIMUS: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

THOMASINA: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?

Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

I didn’t know how tired I was until I got back to my Manhattan apartment, spent a long time grappling with my accumulated snail mail, fell into bed for what was supposed to be a brief, refreshing nap…and awoke five hours later. I think I’ll call it a day. Instead of trying to write, I’ll sit and contemplate the newest addition to the Teachout Museum, an exquisite little Vuillard etching that came in the mail while I was in Chicago. (The online image only suggests the fineness of detail.) I knocked it down for a price so modest that I’m still giggling.

A hell of a week lies before me–three deadlines, three plays, a night at the ballet, and a drunken birthday bash for a friend–but comparatively normal blogging will resume tomorrow, somehow….

– Commissioning fee paid to Henri Matisse by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in three installments between 1930 and 1933 for painting The Dance, a mural installed at the Barnes Foundation: $30,000

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $406,389.23

(Source: Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master)