Word: tonal
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Through July 1995. "Shades of Significance: Tonal Values in Abstract Art." From its perceived origins in Cubism, through its dominance of the post-war American art scene, to its current coexistence with other approaches to imagemaking...
...among other 17th century artists. All his drawings were for his own use, memory aids or steps toward a finished composition, and they don't bother with seducing the eye. They are pragmatic expressions of the desire to understand a pose, a set of figures, or a structure of tonal relationships, bluntly set down in strokes of the pen and unfussed dabs of ink wash. For the sensuous side of Poussin one must consult the paintings, in all their majesty of color: the ultramarine blues, vermilions, gold-yellows, unfurled against the softer tones of nature...
...exhibit, not all of the women are garish creatures. Toulouse-Lautrec's Absinthe Drinker may be a prostitute, but she possesses a maternal modesty conveyed by her relaxed posture, unassuming clothes and coloring in tonal browns. She's not a redhead, as are many of Toulouse-Lautrec's women, nor does she look embalmed and fluorescent as the harsh lighting of the Moulin Rouge was apt to render its drunk habituees. Absinthe Drinker is a refreshing contrast to Toulouse-Lautrec's unflattering portraits. But here again, the work is not psychologically revealing, because the woman is shown in profile...
Popular theory alleges that pastels are physically soothing and pleasing to the eye. At least their color and tonal properties offer no offense, unless one calls gentility and utopianism an offense to sensibility. Impressionism might be attacked with this double-edged critique, which encapsulates both polarized personal responses; sentimental whimsy on the one hand and mild aversion on the other, posthaste from contemplating the first emotion...
...cultural identity. "I thought that a truly American opera would be based on African-American music," says Davis. That is precisely what he accomplished in his powerful and biting 1984 work X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X (with libretto by cousin Thulani), a fierce, modernist, free-tonal piece that employs elements of jazz, blues and gospel...