Word: plaster
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...combination of the Pitti Palace and a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse. Inside, its bright colors (whites, golds and reds) and intimate dimensions (only 1,300 seats) give it a light, cozy ambience. Trompe l'oeil reigns: columns that appear to be marble turn out to be made of skillfully disguised plaster. Scenes from plays like Goethe's Faust and Lessing's Nathan der Weise adorn the doorways; in the auditorium, the gilt chandelier is topped with the crest of the old Saxon monarchy. It illuminates a mid-19th century musical pantheon that includes Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Spontini...
...some original details remained as clues to the materials Semper had used. The acoustics--vivid and unforced, warm and full-bodied--are a particular triumph. The rebuilt Semper Opera disproves the notion that acoustics are still a hit-or-miss proposition: just build a classic horseshoe of wood and plaster, and fill it with statuary and curtains, then sit back and savor the beautifully blended results...
...figures would "read" from restricted angles 65 ft. below. One thinks of him on the ladder, carrying the scheme of exaggeration in his head like a brimful bucket. On the curved surfaces of the ceiling and spandrels, he used cartoons, full-size drawings whose outlines were transferred to the plaster. But the lunettes, or flat semicircular panels, around the top of the Sistine's windows, show no sign of these preliminaries. They were imagined on the spot, alla prima...
...Jacob-Joseph lunette bulge like those of a bodhisattva in a "mad" Zen scroll; and how this is reinforced by colors nobody had seen since the end of the 16th century. They had begun to disappear almost from the moment Michelangelo began laying them on the wet plaster...
...What interests me is a series of shocks and encounters a person can have," confesses Sculptor George Segal. For nearly three decades, the master of plaster has recorded those seismic occasions, and in George Segal (Rizzoli; 379 pages; $65), Art Historians Sam Hunter and Don Hawthorne have gathered the best of them, from '50s paintings like Dead Chicken to his life-size casts of individuals trapped in time. Throughout his long career, the artist has trumpeted his message of alienation...