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1997年5月托福阅读全真试题

时间:2021-09-06 17:00:23 托福英语 我要投稿

1997年5月托福阅读全真试题

Question 1-8

1997年5月托福阅读全真试题

With Robert Laurent and William Zorach, direct carving

enters into the story of modern sculpture in the United States.

Direct carving - in which the sculptors themselves carve stone

or wood with mallet and chisel - must be recognized as some

-thing more than just a technique. Implicit in it is an aesthetic

principle as well: that the medium has certain qualities of beauty

and expressiveness with which sculptors must bring their

own aesthetic sensibilities into harmony. For example, some-

times the shape or veining in a piece of stone or wood suggests,

perhaps even dictates, not only the ultimate form, but

even the subject matter.

The technique of direct carving was a break with the nineteenth-

century tradition in which the making of a clay model

was considered the creative act and the work was then turned

over to studio assistants to be cast in plaster or bronze or carved

in marble. Neoclassical sculptors seldom held a mallet or chisel

in their own hands, readily conceding that the assistants they

employed were far better than they were at carving the finished

marble.

With the turn-of-the-century Crafts movement and the

discovery of nontraditional sources of inspiration, such as

wooden African figures and masks, there arose a new urge for

hands-on, personal execution of art and an interaction with the

medium. Even as early as the 1880's and 1890's, nonconformist

European artists were attempting direct carving. By

the second decade of the twentieth century, Americans -

Laurent and Zorach most notably - had adopted it as their primary

means of working.

Born in France, Robert Laurent(1890-1970) was a prodigy

who received his education in the United States. In 1905

he was sent to Paris as an apprentice to an art dealer, and in

the years that followed he witnessed the birth of Cubism,

discovered primitive art, and le