Word: nicely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rutger ushered me into the cockpit. "Precedent? There is no such thing as precedent in American foreign relations. Every case is decided independently, on a completely random basis. That way there's no favoritism." He added: "If we started rewarding people for being nice to us, what would we have? A world of sycophants...
Scanning Matisse's rooms is like reading a distinguished, reticent autobiography, written before the days when authors were expected to spill all the beans. The calm they radiate is best understood not as an expression of complacency but as a ploy against anxiety. Nice enabled Matisse to stabilize things, to remain in the same frame of mind for days on end. "After a half century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there," he wrote to a friend. "Nature -- or rather, my nature -- remains mysterious. Meanwhile I believe I have put a little order in my chaos...
...instrument for this was color, betokening light. Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures. It encouraged Matisse to think of space (in particular, the space of the hotel rooms where he worked overlooking the Promenade des Anglais) as a light-filled box, full of reflections, transparencies and openings. Shutters filter the light, and their bars are echoed in the stripes of awnings or rugs; light is doubled by mirrors that break open the space...
...strain between the all-over pattern and the real motifs gives his Nice paintings their special vitality. But the strain was real, and in extreme cases, like Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground, 1925-26, it induces an almost palpable discomfort. The sheer congestion of pattern -- rococo mirror, painted wallpaper, overlapping rugs, Ming blue planter -- dismays the eye while seducing it, and the architectonic forms of the nude halt the whirling of color like a massive log brusquely jammed in the gears of a machine. This is the creation not of a complacent man but of an artist...
...candidates "very wisely slipped every punch and ducked every engagement with the President." Even in Louisiana, where Reagan's policies were blamed for the statewide economic crisis wrought by the collapse of oil prices, Democratic Winner John Breaux declined to criticize the President. He diplomatically called Reagan a "very nice gentleman who gets bad advice...