Art Nouveau is chiefly recognised by what?

Flowing curved lines drawn from plant forms

Repeating grids of identical squares

Rough, visible palette-knife work

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Arts & Literature Medium ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~7 Mins +100 XP

Movements, Manifestos and Broken Rules

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Most art movements were named by someone hostile to them. These ten questions cover where each began and what it was arguing against.

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An art movement is usually a small group of people in one city, arguing. The label arrives later, often from a critic who meant it as an insult and found the artists had adopted it before the ink dried. Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism were all named that way, and in each case the sneer stuck because it happened to describe the work. What the movements actually shared was a target. The Impressionists were pushing against the finish and subject matter approved by the Salon. The Futurists were against museums. De Stijl was against ornament of any kind. Knowing what a group refused explains more of its work than any list of stylistic traits, and that is the thread these questions follow.

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Movements, Manifestos and Broken Rules: all 10 questions and answers

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1Impressionism took its name from a painting by which artist?
- A Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- B Edgar Degas
- C Camille Pissarro
- D Claude Monet Correct
Answer: D. Claude Monet

Why: The picture was Impression, Sunrise, shown in 1874. A critic used its title as a jibe and the group adopted the word within a few years.
2Which movement began at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during the First World War?
- A Fauvism
- B Constructivism
- C Dada Correct
- D Futurism
Answer: C. Dada

Why: It started in 1916 among artists and writers who had left the warring countries. Its performances mixed nonsense verse with noise and masks.
3Andy Warhol is most closely associated with which movement?
- A Art Nouveau
- B Pop Art Correct
- C Minimalism
- D Abstract Expressionism
Answer: B. Pop Art

Why: The movement drew its subjects from advertising, packaging and comic strips. Warhol ran his New York studio as a production line and called it the Factory.
4Which movement, launched in Italy by Filippo Marinetti, celebrated speed and machinery?
- A Futurism Correct
- B Symbolism
- C Suprematism
- D Vorticism
Answer: A. Futurism

Why: Marinetti published its founding manifesto in a Paris newspaper in 1909. The group called for museums and libraries to be destroyed.
5Jackson Pollock's poured and dripped canvases belong to which movement?
- A Op Art
- B Neoclassicism
- C Precisionism
- D Abstract Expressionism Correct
Answer: D. Abstract Expressionism

Why: The style is also called action painting, since the record of the gesture is the subject. Its success shifted the centre of the Western art trade to New York after 1945.
6Art Nouveau is chiefly recognised by what?
- A Rough, visible palette-knife work
- B Strictly photographic detail
- C Flowing curved lines drawn from plant forms Correct
- D Repeating grids of identical squares
Answer: C. Flowing curved lines drawn from plant forms

Why: It ran from roughly 1890 to 1910 across posters, glass, ironwork and buildings. German speakers called the same style Jugendstil.
7Which technique, worked out in Renaissance Florence, uses converging lines to create depth on a flat surface?
- A Impasto
- B Linear perspective Correct
- C Chiaroscuro
- D Sfumato
Answer: B. Linear perspective

Why: Brunelleschi demonstrated it around 1420 and Alberti wrote the first treatise explaining it in 1435. Painters north of the Alps took several decades to adopt it.
8Fauvism was named after a critic's remark about which quality of the work?
- A Its wild, unnatural colour Correct
- B Its very large canvases
- C Its rough, unfinished frames
- D Its rural subject matter
Answer: A. Its wild, unnatural colour

Why: The critic Louis Vauxcelles called the painters wild beasts at a Paris show in 1905. Henri Matisse was the central figure and the group held together for only about three years.
9Which movement rejected Victorian machine production in favour of handmade work?
- A De Stijl
- B Rococo
- C Photorealism
- D Arts and Crafts Correct
Answer: D. Arts and Crafts

Why: William Morris led it in Britain from the 1860s. Its influence reached furniture, wallpaper and typography more thoroughly than it ever reached painting.
10Piet Mondrian's grids of black lines and primary colour belong to which Dutch movement?
- A Cobra
- B Fluxus
- C De Stijl Correct
- D The Hague School
Answer: C. De Stijl

Why: Founded in 1917, it is also called Neoplasticism. Gerrit Rietveld applied the same restrictions to chairs and to a house in Utrecht.

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