Word: peculiarities
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Last year's swarm of millennial retrospectives put a peculiar emphasis on Gutenberg's invention of moveable type, as if it prefigured all subsequent media revolutions: television, the Internet, etc. What the Discovery Channel failed to drool over was the near-simultaneous development of printmaking. In the fifteenth century, woodcuts and engravings were accessible to an audience much larger than the small literate classes, and even today we cannot claim to be anything other than a visual culture. Early prints should be as important to us as early editions of the Bible...
...exhibit clearly underscores van Gogh's rejection of ideally beautiful, perfect figures. 'I find a power and vitality which, if one wants to express them in their peculiar character, ought to be painted with a firm brush stroke, with a simple technique,' van Gogh said, referring to the common men he preferred painting. The first rooms feature a haunting display of old pensioners, fishermen and weavers with craggy, misshapen faces. They have a serene dignity, particularly 'Orphan Man with Top Hat' (1882). Van Gogh's drawings reflect his eagerness to express the humanity of his subjects...
...fairly quick on his feet, by turns agile and earnest. He used biblical, born-again locutions which to the unprepared sound peculiar (he needs forgiveness "when my heart is dark") and did a modified, limited, low-information, appropriately dignified minute or two on the subject of his drinking...
Commenting on this case, Cellucci has shown a peculiar callousness to the guarantees in the judicial system that protect the rights of defendants. "Instead of protecting the defendant from the prosecutors," Cellucci has said, "the judge should be protecting the public from the defendant." Coming from a high public official, Cellucci's comment is even more irresponsible. Of course the justice system exists to protect the public. However, only a police state disregards the rights of defendants in order to accomplish that goal. That would indeed be a high price to pay to protect the public...
...simply showing a room full of people with everybody's face, for some reason the experience of the story got kind of confused. You were identifying with all these different viewpoints in the room. It seems like some of the best known cartoon characters end up being these peculiar, almost sexless, baby-like men - bald, pink men, like Charlie Brown, and Tintin and Skeezix, and Barnaby. It's the least specific character. It's the character you can immediately identify with, and I don't really understand it. There's something really peculiar going on there. So by [keeping...