Word: prophet
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...Duchamp's early paintings. The man who consecrated the second half of his life to chess has about his work the air of supremely intelligent, bloodless derision. There is almost no sign of human affection or concern; only the shrewd, anticipatory aspect of a mocking prophet...
...That prophet would have more to mock today. Shortly before he died, Duchamp complained: "In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society." The épater la bourgeoisie act gets harder every day. Each new outrage is given a price tag and immediately sold to some collector−frequently as an investment. The vast, despised leviathan−the middle class−has entirely swallowed the artist and his followers. Yet this too is an irony that Duchamp might have enjoyed. As the Philadelphia Museum visitor walks through Duchamp's striking prefigurations...
Dorothy Day was in jail again last week, and when Dorothy Day goes to jail, it is usually for a cause worth examining. Since her first arrest as a suffragette in 1917, the 75-year-old author-activist has proved herself a prophet of causes that others will eventually join. A redoubtable spokeswoman for pacifism and social reform, she earned an almost annual trip to New York City jails during the '50s for her refusal to participate in compulsory air-raid drills. This time she was arrested, with more than 2,100 Mexican-Americans and members of the Catholic...
Patience is the prophet's greatest ally. In 1900, three years before the Wright brothers puttered over the sand at Kitty Hawk, Wells foretold the modern air armada in The Shape of Things to Come. On the eve of World War I, after reading a book about radium, he wrote The World Set Free, a novel that predicted the atomic bomb with such imaginative precision that the late physicist Leo Szilard acknowledged that the book had inspired the building of his own apparatus for starting chain reactions...
...years ago, I now thank God he lost. Upon witnessing his taking joy in sitting beside the pro-liberal, pro-busing, reduce-American-military-might Edward Kennedy [July 9], I've awakened and I hope that many more are aware of Wallace's true colors: a false prophet and political phony. Those are qualities that America, in her present condition, does not need in a President...