1 . According to Gelb, although not everyone is born with the gifts and the capacities of Leonardo Da Vinci, it is possible for any person to use the fundamentals of Da Vinci’s approach to learning to guide us toward the realization of our inner Da Vinci. One typical fundamental is curiosity. Curiosity is “The desire to know is natural to good men.” — Leonardo Da Vinci
The young Leonardo loved being in nature, showed an early gift for drawing and was fascinated by mathematics. Young Leonardo’s Curiosity regarding education and mathematics especially often raised constant unsureness and difficulties for the teachers who taught him and continuously proved them to be wrong. Most children have in them endless amounts of curiosity and sense of wonder. Unfortunately for multiple reasons these qualities are lost as children reach adulthood, not Leonardo though. Perhaps one of his greatest characteristics was his willingness to question accepted knowledge. Leonardo’s Curiosity never faded and fueled the lake of his genius for his entire life. Leonardo’s motives were not money, women or loyalty to any church or person. His pursuits were pure: the long search for beauty and above all: truth.
Leonardo would wonder around asking questions he did not himself yet understand. He always carried a notebook with himself so that he could quickly write down hundreds of questions, ideas, thoughts, impressions and observations as they occurred. He was expectant and reliant only upon himself to answer his own questions. Being modest, he was not afraid to make mistakes and appear foolish. Leonardo accepted the feelings of unfamiliarity and foolishness.
His questions led him to designing a snorkel (水下呼吸器) as well as diving equipment and even a submarine and also inventing flying machines and a parachute. His curiosity took him under the water and into the sky.
1. What does the underlined words “Da Vinci” refer to?| A．Potential. | B．Curiosity. |
| C．Honesty. | D．Motive. |
| A．Educating kids. | B．Seeking for love. |
| C．Appreciating nature. | D．Questioning his teachers. |
| A．It fooled himself. |
| B．It made him independent. |
| C．It inspired his whole life. |
| D．It disappeared in his adulthood. |
| A．An idle youth, a needy age. |
| B．First come, first served. |
| C．Stay hungry, stay foolish. |
| D．Nothing ventured, nothing gained. |
2 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| A．Raphael’s works. | B．Artists. | C．Drawings. | D．Youngsters. |
3 . New England holds some special museums. They are devoted largely or entirely to the work of just one person. And they are the artists’ birthplaces or onetime homes. Here are four examples of such museums.
Cyrus E. Dallin Art Museum
The name Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944) might not be familiar, but several of the artist’s sculptures (雕塑) are, especially those related to Native Americans. A good example is his “Appeal to the Great Spirit” standing in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. Born in Utah, he lived in Arlington for the final four decades of his life. The museum is in the Jefferson Cutter House, an 1830 Greek styled building.
Norman Rockwell Museum
Rockwell (1894-1978) was America’s well-known artist. The museum, founded in 1969, moved into its present location, Robert A.M. Stern-designed building in 1993. Its 998 paintings and drawings are the largest single collection of Rockwell's artworks.
Kids 16 and under: free; adults: $20; the old: at a 10% discount (折扣)
Edward Gorey House
Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was an artist, but he was also an author and clothes designer. Gorey bought this 18th-century house in 1979 and lived there for the rest of his life. Edward Gorey House is also known as the Elephant House. Gorey had respect for animals. The activities of the house, from art education to exhibits, show Gorey's support of animal well-being.
Gibert Stuart Birthplace and Museum
Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) is responsible for what may well be the most familiar work of any American artist, His drawing of George is the basis of the first president’s portrait (画像) on the dollar. Stuart painted more than a thousand portraits throughout his life.
1. What do we know about Cyrus E. Dallin?| A．He built the Jefferson Cutter House. |
| B．He lived in Arlington for half a century. |
| C．He was best known for his Greek styled sculptures. |
| D．He created famous works related to Native Americans. |
| A．$36. | B．$40. | C．$60. | D．$72. |
| A．Edward Gorey House. | B．Norman Rockwell Museum. |
| C．Cyrus E. Dallin Art Museum. | D．Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum. |
4 . At the first exhibition of Henri Rousseau’s paintings in 1886, the public laughed out loud, and critics made fun of his original, unschooled style, one writing "Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet, and his eyes covered.”
Despite heavy criticism throughout his life, Rousseau kept painting, confident in his gift. He never received formal training in the arts because his family was too poor. For more than twenty years, he worked at the Paris customs office. It wasn’t until the age of 40 that he took up the brush, teaching himself to paint by copying works at the Louvre and studying nature. “Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.” he said.
Though his best-known paintings are of jungle scenes with monkeys, lions, and small woods, Rousseau never left France or saw a jungle. To paint foreign plants and animals, he relied on books, botanical gardens(植物园) in Paris,and his imagination. "When I go into the glasshouse and I see the strange plants of faraway lands,” he once said, "it seems to me that I enter into a dream.”
Rousseau claimed to have invented a new style of painting called the landscape-portrait, in which he paints a background view and then adds a person in the foreground later, as he did in Myself: Portrait-Landscape (1890).
Called a naive (天真) artist due to his childlike, untrained style, Rousseau painted colors one at a time, starting from the top and working his way down. While critics described his works as flat and inexact descriptions of nature, he earned the respect of artists like Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, who thought Rousseau was onto something new.
Though his work was never accepted by the art world in his time, Rousseau’s paintings hang in museums around the world today. And Rousseau’s original approach to art has inspired countless artists to follow their own unique views.
1. Why did Rousseau have no formal training in arts?| A．Because he preferred painting in his own way. |
| B．Because he was afraid of being criticized by others. |
| C．Because his family couldn’t afford the training. |
| D．Because there were more to be found in nature. |
| A．He was unwilling to develop a personal style. |
| B．He moved to a jungle to study nature. |
| C．He came from an artistic family. |
| D．He was indeed a self-taught painter. |
| A．It is black-and-white. | B．It is simple and original. |
| C．It presents social reality. | D．It employs persons in the background. |
| A．Rousseau ’s works have now been recognized. |
| B．Rousseau earned a good reputation in his time. |
| C．Rousseau encouraged young artists to follow his footsteps. |
| D．Rousseau’s paintings have hardly ever been shown in museums. |
