Deck 29: Modernism in Europe and America, 1900 to 1945

Question 1

Her work is often described as autobiographical because of her unflinching self-portrait portrayals. She gives the viewer a personal glimpse into herself and suffering. Which of the following artists does this describe?

A) Frida Kahlo
B) Hannah Höch
C) Georgia O'Keeffe
D) Dorothea Lange

Answer 1

A

Question 2

What message did Vera Mukhina convey in her work entitled The Worker and the Collective Farm Worker?

A) She conveyed the horror of war
B) She glorified the communal labor of the Soviet people
C) She glorified urban lifestyles
D) She showed motion through dynamic line

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Which of the following works demonstrates the Futurists' interest in motion?

A) The City
B) Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
C) Champs de Mars or The Red Tower
D) The Portuguese

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which of the following works of art was melted down for ammunition by the Nazis in 1937?

A) War Monument
B) Bird in Space
C) Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
D) Column

Question 5

Which artists criticized the greed and capitalism that served as the root of war in works such as The Eclipse of the Sun?

A) Picasso
B) Marc
C) Grosz
D) Kandinsky

Question 6

Which of the following is executed in the Synthetic Cubist style?

A) The Dance
B) Fate of the Animals
C) Demoiselles d'Avignon
D) Still-Life with Chair-Caning

Question 7

What style is described as compositions of shapes and forms abstracted from the conventionally conceived world?

A) Fauvism
B) Cubism
C) De Styl
D) Neoplasticism

Question 8

Although many artists dealt with the theme of war or other societal ills, ____ believed above all in the expressive use of color, saying that the whole arrangement of his pictures were expressive.

A) Picasso
B) Matisse
C) Max Beckmann
D) Otto Dix

Question 9

The Champs de Mars or The Red Tower by Robert Delaunay depicts which of the following structures?

A) Eiffel Tower
B) Tower of Babel
C) Coit Tower
D) Tatlin Tower

Question 10

Which of the following artists shared Stieglitz's concern to position photography as an art form with the same fine-art status as painting and sculpture?

A) Dorothea Lange
B) Georgia O'Keeffe
C) Edward Hopper
D) Edward Weston

Question 11

Which of the following artists created a modern American art style combining Synthetic Cubism with jazz tempos and his perception of the fast-paced American culture?

A) Marsden Hartley
B) Charles Demuth
C) Georgia O'Keeffe
D) Stuart Davis

Question 12

Which of the following describes the focus of the Ashcan School?

A) It focused on the horror of trench warfare in WW II.
B) It focused on the hurley-burley activity of farm life.
C) It focused on the bleak and seedy aspects of city life.
D) It focused on the dynamism of the machine.

Question 13

Which of the following artists was a Berlin Dadaist?

A) Hannah Höch
B) Barbara Hepworth
C) Georgia O'Keeffe
D) Frida Kahlo

Question 14

Which of the following artists developed the theory of neoplasticism or the new pure plastic art?

A) Picasso
B) Chagall
C) Mondrian
D) Marc

Question 15

Which of the following artists created large-scale, kinetic sculptures?

A) Henry Moore
B) Brancusi
C) Alexander Calder
D) Boccioni

Question 16

What message is portrayed in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks?

A) the pervasive loneliness of modern humans
B) the seediness of city life
C) the energetic rhythm of city life
D) the cosmopolitan atmosphere of big city life

Question 17

Thomas Hart Benton, a Regionalist artist, focused his attention on which of the following subjects?

A) Times Square, New York
B) the waterfront
C) the social history of Missouri
D) the farming landscape of the Midwest

Question 18

Throughout history, artists have regularly served political ends by using their art to make visual statements. Which of the following artists has created an overtly political statement with his/her work?

A) Dorothea Lange
B) John Sloan
C) Wassily Kandinsky
D) Barbara Hepworth

Question 19

Who is the artist who created a work of art that can be described as "a wickedly funny gift"?

A) Edward Weston
B) Alfred Stieglitz
C) Man Ray
D) Marsden Hartley

Question 20

In the artist's eyes, the Fate of the Animals was almost a premonition of which historical event?

A) World War II
B) the Great Depression
C) the Russian Revolution
D) World War I

Question 21

A nonobjective work refers to work that ____.

A) has been abstracted from a natural object
B) has no reference to the external appearance of the physical world
C) is not considered objectionable by anyone
D) has no material form but is merely conceived in the mind

Question 22

Of the following, who is the best example of a twentieth-century artist who believed that art should delight, inspire, and enhance our lives as human beings?

A) Beckmann
B) Malevich
C) Matisse
D) Ensor

Question 23

Which one of the following statements is not true?

A) Titles of Surrealist works were intended to challenge the expectations of the viewer.
B) The Surrealists considered dreams to be an area in which people could reengage their deeper selves that society had repressed.
C) Surrealism ignored the ideas of psychoanalysis put forth by Jung and Freud.
D) One of the leading proponents of Surrealism was Salvador Dalí.

Question 24

The hovering figure that served as a memorial to those who died in World War I was created by ____.

A) Wilhelm Lehmbruck
B) Ernst Barlach
C) Ernst Kirchner
D) Max Beckmann

Question 25

Which of the following statements about Dada is true?

A) Dada originated in Copenhagen
B) All Dada works were created in marble
C) The Dada artists were Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Kurt Schwitters
D) Dada had no fixed ideas

Question 26

Symbolism and fantasy were joined to create works filled with visionary joy and despair by which of the following artists?

A) Franc Marc
B) Marc Chagall
C) Frida Kahlo
D) Emile Nolde

Question 27

A painting that was done in reaction to World War I was ____.

A) Ernst Kirchner's Street, Berlin
B) Wassily Kandinsky's Improvisation 28
C) Max Beckmann's Night
D) Kurt Schwitters's Merz pictures

Question 28

Which phrase best expresses the sculptural style of Boccioni?

A) nervous agitation
B) dynamic movement
C) sinuous organic curves
D) sharply intersecting planes

Question 29

Which of the Blaue Reiter artists found animals superior to humans as the subject for his art?

A) Wassily Kandinsky
B) Paul Klee
C) Emil Nolde
D) Franz Marc

Question 30

Who is the Surrealist?

A) Salvador Dalí
B) Jacob Lawrence
C) Henri Matisse
D) Pablo Picasso

Question 31

The work of Ernst Kirchner shows ____.

A) the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites
B) the influence of Italian Renaissance frescoes
C) subjects drawn from the industrialized urban bourgeoisie
D) the influence of Analytical Cubism

Question 32

Who wrote, "All my life I have sought the essence of flight. Don't look for the mysteries. I give you pure joy. Look at the sculptures until you see them. Those nearest to God have seen them."

A) Barlach
B) Brancusi
C) Hepworth
D) Moore

Question 33

The Chrysler Building by William van Alen has elements from which of the following styles?

A) Art Nouveau
B) Art Deco
C) Cubist
D) Fin-de-siècle

Question 34

The goal of Dalí's "paranoiac-critical" method was to ____.

A) portray the art of madmen
B) illustrate the sado-masochistic theories of Krafft-Ebing
C) pour his emotions directly onto the canvas, with no thought of technique
D) create images of inner reality and irrationality as concrete as the world of physical reality

Question 35

Who photographed the rural poor displaced by the Great Depression in the 1930s?

A) Alfred Stieglitz
B) Charles Sheeler
C) Edward Weston
D) Dorothea Lange

Question 36

" . . . I believe in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality, in appearance so contradictory, in a sort of absolute reality, or surreality." This definition of Surrealism was written by ____.

A) Guillaume Apollinaire
B) Friedrich Nietzsche
C) Salvador Dalí
D) André Breton

Question 37

Henry Moore's great series of reclining nudes is said to have been inspired by ____.

A) an African ancestral figure
B) a Chinese figure of Guanyin
C) a pre-Columbian figure, the Chacmool
D) a medieval representation of Mary Magdalene

Question 38

Who said: "...we rejected imitative colors, and that with pure colors we obtained stronger reactions..."?

A) Pablo Picasso
B) Ernst Kirchner
C) Max Beckmann
D) Henri Matisse

Question 39

Which artist, even though he was older than the Die Brücke artists, was invited to join them because he was pursuing similar ideas in his work?

A) Henry Matisse
B) André Derain
C) Emile Nolde
D) Kirchner

Question 40

Who belonged to the Pittura Metafisica movement, which greatly influenced Surrealism?

A) Matisse
B) Ernst
C) De Chirico
D) Kandinsky

Question 41

How did Le Corbusier design a house as "a machine for living"?

Question 42

How did Charles Demuth react to Cubism?

Question 43

Briefly describe Surrealism.

Question 44

What subject matter did Jacob Lawrence use in his work, and how was it significant?

Question 45

How does the work of Hannah Höch reflect German society of the Weimar Republic years?

Question 46

Describe Art Deco.

Question 47

What is a "mobile," who created it, and why?

Question 48

How did the subject matter Edward Hopper used in his art relate to the Depression era?

Question 49

What is a "Prairie House"?

Question 50

How did Georgia O'Keeffe reflect the fast pace of city life in her work?

Question 51

Alfred Barr's statement, "German artists of spirit and integrity have refused to conform. They have gone into exile or slipped into anxious obscurity. . . Their paintings or sculptures have been hidden or exiled." is referring to what event? How did this "flight" impact the art of the United States?

Question 52

Brancusi said, "What is real is not the external form but the essence of things." How does this statement reflect his work?

Question 53

How did society see the avant-garde artist?

Question 54

What was the purpose of the Bauhaus?

Question 55

How does Night by Max Beckmann become a metaphor for German society during 1918-1919?

Question 56

Picasso said, "Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an instrument for offensive and defensive war against the enemy." How did this statement reflect the political nature of artists during this time period, and how did it mirror Picasso's personal politics?

Question 57

Describe the Armory Show. How did it impact the American art scene of the early 20ᵗʰ century?

Question 58

Briefly describe Futurism.

Question 59

Briefly contrast Analytic and Synthetic Cubism.

Question 60

What was "291"?

Question 61

Describe the impact the Armory Show (1913) had on the American art scene. Use examples to support your essay.

Question 62

Describe Pablo Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. How did this work re-shape the art of the early twentieth century? Include in your discussion the influences coming from Primitive art. Use examples to support your essay.

Question 63

Compare the work of Hannah Höch, Duchamp, and Kurt Schwitters as it relates to Dada. How did each artist respond to the sociopolitical context of the period?

Question 64

Discuss the relationship of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye to Frank Lloyd Wright's Kaufmann House (Fallingwater). How did the architects marry the shape, volume, and space of each house to its environment? How do these structures represent each architect and his philosophy?

Question 65

Who created these models, and what were their purposes?

Question 66

How do these works differ in how they deal with the theme of war?

Question 67

Who created these works, and what were their themes? Why did the artists feel that such themes were relevant?

Question 68

Explain the development of Cubism and the artistic movements that it spawned. Use examples to support your essay.

Question 69

How does this work break with the academic traditions of heroic male nudity?

Question 70

How does this artist's approach to religious subjects differ from conventional treatments?

Question 71

Explain the use of art as a vehicle for propaganda in the work of Höch, Grosz, Picasso and Lawrence. Use examples to support your essay.

Question 72

How does this work reflect the Futurist art movement?

Question 73

Compare the work of Jacob Lawrence and Edward Hopper. How did each artist respond to his period? What artistic devices did each artist use to create emotion in his work? What was the sociopolitical context each artist addressed? Use examples to support your essay.

Question 74

Contrast these two pieces of sculpture, noting when and where each was done. What do they have in common?

Question 75

Compare and contrast the Fauves with the German Expressionists. What influences can be seen in each movement? How did each influence the other? Use examples to support your essay.

Question 76

Describe the utopian ideals of Suprematism and Constructivism. How were these philosophies manifested in Revolutionary Russia, now called the Soviet Union? How did the art community respond to these concepts? Use examples to support your essay.

Question 77

How do these houses describe their functionality?

Question 78

Compare and contrast the work of Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange. How did each artist respond to the medium of photography as a visual art form? How did their works reflect their respective environments?

Question 79

What do these works describe, and how do they reflect the United States?

Question 80

Compare these two country homes. Who did them, and when? How does each deal with the issues of the relationship of the building to the surroundings? How does each respond to formal design and function?