The phrase neatly caught the new art's strange synthesis of formal rigor and idiosyncratic passion: exploding in Jackson Pollock's drips, clenched in Mark Rothko's fogs of excruciating color, heraldic in Barnett Newman's flat fields creased with upright lines or bands.
The lesson of Trouble in Paradise, subtitled From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, is plain: "a new Dark Age is looming, with ethnic and religious passions exploding, and Enlightenment values receding".
Croatia is far from being an exception: from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India, a new Dark Age is looming, with ethnic and religious passions exploding and Enlightenment values receding.
Passion, whether exploding from within ominous calm ("The Godfather"), or crackling like fireworks on the surface, is his defining mode.
He may be a great postgame interview, especially if his passion is exploding out of him, but in a booth, he needs to be a self-starter with quick analyses and stories, and a good listener.
The Ukrainian nationalist right is one instance of what is going on today from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India: ethnic and religious passions are exploding, and Enlightenment values receding.
Whichever way you read the scene, it fumes with passions primed to explode, and what seems extraordinary is that a film packed with perilous appetites should itself feel so un-angry, reaching at the last toward a bewildered calm.
In reality, relationships that explode with passion and pleasure do not come from forced surrender or sexual wizardry.
A man with incredible passion and vision, exploding with energy — but a man who could also be harsh and rude with the people he worked with.
Mr. Obama showed no passion for the job, and allowed Mr. Romney to explode the characterization of him as a wealthy, job-destroying venture capitalist that the Obama campaign had spent months creating.
