Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“A painting is above all a product of the artist’s imagination, it ust never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn’t spoil anything. But the air one sees in the paintings of the masters is not the air one breathes.”
Edgar Degas (quoted in Maurice Sérullaz, L’univers de Degas)
Ravi Shankar performs on an episode of The Hollywood Palace, originally telecast on September 5, 1967. He is introduced by Bing Crosby:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)
“The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.”
Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value”
From 2005:
I’d somehow managed to make it to the age of thirty-nine without losing anyone to whom I was close. Then one day the bolts of lightning started falling all around me. First my best friend, then my father, and in the twinkling of an eye I was picking up the paper each morning and turning to the obituary page. I’d joined the club, the society of those who no longer need reminding that we all die sooner or later–and that some of us die too soon. Such knowledge changes a man permanently….
Read the whole thing here.
“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”
C.S. Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”
Today I drive from Spring Green, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee, board a plane, fly to LaGuardia Airport, and make my way from there to my apartment in upper Manhattan. On Tuesday I travel from there to rural Connecticut, where Mrs. T awaits me.
It’s not an especially long trip, all things considered, but it’s likely to be a bit hectic, especially at the Wisconsin end, in addition to which I’ve been up to my ears in deadlines for the past couple of days. As a result, it may be a couple of days before you hear from me again.
I’ll try to make it worth the wait—I have an unexpected adventure to report—but for now, try to content yourself with the routine daily postings.
See you soonish.
The New York City Ballet dances George Balanchine’s Agon in 1982. The score is by Igor Stravinsky:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
“Criticism is powerless to reach art. Art proceeds itself in a region quite beyond the reach of other expression save itself.”
John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones