托福阅读材料推荐:艺术类话题Painting

　　Painting in the United States

　　American painting before the 20th century had mainly consisted of portraits and landscapes based on European styles. Many American artists, such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), lived abroad and were influenced by European art. There was, however, an important group of American genre painters, the best of whom were Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and Thomas Eakins (1844-1916).

　　In the 1890's a group of young painters known as The Eight, led by Robert Henri (1865-1929), tried to create an art that was distinctly American. John Sloan (1871-1951) and George W. Bellows (1882-1925) painted life in the alleys, backyards, harbors, and slums. Members of The Eight helped organize the 1913 Armory Show of New York City. This exhibition, held in an armory, brought together modern art from the United States and Europe. At this show Americans saw the daring art of the cubists and other modern Europeans for the first time.

　　By the beginning of World War I, United States artists were aware of everything that was going on in modern European painting. But they did not make use of the new ideas until years later. Many painters in the 1930's were regional artists like Grant Wood (1891-1942), who painted realistic scenes of life in the Middle West.

　　After World War II, the United States became the world center of painting. Arshile Gorky (1904-48) and Jackson Pollock (1912-56) were among the leaders who helped to create a new style called action painting or abstract expressionism. Instead of trying to represent specific objects, they were interested mainly in color, design, rhythm, and new ways of applying paint. Pollock experimented with flinging and dripping color on his canvases from sticks dipped into buckets of paint. Such a bold technique is just one example of the 20th-century artist's search for originality and freedom of expression.

　　Early in the 1960's a group of artists in the United States reacted against abstract expressionism. These artists went to the other extreme. In trying to produce an art that expresses the spirit of today, they began to paint realistic pictures of everyday things. Their subjects included dart boards, light bulbs, comic strips, and street signs. The innovators in this movement included Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Jasper Johns (1930-). Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), Claes Oldenburg (1929-), and Andy Warhol (1928-87) were some of its leaders. Sometimes called "pop" (for popular) art, it represented a phase through which art passed. To many people, however, pop art presented an invitation to take a good look at the objects all around them. The design on a soup can or a bottle of cola might never have been noticed otherwise. Abstract expressionism opened people's minds; pop art opened their eyes.

　　In the mid-1960's, other types of art emerged. "Op," or optical art, was one. In op art, the tricks our eyesight can play become part of the artist's style. In Vaacov Agam's Double Metamorphosis II, the specially arranged patterns of line and color seem almost to vibrate.

　　Some abstract artists, such as Frank Stella (1936-) and Ellsworth Kelly (1923-), sometimes shape the canvas itself into circles, triangles, and other forms. Using bright colors, they often apply paint in hard-edged geometric shapes that conform to the shape of the canvas. So, it may be difficult to distinguish between painting and sculpture today, but we appreciate purity of color and relationships of shapes.

　　Sarah Bradford Landau

　　Department of Fine Arts

　　New York University

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