Word: abstract
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...things -- not just in New York but in school systems across the nation -- get to the muddy pass epitomized by the Sobol report? Principally because an abstract theory happened to catch and ride a new wave of actuality. The idea of multicultural education in its most extravagant current form was born during the 1960s amid the campus turbulence and intellectual stimulation provoked by the civil rights movement and, later, protests against the war in Vietnam. The established centers of authority in U.S. life were not holding; to defend traditional values in the teeth of outraged demonstrations by young people...
Very little about the law was abstract to Marshall. He not only suffered its worst failure, the long reign of legal segregation, but he was also the architect of one of its greatest triumphs. He was the victorious attorney in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark decision that prohibited racial segregation in public schools. As a Justice, Marshall sometimes helped to change American law. As a civil rights lawyer he changed America...
...those who wrote them lacked the imagination to find a frame in which to put his work. Such was the fate of the reflective, mildly conservative artist -- which Bearden certainly was -- in a culture dedicated to the proposition that only "radical" change matters. The complete institutional sweep made by Abstract Expressionism, by hostility to narrative and by the cult of the huge-object-as-spectacle rudely elbowed Bearden to the side. But this also happened to a lot of fine artists who happened to be white: try finding references to Fairfield Porter's work in the books of the time...
...issues go beyond an abstract debate over First Amendment press rights. At the heart of the case are troubling emotional questions about whether a social need is met by graphically showing justice being served in its most extreme form. Viewing an execution could repulse so many people that it might lead to a backlash against the death penalty. Or it could kindle a disquieting Dickensian excitement that appeals to society's most morbid instincts. Or, at a time of fear about rising lawlessness, televised executions might grimly satisfy the public's urge to see that society's most brutal criminals...
...WATER AND POWER, Pat O'Neill takes us even deeper into post-narrative. His is an abstract film in a rush -- a universe of images in 57 hurtling minutes. He can't wait for the moon to rise; with time-lapse photography he Frisbees it into the sky. He tells the history of Western expansion in one minute, with subtitles and sound effects. And he isn't satisfied with man or nature. Flames of neon lick the clouds; an electric fan helps cool the desert...