Friday, January 27, 2017

“Great Art Has Been Put Into a Coma”; “Sears is Like the Mythical Headless Horseman Wandering Aimlessly In the Night Looking for its Lost, Never-To-Be-Found Head”--Use of Visual, Evocative Expression to Emphasize One's Point

[Rewritten on May 27, 2017]

Here are some recent examples of highly effective communicators using a vivid, evocative expression while emphasizing something and thus making their assertion indelible--examples which, I hope, will inspire the rest of us into similarly imaginative use of the language, especially when we are trying to break through the clutter.
 
  • (From a BBC TV news report earlier this year) Commenting on the Geneva Freeport--one of the largest such fortified storage facilities in the world and which houses in secrecy over a million works of art (including hundreds of Picassos), most of which are destined not to be seen by the public for decades--a curator lamenting: Great art has been put into a coma.”
 
A quick 101 on “free ports”: Described by some as “the greatest museums no one can see,” free ports are tax-free facilities for goods in transit and, according to the BBC, these are places “where the super-rich can secretly store their priceless art works that often include smuggled, even Nazi-looted, paintings. (As a result) great masterpieces can be incarcerated here for decades!” Thus, these free ports are a serious impediment to stamping out the illegal art trade.
 
  • With reference to the fast declining fortunes of Sears (stock price plummeting over 40% in the past year and 70% in the most recent three years; sales down from $41b in 2012 to $22b in 2016), Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada and now a marketing professor at Columbia Business School, telling PBS’s “Nightly Business Report” this past winter: “Sears Holding is like the mythical headless horseman wandering aimlessly in the night looking for its lost, never-to-be-found head.”
© Copyright 2017  V. J. Singal