Word: motifs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Slow reflection governed all his work. The pressure of the motif was sublimated in the demands of the painting. Monet also made quite conscious gestures to art history. His series of poplars near his house in Giverny -- their slender, stately trunks along the banks of the Epte reflected in the water and forming an almost abstract palisade, the S shape of their bushed-out tops strung along like a festive garland -- pays homage to French rococo, Fragonard in particular. Like his lyric images of a stretch of the Seine from 1896 to 1897, the paintings show how unrelentingly conscious Monet...
Monet's power to evoke substance through paint was as strong as Rembrandt's. The next 100 years would be full of art about art, but one may doubt whether any of it quite equaled the level of intelligence and passion -- both seizing the motif and respectfully deferring to it -- that is figured forth in Monet's Cathedrals...
Moskowitz's vividly imposing red windmill alludes to Mondrian's great early paintings of that motif. The side of the Yosemite cliff in The Seventh Sister, 1981, recalls Clyfford Still and, through that, the American Romantic tradition of heroic landscape. Such works do not escape the second-handedness that comes with quoted images, but at least they are quite without smug prophylactic irony...
VALENTINE'S Day is the day, more than any other, when Americans act out the ritualized myths of heterosexual companionship. On this one day of the year, feelings are acceptable--indeed, compulsory. Love is the motif, lovers guided by the need to present proof of their affections in the commercially packaged way that makes their sentiments unimpeachable...
...keeping with the AIDS-awareness motif of the weekend, safe-sex packets were given to all couples at the Valentine's Day Ball and condoms were tossed out to audience members at the Krok's concert...