Deck 13: Modernism

Question 1

Which would provide the best illustration of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, first published in 1905?

A) rolling a pair of dice to simulate radioactive decay of an atom
B) the simultaneous points of view in a cubist painting
C) the arc of an apple dropped from a speeding plane
D) traveling in a spaceship from the earth at nearly the speed of light

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which can be counted as a direct result of the "Great War"?

A) the invention and spread of the automobile
B) the growing popularity of television and radio
C) a revival of interest in traditional arts such as furniture-making
D) the convulsion of Russia by social and political revolution

Answer 2

D

Question 3

The documentary photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans are associated with what important historical event or phenomenon in the era 1910-45?

A) the Great War in Europe
B) the rise of fascism in Germany
C) the New Deal in the U.S.
D) the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which pair of works could both be classified as documentary in purpose-that is, intending to record social reality directly and truthfully?

A) Joyce, Ulysses, and Eliot, The Waste Land
B) Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will
C) Magritte, The Key of Dreams, and Miró, Birth of the World
D) Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, and Copland, Appalachian Spring

Question 5

Which of these works best illustrates cubism's effort to analyze subjects into planes, angles, and geometric shapes, in an attempt to show the object simultaneously from different perspectives?

A) Serge Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin
B) Rivera, Enslavement of the Indians
C) Braque, The Portuguese
D) Brancusi, Bird in Space

Question 6

What work is associated with Die Brücke, a movement of German expressionist artists of the 1920s?

A) Picasso's Three Musicians
B) Kafka's The Metamorphosis
C) Copland's Appalachian Spring
D) Kirchner's Street, Berlin

Question 7

Which statement best describes Picasso's Three Musicians?

A) clearly realizes the "expressionist" mode of modern art
B) illustrates the painter's feelings of mistrust toward women
C) its bright colors and irregular shapes give it a humorous tone
D) use of soft, spherical shapes create a mood of mysterious calm

Question 8

With what phenomenon of modernist culture would you associate Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, sculptures made of ordinary objects like bicycle wheels or urinals?

A) dada's challenge to conventional definitions of art
B) the documentary effort to communicate truth through art
C) art deco's commercially appealing mix of elegance and luxury
D) the use of montage to create an emotion in the viewer

Question 9

Which of these works shows most clearly modernism's interest in "primitivism?"

A) Miró's Birth of the World
B) Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
C) Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
D) Malevich's Black Square

Question 10

Which statement best describes Henri Matisse's The Joy of Life, dating from about 1905-6?

A) a non-objective painting of abstract color and shape
B) sought to create an expressive mood with rounded shapes
C) mocks the hallowed aura of traditional art
D) demonstrates the influence of Freudian psychology

Question 11

Who was closely associated with the Bauhaus school in Germany and was an important innovator in modern architecture?

A) Walter Gropius
B) Leni Riefenstahl
C) Charles Ives
D) Duke Ellington

Question 12

"Roped together like two mountain-climbers," as one said, what two artists invented the analytic and synthetic methods of cubist painting?

A) Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse
B) Salvador Dali and Joan Miró
C) Paul Klee and Walter Gropius
D) Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso

Question 13

Which statement best describes Wassily Kandinsky's Improvisation 28?

A) painted on a geometric grid that dissolves object into planes and angular shapes
B) used multiple rhythms to create jarring dislocations of rhythm
C) its swirling lines and color have no reference to figure or story
D) used atonal harmonies to create an atmosphere of dissonance

Question 14

Which work is best classified as surrealist?

A) Picasso's Three Musicians
B) Charles Ives' Three Pieces in New England
C) Wright's "Fallingwater"
D) De Chirico's The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

Question 15

Which modernist figure argued that women who wanted to write needed above all an income independent of men and "a room of one's own?"

A) Dorothea Lange
B) T. S. Eliot
C) Virginia Woolf
D) Leni Riefenstahl

Question 16

Which statement best describes the literary works of Franz Kafka?

A) his novels and stories are mostly set in Dublin, Ireland
B) central characters are caught in absurd and terrifying circumstances
C) novels are thinly disguised memoirs of the author's youth
D) works are filled with allusions to art, music, and religious ritual

Question 17

Which of these works is associated with a twentieth-century attempt to revive the great Renaissance fresco tradition of decorating building walls with monumental paintings?

A) Rivera, Enslavement of the Indians
B) Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory
C) Brancusi, Bird in Space
D) Kahlo, The Broken Column

Question 18

Which of these is the best example of a surrealist work that explores the inner world of dream, emotion, and imagination?

A) Picasso's Guernica
B) Stravinsky's Rite of Spring
C) Dalí's The Persistence of Memory
D) Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye

Question 19

What term is best associated with Freud's theory of the human psyche?

A) dada
B) collage
C) futurism
D) libido

Question 20

Which of these statements best describes the principles of architectural modernism, as illustrated in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye?

A) use of forms from classical Greece and Rome
B) preference for bright, even gaudy exterior color
C) rejection of decoration in favor of a pure glass or concrete skin
D) a belief that buildings should reflect local traditions and styles

Question 21

Which statement best describes Picasso's Guernica as a work of art?

A) exalts the values of industrial civilization
B) uses cubist abstraction to protest technological war
C) celebrates the stylized symbols and rituals of Nazism
D) eloquently defends film's value as art

Question 22

Which statement best describes the music of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck?

A) based on traditional American folk songs
B) employed improvisation and a swinging rhythm
C) written after the composer left New Orleans for Chicago
D) created a disturbing mood by atonal harmonies and dissonance

Question 23

Which of these best expresses the American idiom of modernism in the arts?

A) Nolde's Still Life of Masks
B) Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
C) Braque's The Portuguese
D) Charles Ives' Three Pieces in New England

Question 24

"I pursue the inner, hidden reality, the very essence of objects in their own intrinsic fundamental nature." The author of this statement might have illustrated it with what work of his or her own?

A) Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q
B) Brancusi's Bird in Space
C) Braque's Le Courrier
D) Hopper's Nighthawks

Question 25

Which pair of figures played a central role in the invention of modern dance?

A) Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
B) Sergei Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky
C) Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque
D) Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg

Question 26

What would one expect to encounter in listening to Igor Stravinsky's score for Rite of Spring?

A) the sonata form
B) polyrhythm and dissonance
C) an operatic aria
D) electronic instruments

Question 27

Which figure would most likely have applied the techniques of the twelve-tone method?

A) Louis Armstrong
B) Sergei Diaghilev
C) Sigmund Freud
D) Arnold Schoenberg

Question 28

Which statement best describes Duke Ellington?

A) composed his works principally for jazz ensembles
B) strongly influenced by the atonal methods of Schoenberg
C) author of the jazz-influenced work Threepenny Opera
D) successfully collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev

Question 29

Who fashioned a system of teaching modern dance that made it as rigorous as classical ballet?

A) Isadora Duncan
B) Georgia O'Keeffe
C) Martha Graham
D) Willa Cather

Question 30

Which statement best describes the technique of jazz?

A) arranged notes in an arbitrary series or row
B) based on improvisation and a swinging rhythm
C) first employed in symphonic and operatic settings
D) was slow to influence modernist composers

Question 31

Which statement best describes the architect Frank Lloyd Wright?

A) was a central figure of the Bauhaus movement in Germany
B) believed a building should connect its occupants and surroundings
C) was the inventor of architectural modernism in the U.S.
D) envisioned "radiant cities" of skyscrapers and super-highways

Question 32

Louis Armstrong's 1920s recordings with the "Hot Five" and "Hot Seven" established what aspect of Armstrong's musical achievement?

A) the musician's unparalleled genius for the jazz solo
B) the incorporation of atonal harmonies into jazz
C) composing jazz for a large orchestra of varied musicians
D) the merger of jazz with American popular theater

Question 33

What best describes the style of art deco?

A) sought to purify architecture of decorative facades
B) combined sleek shapes with eclectic decorative motifs
C) found in "primitive" art a universal visual language
D) borrowed decorative elements from neoclassical traditions

Question 34

Identify the historical events and forces that shaped the rise of modern mass society.

Question 35

Describe the trend toward formal abstraction in modernist art begun by Picasso and cubism.

Question 36

Define primitivism and characterize its role in modernist culture.

Question 37

Summarize Freud's view of the role of sexuality in human thought.

Question 38

Identify the principal techniques and themes of modernism in literature.

Question 39

Describe the modernist style in architecture.

Question 40

Illustrate the influence of politics on modernist works of art.

Question 41

Identify one significant American contributor in each of the modernist arts of literature, dance, and music.

Question 42

Analyze the modernist revolution in two different artistic media (for example, music, architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, dance, or theater), identifying the decisive innovations or trends in the two media that broke with traditional art and established the modernist style. In your answer, be sure to discuss specific examples from each medium and to show how each example helped define the modernist artistic revolution.

Question 43

Discuss in detail the unique contribution of artists in North America to the rise of modernism. Illustrate your discussion with detailed examples of artists from different media (literature, music, dance, etc.), and stress the unique or special character of their work, especially as compared with European modernism.