Word: french
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what they do not possess -- especially not the Caprichos and the Disasters of War -- is the sense of intellectual decorum and poise that the well-born, French-reading illuminati of Madrid preferred the discourse of images to have. Goya was not good at optimistic allegory. His large painting of the adoption of the liberal constitution of 1812 -- the constitution as a maiden in white presented by Father Time while pretty Clio, the muse of history, takes notes -- is one of his few real pictorial failures...
...terminal evil. Greed, whoring, pederasty, witchcraft and the religious bigotry that was its mirror image, the brutality of the low and the myopic arrogance of the high, and above all the limitless cruelties inflicted in the name of orthodoxy (by the Inquisition) and political conquest (by the invading French and their guerrilla opponents): these possess him as they have possessed no other artist before or since. Seen through his encyclopedic vision of folly and cruelty, Goya's Spain is more like Dean Swift's Ireland than Voltaire's Europe...
...portraits in which Goya celebrated the nation's distinguished liberals are also in the show. There is his impressive if slightly servile early image of Floridablanca, Prime Minister to the liberal Carlos III and, by 1808, head of the Junta Central that organized opposition to the invading French armies. There is his group portrait of the Osuna family, who held freethinking tertulias (discussion groups) in their ducal palace to which Goya came, along with the best writers and wits in Madrid. From the Countess of Chinchon, pregnant, dithering and infinitely vulnerable in her misty white mass of sprigged muslin...
...partnership allowed Brown to live in the manner to which he wanted to become accustomed. He sports Hermes silk ties accented with a silver collar pin, well-tailored suits and monogrammed shirts with French cuffs. He and Alma live in a new four-bedroom town house just west of Washington's Rock Creek Park, with a sleek black Jaguar in the driveway. Their son Michael is a law student at the University of Delaware; daughter Tracy is a senior at Boston College...
With that, the Bastille exploded into the biggest uproar since a mob stormed the fortress prison to begin the French Revolution of 1789. Some of the brightest stars in the world of music noisily opened fire in support of Barenboim. Jessye Norman, the stately Georgia-born soprano, said she would "reconsider" whether to sing in the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Revolution. Patrice Chereau, who was to stage a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni on opening night a year from now, said he considered his contract "annulled by this event." Conductor-composer Pierre Boulez resigned...