Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a small group of artists working in France and Germany began to re-evaluate the meaning and function of art. In the preceding century, art had lost many of its traditional functions. It had ceased to be an important method for recording the way things look because that job had been taken over by the camera. Artists now sought to isolate the special province of art, to define its own particular essence. Painters and sculptors joined other intellectuals in questioning classical standards based on rationalized patterns and generalized ideals. The world view of the 1890s had been so altered by the tumultuous changes of the nineteenth century that the cool, orderly classical figure style and static Renaissance compositions no longer seemed appropriate forms of expression.The word "compositions" in this paragraph means （）.
A、publications
B、elements
C、illustrations
D、exhibitions
【正确答案】：B
【题目解析】：由最后一句可知，在19世纪风云四起的历史变迁中，19世纪90年代的世界观也发生了很大变化，冷静、有条不紊的经典人物形象和静态的文艺复兴风格不再是合适的表达形式。故 composition在这里是指“要素”。分析选项可知，publications意为“出版物”, elements意为“元素，要素”, illustrations意为“说明，插图”, exhibitions意为“展览”。只有B项与composition的含义接近，故选B。
