Word: vulgarize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...imitation and occasionally imaginative recreation of nature rather than a substitute for it. The imitation of nature ranges from the exquisite blink in an automaton pirate's eye, with lifelike eyelashes and wrinkles on his skin, or the marvel of transparent ghosts dancing around a huge hall, to the vulgar ride through darkest Africa, with your guide shooting at rhinos, hippos, and elephants. One can agree with John Ciardi's estimation of the place is seeing the "shyster in the bacroom of illusion, diluting his witches brew with tapwater, while all his gnomes worked frantically to design gaudier and gaudier...
...never at a public event. As President, an individual is expected to maintain a quality of dignity. A quality of aloofness. Yes, of course, to be friendly too, but people don't want the President of the United States to be a little sloppy or lewd or vulgar. They want to think he is one of them but not too much so. If they see the President kicking up his heels, eating too much or drinking too much, the confidence factor is weakened. People want to think that if there is a crisis, he will be cool and sober. They...
...desire to treat Picasso as if he had been a master from birth has absurdly inflated them. Thus Alfred Barr once wrote that a Picasso of 1905, Boy Leading a Horse (10), "makes the official guardians of the 'Greek' traditions such as Ingres ... seem vulgar or pallid." Rather, the Blue and Pink periods contain the most accessible images Picasso ever produced-sensitive, mannered and drenched in pathos. Those who have problems decoding the intricate Cubist structure of a 1912 still life have none with the consumptive laundresses, wistful acrobats and delicately shaded cripples who populate Picasso...
...MASQUERADE, an anthology of improvisations from children's fables, was the major embarrassment of the PBS premières. The gentle whimsy and fantasy of the original tales withers in a broad, shrill production better suited to the Minsky circuit. Kids of all ages would call it a vulgar rip-off from the Story Theater (TIME, March 1), which has been far more sensitively translated to TV by Creator Paul Sills in a syndicated commercial series. CRITIC-AT-LARGE is a quarter-hour with Berkeley Associate Professor of Journalism David Littlejohn, 34, putting his bite, or perhaps overbite...
...Miller fought back with his persuasive critical intelligence. He mocked the jargon of the human-potential movement. He described Esalen as a typically vulgar California contradiction-"the pursuit of the spirit without adequate traditions." But the confrontation had mortally wounded Miller's vanity. Far from home ground, he had no one to buttress his top-heavy personality. "Who would tell me I was good?" he whimpered when an Eastern colleague failed to respond sympathetically to his complaining letters. By this time his ego began to resemble a shriveled eggplant. Waves of anxiety paralyzed his will...