Test 1

Question 1

CGI?

Answer 1

Computer Generated Images

Question 2

Politics of representation?

Answer 2

Art historians that instead analyze the impact of race, gender, class, sexuality and colonialism on the process of art making.

Question 3

Mass media?

Answer 3

• Goals of the Mass media
• Appeal to as large of an audience as possible
• Reinforce dominant cultural value
• Make a large profit
• According to Berger, “Advertising turns consumption into a substitute for democracy.” Advertising urges us to make purchases, rather than engage in rebellion, freedom or activism.
• We are told we can have power, liberation and freedom through the purchase of cigarettes and underwear.

Question 4

Visual literacy?

Answer 4

the critical study of art and popular culture images

Question 5

Marshall McLuhan?

Answer 5

Canadian literature professor Marshall McLuhan began his pioneering media studies in the middle of the twentieth century. He sought to understand the way new media affect human perceptions.

Question 6

John Berger?

Answer 6

linked the language of the fine arts tradition of Western Culture with that of the mass media, particularly advertising (which, in his British way, he termed “publicity.”)

Question 7

Human sight is intelligent?

Answer 7

Berger came up with the idea that human sight is intelligent: “They way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.”

Question 8

Walter Benjamin?

Answer 8

wrote the first important study of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin argued that ancient art served a ritual function. Such original artworks had a kind of aura that was inherent in the direct experience of the art. In our mass media society, the experience of the artwork is distorted and diminished by multiple reproductions.

Question 9

Ferdinand de Saussure?

Answer 9

Swiss theorist. One of his most important points was that the relationship between a word (or “signifier”) and the object or concept to which it refers (the “signified”) is always culturally constructed, which is to say, always arbitrary.

Question 10

Signifier & signified?

Answer 10

Signifier=word

Signified=the object or concept to which it refers

Question 11

Claude Levi-Strauss?

Answer 11

Anthropologist. Instead of limiting his cultural studies to comparative descriptions or chronologies, the French anthropologist sought to uncover the way various cultural institutions were structured within a society.

Question 12

Bipolar oppositions?

Answer 12

many cultural theorists have asserted that all cultural products from art to language to value systems are human constructions rather than “natural” forms. Many such cultural products are based on conceptual contrasts that might be termed bipolar oppositions. Example: good/evil heaven/hell black/white self/other male/female culture/nature.

Question 13

Jacques Derrida?

Answer 13

grew up during World War II. He began to examine the philosophical foundations that allowed the war and the Holocaust to occur. He began to suspect that fixed structures in Western thought led some people to objectify and devalue others; such fixed conceptual categories may have led to the thinking that made the Holocaust possible. By the 1960’s he was analyzing the fixed structure of bipolar opposition.

Question 14

Edward Said, Orientalism?

Answer 14

the way that Western cultural texts and images depict Near Easterners as immoral and uncivilized, in marked contrast to the upright and sophisticated Europeans.

Question 15

Fredric Jameson, reification?

Answer 15

the transformation of a human or a human product into a thing.

Question 16

Andy Warhol, Pop Art?

Answer 16

the emphasis on mass media subjects and themes, including a direct use of photographs and photographic processes by this movement, which became known as Pop Art.

Question 17

Keith Haring, graffiti art?

Answer 17

formerly been considered crude markings and illegal assaults on private property–were exhibited and discussed as art. The paintings of New York artist Keith Haring, which began as subway graffiti, were shown in fine art galleries in New York and Tokyo

Question 18

bell hooks?

Answer 18

Cultural critic

Question 19

Icon?

Answer 19

The term icon traditionally has referred specifically to a culture’s religious images. But since our culture today is not primarily represented by such religious images, popular art and fine art images can be considered as icons insofar as their appearance in the mass media shapes and reflect our culture’s basic values.

Question 20

Culture?

Answer 20

defined as the shared pattern of customs, ideas, beliefs, images, and languages that unite a group.

Question 21

Myth?

Answer 21

tends to mean a lie or a fable—something that is not true, something unscientific. In relation to culture, however, myth does not mean a lie. A culture’s myths inevitably give explanations of how the cosmos (sun, stars, earth) was born. They also tell who men and women are—in their own relationships and in their relationships with the gods, with the sprits of the ancestors, with nature, and with death.

Question 22

Jacques Louis David, Oath of the Horatii?

Answer 22

Bipolar oppositions are also evident in examples from the fine arts tradition of Western culture. French academic painter Jacques Louis David painted his large historical canvas, The Oath of the Horatii. David’s canvas depicts the moment when three brothers (the male figures on the left) swear to their father (the central patriarchal figure) that they will fight to the death for their rights. On the right side of the painting are wives, sisters, and children responding tearfully to the imminent departure of their sons, brothers, and husbands.

Question 23

When it was originally painted, The Oath of Horatti represented?

Answer 23

The painting, when exhibited in Paris, was embraced as a call to fight for one’s liberty. It has often been interpreted as an incitement to revolution, inspiring the French people to rise up against monarchical abuse and establish a nation of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” the clarion call of the French Revolution.

Question 24

Today we can read the Oath of Horatti as?

Answer 24

Today, we can “read” David’s painting from many viewpoints. A feminist perspective allows us to see that the image reinforces traditional gender roles.

Question 25

Michelangelo’s David (Who?)

Answer 25

“Who” asks about the artist. Michelangelo was one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. He is considered such an important cultural hero that one of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles–cartoon characters created for an early childhood viewing audience–was named
Michelangelo.

Question 26

Michelangelo’s David (What?)

Answer 26

“What” asks about the subject of the artwork. David was a great biblical hero. As a youth, he slayed the giant Goliath. Later, he became king of the Jews. He wrote poetry (several songs or hymns from the Book of Psalms are attributed to him) and codified a legal system that is still influential today. Christians consider David, the greatest king of Israel, an early ancestor of Jesus. The story of David and Goliath has resonance in the mass media. David was a young shepherd boy, who protected his flocks from predators with a slingshot. He became so skilled in this rather low-tech weapon (a slingshot) that he was able to strike and kill Goliath, the leader of the army threatening David’s people, by aiming his slingshot at Goliath’s only point of vulnerability: the center of his forehead.

Question 27

Michelangelo’s David (Where?)

Answer 27

“Where” refers to the locale of creation and/or exhibition. Michelangelo sculpted David in Florence, the northern Italian city often considered the birthplace of the Renaissance. Although David was originally intended for outdoor viewing on a cathedral facade, it is now housed in the Art Academy of Florence, where it is protected from pollution and possible vandals. An important banking and trade city, as well as a major textile producer, Florence was rising in wealth and political importance at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The original placement of the sculpture on public building would have alerted anyone who came into town that they were entering a realm dominated by powerful men of taste and distinction.

Question 28

Michelangelo’s David (When?)

Answer 28

refers to the time the artwork was created. Michelangelo worked on David from 1501 through 1504. That was the height of the historical period known as the Renaissance.

Question 29

Michelangelo’s David (How?)

Answer 29

“How” asks about the process of creating the artwork. Michelangelo used what we call “subtractive” sculpture for David. He began with a 14’ tall block of white marble and carved away whatever part of the stone he did not want to remain. Michelangelo wrote that he saw the figures inside the marble and carved away what surrounded them there. He used hammers and chisels as his primary tools. Sculpting marble was arduous labor, requiring physical strength as well as finesse.

Question 30

Michelangelo’s David (Why?)

Answer 30

“Why” is often the most complex and contended question in reference to artworks. We know that Michelangelo was commissioned to create David. He worked much like what we call a commercial artist today: people came to him, hired him to create a work that would meet their needs and desires, and paid him according to a contract. Powerful civic leaders of Florence hired him to create David. Because Florence was, at the time, vying with the “giant” city of Rome for dominance of the Italian peninsula, some art historians “read” David as a symbol of the smaller upstart city in which it still stands. If that is true, then Michelangelo’s sculpture represented the city of Florence much as the Statue of Liberty represents the United States.

Question 31

Apollo Belvedere?

Answer 31

One reason David is a key Renaissance monument is that it embodies Michelangelo’s reappraisal of Ancient Greek and Roman artistic ideals. Specifically, he used an ancient statue of a Greek god–the Apollo Belevedere–as inspiration for the figure’s pose and physique. Michelangelo was not the only artist to be inspired by the Apollo Belevedere. Throughout history, it has functioned as an image of “almost magical efficacy.” German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann spoke of it as “the highest ideal of art among all the works of antiquity…[and] beauty incarnate…”

Question 32

Coatlicue (Who?)

Answer 32

Although we do know the names of some Pre-Columbian artists, like the Maya ceramic painters who signed their vessels with hieroglyphic inscriptions of their names and honorific titles, we don’t know the names of the artists who created Coatlicue. So we will have to settle for attributing her to anonymous Aztec artists.

Question 33

Coatlicue (What?)

Answer 33

Coatlicue was the Earth Goddess. Although the serpent has an evil connotation in Western culture (remember: in the Garden of Eden, Eve and Adam were tempted into sin by the devilish serpent), the Aztecs considered snakes powerful creatures symbolic of fertility and abundance. She of the Serpent Hills is the fertile earth from which we all come.

Question 34

Coatlicue (When?)

Answer 34

The Aztecs were conquered by an army led by the Spaniard Hernan Cortes in 1521. Coatlicue was made some time before that date–probably close to the time Columbus began his fateful first trip (1492).

Question 35

Coatlicue (Where?)

Answer 35

Coatlicue was a major monument of the Aztec imperial capital, the city they called Mexico-Tenochtitlan and we today call Mexico City. The Spaniards arrived in the Aztec capital city at the height of Aztec Empire, which had trade and communication routes extending out of Central Mexico as far north as the Ohio River Basin and as far south as Peru. The city had been founded in circa 1350 A.D. on a cluster of swampy islands in the middle of an immense lake that covered the floor of the Valley of Mexico.

Question 36

Coatlicue (How?)

Answer 36

A monumental 102 inches tall, Coatlicue is, like Michelangelo’s David, an example of subtractive sculpture. The Aztec artists started with a large boulder of basalt stone and carved away whatever they did not want to remain. The figure was then covered with stucco and brightly painted. Although the earth in which she was buried destroyed most of the original pigment, there are remnants still left in some of the deep crevices, enough to indicate strong contrasts that would allow the complex features to be read from far distances.

Question 37

Coatlicue (Why?)

Answer 37

Coatlicue was originally located in the Aztec ceremonial center, very near the immense double pyramid on top of which stood the temples dedicated to the two main Aztec gods: Huitzilopochtli, the War God with solar attributes, and the Rain God Tlaloc. Anyone who entered the Aztec capital for commercial or political purposes would see her. They would be reminded of the Aztec rulers’ claim to descent from Coatlicue’s son, the War God, and of their justification of imperial extension based on their unique relationship with the goddess.

Question 38

Grotte Chauvet?

Answer 38

The cave paintings in Grotte Chauvet are probably over 32,000 years old. That means they are some of the oldest art on the planet. They are also some of the most recently discovered. Three French spelunkers—Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel and Christian Hillaire— discovered the caves in December 1994.

Question 39

Ancient Sumer?

Answer 39

The ancient culture that developed between the fertile Tigris-Euphrates River beds of Modern-Day Iraq is usually called Mesopotamia. The early phase of Mesopotamia, Sumer, was a loosely associated group of city-states that began over six thousand years ago.

Question 40

By at least 3500 BC, the Sumerians had built ?

Answer 40

complex city-states in sites like Uruk and Tell Asmar (the former to the south and the latter just northeast of modern Baghdad). Ancient Sumer was apparently the first culture to make the leap from village to city. The origins of the Sumerians and the stages of development of the city-state, with its particular myths and heroes, are historical puzzles only partially solved. What is clear is that with the Sumerian city-state a qualitatively new kind of human experience—the urban experience—came into existence.

Question 41

Cylinder seal?

Answer 41

The Sumerians not only invented a form of writing, they also had a rudimentary mass media technology, in the form of written and pictorial messages printed by rolling carved cylinder seals over clay tablets.

Question 42

Cylinder seals may have functioned as ?

Answer 42

official signatures, confirming temple gifts or authenticating elite decrees. Pressing the seals into numerous clay tablets allowed the production of multiple identical images.

Question 43

The imprints of the seals, however small, can be seen as early forms of ?

Answer 43

multiple original artworks. As such, they anticipate printmaking technologies and, ultimately, other mass media. It is important to note that the seals were exclusive possessions; specific dignitaries “owned” the images and thereby the right to reproduce them. This was not exactly the same as individual ownership; specific social roles gave individuals the right to “own” certain images and, by extension, the related cylinder seals.

Question 44

Cuneiform?

Answer 44

The people of the Sumerian cities developed a writing system, called cuneiform, done with pointed sticks pressed into wet clay tablets. Most of these tablets are economic and administrative in nature; many document the economic activities of the temple. They provide records of the sheep, grains and other goods brought to the priests in honor of the divine overseers. But other cuneiform inscriptions are poetic accounts of the culture’s myths.

Question 45

Ziggurat?

Answer 45

the most important structure of the Sumerian city, the massive stepped pyramidal platform known as a ziggurat that stood at its center. The sacred structure was heavily fortified, with thick walls protecting concentric rings of higher and higher elevations. The ancient Sumerian city formed an organic unity, an arena in which the mythic life of the king with the gods became—through ritual and art—the experience of the people themselves. The ziggurat was a symbolic mountain on top of which was the temple, the house of the city’s patron deity, where—on behalf of the people—the Sumerian priests and kings communed with the divine.

Question 46

Standard of Ur?

Answer 46

Found in one of the largest graves in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, the Standard is a large (8” x 19”) wooden box covered with elaborate mosaic of shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli. Both sides of the box—which may have served as part of a musical instrument, perhaps a lyre–are organized into three registers. One side depicts war: above, soldiers lead prisoners of war to their king; below, infantry and charioteers do battle with an unnamed enemy. The “Peace” side of the box depicts what may be a victory celebration. Servants wait upon the king and his guests at a banquet. In two registers below them, commoners parade to the court, bearing gifts for the ruler.

Question 47

Victory Stela of Naram-Sin?

Answer 47

The belief in divine encounter on a mountaintop was continued in a later phase of Ancient Mesopotamia, as we can see in the Victory Stela of Naram-Sin. The victorious ruler climbs the mountain to meet the solar deities indicated by the many-spiked abstract forms at the top. He climbs the mountain to thank the gods for the victory they have led him to. Below, his troops continue the massacre of their foes. The stela is one of the earliest known monuments erected to glorify a conqueror, a function that art takes many times later in history. The sculptural portrait of Sadam toppled during the 2002 Desert War is only one of many, many later examples.

Question 48

Parthenon?

Answer 48

The sacred precinct in the Ancient Greek city-state of Athens was an artificially-leveled mountaintop known as the Acropolis (literally, the city on a mountain). The center of the Acropolis was the plaza-like space in which the citizenry gathered. On the southeast side of the plaza was the largest temple on the Acropolis: the Parthenon. A temple dedicated to the patron deity Athena, the Parthenon was the single most important building in Ancient Athens. Designed by architects Ictinus and Callicrates in 448-432 B.C., it has become the model for so many financial and governmental structures in the ensuing centuries that it is difficult to “see” in any critical fashion. In ancient times, the Parthenon was brightly painted in red, blue and gold with elaborate patterns that might be considered ornate, even gaudy to some viewers.

Question 49

Athena?

Answer 49

Like the sanctuaries of Ancient Sumer, the Parthenon was sited on a mountaintop, which was fortified to protect the sacred precinct from ongoing military assault. Like the deities of Sumer, Athena ruled over certain natural and cultural phenomena. Her dominion over wisdom comes from her miraculous birth. One day Zeus, the father of the gods, had a horrid headache. He called upon the God of the Forge Hephaistos (known as Vulcan to the later Romans), who struck Zeus’s head with an axe and split it open. Out popped Athena, fully grown and fully armed. Born from the brain of the divine patriarch, she embodied his wisdom. She won dominion over war at sea when she bested her uncle Neptune, who was Zeus’s brother and the God of the Ocean, in a mythic contest. When the Athenians won a key victory over the Persians in a sea battle, Pericles, the leader of the city, determined to rebuild the old temple to Athena in gratitude. The resulting edifice is spectacular testimony to Athenian military prowess, one man’s determination, and dozens of artists’ incomparable skills.

Question 50

Pediment?

Answer 50

The largest sculptural figures appeared on the pediments, the triangular roof components. Both the east pediment and the west pediment framed complex representations of the patron goddess Athena.

Question 51

Frieze?

Answer 51

a horizontal ribbon of relief carvings that circles the cella and treasury at roof level of the Parthenon.

Question 52

Venus?

Answer 52

The female nude sculptures that survive represent Aphrodite (later known as Venus), the Goddess of Love and wife of Hephaistos-Vulcan, the God of the Forge. The Classical Greek Aphrodite figure was typically rather modestly posed, with her left hand suspended over their genital area.