2014年公共英语五级考试阅读理解练习题(6)

2014-04-02 18:57:00来源：网络

　　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 are 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 forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity-in short, an art.

　　1. What is the author mainly concerned with? The author is concerned with

　　[A]. defining the Modernist attitude toward art.

　　[B]. explaining how photography emerged as a fine art.

　　[C]. explaining the attitude of serious contemporary photographers toward photography as art and placing those attitudes in their historical context.

　　[D]. defining the various approaches that serious contemporary photographers take toward their art and assessing the value of each of those approaches.

　　2. Which of the following adjectives best describes “the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism” as the author represents it in lines 12-13?

　　[A]. Objective [B]. Mechanical. [C]. Superficial. [D]. Paradoxical.

　　3. Why does the author introduce Abstract Expressionist painter?

　　[A]. He wants to provide an example of artists who, like serious contemporary photographers, disavowed traditionally accepted aims of modern 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 visual forms, is not and should not pretend to be an art.

　　4. How did the nineteenth-century defenders of photography stress the photography?

　　[A]. They stressed photography was a means of making people happy.

　　[B]. It was art for recording the world.

　　[C]. It was a device for observing the world impartially.

　　[D]. It was an art comparable to painting.

　　Vocabulary

　　1. fine arts 美术(指绘画，雕刻，建筑，诗歌，音乐等)

　　2. assert 主张，声明，维护(权利)

　　3. privileged 特殊的，享受特权的，特许的

　　4. pretentious 狂妄的，做作的

　　5. irrelevant 不相干的，无关的

　　6. subversive 破坏性的，颠覆性的

　　On the 36th day after they had voted, Americans finally learned Wednesday who would be their next president: Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

　　Vice President Al Gore, his last realistic avenue for legal challenge closed by a U. S. Supreme Court decision late Tuesday, planned to end the contest formally in a televised evening speech of perhaps 10 minutes, advisers said.

　　They said that Senator Joseph Lieberman, his vice presidential running mate, would first make brief comments. The men would speak from a ceremonial chamber of the Old Executive office Building, to the west of the White House.

　　The dozens of political workers and lawyers who had helped lead Mr. Gore’s unprecedented fight to claw a come-from-behind electoral victory in the pivotal state of Florida were thanked Wednesday and asked to stand down.

　　“The vice president has directed the recount committee to suspend activities,” William Daley, the Gore campaign chairman, said in a written statement.

　　Mr. Gore authorized that statement after meeting with his wife, Tipper, and with top advisers including Mr. Daley.

　　He was expected to telephone Mr. Bush during the day. The Bush campaign kept a low profile and moved gingerly, as if to leave space for Mr. Gore to contemplate his next steps.

　　Yet, at the end of a trying and tumultuous process that had focused world attention on sleepless vote counters across Florida, and on courtrooms form Miami to Tallahassee to Atlanta to Washington the Texas governor was set to become the 43d U. S. president.

　　The news of Mr. Gore’s plans followed the longest and most rancorous dispute over a U. S. presidential election in more than a century, one certain to leave scars in a badly divided country.

　　It was a bitter ending for Mr. Gore, who had outpolled Mr. Bush nationwide by some 300000 votes, but, without Florida, fell short in the Electoral College by 271votes to 267-the narrowest Electoral College victory since the turbulent election of 1876.

　　Mr. Gore was said to be distressed by what he and many Democratic activists felt was a partisan decision from the nation’s highest court.

　　The 5-to -4 decision of the Supreme Court held, in essence, that while a vote recount in Florida could be conducted in legal and constitutional fashion, as Mr. Gore had sought, this could not be done by the Dec. 12 deadline for states to select their presidential electors.

　　James Baker 3rd, the former secretary of state who represented Mr. Bush in the Florida dispute, issued a short statement after the U. S. high court ruling, saying that the governor was “very pleased and gratified.”

　　Mr. Bush was planning a nationwide speech aimed at trying to begin to heal the country’s deep, aching and varied divisions. He then was expected to meet with congressional leaders, including Democrats. Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush’s ruing mate, was meeting with congressmen Wednesday in Washington.

　　When Mr. Bush, who is 54, is sworn into office on Jan.20, he will be only the second son of a president to follow his father to the White House, after John Adams and John Quincy Adams in the early 19th century.

　　Mr. Gore, in his speech, was expected to thank his supporters, defend his hive-week battle as an effort to ensure, as a matter of principle, that every vote be counted, and call for the nation to join behind the new president. He was described by an aide as “resolved and resigned.”

　　While some constitutional experts had said they believed states could present electors as late as Dec. 18, the U. S. high court made clear that it saw no such leeway.

　　The U.S. high court sent back “for revision” to the Florida court its order allowing recounts but made clear that for all practical purposes the election was over.

　　In its unsigned main opinion, the court declared, “The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter.”

　　That decision, by a court fractured along philosophical lines, left one liberal justice charging that the high court’s proceedings bore a political taint.

　　Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in an angry dissent:” Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.”

　　But at the end of five seemingly endless weeks, during which the physical, legal and constitutional machines of the U. S. election were pressed and sorely tested in ways unseen in more than a century, the system finally produced a result, and one most Americans appeared to be willing at lease provisionally to support.

　　The Bush team welcomed the news with an outward show of restraint and aplomb. The governor’s hopes had risen and fallen so many times since Election night, and the legal warriors of each side suffered through so many dramatic reversals, that there was little energy left for celebration.

　　1. The main idea of this passage is

　　[A]. Bush’s victory in presidential election bore a political taint.

　　[B]. The process of the American presidential election.

　　[C]. The Supreme Court plays a very important part in the presidential election.

　　[D]. Gore is distressed.

　　2. What does the sentence “as if to leave space for Mr. Gore to contemplate his next step” mean

　　[A]. Bush hopes Gore to join his administration.

　　[B]. Bush hopes Gore to concede defeat and to support him.

　　[C]. Bush hopes Gore to congraduate him.

　　[D]. Bush hopes Gore go on fighting with him.

　　3. Why couldn’t Mr. Gore win the presidential election after he outpolled Mr. Bush in the popular vote? Because

　　[A]. the American president is decided by the supreme court’s decision.