Intro to Humanities

Which artist best depicts the urbane and somewhat melancholy revelries of the eighteenth-century European aristocracy?

Which two artists are more closely associated with the rococo style in art?

In what phenomenon did the Parisian Madame Geoffrin play an important role?

Francois Boucher’s The Toilet of Venus most clearly illustrates what idea or topic?

Which movement or style employed shell-like decoration and themes of playful sexuality or seduction?

Who created romanticized portraits that he called “fancy pictures” that appealed to the wealthy classes of eighteenth-century Britain?

Which statement best describes the aim of the Enlightenment philosophies?

What term describes the idea, popularized by J.

-J. Rousseau, that human society originated in an agreement among naturally free individuals to establish the rule of law and civil society?

With what term or concept did Adam Smith describe the principle that individuals pursuing their individual self-interest would naturally create prosperity and happiness for all?

What would an eighteenth-century deist most likely have done?

J.-J. Rousseau’s novel titled Emile would today be most influential in what field of study?

Which work most directly expresses the neoclassical desire for simplicity and classical decoration?

Which work best illustrates the fashion of sensibilite by its appeal to moralizing sentiment?

What was the most notable achievement of Marie-Elisabeth Vigee-Leburn?

Which statement best describes the works of J.

-H. Fragonard, creator of The Progress of Love?

Which work embodies the principles of eighteenth-century neoclassicism?

The Marriage of Figaro by W. A. Mozart is an example of what musical form?

Which work might have been most influenced by Palladio’s book of classical designs, an important document in eighteenth-century neoclassicism?

In Rousseau’s Social Contract, what was the term for the collective desire of citizens as guided by public virtue?

Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo was a central figure in the development of what art?

In which work might one expect to read the impassioned letters of a virtuous servant?

What term or phrase is best applied to Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’s painting Boy Spinning Top?

Which work is a pictorial example of satire– the effort to improve society by humorous criticism of its foibles?

What best describes the achievement of Jonathan Swift?

What best states the hero’s thoughts at the end of Voltaire’s tale Candide?

Which movement or style aimed to compile all human knowledge as a practical guide to the improvement of the human condition?

In Japan’s “floating world” of urban entertainment districts, the form of ___________ theatre employed colorful costumes and elaborate staging.

Which topic best describes the principal concern of the liberal revolutions of 1776 and 1789?

With what term or concept did the Federalist write James Madison describe the self-regulating interaction among branches of government in the U.S. Constitution?

What leading painter of the French Revolution shifted his allegiance to Napolean and became the “First Painter” of imperial France?

What philosophical or religious idea exercised the greatest influence on Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence?

Which statement best describes the tone of sculptural works of Antonio Canova, as evidenced in his reclining figure of Pauline Bonaparte as Venus?

“It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual who, here concentrated into a single point, reaches out over the world and dominates it.” To whom was the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel referring here, seeing in this individual the embodiment of the World-Spirit?

How did Ludwig van Beethover substantially alter the Classical symphony form of Haydn and Mozart?

What was a central argument in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto?

Which work was most influenced by Lord Byron’s vision of a rebellious and self-destructive hero?

What statement best describes Goya’s Executions of the Third of May, 1808?

The romantic hero who strives excessively for greater love, power, and knowledge, is best exemplified by what figure?

Which work best celebrated the romantic belief in political freedom and social unity?

Which of these romantic works inspired a set of illustrations by Delacroix, several Lieder by Schubert, and an opera by Charles Gounod?

What aspect of the romantic sensibility is best expressed in Albert Bierstadt’s painting Among the Sierra Nevada?

What poet wrote a sprawling dramatic poem based on the medieval legend of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil?

For what reason would Turner’s The Slave Ship have been criticized by traditional art critics?

In what kind of work would one most likely expect to encounter the technique of idee fixe?

What romantic-era philosopher proposed that the mind possessed imaginative or “transcendental” powers to give shape and order to sense experience?

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers…” What romantic idea is expressed in these lines from a poem by William Wordsworth?

Which work best expresses the romantic fascination with picturesque Gothic architecture?

“Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers…” These lines are from an early feminist manifesto by what author?

Which phrase best describes program music, a frequent format of music in the romantic era?

J. A. D. Ingres’ The Turkish Bath is an example of what romantic theme?

Which novel of willful and tortured souls living in the wild English countryside, buffeted by romantic passions and moral dilemma?

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, how is the central figure of the doctor best characterized?

Who was famed as a virtuoso pianist and composer of romantic nocturnes and preludes?

E. A. Poe and Mary Shelley wrote masterpieces of the genre called _________, tales characterized by horror, supernatural effects, and a medieval setting.

Which example best illustrates the Victorian spirit of progress and the use of new industrial materials?

In which work is the principle of “natural selection” a central; concept?

What statement best expresses the utilitarian philosophy of J.S. Mill?

Why would traditional art critics in 1850 have criticized Gustave Courbet’s Burial at Ornans?

Which work would properly be classified as “realist”– aiming to depict its subject in full detail and with honesty?

Which artist helped inspire a movement called l’art pour l’art– “art for art’s sake”– with morbidly erotic poetry?

Which statement best describes Richard Wagner’s cycle of four operas titled Ring of the Nibelung?

What composer achieved innovations in orchestration and tonality that are ofter called “impressionism in music”?

Why would the artistic public of the 1860s most likely have rejected Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass?

In explaining the importance of Baron Haussman’s new Paris., which cheerfully destroyed traditional neighborhoods in favor of efficient boulevards and up-to-date apartment buildings, what term would you most appropriately use?

Which term is best associated with Louis Sullivan’s Wainright Building in St. Loius and other “Chicago-style” skyscrapers?

How is the style of Art Nouveau best described?

Which statement best describes the statue of the novelist Balzac sculpted by Auguste Rodin?

In what European city would one have seen the first impressionist exhibition?

For what shortcoming would a tradition-minded connoisseur most likely have criticized early impressionist paintings?

What pair of painters sought to develop beyond the impressionist style in the direction of greater formal order and abstraction?

What technique of impressionist and post-impressionist styles, visible especially in Mary Cassatt’s later works, was adapted from Japanese ukiyo-e prints?

What characteristic of the impressionist style is best illustrated by Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette?

What American impressionist painter was known for paintings focused on the intimacy of mother and child?

What pair of painters best defines the pure impressionist style of brilliant color and vibrant brushwork?

Which is a post-impressionist work that used vivid colors to achieve greater emotional power and expressiveness than the impressionists did themselves?

Which characteristic best describes Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte?

Who was an impressionist painter whose works are marked by careful observation of the human figure, often in awkward movements and positions?

What pair of painters responded to the impressionist style by seeking more intense expressiveness of color and design?

How is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s tale of the “Grand Inquisitor,” from his novel The Brothers Karamazov, best described?

Which work develops and applies the concept of the Ubermensch– a type of humans willing to reach “beyond good and evil” and create their own values?

What Japanese art, perfected by the artists Hiroshige and Hokusai, exercised a great influence on European artists of the late nineteenth century?

What figure understood the human will in light of his pessimistic conclusion that “life is given us, not to be enjoyed but to be overcome?”

What would provide the best illustration of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, first published in 1905?

Which can be counted as a direct result of the “Great War”?

The documentary photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans are associated with what important historical event or phenomenon in the era 1910-45?

Which pair of works could both be classified as documentary in purpose– that is, intending to record social reality directly and truthfully?

The landmark film of Leni Riefenstahl titled Triumph of the Will, with its visually stunning shots of massed crowds, is most closely associated with what historical phenomenon?

Which work best illustrates cubism’s effort to analyze subjects into planes, angles, and geometric shapes, in an attempt to show the object simultaneously from different perspectives?

Which statement best describes Picasso’s Three Musicians?

With what phenomenon of modernist culture would you associate Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, sculptures made of ordinary objects like bicycle wheels or urinals?

Which work shows most clearly modernism’s interest in “primitivism?”

Which statement best describes Henri Matisse’s The Joy of Life, dating from about 1905-6?

Who was closely associated with the Bauhaus school in Germany and was an important innovator in modern architecture?

Which statement best describes Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28?

What best describes Paul Klee’s mystical and child-like painting All Around the Fish?

Which modernist figure argued that women who wanted to write needed above all an income independent of men and “a room of one’s own”?

Which statement best describes the literary works of Franz Kafka?

Which work is associated with a twentieth-century attempt to revive the great Renaissance fresco tradition of decorating building walls with monumental paintings?

Which work is the nest example of a surrealist work that explores the inner world of dream, emotion, and imagination?

What term is best associated with Freud’s theory of the human psyche?

What statement best describes the principles of architectural modernism, as illustrated in Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye?

What statement best describes Picasso’s Guernica as a work of art?

What best expresses the American idiom of modernism in the arts?

What would one expect to encounter in listening to Igor Stravinsly’s score for Rite of Spring?

Which statement best describes Duke Ellington?

Who fashioned a system of teaching modern dance that made it as rigorous as classical ballet?

Which statement best describes architect Frank Lloyd Wright?

Louis Armstrong’s 1920s recordings with the “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” established what aspect of Armstrong’s musical achievement?

What post-war American group of poets and novelists explored themes of rootlessness and the endless quest for meaning?

Which best defines Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of satyagraha, which he and his followers employed to win India’s independence from colonial rule in 1948?

Which statement best describes the appeal of existentialism?

Which statement best describes the work of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath?

Which statement best describes Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man?

Who is best categorized as an “abstract expressionist” painter of the New York school?

Which work is a masterpiece of the theater if the absurd?

Which work can be seen as an application of the surrealist technique of automatic creation– “in which the artist allows the unconscious rather than the conscious with to stimulate the act of creation”?

Which statement best describes the art of Robert Rauschenberg, creator of Monogram?

Which work shows the sculptor’s training in automobile assembly plants and his attempt to unite art with industrial design and technology?

The term “pop art” is best applied to which work?

Which work is properly described as a mobile, composed of shapes suspended in the air?

Which artist expanded the definition of music by inventing a music of chance and random sound?

What American musical form rose to prominence in the age of rock-and-roll and made its African American practitioners international pop stars?

Which work best applies the belief that architecture should resemble sculpture in its flowing line and organic shape?

Which structure best illustrates the architectural prinicples of the International Style– glass-and-steel towers of unadorned purity?

Which statement best describes the artistic style of Romare Bearden, whose works celebrated African-American ritual and community?

Which work is a large-scale assemblage of discarded wooden shapes, a symbol of the refuse of modern urban society?

Whos most important works were a series of ten plays depicting African-American experience in twentieth-century America?

Which statement best describes the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude?

Which statement best describes the work of Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges?

The fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, notably his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, is best described by which term?

Who is the novelist whose existential hero suffers from the now-famous “Catch-22”?

The term megalith is properly applied to what work of the ancient world?

What term or topic would be most relevant to a discussion of monumental architecture in the ancient world?

The carved figures of Mycerinus and His Queen, which probably stood along a long causeway, were created by what ancient civilization?

Hammurabi’s Code would be most relevant to a discussion of what topic in the development of ancient civilization?

What ancient Near Eastern ruler received the power of the city of Babylon and rebuilt it in grand fashion with an imposing gate and a multi-layered ziggurat?

The prayers and hymns of the Vedas were the creation of what ancient civilization?

Which structure functioned as an elaborate tomb for god-like rulers?

The Sumerians were the first people of the ancient world to accomplish what?

What term or topic would be most relevant to a discussion of the earliest American civilizations?

What geographic feature provided the center of early human cultures in the South American continent?

The first great cities of the ancient world arose in what region?

In the view of modern scholars, which factor likely played the greatest role in humans’ different rates of cultural development in the ancient world?

What statement best describes the Persian kingdom established by the rulers Cyrus II and Darius, who built a capital at Persepolis?

What topic or term would be most useful in discussing the epic tale of Gilgamesh, whose heroic life culminates in a search for immortality?

In ancient myths, modern psychologists find evidence of deep-rooted, universal mental images called_____.

Rituals involving bull-leaping and female snake deities or priestesses are associated with what culture?

Which qualities best characterize the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete?

What might one expect to find in an archeological excavation at the ancient palace complex at Knossos, on the island of Crete?

What culture or period could you best illustrate with the beaten gold funeral mask of a ruler mistaken for Agamemnon, remembered as a hero of the Trojan War?

What civilization attacked and plundered the city of Troy and provided the dim cultural memory on which the Homeric poems were based?

What phrase best describes the achievement of Sappho?

Where would one expect to find a description of Chaos and the birth of the gods from mother earth?

What features in distinctive of an Ionic column on a classical building?

The Kritios Boy, with its subtly tilted shoulders and hips, can be seen as the beginning of what period of ancient Greek art?

Who was Athens’ most important political leader during its Golden Age, the period of the Parthenon’s construction?

A caryatid column was employed in what work of art?

On the Parthenon in Athens, what scene is depicted on the temple’s inner or cella (Ionic) frieze?

Who was the first great Greek tragedian, in whose drama the suffering of humans eventually led to the recognition of divine wisdom?

In which work would you find one of the classical orders employed?

Which Athenian tragedian – the last of classical Athens’ three great tragic playwrights- “sought to show how people as they are, not as they ought to be?”

How is the Athenian Aristophanes best described?

For what purpose was an orchestra in classical Athens most likely used?

During what period of Greek civilization would one most likely see an idealized and rationally proportioned statue of a god or athlete, poised in a harmonious balance?

How is the Confucian concept of jen best described?

Which work best illustrates the emotional intensity and drama of the Hellenistic style in sculpture?

The Greek tragic theater began as a worship of Dionysus, Greek god of_______.

Which work is the best example of propaganda designed to glorify the person and power of the Roman emperor?

Strolling through the imperial forum in Rome, what would one be surprised to see?

Which work of art contained a sculpture narrative glorifying the military achievements of a Roman emperor?

Which engineering achievement was used to carry water to a Roman city?

Which of major structure, a masterpiece of Roman engineering, was supported by a complex system of interior arches and vaulting?

How is a dome best described?

In a domed Roman temple, where would one find an oculus?

What would one expect to find in an excavation at Pompeii?

Where would one most easily find an atrium?

Plautus and Terence are primarily responsible for the advancement of what Roman art?

Virgil’s greatest poetic work, the Aeneid, most closely resembles what Greek model?

The term scaenae frons is most relevant in a discussion of what Roman art?

What would an Epicurean like Lucretius, author of On the Nature of the Universe, most likely claim to be true?

Which was a monument to Rome’s imperial power and achievement?

The art of mosaic was most useful in the pursuit of what Roman art?

Which was a Roman building that employed a central dome?

In what aspect was Roman civilization markedly different from Greek civilization?

Which Roman writer took the Greek poet Sappho’s lyric poetry as principal influence and model?

The philosophy of stoicism, propounded by the Roman slave-philosopher Epictetus, declared what basic principle or idea?

In which of these works would one expect to read a bitterly humorous criticism of Rome’s decadence and corruption?

What was the greatest achievement of Cicero, the late Republican intellectual?

As adopted by the Romans in their early history, how is the form of government called a republic best described?

What event or development transformed the Roman empire in the centuries before the rise of Christianity?

If asked to illustrate the Roman genius for creating lavish architectural interiors as a setting for recreation and pleasure, which structure would you most plausibly cite?

This term for the political and social policy in which a single nation or city dominates other territories as its subject nations.

Historians give the Latin name _________ to the 200-year period in which Rome’s empire enjoyed relative peace and stability.

The architectural form and building material that accounted for Romans’ innovative building program were______ and ________.

The stoic emperor associated with the end of Rome’s golden age of peace was _______.