Word: chessmen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...sonnets have 14 lines (who among mod poets could resist the 15th?). His surrealism-Lowell's word for it, and not really the right one-is technically encouraged by a decision to abandon rhyme and relax the meter of his sonnets-roughly the equivalent of playing checkers with chessmen on a blank board. This stylistic invitation to artistic indulgence occasionally helps betray Lowell into incoherence. Surrealism, after all, is mainly for those who applaud calculated chaos as critical therapy, a place where turned-on birds may sing but no poetry is written. When Lowell's struggle is against...
...kilns. What he was after was a material that could be impregnated with color throughout, rather than simply receive a surface glaze. And in cauk, a form of barium sulphate, Josiah found what he wanted. Jasper ware grew so popular that the English used it for shoebuckles, chessmen, perfume vials, bell pulls, architectural ornaments, even a mortar and pestle. Most famous of all Josiah's jasper ware was his limited edition of the Portland vase, after a Greek vase supposedly made in Alexandria in 50 A.D. Last year a rare slate-blue Portland vase sold at auction...
...Pace Gallery (125 Newbury St.) is a show of recent wood sculpture by Hugh Townley. He is an extremely talented artist, whose work seems among the most interesting of recent sculpture. I prefer his large reliefs made up of several types of wood, but his oversized "chessmen" and his colored drawings are also fine. Unfortunately, the current exhibit is somewhat thin. There are no recent works of major scale, and I am afraid that the New York branch of this gallery may have sold off the best things there...
Despite the deadness of these entries, there is a lot of potential in some of the other works. The technical quality is quite high on the whole, and sometimes the tricks do create a pleasing effect. Especially good is Walter Krupsaw's melange of chessmen and nuclear tracks, and the quiet and lightness given to a clump of river weeds by a subtle overexposure...
...titleholder, Vassily Smyslov, in a "Peace Fund" benefit match that enthralled 15,000 Muscovites. So were the king, queen, and all the other pieces in the latest Marxist evolution of an ancient Oriental version of chess. But unlike the Eastern game-in which, according to legend, the chessmen were prisoners of war, and once taken, were beheaded-the Soviet game employed beauteous ballerinas and assorted other troupers, each of whom, upon being captured, put on a performance. So distracting, in fact, was the circus atmosphere (the show stopper: a satirical song that went, "Kings get five-room apartments Knights...