Word: greasepaint
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's no mystery about why this should be so. What Nauman practices is a form of psychic primitivism, or atavism if you prefer. His art is chiefly about two states: compulsion and regression. When you see a videotape of him smearing his face with black or green greasepaint, you aren't sure whether he's disguising himself or simulating the fecal games of a backward child. Autism is the governing metaphor of his work's "look"--the long-winded rituals of trivial movement, the ejaculatory phrases, the bouts of ungovernable rage...
...clown who laughs on the outside but cries on the inside is an image that appeals irresistibly to the biographers of comedians. Time and again, they portray those with a gift for humor as embittered souls behind the greasepaint. Fortunately, Kathleen Brady avoids this cliche in Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball (Hyperion; 397 pages; $24.95). Without ignoring the darker aspect's of Ball's life, Brady, a former Time reporter whose previous biography was of pioneering muckraker Ida Tarbell, portrays a woman of impressive determination and resilience...
...times are performing artists -- two stars of the Peking Opera, stalwart Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) and comely Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) -- the movie conjures up dozens of American movies, like Singin' in the Rain and For the Boys, in which popular entertainers put aside their differences before they put on the greasepaint. There is, of course, a pretty woman to fight over, Xiaolou's girlfriend (Gong Li). There is the elegance of stage art compromised by the humility of life beyond the footlights. There is comradeship, and betrayal, and comradeship again...
...Garrison's book), we learn that Oswald was just a pawn in an elaborate plot that ranged from seedy gay bars in the French Quarter to the corridors of power in Washington. We meet bizarre characters like David Ferrie, a homosexual ex-airline pilot with a homemade wig and greasepaint eyebrows who claimed involvement in the conspiracy but died before he could testify. We witness shadowy meetings between Oswald and Jack Ruby before the assassination. We are told that as many as seven shots may have been fired at Kennedy from three different directions -- none of them by Oswald...
Americans, it is said, insist on reducing politics to show biz. And in the gulf, the theater of war was also, maybe mainly, a theater. As the New York Times's Malcolm Browne notes, "This war seemed to smell more of greasepaint than of death." In time, other odors may rise, as the nation weighs the war's cost in American dollars and Arab lives. But last week Schwarzkopf gave the U.S. a warrior to be proud of. Others might see glamour in the allied victory; he would carry the memory of the dead on his burly shoulders. His Great...