All AP Art History Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #430 : 2 D Art
Based on the use of color in his paintings, choose the person who would have said that color was not given to us so that we should imitate nature, but so that we would express our emotions.
Jan Vermeer
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Jean-Francois Millet
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Matisse wanted color to reflect feelings, and so used "nonrepresentational colors." He and the Fauves freed color from realistic representation of the subject. All the others are more traditional and realistic in their use of color.
Example Question #431 : 2 D Art
Which twentieth-century artist focused her career largely on self portraits?
Lee Krasner
Louise Bourgeois
Georgia O'Keefe
Diane Arbus
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who took up painting after a horrific bus accident at the age of eighteen in 1925 and her marriage to the European-trained muralist Diego Rivera. Kahlo painted almost entirely self portraits, typically close ups of her own face, to which she added in the background indigenous native imagery, surrealist symbols, and references to her own troubled life. Her stormy marriage to Rivera was well known, and combined with her ill health contributed to a sense of loneliness and alienation in her work.
Example Question #432 : 2 D Art
What artist created the works Stenographic Figure and She-Wolf in the years leading up to his discovery of a signature, iconic style?
Klimt
Jackson Pollock
Calder
Boccioni
Kandinsky
Jackson Pollock
She Wolf and Stenographic Figure are popular Pollock pieces that hint at the artist's future abandonment of representational art in favor of his classic drip paintings. The rest are other 19th/20th century artists with signature styles.
Example Question #433 : Ap Art History
Magritte's The False Mirror is a depiction of what?
A movie screen
A camera lens
An eye
A TV screen
A mirror
An eye
The False Mirror depicts a large eye with an iris of blue sky. The title was given to Magritte by the Belgian writer Paul Nouge. It suggests an inherent limitation in the human eye's ability to perceive truth.
Example Question #433 : 2 D Art
The Fluxus movement in the 1960s and 1970s was notable for which of the following characteristics?
Outsourcing of manufacturing to professional fabricators
Synthesis of different artistic media
Commerce-centric sensibility
Desire to soothe the viewer
Complexity of design
Synthesis of different artistic media
Fluxus artists railed against commercial art. They wanted to shock the viewer with simple, rather than complex, work, and they were eager to work with whatever materials they had on hand rather than outsourcing anything.
Example Question #434 : 2 D Art
Georges Braque, belongs to which of the following artistic movements?
Dadaism
Cubism
Fauvism
Impressionism
Cubism
Georges Braque was one of the early developers and founders of Cubism in the early twentieth century. Compared with his contemporaries Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, Braque’s work was much more geometric and used more dull and dark colors. Still, Braque’s deconstruction of representational forms into component shapes and a modernist approach are hallmarks of cubism.
Example Question #435 : 2 D Art
Georges Braque's work is most similar in style to _________________.
Paul Gauguin
Henri Matisse
Pablo Picasso
Vincent Van Gogh
Pablo Picasso
George Braque and Pablo Picasso developed cubism literally side by side, often painting in close proximity in the years 1909-1914. Built off of previous artistic movements which drew away from strict representation like expressionism and fauvism, Braque and Picasso built cubism on a structure of more monochromatic colors and geometric shapes. These approaches made their painting even less representational than previous abstract movements, while also needing more artistic and technical skill to create their works.
Example Question #436 : 2 D Art
This painting was created in which century?
17th
13th
20th
16th
20th
This painting is in the cubist style, which can be detected in the use of disjoint geometric shapes that depict the subject from multiple angles at the same time. Since Cubism is an exclusively 20th century movement, that's what the answer must be.
Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1913_Popova_Das_Modell_anagoria.JPG
Example Question #437 : 2 D Art
The artist of this work is ________________.
Rodin
Monet
Van Gogh
Gauguin
Van Gogh
This is a self-portrait of Van Gogh. You can recognize his characteristic large brush strokes and post-impressionist aesthetic.
Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh#/media/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Self-Portrait_-_Google_Art_Project_(719161).jpg
Example Question #438 : 2 D Art
The pop art movement focused on a mix between what two elements?
Low art and high culture
Pop culture and high art
High society and pop culture
High art and popular culture
High art and popular culture
Pop Art's central tenet was that art could borrow from all sources of society including elements of high art and low or popular culture. Pop Artists believed that everything was interconnected and aimed to draw sources of their inspiration from this idea.