Epic, Excessive, German expressionist film, Grand, Monumental, Power

"In the beginning there is nothing. It starts very small and becomes bigger." Pina Bausch creates epics, but they always retain that quality of having come from absence, of having been built piece by piece. Bausch's dances start with a single concept -- a kernel of movement, a memory -- which she bui

Bombast, Ecstatic, Epic, Euro-surreal expressionism, Repetition

Eons before "Days of Our Lives" reared its ugly head on television, Tolstoy was a master of the soap opera. His serialized surveys of nineteenth-century Russian society are devoted to detailing in relentlessly romantic prose the epiphanies of love and war, the travails of the individual on the battle

Dramatic, Epic, High realism, Huge, Monumental

In 1991, Matthew Barney exploded onto the New York art scene with all the force of his often insanely physical videos. Just eight years later, a New York Times article dared to crown him "the most important artist of his generation." The occasion was the release of "Cremaster," one of a cycle of five

Epic, Perverse, Quirky, Surreal