首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
What makes an artist great? Brilliant composition, no doubt. Superb draughtsmanship, certainly. Originality of subject or of con
What makes an artist great? Brilliant composition, no doubt. Superb draughtsmanship, certainly. Originality of subject or of con
admin
2015-01-10
154
问题
What makes an artist great? Brilliant composition, no doubt. Superb draughtsmanship, certainly. Originality of subject or of concept, sometimes. But surely true greatness means that the creator of a painting has brought a certain je ne sais quoi to the work as well.
There is, however, a type of person who seems to sait perfectly well what that quoi is, and can turn it out on demand. In 1945, for example, a Dutchman named Han van Meegeren faced execution for selling a national art treasure, in the form of a painting by Vermeer, to Hermann Goring, Hitler’s deputy. His defence was that it was a forgery he had painted himself. When asked to prove it by copying a Vermeer he scorned the offer. Instead he turned out a completely new painting, "Jesus Among the Doctors", in the style of the master, before the eyes of his incredulous inquisitors.
Goring, who was facing a little local difficulty at the time, did not sue van Meegeren. But that has not been the experience of Glafira Rosales, an art dealer in New York who admitted this week that she has, over the past 15 years, fooled two local commercial art galleries into buying 63 forged works of art for more than $ 30m. She is being forced to give the money back, and is still awaiting sentence. Ms Rosales is guilty of passing goods off as something they are not, and should take the rap for the fraud. But although art forgers do a certain amount of economic damage, they also provide public entertainment by exposing the real values that lie at the heart of the art market.
That art market pretends that great artists are inimitable, and that this inimitability justifies the often absurd prices their work commands. Most famous artists are good: that is not in question. But as forgers like van Meegeren and Pei-Shen Qian, the painter who turned out Ms Rosales’s Rothkos and Pollocks, show, they are very imitable indeed. If they were not, the distinction between original and knock-off would always be obvious. As Ms Rosales’s customers have found, no doubt to their chagrin, it isn’t. If the purchasers of great art were buying paintings only for their beauty, they would be content to display fine fakes on their walls. The fury and embarrassment caused by the exposure of a forger suggests this is not so.
Expensive pictures are primarily what economists call positional goods—things that are valuable largely because other people can’t have them. The painting on the wall, or the sculpture in the garden, is intended to say as much about its owner’s bank balance as about his taste. With most kit a higher price reduces demand. But art, sports cars and fine wine invert the laws of economics. When the good that is really being purchased is evidence that the buyer has forked out a bundle, price spikes cause demand to boom.
All this makes the scarcity and authenticity that underpin lofty valuations vital. Artists forget this at their peril: Damien Hirst’s spot pictures, for instance, plummeted in value when it became clear that they had been produced in quantities so vast nobody knew quite how many were out there, and when the market lost faith in a mass-production process whose connection with the original artist was, to say the least, tenuous. Ms Rosales’s career is thus a searing social commentary on a business which purports to celebrate humanity’ s highest culture but in which names are more important than aesthetics and experts cannot tell the difference between an original and a fake. Unusual, authentic, full of meaning—her life itself is surely art, even if the paintings were not.
In the sentence "Ms Rosales…should take the rap for the fraud, "(para. 3), the expression "take the rap" can best be paraphrased as______.
选项
A、take the consequences and receive punishment
B、feel guilty of her forgery over the past 15 years
C、apologize for fooling the general public
D、give the money back to the commercial art galleries
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/0xSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
Short-sightednesscanbetheresultofanabnormallythickeyeballorthedistortionofthelensoftheeye.
Itiswellknownthatteenageboystendtodobetter【C1】________maththangirls,thatmalehighschoolstudentsaremorelikely
Expressionismisanartisticstyleinwhichtheartistseekstodepictnotobjectiverealitybutratherthesubjectiveemotions
AlthoughtherearemanyskillfulBraillereaders,thousandsofotherblindpeoplefinditdifficulttolearnthatsystemTheyar
Seekingtoframehisnewadministrationasonewithafirmfocusonclosingthegapbetweenchildrenfromaffluentandpoorfami
A、Itisaworldwideproblem.B、Itisaregionalproblem.C、Itisasocialproblem.D、Itisabiologicalproblem.A第一段第二句便提到“The
A、Thelargefueltankswerebroken.B、Itwasanobviousterroristattack.C、Nobodywasinjuredorkilled.D、Theattackerstried
A、fiercecompetitioninnuclearpowerbusinessB、failureinotherbusinesseslikesemiconductorsandDVDplayersC、popularityof
著名实业家阿瑟泰格的办公室周末遭劫,少量现金失窃,办公室内一片狼藉。关键词汇:prominent:有名的,著名的;bebrokeninto:被偷盗了;interriblemess:很乱,杂乱。这句话的难点是里面出现的一些难点词汇较难翻译,比如前面提
A、Aschoolteacher.B、AclerktothecurrentChiefJustice.C、Anappealscourtjudge.D、Aextremistzealot.C
随机试题
格林巴利综合征的临床特征包括
设总体X~N(μ,σ2),统计假设为H0:μ=μ0。对H1:μ≠μ0,若用t检验法,则在显著水平α下的拒绝域为()
关于PET/CT显像,正确的是
一级预防的内容包括
成排布置的低压配电屏,其长度超过6m时,屏后的通道应设两个出口,并宜布置在通道两端,在下列哪种条件下应增加出口?()
设计过程中的质量管理包括()。
设计方案的评价方法中的多指标法是采用多个指标,将各个对比方案的相应指标值逐一进行分析比较,按照各种指标数值的高低对其作出评价,其评价指标包括()。
某商业银行分支机构筹备组与当地企业签订贷款合同,贷款30万给该企业。这个贷款合同的问题在于()
甲、乙签订货物买卖合同,约定由甲代办托运。甲遂与丙签订运输合同,合同中载明乙为收货人。运输途中,因丙的驾驶员丁的重大过失发生交通事故,致货物受损,无法向乙按约交货。下列哪项说法是正确的?()
查询尚未归还书(还书日期为空值)的图书编号和借书日期,正确的SQL语句是( )。
最新回复
(
0
)