1 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. When did the magician first perform professionally?

A．In 1964.

B．In 1968.

C．In 1972.

2. What made the magician world famous?

A．His TV show.

B．His global tours.

C．His teaching job.

3. Which does the magician think is his greatest achievement?

A．Project Magic.

B．Box office records.

C．The Magic of ABC.

4. How is the magician different from other magicians?

A．He practises hard.

B．He believes in wonder.

C．He started his career early.

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. When did Mozart begin to compose music?

A．At the age of four.

B．At the age of five.

C．In his early teens.

2. Where was Mozart’s first major opera performed?

A．In Milan.

B．In Vienna.

C．In Salzburg.

3. What did Mozart do when he stopped performing?

A．He did business.

B．He taught for a living.

C．He composed music.

3 . For Vishwanath Mallabadi from Bangalore, India, there is no such thing as a useless object or “waste”. Give him anything—abandoned metal or plastic items, old devices, dysfunctional printed circuit boards — and he’ll create art out of it.

Vishwanath’s passion is particularly relevant in the current age, where India generates more e-waste than it can recycle. From 2019 to 2020, the country generated a total of more than 1 million tonnes of e waste. Of this, only 22.7 percent was collected, taken apart and recycled. The eco-artist has upcycled and transformed nearly 200 kg of e-waste into usable products and proposes eco-art as a means to deal with waste management.

Vishwanath’s father, D M Shambhu, was a famous sculptor and painter, but he wanted his son to choose medicine and become a doctor. However, Vishwanath, who was interested in upcycling second-hand objects right from childhood, decided to pursue a BFA in Applied Art. He later went on to work in a company as a high-level administrator and retired two years ago. “In my free time and during the weekends. I used to conduct experiments in e-waste and try to develop something unique,” he recalled.

So far, the eco-artist has created more than 500 objects. These include a six-foot tall sculpture made from upcycled computer keyboard keys, and a painting inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, using upcycled resistors (电阻器) on wood. Among his other artworks are a 42×38 inch figure statue created from upcycled keyboard keys on a sun board finished with plastics, a deer made of colorful used wires, plants and flowers from computer parts, and eco jewellery from upcycled digital wrist watch parts.

“The work involves selecting the e-waste objects—the texture, shape, and colour etc, and visualising and conceptualising the final product. It might take weeks and months for sculptures. However, sustainable initiatives and upcycled art are nowadays in demand in multinational companies opting for a sustainable culture,” he said.

1. What does the author try to convey in paragraph 2?

A．The seriousness of e-waste in India.

B．Vishwanath’s passion for environment protection.

C．The achievements of waste management in India.

D．Vishwanath’s attitude towards dealing with e-waste.

2. What did Vishwanath work as before retiring?

A．A passionate eco-artist.	B．A private doctor.
C．A famous sculptor.	D．A senior manager.

3. Which of the artworks were made of the same materials?

A．The deer and the plants.	B．The sculpture and the figure statue.
C．The painting and the flowers.	D．The deer and the eco jewellery.

4. What does Vishwanath think of his working on eco-art?

A．Exciting but unprofitable.	B．Creative but useless.
C．Demanding but worthwhile.	D．Efficient but costly.

4 . Many visual artists have a signature style, as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint. For Amoako Boafo, who often paints with his fingers, this seems doubly true. His distinctive paint strokes (笔画) combine the complex skin tones of his chosen subjects, many of whom are, like himself, Africans with global life experiences.

Boafo, whose first solo museum exhibition runs at the Seattle Art Museum, was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, and moved to Vienna, Austria, in 2014, where he ran into difficulties, with gallerists unwilling to show his works due to his focus on Black figures. He continued making an effort to create self-portraits (自画像) and people he knew or admired-African people and Black people who have African ancestry, painting a community of sorts during a time of hardship. He also developed his standout approach to figurative painting, which combines areas of bright and noticeable color with his soft and deep fingerpainting.

He began posting his art online and caught the attention of artists like Kehinde Wiley, the celebrated American artist. The word started to spread.

Boafo is now a global art star, with numerous shows at galleries and art fairs, working with fashion house Dior, and several paintings selling for over a million dollars. In 2021, with three of his paintings being launched into space by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based spaceflight company, you might even say Boafo has rocketed to success.

And yet a recent phone conversation with the artist from his studio in Accra, which is once again his home base, revealed a well-mannered person who appreciated his success while pointing out all of the luck and preparation that led to it. Seeing so many of his paintings -created from 2016 to 2022-gathered together in an exhibition has helped him remember that “I did not ‘just happen. ‘I did not expect this success but I was hopeful and ready for it.”

1. What makes Boafo’s paintings different from other artists’ works?

A．His finger strokes.	B．His home country. ss-ess
C．His life experiences.	D．His traditional style.

2. How did Boafo deal with the difficult situation in Austria?

A．By turning to celebrated artists for help.	B．By developing a unique painting style.
C．By running his art exhibition at home.	D．By working with local art galleries.

3. What is the author’s purpose in mentioning the spaceflight company?

A．To indicate the price of space travel.	B．To show the value of Boafo’s works.
C．To introduce an international brand.	D．To tell us the advances in technology.

4. What can we learn about Boafo?

A．He is talkative.

B．He is patient.

C．He is determined.

D．He is humorous.

5 . Famous People Who Begin With Difficulties

Oprah Winfrey

Probably having one of the most famous success stories, Oprah was born into a poor family in Mississippi, raised by a single mother living on welfare. She was physically, and mentally abused during her childhood. Despite her initial struggles as a young girl, she turned herself into one of the most successful talk show hosts of our time.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey has been the star of some of the most successful movies of all time. But Carrey grew up extremely poor in Canada. When he was a teenager, his family took security jobs in a factory to help pay the bills. And during his first stand-up comedy performance, he was booed off （喝倒彩） the stage. Not shortly after, he made it big on In Living Color and then went on to star in Dumb & Dumber, The Mask, and Ace Ventura in the same year!

James Dyson

If you thought Thomas Edison’s failures were bad, let me introduce you to James Dyson, the famous inventor of the Dyson vacuums （真空吸尘器） you see all over the television. Dyson developed over 5,000 failed prototypes （原型） before finding the bagless vacuum brand. Not only that, he put his entire savings account into his prototypes over fifteen years! Luckily, the bagless vacuum worked.

Stephen King

Before Stephen King became known as a great living writer—having written over 60 novels, many of which have been adapted for film and television—King was rejected over and over again. In his memoir, On Writing, King describes how he used to post his rejection letters on the wall for inspiration. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times.

1. What do Oprah and Jim have in common?

A．They were abused by parents.	B．They grew up in poor families.
C．They were hired as comedians.	D．They found jobs in a factory.

2. What did James Dyson do?

A．He repaired the failed prototypes.	B．He developed over 5,000 brands.
C．He put all efforts into marketing.	D．He invented the bagless vacuum.

3. Who is a novelist?

A．Oprah Winfrey.

B．Stephen King.

C．James Dyson.

D．Jim Carrey.

6 . To create “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape”. Alejandro Duran gathers plastic trash that is washed up on the beaches of Sian Karan, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve. The site is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Yet every day, plastic pollution from around the world is washed up onto its shores. These materials inspired Duran to create a series of environmental art pieces, which he re-cords with photos and videos.

Duran was born in Mexico City and is now based in Brooklyn. He said that he had been collecting materials and creating photographs for the past five years, and the work was ongoing. “The project will tell me when to stop.”

Each piece can convey a vastly different mood, from the calm greens of soda bottles to the playful rainbows of toothbrushes. “I’m making art,” said Duran. “It comes from the context and my moods. You can’t say only something dark.” The work reflects and plays with natural forms, exploring how humans influence the environment. The colorful and playful images can be much attention-grabbing. “Beauty is a hook (钩子) to attract people’s attention,” said Duran.

In addition to promoting awareness of the plastic pollution problem, Duran is also involved in educational programs and helps to organize beach clean-ups. He has also made a study of the types of products that are washed ashore in Sian Ka’an, and has identified objects from 50 different countries. Although there’s no way to know where or how these objects were dropped into the sea, their labels show the global nature of the problem.

1. What does Alejandro Duran do with the trash?

A．He moves it away.	B．He collects and burns it.
C．He turns it into a form of art.	D．He puts it together for people to see.

2. What does Alejandro Duran mean by saying “The project will tell me when to stop.”?

A．He will stop the project soon.	B．It’s hard to carry on the project.
C．He will go on with the project.	D．The project is important to him.

3. Aleandro Duran runs the project mainly to __________.

A．recycle the trash	B．change his career
C．clean up the beach	D．raise public awareness of pollution

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Plastic pollution in the ocean.

B．An artist creating environmental art.

C．The global nature of the pollution problem.

D．Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve.

7 . Four People Pushing Anamorphic (变形) Art to New Limits

Adry del Rocio

Mexican street artist Adry del Rocio creates 3D murals (壁画). In a piece for Den Helder City in the Netherlands, a playful seal intertwines (缠绕) between impossible column structures that reminds people of the mind-bending imaginings of the classic modernist artist MC Escher. In 2019, she created the award-winning “Swimming in red” for the International Street Art Festival in Brande, Denmark. The killing of whales in the Faroe Islands is marked by her work, where these beautiful mammals jump and play out of a sea of crimson, their tails changing into flowers.

Jonty Hurwitz

Using a variety of materials, the London artist/scientist performs a number of computer calculations, enabling him to warp (扭曲), say, an endangered frog or horse or even, basketball players into unrecognizable objects.

James Nizam

James Nizam works with light to transform a space. In 2016’s “Frieze”, a single beam of sunlight enters a common room through a carefully made hole. The resulting flood of light into the space creates an almost dreamlike feel, with the shining beams creating captivating lines and divisions in what cannot now be described as an empty room. Nizam is also known for transforming rooms by removing walls and floorboards to create anamorphic effects like in “Orthodrome”.

John Pugh

In a career extending over 30 years, world-famous American artist John Pugh has been creating show-stopping trompe L’oeil murals ( French for “deceiving the eye”) on a grand scale, whether it be giant snakes crashing through solid walls or revealing hidden temples and buildings by “peeling away” completely flat surfaces.

1. Who created the work “Frieze”?

A．Adry del Rocio.

B．Jonty Hurwitz.

C．James Nizam.

D．John Pugh.

2. What’s the nationality of John Pugh?

A．He is French.

B．He is American.

C．He is Mexican.

D．He is British.

3. What do the four artists have in common?

A．Their works won many awards.	B．They are fond of creating 3D murals.
C．Their works have reached a new height.	D．They are famous for transforming rooms.

8 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

John is a Mazahua textile artist from the community of San Felipe Santiago, Villa de Allende, Mexico. Ten-year-old John was     1     (great) attracted by the unique forms and beautiful colors of the Mazahua textiles, and asked his mother to teach him embroidery (刺绣). But he     2     (tell) that a man shouldn’t learn it and that a man must spend his time on other things. However,     3     his mother said didn’t affect John’s big interest     4     embroidery.

After that talk with his mother, John set about     5     (make) the effort to learn the artform and hoped to change     6     idea that men couldn’t learn embroidery. He wished to share their cultural heritage through their textiles, so he attended events like meetings related to their     7     (tradition) textiles. To date, he     8     (win) many national prizes presented to people who promote art.

John’s success has changed community opinions and encouraged young people, including men,     9     (preserve) their unique embroidery art. Women from these communities have begun to teach their son to embroider. Clearly, John made a big     10     (contribute) to the protection of their cultural heritage.

9 . Throughout history, many of the world’s greatest artists never achieved tremendous fame until after their death. That’s the case of Vivian Maier, who’s now considered to be one of the most important American street photographers of the last century, alongside famous names like Diane Arbus and Henri Cartier-Bresson. But she remained unknown for much of her life, and it was only a chance encounter with a box of negatives that put her in the spotlight.

Details of her life are unclear, but she was born in New York City in the 1920s to European parents. Maier grew up in France before returning to the U. S., where she spent several decades working as a nanny in Chicago to wealthy families. During her days off Maier is thought to have taken more than 100, 000 photographs of people and city scenes in Chicago, yet she kept the photos to herself-many of them never developed.

Skip ahead to 2007, a Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof, came across Maier’s work by accident after purchasing a box of tens of thousands of undeveloped negatives for $380 Sat an auction (拍卖) . As he developed them, Maloof realized they were more than just photos. He was looking at evocative (唤起) art illustrating a Chicago of the mid-20-century that nobody had never seen. Maloof worked to uncover who the photographer was, acquiring more and more of her work. But before he could locate her, Maier had already passed away in 2009, having slipped on ice and never recovering from her head injury.

While Maloof researched Maier’s work, more details emerged. She kept to herself, her employers said, and she would spend her free days taking photos on the streets of Chicago with a Rolleiflex camera. According to Maloof, the children Maier took care of knew she was constantly taking photos, yet she never showed her photos to anyone. Maier also traveled around the world, as indicated by some of her photos.

Other collectors began to acquire Maier’s photos, but Maloof owns much of her work. He released a book, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer, in 2011, and his documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, came out in 2013.

1. Which word can be used to describe Vivian’s life?

A．Risky.

B．Wealthy.

C．Mysterious.

D．Miserable.

2. What do we know about Vivian Maier?

A．She was born in France.

B．She never developed her photos.

C．She enjoyed great fame in her life.

D．She took photos of Chicago and other cities.

3. What did Maloof do after he found Maier’s photos?

A．He approached Maier’s former employers.

B．He managed to meet the artist in the flesh.

C．He released a collection of Maier’s work.

D．He purchased more developed negatives.

4. What can be inferred about Vivian Maier’s photos?

A．They were presented to her employers.

B．They were meant to earn her a fortune.

C．They were taken by a professional artist.

D．They were of artistic and historical value.

10 . This painting Spring Bouquet has a precise structure. The flowers spill over into the lower left-hand corner, with an imbalance as free and as wild as nature. But at once the artist responds to this unbalance. To the right of the vase, Renoir has developed a heavy shadow area, rich in purples and sharply contrasted with the light below it. The placing of the straight line in the lower right side is necessary. If the reader covers this line, he will see that the composition becomes unbalanced.

The Impressionist technique had not yet developed when Renoir painted this picture. Yet the painting with light and color indicates Impressionism is around the corner; there is something of that school in the feeling of the out-of-doors that Renoir has acquired. The texture (纹理) of the flowers is described. Above all, one can’t help saying the very nice smell of the flowers is there, too.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1841. He began working as a young painter of porcelain and textiles. At age 21, Renoir entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and went on to study under the instructions of painter Charles Gleyre’s. Even though his paintings had been initially rejected by the Academy and the public, with time he became one of the most admired artists of his generation.

Unfortunately, in 1899, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (风湿性关节炎). It is a disease that causes a lot of pain. In addition, the person affected by it may also have deformities (畸形). Consequently, his movements became very limited and each movement was a big and certainly painful effort.

His son, Jean Renoir, writes in the book Renoir, My Father after his father passed away, the reaction of the people to the painting of the father, after seeing his hands:

Visitors who were unprepared for this could not take their eyes off his deformity. Though they did not dare to mention it, their reaction would be expressed by some such phrase as “It isn’t possible!” With hands like that, how can he paint those pictures? There’s some mystery somewhere.

1. What can readers see in the painting?

A．A vase in the left corner.	B．A shadow to the vase’s right.
C．A straight line at the bottom.	D．A natural light in the middle.

2. What seems quite special about this picture when people appreciate it?

A．The painting material.	B．The color choice.
C．The smelly flower taste.	D．The impressive feeling.

3. What does the underlined word “this” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Renoir, My Father.	B．Spring Bouquet.
C．Rheumatoid arthritis.	D．Renoir’s bravery.

4. Which can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Patience Is a Lifetime Practice	B．Pain Passes, but Beauty Remains
C．Impressionism Is a Unique Technique	D．Work hard, and You Will Catch Up