“There is nothing, I think, in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing the fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing.”
Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog