Word: graven
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Fear of Idolatry. Early Christians, following the second commandment's injunction against graven images, at first frowned on artistic expression. Eventually, in catacombs and cemeteries, pictorial art did appear in frescoes and sarcophagi reliefs, but statuary is so rare that scholars have concluded that it was once forbidden. The principal exception is the figure of a shepherd carrying a wounded sheep across his shoulders. With classical Greek sculptures of Hermes as a ready model, it was so common that even given the Christian significance of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, it was not considered idolatrous...
...nearing the $41 million record of Gone With the Wind. And that just counts the North American take. Overseas, Heston is an even bigger favorite. He is also taken seriously as an actor. Despite the critics' First Commandment-thou shalt not worship a graven performance-Heston's stony acting has won him a German Bambi, three Belgian Uilenspiegels, and a U.S. Oscar...
...effect is that of making Mondrian's Boogie-Woogie paintings swing. Agam calls his works "contrapuntals," has even named one Homage to Johann Sebastian Bach for its fugue of color. He uses this oblique approach, he says, to avoid the Judaic religious restrictions on graven images. "In flux, one cannot perceive reality, but only a part of it," he says. As a result, his works may not stand alone impressively enough as masterpieces, but they seem a magnificently practical way to transform blank-walled, vast public wastelands and enormous rooms into lively and provocative architectural gardens...
...Tyrolean-hatted minstrels is cleaving the air with Bavarian bonhomie, when suddenly the guitars are spitting like machine guns, a momentary lapse into the old Wehrmacht tunes of glory. In a sight gag of suspended comic torment, a girl blowing up a balloon reduces a Buckingham Palace guard from graven aplomb to jittering hysteria...
...past year has left its imprint on the features and the temperament of the President. The crevices in cheeks and brow are more deeply graven; his hair is markedly greyer. Johnson's demeanor-in public, at least-has become noticeably more restrained, more responsive to the image of his office. Yet, an erect 6 ft. 3 in., he still exudes irrepressibly the hill-countryman's crackling vitality; his pace is still hell-for-leather, his self-confidence as massive as ever. When asked by an aide how he felt about the job last week, Lyndon replied buoyantly...