Word: abstracted
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Subjective Factor. One of Pound's great fears is that belief in "the justice of the courts" is being undermined. Where 19th Century judges scorned to adapt their abstract reasoning to experience and social change, the "realists" of today, stimulated perhaps by hasty readings in Marx and Freud, challenge the worth of any standard except experience. ". . . [Some] assert [the law] is a camouflage of reason covering up ... individual personal prejudices or wishes . . . because human judges cannot keep purely subjective factors from influencing and indeed determining their action...
Chermayeff is mainly interested in abstract composition. In most cases, he uses conventional colors and does not try for delicate tones or nuances. His large water-color entitled "Three Fish" has a good balance of geometric shapes and is neatly drawn. A smaller "Fish," however, is much more lively because lines forming the skeleton play against lines representing turbulence in the water. The result is a fish which looks alive. Chermayeff's other fish in a large, blue water-color are quite dead and only make a pattern which would look pleasant on a bed-spread. "Breakfast at Sardi...
Woodman's ten water-colors on crumpled, water-soaked paper are among other experiments. The textural effects are novel but the painting is modiocre. His ideas seem better adapted to the medium of clay and plaster because his abstract forms demand depth, which he has failed to give them on paper. His large oil of a girl is technically competent and clearly expressed. I like the same girl in a green water-color much better; her mood is catching...
Previously he had spoken of the attributes of the gifted listener. Quoting Santayana, he warned; "though music were the most abstract of arts, it serves the dumbest of emotions." People respond to music from a "primal and almost brutish level," which acts as a reflection of their "physical life of gesture and movement," and of their "inner sub-conscious life...
This dangerous seed sprouted strongly in the Mound D village. Generation after generation, its priests grew more despotic. More & more elaborate grew the curious pottery that was the ritual furniture of the religion from across the sea. Some of the pots represented animals, both realistic and stylized. Others were abstract shapes like Japanese lanterns or spheres pierced with holes...