5 2 6 . Look at the postcards in the appendix and read the text. Match each paragraph (a-e) to one of the postcards. Modern art

For many people modern art is a mystery and difficult to understand: abstract paintings, sharks in glass boxes and enormous steel angels. What do these works mean? Are they really art?

A One modern artist is different. Most people understand and enjoy his work. He is the American artist Christo. He wraps buildings and geographical features in fabric. One of his most famous works is the Reichstag in Berlin. He wrapped it in white fabric for fourteen days in 1995. The wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin had, for Christo, importance because of the idea of East-West relations (the Cold War), where the U.S. and the Soviets had their biggest confrontation. With the support of the President of the Parliament, Christo worked to convince the elected Members of Parliament, going from office to office, writing explanatory letters to each of the 662 delegates and innumerable telephone calls and negotiations. On 25 February 1995 after a 70 minute debate at the Parliament and a Roll Call vote, the Bundestag allowed the project to go ahead. Just about 100,000m of fireproof polypropylene fabric, covered by an aluminum layer, and 15km of rope were needed. The wrapping began on 17 June 1995 and was finished on 24 June. The spectacle was seen by five million visitors before the unveiling began on 7 July. We see everyday things in a new way in his work. And perhaps that is the greatest aim of modern art.

B Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is Britain’s richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215,000 000 in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. Death is a central theme in his works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved, sometimes having been dissected in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4,3m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britain worldwide. It was sold for £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000.

C Antony Mark David Gormley is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998. Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site installation, which premiered in London in 2007, and in 2010 around Madison Square in New York City.

D Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise. In the picture Woman with a Parasol, facing left, 1886, the depicted woman is Suzanne Hoschedé, the eldest daughter of Alice Hoschedé, second wife of Claude Monet, Musée d’Orsay.

E Kasimir Malevich, a Russian painter and designer, was one of the most important pioneers of geometric abstract art. He is best known by Suprematism With Eight Red Rectangles, White on White, A black square which carry suprematist theories to absolute conclusion. The artist was fired with the desire to free art from the burden of the object and launched the Suprematist movement, which brought abstract art to a geometric simplicity more radical than anything previously seen. There is often difficulty also in knowing which way up his paintings should be hung, photographs of early exhibitions sometimes providing conflicting evidence.

6. a) Listen to Jenny and Serge talking about the same postcards and check your answers. (from Foley M. Total English Elementary. / Mark Foley, Diane Hall – Pearson Longman, 2007. – P. 90.)

b) Listen again. What do they like? Write J or S.

1) Sculpture ____________

2) Impressionist paintings___________

3) Modern art____________

4) Abstract paintings____________