3. What heralds the beginning of Cubism? How are the figures depicted in this painting? In what way did Cezanne influence the development of Cubism? What forms dominate in the SeatedWoman? What phases are distinguished within Cubism? What are their peculiarities? How long did Cubism exist?
4. What is an epitome to the Synthetic phase of Cubism? What is a typical Synthetic Cubist picture? How are the figures depicted in this painting? How do the planes proceed? What style prevailed in Picasso's work during the years immediately after World War I?
5. What impressed Picasso when he was in Italy? What style did Picasso develop in 1921? What were the results of Picasso's experiments with the Classical style? How did Picasso make the figures? How long did this Classical style coexist with late Cubism in Picasso's production?
6. What artistic movement attracted Picasso during the 1930s? What is Picasso's best painting of this decade? What images did Picasso combine in this picture? How is the actual destruction pictured? What is depicted at the left? Where is the bull pictured? What symbols dominate in this painting? What do they mean? What is borne by the Cubist aesthetic means? How can Picasso's latest works be characterised?
III. i. Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases:
to cast a shadow across the twentieth century; artistic activity; to fall under the influence of; a figure of extraordinary sculptural simplicity and beauty; the proverbial colour of melancholy; strolling players; to herald Cubism; the partially decomposed figures; to derive from nature; art historians; component planes; abstract current; the mural paintings; incompatible styles; to execute an enormous painting; to fulfil a commission; crimes against humanity; Christian iconography; motives from Spanish folk culture.
ii. Give English equivalents of the following phrases:
творческая деятельность; попасть под влияние; легендарный цвет печали; фигуры чрезвычайной скульптурной простоты и красоты; искусствоведы; сопутствующие планы; провозгласить кубизм; частично деформированные фигуры; христианская иконография; преступления против человечества; элементы испанской фольклорной культуры; движение абстракционистов; фрески; написать огромную картину.
iii. Make up questions of your own with the given phrases.
iv. Arrange the/allowing in the pairs of synonyms:
a) current; melancholy; aesthetic; mysterious; deserted; wreckage; fragmentary; epitome; to herald;
b) abandoned; smashed ruins; trend; broken; to proclaim; summary; sad; enigmatic; beautiful.
IV. Here are descriptions of some of Picasso's works of art. Match them up to the titles given below.
1. This painting shows a family of the strolling players grouped together physically, but emotionally detached, before a mysterious desert landscape.
2. This picture is an epitome to the Synthetic Cubism.
3. This is the greatest of all social protest pictures.
4. Picasso has made the figures graceless, emphasising the bulk and weight of their hands and feet, and intensifying the impersonality of their stony faces.
5. The figures in the painting are a Pierrot, a Harlequin and a Franciscan monk.
6. This painting heralds the beginning of Cubism.
7. The individual forms – the characteristic swelling and distortion of the neck muscles or the reduction of the eyes to trapezoids -are not derived from nature.
8. The figure of extraordinary sculptural simplicity and beauty is enveloped in self-pity and helplessness.
a. Guernica
b. Three Musicians
c. Three Women at the Spring
d. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
e. The Bottle ofSuze
f. Seated Woman
g. Absinthe Drinker
h. Salimbanques
V. Translate the text into English.
Эволюция искусства XX века наиболее ярко выражена в творчестве Пабло Пикассо.
Родившись в 1881 г. в маленьком испанском городке Малага, Пикассо уже в 1901 г. в Париже открывает свою первую персональную выставку, чтобы стать на последующие семьдесят лет центральной фигурой в западноевропейском искусстве. Период с 1901 по 1907 г. принято называть в его творчестве соответственно «голубым» (1901-1904) и «розовым» (1905 -1906). Картины, посвященные нищим, странствующим актерам, бродягам, выражают настроение усталости и обреченности. Они написаны в сине-зеленой гамме. С 1905 г., хотя темы остаются прежними, пространство заполняется розовато-голубоватой или золотистой дымкой.
Полотном «Авиньонские девушки» (1907) Пикассо ознаменовал рождение кубизма. В картине «Три женщины у источника» художник обращается к реалистическим формам. Пикассо отдал дань и сюрреализму, создав ряд произведений, чудовищно деформировав реальный образ человека.
Панно под названием «Герника» стало настоящим событием мировой художественной жизни. Эта композиция связала искусство Пикассо с жизнью всех народов, борющихся с насилием. До конца жизни Пикассо стремился раскрыть новые возможности искусства.
VI. Summarize the text.
VII. Topics for discussion.
1. Picasso's Blue and Rose periods.
2. Picasso's period of Cubism.
3. Picasso's paintings of social protest.
4. Picasso as the greatest artist of the XX-th century.
Unit XIX Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Salvador Dali typifies in his art the Surrealist movement at its height in the 1930s. After his visit to Paris in 1928 Dali experimented briefly with semi-abstract forms, as he was then under the influence of Picasso. Soon Dali set out on his individual path, based on his study of Freud, which seemed to clarify to him his personal fantasies and obsessions. Dali began producing what he called «hand-coloured photographs of the subconscious.» His desire to «materialise images of concrete irrationality with the utmost imperialist fury of precision» resulted in pictures of a quality and brilliance that cannot be ignored, done in bright colour, with an exactitude of statement that at times recalls less his idols Vermeer and Velazquez than the technique of the Netherlandish masters of the fifteenth century. Dali's terrifying images are always brought home with tremendous force by the magical virtuosity of his draughtsmanship and colour.
The Persistence of Memory, of 1931, is one of Dali's most striking and best-known early Surrealist paintings. Dali said the idea for the work occurred to him while he was eating ripe Cam-embert cheese. The «wet watches», as they were termed by the astonished, horrified and fascinated New York public when the picture was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, are disturbing in their destruction of the very idea of time. Three watches lie or hang limply, and the fourth is devoured by ants while a severed chinless head – its tongue hanging from its nose, its enormous eyelashes extended on its cheeks – lies equally limp on a barren plain. In the background, rendered with hallucinatory clarity, are the rocky cliffs of a Catalan bay.