PASSAGE I
Each one has his reasons: for one art is a flight; for another, a means
of conquering. But one can flee into a hermitage, into madness, into death. One
can conquer by arms. Why does it have to be writing, why does one have
to manage his escapes and conquests by writing? Because, behind the
various aims of authors, there is a deeper and more immediate choice which is
common to all of us. We shall try to elucidate this choice, and we shall see
whether it is not in the name of this very choice of writing that the engagement
of writers must be required.
Each of our perceptions is accompanied by the consciousness that human
reality is a ‘revealer’, that is, it is through human reality that ‘there is’
being, or, to put it differently, that man is the means by which things are
manifested. It is our presence in the world which multiplies relations. It is
we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to
us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that
dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our
auto and our airplane which organizes the great masses of the earth. With each
of our acts, the world reveals to us a new face. But, if we know that we are
directors of being, we also know that we are not its producers. If we turn away
from this landscape, it will sink back into its dark permanence. At least, it
will sink back; there is no one mad enough to think that it is going to be
annihilated. It is we who shall be annihilated, and the earth will remain in
its lethargy until another consciousness comes along to awaken it. Thus, to our
inner certainty of being ‘revealers’ is added that of being inessential in
relation to the thing revealed.
One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of
feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world. If I fix on canvas
or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a look on someone’s
face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of having produced them by
condensing relationships, by introducing order where there was none, by
imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things. That is, I think myself
essential in relation to my creation. But this time it is the created object
which escapes me; I can not reveal and produce at the same time. The creation
becomes inessential in relation to the creative activity. First of all, even if
it appears to others as definitive, the created object always seems to us in a
state of suspension; we can always change this line, that shade, that word.
Thus, it never forces itself. A novice painter asked his teacher, ‘When
should I consider my painting finished?’ And the teacher answered, ‘When you
can look at it in amazement and say to yourself “I’m the one who did that!”’
Which amounts to saying ‘never’. For it is virtually
considering one’s work with someone else’s eyes and revealing what has been
created. But it is self-evident that we are proportionally less conscious of
the thing produced and more conscious of our productive activity. When it is a
matter of poetry or carpentry, we work according to traditional norms, with
tools whose usage is codified; it is Heidegger’s famous ‘they’ who are working
with our hands. In this case, the result can seem to us sufficiently strange to
preserve its objectivity in our eyes. But if we ourselves produce the rules of
production, the measures, the criteria, and if our creative drive comes from
the very depths of our heart, then we never find anything but ourselves in our
work. It is we who have invented the laws by which we judge it. It is our
history, our love, our gaiety that we recognize in it. Even if we should regard
it without touching it any further, we never receive from it that gaiety
or love. We put them into it. The results which we have obtained on canvas or
paper never seem to us objective. We are too familiar with the processes
of which they are the effects. These processes remain a subjective discovery;
they are ourselves, our inspiration, our ruse, and when we seek to perceive
our work, we create it again, we repeat mentally the operations which produced
it; each of its aspects appears as a result. Thus, in the perception, the
object is given as the essential thing and the subject as the inessential. The
latter seeks essentiality in the creation and obtains it, but then it is the
object which becomes the inessential.
The dialectic is nowhere more apparent than in the art of
writing, for the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in
movement. To make it come into view a concrete act called reading is necessary,
and it lasts only as long as this act can last. Beyond that, there are only
black marks on paper. Now, the writer can not read what he writes, whereas the
shoemaker can put on the shoes he has just made if they are to his size, and
the architect can live in the house he has built. In reading, one foresees; one
waits. He foresees the end of the sentence, the following sentence, the next
page. He waits for them to confirm or disappoint his foresights. The reading is
composed of a host of hypotheses, followed by awakenings, of hopes and
deceptions. Readers are always ahead of the sentence they are reading in a
merely probable future which partly collapses and partly comes together in
proportion as they progress, which withdraws from one page to the next and
forms the moving horizon of the literary object. Without waiting, without a
future, without ignorance, there is no objectivity.
1. The author holds that:
1.
There is an
objective reality and a subjective reality.
2.
Nature is the sum
total of disparate elements.
3.
It is human action
that reveals the various facets of nature.
4.
Apparently
disconnected elements in nature are unified in a fundamental sense.
2.
It is the author’s contention
that:
1.
Artistic creations
are results of human consciousness.
2.
The very act of
artistic creation leads to the escape of the created object.
3.
Man can produce
and reveal at the same time.
4.
An act of creation
forces itself on our consciousness leaving us full of amazement.
3.
The passage makes
a distinction between perception and creation in terms of :
1.
Objectivity and
subjectivity.
2.
Revelation and
action.
3.
Objective reality
and perceived reality.
4.
Essentiality and
non-essentiality of objects and subjects.
4. The art of
writing manifests the dialectic of perception and creation because
1.
reading reveals
the writing till the act of reading lasts.
2.
writing to be
meaningful needs the concrete act of reading.
3.
this art is
anticipated and progresses on a series of hypotheses.
4.
this literary
object has a moving horizon brought about by the very act of creation.
5.
A writer, as an
artist,
1.
reveals the
essentiality of revelation.
2.
makes us feel
essential vis-à-vis nature.
3.
creates reality.
4.
reveals nature in
its permanence.
PASSAGE II
Have you ever come across a
painting, by Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, or any other modern abstract painter of
this century, and found yourself engulfed in a brightly coloured canvas which
your senses cannot interpret? Many people would tend to denounce abstractionism
as senseless trash. These people are disoriented by Miro’s bright, fanciful
creatures and two-dimensional canvases. They click their tongues and shake
their heads at Mondrian’s grid works, declaring the poor guy played too many
scrabble games. They silently shake their heads in sympathy for Picasso, whose
gruesome, distorted figures must be a reflection of his mental health. Then,
standing in front of a work by Charlie Russell, the famous Western artist,
they’ll declare it a work of God. People feel more comfortable with something
they can relate to and understand immediately without too much thought. This is
the case with the work of Charlie Russell. Being able to recognize the elements
in his paintings—trees, horses and cowboys—gives people a safety line to their
world of “reality”. There are some who would disagree when I say abstract art
requires more creativity and artistic talent to produce a good piece than does
representational art, but there are many weaknesses in their arguments.
People who look down on
abstract art have several major arguments to support their beliefs. They feel
that artists turn abstract because they are not capable of the technical
drafting skills that appear in a Russell; therefore, such artists create an art
form that anyone is capable of and that is less time consuming, and then parade
it as artistic progress. Secondly, they feel that the purpose of art is to
create something of beauty in an orderly, logical composition. Russell’s
compositions are balanced and rational; everything sits calmly on the canvas,
leaving the viewer satisfied that he has seen all there is to see. The modern
abstractionists, on the other hand, seem to compose their pieces irrationally.
For example, upon seeing Picasso’s Guernica
I agree in part with many of
these arguments, and at one time even endorsed them. But now, I believe
differently. Firstly I object to the argument that abstract artists are not
capable of drafting. Many abstract artists, such as Picasso, are excellent
draftsmen. As his work matured, Picasso became more abstract in order to
increase the expressive quality of his work. Guernica
A cycle of abstract and representational
art began with the first scratchings of prehistoric man. From the abstractions
of ancient Egypt Rome
6. The
author argues that many people look down upon abstract art because they feel
that:
1. Modern abstract art does not portray what is
ideal and real.
2. Abstract artists are unskilled in matters of
technical drafting.
3. Abstractionists compose irrationally.
4. All of the above.
7. The author believes that people feel
comfortable with representational art because:
1. they are not engulfed in brightly coloured
canvases.
2. they do not have to click their tongues and
shake their heads in sympathy.
3. they understand the art without putting too
much strain on their minds.
4. paintings like Guernica
8. In the author’s opinion, Picasso’s Guernica
1. it was a protest against the German bombing
of Guernica
2. Picasso managed to express the emotional
content well with his abstract depiction.
3. it depicts the terror and suffering of the
victims in a distorted manner.
4. it was a mature work of Picasso’s, painted
when the artist’s drafting skills were excellent.
9. The author acknowledges that Mondrian’s pieces
may have ended up looking like a scrabble board because
1. many people declared the poor guy played too
many scrabble games.
2. Mondrian believed in the ‘grid-works’
approach to abstractionist painting.
3. Mondrian was trying to convey the message of
simplicity and rational order.
4. Mondrian learned from his Trees series to evolve a grid system.
10. The main difference between the
abstract artist and the representational artist in matters of the ‘ideal’ and
the ‘real’, according to the author, is:
1. How each chooses to deal with ‘reality’ on
his or her canvas.
2. The superiority of interpretation of reality
over reproduction of reality.
3. The different values attached by each to
being a historian.
4. The varying levels of drafting skills and
logical thinking abilities.
PASSAGE
III
The teaching and transmission of North
Indian classical music is and long has been, achieved by largely oral means.
The raga and its structure, the often
breathtaking intricacies of tala or
rhythm, and the incarnation of raga
and tala as bandish or composition, are passed thus, between guru and shishya by word of mouth and
direct demonstration, with no printed sheet of notated music, as it were,
acting as a go-between. Saussure’s conception of language as a communication
between addresser and addressee is given, in this model, a further instance,
and a new, exotic complexity and glamour.
These days, especially with the middle class having
entered the domain of classical music and playing not a small part in ensuring
the continuation of this ancient tradition, the tape recorder serves as a handy
technological slave and preserves, from oblivion, the vanishing, elusive moment
of oral transmission. Hoary gurus,
too, have seen the advantage of this device, and increasingly use it as an aid
to instructing their pupils; in place of the shawls and other traditional
objects that used to pass from shishya to
guru in the past, as a token of the
regard of the former for the latter, it is not unusual, today, to see cassettes
changing hands.
Part of my education in North Indian classical music
was conducted via this rather ugly but beneficial rectangle of plastic, which I
carried with me to England
This repeated playing out of the rhythmic cycles on
the tabla was inflected by the
noises—an irate auto driver blowing a horn; the sound of overbearing pigeons
that were such a nuisance on the banister; even the cry of a kulfi seller in summer—entering from the
balcony of the third floor flat we occupied in those days, in a lane in a
Bombay suburb, before we left the city for good. These sounds, in turn, would
invade, hesitantly, the ebb and flow of silence inside the artificially heated
room, in a borough of West London , in which I
used to live as an undergraduate. There, in the trapped dust, silence and heat,
the theka of the tabla, qualified by the imminent but intermittent presence of the Bombay Oxford
The tape recorder, though, remains an extension of the
oral transmission of music, rather than a replacement of it. And the oral
transmission of North Indian classical music remains, almost uniquely, a
testament to the fact that the human brain can absorb, remember and reproduce
structures of great complexity and sophistication without the help of the
hieroglyph or written mark or a system of notation. I remember my surprise on
discovering that Hazarilalji—who had mastered Kathak dance, tala and
North Indian classical music, and who used to narrate to me, occasionally,
compositions meant for dance that were grand and intricate in their verbal
prosody, architecture and rhythmic complexity—was near illiterate and had
barely learnt to write his name in large and clumsy letters.
Of course, attempts have been made, through the 20th
century, to formally codify and even notate this music, and institutions set up
and degrees created, specifically to educate students in this “scientific” and
codified manner. Paradoxically, however, this style of teaching has produced no
noteworthy student or performer; the most creative musicians still emerge from
the guru-shishya relationship, their
understanding of music developed by oral communication.
The fact that North Indian classical music emanates
from, and has evolved through, oral culture, means that this music has a
significantly different aesthetic, and that this aesthetic has a different
politics, from that of Western classical music. A piece of music in the Western
tradition, at least in its most characteristic and popular conception,
originates in its composer, and the connection between the two, between
composer and the piece of music, is relatively unambiguous precisely because
the composer writes down, in notation, his composition, as a poet might write
down and publish his poem. However far the printed sheet of notated music might
travel thus from the composer, it still remains his property; and the notion of
property remains at the heart of the Western conception of “genius”, which
derives from the Latin gignere or ‘to
beget’.
The genius in Western classical music is, then, the
originator, begetter and owner of his work—the printed, notated sheet
testifying to his authority over his product and his power, not only of
expression or imagination, but of origination. The conductor is a custodian and
guardian of this property. Is it an accident that Mandelstam, in his notebooks,
compares—celebratorily—the conductor’s baton to a policeman’s, saying all the
music of the orchestra lies mute within it, waiting for its first movement to
release it into the auditorium?
The raga—transmitted
through oral means—is, in a sense, no one’s property; it is not easy to pin
down its source, or to know exactly where its provenance or origin lies. Unlike
the Western classical tradition, where the composer begets his piece, notates
it and stamps it with his ownership and remains, in effect, larger than, or the
father of, his work, in the North Indian classical tradition, the raga—unconfined to a single incarnation,
composer or performer—remains necessarily greater than the artiste who invokes
it.
This leads to a very different politics of
interpretation and valuation, to an aesthetic that privileges the evanescent
moment of performance and invocation over the controlling authority of genius
and the permanent record. It is a tradition, thus, that would appear to value
the performer, as medium, more highly than the composer who presumes to
originate what, effectively, cannot be originated in a single person—because
the raga is the inheritance of a
culture.
11.
The author’s contention that the notion of property lies at the heart of the
Western conception of genius is best indicated by which one of the following?
1.
The creative output of a genius is invariably written down and recorded.
2.
The link between the creator and his output is unambiguous.
3.
The word “genius” is derived from a Latin word which means “to beget.”
4.
The music composer notates his music and thus becomes the ‘father’ of a
particular piece of music.
12.
Saussure’s conception of language as a communication between addresser and
addressee, according to the author, is exemplified by the:
1. teaching of North Indian classical music by
word of mouth and direct demonstration.
2. use of the recorded cassette as a transmission
medium between the music teacher and the trainee.
3. written down notation sheets of musical
compositions.
4. conductor’s baton and the orchestra.
13. The author holds that the “rather ugly but
beneficial rectangle of plastic” has proved to be a ‘handy technological slave’
in:
1. storing the talas played upon the tabla,
at various tempos.
2. ensuring the continuance of an ancient
tradition.
3. transporting North Indian classical music
across geographical borders.
4. capturing the transient moment of oral
transmission.
14.
The oral transmission of North Indian classical music is an almost unique
testament of the:
1. efficacy of the guru-shishya tradition.
2. learning impact of direct demonstration.
3. brain’s ability to reproduce complex
structures without the help of written marks.
4. the ability of an illiterate person to
narrate grand and intricate musical compositions.
15. According to the passage, in the North Indian
classical tradition, the raga remains
greater than the artiste who invokes it. This implies an aesthetic which:
1. emphasises performance and invocation over
the authority of genius and permanent record.
2. makes the music no one’s property.
3. values the composer more highly than the
performer.
4. supports oral transmission of traditional
music.
16. From the author’s explanation of the notion that
in the Western tradition, music originates in its composer, which one of the
following cannot be inferred?
1. It is easy to transfer a piece of Western
classical music to a distant place.
2. The conductor in the Western tradition, as a
custodian, can modify the music, since it ‘lies mute’ in his baton.
3. The authority of the Western classical music
composer over his music product is unambiguous.
4. The power of the Western classical music
composer extends to the expression of his music.
17. According to the author, the inadequacy of
teaching North Indian classical music through a codified, notation based system
is best illustrated by:
1. a loss of the structural beauty of the ragas.
2. a fusion of two opposing approaches creating
mundane music.
3. the conversion of free-flowing ragas into stilted set pieces.
4. its failure to produce any noteworthy
student or performer.
18. Which of the following statements best conveys the
overall idea of the passage?
1. North Indian and Western classical music are
structurally different.
2. Western music is the intellectual property
of the genius while the North Indian raga
is the inheritance of a culture.
3. Creation as well as performance are
important in the North Indian classical tradition.
4. North
Indian classical music is orally transmitted while Western classical music
depends on written down notations.
PASSAGE IV
One of the criteria by which we judge the vitality of
a style of painting is its ability to renew itself—its responsiveness to the
changing nature and quality of experience, the degree of conceptual and formal
innovation that it exhibits. By this criterion, it would appear that the
practice of abstractionism has failed to engage creatively with the radical
change in human experience in recent decades. It has, seemingly, been unwilling
to re-invent itself in relation to the systems of artistic expression and
viewer’s expectations that have developed under the impact of the mass media.
The judgement that abstractionism has
slipped into ‘inertia gear’ is gaining endorsement, not only among discerning
viewers and practitioners of other art forms, but also among abstract painters
themselves. Like their companions elsewhere in the world, abstractionists in India
The situation is further complicated in India
At the same time, Indian abstractionists
have rarely committed themselves wholeheartedly to a non-representational
idiom. They have been preoccupied with the fundamentally metaphysical project
of aspiring to the mystical-holy without altogether renouncing the symbolic.
This has been sustained by a hereditary reluctance to give up the murti, the inviolable iconic form, which
explains why abstractionism is marked by the conservative tendency to operate
with images from the sacred repertoire of the past. Abstractionism thus entered
India
Against this backdrop, we can identify three major
abstractionist idioms in Indian art. The first develops from a love of the
earth, and assumes the form of a celebration of the self’s dissolution in the
cosmic panorama; the landscape is no longer a realistic transcription of the
scene, but is transformed into a visionary occasion for contemplating the
cycles of decay and regeneration. The second idiom phrases its departures from
symbolic and archetypal devices as invitations to heightened planes of
awareness. Abstractionism begins with the establishment or dissolution of the
motif, which can be drawn from diverse sources, including the hieroglyphic tablet,
the Sufi meditation dance or the Tantric diagram. The third idiom is based on
the lyric play of forms guided by gesture or allied with formal improvisations
like the assemblage. Here, sometimes, the line dividing abstract image from
patterned design or quasi-random expressive marking may blur. The flux of forms
can also be regimented through the poetics of pure colour arrangements,
vector-diagrammatic spaces and gestural design.
In this genealogy, some pure lines of
descent follow their logic to the inevitable point of extinction, others engage
in cross-fertilization, and yet others undergo mutation to maintain their
energy. However, this genealogical survey demonstrates the wave at its crests,
those points where the metaphysical and the painterly have been fused in images
of abiding potency, ideas sensuously ordained rather than fabricated
programmatically to a concept. It is equally possible to enumerate the troughs
where the two principles do not come together, thus arriving at a very
different account. Uncharitable as it may sound, the history of Indian
abstractionism records a series of attempts to avoid the risks of abstraction
by resorting to an overt and near-generic symbolism, which many Indian
abstractionists embrace when they find themselves bereft of the imaginative
energy to negotiate the union of metaphysics and painterliness.
Such symbolism falls into a dual trap: it
succumbs to the pompous vacuity of pure metaphysics when the burden of
intention is passed off as justification; or then it is desiccated by the arid
formalism of pure painterliness, with delight in the measure of chance or
pattern guiding the execution of a painting. The ensuing conflict of purpose
stalls the progress of abstractionism in an impasse. The remarkable Indian
abstractionists are precisely those who have overcome this and addressed
themselves to the basic elements of their art with a decisive sense of
independence from prior models. In their recent work, we see the logic of
Indian abstractionism pushed almost to the furthest it can be taken. Beyond
such artists stands a lost generation of abstractionists whose work invokes a
wistful, delicate beauty but stops there.
Abstractionism is not a universal language;
it is an art that points up the loss of a shared language of signs in society.
And yet, it affirms the possibility of its recovery through the effort of
awareness. While its rhetoric has always emphasized a call for new forms of
attention, abstractionist practice has tended to fall into a complacent pride
in its own incomprehensibility; a complacency fatal in an ethos where vibrant
new idioms compete for the viewers’ attention. Indian abstractionists ought to
really return to basics, to reformulate and replenish their understanding of
the nature of the relationship between the painted image and the world around
it. But will they abandon their favourite conceptual habits and formal
conventions, if this becomes necessary?
19. Which one
of the following is not stated by the author as a reason for abstractionism
losing its vitality?
1. Abstractionism has failed to reorient
itself in the context of changing human experience.
2. Abstractionism has not considered the
developments in artistic expression that have taken place in recent times.
3. Abstractionism has not followed the path
taken by all revolutions, whether in politics or art.
4. The impact of mass media on viewers’
expectations has not been assessed, and responded to, by abstractionism.
20. Which one of the following, according to the
author, is the role that abstractionism plays in a society?
1.
It provides an idiom that can be understood by most members in a
society.
2.
It highlights the absence of a shared language of meaningful symbols
which can be recreated through greater awareness.
3.
It highlights the contradictory artistic trends of revolution and
conservatism that any society needs to move forward.
4.
It helps abstractionists invoke the wistful, delicate beauty that may
exist in society.
21. According to the author, which one of the
following characterizes the crisis faced by abstractionism?
1.
Abstractionists
appear to be unable to transcend the solutions tried out earlier.
2.
Abstractionism
has allowed itself to be confined by set forms and practices.
3.
Abstractionists
have been unable to use the multiplicity of forms now becoming available to an
artist.
4. All of the above.
22. According
to the author, the introduction of abstractionism was revolutionary because it:
1.
celebrated
the hopes and aspirations of a newly independent nation.
2.
provided
a new direction to Indian art towards self-inquiry and non-representational
images.
3.
managed
to obtain internationalist support for the abstractionist agenda.
4.
was an
emancipation from the dogmas of the nascent nation state.
23. Which one of the following is not part of the
author’s characterization of the conservative trend in Indian abstractionism?
1.
An
exploration of the subconscious mind.
2.
A lack
of full commitment to non-representational symbols.
3.
An
adherence to the symbolic while aspiring to the mystical.
4.
Usage
of the images of gods or similar symbols.
24. Given the author’s delineation of the three
abstractionist idioms in Indian art, the third idiom can be best distinguished
from the other two idioms through its:
1.
depiction
of nature’s cyclical renewal.
2.
use of
non-representational images.
3.
emphasis
on arrangement of forms.
4.
limited
reliance on original models.
25. According to the author, the attraction of
the Kandinsky-Klee school for Indian abstractionists can be explained by which
one of the following?
1.
The conservative tendency to aspire to the mystical without a complete
renunciation of the symbolic.
2.
The discomfort of Indian abstractionists with Malevich’s Suprematism.
3. The easy identification of obvious points of
affinity with European and American abstract art, of which the Kandinsky- Klee school is an example.
4. The double-edged nature of abstractionism
which enabled identification with mystically-oriented schools.
26. Which one of the following, according
to the author, is the most important reason for the stalling of
abstractionism’s progress in an impasse?
1. Some artists have followed their
abstractionist logic to the point of extinction.
2. Some artists have allowed chance or pattern
to dominate the execution of their paintings.
3. Many artists have avoided the trap of a
near-generic and an open symbolism.
4. Many artists have found it difficult to fuse
the twin principles of the metaphysical and the painterly.
PASSAGE V
The endless struggle between the flesh and
the spirit found an end in Greek art. The Greek artists were unaware of it.
They were spiritual materialists, never denying the importance of the body and
ever seeing in the body a spiritual significance. Mysticism on the whole was
alien to the Greeks, thinkers as they were. Thought and mysticism never go well
together and there is little symbolism in Greek art. Athena was not a symbol of
wisdom but an embodiment of it and her statues were beautiful grave women,
whose seriousness might mark them as wise, but who were marked in no other way.
The Apollo Belvedere is not a symbol of the sun, nor the Versailles Artemis of
the moon. There could be nothing less akin to the ways of symbolism than their
beautiful, normal humanity. Nor did decoration really interest the Greeks. In
all their art they were preoccupied with what they wanted to express, not with
ways of expressing it, and lovely expression, merely as lovely expression, did
not appeal to them at all.
Greek art is intellectual art, the art of
men who were clear and lucid thinkers, and it is therefore plain art. Artists
than whom the world has never seen greater, men endowed with the spirit’s best
gift, found their natural method of expression in the simplicity and clarity
which are the endowment of the unclouded reason. “Nothing in excess,” the Greek
axiom of art, is the dictum of men who would brush aside all obscuring,
entangling superfluity, and see clearly, plainly, unadorned, what they wished
to express. Structure belongs in an especial degree to the province of the mind
in art, and architectonics were pre-eminently a mark of the Greek. The power
that made a unified whole of the trilogy of a Greek tragedy, that envisioned
the sure, precise, decisive scheme of the Greek statue, found its most
conspicuous expression in Greek architecture. The Greek temple is the creation,
par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
A Hindoo temple is a conglomeration of
adornment. The lines of the building are completely hidden by the decorations.
Sculptured figures and ornaments crowd its surface, stand out from it in thick
masses, break it up into a bewildering series of irregular tiers. It is not a
unity but a collection, rich, confused. It looks like something not planned but
built this way and that as the ornament required. The conviction underlying it
can be perceived: each bit of the exquisitely wrought detail had a mystical
meaning and the temple’s exterior was important only as a means for the artist
to inscribe thereon the symbols of the truth. It is decoration, not
architecture.
Again, the gigantic temples of Egypt
Greek architecture of the great age is the expression
of men who were, first of all, intellectual artists, kept firmly within the
visible world by their mind, but, only second to that, lovers of the human
world. The Greek temple is the perfect expression of the pure intellect
illumined by the spirit. No other great buildings anywhere approach its
simplicity. In the Parthenon straight columns rise to plain capitals; a
pediment is sculptured in bold relief; there is nothing more. And yet—here is
the Greek miracle— this absolute simplicity of structure is alone in majesty of
beauty among all the temples and cathedrals and palaces of the world. Majestic
but human, truly Greek. No superhuman force as in Egypt India Athens
27. From the
passage, which of the following combinations can be inferred to be correct?
1.
Hindoo temple—power of nature. 2. Parthenon—simplicity.
3.
Egyptian temple—mysticism. 4. Greek temple—symbolism.
28. Which of the
following is NOT a characteristic of Greek architecture, according to the
passage?
1.
A lack of excess.
2. Simplicity of form.
2. Expression of intellect.
4. Mystic spirituality.
29.
According to the passage, what conception of man can be inferred from Egyptian
architecture?
1. Man is the centre of creation.
2. Egyptian temples save man from unhuman
forces.
3. Temples
4. Man is inconsequential before the tremendous
force of nature.
30. According to the passage, which of the following best explains why
there is little symbolism in Greek art?
1. The Greeks focused on thought rather than
mysticism.
2. The struggle between the flesh and the
spirit found an end in Greek art.
3. Greek artists were spiritual materialists.
4. Greek statues were embodiments rather than
symbols of qualities.
31. “The Greeks flung a challenge to nature in the
fullness of their joyous strength.” Which of the following best captures the
‘challenge’ that is being referred to?
1. To build a monument matching the background
colours of the sky and the sea.
2. To build a monument bigger than nature’s
creations.
3. To build monuments that were more appealing
to the mind and spirit than nature’s creations.
4. To build a small but architecturally perfect
monument.
PASSAGE VI
The painter is now free to paint anything
he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and today everybody is
prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a
painting of a hero dying. The Impressionists did as much as anybody to win this
previously unheard-of freedom for the artist. Yet, by the next generation,
painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and began to paint pictures.
Today the majority of pictures painted are abstract.
Is there a connection between these two
developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is embarrassed by his
freedom? Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn’t know what
to paint? Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum
freedom. But could this be the freedom of the desert island? It would take too
long to answer these questions properly. I believe there is a connection. Many
things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been the
artists’ wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects
are equally possible.
I raise the matter now because I want to
draw attention to the fact that the painter’s choice of a subject is a far more
complicated question than it would at first seem. A subject does not start with
what is put in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens
to remember. A subject starts with the painter deciding he would like to paint
such-and-such because for some reason or other he finds it meaningful. A
subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it special or meaningful may seem to
the artist to be purely visual— its colours or its form.) When the subject has
been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and
justify the significance of that selection.
It is often said today that subject matter
is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the excessively literary
and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century. In
truth the subject is literally the beginning and the end of a painting. The
painting begins with a selection (I will paint this and not everything else in
the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you can see
all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).
Thus, for a painting to succeed it is
essential that the painter and his public agree about what is significant. The
subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator;
but there must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general
meaning. It is at this point that the culture of the society and period in
question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant
nothing to the Aztecs—and vice versa. If, to some extent, a few intellectuals
can appreciate them both today it is because their culture is an historical
one: its inspiration is history and therefore it can include within itself, in
principle if not in every particular, all known developments to date.
When a culture is secure and certain of its
values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general agreement about what
is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular
subject accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds
and water in China Africa .
Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free agent: he
will be employed for the sake of
particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just described it, will
not occur to him.
When a culture is in a state of
disintegration or transition, the freedom of the artist increases—but the
question of subject matter becomes problematic for him: he, himself, has to choose
for society. This was at the basis of all the increasing crises in European art
during the nineteenth century. It is too often forgotten how many of the art
scandals of that time were provoked by the choice of subject (Gericault,
Courbet, Daumier, Degas, Lautree, Van Gogh, etc.).
By the end of the nineteenth century there were,
roughly speaking, two ways in which the painter could meet this challenge of
deciding what to paint and so choosing for society. Either he identified
himself with the people and so allowed their lives to dictate his subjects to
him: or he had to find his subjects within himself as painter. By people I mean everybody except the
bourgeoisie. Many painters did of course work for the bourgeoisie according to
their copy-book of approved subjects, but all of them, filling the Salon and
the Royal Academy
32.
When a culture is insecure, the painter chooses his subject on the basis of:
1. The
prevalent style in the society of his time.
2.
Its meaningfulness to the painter.
3.
What is put in front of the easel.
4.
Past experience and memory of the painter.
33.
In the sentence, “I believe there is a connection” (second paragraph), what two
developments is the author referring to?
1.
Painters using a dying hero and using a fruit as a subject of painting.
2.
Growing success of painters and an increase in abstract forms.
3.
Artists gaining freedom to choose subjects and abandoning subjects
altogether.
4.
Rise of Impressionists and an increase in abstract forms.
34. Which of the
following is NOT necessarily among the attributes needed for a painter to
succeed:
1.
The painter and his public agree on what is significant.
2.
The painting is able to communicate and justify the significance of its
subject selection.
3.
The subject has a personal meaning for the painter.
4.
The painting of subjects is inspired by historical developments.
35. In the context
of the passage, which of the following statements would NOT be true?
1.
Painters decided subjects based on what they remembered from their own
lives.
2.
Painters of reeds and water in China
3.
The choice of subject was a source of scandals in nineteenth century
European art.
4.
Agreement on the general meaning of a painting is influenced by culture
and historical context.
36. Which of the
following views is taken by the author?
1.
The more insecure a culture, the greater the freedom of the artist.
2.
The more secure a culture, the greater the freedom of the artist.
3.
The more secure a culture, more difficult the choice of subject.
4.
The more insecure a culture, the less significant the choice of the
subject.
PASSAGE VII
While complex in the extreme,
Derrida’s work has proven to be a particularly influential approach to the
analysis of the ways in which language structures our understanding of
ourselves and the world we inhabit, an approach he termed deconstruction. In its simplest formulation, deconstruction can be
taken to refer to a methodological strategy which seeks to uncover layers of
hidden meaning in a text that have been denied or suppressed. The term ‘text’,
in this respect, does not refer simply to a written form of communication,
however. Rather, texts are something we all produce and reproduce constantly in
our everyday social relations, be they spoken, written or embedded in the
construction of material artifacts. At the heart of Derrida’s deconstructive approach
is his critique of what he perceives to be the totalitarian impulse of the
Enlightenment pursuit to bring all that exists in the world under the domain of
a representative language, a pursuit he refers to as logocentrism. Logocentrism is the search for a rational language
that is able to know and represent the world and all its aspects perfectly and
accurately. Its totalitarian dimension, for Derrida at least, lies primarily in
its tendency to marginalize or dismiss all that does not neatly comply with its
particular linguistic representations, a tendency that, throughout history, has
all too frequently been manifested in the form of authoritarian institutions.
Thus logocentrism has, in its search for the truth of absolute representation,
subsumed difference and oppressed that which it designates as its alien
‘other’. For Derrida, western civilization has been built upon such a
systematic assault on alien cultures and ways of life, typically in the name of
reason and progress.
In response to logocentrism,
deconstruction posits the idea that the mechanism by which this process of
marginalization and the ordering of truth occurs is through establishing
systems of binary opposition. Oppositional linguistic dualisms, such as
rational/irrational, culture/nature and good/bad are not, however, construed as
equal partners as they are in, say, the semiological structuralism of Saussure.
Rather, they exist, for Derrida, in a series of hierarchical relationships with
the first term normally occupying a superior position. Derrida defines the
relationship between such oppositional terms using the neologism differance. This refers to the
realization that in any statement, oppositional terms differ from each other
(for instance, the difference between rationality and irrationality is
constructed through oppositional usage), and at the same time, a hierarchical
relationship is maintained by the deference of one term to the other (in the
positing of rationality over irrationality, for instance). It is this latter
point which is perhaps the key to understanding Derrida’s approach to
deconstruction.
For the fact that at any given time
one term must defer to its oppositional ‘other’, means that the two terms are
constantly in a state of interdependence. The presence of one is dependent upon
the absence or ‘absent-presence’ of the ‘other’, such as in the case of good
and evil, whereby to understand the nature of one, we must constantly relate it
to the absent term in order to grasp its meaning. That is, to do good, we must
understand that our act is not evil for without that comparison the term
becomes meaningless. Put simply, deconstruction represents an attempt to
demonstrate the absent-presence of this oppositional ‘other’, to show that what
we say or write is in itself not expressive simply of what is present, but also
of what is absent. Thus, deconstruction seeks to reveal the interdependence of
apparently dichotomous terms and their meanings relative to their textual
context; that is, within the linguistic power relations which structure
dichotomous terms hierarchically. In Derrida’s own words, a deconstructive
reading “must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer,
between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of a
language that he uses. . . .[It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to
sight.”
Meaning, then, is never fixed or
stable, whatever the intention of the author of a text. For Derrida, language
is a system of relations that are dynamic, in that all meanings we ascribe to
the world are dependent not only on what we believe to be present but also on
what is absent. Thus, any act of interpretation must refer not only to what the
author of a text intends, but also to what is absent from his or her intention.
This insight leads, once again, to Derrida’s further rejection of the idea of
the definitive authority of the intentional agent or subject. The subject is
decentred; it is conceived as the outcome of relations of difference. As author of its own biography, the subject thus
becomes the ideological fiction of modernity and its logocentric philosophy,
one that depends upon the formation of hierarchical dualisms, which repress and
deny the presence of the absent ‘other’. No meaning can, therefore, ever be
definitive, but is merely an outcome of a particular interpretation.
37.
According to the passage, Derrida believes that the system of binary
opposition
1. represents a prioritization or hierarchy.
2. reconciles contradictions and
dualities.
3. weakens the process of
marginalization and ordering of truth.
4. deconstructs reality.
38.
Derrida rejects the idea of ‘definitive authority of the subject’
because
1. interpretation of the text may not make the
unseen visible.
2. the meaning of the text is based on binary
opposites.
3. the implicit power relationship is often
ignored.
4. any act of interpretation must refer to what
the author intends.
39. According to the passage, Derrida believes
that:
1. Reality can be constructed only through the
use of rational analysis.
2. Language limits our construction of reality.
3. A universal language will facilitate a
common understanding of reality.
4. We need to uncover the hidden meaning in a
system of relations expressed by language.
40. To Derrida, ‘logocentrism’ does not imply:
1. A totalitarian impulse.
2. A domain of representative language.
3. Interdependence of the meanings of
dichotomous terms.
4. A strategy that seeks to suppress hidden
meanings in a text.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ANSWER KEY
1. (3) 2.
(2) 3. (4) 4. (1) 5. (2)
6. (4) 7. (3) 8. (2) 9. (3) 10. (1)
11. (3) 12. (1) 13. (4) 14. (3) 15. (1)
16. (2) 17. (4) 18. (2) 19. (3) 20. (2)
21. (4) 22. (2) 23. (1) 24. (3) 25. (1)
26. (4) 27. (2) 28. (4) 29. (4) 30. (1)
31. (3) 32. (2) 33. (3) 34. (4) 35. (1)
36. (1) 37. (1) 38. (1) 39.
(4) 40. (3)
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