Word: motif
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...social foible was mean and exact; his sense of ideas almost nonexistent. He had (and still has) one obsessive theme: the unease of the arrived white rich, the devices by which they assuage guilt, and the hustles wrought on them from below. That was the motif of his last book, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). It also supplies the comedy of manners for his new one, The Painted Word, which appeared in Harper's April issue and has now been published in hard cover by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book was meant...
...skit without worrying much about continuity. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, by contrast, has a single unified story line about a deadpan King Arthur searching for, well, the Holy Grail. Instead of being simply a background for a series of more or less independent routines, the Arthurian motif strangles the jokes...
...alumnus of Miles Davis and John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, Cobham evolved from a progressive rhythm-and-blues drummer to a deft jazz writer-arranger. His music, often danceable, reflects Caribbean and Latin American rhythmic and tonal influences. Solarization, a 10½-minute elaboration of a five-note motif, is sometimes ruminative, but at other times radiates sizzling sensuality...
...patch of spiky hair like hedgehog quills. To a degree few other painters can rival, Bacon convinces you that every stroke and drip counts, that they carry a weight of ethical decision, so that representation is not a matter of filling-in but rather a continual reinvention of the motif. "I use everything from the brushes that sweep the floor to rags. I use everything to remake the images. I am not trying at all to illustrate life." Bacon wants - and generally manages to put - the drama in the paint, not in the narrative. In fact, the best triptychs...
Boston's Sanson Institute of Heraldry puts coats of arms on everything from blazer patches ($14.95) to watches ($49.95). The American Heraldry Foundation in Clearwater, Minn., has a different approach. For a $39.95 fee, customers can suggest the motif of their shields. The Beihoffers, a farming family from Buffalo Lake, Minn., for example, picked a horse and plowshare and a spool of thread (sewing is Opal Beihoffer's hobby) for their coat of arms; because marriage and the home are important to the family, they also chose a pair of intertwined rings and a front door...