- The exam counts for 20% of the course grade.
- The exam covers material from the coursebook and from class presentations.
- No books or class notes may be used during the exam
- The exam must be written in the class room and during the class period.
- Short essays are required. This means college level writing: Complete and correct sentences with proper spelling and punctuation. Illegible answers will receive not credit.
- There are 140 points possible on this test. Some of you need the points so it will be helpful to take some time and care in writing the exam.
- The entire class period is allowed for the test. When you have completed the exam leave your test paper on the front desk. Class is then dismissed.
- What effect on civilization does the advent of photography have? What is the social impact? How, if at all, does the representation of the human body change? What is the consequence for the arts, particularly painting? You should select a painting to support your point and explain your position. (20 points)
- Explain the operation of cinematic montage in Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin. What does the montage do and how does it do it? What is the relation between the camera and the audience? How are space and time reconfigured?
Some information from notes.
Cinema is to make the image moves. The camera is the tool of an active editor. For Battleship they used original statement and cinematic grammar. Music is done by Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich. He is a Russian composer in the 20 Century-Music.
- Write a cogent paragraph explaining Darwin’s influence on Modernism. (20 points)
Some information from notes.
Modernism: single point view doesn’t work.
- Choose a painting from an Art History book. Identify it and give an analysis (decoding) with respect to Freud’s understanding of human being. (20 points)
- Consider William Butler Yeats’ poem The Second Coming. Write a short essay in which you consider why this work might be thought of as an anthem of Modernity. A copy of the poem is provided. (20 points)
Copy of the poem
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- Choose one form of contemporary media and detail its effects on current understandings of the arts. 20 points)
- What is Jean Francois Lyotard’s definition of Postmodernism? What does it tell us about the current state of civilization? You need to be specific. (20 points)
Some information from notes
Postmodernism is defined by jean as a mistrust of master narrative. Master narrative is an account that claims to explain everything. It also defined as wired.
