Word: cosmeticians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...incorruptible than what is irretrievable. And just as a good man, once dead, becomes a saint, so a nice place, once quit, becomes an Eden. As the years slide by, the places we have visited are steadily pushed back to an enchanted distance, and memory, the mind's great cosmetician, begins to remove wrinkles, soften edges, touch up the past in a golden glow. The 26-hour bus trip, the simultaneous swarm of hucksters and mosquitoes, the revolutions of the stomach are all forgotten or, better yet, transfigured into the unforgettable adventures with which we can impress our friends. Paradise...
Certainly, Van Dyck knew how to make his sitters look handsomer than they were. Any cosmetician can do that; it is part of the ordinary transaction that painting and photography have with reality. Before photography, when one's idea of a strange face had to be set up by painting, the disparity between the evidence of the eye and the speech of the brush could sometimes come as a shock. One of Prince Rupert's sisters, who knew Queen Henrietta Maria only through the portraits of Van Dyck, was dismayed to meet a short woman with crooked shoulders...