Test 4

Question 1

What do the triangles along the rim of Kuakudili’s female dance mask represent for Baule viewers?

Answer 1

Would have recalled the rays of light cast by the full moon, and the pair of birds and the horns at the top would have linked the mask to various fables and proverbs.

Question 2

What are the multiple meanings evoked by the Kanaga headdress left in Paris after the 1931 Colonial Exposition?

Answer 2

Could be a jackal, a grid formed by the raised beds in the Dogon agricultural fields, or funeral shrouds woven of indigo something… The ears at the top could be the first man and woman.

Question 3

What phase of Cubism is represented by Picasso’s Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Braque’s The Portuguese

Answer 3

Analytic Cubism (defined by complete destruction of form).

Question 4

What was the source of inspiration for the projecting cylindrical soundhole of Picasso’s Guitar of 1912?

Answer 4

A Grebo/Krou mask motif.

Question 5

What was Henri Matisse’s attitude toward the art of Cézanne?

Answer 5

He was interested in Cezanne’s use of color; “Cezanne is the master of us all,” in reference to his colorism. He preferred to focus less on the reduction of planes.

Question 6

What name was given to Matisse and Derain to describe their use of color?

Answer 6

Fauvism/Fauves.

Question 7

What name is given to the curling tendril-and-leaf forms found in Islamic art?

Answer 7

Arabesques.

Question 8

How were Nyeleni sculptures used by Bamana men?

Answer 8

Used in initiation ceremonies where these young, unmarried Bamana men would dance around with these sculptures - idealized feminine figures - to demonstrate their eligibility and their attractiveness.
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Question 9

What image was printed on the cover of the Surrealist journal Minotaure, no. 1, June 1933?

Answer 9

A mixed media collage with the drawing of a minotaur, all by Picasso. Irrational form of life, connected to fascism and capitalism in Europe.

Question 10

Why did the Surrealists take an interest in the mythical figure of the Minotaur?

Answer 10

It gave them a symbol of irrationality, a figure driven by irrational desires and impulses rather than rational thinking (which is what Fascism was believed to be).

Question 11

What was the Surrealists’ name for the technique of creating art without conscious control?

Answer 11

Automatism; is a technique for producing art rooted in the unconscious.

Question 12

What is the name given to the types of forms in Joan Miró’s Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird?

Answer 12

Biomorphic surrealist forms (clearly a life form, but the life form specifically is unclear).

Question 13

How does Man Ray represent the human figure in the frontispiece of Minotaure, no. 7, 1935?

Answer 13

As a minotaur, using his pose, dramatic lighting/shadows, and features of his body.

Question 14

What is the relationship between what we see in Picasso’s Guernica to the events that took place on April 26, 1937, in Guernica?

Answer 14

It is a representation/response to the civilian bombing in Guernica, showing extreme horror and terror despite no bombs being dropped in the painting.

Question 15

In what ways does Wifredo Lam’s The Jungle connect to Cuban culture?

Answer 15

Stalks of sugarcane and tobacco leaves are present (important for the Cuban agricultural economy), Santeria deities (Cuban religious figures), faces resemble African masks, Lam being Afro-Cuban himself.

Question 16

Who are the participants in the struggle pictured in the lower part of the central section (From the Conquest to 1930) of Diego Rivera’s History of Mexico?

Answer 16

Aztec Warriors and Spanish cavalry being injured.

Question 17

How does José Clemente Orozco’s Epic of American Civilization differ in its subject matter from his earlier Maternity?

Answer 17

The EAC focuses on the working class/the people and political messages/figures, and images of labor, whereas Maternity, is religious; an image of motherhood, depicts blonde Madonnas and flying angels and is heavily inspired by Italian Renaissance art.

Question 18

What is the label associated with paintings by Salvador Dalí like Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach?

Answer 18

Naturalistic Surrealism - outlandish imagery in a naturalistic style.

Question 19

Why do art historians associate paintings like The Broken Column by Frida Kahlo with Surrealism?

Answer 19

Because the imagery represents things in real life, but are not quite possible/realistic (they are like imagery from dreams, very outlandish/dreamlike in a naturalistic/surrealist style). Presents outlandish, bizarre imagery in a naturalistic style.

Question 20

How are the two women dressed in Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas?

Answer 20

The Frida on the left wears a European-style lace dress, and the Frida on the right wears a Tehuana dress, associated with Oaxacan with an emphasis on Zapotec identity.

Question 21

What was the Works Progress Administration?

Answer 21

An agency that employed many people and artists who had no jobs during the Great Depression and carried out public works projects, such as construction (property/buildings) and even art murals.

Question 22

What is at the upper left of Aaron Douglas’s An Idyll of the Deep South?

Answer 22

Star that emits a diagonal beam of light, hopes for a new political system that ushers in a new economy. Reference to Nazis and fascism.

Question 23

What are the figures at the right of From Slavery Through Reconstruction celebrating?

Answer 23

The freed slaves are celebrating the end of slavery.

Question 24

What became of Augusta Savage’s Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp)?

Answer 24

This sculpture was destroyed after the end of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Question 25

What kind of correspondence did Piet Mondrian detect between boogie-woogie music and what he wanted to achieve in Broadway Boogie Woogie?

Answer 25

Dynamic rhythm. Wanted to represent the liveliness of the music and New York. (The pulsating rhythm of the music) The opposition of pure means is present in both the music and the painting.

Question 26

What is the significance of the fact that there are abstract artworks from many cultures and periods (e.g. Sengai Gibon’s Circle, Triangle, and Square)?

Answer 26

Abstraction is often seen as one of the innovations of European modernism, but actually, it existed in many times and places prior to European modernism. It’s not an innovation of modernism and any statements that you come across saying it is are purely ideological.

Question 27

What medium did Jacob Lawrence adopt for his Migration Series?

Answer 27

Used tempera, inspired 14th and 15th-century Italian paintings he saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Question 28

What inspired the colors of Jacob Lawrence’s art?

Answer 28

Inspired by his mother’s scatter rugs, and by the colors of Harlem itself.

Question 29

What name is given to the sculptures Bicycle Wheel and Fountain by Marcel Duchamp?

Answer 29

Readymade art.

Question 30

In what ways does Jackson Pollock’s Mural anticipate his later drip paintings?

Answer 30

He developed an allover composition. The composition has vertical and surreal elements. The painting is quite large and has splashes/dashes of paint throughout, showing spontaneity and creative expression. Not methodical.

Question 31

What did Pollock say was the source of his painting?

Answer 31

The unconscious.

Question 32

Why is it difficult to gender the forms of abstract art of the postwar era?

Answer 32

Because the gendered terms don’t correlate with the paintings at all or the gender of the artist (softer pools of paint = menstrual = female, hard splashes = ejaculate = male) Sexual innuendos.

Question 33

What was the name of the medium used by Jasper Johns in Flag?

Answer 33

Encaustic; pigment mixed with hot wax.

Question 34

What was the name given to the works by Robert Rauschenberg that combined painted, sculpted, and found elements?

Answer 34

Combines; things that integrate 3D elements with painted components.

Question 35

What technique did Andy Warhol use to make the Marilyn Diptych?

Answer 35

Silkscreen/screen printing process using readymade/found images

Question 36

In what way did Warhol’s Brillo Boxes relate to the work of James Harvey?

Answer 36

Harvey originally designed the Brillo Boxes, and was an aspiring abstract artist - and was very upset over the fact that his works were being used without acknowledgment by Warhol.

Question 37

How does Adrian Piper’s Catalysis III use language?

Answer 37

Wore a sign that said “Wet Paint,” and deliberately went into places that elicited stares.

Question 38

What changed in the art of Lorna Simpson in the early 1990s?

Answer 38

She transitioned away from the figurative aesthetic and toward the found objects and readymade aesthetic (like Duchamp).

Question 39

What are El Anatsui’s Intermittent Signals made of?

Answer 39

Aluminium tops and wrappers from liquor bottles, stitching them together using copper wire. The pattern resembles that of a kente.

Question 40

What earlier works from this class are evoked by Mickalene Thomas’s Marie of 2014?

Answer 40

Picasso’s Maquette for Minotaure, Manet’s Olympia, Titian’s Venus of Urbina, and Ingres’ Grand Odalisque.