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Chapter 12 – Art from 1900 to 1949
Multiple Choice Questions
1. In Hopper’s Nighthawks the harsh interior light is used to:
a. reveal the personalities of the sitters.
b. encourage deep psychoanalysis.
c. expose the lack of communication.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
2. The duality felt by Frida Kahlo is revealed in The Two Fridas by the:
a. two hearts.
b. contrasting costumes.
c. Catholic and Aztec implications.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
3. Picasso used the African masks in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon because to him they were:
a. reminiscent of Greek vases.
b. exotic, magic things.
c. references to Goya.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
4. Braque’s Violin and Palette presents:
a. a series of planes.
b. different points of view reassembled.
c. a highly abstract composition.
d. disengaged fragments.
e. all of these.
5. Hopi villages seem to grow directly out of the mesa top, the building materials and
shapes suggesting continuity with the living rock; this is often called:
a. an organic mode of building.
b. a harmonic stratum.
c. a sandwich design.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
6. The artists of Die Brücke, including Kirchner, deeply probed the psychological
relationship between the:
a. guild and patron.
b. artist and world.
c. shaman and patient.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
7. To create his eerie scene in The Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, Giorgio De Chirico
employs:
a. a void setting.
b. an exaggerated perspective.
c. stark chiaroscuro.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
8. Henry Moore’s Recumbent Figure suggests:
a. the hills and gullies of a landscape.
b. a voluptuous figure.
c. a reclining female form.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
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9. The true modernity of Joseph Cornell’s boxes lies in how they encourage:
a. the precious juxtaposed to the sublime.
b. art critics to dismiss them.
c. individual, unconscious interpretations.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
10. Inspired by the works of Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson’s Glass House is a
satisfying construction of:
a. elegant materials.
b. subtle proportional relationships.
c. pure geometric form.
d. all of these.
e. none of these.
Fill–in–the-Blank Questions
11. Picasso’s Guernica has endured as an emblem for all those who hate the
____________ experienced by humanity during political conflicts.
12. Alfred Stieglitz’s 1907 photograph The Steerage balances the relationship between
form and ____________, and thus should be understood as a work of art in itself.
13. In Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp used a sequence of fragmented
planes to describe the ____________ of a figure descending a staircase.
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14. In his nonrepresentational compositions dominated by simple geometric shapes,
Kasimir Malevich attempted “to free art from the burden of the ____________.”
15. Diego Rivera’s fresco murals present a stark and didactic contrast between the
debauchery of the rich and the ____________ of the poor, honest peasants.
True-False Questions
16. The ritual dancers wearing painted wooden masks of the Bwa culture are
participants in rites performed to ensure success in battle over tribal enemies.
17. Assemblage usually involves combining three-dimensional objects into a coherent
18. Frank Lloyd Wright’s style at the time of the Robie House is known as the Prairie
style.
19. The cantilever projects a horizontal architectural member out into space and
supports it with a vertical member at its terminating point.
20. Gropius’ design for the new Bauhaus building at Dessau was guided by his
philosophy on the unity of the arts.
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Short Answer Questions
21. Even standing still, Pininfarina’s Cistalia “202” GT car gives what impression?
22. Early in the twentieth century, as a Fauve painter Matisse began to make paintings
in which color was used how?
23. Brancusi’s Bird in Space draws us close not to the essence of a natural form, but to
what instead?
24. How did Duchamp enter his mass-produced objects called “ready–mades” into the
realm of art?
25. The poetic, evocative position implied by the point of view in Georgia O’Keeffe’s The
Lawrence Tree emphasizes what?
Essay Questions
26. In his Schröder House of 1923-24, how does Gerrit Rietveld establish a series of
complex relationships?
27. Despite its purity and reductive beauty, why did the International Style quickly
reach a dead end?