Word: icons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pontiff (now retired) of the Cleveland Museum, bought it for $20,000. The picture was Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, by Frederic Edwin Church, a work now thought to be one of the crucial American images, the very essence of Yankee emotion in the face of natural sublimity, the icon before which many people (up to a few months ago) would have sacrificed James Watt on a stake. No doubt it would make $3 million or more at auction today...
Eakins' masterpiece, The Gross Clinic, 1875, certainly bridges two cultural worlds. On the one hand, one can read it as a very American icon of progress; it is a fervent, secular celebration of objective scientific knowledge, with the realism of paint serving that of science. Dr. Gross, light shining from his high forehead and glittering on his bloody hand and scalpel, is a pragmatic hero, and his skill is set before us as part of his American nature...
Orwell was one of the English language's most precise prose craftsmen, and assessing such a literary icon would give any writer pause. Gray, who taught English literature for seven years at Princeton, is no exception. Says he: "I sometimes felt as though his ghost were looking over my shoulder, judging every word that came out of my typewriter...
While the bells of Poznan pealed and a full-voiced choir intoned a hymn, John Paul mounted the red-carpeted stairway leading to the altar and a gigantic reproduction of the icon of the Black Madonna. With the timing of a seasoned performer, he paused halfway to raise both arms in a gesture of blessing. Then the Pope joined 20 bishops in golden robes in a solemn ceremony beatifying Sister Urszula Ledochowska, a Polish educator who organized Catholic schools before World War I. As the Pope conferred on Sister Urszula the title "blessed," the next-to-last step...
...white frame house. For the mass audience it was the most famous painting in the world. The runner-up was Leonardo's Last Supper; and after that, what? The Mona Lisa? The Washington portrait by Peale? It hardly matters; the pre-eminence of American Gothic as a popular icon has not been challenged in several generations, since Wood painted it in 1930. Its fame sank Wood's reputation and took the rest of his work with...