Word: lyre
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...more phallocratic moments, "is intelligence with an erection." Aged nearly 70, in the hectic relief that followed the lifting of the siege of Paris, he averaged one sexual encounter a day--40 different women in five months, competing for the touch of what Hugo called his "lyre." Larger than life, he was almost larger than death: half a million people, the biggest funeral attendance since the death of Napoleon, followed his cortege to the freshly deconsecrated Pantheon, a building he detested and compared to a sponge cake. There he still lies. "Victor Hugo was a madman who thought...
...attention to the text in his hand and the muse Calliope gives him a level look of benign assessment, might as well be Poussin himself. The allegory unfolds in a luminous calm but is grounded by discreet observation: the relaxed pose of Apollo's arm resting on the lyre, the physical beauty of the Muse, the crispness of her yellow-and-white drapery...
...inventive set, too, cries out money, money, money. The scenery spans from the Roman court to an Egyptian crypt; the paint is lavish and the settings are clever. The Broadway backdrop advertises "Guys and Gauls," "Camel Lot," and "Lyre on the Roof." (Get it?) a few technical touches add just the right flair: an erupting Mt. Vesuvius and an electric scoreboard in the Colosseum ("Lions 1, Christians...
This should not suggest, however, that Jagger has taken up lyre and goose quill to compose tremulous anthems for broken hearts. Wandering Spirit cooks and boils in Jagger's chosen area of expertise: shin-splitting, butt-kicking rock 'n' roll. Out of Focus, the self-mocking Put Me in the Trash and the stops-out title cut show conclusively that old Jumping Jack Flash may be showing his age, but he's not slowed by it. Time, all of a sudden, is on his side again...
...from him. Samuel Jennings' Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, 1792, may be a naive image, but no one could doubt that its heart is in the right place. It shows the Goddess of Freedom in her temple offering the emblems of civilization -- books, an artist's palette, a lyre, a globe and, most important of all, a broken chain -- to a group of grateful freed slaves, while in the background more blacks celebrate a liberty pole. McElroy complains that the artist "avoids presenting images that describe individual black people": none of the black figures is a portrait...