Word: aura
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...podium, Salonen projects an aura of crisp, businesslike authority. There is none of Mehta's grandstanding glamour; instead, the conductor he most resembles is his hero Pierre Boulez, guiding his players through the most intricate rhythms with unflappable aplomb. In 1985 Salonen signed an exclusive contract with CBS, now Sony Classical, and since then has issued a steady stream of albums (the best so far: Messiaen's formidable Turangalila-Symphonie and Grieg's Peer Gynt music). Already he is one of the few living maestros who can sell the standard repertoire on the strength of his name alone...
Names possess a peculiar indelible power -- subversive, evocative, satirical, by turns. The name is an aura, a costume. Dickens knew how names proclaim character -- although anyone named Lance is bound to hope that that is not always true. Democrats used to have fun with "George Herbert Walker Bush." The full inventory of the pedigree, formally decanted, produced a piled-on, Connecticut preppie-Little Lord Fauntleroy effect that went nicely with the populist crack that Bush "was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple...
...writing to you under the aura of last week's Cultural Rhythms. I was very impressed at the whole organization of the event both as a spectator and as a representative of one of the participating groups...
Barry Diller is sitting at his regular booth at the heart of the Four Seasons grillroom, basking in attention. Even in the headiest of Manhattan's power lunchrooms, Diller, with his bullethead and designer-mogul aura, manages to draw a crowd. Henry Kissinger nuzzles onto his banquette for a brief chat; other members of the business and media elite stop to pay homage. To each, Diller offers a greeting or a quip, then gets back to his enthusiasm of the moment. He is talking about home shopping...
Koons' work is a late footnote to Pop art that relies on one obsessive device: the exaggeration of the aura of consumer objects, a devotion to gloss and glitz. An ice bucket or a set of "limited-edition" whiskey bottles in the form of a choo-choo train is recast in stainless steel; a porcelain effigy of Michael Jackson with his pet ape is slathered in bright gold glaze. Once in a while, Koons contrives an image of curious intensity, such as Rabbit, 1986, a stainless-steel cast of an inflatable plastic bunny, once pneumatic, now rigid and manically shiny...