Word: ornamentally
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pioneering Postmodernist Robert Venturi is still given to architectural wisecracks -- an ironic use of old-fashioned forms, a cartoony application of classical ornament -- but for this most important job of his career, he (and partner Denise Scott Brown) behaved just enough. The new wing can speak the decorous language of the old museum: the facade is the same limestone block; the galleries, naturally lit John Soane-ish spaces. But the design is also quietly irreverent: pilasters, above, pile up on one another like so much extruded Play-Doh, and the Tuscan columns inside are impossibly faux...
Meier's architecture is cool and impeccable, deluxe abstract collages of interlocking white-metal-clad boxes and curved white-metal-clad walls, with nothing but dark punched windows and steel stair rails for exterior ornament. It is architecture for the 21st century as imagined in the early 20th century. There are no diversionary pediments and keystones, only suave geometries and rigorous details. His best-known work has been relatively small-scale zillionaires' villas and a few museums...
...cool majesty. And with its sensuous color scheme -- reds, yellows, blues, in bold and subtle tonalities -- Ju Dou looks like a dream of carnage at sunrise. When the couple make love by the dye vat, a long bolt of red fabric unravels past Ju Dou's face: an ornament to her ecstasy and a hint of the blood to be spilled. The lovers cannot wash out the stain of their passion. This is a movie about taint...
...elfin intensity of Winona Ryder, the resilient wit of Jodie Foster, the cunning sensuality of Annette Bening. Most of all, Roberts lacks mystery. She does not seduce the viewer into wanting to know more about her characters or herself. She is not the engine of movie hits, only their ornament...
...sense, this exhibition is an impossible task: you cannot boil down so vast a visual culture and ship it to a museum, especially when so much of the essential evidence consists of immovable buildings and their ornament. One silver altar frontal or a gilded retablo, no matter how impressive in itself, cannot possibly duplicate the devotional frenzy of incrustation that gives Mexican Baroque its special character, any more than a few Chacmool figures and feathered serpents can convey the impact of the step pyramids, ramps and avenues of Chichen Itza or El Tajin...