Word: motif
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...perhaps connect this yearning for stabilization with Van Gogh's fear of his own ailment, whatever it was (epilepsy complicated by syphilis is a likely guess). It is as though the calmer color, the growing penchant for structuring his work as a process of sequential research into a given motif -- a walled field near the asylum, the olive grove outside it, the pines in the asylum garden -- had an apotropaic use for him, keeping at bay the demons of the unconscious. He wrote incessantly; his letters from the asylum, unmarred by a single note of self-pity, are among...
...butterfly migration, in fact, may turn into an economic boon for the peasants. Last year the locals guided 50,000 sightseers through the region -- for 500 pesos, about 60 cents each. They also conduct a brisk business selling butterfly-motif postcards, posters and tiles supplied to them at cost by Monarca. "Though it seems a very small amount," says Melody Allen, executive director of the Monarch Project, an Oregon-based lobbying organization that concentrates on protecting similar sites in California, "they are charging enough to make more income than they would if they were logging...
...paralyzed cyclops -- for a split second." But between 1981 and 1983 Hockney scarcely touched a paintbrush; irked by painter's block, he turned to photography to shake it loose, first with a Polaroid SX-70 and then with various popular automatic 35- mm cameras. He would take a motif -- a friend smoking and talking, people around a table, a swimmer in the blue light-dappled water of his Los Angeles pool, an allee of chestnut trees or a green spindly iron chair with pigeons in ) the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris -- and shoot away: click-zip, left-right, up- down, frame...
...shirt with a crocodile logo on the breast. Lacoste's garment was first marketed in the U.S. in 1951 under the name of a famous English tailor, Jack Izod. The Izod Lacoste shirt quickly became an American standard. In 1972 Lauren introduced a version featuring his own polo-player motif. Polo/Ralph Lauren claims to sell about 4 million of the items annually. Izod Lacoste's U.S. manufacturer is not forthcoming with sales figures, but industry analysts say the older shirt is more popular...
...Elizabeth Perkins and the splenetically funny Jim Belushi) to form a profoundly modern relationship. The movie is so intent on ingratiating itself with its audience that it betrays the meaning of its source. One of Mamet's themes--that friends are more possessive than lovers --remains as a vagrant motif. The rest is obscured in the mist of soft- focus cuteness, as yuppie lust conquers all. Welcome to St. Elmo's Fizzle...