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  3. The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph’s fidelity to appea

The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph’s fidelity to appea

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问题    The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph’s fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct from merely a practical art. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defence of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality, photographers asserted that it Was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting.
   Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Serious photographers variously claim to be finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselves -- anything but making works of art. They are no longer willing to debate whether photography is or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art. It shows the extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.
   Photographers’ disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harried status of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. For example, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they arc getting away from the pretensions of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionist painters who imagined they were getting away from the intellectual austerity of classical Modernist painting by concentrating on the physical act of painting. Much of photography’s prestige today derives from the convergence of its aims with those of recent art, particularly with the dismissal of abstract art implicit in the phenomenon of Pop painting during the 1960’s. Appreciating photographs is a relief to sensibilities tired of the mental exertions demanded by abstract art. Classical Modernist painting -- that is, abstract art as developed in different ways by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matisse -- presupposes highly developed skills of looking and a familiarity with other paintings and the history of art. Photography, like Pop painting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about its subjects than about art.
   Photography, however, has developed all the anxieties and self-consciousness of a classic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the promotion of photography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so far that the public will for get that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity -- in short, an art.
Why does the author introduce Abstract Expressionist painters?
选项 A、He wants to provide an example of artists who, like serious contemporary photographers, disavowed traditionally accepted aims of modem art.
B、He wants to set forth an analogy between the Abstract Expressionist painters and classical Modernist painters.
C、He wants to provide a contrast to Pop artist and others.
D、He wants to provide an explanation of why serious photography, like other contemporary vis ual forms, is not and should not pretend to be an art.
答案A
解析 该题问：作者为什么介绍抽象印象派画家？A项意为“他要列举这样艺术家的例子，他们像当代严肃的摄影家一样摒弃了传统上被接受的现代艺术目的”。见第三段第二句：“举例说，这些认为通过拍照可以摆脱绘画所表现的艺术的矫饰的摄影家，使我们想起了那些抽象表现主义画家，他们以为如果他们把注意力集中在绘画的具体行动上，就可以摆脱古典现代主义绘画的严肃的思想”。B项意为“他想在抽象表现主义画家和古典现代主义画家之间找出相似点”；C项意为“他要在流行艺术家和其他艺术家之间作一个对比”；D项意为“他想解释为什么严肃摄影，像其他当代视觉形式一样不是艺术，而且也不应当作艺术”。
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