企源知识库

Read the following passage and choose the most likely answer to each of the following questions.

    Throughout history artists have filled many different roles, but their value and importance to society have stayed basically the same. To begin with, artists fulfill a practical function, designing virtually every structure and object in the environment. Today this practical role is carried out by artists with specialized, often technical training——industrial and graphic designers, architects, craft artists, and fashion designers, among others. But what about the painters and sculptors, the photographers and cinematographers (电影摄影师)? What needs do they meet in our computer age? We can identify at least four basic functions for the artist——all of them age-old, all expanding in complexity.
    First, artists record. They give us visual images that can be preserved for historical reference. This idea is so obvious that we take it for granted, forgetting how overwhelming our ignorance otherwise would be. Were it not for artists, we would have no idea what people from the past looked like. Nor could we form any visual image of historical places and events. Before the invention of the camera in the early 19th century, artists recorded images mainly through painting, drawing, and sculpture. Today we rely more heavily on photography, cinema, and television to keep our history, but of course the people behind these media are also artists. Even with the prevalence of mechanical recording, there remains interest in the painted impression, the artist's distinctive filtering of visual appearances.
    The second thing artists do is to give tangible form to the unknown. In other words, they attempt to record what cannot be seen with the eyes or what has not yet occurred. This role has been important throughout the history of art, and it is no less vital today. Ancient artists had a somewhat different list of unknowns to contend with. They puzzled over and feared such things as tornadoes, floods, eclipses and the wrath of spirits. Even in an age when satellites predict the weather and spirits have been tamed, there still are certain unknowns, and artists still are struggling to give them tangible form. What would a nuclear holocaust be like? We do not know and dare not find out. What exists at the edge of our universe? Scientists will know eventually, but not soon. What do our dreams and nightmares really mean? None of us can analyze them definitely. These unknowns are frightening to us, just as the Thunder God must have been to our ancestors.
    Third, artists give tangible form to feelings. These may be the artist's own feelings that are expressed in paint or marble or whatever the medium. But surely they are feelings shared by many people——love, hate, despair, fear, exhilaration, anger. When we pay attention to the emotions a work of art evokes, we are communicating with the artist and with others who have such feelings.
    Fourth, artists offer an innovative way of seeing, a unique visual "take" on the world. At a glance René Magritte's The Blank Cheque seems a straightforward picture of a woman riding a horse through the forest. A closer look reveals the sort of bizarre visual disruption in which Magritte delighted. Parts of the figures are hidden by trees, but other parts are hidden by the space between trees! The horse's left rear leg comes and goes, defying all natural laws. This is truly an innovative way of seeing forms in space.
    To sum up, then, artists perform at least four important functions: they record, they visualize the unknown, they portray feelings, and they stretch one's ability to see. All these functions have to do with communication. Artists are about to fill these roles because they create new visual images.

What does the writer think of the function of giving tangible form to the unknown?（ ）

It has been vital throughout history.

It no longer exists in modern art.

It is getting more important nowadays.

It is not as important as it used to be.

本题考查作者对给未知的事物以有形的形式这一功能的看法。
定位到第三段前三句“艺术家要做的第二件事就是给未知的事物以有形的形式。换句话说，他们试图记录用眼睛看不见的或还没有发生的事情。这一作用在整个艺术史上一直很重要，今天也同样重要”可知，A选项“它在整个历史上都是至关重要的”符合题意。B选项“它在现代艺术中不再存在”、C选项“现如今它正变得越来越重要”和D选项“它没有过去那么重要”均与文章描述不符。故选择A选项。