CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO MODERN ART IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS, 1900-1950

1. When compared to paintings by Diego Rivera, those of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo are considered

A. more historical.

B. more modern.

C. more personal.

D. more abstract.

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

2. Which movement inspired Paula Modersohn-Becker’s painting?

A. Cubism

B. Romanticism

C. Primitivism

D. Realism

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Independent Expressionists

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

3. Surrealist painters’ variety of techniques were known collectively as

A. collage.

B. automatism.

C. primitivism.

D. readymades.

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: Surrealism and the Mind

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

4. Who exhibited with the Surrealists but never formally joined the movement, embracing, instead, biomorphic abstraction?

A. Lawrence

B. Moore

C. Hepworth

D. Miró

Answer: D

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: Surrealism and the Mind

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

5. The best-known artist to emerge from the Harlem Community Art Center was

A. Dali.

B. Lawrence.

C. Hepworth.

D. Moore.

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: The Harlem Renaissance

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

6. A spare, geometric style of Modern architecture in Europe developed in response to

A. Pre-Raphaelite

B. Neo-Baroque

C. Bauhaus

D. Art Nouveau

Answer: D

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: Early Modern Architecture

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

7. In the years after World War II, Francis Bacon’s paintings evoked the horrors of war and human suffering through

A. expressive images of distorted figures.

B. raw, heavily worked abstract forms.

C. biomorphic images that held personal symbolism.

D. large-scale murals inspired by Renaissance frescoes.

Answer: A

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Figural Responses and Art Informel in Europe

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

8. What motivated Picasso to create his large-scale painting Guernica (Fig. 32-64) for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1938 Paris Exposition?

A. It was a celebration of Spain’s technological innovations in the early twentieth century.

B. It was a response to the German bombing of a small Basque town, sponsored by Spanish Nationalists.

C. It memorialized the huge loss of life through trench warfare in World War I.

D. It was a modern version of traditional history painting recognizing Spanish accomplishments.

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Picasso’s Guernica

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

9. What ideals are reflected in Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Poissy-Sur-Seine (Fig. 32-40) in its geometric design and avoidance of ornamentation?

A. Dada

B. Bauhaus

C. Purist

D. Futurist

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Early Modern Architecture

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

10. Why did the U.S. government hire Dorothea Lange and other photographers during the Great Depression?

A. It was a part of a program that provided jobs to unemployed artists.

B. They hoped to build public support for federal assistance for rural America.

C. They wanted artwork that reflected the national American identity.

D. It was part of an effort to create an art market for underdeveloped states.

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Rural America

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

11. How did Picasso’s treatment of space in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Fig. 32-6) dramatically change the practice of painting in the West?

A. It was an alternative to traditional systems of perspective.

B. It legitimized non-objectivity as a viable interest in painting.

C. It emphasized deconstruction of the human form and the picture plane.

D. It implied that art was an intellectual activity not rooted in emotional expression.

Answer: A

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: Picasso, “Primitivism,” and the Coming of Cubism

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

12. How does Synthetic Cubism reference the real world?

A. Illusionistic painting techniques are used to render objects.

B. The suggestions are of discernible subjects.

C. Paintings typically display overt political critique.

D. Figural proportions are accurately portrayed.

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: Picasso, “Primitivism,” and the Coming of Cubism

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

13. Which Dadaist idea would have a radical influence on art of the later twentieth century?

A. the rejection of three-dimensional illusionism in painting

B. the belief that art could convey spiritual concerns through non-objective imagery

C. the notion that art was not precious but could exist as conceptual ideas and actions

D. the role of the subconscious in revealing universal symbols and meaning

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Dada: Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

14. Which of the following was a significant factor in providing New York with the foundation to supersede Paris as the center of the world of Modern art?

A. the Armory Show

B. the 291 Gallery

C. the Harlem Renaissance

D. the Federal Arts Project

Answer: D

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Rural America

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

15. What theme does Constantin Brancusi incorporate into both The Newborn (Fig. 32-25) and Torso of a Young Man (Fig. 32-26)?

A. capitalism

B. reproduction

C. transience

D. humor

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Toward Abstraction in Sculpture

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

16. What created the radical asymmetry sought after in the De Stijl movement of Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder House, Utrecht (Fig. 32-51)?

A. exposed skeletal structure

B. large expanses of windows

C. richly encrusted surfaces

D. horizontal and vertical lines

Answer: D

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: De Stijl in the Netherlands

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

17. How did Walter Gropius’s design for the Bauhaus building convey the dynamism of modern life?

A. The three large cubic areas had a balanced asymmetry.

B. It used modern materials and technology in a traditional architectural form.

C. It emphasized handcrafted workmanship and aesthetic quality.

D. It integrated the building’s form organically into the surrounding landscape.

Answer: A

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: The Bauhaus in Germany

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

18. Which artist explicitly addressed feminist concerns in her work?

A. Georgia O’Keeffe

B. Hannah Höch

C. Anni Albers

D. Helen Frankenthaler

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Dada: Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

19. The Abstract Expressionist painters were greatly influenced by which of the following, who described a collective unconscious of universal archetypes shared by all humans?

A. Sigmund Freud’s

B. Carl Jung’s

C. Clement Greenberg’s

D. Vassily Kandinsky’s

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Abstract Expressionism in New York

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

20. What term, which is based on the French word for “wild beast,” was the name of an art movement that included Henri Matisse?

A. Die Brücke

B. Fauvism

C. Dada

D. Orphism

Answer: B

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: The Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

21. What did artist Franz Marc paint because they were “primitive”?

A. landscapes

B. symphonies

C. animals

D. still lifes

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Spiritualism of Der Blaue Reiter

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

22. Which of the following is a term that comes from the French word meaning “to glue” and describes an important aspect of Synthetic Cubism?

A. readymade

B. merz

C. collage

D. bauhaus

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: Picasso, “Primitivism,” and the Coming of Cubism

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

23. Kandinsky believed that looking at a painting should be comparable to experiencing

A. music.

B. mathematics.

C. psychology.

D. love.

Answer: A

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Spiritualism of Der Blaue Reiter

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

24. Which artist conceptualized the readymade?

A. Brancusi

B. Boccioni

C. Léger

D. Duchamp

Answer: D

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: Dada: Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Easy

Skill Level: Remember the Facts

25. What served as an incubator for fascism and communism in Europe during the early twentieth century?

A. the Weimar Republic

B. the Nazis’ concentration camps

C. the Great Depression

D. the Spanish Civil War

Answer: C

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: Europe and America in the Early Twentieth Century

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Short Answer

1. What did the Fauvists do to repudiate traditional notions of pictorial representation?

Answer: The Fauvists took color and strong brushwork to new heights of intensity and expressive power and entirely rethought the painting’s surface. Arbitrary color, bold outlines, and shallow, flattened spaces defined the movement.

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

2. How does Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (Fig. 32-23) embrace the Futurists idea of “the beauty of speed”?

Answer: The artist has created the figure with a powerful stride with muscular forms like wings flying out energetically behind it. The use of bronze, a symbol of strength and technology, helps to increase the idea of motion and advancement.

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Extending Cubism and Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

3. How did the Suprematists combine Cubist picture space with complete abstraction?

Answer: Artists such as Malevich exhibited works of art that consisted of flat, assembled, geometric shapes and arranged them on a white ground.

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: Extending Cubism and Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

4. Why and how did Duchamp create L.H.O.O.Q.?

Answer: He labeled the work a “modified readymade” and used the fame of the then-missing Mona Lisa to comment on the value of art. The mustache and beard, along with the phrase, sexualize the figure and objectify the image.

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Dada: Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

5. How did Mary Colter express a connection to the landscape in her architecture?

Answer: Built on the edge of the Grand Canyon’s south rim, the Lookout Studio has a foundation of natural rock and walls of local stone. The roofline was designed to echo the irregular surrounding canyon wall.

Learning Objective: 32.b Interpret the meaning of works of modern European and American art from 1900–1950 based on their themes, subjects, and symbols.

Topic: Early Modern Architecture

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

6. How did Russian Constructivists combine Modern styles with practical needs?

Answer: They renounced painting as a selfish activity and condemned self-expression as weak and unproductive. They turned to making useful objects and promoted the aims of the collective. The artists emphasized form and were inspired by architecture, topography, photography, and photomontage.

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: Utilitarian Art Forms in Russia

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

7. How did Bauhaus artists incorporate the idea of modern mass production?

Answer: Gropius’s students were not allowed to begin architectural training until after they had completed a mandatory foundation course and received full training in the design and crafts in the workshops, which included pottery, metalwork, textiles, stained glass, furniture, wood carving, and wall painting. Artists were hired to work in the workshops mass production in mind.

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: The Bauhaus in Germany

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

8. What techniques did the Harlem Renaissance combine to raise awareness of African-American culture?

Answer: Harlem Renaissance artists used photography, sculpture, and painting, to help them spread awareness of African-American culture. Their bold abstract forms, expressive colors, and primitive forms that were popular in European styles helped these artists gain notoriety.

Learning Objective: 32.a Identify the visual hallmarks of modern European and American art and architecture from 1900–1950 for formal, technical, and expressive qualities.

Topic: The Harlem Renaissance

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

9. What was Meret Oppenheim’s intention with Object (Luncheon in Fur) (Fig. 32-59)?

Answer: The work was inspired by a conversation with Picasso and Maar at a café. The work removes two objects from their ordinary reality and recontextualizes them in an irrational new surreality. The artist was playing with texture and the senses. The work can be touched to provide a desirable sensory experience. If the work is used as it was intended, it becomes very distasteful and even disgusting.

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Surrealism and the Mind

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

10. What is the International Style?

Answer: The International Style emphasized the use of a structural skeleton of steel, making it possible to eliminate load-bearing walls. Regular distribution of structural supports and the use of standard building parts promoted rectangular regularity. Also, the new architecture depended on the intrinsic elegance of its materials and formal arrangements.

Learning Objective: 32.c Relate modern European and American art and artists from 1900–1950 to their cultural, economic, and political contexts.

Topic: The Bauhaus in Germany

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

Essay

1. How did early twentieth-century artists systematically undermine the traditional rules of Western art?

Answer:

1. Artists of the early twentieth century, such as Matisse and Picasso, led the way in undermining the traditional rules of Western art through their experimentation with form, space, and color. Matisse used shallow space in his paintings, and with the development of Cubism, Picasso eliminated the idea of picture-plane divisions.

2. The idea that works had to be representational diminished in the beginning of the century and developed into pure abstraction, seen first in Malevich’s Suprematist Painting (Eight Red Rectangles) (Fig. 32-25).

3. Artists like Braque, Picasso, Hoch, and Lissitzky began to expand on the idea of two-dimensional painting. By combining multimedia into the same work, artists opened the possibilities and opposed the traditional ideas of Western art.

4. Marsden Hartley developed a powerfully original and intense style of his own in Portrait of a German Officer (Fig. 32-35). He tightly arranged compositions of boldly colored shapes and patterns interspersed with numbers, letters, and fragments of German military imagery.

Learning Objective: 32.d Apply the vocabulary and concepts relevant to modern European and American art, artists, and art history from 1900–1950.

Topic: The Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color; Picasso, “Primitivism,” and the Coming of Cubism; Extending Cubism and Questioning Art Itself; Dada: Questioning Art Itself; Modernist Tendencies in America; Utilitarian Art Forms in Russia

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

2. In what ways did artists give their art a deeper social relevance in the period between the wars in the Americas?

Answer:

1. The art of James Van Der Zee took carefully crafted portraits of the Harlem upper-middle classes to glamorize his subjects and their environment.

2. Emily Carr showed symbols of enduring spiritual power and national pride associated with Northwest Coast Native peoples in her painting Big Raven (Fig. 32-72).

3. Tarsila do Amaral expressed pride in Brazilian traditional cultures by alluding to cannibals in abstract forms in The One Who Eats (Abaporú) (Fig. 32-75).

4. Joaquin Torres-Garcia focused on indigenous art of the Inca, believing ancient Uruguayan culture to be a fertile soil in which to grow a new national and cultural visual identity while using Cubist forms.

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: The Harlem Renaissance; Canada; Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba; Experiments in Latin America

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

3. How did Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (Fig. 32-29) change the course of art?

Answer:

1. The work still incites laughter, anger, embarrassment, and disgust by openly referring to private bathroom activities and to human carnality and vulnerability.

2. The artist has not used skill or made an object. He has only slightly altered a readymade object and presented it as a work of art.

3. Duchamp claimed that the idea was important, not the object itself. Because he was an artist, it was up to him to decide what was classified as art.

4. The work expressed an affinity for mass-produced objects and expensive, high art, such as porcelain, while satirizing the manufacturer and the state of the country.

Learning Objective: 32.e Interpret a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950 using the art historical methods of observation, comparison, and inductive reasoning.

Topic: Dada: Questioning Art Itself

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Skill Level: Apply What You Know and Analyze It

4. Explore the significance of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. How did he make them, and did they move beyond any abstract work made previously?

Answer:

1. Pollock pushed beyond the Surrealist strategy of automatic painting by placing raw, unstretched canvas on the floor and throwing, dripping, and dribbling paint onto it to create abstract networks of overlapping lines.

2. Pollock’s compositions lack hierarchical arrangement, contain multiple focal points, and deny perspectival space.

3. The idea of allowing viewers to explore the canvas and feel emotionally connected to the work was incorporated into the process of painting.

4. The artist combined ideas of philosophy, jazz, and Navajo sand painters to create art for “the age of the airplane, the atom bomb, and the radio.”

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Abstract Expressionism in New York

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts

5. Color Field painters such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman embraced abstraction in a way that was completely different from Jackson Pollock’s. Explain what they tried to achieve with their nonrepresentational work.

Answer:

1. The Color Field painters created large, flat areas of color to produce more contemplative moods.

2. Rothko arranged rectangular shapes of color in a vertical format and often allowed them to bleed into one another. He thought of them as ideas uninterrupted by a recognizable subject.

3. Newman expressed humanity’s existential condition with, often, a single color that he called “zips.” He claimed his art was self-referential and that it presented focus. The single color presents an absolute state of sublime across a vast, heroic canvas.

4. Pollock focused on line and his own movements, while Color Field painters focused on achieving a transcendental state.

Learning Objective: 32.f Select visual and textual evidence in various media to support an argument or an interpretation of a work of modern European or American art from 1900–1950.

Topic: Abstract Expressionism in New York

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Skill Level: Understand the Concepts