Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists" only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad. This wasn"t always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for ex- pressing ioy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth"s daffodils to Baudelaire"s flowers of evil. You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it"s not as if earlier times didn"t know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today. After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology. People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too. Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda—to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks. What we forget—what our economy depends on is forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you wiI1 die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It"s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
单选题
By citing the example of poets Wordsworth and Baudelaire, the author intends to show that ______.
【答案解析】解析：作者在涉及advertising的第四段尾句(The rise of anti-happy art...not just an ideal but an ideology)说到：反幸福艺术产生了，几乎是在同时，出现了大众媒体以及这样一种商业文化：幸福是一种理想化的东西，是一种空论。选项D的意思为：(广告)创造了幸福的幻觉而不是幸福本身，正好与题意相符。其他选项A、B、C都不符合题意。
单选题
We can learn from the last paragraph that the author believes ______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：B在尾段的尾句(It"s a message...a breath of fresh air)，作者说到，这种艺术比丁香纸烟还要苦，然而却透出一股新鲜的气息。这与选项B的内容完全相符。
单选题
Which of the following is true of the text?
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析：A在第五段谈论reminders of misery(痛苦的提醒者)话题时，作者说：the church...reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms(教会提醒朝拜者，他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们的躯体将成为蠕虫的美食)。在第七段，作者把反幸福艺术的警示作用与宗教的提醒作用等同起来(...we need art to tell us，as religion once did...)。