Passage One
Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.
What is the place of art in a culture of inattention? Recent visitors to the Louvre report that tourists can now spend only a minute in front of the Mona Lisa before being asked to move on. Much of that time, for some of them, is spent taking photographs not even of the painting but of themselves with the painting in the background.
One view is that we have democratised tourism and gallery-going so much that we have made it effectively impossible to appreciate what we’ve travelled to see. In this oversubscribed society, experience becomes a commodity like any other. There are queues to climb Mt. Jolmo Lungma as well as to see famous paintings. Leisure, thus conceived, is hard labour, and returning to work becomes a well-earned break from the ordeal.
What gets lost in this industrialised haste is the quality of looking. consider an extreme example, the late philosopher Richard Wollheim. When he visited the Louvre he could spent as much as four hours sitting before a painting. The first hour, he claimed, was necessary for misperceptions to be eliminated. It was only then that the picture would begin to disclose itself. This seems unthinkable today, but it is still possible to organise. Even in the busiest museums there are many rooms and many pictures worth hours of contemplation which the crowds largely ignore. Sometimes the largest crowds are partly the products of bad management; the Mona Lisa is such a hurried experience today partly because the museum is being reorganised. The Uffizi in Florence, another site of cultural pilgrimage, has cut its entry queues down to seven minutes by clever management. And there are some forms of art, those designed to be spectacles as well as objects of contemplation, which can work perfectly well in the face of huge crowds.
Olafur Eliasson’s current Tate modern show, for instance, might seem nothing more than an entertainment, overrun as it is with kids romping (喧闹地玩耍)in fog rooms and spray mist installations. But it’s more than that: where Eliasson is at his most entertaining, he is at his most serious too, and his disorienting installations bring home the reality of the destructive effects we are having on the planet — not least what we are doing to the glaciers of Eliasson’s beloved Iceland.
Marcel Proust, another lover of the Louvre, wrote: “ It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees the universe, whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any on the moon.”If any art remains worth seeing, it must lead us to such escapes. But a minute in front of a painting in a hurried crowd won’t do that.
46. What does the scene at the Louvre demonstrate according to the author?
A) The enormous appeal of a great piece of artistic work to tourists.
B) The near impossibility of appreciating art in an age of mass tourism.
C) The ever-growing commercial value of long-cherished artistic works.
D) The real difficulty in getting a glimpse at a masterpiece amid a crowd.
47. Why did the late philosopher Richard Wollheim spend four hours before a picture?
A) It takes time to appreciate a piece of art fully.
B) It is quite common to misinterpret artistic works.
C) The longer people contemplate a picture, the more likely they will enjoy it.
D) The more time one spends before a painting, the more valuable one finds it.
48. What does the case of the Uffizi in Florence show?
A) Art works in museums should be better taken care of.
B) Sites of cultural pilgrimage are always flooded with visitors.
C) Good management is key to handling large crowds of visitors.
D) Large crowds of visitors cause management problems for museums.
49. What do we learn from Olafur Eliasson’s current Tate Modern show?
A) Children learn to appreciate art works most effectively while they are playing.
B) It is possible to combine entertainment with appreciation of serious art.
C) Art works about the environment appeal most to young children.
D) Some forms of art can accommodate huge crowds of visitors.
50. What can art do according to Marcel Proust?
A) Enable us to live a much fuller life.
B) Allow us to escape the harsh reality.
C) Help us to see the world from a different perspective.
D) Urge us to explore the unknown domain of the universe.
答案解析：
由题干中的关键词“the scene at the Louvre”定位到第一段和第二段。第一段描述了卢浮宫里游客在《蒙娜丽莎》前只能停留一分钟且很多人忙着拍照的场景，第二段提到“we have democratised tourism and gallery - going so much that we have made it effectively impossible to appreciate what we’ve travelled to see”，即大众旅游和参观画廊变得如此普遍，以至于实际上不可能欣赏我们特意去看的艺术作品，所以选B。
根据题干中的关键词“the late philosopher Richard Wollheim spend four hours before a picture”定位到第三段。文中提到“When he visited the Louvre he could spent as much as four hours sitting before a painting. The first hour, he claimed, was necessary for misperceptions to be eliminated. It was only then that the picture would begin to disclose itself.”，说明他花四小时是因为需要时间来消除误解，充分欣赏一件艺术作品，所以选A。
由题干中的关键词“the case of the Uffizi in Florence”定位到第三段。文中提到“The Uffizi in Florence, another site of cultural pilgrimage, has cut its entry queues down to seven minutes by clever management.”，即佛罗伦萨的乌菲齐美术馆通过巧妙的管理将入场排队时间缩短到了七分钟，这表明良好的管理是应对大量游客的关键，所以选C。
根据题干中的关键词“Olafur Eliasson’s current Tate Modern show”定位到第四段。文中提到“Olafur Eliasson’s current Tate Modern show, for instance, might seem nothing more than an entertainment... But it’s more than that: where Eliasson is at his most entertaining, he is at his most serious too”，说明奥拉维尔·埃利亚松在泰特现代美术馆的展览看似只是娱乐，但实际上在娱乐的同时也能让人欣赏严肃的艺术，即有可能将娱乐与欣赏严肃艺术结合起来，所以选B。
由题干中的关键词“Marcel Proust”定位到最后一段。文中提到“It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees the universe”，即只有通过艺术，我们才能摆脱自我，了解他人如何看待宇宙，也就是帮助我们从不同的角度看待世界，所以选C。
