2024年专四阅读练习：摄影和艺术

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　　摄影和艺术

　　The earliest controversies about the relationshipbetween photography and art centered on whetherphotograph’s fidelity to appearances anddependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine artas distinct from merely a practical art. Throughoutthe nineteenth century, the defence of photography was identical with the struggle to establishit as a fine art. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying ofreality, photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt againstcommonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting.

　　Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographersfind it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Serious photographers variously claim tobe finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselves—anything but making works of art. They are no longer willing to debate whether photographyis or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art. It showsthe extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumphof Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.

　　Photographers’ disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harriedstatus of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. Forexample, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they are getting awayfrom the pretensions of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionistpainters who imagined they were getting away from the intellectual austerity of classicalModernist painting by concentrating on the physical act of painting. Much of photography’sprestige today derives from the convergence of its aims with those of recent art, particularlywith the dismissal of abstract art implicit in the phenomenon of Pop painting during the1960’s. Appreciating photographs is a relief to sensibilities tired of the mental exertionsdemanded by abstract art. Classical Modernist painting—that is, abstract art as developed indifferent ways by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matisse—presupposes highly developed skills oflooking and a familiarity with other paintings and the history of art. Photography, like Poppainting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about itssubjects than about art.

　　Photography, however, has developed all the anxieties and self-consciousness of aclassic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the promotion ofphotography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so farthat the public will forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity—in short, anart.

　　1. What is the author mainly concerned with? The author is concerned with

　　[A]. defining the Modernist attitude toward art.

　　[B]. explaining how photography emerged as a fine art.

　　[C]. explaining the attitude of serious contemporary photographers toward photographyas art and placing those attitudes in their historical context.

　　[D]. defining the various approaches that serious contemporary photographers taketoward their art and assessing the value of each of those approaches.

　　2. Which of the following adjectives best describes “the concept of art imposed by thetriumph of Modernism” as the author represents it in lines 12—13?

　　[A]. Objective [B]. Mechanical. [C]. Superficial. [D]. Paradoxical.

　　3. Why does the author introduce Abstract Expressionist painter?

　　[A]. He wants to provide an example of artists who, like serious contemporaryphotographers, disavowed traditionally accepted aims of modern art.

　　[B]. He wants to set forth an analogy between the Abstract Expressionist painters andclassical Modernist painters.

　　[C]. He wants to provide a contrast to Pop artist and others.

　　[D]. He wants to provide an explanation of why serious photography, like othercontemporary visual forms, is not and should not pretend to be an art.

　　4. How did the nineteenth-century defenders of photography stress the photography?

　　[A]. They stressed photography was a means of making people happy.

　　[B]. It was art for recording the world.

　　[C]. It was a device for observing the world impartially.

　　[D]. It was an art comparable to painting.

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