Word: virtuoso
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...think of him as a somewhat stolid, ruminative artist compared with a virtuoso like Picasso. It's true that there's no erotic content in his work, and little manifest lyricism or spontaneity. He painted with the steady determination, from form to closed form, of a silkworm chewing its way across a mulberry leaf. Much of his work is not Cubist at all, if Cubism means fragmentation. It was massively built and integrated, and it buried all traces of its construction process. But it could also be very surprising, and in its insistent reduction of the human form to mechanics...
...Justice is most enjoyable because of its deliciously subversive literary flair. James' prose is eloquent and yet strikingly lucid. The opening line of the novel, "Murders do not usually give their victims notice," is the perfect segway into a haunting exploration of Venetia Aldrige's character. The well-practiced virtuoso quality in A Certain Justice draws you into its foreboding atmosphere: "Has it ever occurred to you that a woman, when she is powerful, is more powerful than a man?" asks one of the suspects. The flowing prose often reaches its own stylistic climaxes, independent of plot events...
...every-thing in the world 24-7, though, such meta-ness isn't really sustainable for long without wearing thin: expectations grow higher and higher, we're the rats at the cocaine drop bottle with the tap key, etc. Scream 2 can't go much beyond its first virtuoso scene, in which a woman is stabbed by a movie's fan(atic) in a movie theater raucous over the violence on the screen. We ourselves in the theater feel real fear that the same could happen...
...rife with up-and-coming virtuoso pianists, Awadagin Pratt stands out. Frequently pegged as the Glenn Gould of our age, he just may be...a Gould, that is, with dreadlocks and a flamboyantly jazzy stage presence...
...especially proud of the new Nick Salaman covers she's doing, which she calls "poppy and beautiful." Salaman, former leader of Bevis Frond, has collaborated with Lord in the past, but the Got No Shadow material is most characteristic of his individual music, with less guitar and "more pop virtuoso...