Word: chintz
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...however, the "Asian" influence is a touch heavy-handed: Burckhardt seems to like cherry blossoms and dragons, while his wife incorporates those little bearded toothy-smiley dogs into a few of her pieces. The press release calls them Chinese Fu dogs, but, with Butterly's vivid glazes, flea market chintz is a more accurate description...
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...
...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...