Word: talismanic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...distance from the Australian art world-which, by the early '60s, had begun to see him as a talisman of integrity-was only outwardly bohemian; its ori-gins lay in the sort of calm, fanatical pride that cannot bear the distraction of company. One thinks of him scratching around between studio and sea like Shakespeare's exiled misanthrope Timon on the beach: "Come not to me again, but say to Athens/ Timon hath pitched his everlasting mansion/ Upon the beachEd verge of that salt flood...
...semiotical analysis of post-war America. Yet the play's treatment of kitsch goes no farther than to make the point that '50s consumer products would look pretty weird to Victorian dames. For example, during their voyage through time the intrepid adventurers keep coming across egg-beaters. "Totem!" "Talisman!" "Taboo!" they conjecture, and develop the practice of spinning the beaters at one another. They seem to be voiding the egg-beaters of signifying power and revealing them as empty signs, which makes no sense. Yet the two-hour kitsch fest invites this sort of analysis...
...wonder that the work Twombly was doing 30 years ago, before the debate about Post-Modernism blew up, now seems like a talisman to certain Post- Modernists. Po-Mo's relation to the past was all about the sort of skittering, rather affectless quotation, the shoring of fragments against the ruins, that is written all over Twombly's work. One detects the artist's own hand behind the hyperbole of his admirers. But he is still a considerable painter...
That 10% has remained a political talisman for the gay community was clear last week when several leaders refused to give it up. The San Francisco-based magazine 10 Percent, a national quarterly devoted to gay culture, made clear it had no intention of changing its name. "I'm not a mathematician," says editor Hank Donat, "but by their reasoning, there are about 2.5 million gay men in America. I guess we're all living in California...
...blade. A sloeberry, probably his snack food, was found at the site, along with two mushrooms strung on a knotted leather cord. The mushrooms have infection-fighting properties and may have been part of the world's oldest-known first-aid kit. The only decorative item, possibly a talisman, was a small, doughnut-shaped stone disk, with a tassel of string...