Another Phrase to be Removed from News Coverage for the Foreseeable Future

hit the ground running

Banished Words

Apropos this post, I draw your attention to Lake Superior State’s list of banished words for2009.  ‘Green’, ‘maverick’, and ‘main street’ are my favorites (though ‘maverick’ is less of a problem now that the election is over).

Threshing in Isaiah

Isaiah describes the people of God in the following way in ch. 21: ‘O my threshed and winnowed one, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I announce to you’ (21:10).

This same imagery of the people of God as wheat mixed with chaff is carried over into the New Testament.  For example, Luke records that John the Baptist describes Christ thus: ‘His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’ (3:17).

Words and phrases that should be eliminated from (e.g.) Associated Press stories for the foreseeable future

barbs

jabs

evoked

invoked

hit back

pushed back

roiled

Brunelleschi (1)

Notes from The Oxford Companion to Western Art, s.v. ‘Brunelleschi’

–full name: Filippo di Ser Brunellesco Brunelleschi

–1377-1446; ‘Florentine architect and sculptor credited with initiating the revival of the architectural principles of ancient Rome’

–competed for commission of bronze doors of Florentine Baptistery in 1401, but lost to Ghiberti; his relief of the Sacrifice of Isaac is in the Bargello; then probably visited Rome w/ Donatello to investigate ‘the construction and proportions of ancient buildings’

–afterwards ‘he adapted classical architectural elements to Tuscan Romanesque forms’

–’With his design for the Scolari oratory, S. Maria degli Angeli (begun 1434), he initiated the centrally planned Renaissance building, based on the circle—according to humanists the perfect geometric form’

–around 1413 B. formulated ‘the kind of system of linear perspective used by Masaccio’

–responsible for construction of dome of Florence Cathedral

Donatello

Notes from The Oxford Companion to Art, ed. H. Osborne (Oxford: OUP, 1970), s.v. ‘Donatello, Donato di Niccolo’

–1386-1466

–’Italian sculptor who is sometimes considered the most original and comprehensive genius of that remarkable group of sculptors, architects, and painters who created a veritable artistic revolution in Florence during the first quarter of the 15th c.’

Florentine School

Notes from The Oxford Companion to Art (Oxford: OUP, 1970), s.v. ‘Florentine School’
–was for two and a half centuries the principal center of Western art; first assumed leadership in the arts gradually in the 13C at time of Dante; Florence produced such artists as Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo

–Florence was the site of the first academy of art, founded by Vasari

–’The Florentines always retained a special affection for their Baptistery, which dates perhaps from the 5th c., was consecrated in 1059, became a great centre of mosaic work in the 13th c., and in the 15th a centre of sculpture, led by Ghiberti’

Worldviewism

I’m not sure what I think about Christian worldviewism.  It generally seems to want to make all cultural activity, and indeed all of life, ideologically driven, and therefore political.  But construing all relations and interactions as political performances of identity seems to land one squarely in a postmodern outlook on life.  Granted, Christian worldviewism will not accept the relativity of all ideologies, but it does base its analysis on ideologies relative one to another, with the caveat that theirs (or rather, ours) is the true one, and uses ideological frameworks as the basis of critique.  Yet Christian worldviewism presents itself (in my observation, which, it is true, is limited) as adamantly opposed to any form of postmodernism.

International Gothic

Notes from The Oxford Companion to Western Art, ed. H. Brigstocke (Oxford: OUP, 2001), s.v. ‘International Gothic’

–late form of Gothic art; first coined by Louis Courajod in 1892 to refer to style of painting common throughout w. Europe form c. 1370 to c. 1425

–characteristics ‘have been variously described as a stylized elegance of form, refinement, prettiness, restrained vitality, decorative fantasy, and sumptuous colour.  Others have identified an interest in nature in the form of plants and landscape, and a penchant for secular themes from aristocratic life’

Botticelli: Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi)