1 . When Simon Beck creates artwork, he doesn’t use paint or pencils. Instead, he takes his snowshoes and compass (指南针) and walks to a wide-open area of fresh snow, making huge designs in the snow by walking and leaving snowshoed footprints in different patterns.
The idea to make a snow mural (壁画) came to him in 2004 after a day of skiing in Savoie, France. Mr. Beck noticed an inviting area of undisturbed snow and thought it would be fun to draw a star in it. Being a mapmaker and an expert at orienteering (定向越野赛), Mr. Beck was good with these skills to create in the snow.
Once he got to his site, he started in the center of the design. He then “drew” the primary lines while holding his compass to make sure he kept walking straight. Next, he added smaller lines, keeping track of their length by counting his footsteps. Finally, he filled in, or “shade”, some of the areas between the lines with more footsteps. The result looked impressive, especially when he viewed it from above on a nearby chairlift.
On average, a snow design takes Mr. Beck 10 hours to make. So far, Beck has created over 300 snow murals—the size of the biggest one is about 10 soccer fields. As Mr. Beck worked to build a collection of photos to publish in his book Snow Art, he posted some of his pictures on the Internet. His art started to gain more attention and companies began asking him to create snow artwork. Mr. Beck has been invited to make snow art all over the world, including Canada, the United States, Russia, and China.
It doesn’t worry Mr. Beck that his work will disappear with the next snowfall. Once he has photographed a design, he’s ready to think about the next one. “I can make another drawing in the same place when the weather improves,” he says.
1. Where did Beck’s idea to make a snow mural come from?| A．His love for artworks. | B．His skiing experience. |
| C．His mapmaking skills. | D．His painting collection. |
| A．Stop him from getting lost. | B．Find the right site to draw. |
| C．Finish drawing more quickly. | D．Create a better snow artwork. |
| A．Calm. | B．Annoyed. | C．Cheerful. | D．Worried. |
| A．Snow: Nature’s Most Beautiful Artwork |
| B．Snow Mural: A Cross Between Nature and Art |
| C．Simon Beck: An Artist Painting in the Snow |
| D．Snow Art: A Photo Collection of Snow Artworks. |
2 . Pablo Picasso was born on October 25 in Malaga. Spain in 1881. Taking after his father, Picasso shared a passion （热爱）for painting and art. Even though he wasn't the best student in school, Picasso excelled at drawing. Noticing his amazing talent, Picasso's father, an artist, taught him everything he knew. Before long, Picasso could paint and draw much better than his father. With this rich talent, Picasso paid less and less attention to his schoolwork and spent the majority of his day sketching and drawing in notepads and sketchbooks.
When he was a little bit older, Picasso moved twice and was accepted into two fine art programs. However, he didn't care very much for the special techniques they taught and often wandered the streets by himself drawing the scenes around him. After moving to these two places, Picasso moved back home to Barcelona and decided that he would develop new techniques of art and painting based on what he saw.
Later, Picasso decided to move to Paris, France, where he began perfecting his own techniques of painting, drawing and other forms of art. His drawings. paintings, and an included pieces about sadness, poverty, classics and self-portraits. One of his major types of work is called cubism （立体 派），which includes art with all sizes of geometric shapes together on the piece of an. This type of art is very important because no other artists had come up with the idea before. Picasso decided to try something new, and as a result, cubism is widely accepted today as a classic style of art.
Picasso inspires us to always be thinking. He tells us to think outside the box and come up with fresh new ideas that can change the world. He surely plays a significant role in the art field.
1. What do we know about Picasso as a student at school?| A．He hated doing his homework. |
| B．He was very proud of his talent. |
| C．He showed great talent for drawing. |
| D．He was often praised by his teacher. |
| A．He tried his best to help Picasso. |
| B．He blamed Picasso for his laziness. |
| C．He asked Picasso to finish his work on time. |
| D．He encouraged Picasso to do better at school. |
| A．He thought highly of them. |
| B．He took no interest in them. |
| C．He was confused about them. |
| D．He was concerned about them. |
| A．Picasso has great faith in art. |
| B．Picasso has changed the world a lot. |
| C．Picasso can do anything he wants to. |
| D．Picasso is a highly creative artist. |
3 . How can having a childlike view of the world help the environment? Danish eco-artist Thomas Dambo combines a talent for recycling with a fairy-tale imagination to bring people worldwide closer to nature.
For the “Guardians of the Seeds” exhibition, Danish eco-artist Thomas Dambo built five trolls from discarded wood materials, which were appointed by Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG) for its splendid riverside woodland.
The exhibition composed of the five trolls aims to give visitors an emotional connection with nature that will encourage them to become keepers of it. For the exhibition, Thomas came up with a story that a family of trolls hid 10 golden seeds to protect the old forest. Using a map that's provided, visitors follow clues to find where the seeds are hidden.
Besides using carefully selected recycling materials to produce his works, to challenge himself creatively, the artist allowed for a degree of production on-site. He gave a skinny troll named Birk a beard made from the roots of fallen trees. The fur of another troll Roskva is made from bark. Also, Gro, sitting with her eyes closed in a yoga pose, has a tongue made out of a nearby deserted planter.
“Thomas wants people to interact with them,” says Gretchen, president of CMBG. “He wants it to be a journey of discovery where you're walking along and all of a sudden this big magical being appears in front of you. These are friendly, happy trolls. They're not scary, mean trolls.”
Thomas hopes that “Guardians of the Seeds” gives viewers the same joy he gets from an occupation that he compares to a hobby. He says too many people lose their playfulness in their adult life. The key quality of his work is just its playfulness. One of his trolls sits on a real car on a hillside, appearing to cheerfully ride it. He wants to reactivate a childlike imagination in adults so they begin to see trash as objects that can be repurposed in practical and even picturesque ways. And he loves to entertain kids, too.
Nowadays, Mr. Dambo gets a kick out of seeking waste everywhere, hoping to find more stuff he could refashion into something amazing.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Given-out. | B．Thrown-away. | C．High-priced. | D．Randomly-chosen. |
| A．To set off visitors' curiosity. | B．To get back the 10 golden seeds. |
| C．To promote the popularity of CMBG. | D．To boost the bond between visitors and nature. |
| A．His environmental awareness. | B．His creativity and artistic gift. |
| C．His working efficiency and skill. | D．His sense of social responsibility. |
| A．Thomas' Massive Troll Sculptures |
| B．Let Us Turn Trashed Wood into Elegant Art |
| C．Artist Preserves Imagination and Nature with Huge Trolls |
| D．Welcome to the Magic “Guardians of the Seeds” Exhibition |
4 . There have been many great painters in the rich history of Chinese art. Here are four of the greatest painters from China.
Li Cheng (919-967, Five Dynasties and early Song Dynasty)
Li Cheng contributed greatly to one of the golden ages of landscape paintings in world history. During his time, he was considered the best landscape painter ever. He is remembered especially for the winter landscapes he created and for simple compositions of tall, old evergreens set against a dry landscape. Several of his paintings are in thin ink which gives them a foggy appearance.
Fan Kuan (990-1020 , Song Dynasty)
Fan Kuan began his career by modeling Li Cheng's work but later created his own style, claiming that the only true teacher was nature. His finest work Travelers among Mountains and Streams is a masterpiece of landscape painting and many future artists turned to it for inspiration.
Qi Baishi (1864-1957)
One of the greatest contemporary Chinese painters, Qi Baishi is known for not being influenced by Western styles like most painters of his time. He can be considered as the last great traditional painter of China. He painted almost everything from insects to landscapes. He is regarded highly in Chinese art for the freshness that he brought to the familiar types of birds and flowers, insects and grass.
Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010)
Widely considered as the founder of modern Chinese painting , Wu Guanzhong has painted various aspects of China, like its architecture, plants, animals, people and landscapes. Wu went on to combine Western and Chinese styles to create a unique form of modern art. In 1992, he became the first living Chinese artist whose work was exhibited at the British Museum.
1. What do we know about Li Cheng?| A．He loved landscape paintings. |
| B．He copied many artists' work. |
| C．His work gained worldwide recognition. |
| D．He was considered as Fan Kuan's teacher. |
| A．They have foggy appearances. |
| B．They lack diversity in the theme. |
| C．They come under Western influence. |
| D．They show advanced traditional painting skills. |
| A．They were all modern painters. |
| B．They all created landscape paintings. |
| C．They were all impacted by Western art. |
| D．They were all pioneers in traditional art history. |
5 . Christo Javacheff the artist who worked to turn landscapes and buildings into massive, temporary works of art, died on March 2021 at age 84. Christo surprised the world again and again with the imagination and size of the artworks he created.
Christo, born in Bulgaria in 1935, met his wife Jeanne-Claude in Paris in 1959. Together, the two formed a strong partnership that lasted the rest of their lives. They worked as a team to create huge works of art called installations. In these installations, Christo and Jeanne often changed the way buildings or large areas of land looked — a kind of art known as "land art”.
The two were most noted for “wrapping” things so large that most people would never think to wrap them. Many of their projects used huge pieces of cloth or plastic. For example, in 1969, they wrapped 1.6 miles of rocky coastline near Sydney, Australia and it was the largest artwork ever made. In 1995, they used cloth to wrap up the Reichstag, a famous and historic building in Berlin, Germany.
Being extremely large, their art works cost a fortune to create. The artists paid for the projects themselves by selling the plans, drawings, and models they made for each installation. Many projects seemed so unusual that the couple had to work very hard to get permission to create them.
But, like almost all of the artist's work, it was only meant to last a short time. Most of the installations only stayed up for a few weeks or months before being taken down.
“I am an artist, and I have to have courage," Christo said. "Do you know I don't have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they're finished." Christo himself has gone away, leaving behind an art world forever changed by the memory of his huge and daring artworks.
1. For what were the couple best known?| A．Overcoming financial problems. |
| B．Tearing down old-fashioned buildings. |
| C．Inventing innovative building materials. |
| D．Packaging huge landscapes and buildings. |
| A．Considerate and humble. | B．Creative and courageous. |
| C．Enthusiastic and careful. | D．Demanding and generous. |
| A．His artworks were temporary. |
| B．His hard work didn't pay off at last. |
| C．He regretted exhibiting his artworks. |
| D．He didn't expect his works to last long. |
| A．Christo's Collection of Massive Artworks |
| B．Christo's Enormous Influence on Architecture |
| C．Christo: an Artist Who Dreamed and Built Big |
| D．Christo and Jeanne: a Couple Who Warmed the World |
