【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 40-45
[Narrator] Listen to part of a discussion in an art history class. The professor is talking about action art.
[Professor]
In the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism emerged among a group of painters that, uh, came to be known as Q40
the New York School, although the members included artists from many regi0nsofthe United States and
several European countries as well. In any case, we know that the brushstrokes were a significant feature
of the work of Impressionist and Post Impressionist painters, and like them, the Abstract Expressionists
were interested in the expressive qualities of paint, and particularly in the case of action painters or gesture
painters... they were sometimes called gesture painters... and they developed new methods for
applying the paint. They dripped, threw, sprayed, and, uh, splattered... paint on the canvas... with a
view to expressing artistic... actions or gestures... as part of the creative process.
Now, according to your textbook, probably the best-known of the action painters was... who?
[Student 1] Pollock.
[Student 2] Jackson Pollock.
[Professor]
No doubt about it. Pollock was a highly individual artist. He's famous for huge mural-sized works. And...
to create them, he'd spread his unstretched canvas on the floor, and he'd approach the work from all four
sides, walking around it and attacking it with commercial house paint in cans that he carried with him.
He dripped the paint from sticks or brushes that he dipped in the cans or... or he threw the paint
and splashed it in patterns... that, uh that reflected the motion of his arm and, uh and his body,
as he engaged in his so-called action painting. I think you can see how the name applies to this method.
So Pollock claimed that this process allowed him to be in the painting, not apart from it.
Let me show you a picture of Pollock with a work in progress.

As you can see... and this is Pollock... he's stepping right onto the canvas, splattering and dripping
the paint. He's focusing on the act of painting and he's using grand, rhythmic gestures... sort
of similar to a dance. In fact, some critics referred to the work as a performance or a choreographed Q41
activity. He also used to pour the paint directly out of the can, and occasionally threw sand, broken
glass, uh... pebbles, and string, and other objects... he would throw them onto the canvas.
So, how much of the action art was a result of decisions and how much was pure chance? What do
you think?
[Student 3] Well, there was probably a little bit of both going on there.
[Professor]
Probably so. But Pollock contended that he could control the flow of the paint with the motion of his arm
and body... and that his work was not accidental. And it certainly was spontaneous in the sense that it
happened very quickly and the decisions that he made were, uh were... of necessity, split second
choices. So, I would say you're right, that action art, and Pollock's work in particular, is a combination Q12
of, uh, ...of chance, of artistic intuition, and, uh, ... and control. And I should point out that he was
known to retouch a drip with the brush on occasion.
Now let me show you an example of the paintings themselves.