Unit 1 - Arts
Remember that the answers to these exercises are in the contents of the course.
1. Vik Muniz - interviewed
Let’s get to know artist Vik Muniz. Answer the questions while watching the interview.
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1. Why did he think he would never be an artist?
_Because he has a poor family
2. What was his aspiration?
He would like to work illustrator in a magazine or a newspaper
3. How old was he when he decided to become an artist?
He was 27 years old
4. Does he have traditional artistic influences?
He doesn´t have traditional artistic influences
5. Who are his two artistic influences?
Andy Warhol and Josep Boys
6. What is Vik after in his art?
Magic
7. Why does he not have his own work in his house?
Because reduces his creativity
8. What is his favorite object or image?
Which has not yet been done
9. What does he expect from people who look at his work?
2. The Truth about Art
You will read a text about modern art. After reading the text, you will classify statements according to the
person they refer to: A. Charlie Moore, B. Lewis Williams, or C. Emily Cope.
1. British people don't appreciate art because they don't see enough art around them all the time.
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2. British museums aim to appeal to popular tastes in art.
3. The average Englishman likes the works of Turner and Constable.
4. Britain, like every other country, has its own view of what art is.
5. In Britain, interest in art is mainly limited to traditional forms such as representational painting.
6. British art has always been affected by other cultures.
7. Galleries in other countries are of better quality that those in Britain.
8. People are not raised to appreciate art.
9. The British have a limited knowledge of art
PARAGRAPH 1
Modern art has had something of a bad press recently - or, to be more precise, it has always had a bad
press in certain newspapers and amongst certain sectors of the public. In the public mind, it seems, art
(that is, graphic art - pictures - and spatial art - sculpture) is divided into two broad categories.
The first is 'classic' art, by which is meant representational painting, drawing and sculpture; the second is
'modern' art, also known as abstract or non-representational. British popular taste runs decidedly in favor
of the former, if one believes a recent survey conducted by Charlie Moore, owner of the Loft Gallery and
Workshops in Kent, and one of Britain's most influential artistic commentators.
He found that the man (or woman) in the street has a distrust of cubism, abstracts, sculptures made of
bricks and all types of so-called 'found' art. He likes Turner and Constable, the great representatives of
British watercolour and oil painting respectively, or the French Impressionists, and his taste for statues is
limited to the realistic figures of the great and good that litter the British landscape - Robin Hood in
Nottingham and Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament. This everyman does not believe in
primary colours, abstraction and geometry in nature - the most common comment is that such-and-such a
painting is "something a child could have done".
PARAGRAPH 2
Lewis Williams, director of the Beaconsfield Galleries in Hampshire, which specializes in modern painting,
agrees. "Look around you at what art is available every day," he says. "Our great museums and galleries
specialise in work which is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It may be
representational, it may be 'realistic' in one sense, but a lot of it wouldn't make it into the great European
galleries. Britain has had maybe two or three major world painters in the last 1000 years, so we make up
the space with a lot of second-rate material. “
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PARAGRAPH 3
Williams believes that our ignorance of what modern art is has been caused by this lack of exposure to
truly great art. He compares the experience of the average British city-dweller with that of a citizen of Italy,
France, or Spain).
PARAGRAPH 4
"Of course, we don't appreciate any kind of art in the same way because of the paucity of good art in
Britain. We don't have galleries of the quality of those in Madrid, Paris, Versailles, Florence, New York or
even some places in Russia. We distrust good art - by which I mean both modern and traditional artistic
forms - because we don't have enough of it to learn about it. In other countries, people are surrounded by
it from birth. Indeed, they take it as a birthright, and are proud of it. The British tend to be suspicious of it.
It's not valued here."
PARAGRAPH 5
Not everyone agrees. Emily Cope, who runs the Osborne Art House, believes that while the British do not
have the same history of artistic experience as many European countries, their senses are as finely attuned
to art as anyone else's.
PARAGRAPH 6
"Look at what sells - in the great art auction houses, in greetings cards, in posters. Look at what's going on
in local amateur art classes up and down the country. Of course, the British are not the same as other
countries, but that's true of all nationalities.
The French artistic experience and outlook is not the same as the Italian. In Britain, we have artistic
influences from all over the world. There's the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish influences, as well as Caribbean,
African and European. We also have strong links with the Far East, in particular the Indian subcontinent.
All these influences come to bear in creating a British artistic outlook. There's this tendency to say that
British people only want garish pictures of clowns crying or ships sailing into battle, and that anything new
or different is misunderstood. That's not my experience at all. The British public is poorly educated in art,
but that's not the same as being uninterested in it."
PARAGRAPH 7
Cope points to Britain's long tradition of visionary artists such as William Blake, the London engraver and
poet who died in 1827. Artists like Blake tended to be one-offs rather than members of a school, and their
work is diverse and often word-based, so it is difficult to export.
PARAGRAPH 8
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Perhaps, as ever, the truth is somewhere in between these two opinions. It is true that visits to traditional
galleries like the National and the National Portrait Gallery outnumber attendance at more modern shows,
but this is the case in every country except Spain, perhaps because of the influence of the two most famous
non-traditional Spanish painters of the 20th century, Picasso and Dali. However, what is also true is that
Britain has produced a long line of individual artists with unique, almost unclassifiable styles such as Blake,
Samuel Palmer and Henry Moore.
3. Perfect Modals
In the next slides you are going to figure out what happened in each
situation using a perfect modal. Take a look at the website below to help you. It
also includes a great chart to help you as you complete this activity:
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THE SHINER – NORMAN ROCKWELL
NAMELESS AND FRIENDLESS – EMILY
OSBORNE _______________________________________
_______________________________________
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PENSIVE LADY IN PINK– EDWARD HOPPER
_______________________________________
THE RUNAWAY – NORMAN ROCKWELL
EDVARD MUCH – SEPARATION
_______________________________________
GEORGE TOOKER – THE SUBWAY
_________________________________________
LES VOYAGEURS– BRUNO CATALANO
______________________________________
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JULIA AND THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY – JOANNE
LEONARD
______________________________________
4. Robin Hood Statue
You are going to read about the Robin Hood statue. Complete the
paragraphs on the following slides with the words below:
COMPLETION/ TARGET /COMMISSIONED / AIMED / UNVEILED/
MEAD / STONE / GIFTED / FORLORN / TALES / BOW/ FIRMS/
WELDING / DETER
Cast in eight pieces of half-inch thick bronze and weighing half a ton, the 7ft effigy of
Nottingham's legendary outlaw proudly stands on a two-and-a-half-ton block of white
Clipsham 1______________ It is surrounded by small studies of Little John, Friar Tuck,
Alan A Dale, and Will Scarlett, whilst wall plaques illustrate scenes from the
2______________ of Robin Hood & his Merry Men.
In typical outlaw style Robin Hood stands outside of Nottingham Castle, the point of
his arrow 3______________ at the gatehouse and the establishment within.
On 24th July 1952, the statue of Robin Hood was 4______________ by the Duchess of
Portland on the Robin Hood Lawn, beneath Nottingham Castle, in the remains of the
moat on Castle Road.
5______________ to the city by local businessman, Philip E F Clay, the impressive figure
was intended to provide something tangible for visitors to see relating to Robin Hood,
Nottingham's world-famous folk hero. Mr. Clay was a successful director of well-known
city 6_________ Elastic Yarns Ltd and Fine Wires Ltd and in 1949, at a cost of £5,000,
he 7______________ the respected Royal Academy sculptor, James Woodford, to design
and make the Robin Hood statue, plaques, and statuary.
On 8______________, they were to be presented to the city to commemorate the visit of
Princess Elizabeth and The Duke of Edinburgh on 28th June 1949 during the city's
quincentenary celebrations.
At the luncheon at the Council House which followed the event, the 117 civic guests
dined appropriately on Fillet of Sole Robin Hood and Venison Chasseur or Roast
Duckling – complimented by plenty of 9______________, the honey-flavored beverage
popular in medieval times.
Over the years the statue became a 10______________ for souvenir hunters and there
have been times when Robin has looked particularly 11______________ with no arrow,
no bowstring and sometimes only half a 12______________
Surprisingly, it was a former Sheriff of Nottingham, Alderman Frank Dennett who
came to Robin's aid and enlisted the services of the engineers at the Royal Ordnance
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Factory, who made the arrow from a particularly strong material fixed with a
specialized 13______________ process to 14______________ the vandals.
5. Shibboleth
Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (1-7). There is one extra sentence which you
do not need to use.
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A. this fault-line could be read in the local context
B. with this in mind, the crack in the floor in the Shibboleth photographs and installation
C. all 42.000 were slaughtered by the Gileadites
D. to set the standards for who belongs to their group: who is "in" and who is "out “
E. our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception
F. ‘a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another’
G. ‘a colonial and imperial history [that] has been disregarded, marginalized or simply obliterated ...
the history of racism, running parallel to the history of modernity’
H. in one of the world’s major art institutions, and the place of that museum within the culturally
influential city of London
A shibboleth* is a kind of linguistic password: A way of speaking (a pronunciation, or the use of a particular
expression) that is used by one set of people to identify another person as a member, or a non-member, of
a particular group. The group making the identification has some kind of social power 1. ___ .
The story behind the word ‘shibboleth, is recorded in the biblical Book of Judges. After defeating the
Gileadites in a great battle, the Ephraimites set up a blockade across the Jordan River to catch the fleeing
Ephraimites who were trying to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to
cross the river to say the word ‘shibboleth’. The Ephraimites, who had no /sh/ sound in their language,
pronounced the word with an /s/ and were thereby unmasked as the enemy and 2. ___.
Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a
subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine; 3. ___ could be seen as a symbol of the
damage caused by cultural and geographical exclusion. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a
steel mesh fence, creating 4. ‘____’.
Shibboleth reflects Salcedo’s belief that modern art museums have until recently largely failed to address
the contributions made by non-European cultures. The artist also stated that the crack in Tate Modern’s
iconic space reveals 5. ‘____ ‘.
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Although Salcedo conceived of Shibboleth thousands of miles away from London in her studio in Colombia,
6. ____ (dividing the old industrial half of the building from the museum; London’s economically deprived
south from its salubrious northern counterpart) as much as on a global scale (the division between the
economic Northern and Southern hemispheres).
In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work
encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about 7. ____ .
*The word ‘shibboleth’ in ancient Hebrew dialects meant 'ear of grain' (or, some say, 'stream').
6. The Elgin Marbles
Complete each gap in the text with a conjunction or preposition from the box. The first one has been
done for you.
The Elgin Marbles are statues which date back to the 5th century BC. (0) Although they were created in
Greece and were located there until the late 18th century, they are now exhibited in the British Museum,
London. The statues used to be in Athens (1) ______________ they were bought h 1799 by the Englishman
Lord.
Elgin, who wanted to bring them back to Britain as part of his personal art collection. (2) ______________,
on the sea voyage back to England, the ship carrying them was sunk and the 'Marbles’ were temporarily
lost. It would be an incredibly expensive operation to recover them. (3) ______________, Elgin did so, and
(4) ______________ he was a very rich man, he placed himself in enormous debt. (5) ______________ his
own desires, he had to sell the Marbles to the British Government to recover his losses and they were
housed in the British Museum, where they have remained ever since.
In recent times, (6) ______________, the statues have become the subject of debate between Britain and
Greece and, indeed, among British historians and archaeologists. (7) ______________ the Greek
authorities have requested the return of the Marbles on many occasions, the request has always been
refused. There are arguments on both sides. Some people believe that it would be foolish to return them,
valid (8) ______________ the Greek request may be, because of the pollution that is affecting the
Parthenon and the possibility of earthquakes in Greece. Restored to the Parthenon, the Marbles could be
exposed to damage, (9) ______________ they are safe in the British Museum.
Of course, there are equally compelling arguments for their return, especially on the moral level. It cannot
be denied, (10) ______________ the material safety the statues enjoy in Britain, that they are part of the
Greek heritage. Many people also refute the argument that Athens would not be a safe place for them .
(11) ______________, they claim that if the statues were returned to Greece, a new state-of-the-art
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building would be constructed to house them, where they would be both safe and in their rightful
environment. Furthermore, the British authorities have long used the argument that works of art should
not be subject to 'ownership', but should be kept where they are accessible to most people. (12)
______________ in the past they have returned a number of cultural artefacts from other civilizations to
their origins. The argument continues and is likely to do so for some time in the future.
7. Vincent Song
Listen to the song by Don McLean as homage to the great painter, Vincent van Gogh. Listen to the song in
the corresponding slide of the course and complete the gaps in the following slides.
Starry, starry night
Paint your …………………………… blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the …………………………
in my soul
Shadows on the hills
………………………..the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter …………………………………….
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry, starry night
…………………………….. flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet ……………………………
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning ……………………….. of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed …………………………………… the artist's loving hand
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
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They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was …………………….
And when no hope was left in …………………….
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could've told you Vincent
This world was never..……………for
One as beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
………………………. hung in empty halls
Frame-less heads on ……………………… walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver …………………….. of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the …………… snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
*Now, you may go to>TASK.
Complete the assignment according to the instructions and upload it for assessment.
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