Word: tableau
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...none of this takes place, what might the earth look like? Author Meadows predicts that at its best, the typical landscape might resemble the Netherlands: a crowded, monotonous tableau in which no aspect of nature is free from human manipulation. Other analysts look to the history of island cultures because they tend to reveal how the environment and humans respond when burgeoning populations put stress on an isolated ecosystem...
Buchanan glared like a Jesuit prefect of discipline and stabbed the air. His rendition was family values in the bully's mode -- an appeal to visceral prejudices, not to American ideals. Barbara Bush and the tableau of Bush children and grandchildren transmitted a softer version, a kind of Pepperidge Farm, white-bread appeal in handsome plenty...
...scene on the podium after the two acceptance speeches was like a wedding | reception where the bride and groom fan out to dance with the rest of the family. It was a Norman Rockwell tableau that could persuade older voters that the first all-baby-boomer ticket won't ignore them, signaling that while they may be the younger generation, they are still the type to bring the grandchildren home for the holidays...
...closing week at London's National Gallery, makes clear. Rembrandt was not a "literary" painter, as his intense devotion to the muck and glow and substance of paint attests. But he was an incomparably theatrical one. In his work, the idea of a figure painting as tableau is exchanged for that of outright drama: deep, dark backgrounds and narrative light picking out the hierarchy of character; turbulent crowd scenes; an eye for all classes, from cobblers to kings; a vast range of expression in the faces and gestures; moments of shock (the blade grinding into the clumsy giant...
Finally, suppose there's no touching, no tableau, no quid pro quo -- just a crude exploratory gambit along the lines of "Hiya, babe, you wanna . . . ?" Here too some moral Rubicon has been crossed. Intimacy in a public setting is not just "inappropriate," in the prissy, yuppie sense. It can be deeply insulting, which is why a misapplied tu in French or du in German can be a fighting word. When we leave our homes to go to work, we assume an impersonal role like "teacher," "secretary" or "judge." We may even don a special costume (black robes, skirted suit...