Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find
poetry
where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape (风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Ledge pains what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in motion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography (摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, eastern or western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.
单选题
The underlined word "poetry" most probably means ______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 从第一段最后一句中“to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before”可知艺术家试图创造一种以前没人看到或者经历过的意境。因为是没有人看到过或者经历过,所以“poetry”指的应该是一种不平常的东西,故选C。
单选题
Leslie"s paintings are extraordinary because ______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 第二段倒数第二句中提到“In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background.”,由其中的ordinary things(普通的东西)可以推断出Leslie的画表现的都是生活中常见的事物,所以本题的答案是C。
单选题
What is the author"s opinion of artistic reality?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[解析] 第三段第三句提到“Each generations of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another”(每一代的艺术家用一种或其他方式来展示他们对现实的理解),由此可知每一代艺术家对于现实的理解和表现没有一个永恒的标准,所以本题的答案是B。
单选题
What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 最后一段最后一句提到“Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.”,由此可知虽然艺术有许多不同的表现形式,但都是表达了人类基本的需求和希望,即艺术反映了当时人的生存状态,所以选D。
单选题
Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[解析] 本文作者将不同时期艺术家进行比较后,提出了关于艺术的一个共同问题:什么是真实(What is real?),然后进行分析最终得出的结论是虽然不同时代和地方的艺术的表现形式各异,但都表达了人类基本的需求和希望,所以选B。