Word: avante
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...show seemed to break new ground almost weekly: pushing the boundaries of permissible language and subject matter, rejuvenating political satire, breaking the "fourth wall" to make fun of the TV medium itself. It helped launch or boost the careers of comics like Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman, gave avant-garde rock an outlet on mainstream TV and made the world safe for David Letterman...
Hwang is keenly aware of the F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum that American lives have no second acts, that youthful success leads to mid-life burnout and embitterment. A few months after M. Butterfly opened, he and avant-garde composer Philip Glass mounted 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, a multimedia oddity that proved too abstruse for the masses yet too tabloid for intellectuals; it centers on an apparent close encounter with aliens from space. In multiple productions it showed scant commercial potential. In addition to the screenplay for M. Butterfly, which Hwang will write himself, he is working on three other...
...subvention." What pussycats our supposedly radical artists are. They not only want the government's permission to create their artifacts, they want federal authorities to supply the materials as well. Otherwise they feel "gagged." If they are not given government approval (and money), they want to remain an avant-garde while being bankrolled by the Old Guard...
...whose Fresh Gasoline, 1989, a 9-ft.-high bulbous yellow pod, is the most startling work in the show. The creepy beauty and rich surface texture of Tsubaki's monstrous blob, with tentacle-like branches sprouting from its top, recall a fascination with the grotesque that characterized some Japanese avant-garde art of the 1950s and early '60s. Its inspiration: Japan's bombed-out landscape after World War II. Strains of this extreme aesthetic are still visible today in the ghoulish makeup and gestures of butoh dancers. Similarly, Shoko Maemoto creates souvenirs from a nightmare alley where fairy- tale fantasy...
Whether new or vintage, all Peoples eyewear shares a kind of avant-garde antiquarianism. These are the specs Benjamin Franklin would have worn if he'd been into performance art instead of kite flying. Two Peoples best sellers: frames that combine tortoiseshell eye pieces and temples with a wire bridge (Nick Nolte sports a pair in the recent New York Stories); and clip-on sunglasses, the sort that '30s movie stars would attach to their specs to check out a polo match over at Will Rogers' place...