Word: motif
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...Sunday, you would be well to catch Guy Van Duser's act at the Springefield St. Salon (13 Springefield St.), a unique bar with, get this, an old-western motif...
...Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries whose caravels found their way to Japan in the 16th century were known as nambanjin, or "southern barbarians." Naturally, the artists knew next to nothing of the habits of these white-faced extraterrestrials with their quaint, long spindly noses. Yet they became a popular motif on screens: gesturing from their ships, clumsy as grounded kites in their absurd pantaloons. They were to Japan what the willow-pattern Chinaman became to England...
Beer mugs in hand, a dozen men relaxed together in an isolated forest clearing. The uniforms they wore were disturbingly familiar: brown shirts, black breeches, high black boots; the swastika motif on their red, black and white armbands was repeated on flags massed behind them. Then, standing at attention, the men thrust their arms upward in a Heil, Hitler salute. Armed with rifles, they goose-stepped through a military drill...
...hour-long majlis took place in an audience chamber big enough to accommodate a basketball court. The maroon carpet was wall-to-wall, and armchairs in green or gold upholstery bordered the room. The green walls were decorated with a palm branch motif. From the center of the ceiling hung a large crystal chandelier, and from each corner, a smaller chandelier...
Monet gave impressionism the dignity of classical art, though by the turn of the century he was no longer an impressionist in the sense of working outdoors, directly from the motif. Whether his canvases, he remarked, "are painted from life or not is nobody's business and of no importance whatsoever." They were in fact painted from memory-but the span of memory was as short as the walk from the pond to the studio. In his genius for rendering evanescence within a monumental structure, Monet became a master of le temps retrouvé: the most Proustian of painters...