阅读理解
Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists.No matter
what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change-to find poetry
where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape (风景) is another unchanging element of art.It can be found from ancient times through the
17thcentury Dutch painters to the 19thcentury romanticists and impressionists.In the 1970s Alfred Leslie,
one of the new American realists, continued this practice.Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before.Unlike Cole
who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually
sees.In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the
highway in the background.He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄
影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the ageold question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their
understanding of reality in one form or another.The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects,
the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the CroMagnon cave people in their naturalistic
drawings of the animals in the ancient forests.To sum up, understanding reality is a nec
essary struggle for
artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant.Past or present,
Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience.Many and different are the
faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.
1. The underlined word "poetry" most probably means ________.
A. an object for artistic creation
B. a collection of poems
C. an unusual quality
D. a natural scene
2. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because ________.
A. they are close in style to works in ancient times
B. they look like works by 19thcentury painters
C. they draw attention to common things in life
D. they depend heavily on color photography
3. What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?
A. It will not be found in future works of art.
B. It does not have a longlasting standard.
C. It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.
D. It is lacking in modern works of art.
4. What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?
A. They express people's curiosity about the past.
B. They make people interested in everyday experience.
C. They are considered important for variety in form.
D. They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.
5. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?
A. History of the arts.
B. Basic questions of the arts.
C. New developments in the arts.
D. Use of modern technology in the arts.
