Word: motif
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that Hollywood usually purveys as local color. He does not give us pale demigods or villains with waxed black mustaches; the three men he presents us with are for the most part fully believable in a believable if distant situation. One of the three, tough guy Bogart, illustrates the motif of the film, that "gold can destroy men's souls," his degeneration coming almost in retribution for his claim that he is immune to the poison of the yellow dust. The other two seem ready to yield also, but they do not, and we are left with the feeling that...
Taking note of the hubbub, Moscow's Literary Gazette also came out boldly in favor of nudes, preferably female. "Hypocrites and doctrinaires and art administrators have tried with enviable success to drive this undying motif, which inspired so many great realists, from the sphere of painting in Socialist realism as 'immoral.' Glazunov cannot but be praised for the boldness with which he broke this stupid taboo and brought back to art an earthy delight and poetry of feeling." As a followup, Moscow Radio's English broadcast quoted Critic Anatoly Chlemov deploring the view that "just about...
...refined experiment in egomania. Lipton's The Cloak, even as a theme, could be more feelingly rendered by any class of fifth-graders. Glarner's Relational Painting Number 79 should be considered as an expression of pure design, not as art-it would make an excellent linoleum motif. Contrastingly, Loren Maclver's The Street shows a lyric tenderness; apparently there is still a bold blaze of originality in contemporary American art, for all of the maunderings of the abstract expressionists. TED LOVINGTON JR. Staten Island...
Apart from the animal motif, Ritchard has staged the affair with the wit of a Gilbert-and-Sullivan romp and the style of a top-drawer fancy-dress ball. Bouncing about like a tall, elegant puppet, he lives up to the excellent settings by Rolf Gérard (including a hilarious-looking Dungeon for Recalcitrant Husbands) and he delivers the lines and lyrics of Playwright Maurice Valency's able English adaptation with skilled gusto. In fact, Ritchard is guilty of only one flaw. He has included a cancan that is danced by the corps de ballet in more...
...later-day subjects none inspired better work than the giant seashell his wife brought as a souvenir of her birthplace, and kept on the white-marble fireplace mantel of their quiet Paris apartment. Fascinated by the shell, Redon used it as the starting point for a motif as old as antiquity. His Birth of Venus is a subject that has inspired artists from the time of the Greeks to Botticelli. Redon painted it as something glimpsed deep in the sea or seen fleetingly but unforgettably in a dream...