Deck 14: The Contemporary Spirit

Question 1

What post-war American group of poets and novelists explored themes of rootlessness and the endless quest for meaning?

A) the Beats
B) the regionalists
C) the pop artists
D) the confessional poets

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which term is best associated with the international political situation of the 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II and the defeat of fascism?

A) the Great Depression
B) post-modernism
C) Cold War
D) global terror

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Which best defines Mahatma Gandhi's principle of satyagraha, which he and his followers employed to win India's independence from colonial rule in 1948?

A) determined pursuit of military superiority
B) peaceful non-cooperation with unjust laws
C) achieving a stable balance between competing powers
D) mobilizing social elites in the cause of the dispossessed

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which statement best describes the appeal of existentialism?

A) represented a new American dominance of Western styles in art
B) vigorously applied the lessons of modern physics
C) searched for authentic freedom in an absurd world
D) helped explain the origins of the Cold War

Question 5

Which statement best describes the work of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath?

A) wrote self-consciously metaphysical stories about labyrinthine fictional worlds
B) dealt principally with African-American characters and social life
C) composed poetry in a "confessional" vein, with graphic images of female sexuality
D) was strongly influenced by the Beatles and other groups of 1960s rock-and-roll

Question 6

Which statement best describes Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?

A) dramatizes the atheistic branch of existentialist philosophy
B) a largely autobiographical story of a poet's unhappy life
C) explores an absurd world beyond logic and decency
D) illustrates a young black man's struggle to find his own identity

Question 7

Who is best categorized as an "abstract expressionist" painter of the New York school?

A) Jackson Pollock
B) Andy Warhol
C) Robert Smithson
D) Judy Chicago

Question 8

Which work is a masterpiece of the theater of the absurd?

A) Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
B) Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
C) Allen Ginsberg's Howl
D) Tony Kushner's Angels America

Question 9

Which work can be seen as an application of the surrealist technique of automatic creation- "in which the artist allows the unconscious rather than the conscious will to stimulate the act of creation"?

A) Romare Bearden, Baptism
B) Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky
C) Jackson Pollock, Number 1
D) David Smith, Cubi I

Question 10

Which statement best describes the art of Robert Rauschenberg, creator of Monogram?

A) experimented with "combine" paintings of several media
B) employed a rigorous method of "automatic" painting and free association
C) crossed over the division between traditional art and mass culture
D) consciously imitated the methods of baroque masters

Question 11

Which work shows the sculptor's training in automobile assembly plants and his attempt to unite art with industrial design and technology?

A) Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure
B) David Smith, Cubi XVIII
C) Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag
D) Louise Nevelson, Black Wall

Question 12

The term "pop art" is best applied to which work?

A) Le Corbusier's Notre-Dame-du-Haut
B) Warhol's Marilyn Diptych
C) Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial
D) García Márquez' One Hundred Days of Solitude

Question 13

Which of these works is properly described as a mobile, composed of shapes suspended in the air?

A) Kiefer's Die Meistersinger
B) Rauschenberg's Monogram
C) Chuck Close's Phil
D) Calder's Spring Blossoms

Question 14

Which artist expanded the definition of music by inventing a music of chance and random sound?

A) Jenny Holzer
B) Romare Bearden
C) Philip Glass
D) John Cage

Question 15

What American musical form rose to prominence in the age of rock-and-roll and made its African-American practitioners international pop stars?

A) rhythm-and-blues
B) raga
C) fugue
D) be-bop

Question 16

Which work best applies the belief that architecture should resemble sculpture in its flowing line and organic shape?

A) F. L. Wright's Guggenheim Museum
B) Piano and Rogers' Pompidou Center
C) Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia
D) Michael Graves' Portland Public Services Building

Question 17

Which structure best illustrates the architectural principles of the International Style-glass-and-steel towers of unadorned purity?

A) Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia
B) Michael Graves' Portland Public Services Building
C) Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
D) Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson's Seagram Building

Question 18

Which of these works was a pioneering work of musical minimalism, carrying the style to a much wider audience?

A) Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach
B) Pierre Boulez, Structures I
C) Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
D) August Wilson, Fences

Question 19

Which statement best describes the artistic style of Romare Bearden, whose works celebrated African-American ritual and community?

A) constructed earth art in primeval natural settings
B) created mosaics of photomontage, cloth, and ordinary objects
C) adapted Indian musical forms and techniques to his avant-garde musical style
D) created mobiles of cut-out shapes suspended in the air

Question 20

Which of these works is a large-scale assemblage of discarded wooden shapes, a symbol of the refuse of modern urban society?

A) Alexander Calder, Spring Blossoms
B) David Smith, Cubi XVIII
C) Judy Chicago, Dinner Party
D) Louise Nevelson, Black Wall

Question 21

Which is best described with the term earth art, a mode of minimalism that merged sculpture with the landscape?

A) Alexander Calder, Spring Blossoms
B) Le Corbusier's Notre-Dame-du-Haut
C) Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty
D) Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure

Question 22

Whose most important works were a series of ten plays depicting African-American experience in twentieth-century America?

A) J. L. Borges
B) Philip Glass
C) August Wilson
D) Donald Judd

Question 23

Which of these statements best describes the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude?

A) were directly influenced by the drip method of Jackson Pollock
B) have provided striking production sets for minimalist musical performances
C) extended the technique of collage in their "combines" of painting and sculpture
D) use spacious natural and urban sites for unique sculptures on a large scale

Question 24

Which is best associated with "post-modernism," especially in its use of pastiche?

A) Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
B) Jörn Utzon's Sydney Opera House
C) Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex
D) Michael Graves, Public Services Building ("the Portland")

Question 25

What dance choreographer collaborated with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and other figures of the avant-garde scene?

A) Joseph Heller
B) Merce Cunningham
C) Philip Johnson
D) Alvin Ailey

Question 26

Which statement best describes the work of the Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges?

A) wrote self-consciously metaphysical stories about labyrinthine fictional worlds
B) dealt principally with African-American characters and social life
C) composed poetry in a "confessional" vein, with graphic images of female sexuality
D) was strongly influenced by the Beatles and other groups of 1960s rock-and-roll

Question 27

The fiction of Gabriel García Márquez, notably his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, is best described by which term?

A) organic
B) magic realism
C) beat
D) existentialist

Question 28

What best describes Judy Chicago's most famous work, the Dinner Party?

A) a set of intensely personal poems about her experience as mother and housewife
B) a controversial art installation commemorating women heroes
C) a cycle of dramas depicting African-American characters and social life
D) an acclaimed dance performance with the American Dance Theater

Question 29

Who is the novelist whose existential hero suffers from the now-famous "Catch-22"?

A) Joseph Heller
B) Robert Rauschenberg
C) Philip Johnson
D) Toni Morrison

Question 30

Illustrate the varied responses of artists and thinkers to the holocausts of war and the rise of consumer society.

Question 31

Summarize existentialism's view of the human condition in the modern world.

Question 32

Describe the situation of the existential hero as depicted in post-war drama and fiction.

Question 33

Illustrate the different trends of the arts in the post-war period.

Question 34

Summarize the artistic goals of the International Style in architecture.

Question 35

Contrast the post-war avant-garde in music with developments in popular music.

Question 36

Define the post-modern sensibility and cite examples from different media.

Question 37

Summarize the effect of colonial, women's, and civil rights struggles on the character of Western civilization.

Question 38

Identify principal examples of the emerging global culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Question 39

It may be said that existentialism asserted the absolute freedom of human action in a world without absolute values. Evaluate the arts in the post-1945 period as the realization of absolute freedom in the choice of subject, form, and style. Assess the advantages and disadvantages of absolute artistic freedom, illustrating with examples from several artistic media or forms.

Question 40

Argue either that contemporary art and literature are an extension and elaboration of modernist styles, or that the contemporary scene represents a fundamentally new and unprecedented development in the history of Western civilization. Support your position with examples and illustrations drawn from at least two different artistic media or forms (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, theater, fiction, poetry, etc.).