Word: 80s
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...America in the '80s that means rescinding the sexual revolution of the past quarter-century. Five years ago, concern about herpes caused a similar scare, one that seems trivial by comparison. Now "safe sex" are the watchwords. The mechanics of copulation have become public to a degree unthinkable only a year ago, with detailed discussions in the press and on television of bodily secretions and sexual protection like condoms...
Salle, who was eight that year, seems not quite to have absorbed whatever lessons the text offered. Instead, he was destined to become the painter most identified with the big vogue of the early '80s, "appropriation": the copying and scavenging of images and stylistic packages, or even of whole works, from other art and the mass media. Works like Footmen, 1986, are palimpsests: some grainy silkscreens a la Warhol, a head roughly quoted from a 17th century Spanish painting, a figure leaning over a railroad bridge, a scrawled yellow outline of a girl in hot pants. They suggest narrative...
...stores these days: racks and racks of short, stiff crinolines flaring out into the aisles. By spring they will be bobbing along the streets, impeding entry into buses and buildings and providing the most radical change in silhouette since the mini and the maxi. Does a woman in the '80s really want to look like a Frisbee? Does she care to be the focus of frank stares every time she sits down? Where on earth, in this era of female liberation and utilitarian dress, did these saucy, sexy, impractical throwbacks come from...
Armani has it right. Clothing has been sober and serious in recent years. The dominant figure of the late 1970s was not a Frenchman but the brilliant tailor Armani. In the early '80s the Japanese brought artistry to clothing, but very few chuckles. Lagerfeld cheered things up a bit, but Lacroix has thrown all caution -- some would add taste -- to the winds and opted for outright hilarity...
...80s the message of the day is, get with the program or get out. Given a choice between sticking to principles and eating, a man's got to eat. But there's always another...