1 . Cimabue, the greatest painter in medieval(中世纪的)Italy, was surprised one day when he came back from his lunch break and discovered a fly was under the nose of a character he had been working on. So he reached out to touch the insect. To his surprise, he found only wet paint. Turning around, he saw that his apprentice(学徒), Giotto di Bondone, was doing everything he could to keep from laughing. Giotto had painted the fly when Cimabue was away, and it looked so real that Cimabue had been completely fooled.
Giotto was born into a poor farming family. Legend has it that one day when Cimabue was walking around the countryside, he spotted a young shepherd(牧羊人)boy. The boy was not tending his sheep. Instead, he was drawing pictures of them, and the sheep he drew were so lifelike that Cimabue stopped to ask the boy his name. The boy replied that it was Giotto, and Cimabue immediately asked him to come to Florence so that the young shepherd could learn how to paint.
In the Middle Ages, an artist not only had to concern himself with things like design and technique, but he also had to learn how to make paints. Almost all artists were men, and they began their apprenticeships at an early age. An apprentice’s job was to copy his master as exactly as he could. The unfortunate result of this imitation(模仿)was a lack of new ideas.
In fact, art in the Middle Ages remained the same for hundreds of years. The people in paintings didn’t look like real people, and the symbolism of art was often so remote that it must have been difficult for viewers to connect with it on a personal level. Giotto used many techniques that were uncommon at the time to bring the paintings to life for viewers. He painted people the way he saw them, instead of the overly tall people that other artists painted. He created three-dimensional space by using perspective, something that had not been done since Roman times. Finally, he threw out parts of the symbolism associated with medieval painting.
1. Why does the author mention the fly event in paragraph 1?| A．To indicate Giotto drew better than Cimabue. |
| B．To indicate Giotto liked making fun of others |
| C．To show the fly painted by Giotto looked real. |
| D．To show Cimabue disliked painting flies very much. |
| A．He was taking a walk. | B．He was feeding sheep. |
| C．He was playing with a shepherd boy. | D．He was drawing pictures. |
| A．Lacking creativity. |
| B．Having an unhappy childhood. |
| C．Having a short period of apprenticeship. |
| D．Supporting themselves by making paints. |
| A．Giotto’s study on medieval painting. |
| B．The competition between medieval artists. |
| C．Giotto’s efforts to change art in the Middle Ages. |
| D．The most popular forms of painting in the Middle Ages. |
2 . 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. |
| A．The painting material. | B．The color choice. |
| C．The smelly flower taste. | D．The impressive feeling. |
| A．Renoir, My Father. | B．Spring Bouquet. |
| C．Rheumatoid arthritis. | D．Renoir’s bravery. |
| 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 |
3 . Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933 as the seventh child of eight to a father who worked on the railroad and a homemaking mother. He attended the University of Louisville for both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but in 1962 moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived and had his studio (工作室) for the rest of his life. He became one of the leading artists of the Washington Color School—a 1950s movement that attached great importance to large fields of color.
He was very interested in freeing his paintings from the limit of canvases (画布) and frames. Instead, in his Drape works of the 1960s, he took unstretched canvases and hung them from ceilings or pinned them in great waterfalls to walls. Each time his work—part painting, part sculpture-was shown in an exhibition, it hung differently, never the same way twice.
In a 2018Morning Edition profile, Gilliam explained that the intention behind his Drape work was “to develop the idea of movement into shapes”—and that he was inspired by laundry (洗衣店) hanging from a clothesline.
His work is represented in the collections of some of the world’s most celebrated museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Tate Modern in London; and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. In 2015, he was awarded the U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts Lifetime Achievement Award.
In the 2018 Morning Edition profile, the then 84-year-old Gilliam said that he felt that he was in his prime, despite health challenges. “I’ve never felt better in my life. I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking. I live for this period of being in the studio and actually working.”
1. What do we know about Gilliam?| A．He leads a 1950s movement. |
| B．He stresses the large areas of color. |
| C．He has a deep interest in the canvas. |
| D．He likes to exhibit his paintings himself. |
| A．A detail in daily life. |
| B．His strange imagination. |
| C．His attention to paintings. |
| D．An idea of movement. |
| A．He feels bad in his life. |
| B．He loves painting deeply. |
| C．He makes a living by painting. |
| D．Smoking and drinking are his favorite. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Health. | C．History. | D．Culture. |
4 . Wang Fang, a Suzhou native, has given her heart and soul to Kunqu Opera. Wang, who has twice won the Plum Performance Award — China’s top award for theater and opera performances-started to learn the traditional art form in 1977.
Born with a melodic voice, Wang loved to sing and dance when she was little. She performed frequently, and was recruited by the Suzhou Kunqu Opera Troupe (剧团) when she was in middle school. However, her parents refused the troupe’s invitation, insisting that she should concentrate on her studies and not drop out of school. After members of the troupe visited the parents repeatedly and showed great sincerity,Wang’s parents finally agreed.
Learning the traditional art form was never easy. She started to learn how to pronounce words, sing them lyrically and make gestures gently. As an actress playing martial artists roles at first, she had to spend extra time practicing kung fu movements. Years later, Wang used the word “unimaginable” to describe how hard the days were when she first learned Kunqu. She was soaked in sweat when practicing movements in summer, while in winter she often had chilblains (冻疮) on her hands when training in shabby classrooms with broken windows. “But I was young and determined at the time. No matter how difficult, I always got up early the next morning to practice,” Wang recalls.
Wang says she did not love Kunqu at first, but in her early 20s,when she watched the show Peony Pavilion performed by Zhang Jiqing, a master of the art form, it clicked. “I was shocked,” Wang says. “Her every movement was full of elegance and delicacy. Each of her lines and songs was perfect. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of Kunqu for the first time in my life, and it has stayed with me since.” Now, Wang has herself become a master of Kunqu. Her performances have impressed generations and helped to promote the art form among young people.
1. Why did Wang’s parents turn down the troupe’s invitation at first?| A．They didn’t think Wang had artistic talent. |
| B．They saw no future in learning Kunqu Opera. |
| C．They didn’t want Wang to ignore her studies. |
| D．They regarded members of the troupe as insincere. |
| A．Wang has made great efforts to learn Kunqu well. |
| B．Artists should be given more attention and care. |
| C．Traditional culture needs to be further promoted. |
| D．Wang has played a key role in the development of Kunqu. |
| A．Winning the Plum Performance Award. |
| B．Joining the Suzhou Kunqu Opera Troupe. |
| C．Watching Zhang’s masterly performance. |
| D．Being greatly admired by the audience. |
| A．It is never too late to learn. | B．Rome was not built in a day. |
| C．Doing is better than saying. | D．Don’t judge a book by its cover. |
5 . Zhao Yishen bends over, his eyes staring at the woodblock. Holding a chisel in his right hand, he guides it forward carefully and exactly across the woodblock using his left hand. To carve the woodblocks, the young craftsman has to hold this position for six hours. He has been carving woodblocks since 2012.
“It feels good and looks beautiful when a Chinese character slowly appears on the woodblock under your chisel,” says Zhao. Zhao is now the only full-time carver working at the Zhuyu Shanfang studio, a workshop that focuses on creating woodblock-printed books in Beijing. Each carved woodblock has ink applied and goes on to print a text onto hundreds of pieces of paper. Zhao carves around 20 Chinese characters each day, which means it takes him one year or even a longer time to complete a set of woodblocks fit for a whole book.
As a teenager he loved to read ancient Chinese books in the library, and the curiosity of how the books were made led him to get a job at the Guangling Guji ancient books woodblock printing studio in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, in 2011 after graduating as a law major from college.
Block printing was listed as a UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009. Zhao was introduced to one of the technique’s masters, Chen Yishi, in 2012 and started to learn the skill from him.
In Zhao’s mind, the inked woodblock is a work of art. After a year of learning from Chen, Zhao found a job at Zhuyu Shanfang in 2013, where he upgraded his carving skills. With his progress, his carved woodblocks have been used for more and more books over the past years.
“I have just learned the basic skills, but to master it, I still need years of practice,” says Zhao. “A good craftsman can carve an entire book with every single character lined evenly.”
1. What can we know about Zhao Yishen’s work?| A．It is a flexible part-time job. | B．It involves the printing work. |
| C．It needs much effort and time. | D．It includes creating characters. |
| A．The family influence. | B．His major in college. |
| C．The difficulty of finding a proper job. | D．His interest in ancient Chinese books. |
| A．Modest and hard-working. | B．Talented and knowledgeable. |
| C．Ambitious and clever. | D．Creative and confident. |
| A．The popularity of woodblocks. | B．A traditional block printing studio. |
| C．A craftsman with a traditional skill. | D．The development of woodblock-printed books. |
