Chapter Five: Meanings in Art Quiz
Question 1
A symbol can have multiple meanings depending on the beliefs of the individuals viewing them.
True
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The swastika began as a symbol of good fortune and positive movement by the Buddhist stupa worship centers. In the twentieth century the symbol took on a very negative connotation when the Nazi Party appropriated it as a symbol of the superiority of the Aryan heritage.
Question 2
Still life is an arrangement of objects both made by humans and found in nature. This is what type of painting?
Genre
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Genre paintings are paintings of objects or scenes of everyday life.
Question 3
The invention of photography in the nineteenth century allowed questions that had long intrigued artists and scientists, but could not be answered by observation with the naked eye, to finally be answered.
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In 1872 Leland Stanford, head of Union Pacific Railroad, accepted the challenge to prove whether all four feet of a horse left the ground when galloping. He hired Eadweard Muybridge who used photography along a race track to photograph the horse and rider and prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when galloping.
Question 4
Lily Martin Spencer used her paintings to challenge the social structure of the role of men and women in the mid-nineteenth century United States
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Lilly Martin Spencer painted scenes of everyday life between herself and her husband. Men and women had rigid gender roles that were the social norm, Spencer depicts the man in an equally caring and warm family role, as more than just a breadwinner. She draws the family into one circle.
Question 5
Which concept refers to the use of specific figural or naturalistic images to hold meaning within a group?
Symbolism
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Symbolism refers to the use of specific figural or naturalistic images, or abstracted graphic signs that hold shared meaning within a group. A symbol is an image or sign that is understood by a group to stand for something.
Question 6
Type of literacy that involves interpreting a work of art.
Visual literacy
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Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text.
Question 7
A figure of speech in which one thing symbolically stands in for another, unrelated thing or idea is what?
Metaphor
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A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing symbolically stands for another, perhaps unrelated, thing or idea.
Question 8
Which type of painting dwells on mortality and the transience of life in the face of death?
Vanitas
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A vanitas painting uses mortality as its subject matter
Question 9
What is a motif?
Distinguishing features or ideas which are symbolic
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Motifs can carry differing meanings in one context from what they might in another.
Question 10
The broader study and interpretation of subject matter and pictorial themes in a work of art is what?
Iconography
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Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct from artistic style.