Reading Art: Art for Book Lovers is a celebration of an everyday object — the book, represented here in almost three hundred artworks from museums around the world. The image of the reader appears throughout history, in art made long before books as we now know them came into being. In artists’ representations of books and reading, we see moments of shared humanity that go beyond culture and time.
In this “book of books,” artworks are selected and arranged in a way that emphasizes these connections between different eras and cultures. We see scenes of children learning to read at home or at school, with the book as a focus for relations between the generations. Adults are portrayed (描绘) alone in many settings and poses —absorbed in a volume, deep in thought or lost in a moment of leisure. These scenes may have been painted hundreds of years ago, but they record moments we can all relate to.
Books themselves may be used symbolically in paintings to demonstrate the intellect (才智), wealth or faith of the subject. Before the wide use of the printing press, books were treasured objects and could be works of art in their own right. More recently, as books have become inexpensive or even throwaway, artists have used them as the raw material for artworks — transforming covers, pages or even complete volumes into paintings and sculptures.
Continued developments in communication technologies were once believed to make the printed page outdated. From a 21st-century point of view, the printed book is certainly ancient, but it remains as interactive as any battery-powered e-reader. To serve its function, a book must be activated by a user: the cover opened, the pages parted, the contents reviewed, perhaps notes written down or words underlined. And in contrast to our increasingly networked lives where the information we consume is monitored and tracked, a printed book still offers the chance of a wholly private, “off-line” activity.
What are the selected artworks about?
A.Wealth and intellect. |
B.Home and school. |
C.Books and reading. |
D.Work and leisure. |
相似题推荐
① I like reading books of all kinds.
② I have a top 10 reading list and I try to keep it updated.
③ It always makes me excited to work hard and achieve a team goal together.
④ Meanwhile, I’m an active member of my school’s long-distance running team and volunteering club.
A.③②①④ | B.①②④③ | C.①②③④ | D.②①④③ |
【推荐2】I was 16 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!
And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for shopping?
Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book — it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another biology exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).
I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role — as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student — in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed in something I loved.
Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.
Why did the author skip school on that day?A.Because her parents left home early. |
B.Because she was attracted by a novel. |
C.Because she planned to go shopping. |
D.Because she missed the school bus. |
【推荐3】I was 16 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!
And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for shopping?
Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book — it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another biology exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).
I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role — as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student — in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed in something I loved.
Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.
What can we infer from the last paragraph?A.I was aware of the subtle things back then. |
B.I simply learnt how to write on the internet. |
C.Hemingway’s style influenced me a lot. |
D.Becoming a writer was my childhood dream. |
【推荐1】Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang Nigeria, it really happens. It’s not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when spoken by the opposite sex. For “clothing”, men use the word “nki”, while women say “ariga”; “kitchi” means tree for men, while women say “okweng”. These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. “It’s almost like two different lexicons (词汇集),” a language expert, Chi Chi Undle said. “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don’t sound alike, and don’t have the same letters. They are completely different words.”
Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage the male will reach and he discovers he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men’s language, you know the maturity is coming into him.
No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a “double-sex culture” where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.
Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang’s two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male nor female language is written down, so they both rely on young people passing them down to the next generation.
1. What do we know about languages in Ubang?A.Word differences account for a high percentage. |
B.Men and women speak totally different languages. |
C.Word differences partly exist between the opposite sex. |
D.Men and women pronounce differently on the same word. |
A.Their lexicons sound alike. |
B.They learn both languages at school. |
C.The men can speak two different languages. |
D.They are exposed to both languages in their childhood. |
【推荐2】Tetraplegic patients (those who can’t move their upper or lower body) are prisoners of their own bodies. Now a robot arm is to help them interact with their world. This research was completed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Professor Aude Billard and Jose del R. Millan worked together to create a computer program that can control a robot using electrical signals from a patient’s brain.
First, the user wears an EEG cap to have their electrical signals inside their brain scanned (扫 描) effectively, which are then interpreted by the machine-learning algorithm (算法).The computer then sends signals to the robot arm to determine how it moves. As the robot arm performs a motion,the algorithm is looking to get feedback from the user when it makes a mistake: perhaps it moved too fast, or too violently. The end goal is that the robot can learn the right movements for a task in a given context. For example, you might want the arm to use a bit of force to throw a paper ball, but you might want it to be gentler when putting glass bottles.
......
Which paragraph mentions the working process?
A.Paragraph 1. | B.Paragraph 2. | C.Paragraph 3. | D.Paragraph 4. |
【推荐3】In recent years, humans have gradually offered membership in the sentience club not only to their own young, but to some other animals. In the last decade, many countries have begun to ban experimentation on all great apes. And some ocean creatures were recently recognized as sentient. But with insects, the question remains open.
What does the underlined phrase “sentience club” refer to in paragraph 3?
A.Animals selected for scientific research. |
B.Social clubs founded to protect animals. |
C.Creatures recognised as having consciousness. |
D.Organizations committed to emotion management. |
Unde Tom’s store is having a big week sale! Everything 30% off All TVs, radios, MP3s, digital cameras and computers Open from 12:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. |
A.8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. | B.9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. |
C.12:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. | D.6:00p.m. to 8:00 p.m. |
【推荐2】You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
What effect would “Truckload of Plastic” have on viewers?A.Calming. |
B.Disturbing. |
C.Refreshing. |
D.Challenging. |
【推荐3】Alice Moore is a teenager entrepreneur (创业者), who in May 2015 set up her business AilieCandy. By the time she was 13, her company was worth millions of dollars with the invention of a super-sweet treat that could save kids’ teeth, instead of destroying them.
It all began when Moore visited a bank with her dad. On the outing, she was offered a candy bar. However, her dad reminded her that sugary treats were bad for her teeth. But Moore was sick of missing out on candies. So she desired to get round the warning, “Why can’t I make a healthy candy that’s good for my teeth so that my parents can’t say no to it?” With that in mind, Moore asked her dad if she could start her own candy company. He recommended that she do some research and talk to dentists about what a healthier candy would contain.
With her dad’s permission, she spent the next two years researching online and conducting trials to get a recipe that was both tasty and tooth-friendly. She also approached dentists to learn more about teeth cleaning. Consequently, she succeeded in making a kind of candy only using natural sweeteners, which can reduce oral bacteria.
Moore then used her savings to get her business off the ground. Afterwards, she and her father secured their first business meeting with a supermarket owner, who finally agreed to sell Moore’s product — CanCandy.
As CanCandy’s success grows, so does Moore’s credibility as a young entrepreneur. Moore is enthusiastic about the candy she created, and she’s also positive about what the future might bring. She hopes that every kid can have a clean mouth and a broad smile.
Meanwhile, with her parents’ help, Moore is generally able to live a normal teenage life. Although she founded her company early on in life, she wasn’t driven primarily by profit. Moore wants to use her unique talent to help others find their smiles. She donates 10% of AilicCandy’s profits to Big Smiles. With her talent and determination, it appears that the sky could be the limit for Alice Moore.
What is special about CanCandy?
A.It is beneficial to dental health. |
B.It is free of sweeteners. |
C.It is sweeter than other candies. |
D.It is produced to a dentists’ recipe. |