Word: bas-relief
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...does a Matisse: so with Moroni's extraordinary Portrait of Gian Gerolamo Grumelli. The picture has its allegorical furniture. The ivy clinging to the ruin suggests clan loyalty, the broken statue (whose foot remains in the niche) symbolizes the passage of time, and the motto on the bas-relief, "Better the follower than the forerunner," is a manifesto of conservatism. Yet what counts visually is the brocaded red figure, glowing with arrested vitality against the gray ground of the past. Moroni did not overplay the tension between this expansive youthful red and the cool stasis of his drawing...
Longo is not without entrepreneurial desires. He staged performances, did sculpture and is producing a full-length film, Empire. His art got more ambitious, involving more people both in his pictures and as assistants in the studio. We see the results at Castelli and Metro. They include a large bas-relief in aluminum depicting a horde of struggling Wall Street types: a Roman battle sarcophagus with updated clothes, flanked by ominous, smooth, black effigies of skyscrapers in perspective that recall the architectural renderings of Hugh Ferriss in the '30s. The trouble is that the execution does not carry...
...deeper physiological purpose, programmed into the human animal in the first dawn of his intelligence: to keep the adrenaline flowing, maybe, and the brain alert to the world's epic of apprehension, terror, greed and hope. Perhaps luck is the way that life puts history into bas-relief, and differentiates moments, and people: the way that the universe punctuates time...
...strength of Brigadoon lies in its songs and dances. Lerner and Loewe struck a rich melodic vein, and this full-throated cast mines every golden nugget. Agnes de Mille's dances summon up atavistic ceremonies that might have been carved in bas-relief on the walls of ancient temples. Two standouts: Sword Dance, done with steely balletic precision by John Curry of ice-skating fame, and the Funeral Dance, performed with melancholy fury by Marina Eglevsky to a dirge of bagpipes. The guiding intelligence behind every moment of every scene belongs to Vivian Matalon, who makes of the director...
...rarely deals with young people or with bright show-biz professionals, his tart and wacky one-liners are in perfect accord with the temperaments of his hero and heroine. The show is very New Yorky in mood, with an opening backdrop of the Manhattan skyline that is like a bas-relief of tinseled Christmas trees. A top-name pop composer. Vernon Gersch (Robert Klein), surveys the scene from his luxury apartment where he first meets Sonia Walsk (Lucie Arnaz), an aspiring lyricist much in awe of his success. When she picks up his solid-gold Oscar, she is astonished: "They...