Word: ornamentations
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...rounding a turn in the stream, both canoes struck a tree that had been mostly obscured by the flood. The lead canoe tipped its passengers and then righted itself, floating out of reach of the boaters. The second wrapped itself around the tree and stayed there, a bizarre Christmas ornament one holiday late. Rescuers in Guerneyville picked up five of the six canoers within three hours of the accident. The next day they recovered the body of the sixth. Joseph Richmond Levenson, Sather Professor of History at the University of California, my father...
Other songs on the album go the opposite way--tones and squeals ornament the chillier lyrics about sanitized society. On "Green Shirt," an obstinate bass pulse and the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun drum hover behind these lyrics...
...dogmatism. The years 1900 to 1930 bristle with formulas and coercive epigrams: "Form follows function," "The house is a machine for living in," and so forth. Mies van der Rohe's "Less is more" was prefigured by the Viennese architect Adolf Loos' belief, published in Vienna in 1908, that ornament was crime: "We have outgrown ornament!" Loos exclaimed. "See, the time is nigh, freedom awaits us. Soon the streets of the City will glisten like white walls, like Zion, the holy city, the capital of heaven! Then fulfillment will come...
...might say that the essential subject matter of the International Style was the end of history. Its "functionalism," which correctly saw that mass production was destroying handcraft and, with it, ornament, was always colored by this millenarian fantasy. Johnson, whose relationship to Mies van der Rohe is complicated and Oedipal, argues that "Mies believed in the ultimate truth of architecture, especially of his architecture: that it was closer to the truth than anyone else's because it was simpler and could be learned. He felt it could be adapted on and on into the centuries, until architecture bloomed into...
...romance in his/her soul, would present a loved one with a stove? Better a filmy negligee or even a velour shirt (both went well this winter). Better yet, a Fendi sable coat (Bergdorf's catalogue sold three at $18,500 apiece), a $500 cashmere robe or any ornament made of gold, the invaluable metal that fetched some $220 an ounce on the London market last week. Tiny gold pendants in the shape of oil barrels went for $850 and solid gold nuggets for $950. Tiffany's diamond-studded gold watch was a bargain. Its price...