Word: foregrounding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...artist seems as explicit about this legerdemain as Velazquez. At 20, as The Waterseller attests, he was already a virtuoso of appearances. To be able to record both the half-sunken splash of water and the light dew of condensation on the pottery jar in the + foreground was to have touched a level of skill beyond that of most painters. But then the virtuosity is replaced by something deeper -- a meditation on the way the painter translates sight into mark and how the viewer turns mark back into sight. How can painting serve empirical ends and reveal truth? Only...
...Senator. Andover. Yale. Kennebunkport. What could be easier? But Bush reversed the normal equation. The man with four names jettisoned his g's, touted his taste for pork rinds and successfully put himself across as a regular guy. Bush persuaded voters to forget his background by pushing to the foreground the themes of cultural, not economic, populism: patriotism (the flag and the Pledge) and toughness on crime. His campaign has cynically mined the white fears and racism that feed this form of cultural populism. At the same time, the Bush campaign depicted Dukakis as a "Harvard elitist." Dukakis' initial lawyerly...
...styles of the songs cover the entire spectrum of rock history. At one end is the droll "I Could Have Stood You Up," featuring Jordanaires-like "bop bop" vocals in the background, Chuck Berry sideman Johnnie Johnson's rolling piano in the foreground and whimsical lyrics like "My shoes walked down the street/Only trouble is they weren't on my feet." At the other end is the funky swagger "Big Enough," which plays with tricky tape loops and loud bass and drums...
...recreational athletes resent the millions dedicated to the elite. East German stars would like the state to take a smaller share of the millions they earn in Western appearance fees. Consider the revolutionary statement of World Class Sprinter Silke Moller last month. "Material concerns should never stand in the foreground in sports," said Moller. "But they can play a role, even for G.D.R. athletes...
...Winogrand's images can look limp, slapdash -- shots taken at the indecisive moment. They seem to lack a prevailing mood, leaving the eye to make its way among faces with canceled expressions or bodies deposited around the frame in eccentric ways. Rather than place his main figures in the foreground of a tautly arranged setting, Winogrand was content to see them sliced by the edges of the frame, or surrounded by acres of unexceptional space, or perched in the middle distance while some quizzical extra hogged center stage...