Word: plastered
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...hotchpotch with some loose thematic strands. The ostensible subject for 1984 is "Art and the Arts"-painting, sculpture and their connections to other media, to their own history, to architecture, and so on. Almost anything can be gathered under such an umbrella, and nearly everything has been, from plaster Apollos to graffiti, from marble to flickering television sets. The prevailing tone is of fatigue and mannerism. Everyone complains that the Biennale, like art itself, is in decline; such complaints are a necessary part of the ritual of visiting it. But this year in particular the visitor feels like a tourist...
...past. There are, for instance, the canvases of Christopher Lebrun, a young Englishman whose thickly mortared landscapes featuring cypresses, caverns and the winged horse Pegasus have a Böcklin-like drama that is not wholly the result of judicious quotation. But quotation does rule. This Biennale has more plaster casts in it than the cellar of a Viennese art academy: the abused relics of antiquity dragged back as conceptual décor for a dying art tradition...
Johnson's own work, also done at the atelier, needs painstaking care. After he models a 12-in.-tall clay figure, assistants duplicate it as a life-size nude. Real clothing is fitted on it by a full-time seam stress, who stitches the material to plaster castings so the folds will fall just right. Afterward it is sprayed with a stiffening resin to hold its shape. The casting method Johnson uses is so fine that it duplicates wrinkles on the leather of an old briefcase. He hired Japanese and Italian as well as American chemists to develop...
...pyramid that was flanked by a cluster of temples. Workers digging an exploratory trench discovered that flakes of flint had been scattered through a layer of masonry, a funerary custom of the Maya. Digging farther, the archaeologists uncovered the remains of a stone platform and the outline of a plaster dome...
...statue model was cast in plaster and the design completed by that May. Its casting took three and one half months, done in New York by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company. It was set on its pedestal, designed by C. Howard Walker, a Boston architect, on October...