Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but also he wants it to be something which has not been said before. He hopes the public will listen and understand－he wants to teach them, and he wants them to learn from him.
What visual artists like painters want to teach is easy to make out but difficult to explain, because painters translate their experiences into shapes and colors, not words. They seem to feel that a certain selection of shapes and colors, out of the countless billions possible, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth showing to us. Without their work we should never have noticed these particular shapes and colors, or have felt the delight which they brought to the artist.
Most artists take their shapes and colors from the world of nature and from human bodies in movement and rest; their choices indicate that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, and that they contain beautiful sights. Contemporary artists might say that they merely choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, and that there is nothing more in it. Yet they do not choose them without reference to the character of their subjects.
If one painter chooses to paint a gangrenous(生疮的) leg and another a lake in moonlight, each of them is directing our attention to a certain aspect of the world. Each painter is telling us something－all of which means that, consciously or unconsciously, he is trying to teach us.
1．It is hard to explain what a painter is saying, because ___________.
A．painters do not express themselves well
B．painters use shapes and colors instead of words
C．painters use unusual words and phrases
D．painters do not say anything actually
2．The contemporary art contains ____________.
A．totally imaginary subjects
B．merely the subjects from nature
C．uninteresting aspects of the world
D．subjects chosen partly for their meaning
3．Compared with a painter of unpleasant subjects, a painter who draws a lake in moonlight is
_______________.
A．better to communicate with
B．more skilled at expressing himself
C．pointing at different things
D．showing more meaning
4．From the passage we can get the information that _____________.
A．paintings are not difficult to understand
B．painters intend to make the paintings hard to understand
C．artists don’t care about the public
D．one must look beyond shapes and colors to find what the artist is saying