Word: abstracted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Considered in the abstract, at least, the idea of making English the official language of American states seems reasonable enough. As supporters of the referenda often argued, it doesn't seem like a great imposition to ask United States citizens to learn the nation's native language. After all, learning a new language hardly seems too much to ask in exchange for the benefits of living in a free society. And having pockets of foreign-speaking people might have a divisive effect on the unity of the nation, the referenda supporters claimed...
...result, Kossoff's work went naturally against the grain. A figurative painter when abstract art was the rage, he sinned by embracing premature neoexpressionism back in the '50s and '60s. When painting was required to be thin, linear and efflorescent, Kossoff stuck to delving into the images and people around him and the memories within. His scenes of public baths, markets and Underground entrances are packed with small figures, stuck in their social matrix as though in jam (especially given Kossoff's dense pigment) -- a pictorial equivalent, as it were, of the double meaning of the Hebrew word olam, which...
...PUBLIC. From the outset, there were few signs that the nation was breathlessly anticipating this year's campaign. Lulled into passivity by an era of peace and paper-thin prosperity, the voters never displayed much interest in confronting the largely abstract problems, from environmental hazards to the trade deficit, that could threaten America's well-being in the 1990s. When the national mood is I'm-all-right-Jack complacency, it is unrealistic to expect political leaders to play Cassandra. Even public concerns, like crime and drugs, that consistently ranked high in national polls contributed to this air of unreality...
...That's the wole story, were not the mystery rekindled by the limited edition Ta Chien print on the wall. It is a landscape, viewed through a peculiar window a foot high and perhaps ten feet long. There are sea, land and river mouths, but the whole is rendered abstract and emotionally disturbed by the odd shape and the subtle colors. It is a plain and impenetrable as Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," despite helpful paper signs by the staff labeling various blotches as particular rivers...
That is wrong. A large segment of the population lost ground economically during the Reagan years--the poor. According to the 1988 United States Statistical Abstract, from 1981 to 1987 the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 3 million. The percentage of the population living in poverty also rose, as did the percentage of impoverished American children. More than one of every five American children (and two of every five Black children) currently live below the poverty level...