Arts and Culture

Question 1

The Hay Wain by John Constable originally had the title _______ Noon. Which word, that in image orientation is the opposite of portrait, fills the blank?

Answer 1

Landscape

Question 2

Bilbo Baggins is the title character of which 1937 fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkein? This work preceded the Lord of the Rings trilogy of books.

Answer 2

The Hobbit

Question 3

The literary character Moby Dick is a sperm species of which type of marine mammal? The biblical character Jonah is swallowed by a big ‘fish’ that is often depicted as one of these mammals.

Answer 3

Whale

Question 4

Which Basque town gives its name to a 1937 Picasso oil painting that features figures such as a bull, a screaming woman, and a dismembered soldier?

Answer 4

Guernica

Question 5

Which is the smallest of the instruments that make up a string quartet? Vivaldi wrote The Four Seasons for this instrument.

Answer 5

Violin

Question 6

Which meaty-sounding surname is shared by the philosopher who developed his namesake “method” in the 1620 8 treatise Novum Organum and the artist who produced many works depicting his muse, George Dyer? The pair also share a surname

Answer 6

Bacon

Question 7

The critics August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel are considered by some to be the founders of which artistic 9 and intellectual movement that arose in Europe in the late 18th century? The poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley were prominent figures in this movement.

Answer 7

Romanticism

Question 8

Usually attributed to Dorothy Parker, the quote “They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles” is a description of which group of writers, intellectuals, and artists? This group, members of which included Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, took their name from an area of London.

Answer 8

Bloomsbury Group/Set

Question 9

Which Soviet Russian theatre practitioner co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko 15 in 1898? He is, however, best known for his system of training actors that relied on what he referred to as the “art of experiencing?”

Answer 9

Stanislavski

Question 10

Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin is the title character of which Fyodor Dostoevsky novel?

Answer 10

The Idiot

Question 11

Fenrir, the figure that is foretold to kill the god Odin during the events of Ragnarök, is which type of animal? A popular image from the founding of Rome shows Romulus and Remus being suckled by one of these animals.

Answer 11

Wolf

Question 12

Home to displays such as the Ishtar Gate and the Market Gate of Miletus, the Pergamon Museum is located on the Museum Island in which European capital city?

Answer 12

Berlin

Question 13

Which two characters “are dead” in the title of an absurdist play by Tom Stoppard? The pair originally appear in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Answer 13

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Question 14

In Islam, which official typically proclaims the call to prayer five times a day from the minaret of a mosque? This person usually also has responsibilities such as keeping the mosque clean.

Answer 14

Muezzin

Question 15

“Hens and Roosters”, “The Elephant”, and “The Swan” are among the movements in which 1886 musical suite? The work in question was only published in 1922, a year after the death of its French composer.

Answer 15

The Carnival of the Animals (Saint Saens)

Question 16

Which Wilfred Owen poem has a title that is drawn from the Latin phrase meaning “it is sweet and fitting”? The title phrase features in the penultimate line of the work before the phrase “pro patria mori”.

Answer 16

Dulce et Decorum est

Question 17

Which British author became the first woman with Black heritage to win the Booker Prize when she shared the award 17 in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other? In 2022, she also became the first person with Black heritage to be President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Answer 17

Berndadine Evaristo

Question 18

Which light opera company, named after its founder, staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas nearly year-round in the UK 18 from the 1870s until 1982? The Savoy Theatre was built to showcase the Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced by this company.

Answer 18

D’Oyly Carte Opera Company

Question 19

The term ‘culture industry’, which likens popular culture to a factory producing standardised cultural goods such as 20 films and radio programmes, was coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in which work of 1947? Much of the text of this work had previously been circulated among the authors’ friends as Philosophical Fragments.

Answer 19

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Question 20

Which new religious movement was founded in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi? Persecuted heavily by the Chinese 21 Communist Party, and now headquartered at the vast Dragon Springs complex in New York state, this movement operates the far-right newspaper The Epoch Times and the dance troupe Shen Yun.

Answer 20

Falun Gong

Question 21

Which man, the last king of Assyria according to the Greek writer Ctesias, was depicted in an oil painting by Eugène Delacroix and gives his name to the title of a play by Lord Byron?

Answer 21

Sardanapalus

Question 22

The author of novels such as Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, which politician and writer was characterised by Hunter S. Thompson as the Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? This activist in the Chicano Movement disappeared in 1974 during a trip to Mexico.

Answer 22

Oscar Zeta ACOSTA

Question 23

Who is the subject of the 1960 photograph by Alberto Korda that is titled Guerrillero Heroico? It was taken only 7 years N before this person was executed and has helped build his status as a cultural icon.

Answer 23

Ernesto ‘Che’ GUEVARA

Question 24

What is the Latin name under which the “Lamb of God” is honoured within Christian liturgies? A painting by Francisco N de Zurbarán has this title.

Answer 24

Agnus Dei

Question 25

The Swan, No. 18 is a work of 1915 by which Swedish artist? Her paintings are considered among the first abstract N paintings, and many predate compositions by Kandinsky and Malevich.

Answer 25

Hilma af KLIMT

Question 26

Killed by serpents, which Trojan priest was the father of Antiphantes and Thymbraeus? A painting by El Greco depicts this grisly scene from Greek mythology.

Answer 26

Laocoon

Question 27

One of the oldest works in the modern ballet repertory, which Jean Dauberval comic ballet was inspired by a Pierre- Antoine Baudouin painting?

Answer 27

La Fille Malgardée. Or Wayward Daughter

Question 28

In Japanese mythology, which deity is the god of the sea, storms, and harvest? Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi are siblings of this deity who slew the eight-headed serpent Orochi.

Answer 28

Susanoo

Question 29

Which semi-autobiographical debut novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga focuses on the story of a Shona family in post- colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s? This work opens with Tambu, the protagonist, being told of the death of a sibling.

Answer 29

Nervous Conditions

Question 30

In architecture, what name is given to a female figure that is used as a pillar to support the entablature of a building?

Answer 30

Caryatid