Word: tarquinia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. ROBERTO MATTA ECHAURREN, 91, Chilean surrealist known as Matta, whose hallucinatory paintings heavily influenced such artists as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko; in Tarquinia, Italy. His eerie mutants and globs of clashing color were, he said, "the subconscious in its burning, liquid state...
...DIED. ROBERTO MATTA ECHAURREN, 91, Chilean painter whose hallucinatory images of cosmic dream worlds made him a leading Surrealist artist; in Civitavecchia, near Tarquinia, Italy. Matta lik-ened his images to the experience of clasping one's eyes shut against the light...
When I finally heard the news, I was digging up ancient medieval ruins outside an historic back-water of a town in Italy--Tarquinia, which had once been a main nexus of the Etruscan civilization. The Etruscans were shepherds who set up a culture that the Romans subsequently built on. I appreciated the irony of standing on top of the roots of Western civilization when one of the Italian kids on the team came running down the path to our site waving a copy of Italy's major communist newspaper, l'Unita, with a headline proclaiming what so many have...
...watched Nixon's resignation speech on the news. There was no pity for this broken leader; he had fallen before we were born. The Italians at the table watched our reactions. We showed no shame for Nixon--this man was as politically remote from us as the distance between Tarquinia and Washington--but on the other hand we drew no elation from watching the president take responsibility for screwing the democratic system, but point the blame elsewhere...
...thus far been available only as an English-language paperback in Italy. Arcane as that fact may be, it has a certain poetic fitness, since Lawrence wrote this most lyrical draft in Italy, inspired partly by the sensual "bright and dancing" frescoes in the Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia. It is substantially longer than the famous version, but no more obscene-which is to say that today it seems about as off-color as a Tiepolo cupid...