Word: duller
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...there a duller or more formula-ridden artist in America than Salle in 1991, as he approaches the Big Four-Oh? His work, essentially, is a decoction from three other artists. From Robert Rauschenberg's combines of the '50s and his silk-screen "collages" of the early '60s, Salle learned about piling unrelated images onto a canvas, the difference being that Salle hasn't a trace of the lyrical sharpness and poetic force of vintage Rauschenberg. His tone is a supercilious droning, very far from Rauschenberg's enthused, life-enhancing Barbaric Yawp...
...comprehensible: the plagiarist could not resist. But what if the borrowed stuff is a flat, lifeless mess -- the road kill of passing ideas? In that case there is less risk, but surely no joy at all. (Does the plagiarist ever feel joy?) Safer to steal the duller stones. None but the dreariest specialists will remember them or sift for them in the muck...
...many inside and outside the Post, Downie's avowed attempt to make the paper more credible and authoritative has also made it duller and more predictable, less willing to take on the powerful and needle the pretentious. "There was a time at the Post when its creative talents were pushed to move forward," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "That time has passed." Concedes Bradlee: "We're less concerned with taking risks now that we're successful and 25 years older. There's a certain conservatism that...
...solid gift for getting a story told. But the company he guided was uneven and, worse, unsubtle. There were almost no quiet moments of insight into the characters' souls. It would be hard to imagine better, more accessible productions for audiences seeing the plays for the first time or duller, more disappointing ones for playgoers who know the texts well. Perhaps that is why reviewers tended to be regretful while audiences in Los Angeles, which does not have much of a Shakespeare tradition, chortled and cheered...