Word: chintz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Usually (I don't know why) I see an unhappy woman who has drunk herself to sleep. The lit cigarette, which she thought she placed in the ashtray from the Stork Club, has rolled off the night table toward the chintz curtains. She dreams of the man she loved long ago and of a blazing fireplace. The dream is vivid. She can even smell the smoke...
DIED. DAVID HICKS, 69, 1960s avatar of interior design who dressed the homes of the rich and famous with wall-to-wall flamboyance and fidgety fuss; of cancer; in Oxfordshire, England. Hicks, a sworn enemy of chintz, eschewed the staid flowery prints in favor of eye-popping solids, which he boldly mingled with modern paintings and patterned carpets. Among his chichi clientele: King Fahd and royals Prince Charles and Princess Anne, who became his peers after he married Lady Pamela Mountbatten...
Nevertheless, he painted his first masterpiece in 1869-70, a portrait of his fellow painter from Aix, Achille Emperaire, with his dwarf's body and weak mantis limbs, enthroned--there is no other word for its weirdly authoritarian effect--in a high-backed chair upholstered in floral chintz. Painted darkly in homage to Manet and preceded by some of the most beautiful head studies in Cezanne's early work, it depicts the stunted Emperaire as a parody king, an "emperor," but with compassion; no mere caricatural impulse could account for the averted gaze and the great, sad, liquid eyes...
...Shostakovich's "Jazz Suites" are quite unlike any jazz that we know today. They don't even correspond to the jazz compositions attempted by Igor Stravinsky at the same time--his were far more exploratory in chord structure and overall form. Shostakovich's jazz embodies a kind of ethereal chintz that might call to mind, on first listening, the London compact disc, Riccardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam attempt to bring forth that light naivete in all of its utter inocuousness...
...last piece on the disc is the widelyknown "Tahiti Trot," based on the popular Vincent Youman tune "Tea for Two." As the story goes, Shostakvich orchestrated the theme in 40 minutes after a challenge by a friend. Chintz turns into schmaltz at this point; the listener is treated to a seemingly endless (actually only three-minute-33-second) passing of the mindless theme from section to section. The best advice here is to listen for the melding of one texture into the next. Shostakovich manages to keep within the same balance of bass and treble parts, though he sometimes bursts...