1 . The expressive quality of both the forms and gestures in the basically monochromatic composition of Guernica found its way into Picasso’s other work, especially in the intensely coloured versions of Weeping Woman (1937) as well as in related prints and drawings, inportraits of Dora Maar and Nusch Eluard (wife of Picasso’s friend, the French poet Paul Eluard), and in still lifes (Still Life with Red Bull’s Head, 1938). Those works led to the claustrophobic interiors and skull-like drawings (sketchbook number 110, 1940) of the war years, which Picasso spent in France with Maar as well as with Jaime Sabartes, a friend of his student days in Barcelona. Thereafter Sabartés shared Picasso’s life as secretary, biographer, and companion and more often than not as the butt of endless jokes (Portrait of Jaime Sabartes, 1939; Retour de Bruxelles, sketchbook number 137, 1956).

After the liberation of Paris, Picasso resumed exhibiting his work, notably at the Salon d’Automne of 1944 (“Salon de la Libération”), where his canvases of the preceding five years were received as a shock. At the same time, Picasso opened up his studio to both newand old writer and artist friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Reverdy, Eluard, the photographer Brassai, the English artist Roland Penrose, and the American photographer Lee Miller, as well as many American GIs.

Already in 1943 a young painter, Francoise Gilot, had presented herself at the studio, and within months she became Picasso’s mistress. In 1946 Picasso moved to the Mediterranean with Gilot (with whom he was to have two children, Claude in 1947 and Paloma in 1949). First they stayed near Antibes, where Picasso spent four months painting at the Château Grimaldi (Joie de Vivre, 1946). The paintings of that time and the ceramics he decorated at the studio in nearby Vallauris, beginning in 1947, vividly express Picasso’s sense of identification with the classical tradition and with his Mediterranean origins. They also celebrate his new found happiness with Gilot, who in works of that period was often nymph to Picasso’s fauns and centaurs.

1. What can we learn about Picasso’s works during the World War II?

A．There were intensive colours in the works at that time.

B．Most of the works at that time were portraits.

C．Skull-like paintings were the features of the works at that time.

D．Sabartes contributed to Picasso’s works at that time in terms of inspiration.

2. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “resume” in Paragraph2?

A．Continue.

B．Abandon.

C．Restate.

D．Reserve.

3. What can be learned about Francoise Gilot?

A．Picasso and Gilot got married in 1946.	B．Gilot was as famous as Picasso at that time.
C．Picasso portrayed Gilot in his paintings.	D．Picasso and Gilot had three children.

2 . Picasso’s reputation as a major 20th-century sculptor came only after his death, because he had kept much of his sculpture in his own collection. Beginning in 1928, Picasso began to work in iron and sheet metal in Julio González’s studio in Paris. Then, in 1930, he acquired the Chateau Boisgeloup (northwest of Paris), where he had room for sculpture studios. There, with his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter as his muse, Picasso began working in 1931 on large-scale plaster heads. In the 1930s he also made constructions incorporating found objects, and until the end of his life Picasso continued working in sculpture in a variety of materials.

Picasso’s ceramics(陶瓷制品) are usually set apart from his main body of work and are treated as less important, because at first glance they seem a somewhat frivolous exercise in the decoration of ordinary objects. Plates, jugs, and vases, made by craftsmen at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris, were in Picasso’s hands reshaped or painted, gouged out, scratched, or marked by fingerprints and, for the most part, were rendered useless. In turning to craft, Picasso worked with a sense of liberation, experimenting with the play between decoration and form (between two and three dimensions) and between personal and universal meaning.

During that period Picasso’s fame increasingly attracted numerous visitors, including artists and writers, some of whom (Hélène Parmelin, Édouard Pignon, Éluard, and especially Louis Aragon) encouraged Picasso’s further political involvement. He contributed designs willingly (his dove was used for the World Peace Congress poster in Wroclaw, Poland, in 1949), which was from a sincere and lifelong sympathy with any group of repressed people. War and Peace, two panels begun in 1952 to adorn the Temple of Peace attached to an old chapel in Vallauris, reflect Picasso’s personal optimism of those years.

1. Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A．Picasso only became famous after his death.	B．Picasso had a lot of his own collections.
C．In 1930 he began to make incorporating objects.	D．He started working in 1931.

2. What’s the possible meaning of the underlined word “frivolous”?

A．Not having any serious purpose or value.	B．Able to be used for a practical purpose.
C．Funny and ridiculous.	D．Expensive and elegant.

3. What may be the possible reason for Picasso’s artworks’ success?

A．Because Picasso kept a lot of his artworks after his own death.

B．Because Picasso had the ability to attract many visitors and writers.

C．Because Picasso’s artworks carried his sense of liberation and designed specially.

D．Because Picasso’s artworks are worth a lot of money.

4. What is the best title for the passage?

A．Picasso’s Outstanding Sculpture

B．Why We All Love Picasso’s Art?

C．Picasso’s Works of Sculpture and Ceramics

D．Picasso’s In-depth Influence on Art and Politics

3 . 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.

4 . Carmen Herrera: “Every painting has been a fight between the painting and me. I tend to win. But you know how many paintings I threw in the garbage? I wouldn’t have anything were it not for my husband. He didn’t have a hand in anything? But no, they say that behind every great man there is always a woman. Well, behind a great woman there is always a man. You need it; I was very lucky. You don’t decide to be an artist; art gets inside of you. Before you know you are painting, you are so surprised. It’s like falling in love.”

Born in Cuba in 1915, Carmen Herrera lived in New York and Paris and eventually settled in New York where she lived till now. Through the years, she worked quietly and created a huge quantity of paintings. While living in New York in the 1950s, she made reductive, hard-edged abstractions that predate(早于) the works of artists such as Lygia Clark in Brazil and Ellsworth Kelly in the US. Her works also proved her foresight as Minimalism and Op Art took hold in the 1960s, and with later developments in the works of American painters such as Brice Marden Agnes Martin, both of whom are represented in the collection.

It wasn’t until 2004, at the age of 89, that Carmen Herrera sold her first painting; like many women artists of her generation, her works were overlooked despite her friendships and associations with great male artists like Barnett Newman. Now, however, the artist and her works are now receiving much-deserved attention in and beyond the US. Herrera’s paintings have entered the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Tate Modern; the Walker’s acquisition is special in that.

1. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A．Carmen is addicted to drawing.

B．Carmen’s husband objects to her drawing.

C．It’s easy for Carmen to be famous.

D．Carmen sold her first picture at $1,000.

2. What does the underlined sentence mean in Paragraph 1?

A．Carmen is successful finally.

B．Carmen has sold her first painting.

C．Carmen has a good husband supporting her.

D．Carmen thinks she has a gift for drawing.

3. What is the key to Carmen’s success?

A．Kindness.

B．Love for family.

C．Passion.

D．The museum’s help.

5 . The painter Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and grew up on her family’s farm. At seventeen she decided to be an artist and left the farm for schools in Chicago and New York, but she never lost her contact with the land. Like most painters,O’Keeffe painted the things that were most important to her, and nearly all her works are simplified portrayals (描绘) of nature.

O’Keeffe became famous when her paintings were discovered and exhibited in New York by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. During a visit to New Mexico in 1929, O’Keeffe was so moved by the bleak (荒凉的) landscape and broad skies of the western desert that she began to paint its images. Cows’ skulls and other bleached bones found in the desert figured prominently in her paintings. When her husband died in 1946, she moved to New Mexico permanently and used the horizon lines of the desert, colourful flowers, rocks, barren hills, and the sky as subjects for her paintings. Although O’Keeffe painted her best-known works in the 1920s,1930s and 1940s, she continued to produce tributes to the western desert until her death in 1986.

O’Keeffe is widely considered to have been a pioneering American modernist painter. While most early modern American artists were strongly influenced by European art, O’Keeffe’s position was more independent. She created her own vision and preferred to view her painting as a private effort. Almost from the beginning, her work was more identifiably (可识别地) American than other painters in its special treatment of colour,light,space and natural forms.

1. Alfred Stieglitz ________.

A．was a film director

B．married O’Keeffe in 1924

C．died in 1986

D．became famous when his paintings were exhibited in New York

2. Which of the following is most similar to O’Keeffe’s relationship with nature?

A．A photographer’s relationship with a model.

B．A writer’s relationship with a publisher.

C．A student’s relationship with a book.

D．A carpenter’s relationship with a hammer.

3. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an influence on O’Keeffe’s paintings?

A．Her life in the countryside.

B．Her life in the West.

C．The works of European artists.

D．The appearance of the natural landscape.

4. The main idea of this passage is that ________.

A．O’Keeffe was a different modern American painter

B．O’Keeffe was the best painter of her generation

C．O’Keeffe liked to paint what was familiar to her

D．O’Keeffe used colours and shapes that are too simple

6 . John Myatt is an artist. He may not be the greatest artist in the world, but he is possibly the world’s greatest forger (伪造者). He is able to paint pictures in the style of famous artists like Monet and Matisse.

    1     This unusual skill got Myatt into a lot of trouble in the 1990s. For many years he taught art at a secondary school, but then he got divorced (离婚) and he gave up his job to spend more time with his children. In order to make some money he started painting pictures in the style of famous artists and selling them.

    2     He was honest about his work—he wrote his name on the back, and he sold them for ￡150 each. However, one of his customers, John Drewe, started to resell Myatt’s paintings as genuine, original works. Drewe had sold one of Myatt’s paintings for￡25,000. He contacted Myatt and suggested that they go into business together. Myatt agreed. He continued to paint and Drewe sold his paintings to art collectors around the world.     3    

The amazing thing is that Myatt painted his pictures with decorator’s paint.     4     But it soon came to an end. Drewe was divorced too, and his ex-wife found out about the forgeries. She went to the police and they arrested Dewe and Myatt. At their trial Drewe was sent to prison for six years and Myatt for less than one year.

    5     When he came out he started to produce pictures in the style of famous artists again. But he put his name on the back, as he’d done before he met Drewe. Myatt is now famous and instead of charging￡150 for a painting, he can charge￡40-50,000.

A．It wasn’t illegal.

B．Then he decided to stop copying famous paintings.

C．It was the same paint that people use to paint houses!

D．Myatt only spent four months in prison for good behavior.

E．That’s more than Drewe gave him for his ‘genuine’ paintings!

F．His pictures are so good that experts can’t tell that they are not originals.

G．Between 1986 and 1994 they sold about 200 paintings and made over a million pounds.

7 . Stephen Wiltshire is a famous artist.His drawings —often drawn from memory and at great speed—are sketched(素描) on the spot at street level.

Stephen,who was born in London in 1974,didn’t say a word as a small child,and found it hard to relate to other people.At the age of five,Stephen was sent to Queensmill School,London,where it soon became apparent that he communicated through the language of drawing.His teachers encouraged him to speak by taking away his art materials for a short time;eventually he said his first words—“paper” and “pencil”—but didn’t learn to speak fully until the age of nine.

Stephen loved drawing and he was seldom to be found without pen and paper.Once he took part in art competitions, news of his great talent began to spread.Early fans included the late Prime Minister Edward Heath who bought his drawing of Salisbury Cathedral，made when Stephen was just eight.

But Stephen came to wider public attention when the BBC featured him in the programme,The Foolish Wise Ones in 1987,when he was introduced by Sir Hugh Casson(a past president of the Royal Academy),as “the best child artist in Britain”．

After that,Stephen’s reputation grew worldwide.A second BBC documentary in 2001 showed Stephen flying over London in a helicopter and later completing a detailed drawing of London within three hours,which included 12 historic landmarks(地标性建筑)and 200 other structures.

In 2006 Stephen was recognised for his services to the art world,when he was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.Today wherever Stephen goes,people are attracted by his outstanding talent.

1. What problem did Stephen have when he was a small child?

A．No schools wanted him.

B．No teachers liked him.

C．He couldn’t speak.

D．He couldn’t spell.

2. When did Stephen become world­famous?

A．After his second BBC documentary.

B．After the programme The Foolish Wise Ones.

C．After he met with the late Prime Minister Edward Heath.

D．After Sir Hugh Casson bought his drawing of Salisbury Cathedral.

3. What is special about Stephen’s drawing of London?

A．It was his greatest work.

B．It was drawn in a helicopter.

C．It featured historic landmarks.

D．It was finished in a short time.

4. The text is likely to appear in ________．

A．a novel	B．a biography
C．an official report	D．a history paper

8 . Evelyn Glennie is a unique musician. She is a percussionist (打击乐手) who plays with classical orchestras. When she performs, she hits the gongs, snare drums, vibraphones, timbales, cymbals, conga drums, bells, and bass drums that are in front of her. Although classical musicians usually wear formal clothes in concert, Glennie performs in bare feet. What really sets her apart, though, is that she is a musician who cannot hear. Glennie has been almost totally deaf since she was 12 years old. Despite being deaf, she has become the first solo star to play her type of percussion instruments in classical music.

Glennie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. At the age of eight, she started taking piano lessons. She found that she preferred the drums, so she began to concentrate on other percussion instruments. Her doctors were never able to find out why she started to lose her hearing. By the time Glennie was 12, most of her hearing was gone. Glennie stayed in her school and learned to read lips. She also continued her music lessons. She learned how to play percussion instruments by using her sense of touch. She learned to feel the difference between high and low notes. She became very sensitive to the vibrations created by different sounds. Glennie took off her shoes to make it easier for her to feel the vibrations made by her instruments.

Glennie was very talented. At 16 she was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. She was the music school’s first solo percussion student, graduating when she was 19. To build her career, she performed anywhere she could. There was very little solo music written for her instruments, so she asked for percussion music to be written for her. She then performed the new pieces in her solo concerts. Glennie attracted attention by performing in radio and television concerts. One 1988 concert was recorded live and made into a CD. This recording earned Glennie her first Grammy Award for a classical music performance.

Today Glennie performs all around the world. In addition to classical orchestras, she plays with folk musicians and rock stars. She has written music for movies, television shows, and commercials. Every year more new compositions are written for Glennie to perform. She has even taken up a new instrument: the bagpipes. Glennie considers herself a pioneer in music, not because she is deaf but because she has become a solo percussion star in classical music.

1. The reader can tell that the author________.

A．thinks Glennie should wear shoes when performing

B．believes that Glennie should not work so hard

C．believes that Glennie had a gift for music

D．doesn’t like Glennie’s music so much

2. In the future, Glennie will most likely________.

A．always wear her shoes in concert

B．quit playing classical music in concert

C．learn to play other musical instruments

D．focus on studying the piano again

3. Which is the best summary of the passage?

A．Deaf as she is, Evelyn Glennie is an award-winning solo percussionist who performs mainly classical music.

B．Evelyn Glennie lost her hearing at a young age, and doctors were never able to find out why.

C．Although classical musicians usually wear formal clothes in concert, Evelyn Glennie performs barefoot.

D．When Evelyn Glennie found that there was little music written for solo percussionists, she didn’t give up.

9 . No artist has affected modern art more than Pablo Picasso.The thousands of masterpieces he created changed the way people thought about art. Picasso was perhaps the most talented and successful artist who ever lived.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in 1881 in a small town on the southern coast of Spain. His father was a painter who taught art. Picasso showed exceptional talent at an early age and, by the time he was in his teens, painted better than his father or any of the local art teachers. At sixteen, Picasso was sent to the Royal Academy of Madrid, where students drew from plaster casts and copied works of the old masters. Picasso felt these assignments were pointless and began to work on his own. Picasso’s father soon became angry with his son’s rebellious behavior, long hair, and strange clothes. He believed that Picasso was wasting his talent and scolded him, “Why don’t you cut your hair and paint sensibly？” In 1900, Picasso left for Paris — then the center of the art world.He lived in a cold, run­down building, painting constantly, sometimes surviving for days on only a piece of bread.During these years, his art reflected his dismal (凄凉的) surroundings.Homeless outcasts were the subject of many of his fairly realistic early paintings. After seeing African masks and sculptures, his works became more simplified and angular leading up to the revolutionary new style known as Cubism.

Picasso didn’t sell much of his works during these early years.On 8 May 1995, Picasso’s Angel Fernandez de Soto was sold at auction for D|S29 million.The next day Blue Period, one of his later works, sold for D|S5 million.But he worked continuously, always experimenting with different styles of painting.Though Picasso lived to be ninety­two and became the most famous artist in the world, he spoke of his youthful days in Paris as “the happiest time in my life”．As a matter of fact, everyone knows that in his late years, Picasso was inordinately frustrated about his age, death and his loss of sexuality — that’s in all his works.

1. Pablo Picasso showed unusual talent for painting ________.

A．in his early childhood

B．in his early teens

C．at the age of sixteen

D．when he painted better than the local art teachers

2. Pablo Picasso started to reveal his rebellious spirit ________.

A．when he was a child

B．in his early teens

C．when he was studying in the Royal Academy

D．after he moved to Paris

3. What marks something of a turning point in his career as an artist?

A．Those miserable but fruitful youthful days in Paris.

B．Those realistic paintings reflecting dismal social surroundings.

C．The influences of masks and sculptures created by native African artists.

D．Experimenting with new different styles of painting.

4. This passage mainly discusses ________.

A．Picasso’s Cubism as a revolutionary style in art

B．Picasso as a rebel and his art

C．Picasso’s life and painting in Paris

D．Picasso’s influences on the development of modern art

10 . Pablo Picasso, born in Spain in 1881, was one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. Picasso began painting when he was a small child and took advanced art courses when he was only fifteen. Between 1904 and 1947 Picasso lived in Paris. In 1947 he moved to Riviera, in the south of France.

Many people thought Picasso’s works were strange and unpleasant. Still, he had a great influence on artists in every country. Today, Picasso is regarded as a genius, and his paintings are in the museums all over the world.

In 1912, Picasso actually invented a new type of art. He painted a picture, and then he pasted bits of paper and something else on the picture. This picture of art is called collage(拼贴艺术).

Picasso was not only a painter, but also a sculptor (雕刻家) and a designer of scenery for plays. There are even some photographs of “light paintings” that he created. These paintings were produced by moving a light pencil, or a small flashlight in the air. Although the images could be seen only by people watching them happen, the camera was able to catch the images as they occurred.

By the time he died in France in April of 1973, he had created 22, 000 works of art.

When he was asked how someone could become an artist, Picasso would reply, “If you want to draw, you must shut your eyes and sing.”

1. After reading the text, we can learn that Picasso was a(n) 　　　.

A．French artist

B．Spanish artist

C．English artist

D．Australian artist

2. The meaning of the underlined word “pasted” in this text means “　　　”.

A．stuck	B．struck
C．drew	D．mixed

3. According to the text, which of the statements is RIGHT?

A．Although Picasso was a great artist, he was not clever at all.

B．Picasso didn’t leave Paris until he was 23 years old.

C．People didn’t like Picasso’s works at first.

D．Picasso was only good at collage.

4. Which would be the best title for the text?

A．How to Become a Great Artist

B．A Genius

C．Pablo Picasso:More Than Just a Painter

D．Picasso’s Life in France