Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Le Grand Cirque Calder 1927, a 1955 film directed by Jean Painlevé, in which Alexander Calder demonstrates the workings of the miniature circus that he constructed in 1927. It is now part of the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“ It’s risky business to speak for the dead. In the terrible case of Dmitri Shostakovich, the temptation is strong, because history, in the form of Stalin, didn’t allow the composer to speak for himself. Of course, there’s the music, but music is reticent about meaning—like a therapist, it prefers you draw your own conclusions.”
Jeremy Denk, review of Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time (New York Times Book Review, May 9, 2016)