Word: peculiar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...doll's house. Nevelson's work-almost 12 ft. high, 20 ft. wide, and 15 ft. deep-is actually domestic (if not palatial) in size, a place one can move into. It is both sculpture and shelter, a continuous surface painted black-Nevelson's peculiar black, said to be ordinary house paint straight from the can, but with a dull lunar sheen to it, like graphite or caviar...
...starched aprons cannot mug for the audience or recite witty lines. Scenic and vocal delights pale when the direction is drab and comic potential ignored. Although the company's voices are strong and clear, they may as well be disembodied. The staging is sometimes pedestrian, and there is a peculiar reluctance to ham up the show...
Oates uses madness as a symbol for a peculiar kind of corruption in the soul. Her characters are not hateful because of anything that they do; they are not even guilty of the usual existentialist sins of cowardice and self-deception. On the contrary, they bravely confront problems which most of us prefer not to think about. Their only fault is the morbid quality of their fascination with these problems. Their ugliness is not a failure of character, but a rottenness of essence that can only be observed by an omniscient narrator...
...myth. Balthus is an artist's artist: there are perhaps three or four painters alive today whose work is a real addition to the great, tottering edifice of Western figure painting, and Balthus is their doyen. Under the dandy's glare all triviality withers; Balthus' peculiar position is in part the result of his steady refusal to be a man of his own time. Admittedly, his silent paintings, populated by cats and malignant-looking, narcissistic girls, offer their distant homages to surrealism. Balthus' work is, to put it mildly, post-Freudian. But the innovations...
...this Rigoletto's failings, Dexter must bear most of the blame. Yet Levine, despite the beauty and power of his conducting, cannot be totally absolved. It is the peculiar penchant of both to want to concentrate as much action as possible at the front of the stage. In Dexter's case the practice seems to have developed during a brilliant career on the legitimate stages of Broadway and London's West End. For Levine it seems to be a case of wanting to bring the singers closer to both the audience and his own podium. They...