阅读理解。
下面文章有5处(第61～65题)需要添加小标题.请从以下选项(A、B、C、D、E和F)中选
出符合各段意思的小标题,并在答题纸上将相应选项的标号涂黑.选项中有一项是多余选项.
A. There are few statues in the Middle East.
B. Art is a good means for people to know about religions.
C. Artists express their feelings and opinions in their works.
D. People know more about our culture through learning art history.
E. Art is more objective than history itself.
F. Art history provides information of different places and people. |
A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about a culture than is possible to learn
in general history classes. Most typical history courses concentrate on politics, economics and war.
But art history focuses on much more than this because art reflects not only the political values of a
people, but also religious beliefs, emotions, and psychology.
In addition, information about the daily activities of our ancestors - or of people very different from
our own - can be provided by art. In short, art expresses the essential qualities of a time and a place,
and a study of it clearly offers us a deeper understanding than can be found in most history books.
In history books, objective information about the political life of a country is presented; that is, facts
about politics are given, but opinions are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is subjective: it reflects
emotions and opinions. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya was perhaps the first truly "political"
artist. In his well-known painting The Third of May 1808, he criticized the Spanish government for its
misuse of power over people. Over a hundred years later, symbolic images were used in Pablo
Picasso's Guernica to express the horror of war. Meanwhile, on another continent, the powerful
paintings of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros - as well as the works
of Alfredo Ramos Martins - depicted these Mexican artists' deep anger and sadness about social
problems.
In the same way, art can reflect a culture's religious beliefs. For hundreds of years in Europe, religious
art was almost the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with
paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. Although most people couldn't read, they c
ould still understand biblical stories in the pictures on church walls.
By contrast, one of the main characteristics of art in the Middle East was (and still is) its absence of
human and animal images. This reflects the Islamic belief that statues are unholy. That's why no figures
can be found in or around places of interest in these regions.