May 11, 2019 – Why do we keep going back to the classics? From the Renaissance to the Ballets Russes, a Parisian dance troupe that amazed and scandalized European audiences for two decades in the 1910s and 20s, ancient Greek art has been an inexhaustible font of inspiration and ideas. The sumptuous “Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World includes timeless objects, costume designs by Léon Bakst, and photographs of Nijinsky as a faun. And all of it suggests that in part it’s the fragmentary nature of the surviving record that makes classical art so alluring: How could you look at the undulating maenad on this drinking vessel without imagining the music she’s listening to, or the steps that led her to her unforgettable pose? WILL HEINRICH
May 17, 2019
