MAKE_THE_GRADE_kafedra

UNIT 4 ART

4.1. READING

Ex.1. Answer questions 1-18 by referring to the magazine article in which modern-day artists talk about their work. Match the statements with the list of artists A-F. One mark is given for each correct answer.

he does not want his works displayed in the conventional way. 4 …5 …

that practical experience is more important than formal training. 11 …

new works of art are not always original as everyone imagines. 15 …

61

that he is very concerned with the message his works convey. 16 … 17

… 18 …

CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

A Tom Bedwyn

A lot of artists limit themselves to business as usual. I‘m not sure I have a regular style. I‘m often told that my work incorporates a lot of decorations

– if so, that‘s not conscious, as I always like to start from zero with my paintings, to create something completely different. But I do have to work within certain limits, and the most important of those is that we live in the age of reproduction. All sorts of people know my art from magazines, catalogues or TV. That‘s all right with me because I don‘t want them to go to a gallery. But one of the consequences is that I want to create works that have nearly as strong an impact in a photograph or a video as in real life. You see, I want my work to have street credibility, to speak directly to people, so that it doesn‘t need the help of the white boxes – the museums or galleries – to be appreciated.

B Alan Frances

The greatest influence on my way of thinking as a painter came when I took part in a famous exhibition called ‗Freeze‘ when I was a student at college. That college was a dream for creative people; it was the only place in the art world that didn‘t stipulate which medium we had to work in. All the other schools divided you into categories, such as sculpture and painting. Art practice isn‘t confined by these old barriers and techniques any more. I don‘t think ―Freeze‘ was ground-breaking in terms of the actual work, but there was a massive energy around it. We weren‘t trying to attract the attention of the galleries – it was more a case of ‗we don‘t need them, we can do it anyway‘.

C Marcus O’Connor

I didn‘t actually study art at college: I qualified in electronics: I qualified at an evening class. I never enjoyed school, nor work, which I have always tried to avoid, without success. In fact, I found my path in art a bit late – only eight years ago. For me, art is just a joke like any other that can be learned while you do it. When I was small, I always thought I wouldn‘t want to do any work, and that art should be like that. But now I‘m really working. I don‘t have a minute, what with galleries, gallery owners and

62

interviews in different places. I consider the geography of towns as a kind of library which you use for your own needs; you go where you think you can feel good for a while. I go around different towns so as to meet new people, breathe new air and get new ideas.

D Jan Pillin

I‘m very flexible – I paint, create logos, design furniture and products and write comics; but if pushed, I always say that I draw. Illustrators and cartoonists are the only ones who have accepted me: ‗What are you doing? You‘re not a graphic designer, are you a painter?‘ the painters say: ―Why don‘t you design furniture? Your furniture is really nice.‖ And the furniture designers say: ―You should be doing comic books, that‘s your business.‖ I think my drawings are awful, but I have to say other artists have used my work to develop their own. Mind you, they haven‘t copied any more than I have. I‘ll keep on copying, allowing myself to be influenced by thousands of authors and images. It‘s very positive when you‗re creating things. You can never start from square one.

E Henric Bader

My work is all about building art into daily life. I would have a much more comfortable life if I was ‗fine art‘ artist; sitting in a studio in the countryside. But I wanted to be involved in building in the city; I wanted to contribute to daily life, with all its idiosyncrasies and difficulties. You see, I had a more practical education than most, learning building construction at technical high school, and went on to study art and architecture in Vienna in an environment of artists, stage designers, painters and sculptors, I was constantly moving between the fine arts and architecture – today you call it ‗crossover‘, and actually the demarcation is now less rigid. I‘ve worked for the advertising industry, for example, superimposing advertising images onto photographs of buildings. Indeed, in whatever I do I introduce a foreign element into a given situation, and, by transformation of scale and meaning, it makes another, very clear statement. I need to make sure that it‘s a statement which is getting through to people.

F Billy Matuka

I‘m always told I favour writing in my art, rather than images. In any painting there is something which says: ‗Look at me, please‘. So I said to myself: ‗Instead of painting the painting, I‘m going to write ‗Look at me,

63

please.‘ The painting is only a pretext to say something, so I might as well say it simply, with words on the painting. Also, I wanted to establish my own territory, after an initial period of not really knowing where I was going. Writing went well with desire to tell the truth. It‘s been said that art is a lie, but you have to find the truth somewhere.‘

Ex. 2. Read the magazine article about Mara Amats then choose the best explanation (A, B or C) for these words or phrases (1-10) according to how they are used in the article. One mark for each correct answer.

A room of my own

M A R A A M A T S

used to restore frescoes until she decided restoring people was somewhat more valuable.

By this she meant giving people whose lives were as distinctive as the icons she worked on the chance to maintain their own ways. Her change of tack began when she discovered that the beggars hanging around the church where she was working in Addis Ababa had been embroiderers in

Haile Selassie‘s palace and that their only sources of work now were infrequent church commissions. She looked at their designs, advised how they could sell them more effectively and in years to come found herself working among the people in other parts of Africa as well as India and the Caribbean.

That is why her room in a small flat just off London‘s Baker Street is filled with exotica – of which she herself could claim to be an example. She was born in Latvia, half-Russian on her mother‘s side, and spent her childhood years in displaced persons‘ camps before settling in France, where she was apprenticed to an icon master who trained her as a restorer. Her artistic sensitivity is balanced by a strong practical streak and her adventurous spirit sustains her in her travels to isolated and often dangerous parts of the world.

Her flat is in what began as a block of artisans‘ dwellings, purpose built at the turn of the century, and mostly occupied then by glove -makers and other craftsmen: she believes three families lived in the fairly cramped

64

space that is now her base whenever she is in London – ‘the navel of the world, the crossroads for all these other places‘. She has worked on the development projects in poor countries in the belief that many of the textiles, pottery and sculpture such countries produce can sell in the West in their own right and not just on the guilt principle. ‗I start from the other end, designing products that can sell because they are the best in their price range.‘ Financial help from the West often went down the plughole of grandiose bureaucratic enterprises. ‗One walks across the field or into that hut and there is seldom any of that aid visible, though billions are spent. Now I think we are beginning to have ideas and look at our methods.‘

She went on contract from the Commonwealth Secretariat to the Caribean where the mechanization of banana-loading meant that the women who used to hump the bananas to the ships needed new jobs. She experimented with banana fibre and found it made rather fine paper. Then she went to Nepal, where people had been making paper since the eleventh century, using the bark from trees of the daphne family. The trees were never replanted, contributing to the 40 per cent loss of ground cover in the

Himalayas. ‗I found a water hyacinth that makes splendid paper and now the people are producing it for several top British firms.‘ She has also helped them market a species of black mushrooms that needs to be harvested, dried and sold within two months. She brought a sample back with her and now it is sold in the West End of London.

She herself is an artist and works in paper. On the left hangs a shirt she made out of water hyancinth paper and pheasant feathers, one of a series of symbolic representations she has constructed. On the wall to the right of the shells is a drawing on vellum from a Coptic bible by an Ethiopian artist, and near it carved figures from West Africa.

Tribal rugs from Persia and Anatolia add their colour and in front of the table with the skulls a set of saddle-bags originally used by yurt-dwellers in Kazakhstan find an alternative role on the floor. Mara has just spent several months in Kazakhstan advising craftspeople how to pick up the threads of their pre-Revolutionary skills, deliberately crushed in 70 years of ‗socialistic realism‘. Their crafts were mummified, she says; instead of their symbolic patterns and native decorative arts they had to make busts of Lenin or representations of people driving tractors. ‗Many

65

of these crafts survived only in the more remote areas where old people kept them going because of dowry customs and so on. The younger ones see them as living libraries of their past – please read them with us, they asked, so that we can earn our living through them again.‘

66

4.2. USE OF ENGLISH

Ex.1. Match the following words with appropriate definitions (1-15).

Ex. 2. Fill in the blanks (1 – 21) with the correct particle or preposition where necessary.

1.In the 19th century, easels were moved out-of-doors and colour was broken (1) … minute areas. 2. Another friend has just changed careers and taken (2) … painting. 3. His earth-bound scenes teem (3) …life, every one of the actors is engaged (4) …a special plot of his own. 4. He was entirely

(5) … key (6) … the moral mood of his age. 5. The quality of Hogarth as an artist is seen (7) … advantage (8) … his sketches. 6. A few painters resisted attempts (9) ….. art experts to draw them (10) … in the discussion of the new art trend. 7. For this painting he was awarded (11) … the golden medal. 8. He had gone a bit too far (12) … … his time. 9. We can see Turner‘s realization of an interplay (13) … dark and light, warm and

67

cold masses. 10. Very often the public didn‘t approve (14) … this style of painting. 11.Consequently all colours act and react (15) … one another.

12. The Impressionists refrained (16) … mixing colours (17) … their palettes and applied them (18) … minute touches (19) … the canvas. 13. There was a picture (20) … her on page three, which made her unique combination of rare features more picturesque than (21) … flesh .

Ex. 3. Read the text below. Use the word given at the end of the lines to form a word that fits in the space in the same line (1-10).

a profound impression on his painting style.

Modigliani was not a professional portraitist in the strict sense

of the word. His paintings are almost always portraits of relatives,

Ex. 4. Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only one word in each space (1- 14).

68

VERMEER

The seventeenthcentury Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is famous (1)

…… his realistic paintings. Many experts have tried to work out how he was so good (2) …… painting accurate details. In his day, it was usual (3) ……painters to draw the picture first, (4) ….. Vermeer seemed capable (5)

…….painting without doing this. Even the Victorians, who were responsible (6) ….. Vermeer‘s present great reputation, were puzzled (7)

…….why his paintings were so similar (8) ……. photographs.

Philip Steadman of University College, London has no doubt (9) …… the reason. He claims Vermeer used an early form of camera, called a camera obscure, (10)…. a means (11) …. creating accurate images. Steadman was suspicious (12) …… a mysterious black box in one painting, saying that it is exactly where Vermeer‘s camera would have been. But Steadman says even if he is right (13) …… Vermeer‘s method, we shouldn‘t lose respect (14) …… the artist‘s talent.

Ex. 5. Fill in that, who, why, which, whose, where, (1-15).

THE WHITE HOUSE

One of the most famous buildings in the world is the White House, (1)

…… is the official home of the US president. The White House is in Washington DC, (2) …… there are many other important buildings and monuments. The city, (3) …… was founded in 1790, was deliberately planned as a national capital. George Washington, (4) …… was the first US president and (5) ……. name was given to the city, wanted it to be the place (6) …… the nation‘s government would permanently reside.

The White House, (7) …… was originally named Executive Mansion, was built in pale grey sandstone. The colour of the stone, (8) …… was so different from the surrounding red brick buildings, was the reason (9) …… the mansion became known as the White House. The main building, (10)

…… many presidents have lived, is a large complex (11) …… consists of over 130 rooms.

People find the White House fascinating and that is the reason (12) …… the parts of the complex (13) …… are open to the public are toured every

69

year by one and a half million people (14) …….. want to see the place (15) ……. their president lives and works.

4.3. MEDIATION

Ex. 1. Render the following text into English.

СІКСТИНСЬКА МАДОННА

Славнозвісна ‖Сікстинська мадонна‖ (Дрезденська галерея) – вершина творчості Рафаеля. Перше враження від картини: постать статної жінки, яка несе хлопчика, тримаючи його міцними, але ніжними руками. Уже в тому, як вона тримає сина, і навіть у лініях, якими окреслено постать і покривало, є щось невимовно сумне, принадне й разом величне, таке, що кожній людині нагадує матір. Легкий вітерець надуває покривало, відкидає край синього плаща мадонни. Дивне небо, в якому клубочаться хмаринки та юрмляться безвинні душі дітей-янголяток, оточує постать мадонни. З безмежною розчуленістю й захопленням дивиться в обличчя мадонни чоловік похилого віку у парадному папському вбранні – святий Сікст. Схилилася, притуливши руки до серця, опустила очі до долу свята Варвара. Наближається до глядача, не йде – пливе повітрям мадонна. Хлопчик дивиться з докором, а мати зі співчуттям та готовністю все зрозуміти і простити...

―Сікстинська мадонна‖ силою свого впливу на глядача перевершує всіх інших мадонн, будь-коли створених. Довгий час нікому не спадало на думку, чому, перебуваючи в зеніті своєї слави, переобтяжений замовленнями папи, кардиналів, королів, геніальний художник написав свій кращий твір на замовлення ―чорних монахів‖ далекого від Рима провінційного містечка П‗яченці. А річ у тому, що ―Сікстинська мадонна‖ створювалася не як вівтарний образ для собору П‗яченці. Мала вона висіти над місцем поховання благодійника Рафаеля – Юлія ІІ. Ось чому тіара, яку зняв святий Сікст, покровитель роду Роверо, перед мадонною, увінчана жолудем

– гербовим знаком Юлія, ось чому явилась йому мадонна зі святою Варварою, яка, за повір‗ям, полегшує муки вмираючих. Нарешті, завіса і постаті янголяток, що виглядають з-під нижнього краю полотна, є властивими деталями ренесансних скульптурних надгробків.

70