Word: rococo
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...same sentence. And if at times the sheer weight of detail may almost be dizzying to a newcomer, the text is enlivened at every turn by all the familiar props of the Hughes voice -- the mischievous erudition (translating a Latin motto as "Far down! Far out!"), the rococo diction ("fribblers" and "cutpurses" abound) and the Augustan bite (asides that wither "the mingy veneering of today's 'lite' architecture"). Beneath the virile lucidity of the prose, however, is a subtle and sensitive mind that can lead the reader, patiently, into complexity: "In Gaudi one sees flourishing the egotism achieved by those...
Orlando's rococo industry of make-believe has put some zip into local gossip columns. Hollywood celebrities pop up regularly. Some, like Steven Spielberg and Robert Earl, the British mastermind behind the international chain of Hard Rock Cafes, have even bought homes in Orlando. The area, says Earl, is "full of millionaires driving trucks and wearing jeans...
...that "they represent a race that could perhaps be persuaded by rational argument . . . to abandon tribal tradition." There is not a shred of evidence in the painting for this sanctimonious interpolation. Elsewhere one reads that "rectilinear frames . . . provide a dramatic demonstration of white power and control." Sure, and gilt rococo ovals would mean drag queens had taken over the Senate...
...integument of Political Correctness, Salle has stopped including the mildly pornographic nudes that annoyed some spectators in the '80s. One must content oneself with his equally crude versions of less sexually loaded images. The New York Times, rarely in doubt about Salle's virtues, hailed the new works as "Rococo," presumably because they are all pale, some have harlequins, and one of them recycles a bit of 18th century decor -- figures in a Roman landscape beside the Pyramid of Cestius. Such is the history of style...
JANOS STARKER (Mercury Living Presence). Accompanied by Antal Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra, the splendidly patrician Starker restores freshness to three warhorses: Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. This is one of several remarkable recordings immaculately transferred from the Mercury Living Presence series (1951-68), which for sound quality remains unsurpassed...