Deck 31: Modernism and Postmodernism in Europe and America, 1945 to 1980

Question 1

Charles Moore's postmodernist Piazza d'Italia is located in which American city?

A) New York
B) San Francisco
C) Chicago
D) New Orleans

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which art critic asserted the importance of strict formalism, in which the emphasis is on the elements rather than the subject of an artwork?

A) Arshile Gorky
B) Joan Miró
C) Clement Greenberg
D) Willem de Kooning

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Who was the postwar Expressionist artist who theorized about art brut ?

A) Francis Bacon
B) Jean Dubuffet
C) Gerhard Richter
D) Arshile Gorky

Answer 3

B

Question 4

The work of which artist exemplifies gestural abstraction?

A) Vassily Kandinsky
B) Barnett Newman
C) Robert Motherwell
D) Jackson Pollock

Question 5

Which painter revolutionized the preparation and use of the canvas?

A) Arshile Gorky
B) Willem de Kooning
C) Barnett Newman
D) Jackson Pollock

Question 6

What art movement arose in the United States as a result of the emigration of European artists after World War II?

A) Brutalism
B) Regionalism
C) Abstract Expressionism
D) Synthetic Cubism

Question 7

Which New York artist evolved in style to compositionally simple paintings in which color was the primary conveyor of meaning?

A) Jackson Pollock
B) Willem de Kooning
C) Arshile Gorky
D) Mark Rothko

Question 8

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What title did Arshile Gorky give to this work?

A) The Artist and His Mother
B) Agony
C) Enigmatic Combat
D) Garden in Sochi

Question 9

Which of the following was the purpose of Performance Art?

A) To challenge art's function as art
B) To challenge art's function as a commodity
C) To challenge art's function as permanent
D) To challenge art's function in the postmodern period

Question 10

Francis Bacon's paintings detailing the horrors and brutality of war often feature which class of object?

A) Umbrella
B) Telephone
C) Church bell
D) Meat

Question 11

What was the source of the images of women de Kooning used as the focus of his Woman series?

A) Medieval manuscripts
B) Advertising billboards
C) Greek sculpture
D) Japanese woodcuts

Question 12

Jean-Paul Sartre saw the sculptures of which artist as embodying his philosophical theory of existentialism, which asserts the absurdity of human existence?

A) Man Ray
B) Alberto Giacometti
C) David Smith
D) Donald Judd

Question 13

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Which female Abstract Expressionist artist painted this untitled work, with its asymmetrical composition?

A) Lee Krasner
B) Helen Frankenthaler
C) Joan Mitchell
D) Elaine de Kooning

Question 14

Which of the following best describes the function of Performance Art?

A) It is meant solely to imitate live theater.
B) It replaces traditional stationary artworks.
C) It is a commentary on contemporary art.
D) It is intended to purposefully confuse the audience.

Question 15

What painting technique did Jean Dubuffet employ in Vie Inquieté ( Uneasy Life )?

A) Sfumato
B) Underpainting
C) Glazing
D) Impasto

Question 16

Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko are artists who worked in which style?

A) Gestural abstractionism
B) Chromatic abstractionism
C) Pop art
D) Fauvism

Question 17

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By what term did Barnett Newman refer to the narrow lines that run vertically through the color fields of his paintings?

A) Bands
B) Veins
C) Zips
D) Accents

Question 18

What is the permanent record of a Performance Art event?

A) Documentary photos of a rehearsed performance
B) Documentary photos at the time of the performance
C) A script used for a repeat performance
D) A script and direction transformed into video

Question 19

A leader in Performance Art, John Cage brought to music the ideas of Eastern philosophy and which artist?

A) Jackson Pollock
B) Salvador Dalí
C) Andy Warhol
D) Marcel Duchamp

Question 20

What did Fluxus artists name their individual instances of Performance Art, to distinguish their performances from Kaprow's Happenings ?

A) Art brut
B) Events
C) Episodes
D) Immersions

Question 21

Among the criticisms of Michael Graves's Portland Building was that it resembled what?

A) A Las Vegas monstrosity
B) A tribute to Philip Johnson
C) An enlarged jukebox
D) A Renaissance palace

Question 22

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Who famously said of this artwork, "What you see is what you see"?

A) Clement Greenberg
B) Barnett Newman
C) Frank Stella
D) Louise Nevelson

Question 23

Which of the following is an example of the eclecticism that characterizes postmodernist architecture?

A) Guggenheim Museum, New York
B) Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp
C) Portland Building, Portland
D) Seagram Building, New York

Question 24

Which 20th-century art movement sought to harness the communicative power of art to reach a wide audience?

A) Op Art
B) Pop Art
C) Post-Painterly Abstraction
D) Minimalism

Question 25

Which artist created Superrealist life-size painted plaster sculptures that capture the loneliness of average Americans in familiar settings?

A) Minor White
B) Ana Mendieta
C) Magdalena Abakanowicz
D) Duane Hanson

Question 26

In creating his sculptures specifically for open-air settings, what element did David Smith prioritize?

A) Surface volume
B) Light and dark
C) Voids and masses
D) Surface texture

Question 27

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Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs is an example of which art movement?

A) Site-specific art
B) Optical art
C) Conceptual art
D) Pop art

Question 28

Which of the following was NOT one of Judy Chicago's intentions in creating The Dinner Party ?

A) To herself employ traditionally female craft techniques
B) To show the role of women in history and the fine arts
C) To emphasize the feminine virtues of loyalty and subservience
D) To honor women who had worked anonymously as artists

Question 29

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This monochromatic sculpture, incorporating found objects in frames, by Louise Nevelson is meant to evoke what mood?

A) Religious reverence
B) Mystery and magic
C) Order and rhythm
D) Permanence and solidity

Question 30

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Which element of Donald Judd's sculpture Untitled reflects his intention of banishing ambiguity from his work and using a visual vocabulary that does not deceive as illusionism would?

A) Geometric shape
B) Brass material
C) Steel brackets
D) Plexiglas material

Question 31

Which of the following works is the product of its creator's study of the way advertising shapes public attitudes?

A) Johns, Hopeless
B) Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
C) Rosenquist, F-111
D) Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks

Question 32

Isamu Noguchi's Shodo Shima Stone Study weds the geometric abstraction of Western art with what other tradition?

A) Japanese architectural style
B) Buddhist sculptural history
C) Japanese garden design
D) Japanese magazine ads

Question 33

What did Minimalist sculptors such as Tony Smith choose to emphasize as the essential characteristic of their medium?

A) Texture
B) Flatness
C) Three-dimensionality
D) Color

Question 34

As evident in Ellsworth Kelly's painting Red Green Blue , which of the following is NOT one of the elements he considered essential to painting?

A) Color
B) Line
C) Form
D) Composition

Question 35

Which artist is synonymous with the Op Art movement, relying on a pointillist manner to create the impression of movement and depth?

A) Richard Hamilton
B) Roy Lichtenstein
C) Bridget Riley
D) Andy Warhol

Question 36

Which phrase best characterizes the sculptural works of Louise Bourgeois such as Cumul I ?

A) Architectural Abstractionism
B) Synthetic Cubism
C) Volumetric Fauvism
D) Biomorphic Surrealism

Question 37

Which of the following artists was a color-field painter, who poured diluted paint onto unprimed canvas to emphasize that painting is simply pigment on a flat surface?

A) Jasper Johns
B) Helen Frankenthaler
C) Frank Stella
D) Henri Matisse

Question 38

Which of the following artists is best known for his large-scale portraits?

A) Jackson Pollock
B) Francis Bacon
C) Lucian Freud
D) Chuck Close

Question 39

In her photograph series, Cindy Sherman addressed the tradition in Western art that presents female beauty from which perspective?

A) The wealthy patron
B) The male gaze
C) Christian morality
D) Feminism

Question 40

Post-painterly Abstractionists most differed from Abstract Expressionists in which aspect of their work?

A) Injection of emotion
B) Color-field exercises
C) Cool, detached rationality
D) Non-Western influences

Question 41

The iconic Sydney Opera House was designed by which architect?

A) Eero Saarinen
B) Frank Lloyd Wright
C) Michael Graves
D) Joern Utson

Question 42

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Robert Frank's photograph illustrating the realities of segregation was taken in which American city?

A) Selma
B) Chicago
C) New Orleans
D) Houston

Question 43

What artist chose to employ the commercial printing technique of benday dots on a large scale?

A) Jasper Johns
B) Roy Lichtenstein
C) Richard Hamilton
D) Andy Warhol

Question 44

What printing method did Andy Warhol employ to create multiple images of the same object, such as a Coke bottle or a soup can?

A) Etching
B) Engraving
C) Lithograph
D) Silkscreen

Question 45

Audrey Flack's Marilyn is a meant as a reference to which earlier painting genre?

A) Flemish still lifes
B) Dutch vanitas paintings
C) Baroque ceiling paintings
D) Spanish portrait paintings

Question 46

Piano and Rogers designed the Centre Georges Pompidou, meant as a cultural arts center, to imitate which building type?

A) A cathedral
B) A theater
C) A factory
D) A stadium

Question 47

Which of the following is NOT a shape implied in the structure of Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut?

A) Praying hands
B) Snail shell
C) Dove
D) Ship's hull

Question 48

At the beginning of his long career, Philip Johnson was closely associated with which modernist architect?

A) Le Corbusier
B) Frank Lloyd Wright
C) Mies van der Rohe
D) Louis Sullivan

Question 49

What is the location of Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty ?

A) Lake Michigan
B) Crater Lake
C) Lake Powell
D) Great Salt Lake

Question 50

In his writing on postmodern architecture, Venturi emphasized which two concepts?

A) Consistency and complexity
B) Complexity and contradiction
C) Consistency and creativity
D) Complexity and symmetry