CLEP Humanities : Identifying Artists, Works, and Schools of 2D Visual Art from the Twentieth Century

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for CLEP Humanities

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Example Questions

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Example Question #341 : Renaissance To Contemporary 2 D Art

Which of the following artists was most well known for painting murals?

Possible Answers:

Joan Miró

Diego Rivera

Paul Cézanne

Frida Kahlo

Pablo Picasso

Correct answer:

Diego Rivera

Explanation:

The Mexican painter Diego Rivera first started his artistic career in the 1910s in Paris as a conventional Cubist. On the urging of the Mexican ambassador to France, Rivera began painting murals back in Mexico, which were large, symbolic, and drew on Mexican history and culture. This made Rivera an internationally famous artist, and he was commissioned to paint murals across the world.

Example Question #11 : Identifying Artists, Works, And Schools Of 2 D Visual Art From The Twentieth Century

Who was the Pop Artist well known for using images of flags and maps of the United States in his work?

Possible Answers:

Roy Lichtenstein

Andy Warhol

Jackson Pollack

Diane Arbus

Jasper Johns

Correct answer:

Jasper Johns

Explanation:

Like fellow Pop Artists Lichtenstein and Warhol, Jasper Johns used familiar symbols and images, but reshaped and transformed them to present them in new ways. Unlike his fellow Pop Artists, who preferred commercial and pop culture symbols, Johns largely used icons of Americana, most notably the American flag and maps of the United States. One of Johns' most well known paintings is of an American flag that is completely in white.

Example Question #12 : Identifying Artists, Works, And Schools Of 2 D Visual Art From The Twentieth Century

Which twentieth-century artist focused her career largely on self portraits?

Possible Answers:

Georgia O'Keefe

Louise Bourgeois

Diane Arbus

Frida Kahlo

Lee Krasner

Correct answer:

Frida Kahlo

Explanation:

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 #13 : Identifying Artists, Works, And Schools Of 2 D Visual Art From The Twentieth Century

Nighthawks, a famous painting that shows three customers and a bartender at a well-lit bar late at night from a distance, was made by which artist?

Possible Answers:

Edward Hopper

Georgia O'Keefe

Mark Rothko

Norman Rockwell

Joseph Stella

Correct answer:

Edward Hopper

Explanation:

Nighthawks was painted in 1942 by Edward Hopper, who sought to capture the inherent loneliness and suffocation of the "new" urban society as well as the effects of wartime.

Example Question #415 : 2 D Art

The French artist Marcel Duchamp helped to create what artistic movement?

Possible Answers:

Dada

Pop Art

Impressionism

Cubism

Abstract Expressionism

Correct answer:

Dada

Explanation:

Dada was an art movement that grew out of abstract and modernist movements in the early twentieth century. One of the most famous dadaist artists was Marcel Duchamp, a frenchman who began his career in a cubist vein, but then sought to make art that was less "retinal," or simply pleasing to the eye. Duchamp's art work challenged the very notion of what was "art," as in his 1917 "Fountain," a urinal Duchamp placed in the middle of a gallery space and only attributed as "R Mutt."

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