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Chapter 21—From 1900 to the Present
Multiple Choice Questions
1. The artist who painted Houses at L’Estaque worked with Picasso to promote the style
called Cubism. The artist’s name is:
a) Henri Matisse.
b) Wassily Kandinsky.
c) Georges Braque.
d) Marcel Duchamp.
2. Wassily Kandinsky’s Sketch I for Composition VII is an example of:
a) German Expressionism.
b) French Surrealism.
c) Fauvism.
d) Italian Futurism.
3. The paintings of Giacomo Balla capture the fascination with movement characteristic
of artists of which movement?
a) Dada
b) Futurism
c) Surrealism
d) Abstract Expressionist
4. Showing irreverence for tradition and rationality, Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa
[L.H.O.O.Q.] exemplifies the _______ movement.
a) Futurist
b) Surrealist
c) Dada
d) Automatic
5. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica represents an event in the:
a) Spanish Civil War.
b) American Civil War.
c) Korean War.
d) Vietnam War.
6. Using her work to struggle with the question of identity, this photographer’s images
are self-portraits.
a) Barbara Kruger
b) Cindy Sherman
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c) Anne Truitt
d) Frida Kahlo
7. Which of these pieces is a Cubist painting?
a) Georges Braque’s Violin and Palette
b) Henri Matisse’s The Green Stripe
c) Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain
d) Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory
e) Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle
8. Cubism can best be described as:
a) work based in irony and absurdity, in reaction to the horrors of World War I.
b) art that is about the process of painting.
c) work that is based on the subconscious, non-rational self.
d) work that attempts to depict objects/images from multiple perspectives
simultaneously.
e) work that seeks to capture a mood/moment and to depict the play of light across
objects.
9. Which of these is an example of Dada art?
a) Georges Braque’s Violin and Palette
b) Henri Matisse’s The Green Stripe
c) Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain
d) Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory
e) Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle
10. Which of these paintings is considered an Abstract Expressionist painting?
a) Georges Braque’s Violin and Palette
b) Henri Matisse’s The Green Stripe
c) Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain
d) Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory
e) Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle
11. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali illustrates how he looked to his
subconscious (dreams, hypnosis, psychoanalysis) for his subject matter. What artistic
movement is he associated with?
a) Surrealism
b) American Regionalism
c) Pop Art
d) Abstract Expressionism
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e) Impressionism
12. Chéri Samba’s Problème d’eau. Où trouver I’eau? is an ironic comment on:
a) sending Buddhist monks into space.
b) the US spending millions of dollars to look for water on Mars, while millions of
people die for lack of water in Africa.
c) the Cuban missile crisis.
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
13. The twentieth-century painting movement most often associated with Henri Matisse
(p. 500) is:
a) Postmodernism.
b) Dada.
c) Cubism.
d) Fauvism.
14. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque helped pioneer Cubist landscapes (p. 499). What
earlier painter of landscapes inspired them?
a) Henri Matisse
b) Paul Gauguin
c) Paul Cézanne
d) Jackson Pollock
15. “Postmodernism” (p. 515) has been defined in part as:
a) the presence of diverse traditions in a single work.
b) a reassessment of our urban environment.
c) Neo-Gothic style for the 1990s.
d) the new streamlining.
16. The artist André Breton issued a manifesto (p. 505) that described the point of
“resolution between these two states, dream and reality.” What was this movement?
a) Dada
b) Surrealism
c) Modernish
d) Suprematism
17. In what aspect of the twentieth century were Umberto Boccioni and other Futurist
artists (p. 502) most interested?
a) photographic innovations
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b) movement and speed
c) absolute rule
d) acrylic paints
18. The two major art movements of the 1960s (pp. 512-513) were:
a) Pop Art and Fauvism.
b) Expressionism and Combine Painting.
c) Minimalism and Pop Art.
d) Futurism and Op Art.
19. The Cubists (pp. 499) freed painting from the necessity of representing the world in
order to dwell on:
a) form.
b) texture
c) content.
d) emotion.
20. Marianne Nicholson’s cliffside pictograph (a “copper”) represents a Northwest
Native American tradition that had been suppressed through most of the 20th century,
called:
a) the potlatch.
b) the Ghost Dance.
c) buffalo hunts.
d) vision quests.
e) sweat lodge ceremonies.
21. Henri Matisse was a leader of early 20th century artists who felt free to use color
“arbitrarily” and were labeled, derogatorily, “Fauves”, which translates __________.
a) false
b) “Wild Beasts”
c) fake
d) crazy
e) none of the above
22. Artists often find that the art they make has unintentional meaning. Georgia
Papageorge’s Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire: Namibia/Brazil is an example of this because:
a) a war started in Brazil on one of their filming days.
b) the color of the banners was different than what she expected.
c) one of their principal days of filming was 9/11/2001 and the banners came to
signify the rifts separating humanity on a global scale.
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
Short Answer Questions
23. Wassily Kandinsky believed that the greatest device to express emotion was
________.
24. In 1909, an Italian poet named Filippo Marinetti published a manifesto announcing
25. What was the name of the anti-art movement founded in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and
New York during World War I?
Essay Questions
26. Our perceptions of reality are dependent upon our senses. How might Surrealism,
with its fantastic and sometimes disturbing dream-based imagery, be evidence of a more
direct “reality”?
27. Discuss the significance of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 work titled The Fountain. How
has this work and others like it influenced modern art?
28. Explain the revolutionary aspects of the Cubist movement.
39. Using examples from the chapter, discuss the directions taken by artists in the 1970s
and 1980s.