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...early portraits-whether in pencil, like the exquisite study of Elaine de Kooning, Portrait of Elaine, circa 1940-41, or in oil-thus tended to consolidate an unerring density of structure beneath their tentative-looking, close-toned surfaces; all nuance and doubt on top (often de Kooning, like Arshile Gorky, could not bring himself to give the final form to a hand or the side of a face, leaving it a worried blur), they were iron below. It was de Kooning's draftsmanship that enabled him to fix his parings from other artists-from Gorky, John Graham and, above...
White Mischief by James Fox. As the sun sets luridly on the British Empire, circa 1940, Kenya colonials go to pieces in a scandalous, riveting tale of murder and retribution...
Despite this disproportion, The Oxford Book of Dreams is an irresistible sampler. Reading Artemidorus (circa A.D. 150) is like eavesdropping in the imperial marketplace: "Someone dreamt that he had an iron penis. He fathered a son who killed him. For iron is consumed by the rust that it produces from itself." Freud's claim that the ancient Greeks had sensed what he had systematized is borne out by eerie resonances. In Aeschylus' drama, Orestes describes a snake "as though human ... its gaping mouth clutching the breast that once fed me ... it then mingled the sweet milk with curds...
...ignoramus" who sheds "crocodile tears." Protesters who picketed the Long Island estate of the Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations behaved like "hooligans." All this international outrage amounts to a "hullabaloo." It was as if a Soviet translator had stumbled onto a dusty dictionary of Anglo-American slang, circa...
...punk. As if herpes and AIDS weren't enough to worry about, we now learn that aliens have come to earth to kill and vaporize horny humans during intercourse. Like Strange Invaders (a much better movie), Liquid Sky says that there is nothing more alien than an earthling circa 1983. The victims here are denizens of New York's underground-zombies of the spirit, existing on quick fixes of drugs and sex-for whom death is just the ultimate high. This kinky, doggedly erratic comedy was made in the city by Soviet Émigré Slava Tsukerman...