Study Guide

Field 214: Visual Arts 
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Each multiple-choice question has four answer choices. Read each question and its answer choices carefully and choose the ONE best answer.

During the test you should try to answer all questions. Even if you are unsure of an answer, it is better to guess than not to answer a question at all. You will NOT be penalized for choosing an incorrect response.

Objective 0001 
Understand the elements of art and design.

1. Use the reproduction below of The Migration Series, No.number 10 ("They were very poor.") (1940–41) by Jacob Lawrence¹ to answer the question that follows.

An image of a painting with landscape orientation is shown. Most of the color in the composition is teal, which appears to be a wall in the background that takes up more than 80% of the pictorial space. A rectangular brown shape representing a table comprises most of the lower quarter of the composition. Two human figures appear to be sitting at the table. A bowl and a spoon are in front of the human figure on the left, and a bowl and spoon are in front of the figure on the right. In the upper right of the composition, what appears to be a black pot is nailed to a board.

In this painting, which of the following is the most obvious compositional device used to create a mood?

1. the illusion of deep recession in space
2. an unusually low observer eye-level
3. the use of a uniform value throughout
4. a large expanse of negative space

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.
Negative space refers to the space surrounding shapes and subjects of a composition. The large expanse of negative space in the painting around the two people seated at the table creates a mood of sparseness and restraint.

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Objective 0001 
Understand the elements of art and design.

2. In regard to color, the intensity or vividness of a particular color is known as its:

1. value.
2. hue.
3. saturation.
4. tone.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Saturation refers to the degree of purity of color and its degree of intensity, vividness, or brightness.

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Objective 0002 
Understand the principles of art and design.

3. Use the reproduction below of Untitled (After Joan Miró) (1985) by Sherrie Levine² to answer the question that follows.

The composition’s background color is light yellow. There are several circular shapes, most of them solid black, and one of them, the largest, is solid light blue. Two other small circular shapes are solid coral in color and solid green in color. There are also several shapes depicted as rudimentary stars. Their sizes vary.

Which of the following aspects of the work most contributes to its sense of rhythm?

1. the repetition of shapes
2. the vertical orientation of the image
3. the asymmetrical balance
4. the use of cool and warm colors

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
In visual arts, rhythm is a principle of design that generally refers to how repetition is used in artworks. In this work, the repetition of circular shapes of varying sizes and the repetition of star-like shapes contribute to a sense of visual rhythm.

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Objective 0003 
Understand contemporary approaches to art and design.

4. Use the reproduction below of Rickshaw 2 (2009) by Banksy³ to answer the question that follows.

The composition depicts what appears to be a middle-aged man and woman seated on a rickshaw. They are the only parts of the picture in color. Every other aspect of the picture, except the man’s white sneakers, is colored in neutral shades of black, white, and gray. The couple is wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sunglasses. The man appears to be taking a selfie of the two with a smartphone he holds out in front of them in his left hand, his left arm extended. Both are smiling. The colors used to depict the couple are light and sun-splashed. Her top is light purple, his shorts are light blue. His t-shirt is a lighter shade of blue. The skin color of their arms and legs are typically associated with Caucasian skin color. The woman wears flip flops. The man wears white sneakers. The couple appears to be from a Western country. The rickshaw has a parasol and two wheels, and is being pulled by a small boy who wears a cap on backwards and doesn’t appear to be wearing shoes. He wears shorts and a t-shirt. The boy is so small he seems hardly able to pull two middle-aged adults who are depicted as bearing not inconsiderable weight. The boy looks directly at the viewer with an expression that is hard to determine—it could be sad, angry, defeated—but is certainly not an expression of happiness.

The artist's use of color and neutral tones helps convey primarily which of the following themes?

1. the inequities of societies
2. the innocence of youth
3. the conveniences of technology
4. the threat of climate change

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
The work depicts a small boy pulling a rickshaw in which two adults are seated. The boy, the rickshaw, and the background are all depicted with shades of gray and black. By contrast, the couple in the rickshaw is depicted in full color. Even without this use of color, the work would convey a theme of inequity because a little boy is pulling two adults, who seem to represent Western culture. The color contrast underscores the theme because one culture is depicted as bright, happy, and colorful, while the other is depicted as small and drab.

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Objective 0003 
Understand contemporary approaches to art and design.

5. Contemporary installation, performance, and multimedia artists often produce work that encourages or requires the active participation of its viewers, whose input can even shape the work. Which of the following statements best accounts for this development in contemporary art?

1. Fewer and fewer artists consider their role to be to broaden an audience's outlook or understanding.
2. Viewers are increasingly being recognized as highly educated critics rather than mere observers.
3. The relationship between artist and audience is changing as new roles and media are being explored.
4. More and more members of the viewing public consider themselves to be artists in their own right.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
One characteristic of contemporary art is the involvement of the viewer. Technological advances are one reason for this. Another is that artists of today are more consciously aware of the artifice of art and their role in making art. They are also interested in challenging the traditional audience-viewer relationship by actually engaging the audience, making the audience a part of their work.

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Objective 0004 
Understand the media, materials, tools, technologies, and techniques used in two-dimensional art and design (e.g., drawing, painting, printmaking, mixed media).

6. In painting, a painting knife is best used in which of the following ways?

1. mixing colors on the support
2. cutting canvas before stretching it
3. removing wet paint from the palette
4. scraping dried paint off of brushes

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
Painting knives can be used to mix paint directly on the support.

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Objective 0005 
Understand the media, materials, tools, technologies, and techniques used in three-dimensional art and design (e.g., architecture, ceramics, fiber arts, sculpture, metals).

7. The major advantage of using reinforced concrete, rather than stone and steel, in architecture is that reinforced concrete can:

1. add decorative elements and add aesthetic value to a structure to which it is applied.
2. be designed to allow more openings than stone or steel can allow.
3. be formed into arches, domes, and buttresses.
4. span greater distances and support greater weight than stone or steel can.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.
Reinforced concrete, which is also referred to as ferroconcrete, is concrete that is reinforced with metal, such as steel rebar. The metal significantly increases the tensile strength of the concrete, making reinforced concrete stronger than stone or steel alone.

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Objective 0006 
Understand the media, materials, tools, technologies, and techniques used in media arts (e.g., graphic design, photography, time-based art, interactive).

8. A set designer has selected a blue couch for a scene that will include several characters. Which color should the costume designer use when designing a costume for a character who will be sitting in the couch and walking near it if the intent is to draw as much attention to the character as possible?

1. yellow
2. green
3. orange
4. red

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Blue and orange are complementary colors. Complementary colors contrast strongly when they are near each other. They seem to vibrate when paired.

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Objective 0007 
Understand works of art from Africa from prehistoric times to the present.

9. Sub-Saharan sculpture influenced Modernist artists in the early twentieth century due to primarily which of the following characteristics?

1. sophisticated use of form
2. spiritual meaning and function
3. wide variety of materials used
4. reflection of social hierarchy

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
As a result of the colonization of many African countries during the nineteenth century, Modern artists in Europe during the early twentieth century began to see African sculptures in museums and shops. The abstract, stylized forms heavily influenced the artists, who saw the works as highly sophisticated and unlike anything they had ever seen.

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Objective 0008 
Understand works of art from Asia from prehistoric times to the present.

10. Use the reproduction⁴ below to answer the question that follows.

The photograph shows a structure that appears to be built of stone, grayish in color. The structure has many features but the most prominent is a round dome that seems to come out of the ground. It appears to be a large structure, given parts of trees on each side of the photo appear to be significantly smaller than the overall size of the structure. The dome gradually arcs up from wide at the base. On the top center of the dome appears to be a small rectangular structure and atop that are three circular disc-like sculptures that ascend from largest to smallest, such that the smallest is the very top of the overall structure. What looks like a stone border fence surrounds the dome. An opening in it has the appearance of a gate for entrance into the area around the dome.

This structure is most characteristic of the architecture of which of the following belief systems?

1. Hinduism
2. Daoism
3. Buddhism
4. Confucianism

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Stupas are monuments to Buddha. This one, the Great Stupa of Sanchi, built in the third century BCE, is characteristic of stupas in its circular base, solid dome, and relief sculptures.

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Objective 0009 
Understand works of art from Central America from prehistoric times to the present.

11. Use the reproduction⁵ below to answer the question that follows.

The photograph shows a stone sculpture that sits on a stone pedestal. The sculpture has been weathered considerably. The sculpture appears to be a reclining human figure whose hands are folded over its midsection and whose legs are together, knees are up, and feet are together on the ground. The figure’s back is raised up rather than prone and the figure’s head looks to the side. Taken as a whole, the figure’s posture is in a state somewhere between sitting on the ground or floor, in this case the pedestal, and lying down on the ground or the floor. The statue is outside. In the distance of the photograph is a beach and what looks like the ocean beyond. The actual texture of the sculpture is rough, which may not have been its original state, as the sculpture appears to have been in the elements for a long time.

Mayan chacmool sculptures such as this one heavily influenced which of the following twentieth-century sculptors?

1. Louise Bourgeois
2. Henry Moore
3. Barbara Hepworth
4. Constantin Brancusi

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.
Mayan chacmool sculptures are typically made of stone and feature a reclining human figure with a head turned 90 degrees away from the body and looking directly at the viewer. Henry Moore saw a cast of a chacmool in a Paris museum and was fascinated by it. Moore’s reclining figures, which are more abstract than chacmools but were inspired by the essence of chacmool form, became a major characteristic of Moore’s work.

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Objective 0010 
Understand works of art from Europe from prehistoric times to the present.

12. Impressionism influenced European artists and later artists in the United States in which of the following ways?

1. painting primarily rural genre scenes
2. using abstract shapes to capture the essence of a subject
3. rejecting the standards of academic art
4. emphasizing complementary colors and asymmetrical balance

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Impressionism was a movement that started in Paris in the 1870s. Principal figures of the movement, such as Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edouard Degas, and Berthe Morisot, were interested in the actual and implied textures of loose brushstrokes, depicting fleeting impressions of modern life, and emphasizing the optical effects of natural light. Because they were interested in capturing impressions of their subjects and often rejecting symmetry, they shunned and were shunned by the academy, whose expectation was that art should depict detailed realism.

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Objective 0011 
Understand works of art from the Middle East from prehistoric times to the present.

13. Use the reproduction⁶ below to answer the question that follows.

The photograph shows part of an interior wall with interlacing, arabesque designs. Part of the wall is recessed in a half-cylindrical shape that rises to a domed peak. This recessed area appears to be large enough for a person to stand inside of it. The bulk of the color of the design elements of the wall and recess is shades of blue. Written Arabic is part of the design and appears along the outer sides of the recess and also within it.

The fourteenth-century mihrab from Isfahan, Iran, was primarily designed to serve which of the following functions?

1. built-in pulpit
2. clerical chamber
3. prayer niche
4. relic shrine

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
In Islamic traditions, a mihrab is a prayer niche in the qiblah wall of a mosque. The mihrab indicates the direction of Mecca.

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Objective 0012 
Understand works of art from North America from prehistoric times to the present.

14. Mexican muralists influenced primarily which of the following twentieth-century American artists?

1. Jackson Pollock
2. Georgia O'Keeffe
3. Thomas Hart Benton
4. Margaret Bourke-White

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Mexican muralism, a movement that began in the 1920s and featured Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, focused on depictions of history, oppression, Mexican independence, and other issues of the day. The murals often had social, political, and even nationalistic purposes. Thomas Hart Benton met Rivera in Paris and was influenced by his socially conscious murals.

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Objective 0013 
Understand works of art from Oceania from prehistoric times to the present.

15. Tattooing in ancient Maori art was primarily intended to convey which of the following concepts, messages, or purposes?

1. healing power
2. individual prestige
3. sexual orientation
4. tribal mythology

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: B.
Tattoos in ancient Maori culture served many purposes, such as conveying tribal affiliation, but above all they were sources of pride and prestige.

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Objective 0014 
Understand works of art from South America from prehistoric times to the present.

16. Use the reproduction⁷ below to answer the question that follows.

The painting depicts two recognizable shapes—a green cactus and a yellow sun—and a somewhat recognizable but highly distorted human-like figure. The human figure is so distorted that aside from a foot and hand, which themselves are extraordinarily large in comparison to the rest of the body, one would probably not recognize the figure as human-like. To the limited extent that the figure appears to have a head, from it stretches a shape that could be construed as a nose, but the shape is so long it’s hard to determine what it is. The background color of the painting is blue and seems to represent the sky. The skin tone of the highly distorted, human-like figure is typically associated with Caucasian skin color. The strange, distorted human-like figure dominates the pictorial space, taking up most of the actual space and most of the viewers’ attention.

The painting by Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral suggests the influence of primarily which of the following movements?

1. Surrealism
2. Cubism
3. Expressionism
4. Dadaism

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
The strange distortions of the human figure, with its enormous foot, and the perplexing, imaginative nature of the work suggest the influence of surrealism.

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Objective 0015 
Understand the analysis and interpretation of works of visual art.

17. Use the reproductions below of two photographs of a migrant family (1936) by Dorothea Lange⁸ to answer the question that follows.

Image A is a black-and-white photograph. It is an iconic image by Dorothea Lange that put a human face on suffering during the Great Depression. Four humans are depicted in compressed pictorial space. In the center, and comprising most of the photograph, is a woman with a deeply worried look on her face. She stares off camera. We can see a small part of a swaddled baby. The woman appears to be holding the baby in her lap. Two older children flank the woman. Each is pressed up against the woman and each is turned away from the camera.
Image B is also a black-and-white photograph by Lange that appears to have been taken shortly before or after Image B was taken. This time we see the mother and the baby and one of the other children, not both children. This time the mother looks directly at the camera. The older child appears to be a boy. Unlike in Image A, we see his face. He is not turned away from the camera. We see more of the swaddled baby in Image B, too, but the baby is in the same position on the woman’s lap. The other big difference between the two images of essentially the same subject is that in Image A, space is compressed and the perspective is close to the four figures as if the viewer is close enough to touch the figures. Space is not compressed, or not nearly as compressed, in Image B. The viewer can see what appears to be a makeshift tent and pole made of a branch that the boy clings to. The viewer can see distant space in the background. In front of the woman, the boy, and the baby, is a small makeshift table, upon which is an empty plate. The woman’s expression is similarly pained in Image B, but the viewer is farther away from it than in the closer range of Image A.

Which of the following statements offers the best comparative analysis of these two images?

1. By including a third child in the frame, Image A imparts a greater sense of family than Image B.
2. By including the barren surroundings in the frame, Image B introduces greater interest than Image A.
3. By including only the family with the mother's face in close-up, Image A becomes a more universal expression of human suffering than Image B.
4. By including an assertive diagonal element, Image B makes a more forceful statement about social injustice than Image A.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
The compressed space of Image A lends the image more drama and expression than Image B because the viewer is closer to the worried look on the woman’s face than in Image B. The compressed space also shows three children clinging to the woman, two with their backs turned to the camera, which further contributes to the sense of suffering conveyed by the photograph.

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Objective 0016 
Understand the function of visual art and design in history, society, and culture.

18. Which of the following illustrates the most significant way in which the visual arts influence twenty-first-century Western culture?

1. Community art projects provide a creative outlet for community members.
2. Public works of art serve to instruct their viewers in approaches to aesthetic analysis and criticism.
3. New uses by artists of familiar materials and tools promotes further creativity in the use of materials and tools in other disciplines.
4. Public images provide alternative viewpoints of significant events, peoples, and developments occurring in society.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: D.
The explosion of social media and the importance of visual literacy in the twenty-first century means, among other things, that visual images are ubiquitous. Their design and dissemination through countless channels have had a profound effect on how stories are shaped, and they provide many viewpoints on events, peoples, and societal developments.

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Objective 0017 
Understand the commonalities, distinctions, and connections in and among the arts (e.g., visual arts, dance, music, drama/theatre) and other disciplines.

19. In the late twentieth century, artists used images from popular television series, commercial advertising techniques, and video technology in their work. This trend has aroused the greatest controversy about whether:

1. there is a meaningful distinction between high art and low art.
2. art may be legitimately used as a vehicle of social criticism.
3. the artist's intention is relevant to the interpretation of a work of art.
4. all art reflects the society in which it is created.

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: A.
Visual artists’ incorporation of designs from popular culture, such as television shows, advertising, and graphic design, and techniques associated with those aspects of visual culture, raised the question of what should qualify as art and what should not. Prior to the late twentieth century, images from visual culture were generally not considered high art or even art at all.

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Objective 0018 
Understand the teaching of visual art and design in a school setting.

20. Which of the following is most typical of children's approach to art-making in the early elementary years (grades 1 to 3)?

1. the creation of works in which the entire surface of the picture plane is filled with images and/or colors
2. free experimentation with the tactile qualities of media, along with a total lack of interest in the final artwork
3. the development and repeated use of schemas to represent familiar objects and scenes
4. the ongoing exploration and refinement of techniques for making their art as realistic as possible

Answer and Rationale Answer and Rationale. Enter to expand or collapse. Answer expanded

Correct Response: C.
Although every child is different and there are no clearly definitive types of artwork by children at each stage of their lives, children in the early elementary years tend to focus on representing familiar objects and scenes, especially repeating the objects or scenes, which art educator Viktor Lowenfeld referred to as schema.

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