Word: much
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This long sequence is a blend of smartly staged action and mechanical and photographic effects as spectacular as anyone has achieved. It simply blows one away. The trip into the black hole that follows owes too much to 2001, but there are some amusing visual references to Fantasia, which partly compensate. It is good to see the Disney craftsmen doing what they do best on such a grand and risky scale. If one has time for only one space opera this season, this is the one to choose. - Richard Schickel
...Bernet's Auction 4290 in Manhattan on Oct. 25. It took only three minutes and 45 seconds to gavel down Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs for $2.5 million. That was the third highest bid ever made for a painting at auction* and more than twice as much as any other American work of art has ever fetched (see ESSAY). In all, the 264 works by 146 American painters of the 19th and 20th centuries posted a record for a sale of U.S. art: $6,750,950. The Icebergs, a flamboyant canvas by one of America...
...dealer reminisces, "people were giving away Victorian furniture for wood scrap." Today those otherwise indestructible pieces, long derided by the English as "chocolate" (they are Hershey brown), still cost less than glued-and-screwed contemporary furniture-but probably not for long: already a Victorian sleigh bed sells for as much as $30,000. Early American furniture, particularly colonial adaptations of Queen Anne, Chippendale and Hepplewhite, are worth far more than 18th century English pieces of the same style...
...short supply, and becoming ever more scarce, as the auction catalogues-if not the sales figures-sadly reflect. The prizes go mostly these days to citizens of nations that do not extract excessive taxes from the wealthy: Switzerland, France, West Germany, Japan and the Arab countries. Americans remain very much in the market, however, thanks in part to U.S. tax laws that permit a collector to deduct contributions from his taxable estate if he has willed his treasures to a museum. The museums of America, Western Europe and Japan have at their disposal millions of dollars for acquisitions. The biggest...
...night with the ambience of a celebrity party. A top auctioneer has the talents of a croupier, a fight promoter and a matinee idol. As SPB President John Marion, who has wielded the gavel for 18 years, said to TIME'S Georgia Harbison: "A good auctioneer is very much like a good lecturer. Everyone should understand what's going on and be sitting forward in his seat." He added: "Sometimes the atmosphere in the salesroom is absolutely crackling. The eyes of the whole world are on you at an impressionist sale. As much as $5 million may change...