Passage Ten
The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photographs fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct from merely a practical art. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defence of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality, photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting.
Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Serious photographers variously claim to be finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselvesanything but making works of art. They are no longer willing to debate whether photography is or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art. It shows the extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.
Photographers disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harried status of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. For example, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they are getting away from the pretensions of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionist painters who imagined they were getting away from the intellectual austerity of classical Modernist painting by concentrating on the physical act of painting. Much of photographys prestige today derives from the convergence of its aims with those of recent art, particularly with the dismissal of abstract art implicit in the phenomenon of Pop painting during the 1960s. Appreciating photographs is a relief to sensibilities tired of the mental exertions demanded by abstract art. Classical Modernist paintingthat is, abstract art as developed in different ways by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matissepresupposes highly developed skills of looking and a familiarity with other paintings and the history of art. Photography, like Pop painting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about its subjects than about art.
Photography, however, has developed all the anxieties and self-consciousness of a classic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the promotion of photography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so far that the public will forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activityin short, an art.
1. What is the author mainly concerned with? The author is concerned with
[A]. defining the Modernist attitude toward art.
[B]. explaining how photography emerged as a fine art.
[C]. explaining the attitude of serious contemporary photographers toward photography as art and placing those attitudes in their historical context.
[D]. defining the various approaches that serious contemporary photographers take toward their art and assessing the value of each of those approaches.
2. Which of the following adjectives best describes the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism as the author represents it in lines 1213?
[A]. Objective [B]. Mechanical. [C]. Superficial. [D]. Paradoxical.
3. Why does the author introduce Abstract Expressionist painter?
[A]. He wants to provide an example of artists who, like serious contemporary photographers, disavowed traditionally accepted aims of modern art.
[B]. He wants to set forth an analogy between the Abstract Expressionist painters and classical Modernist painters.
[C]. He wants to provide a contrast to Pop artist and others.
[D]. He wants to provide an explanation of why serious photography, like other contemporary visual forms, is not and should not pretend to be an art.
4. How did the nineteenth-century defenders of photography stress the photography?
[A]. They stressed photography was a means of making people happy.
[B]. It was art for recording the world.
[C]. It was a device for observing the world impartially.
[D]. It was an art comparable to painting.
Vocabulary
1. fine arts 美术(指绘画,雕刻,建筑,诗歌,音乐等)
2. assert 主张,声明,维护(权利)
3. privileged 特殊的,享受特权的,特许的
4. pretentious 狂妄的,做作的
5. irrelevant 不相干的,无关的
6. subversive 破坏性的,颠覆性的
7. disclaimer 弃权者
8. harry 掠夺,折磨
9. austerity 严格,简朴
10. convergence 聚合,集合点
11. implicit 含蓄的
12. distinctive 区别的,独特的
13. exalted 高贵的,高尚的
雅思口语素材:常用idiom
雅思口语素材:美食口语-鱼香肉丝
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-记住该记住的
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-人之本性
雅思口语技能提高多用套话
外教揭秘雅思口语考官的评分标准
雅思口语素材:美食口语-香芋西米露
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-新的起点
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-伟大始于渺小
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-命运的安排
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-学会爱自己
雅思口语素材:水生动物-神仙鱼
雅思口语素材:水生动物-东方铃蟾(下)
雅思口语素材:水生动物-鼠鱼
雅思口语素材:美食口语-蕃茄虾球
雅思口语词汇:美食口语-陈皮鸭脷
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-热情成就伟业
雅思口语素材:名人名言-加德纳
雅思口语素材:美食口语-孜然炒意面
雅思口语常用谚语:时势造英雄
雅思口语词汇:大刺鳅(一)
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-平凡的事
雅思口语常用谚语:新官上任三把火
雅思口语素材:水生动物-大刺鳅(三)
雅思口语素材:美食口语-赛海蜇拌火鸭丝
雅思考官指导:口语备考7大误区
雅思口语三个阶段的备考重点
雅思考官:口语高分要“与众不同”
雅思口语素材:好句推荐-快乐的源泉
雅思口语快速提分的黄金定律
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