Word: masterwork
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...curious (and heavily painted) medallion all contribute to this great self-portrait's emotional intensity. My next favorite is Degas' La Chanteuse au Gant, a painting in which the design of the black glove brilliantly counterpoints the rainbow of vibrant colors found in the background curtains. Another masterwork in the collection is Manet's Le Skating, in which quick brushwork, a masterful array of greys, blues and blacks, and an opaque face as focal point, are used to great effect. A magnificent Renoir Bagneuse is next, with blended brushwork, brilliant light and shimmering color creating a rich canvas. Other notable...
Ingmar Bergman needs no praise for those Brattle patrons who saw his delightful Smiles of a Summer Night earlier this year. And just as that earlier, lighter masterwork examined the forms and varieties of eros, so The Seventh Seal probes the modes and species of fides. Every form of Christian faith seems to be present here--what Kierkegaard prayed for and what made Nietzsche gnash his teeth. Gunnar Bjornstrand as the jaded, worldly squire voices a despairing stoic atheism that sounds perhaps too contemporary for the middle of the fourteenth century. Nils Poppe as the peasant Jof, on the other...
...England the masterwork of Stone Age men is getting long-needed maintenance, using the most modern methods. In spite of clamor from indignant traditionalists, Britain's Ministry of Works intends to reerect one of the massive trilithons (three-stone arches) of prehistoric Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. It fell in 1797 after staying upright for perhaps 3,000 years, and there are accurate drawings that show it unfallen. The ministry will not reerect other trilithons that fell in Roman times or earlier, but it sees nothing false about restoring Stonehenge to its 18th century condition...
Although Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso for Strings and Piano Obbligato is a modern masterwork, it showed off the Orchestra's weakest section, the strings, and the performance was uneven. Bloch's incisive rhythms give the work an excitement and a tension that make it a perfect piece to try out on people who "don't like modern music." The final fugue, especially, builds and builds until only the most blase listener can remain unmoved...
...thoroughly forgotten paintings in American history is heading for a comeback. A 165-ft. panorama of the palace and gardens at Versailles, painted in two CinemaScope-like sections, it is being installed this week in a specially built circular room in Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum. Versailles is a masterwork of sobersided, redheaded John Vanderlyn (1775-1852), a painter deeply admired in his youth, deeply pitied in old age, and deeply buried in the textbooks after his death. The picture's new home at the Met should do much to rescue Painter Vanderlyn from his long oblivion...