雅思口语话题背景材料：艺术_雅思英语口语

雅思口语话题背景材料：艺术

　　This function of the arts can be denoted as expressionism -- the artists use of a medium to express unique passion and insight. Poets such as Emily Dickinson and Theodore Roethke, painters such as the American sea painter Winslow Homer, the black folk artist Horace Pipkin, and musicians like blues artist Clarence Leadbelly used the arts to express their deepest private feelings and their vision of the universe. What they created were not works that expressed an official or institutional point of view. They elevated the personal to a level of all-consuming importance.

　　A second kind of expressionism also developed in the 19th century. This one was much more offensive. In societies undergoing tremendous change, artists began to use art to agitate for social change.

　　Photographer Sherry Levine has used grotesque images of women to protest the oppression of the female gender by American advertising, law, and social custom. This form of expressionism we can call cultural criticism. That is, artists take a stand against certain practices in the society that they consider to be unjust.

　　One can well understand that these most recent functions of art -- the expression of private feelings and the criticism of society -- are seen as grave threats by citizens who want entertainment, or beauty, or peace.

　　Beethovens early listeners, accustomed to the predictable harmonies and melodic lengths of Haydn, dismissed his symphonies as literally causing their ears to hurt.