III. Speech practice.

Exercise 5. Give the description of the sculptor, how did he look like in 1959.

Exercise 6. Prove that the author of this article didn’t like the monuments to Lenin and maybe Lenin himself.

Exercise 7. Make up the plan of the article and retell it.

ІV. Discussion points.

Exercise 8. The author of the article considers that “on the day that the artist’s material problems are solved, he stops producing works of art”. What do you think about it?

Active Vocabulary.

obscurity

oblivion

studio

lack of acknowledgement

monumental art

a statue

a statuette

to create sculptures

to find images

to violate material

hidden in a tree trunk

hidden in a mass of rock

caved of wood

to flourish

world fame

leading galleries

biographer

memories

expressive means

to share

decadent

modernist

slender elongated

sculptures

likeness

a treat for the eye

Keys.

Ex.1. a - 2; b - 2; c - 4; d - 6.

Ex.3. a - F; b - F; c - T; d - F; e - T; f - T; g - F.

Ex.4. 1 - b ; 2 - c; 3 - b; 4 - a; 5 - c ; 6 - b; 7 - b; 8 - a.

Text 4

І. Reading.

Read the text “Claude Monet” and do the exercises given after the text.

Claude Monet (1840—1926)

Monet was the most convinced and consistent Impressionist of them all. From his earliest days as an artist, he was encouraged to trust his perceptions and the hardships he suffered never de­terred him from that pursuit.

Devoting himself to the painting of landscapes in bright sun­light, he has carried the pitch of painting into a higher key than any artist before him had done. "Pine-Trees at Antibes" is a beau­tiful example of his style at its maturity; radiant colours are laid side by side in small broken touches to suggest the vibration of light, while the decorative arrangement shows Japanese influence.

Light is always the "principal person" in Monet's landscape, and since he is always aiming at seizing a fugitive effect, he has insisted on consistency of illumination at particular hours of the day and season. With this object he adopted since the early eighties a habit of painting the same subject under different con­ditions of light. In this way he painted a series of views, all of the same subject, but all different in colour and lighting.

His aim was to give a serial, continuous impression of the most minute transformations of light; by deemphasizing the subject matter through repetition, he felt he could more readily control the variable of light. In some of these motifs he lost the freshness of his early work and became overemphatic and monoto­nous.

In 1890 Monet bought the property at Giverny and began work on the series of haystacks which he pursued for two years. Monet painted the stacks in sunny and grey weather, in fog and covered with snow.

Though it is one of the simplest versions, "Haystack" mag­nificently exemplifies Monet's struggle to capture the transient splendor of light. The hill, trees, houses, and fields, as passive in local colour as the piled hay, are bathed in unnamable nuances of colour that radiate from behind the stack. The contour of its peak, dissolved in a heated aura, writhes as if it were about to melt.

Monet's renowned series of the cathedral at Rouen seen under different light effects was painted from a second-floor window above a shop opposite the facade. He made eighteen frontal views. Changing canvases with the light, Monet had followed the hours of the day from early morning with the fagade in misty blue shadow, to the afternoon, when it is flooded with sun, and finally to the end of the day, when the sunset, disappearing be­hind the buildings of the city, weaves the weathered stone work into a strange fabric of burnt orange and blue.

Monet poetically demonstrated, as motion and colour photo­graphy were to prove, that nature's colour lies in atmosphere and constantly changing light rather than in inert materials; that during a short time the appearance of a single substance can moderate through the entire spectral and tonal range.

His lily pad motifs, where close-valued, but lower-keyed colour is enhanced by a loose and fluent brush-work, today assume power and originality.

During his last years, Monet expanded on the theme of the water-lilies, using an informal pointillistic style. He was the leader of the Impressionist School, a painter of twinkling light and luminous colour; his sensitive eye brought the representation of colour gradations in the landscape to an unequalled height.

ІІ. Comprehension.

Exercise 1. Find where in the text it is said:

a). that he devoted himself to landscape painting;

b). that he used the technique of painting laying colours in small broken touches;

c). that he painted haystacks in different weather;

d). that nature’s colour lies in atmosphere.

Exercise 2. Find in the text the answers to the following questions:

a). What was he encouraged to trust as an artist?

b). What technique of painting did he use?

c). What was the “principal person” in Monet’s landscape?

d). What did Monet want to capture by painting his “Haystacks”?

e). How many frontal views of the cathedral at Rouen did he paint?

f). What was his theme of painting during his last years?

Exercise 3. Say whether the following statements are true or false:

a). Monet was the last to join and the first to leave the Impressionists.

b). He painted using broad strokes of his brush.

c). He adopted a habit of painting the same objects under different conditions of light and weather.

d). He painted the facade of the cathedral at Paris

e). During his last years he used a pointillistic style

f). During his last years he painted ponds with water-lilies.