Art Fundamentals

Question 1

In Advance of a Broken Arm

Answer 1

1915 work by Marcel Duchamp in which he displayed a snow shovel in New York City

Question 2

Constructivist movement

Answer 2

movement in which Russian artists sought to further merge art and life by applying their abstract style to items like clothing fabric and kitchen tools

Question 3

Spiral Jetty

Answer 3

Robert Smithson work of a giant coil of rock and dirt on the shore of the Great Salt Lake

Question 4

Double Negative

Answer 4

Michael Heizer work of two massive cuts made into a mesa in Nevada

Question 5

Art history

Answer 5

an academic discipline dedicated to the reconstruction of the social, cultural, and economic contexts in which an artwork was created

Question 6

Art criticism

Answer 6

the explanation of current art events to the general public via the press

Question 7

Fine art

Answer 7

produced specifically for appreciation by an audience who also understood the objects as works of art (e.g. paintings, prints, architecture)

Question 8

Formal analysis

Answer 8

the visual qualities of the work of an art itself

Question 9

Contextual analysis

Answer 9

examines present and later cultural, religious, and economic contexts in which a work is consumed

Question 10

Which type of analysis do we begin a study on a work of art to keep the focus on the object itself?

Answer 10

formal analysis

Question 11

Pliny the Elder

Answer 11

sought to analyze historical and contemporary art in his text Natural History

Question 12

Giorgio Vasari

Answer 12

gathered the biographies of great Italian artists, past and present, in The Lives of the Artists, which developed the concept of “individual genius”

Question 13

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Answer 13

German scholar who shifted away from Vasari’s biographical emphasis to a rigorous study of stylistic development as related to historical context

Question 14

Throughout which centuries did art historians continue to develop approaches that placed increasing emphasis on the interrelationship between the formal qualities of a work of art and its context?

Answer 14

Nineteenth through twentieth centuries

Question 15

Chauvet Cave

Answer 15

cave in southeastern France that is the location of the oldest works of art discovered

Question 16

When are the paintings in Chauvet Cave dated to?

Answer 16

c. 30,000 BCE

Question 17

When were the paintings in Chauvet Cave discovered?

Answer 17

1994

Question 18

What do the Chauvet Cave paintings depict?

Answer 18

horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalos, and mammoths using red ochre and black charcoal

Question 19

Lascaux/Altamira cave paintings

Answer 19

large colored drawings of horses, bears, lions, bison, and mammoths along with the inclusion of several outlines of human hands

Question 20

Which animals do the Chauvet Cave and Lascaux/Altamira paintings have in common?

Answer 20

horses, lions, and mammoths

Question 21

Venus (or Woman) of Willendorf

Answer 21

four and one-eighth-inch high stone figure of a female with exaggerated female features, an undefined face, barely visible arms, and missing feet

Question 22

Recap: What were the Old Stone Age (Upper Paleolithic Period) artworks?

Answer 22

Chauvet Cave, Lascaux/Altamira, and the Venus of Willendorf

Question 23

Where was evidence of cave dwellers moving toward rock shelters in the Middle Stone Age found?

Answer 23

eastern Spain

Question 24

Rock shelter paintings

Answer 24

portray human beings, both alone and in groups, with an emphasis on scenes in which humans dominate animals

Question 25

Where was the Old Stone Age exception for painting a human figure?

Answer 25

Lascaux

Question 26

When are the rock shelter paintings dated to?

Answer 26

7000 BCE to 4000 BCE

Question 27

Recap: What were the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic Period) artworks?

Answer 27

rock shelter paintings in eastern Spain

Question 28

Megaliths

Answer 28

“great stones”

Question 29

Where is Stonehenge located?

Answer 29

Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England

Question 30

When was Stonehenge built?

Answer 30

2100 BCE

Question 31

Post and lintel construction

Answer 31

two upright pieces of stone topped with a crosspiece (or lintel)

Question 32

“Heel-stone”

Answer 32

marks the point at which the sun rises on the midsummer solstice from the northeast

Question 33

How large/heavy were the rough-hewn stones used to build Stonehenge?

Answer 33

17 feet in height and 50 tons

Question 34

Describe the outer ring of Stonehenge

Answer 34

comprised of huge sarsen stones in post and lintel construction

Question 35

Describe the inner ring of Stonehenge

Answer 35

composed of bluestones, which encircle a horseshoe-shaped row of 5 lintel-topped sarsen stones that weighed as much as 50 tons

Question 36

Which two civilizations developed writing and arts in parallel to one another?

Answer 36

Mesopotamia and Egypt

Question 37

Sumerians

Answer 37

built massive temples at the centers of cities, which later evolved into the stepped ziggurat pyramids

Question 38

When did the Sumerians control Mesopotamia?

Answer 38

4000 BCE

Question 39

When did the cities of Sumer come under control of the Sargon of Akkad?

Answer 39

2334 BCE

Question 40

Akkadians

Answer 40

assimilated Sumerian culture, supplanted loyalty to the city-state with loyalty to the king, and depicted rulers in freestanding and relief sculptures

Question 41

When did Akkadian rule come to an end?

Answer 41

2150 BCE

Question 42

Guti

Answer 42

barbarous mountaineers who invaded the Akkadians in Mesopotamia and took control

Question 43

Neo-Sumerians

Answer 43

greatest known works were the ziggurats that functioned as temples and administrative/economic centers

Question 44

King of Ur

Answer 44

Neo-Sumerian ruler

Question 45

When did the Sumerians reinstate control in Mesopotamia?

Answer 45

2100 BCE

Question 46

Babylonians