MyHumanitiesStudio Exercises


1			Music and Dance (pp. 452-455) Music > Structure > Form http://www.mhhe.com/HumanitiesStudio/6/6/1.html Structure is an important element of a musical composition. How does John Cage use structure in his famous piece 4'33" (p 452)? Can this composition be said to consist of anything besides structure? Can this composition be said to constitute a work of art? Compare this piece to Duchamp's Fountain (p. 403). What do Cage and Duchamp both seem to be saying about art and ordinary life? Is their point a valid one? How does the artistic philosophy behind 4'33" and Fountain compare with Warhol's Pop Art (Fig. 15.17)? How do the roles of Cage and Duchamp as artists compare with that of Jackson Pollock (Figs. 15.14-15.15) and other action painters?




2			Theater of the Absurd (pp. 419-420) Theater > Drama > Plot http://www.mhhe.com/HumanitiesStudio/7/3/2.html The twentieth-century rejection of prevailing artistic conventions found its expression on stage in the theater of the absurd. Probably the most famous English-language work in this genre is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (pp. 419-420), in which two characters await the arrival of a third person, who never shows. Can the action of this play be said to constitute a plot? Can a play have an artistic meaning without a recognizable plot, or is the absence of a standard plotline a meaning in and of itself? Compare the artistic intent behind Waiting for Godot to the works of contemporary artists such as Gwendolyn Brooks (p. 424), Betye Saar (Fig. 15.4), Barbara Kruger (Fig. 15.7), and Robert Mapplethorpe (Fig. 15.8). Are the intended meanings of these works more or less apparent than the intended meaning of Beckett's play? What does the juxtaposition of these works suggest about the uses of art since the end of the Second World War?

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