An Open Letter to Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout lives in Manhattan. He's the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the music critic of Commentary, but for his blog About Last Night he writes about the other arts, too—books, ballet, painting and sculpture, film and TV, whatever happens to catch his eye or ear. He writes "Second City," a column about the arts in New York that appears in the Washington Post on the first Sunday of every month, and his work also appears in the New York Times, National Review, and many other magazines and newspapers.

Dear Terry,

For U.S. Society & Values, An electronic journal of the Department of State you wrote an article called "The Return of Beauty," in which you said,

What a difference a century makes. In 1903, comparatively few Americans took anything like a passionate interest in the arts. Only two living American novelists, Mark Twain and Henry James, had done major work, and Twain's was long behind him. Our best painters, the American impressionists, hewed to a style frankly derivative of their European models; our art museums were narrowly provincial in scope and ambition. We had no great composers, no great poets or playwrights, no ballet companies, and only a handful of symphony orchestras and opera companies.

Having met you a couple of times in the company of our mutual friends Sim and Whit (the last time at a Last Days of Disco screening), I’m surprised by your endorsement of this Modernist bias towards the early 20th century. You are breezily dismissing one of the greatest artistic periods in American history.

This is standard today. The publisher of an architecture press here in New York recently wrote that Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum was one of the three greatest museums of the 20th century. Wright was a great architect, but the Guggenheim isn’t even one of the three best New York museums of the 20th century – would you call it more beautiful than the Metropolitan (the best part built 1902 – 1904), the Morgan (1902 – 1907), or the Frick (1912 – 14)? And that’s without even considering the fact that most artists and curators complain that the ramps, the main idea of the building, don’t work for displaying art.

Perhaps there was no great novel written specifically in the year 1903, and no great dance company – but then what great novel would you point to in 2003? More to the point, 1903 was the heart of the period called the American Renaissance and the peak of the widespread and very popular City Beautiful movement. Without question, it was the greatest time in America for architecture and city-building.

Charles McKim and Stanford White were at their height of the talents and success. Daniel Burnham, after the enormous popular success of the World’s Columbia Exposition, had just finished the McMillan Commission plan for the Washington Mall and the surrounding area and was laying the groundwork for his 1909 Plan of Chicago. It was also a great time for their collaborators – John Singer Sargent, John White Alexander, John LaFarge, Daniel Chester French and Augustus St. Gaudens.

A lot of what makes New York New York comes from that time. In addition to the Metropolitan Museum, there was the Brooklyn Museum (1895 – 1915), Grand Central Terminal (1903 – 1913, Penn Station was 1904 – 1910), the New York Public Library (1897 – 1911) and all the great branch libraries. The Columbia University (1895 – 1902) and City College (1905 – 1907) campuses and all the great New York City schools were built then. Most of the great towers of downtown date from that time, like most of the best apartment houses and houses of the Upper West and East Sides. Most of the great churches, most of the great courthouses, and even some of the best bridges (Williamsburg Bridge, 1903, Manhattan Bridge, 1903 – 1909, Queensboro Bridge, 1909, Hellgate, 1907 – 1914) were built then.

In music and theater, the new Manhattan Opera was built to compete with the Metropolitan Opera. Many of the best old places like Madison Square Garden, the Olympia, Hippodrome (1905) and Century theaters are gone, but we still have the New Amsterdam (1903), the Lyceum (1903) and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (competition 1904). And I haven’t even mentioned all the great old roof gardens that are gone, nor the hotels, clubs and banks that are still with us.

You might say that these were derivative of European models. So what? How does that prevent them from being beautiful? How many equally beautiful buildings have been built in New York since then? And what Modern art was not Western influenced?

If we are to talk about beauty in America, let’s start with the most beautiful American work, independent of polemical premises. On those terms, I don’t think Ghost World and Cremaster qualify.

Sincerely,

John Massengale

PS: It’s obvious from all the theaters being built that theater and music were very popular around 1903. And while dance isn’t my field, wasn’t Isadora Duncan, almost 25, well on her way to being the Madonna of her day? In any case, Henry James was only 57 and still had the New York edition ahead of him, certainly a major work, as well as his memoirs and some essays and short stories. Edith Wharton’s best work and Pulitzer Prize were still to come, but she had published some work and was hanging out with James – wouldn’t you have liked to have been there?

Magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The New Republic were all going strong, playing a much more important role in American intellectual life than comparable magazines today.