Word: portrayal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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HUFFINGTON is determined to fit Picasso into a symbolic context--showing him to be alternately creator, then destroyer. But any biography with so rigid a framework invariably paints a black-and-white picture of the person it seeks to portray. To Huffington, Picasso was a destroyer and his art a negation of human values. Her evidence for this, however, is not drawn from the vast body of Picasso's works; it comes from the bitter testimony of the artist's former lovers and friends. His sex life, it would seem, was the expression of Picasso's true soul...
Picasso's life "was, in a very real sense, the twentieth century's own autobiography," Huffington writes at one point. That statement can be seen as the epigraph for the book's failings, as well as for the man it seeks to portray, because the book embraces wholeheartedly the narrow commonplaces which comprise bestselling books today. If there are no heroes, only 15-minute celebrities, then the People magazine school of biography is appropriate for cultural figures...
...past. The Democrats balloted by computer for the first time four years ago in San Francisco, and when the Republicans gather in New Orleans next month, they will bring with them the usual arsenal of portable computers, cellular telephones and fax machines. But this year the Democrats, eager to portray themselves as the party that champions economic growth through high technology, seem to find pride and political symbolism in the fact that their convention will significantly out tech the Republicans'. "We just really knocked ourselves out to make sure we ended up with a state-of-the-art information system...
...discover she is a member of "Arab royalty," her father is an oil sheik or that she has a personal body guard. Khalil, however, laughs at these suggestions, seeming genuinely surprised that anyone would fabricate or believe such fanciful stories. Brushing aside these tales, Khalil and her friends portray her as a typical Harvard student, not the pretentious, exclusive person she is rumored...
...movie industry has always looked at minorities with a limited perspective. The Godfather is the prime example. Portray the Italian as a crime boss, Hollywood says, because that's what...