Archives for 2014

I recently visited an important Phillips Collection exhibition, Made in the U.S.A., about which I hold forth in today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column. Here’s an excerpt.
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When art-loving tourists think of Washington’s Phillips Collection, they usually think of Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” the museum’s celebrated centerpiece, or its spectacular holdings of post-Impressionist paintings by Bonnard, Cézanne and Vuillard. But Duncan Phillips, who in 1921 turned his private collection into America’s very first museum of modern art, started the Phillips (as everyone now calls it) to show his fellow countrymen that the American art he loved was good enough to stand up to direct comparison to the best work of Europe’s then-contemporary masters….
Of the 2,000 works of art in the collection at the time of his death in 1966, fully 1,400 were by American artists, and it was his custom (as it still is at the Phillips) to hang their work in close proximity to European paintings. Yet it’s been nearly 40 years since his museum last mounted a large-scale exhibition that sought to tell the story of American art as seen through the eye of its founder. Now, with “Made in the U.S.A.: American Masters from the Phillips Collection, 1850-1970,” on display through Aug. 31, the Phillips has triumphantly reasserted the validity of its original mission. By simultaneously exhibiting some 200-odd paintings, works on paper, photographs and sculptures by such artists as Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Richard Diebenkorn, Thomas Eakins, Helen Frankenthaler, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, Joan Mitchell, Alfred Stieglitz and John Twachtman, the Phillips leaves no doubt that long before the postwar advent of the New York School of American painting, the U.S. had come into its own as a font of world-class art.
Among the plethora of first impressions evoked by the show, two in particular stand out. The first is that it is an eloquent tribute to one man’s imagination. As befits a collection assembled by an individual, it’s taste-driven, not theory-driven–and Duncan Phillips’ taste was unusually catholic….
Beyond that, though, “Made in the U.S.A.” is a model of how a museum of a certain age can renew itself–and thrill its visitors–by making bold use of its permanent collection….
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Read the whole thing here.

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Act One (drama, G, too long for children, closes June 15, reviewed here)

• Bullets Over Broadway (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, virtually all performances sold out last week, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

• Casa Valentina (drama, PG-13, closes June 15, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, many performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Of Mice and Men (drama, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

• A Raisin in the Sun (drama, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Rocky (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Henry IV, Parts One and Two (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in rotating repertory, closes June 7 and 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• The Heir Apparent (verse comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

“His refusal to accept the realities of this world, babyish as it may be, compels us to take another look at this world and reflect upon our motives for accepting it. The drunkard’s suffering may be self-inflicted, but it is real suffering and reminds us of all the suffering in this world which we prefer not to think abut because, from the moment we accept this world, we acquired our share of responsibility for everything that happens in it.”
W.H. Auden, “The Prince’s Dog”

The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, a 1944 War Department propaganda film directed by William Wyler. Some of the aerial combat footage was personally shot by Wyler. The uncredited musical score is by Gail Kubik:

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

“She had given him that existential certainty, that confidence in his own judgement, which had allowed him to live his life and not merely inhabit it.”
Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life

From 2004:

I came home from Broadway a little while ago and was too wired to go to bed, so I turned on the TV, started channel-surfing, and suddenly found myself watching a snippet from The Sound of Jazz, the famous 1957 show still widely (and rightly) regarded as the finest jazz program ever telecast. Ben Webster was playing a slow blues in F, with Gerry Mulligan nodding in the background, and as the camera panned to Billie Holiday, I realized that the song was “Fine and Mellow” and that the next face I saw would be Lester Young, sick unto death…

Read the whole thing here.

“If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict–and of tragedy–can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition.”
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”