Word: frith
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Forever Sound. Throughout its survey, "British Masterpieces" blends together paintings with intellectual pretensions and popular successes. One of the surprises is that many of the once admired esthetes look downright banal today, while several of the philistines positively shine. William Powell Frith (1819-1909) had nothing but contempt for "the crazes in art," preferred to depict "the infinite variety of everyday life." His Derby Day (center color pages) drew such huge crowds to the Royal Academy in 1858 that it had to be protected by a guard rail...
Contemporary critics kissed off Derby Day as vulgar and commonplace, but it offers today's viewers a rare opportunity to rub elbows with a red-blooded race of Britons sporting in a roseate world when the pound seemed forever sound. In addition, Frith's breezy freshness and mundane subject matter mark him as an artist who did more to announce Manet and Degas than either he or they would have been prepared to admit...
Alligator, as its arterisked cover and considerable length indicate, is an elaborate joke about the nine James Bond thrillers which has been concocted by two editors of the Harvard Lampoon, Michael Frith and Christopher Cerf. It is refreshing reminder that 'Poonies can still enjoy themselves and, when they get ahold of a good ideas, make themselves enjoyable. It is not, however,-- and I'm afraid I must underscore this point rather heavy handedly--a parody of Ian Fleming or of his writings...
This last item, to their credit, Messrs. Frith and Cerf detected in the corpus of Fleming's work, and they pounce on it, with the highest of spirits and the greatest of glee. J*mes B*nd, their heavily camouflaged fly spy hero, is asked to uncover the hideous doings of one Lacertus Alligator (no asterisks) who plans to hijack the British Houses of Parliament with the Queen and everyone else of any importance inside, float them down the Thames and across the Atlantic, and ingeniously hide them in the Caribbean by spraying them with purple paint. Alligator heads...
...Frith, president of the Lampeon , however, that the 'Peon is to convert permanently to a magazine. Frith had no further...