1 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. Which date was Van Gogh born on?

A．March 30.

B．March 20.

C．March 13.

2. What did Van Gogh do when he was 15?

A．He began to learn French.

B．He decided to be an artist.

C．He started to work.

3. Which country did Van Gogh move to in 1886?

A．France.

B．Germany.

C．Britain.

4. How did Theo support Van Gogh according to the talk?

A．He made paintings for Van Gogh.

B．He sold Van Gogh’s paintings to others.

C．He bought Van Gogh’s works from others.

2 . 阅读下面材料, 在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

When 35-year-old Chinese pianist WangYujia finished her last note on Tuesday, she received a standing applause from the audience. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, commonly     1     (know)as Yannick, the conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, even went down on his knees after watching her four-hour     2     (perform)at the Carnegie Music Hall.

She was considered as a superstar for her once-in-a-lifetime show. Yannick even compared the level of her excellence to     3     (climb)Mount Qomolangma. Despite the difficulty, however, it seemed she managed     4     (play)all the musical pieces with ease right to the last movement. Yannick noted that Wang was     5     ideal pianist because of her forceful and relaxed style. And he said that she was born for this kind of music. Wang showed a special interest     6     Rachmaninoff’s music when she was young. She began to play the piano when she was 6. At the age of 14, she entered the Curtis Institute of Music in the US and began to study it     7     (carefully)than before. She     8     (attract)by this Russian composer’s noble and pure music deeply at that time.

After graduation, she became one of the world’s most famous     9     (star)in classical music. Wang’s success also shows that her parents’ years of efforts have paid off,     10     will be very encouraging for other parents in China.

3 . 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。

Each time a medal was presented to a winner at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the award music was played. The music was written by Tan Dun,    1    is a world-famous composer.

Born in 1958 in central Hunan, China, Tan     2    (grow) up near the Liuyang River.When he was very young, he showed a great interest     3    music. He loves the     4    (sound) of the rushing water and blowing wind because, to him, the best music comes from nature. His amazing piece of music Water does not use any musical instruments. Instead, Tan makes over 50 sounds from water by     5    (control) the speed of water flow(流动).

Tan has helped build     6    bridge between the East and the West. He has     7    (successful) brought the Chinese and Western music together.    8     (make) the music for the Beijing Olympics special, Tan used     9    (tradition) Chinese music and the sounds of an ancient Chinese bell but in a Western style.

In     10    (he) works, the past and the present, common objects and musical instruments, traditional Chinese music and modern Western music all mix together to make anew type—music without boundaries.

4 . 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。

The creative concept of jinhuidui (literally “a pile of beautiful things from ash”), a Chinese art form which is said     1     (start) in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and boomed in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), shares similarities     2     pop art.

    3     (create) traditional jinhuidui artwork is much more difficult compared to pop art, as all the images are painted as if they were copied and pasted (粘贴). It requires     4     good command of calligraphy as well as excellent skill in painting flowers, birds, fish, insects, landscapes and     5     (figure), and a mastery of techniques such as seal carving.

Geng Xuezhi, 50, from Zibo city, Shandong Province, is one of the masters of jinhuidui. Geng has been learning Chinese painting and calligraphy     6     he was 16. He came into contact with jinhuidui painting skills through his father in 2006.

The artist says the distinctive feature of jinhuidui can be summed up as “broken”,     7     means that it has to present fragments in forms such as broken, rolled, overlapped,     8     (tear), burned or smoked. He adds it will take at least 10 years to master the skill.

The creation of jinhuidui is complex and lengthy, and     9     (it) dyeing process is laborious (费力的) and time-consuming. Sometimes a fragment needs to be dyed a dozen times. “A simpler work of jinhuidui takes about 20 days to complete, while a     10     (hard) one will take several months, and sometimes some extra effort has to be made,” Geng says.

5 . Have you ever thought of being an actress and having to finish a show you started and at the same time, battling a life-threatening illness? That is what Emilia Clarke did. You may know her for her famous role of Daenerys Targaryen from the hit TV series Game of Thrones. This role skyrocketed her to stardom and made a big impact on her life. However, behind the scenes, Clarke had been battling a life-threatening illness for most of the first few seasons.

Just after finishing the first scazon of Game of Thrones, she faced an awful situation following the events of being rushed to the hospital after a workout session at the gym. Her worst fears were realized when she was diagnosed with subarachnoid hemorrhage, a kind of disease that kills once out of three people diagnosed with it. She was immediately told that she needed to undergo surgery to remove her brain aneurysm (动脉瘤) but she was a bit skeptical about it since she had a busy life and a busy schedule.

Ultimately, she had to go under the knife and the recovery was very miserable for her. She felt so hard to memorize and remember that it came to the point that she couldn’t even remember her name. At that point, she was extremely desperate since she believed that her life depended on communication and memorization so her life wasn’t worth anything. Luckily, a month later, Clarke recovered well and was able to go home just a few weeks before the start of filming for the 2nd season of Game of Thrones.

After the third season, doctors found out that there was another brain aneurysm that needed immediate surgery. Recovery had been more painful than before and Clarke spent a month in hospital experiencing all sorts of anxiety and depression. Fortunately, she overcame this adversity again. She recovered well and was able to finish all eight seasons of Game of Thrones. Right now, she’s just waiting for all the beauty and surprises that life can bring.

1. What can we know about Emilia Clarke?

A．She hesitated about the first surgery.

B．She suffered less during the second recovery

C．She fought the disease for eight seasons of Game of Thrones.

D．She missed the filming of the 2nd season of Game of Thrones.

2. Why was Emilia Clarke frustrated by the first diagnosis?

A．She wasn’t sure of her sports ability.

B．She was afraid of her upcoming surgery.

C．She wasn’t confident of her acting skills.

D．She was worried about her career development.

3. What words can be used to describe Emilia Clarke?

A．Decent and talented.

B．Diligent and tough.

C．Daring and thoughtful.

D．Dedicated and trustworthy.

4. Which entry can help you access the text?

A．Fashion.

B．Science.

C．Health.

D．Celebrity.

6 . 阅读下面读文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Chopin was born on March 1st, 1810. He is a Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best     1    (know) for his pieces for piano. Although he wrote brief works, Chopin ranks as one of music’s greatest tone poets by reason of his superb imagination.

All Chopin’s family had artistic leanings, and even at an early age, Chopin was always strangely moved when listening to his mother or eldest sister playing the piano. By age six he was already trying to reproduce     2     he heard or to make up new tunes.     3     following year he started piano lessons with the 61-year-old Wojciech Zywny, an all-around     4    (music) with an intelligent sense of values. Zywny’s simple instruction in piano playing     5    (leave) behind soon by his pupil,     6     discovered for himself an original approach to the piano. Later, Chopin was allowed to develop     7    (smooth) by academic rules and formal training. Chopin found himself     8    (invite) at an early age to play at private parties, and at eight he made his first public appearance at a charity concert.

Piano playing was not alone responsible for his growing reputation as a child genius. At seven he also wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed. Chopin had a great gift     9     music and grew up with his efforts,     10    (become) a world-famous musician finally.

7 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容 (1个单词) 或括号内的正确形式。

Rowan Atkinson is an English comedian and writer, who is famous around the world for his character Mr. Bean. He     1       (list) in the top 50 funniest people ever by a group of comedians and shot to fame in Britain in the late 1970s. In the early 1990s, his     2       (perform) in Mr. Bean brought him worldwide fame.

    3       (bear) in the north of England in 1955, he went to very good schools and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.     4     he studied for a Master’s degree at Oxford University, he fell in love     5     acting and comedy and joined an amateur theatre company. After university, Atkinson got a lucky break and made a comedy show for a British TV company. He quickly set out     6     (appear) in the hit comedy show Not the Nine O’clock News, which made him one of Britain’s     7       (popular) comedians ever. From 1983, he starred in the successful Black Adder series,     8     he also co-wrote.

Mr. Bean came along on New Year’s Day, 1990. It was     9     (original) just a one-off show. The character was a hit and Atkinson made more throughout the 1990s. It was eventually made into a movie which made Atkinson an international star. His visual comedy style     10     (earn) him the nickname “the man with the face” since then.

8 . To say that Spanish painter Pablo Picasso was a leader in Western art in the 20th century is to repeat an accepted fact, according to Time magazine. “No painter before him had enjoyed such a large following in his own lifetime.”

This year marks the 140th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. Born on Oct. 25, 1881, Picasso had created more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures and other pieces of art by the time he died at 91.

That’s a long time to paint! The result is not only a lot of art, but a lot of different phases in Picasso’s work. On its website, Christie’s auction (拍卖) house lists eight different periods in the course of his painting career.

Over a century ago, the painter once said that, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” So the eight periods are all very different in their choice of subjects and yet unmistakably drawn by Picasso’s hands. Financial Express called his style unusual.

As his style changed over time, it became more simplistic. A common joke is that Picasso forgot how to paint. After all, he was classically trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona.

Now he is best known for leading an artistic movement known as “Cubism (立体派)”. It used geometric shapes to create human and animal figures. With this method, Picasso tried to show his figures from multiple perspectives (视角) in two-dimensional space. For example, a person’s left eye may be shown from straight ahead while his right eye and nose are shown from the side. The result is strange and beautiful, frightening and funny.

Picasso often said that he admired primitive art and drawings made by youngsters. “When I was the age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them,” he said. Maybe that’s why Picasso is still so popular. We look at his work and think, “Maybe I could do that!”

1. Which of the following best describes Pablo Picasso?

A．Productive.

B．Optimistic.

C．Traditional.

D．Generous.

2. Why did Financial Express call Picasso’s style unusual?

A．His act of creation was destructive.	B．He created a series of simple images.
C．His painting style remained unchanged.	D．He drew different subjects in different periods.

3. What is special about a cubist painting according to the text?

A．It is rather difficult to understand.	B．It shows figures from various perspectives.
C．It covers different subjects at the same time.	D．It reflects the relationship between humans and animals.

4. What does the underlined word “them” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Raphael’s works.

B．Artists.

C．Drawings.

D．Youngsters.