Word: vernacular
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Later architects, from Robert Venturi to Michael Graves, may seem to be coming out in favor of vernacular, complexity, decoration, memory and whatnot-the whole postmodernist bag of tricks, from Cape Cod shingles to Roman arches-but are all pointy-headed clones of the Compound, still seeking to exalt the Word (theory and manifestos) over the Act (workable buildings). Real populist architecture has no chance. Within the taste centers, Wolfe says, "there was no way for an architect to gain prestige through an architecture that was wholly unique or specifically American in spirit." What was this spirit, this ignored Zeitgeist...
...good deal of the popularity of Pop art, as the late Harold Rosenberg pointed out some years ago, partook of "the astonishment of Moliere's character on learning that he has been speaking prose" all his life. Suddenly, there was the commercial vernacular of America, that amniotic fluid in which every collector had been nurtured, right there on the museum wall. And the curious paradox was that, in Lichtenstein's case, the fluid -those cartoon images of teen-agers and Korean War jets-was transparent. After a while the imagery hardly...
...plainly concerned about the increased popularity of softer drugs in the ranks. And with good reason. Last year courts-martial connected with cocaine, marijuana and hashish trafficking or use jumped an eye-opening 122%. The new drug of particular preference among U.S. servicemen? Cocaine, known in the street vernacular as coke...
Marxistka, a terms that literally means a woman who embraces Marxist political beliefs, has come to mean, in the Moscow vernacular, a prostitute who walks Marx Avenue in Moscow. Another phrase which originally meant 'to change views to keep in line with the party line,' has taken on a new connotation. It now refers to a conformist who adheres to the party line, fluctuating even as the party line shifts...
...program. Cobb's design is an attempt to assimilate the new building into the site: a large brick facade encloses a public square; the stepped levels of the rear connect the vast new structure with the smaller existing museum building. Red brick was chosen to match the vernacular buildings of the city...