Passage 1(Art)
中国历史文化名城Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (1887), a van Gogh lf-portrait done in Paris, is one of his most intriguing yet most neglected works. The artist’s gloomy eyes stare out from his face in half-profile, facing to the left, and the world-weary expression initially appears to support the view of critics such as James Risr, who explains van Gogh’s lf-portraits as a sustained arch for identity.
Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (1887) initially appears to comply with Risr’s evaluation. In this work, the painter depicted himlf wearing a jumper of inten blue before a background done almost entirely in gray but with noticeable blurs of blue—most notably in the top right corner. Overall the painting appears to be unfinished, a hastily done portrait that the painter abandoned to create more lasting works.
In its incomplete state we can precily read “an unfinished life,” and in the wild strokes of casual blue in the background and splashed across the artist’s garments we are instantly confronted with the n of growing “more and more out of control.”
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But is this an accurate evaluation? On the one hand, Risr ems to have legitimate cau for envisioning van Gogh’s lf-portrait as psychological lf-analysis, a painting that “reveals an emotional intensity hiding beneath the surface”. But is the chaotic surface effect of the blue in this painting actually a form of lf-criticism, the artist’s own inten and emotional despair over his loss of control—or is it reprentative of an underlying aesthetic who focus is not the painter himlf? An intriguing alternative exists: van Gogh may not have painted the lf-portraits as psychoanalytical evaluations of himlf, but instead merely as experiments in technique. The artist often stated that he painted himlf only becau he lacked other models, a view found in the critical work of both Richard Kendall and T.J. Shackelford. Perhaps, then, van Gogh was not trying to learn about himlf but about art as a whole while painting the portraits and hence we ought to read the lf-portraits as a ries of statements about art itlf. The key to this analysis may be a careful exploration of the special color symbolism van Gogh attached to the color blue. Unlike our everyday association of blue with melancholy or boredom, the artist imagined blue as a symbol for the infinite or the limitless. Such a view calls into question t
he idea that lf-portraits such as van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (1887) were a psychological profile of the artist’s melancholy or despair. Instead, when we consider blue’s special symbolic role as the infinite in van Gogh’s Paris lf-portraits, we discover a new narrative describing the painter’s own aesthetic: his insistence that the future of art lay in expressive rather than realistic methods.
1. What does James Risr think of van Gogh’s lf-portraits?
A. Different lf-portraits reprent van Gogh’s different attitude towards life.
凹面镜的应用B. Many of his lf-portraits have been neglected by critics.
C. Van Gogh sought for identity through all his lf-portraits.
D. Van Gogh expresd his weariness of the world in most of his lf-portraits.
2. Which description is mentioned in the cond paragraph about van Gogh’s Self-portrait with a Straw Hat?
钢纤维混凝土
A. The painting is not well done.
B. The painting mainly ud gray.
C. The painter ud blue but erad it later.
D. The portrait showed a depresd emotion.
3. Who felt that the lf-portrait showed “an unfinished life”?
A. Van Gogh himlf.
四叶草图片大全
B. Risr’s opponents.
C. The author.
D. James Risr.
4. According to Richard Kendall and T.J. Shackelford, the Self-portrait with a Straw Hat may not have anything to do with __________.
A. van Gogh’s painting technique
B. the symbolism of color
C. the psychological analysis of the painter
D. the painter’s aesthetic
5. According to van Gogh himlf, his lf-portraits were intended to be __________.
A. narrative
B. expressive
C. analytic
D. artistic
音乐教师Passage 2 (British customs and culture.)
Scottish customs and traditions cover a very wide range of topics. Everything from kilts to golf, bagpipes to whisky, Celtic cross to Protestant missionary work, the "cond sight" to Nessie.
老公生日礼物
The history of the bagpipes takes us a long way back from today and far away from Scotland. Everyone thinks about Scotland when they hear the word “bagpipe”, but this instrument is so old that true age and origin are unknown. In some historical documents it is written that the pipes were first played somewhere around Asia Minor in 1000 BC. Also, it is said, by some, that "Emperor Nero played the "Pipes" not the fiddle, while Rome burned." Some 'form' of bagpipes are ud in many European countries but in Scotland they have become an integral part of the country's culture. Scotland is the ancestral home of the "Great Highland Bagpipes" known to all as the "Great Pipes".
A Pipe band is one thing that every visitor of Scotland wants to e. The are groups of men (in modern times it can be both men and women); each group has matching skirts, fancy jackets and strange little hats. They march around squeezing the air out of big tarta
n bags (known as bagpipes) and blowing it in again through a pipe attached to the bag. This results in a racket known as "the skirl o' the pipes" which is almost indistinguishable from the noi made by the haggis during the mating ason. The pipe bands often turn out to be Australians, not Scots at all!
关于熊猫的作文The tartan kilt has long been the most recognizable cultural tradition of the Highland Scots, but just like the other symbols, kilts have also an unknown origin. One sure fact is that the wearing of the kilt has been developed in the 19th century during the reign of Queen Victoria. It had been created for some rational reasons: men who wore it could make very quick moves, wade through rivers and shelter in huts, woods and rocks, etc.
