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FAKULTET LIKOVNIH UMETNOSTI ODSEK ZA TEORIJU PREDMET: ENGLESKI JEZIK I i II

SKRIPTA ZA PREDMET ENGLESKI JEZIK I i II

Aleksandra Marković predavač za engleski jezik

na FLU

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UVOD Ova skripta je skrojena isključivo prema potrebama studenata Fakulteta likovnih umetnosti. Posle nekoliko godina rada na ovom fakultetu, prateći nivo znanja studenata kroz nekoliko generacija, predavač je stekao jasnu sliku o prosečnom nivou znanja sa kojima naši studenti dolaze iz srednjih škola, o problemima sa kojima se susreću učeći engleski jezik, o slabim tačkama u njihovom znanju, o nastavnim jedinicama koje teže usvajaju, o njihovim interesovanjima. Upravo zbog toga je ova skripta odraz prevashodno njihovih potreba i interesovanja. Skripta se sastoji iz dva dela: u prvom delu su gramatička objašnjenja i vežbanja, a u drugom delu su odabrani tekstovi iz oblasti umetnosti. Sva objašnjenja su na srpskom jeziku, jer je prema proceni predavača tako svrsishodnije. A.M.

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I DEO: OSNOVNA GLAGOLSKA VREMENA SA NAJOSNOVNIJIM UPOTREBAMA PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE KAKO SE PRESENT SIMPLE GRADI: Present Simple je jednak infinitivu glagola za sva lica, osim trećeg lica jednine gde se dodaje nastavak „S“. Upitan i odričan oblik se grade pomoćnim glagolom DO za sva lica, odnosno DOES za treće lice jednine. Uzmimo na primer glagol WORK: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I work 1. We work 2. You work 2. You work 3. He/ she/ it WORKS 3. They work

Upitan oblik:

1. Do I work? 1. Do we work? 2. Do you work? 2. Do you work? 3. Does he/ she/ it/ WORK? 3. Do they work?

!!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU na treće lice jednine u upitnom obliku ovog vremena: DOES HE WORK- primećujemo da se gubi nastavak S. Odričan oblik: 1. I do not work ILI I don’t work 1. We do not work 2. You do not work 2. You do not work 3. He/ she / it / does not WORK ILI He doesn’t work 3. They do not work !!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU na treće lice jednine u odričnom obliku ovog vremena: HE DOES NOT WORK- primećujemo da se gubi nastavak S. KAKO SE PRESENT SIMPLE KORISTI: PRESENT SIMPLE se koristi prevashodno kada se govori a) o radnji koja se PONAVLJA ILI PREDSTAVLJA NEKU RUTINU I go to work every day.

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U ovom slučaju često koristimo adverbijale kao što su EVERY DAY/ WEEK/ MONTH/ YEAR; ALWAYS; REGULARLY; USUALLY b) o činjenicama ili situacijama koje su permanentne. I love chocolate. The Sun sets in the west.

EXERCISES:

1. Napiši deset rečenica o sebi koristeći PRESENT SIMPLE, tako da opišeš ono što radiš SVAKOGA DANA, SVAKOG MESECA, SVAKE GODINE, UVEK, NIKADA, REDOVNO, OBIČNO...

2. Napiši deset rečenica koje će odražavati činjenice o tebi, koristeći PRESENT SIMPLE.

PRESENT CONTINUOUS TENSE KAKO SE PRESENT CONTINUOUS GRADI: POMOĆNI GLAGOL „TO BE“ + OSNOVNI GLAGOL SA NASTAVKOM „ING“ Uzmimo na primer glagol READ: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I am reading 1. We are reading 2. You are reading 2. You are reading 3. He/ she/ it/ is reading 3. They are reading

Upitan oblik:

1. Am I reading? 1. Are we reading? 2. Are you reading? 2. Are you reading? 3. Is he/ she/ it/ reading? 3. Are they reading?

Odričan oblik:

1. I am not reading 1. We are not reading 2. You are not reading ILI You arent’ reading 2. You are not reading 3. He/ she / it/ is not reading 3. They are not reading

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KAKO SE PRESENT CONTINUOUS KORISTI: Present Continuous se koristi da izrazi:

a) radnju koja se dešava u trenutku govora: I am reading a book (now).

b) radnju koja odražava neku privremenu situaciju: I am living in London at the moment. (Ovo znači da ta osoba PRIVREMENO živi u Londonu i da to nije uobičajena situacija za nju. Da jeste uobičajena, upotrebili bismo Present Simple).

c) neki proces ili situaciju koja se postepeno menja: My English is getting better and better. EXERCISES: Napiši po pet primera za sve tri gore navedene upotrebe ovog glagolskog vremena. PRESENT PERFECT KAKO SE PRESENT PERFECT GRADI: POMOĆNI GLAGOL „HAVE“ + PAST PARTICIPLE GLAVNOG GLAGOLA Past Participle se gradi isto kao i Past Simple kod pravilnih glagola (vidi Past Simple u daljem tekstu), dok kod nepravilnih glagola mora da se nauči posebni oblik za Past Participle (u listi nepravilnih glagola oblik za Past Participle je dat u trećoj koloni). Ovo je trenutak da istaknemo da Past Participle sam po sebi nije glagolsko vreme, već služi sa gradnju složenih glagolskih vremena, u koje spada i Present Perfect Tense o kome je ovde reč. Iz svega ovoga je jasno da, kako bismo sagradili ovo vreme, kao i razna druga složena vremena, moramo znati NEPRAVILNE GLAGOLE. Najosnovniji nepravilni glagoli su dati u ovoj skripti. Uzmimo na primer pravilni glagol WALK: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I have walked 1. We have walked 2. You have walked 2. You have walked 3. He/ she / it/ HAS walked 3. They have walked

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!!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU na treće lice jednine – HAS. Za sva ostala lica je HAVE. Upitan oblik:

1. Have I walked? 1. Have we walked? 2. Have you walked? 2. Have you walked? 3. Has he/she/ it/ walked? 3. Have they walked?

Odričan oblik:

1. I have not walked ILI I haven’t walked 1. We have not walked 2. You have not walked 2. You have not walked 3. He/she/ it/ has not walked 3. They have not walked

!!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU na treće lice jednine – HAS. Za sva ostala lica je HAVE. KAKO SE PRESENT PERFECT KORISTI: U srpskom jeziku ne postoji slično vreme i zbog toga je ovo glagolsko vreme često kamen spoticanja za naše studente. Sam naziv kaže da je u pitanju SADAŠNJE-PROŠLO vreme. To je stoga što ovo glagolsko vreme odražava:

a) radnju koja je započela u prošlosti i traje još uvek (dakle svojim trajanjem doseže do sadašnjeg trenutka i uključuje ga):

I have worked in this bank for four years. (Ovo znači da je osoba pre četiri godine počela da radi u banci i da još uvek u njoj radi. Stoga bi prevod glasio: Četiri godine radim u ovoj banci. b) radnju koja je započela u prošlosti i ima neku posledicu u sadašnjosti (dakle radnja je započeta u prošlosti i više ne traje bukvalno u sadašnjosti, ali ima neke veze sa njom). My computer has crashed and I cannot finish my work now. (Dakle, kompjuter se pokvario u nekom trenutku u prošlosti i ja SADA, kao posledica toga, ne mogu da završim svoj posao. Uz Present Perfect često koristimo: EVER, NEVER, FOR: Have you ever been to Italy? Mary has never seen that film. I have lived in London for four years now. Present Perfect se često koristi u korelaciji sa glagolskim vremenom Past Simple, uz upotrebu reči SINCE:

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I have had problems SINCE I met John. (Osoba ima problema od odredjene tačke u prošlosti, t.j. od kada je upoznala Džona, uključujući i sadašnji trenutak). EXERISES: Napiši deset rečenica koristeći Present Perfect, od čega pet treba da se odnosi na tebe lično, npr. gde nikada nisi bio, šta nikada nisi radio, video, pročitao, šta si započeo pre nekog vremena i to još uvek za tebe traje, itd... PAST SIMPLE TENSE KAKO SE PAST SIMPLE GRADI: NA INFINITIV PRAVILNIH GLAGOLA SE DODAJE NASTAVAK „ED“ PAST SIMPLE NEPRAVILNIH GLAGOLA SE MORA NAUČITI (DRUGA KOLONA NA LISTI NEPRAVILNIH GLAGOLA). Upitan i odričan oblik ovog vremena se grade uz pomoć DID. Uzmimo na primer pravilni glagol TALK. Potvrdan oblik:

1. I talked 1. We talked 2. You talked 2. You talked 3. He/ she/ it/ talked 3. They talked

Upitan oblik:

1. Did I talk? 1. Did we talk? 2. Did you talk? 2. Did you talk? 3. Did he/ she/ it/ talk? 3. Did they talk?

!!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU DA U UPITNOM OBLIKU GLAGOL GUBI NASTAVAK „ED“. Odričan oblik:

1. I did not talk ILI I didn’t talk 1. We did not talk 2. You did not talk 2. You did not talk 3. He/ she/ it/ did not talk 3. They did not talk

!!! OBRATIMO PAŽNJU DA U ODRIČNOM OBLIKU GLAGOL GUBI NASTAVAK „ED“.

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KAKO SE PAST SIMPLE KORISTI: Past Simple se koristi da izrazi radnju koja je započela u prošlosti i završila se u prošlosti. Često je vreme dogadjanja radnje tačno definisano uz pomoć adverbijala kao što su: YESTERDAY, TWO DAYS AGO, THREE YEARS AGO, LAST MONTH, LAST YEAR, IN 1998... She saw me yesterday. I rode my bicycle several days ago. Joan met her husband in 2001. PAST CONTINUOUS TENSE KAKO SE PAST CONTINUOUS GRADI: GLAGOL „TO BE“ U PROŠLOM VREMENU + PRESENT PARTICIPLE GLAVNOG GLAGOLA PRESENT PARTICIPLE ZNAČI- OSNOVNI GLAGOL PLUS NASTAVAK „ING“. Npr. READING, WATCHING, TALKING, WALKING... Uzmimo na primer glagol TAKE: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I was taking 1. We were taking 2. You were taking 2. You were taking 3. He/ she / it was taking 3. They were taking

Upitan oblik:

1. Was I taking? 1. Were we taking? 2. Were you taking? 2. Were you taking? 3. Was he/ she/ it/ taking? 3. Were they taking?

Odričan oblik:

1. I was not taking ILI I wasn’t taking 1. We were not taking 2. You were not taking ILI You weren’t taking 2. You were not taking 3. He/ she/ it/ was not taking 3. They were not taking

KAKO SE PAST CONTINUOUS KORISTI:

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Past Continuous se koristi da izrazi:

a) radnju koja se dogodila u prošlosti i imala odredjeno trajanje: I was reading a book all afternoon.

b) radnju koja je trajala u prošlosti (izraženu vremenom past continuous) i bila prekinuta nekom drugom prošlom radnjom (izraženom vremenom past simple):

I was reading a book when somebody knocked at the door.

c) radnju koja je tekla paralelno sa nekom drugom radnjom u prošlosti, pri čemu se obe radnje izražavaju ovim vremenom:

I was reading a book while my husband was working in the garden. PAST PERFECT KAKO SE PAST PERFECT GRADI: POMOĆNI GLAGOL „HAD“ + PAST PARTICIPLE O past participu smo već pisali u delu koji se odnosi na Present Perfect Tense. Uzmimo, na primer, nepravilni glagol MAKE: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I had made 1. We had made 2. You had made 2. You had made 3. He/she/ it/ had made 3. They had made

Upitan oblik:

1. Had I made? 1. Had we made? 2. Had you made? 2. Had you made? 3. Had he/she/it/ made? 3. Had they made?

Odričan oblik:

1. I had not made ILI I hadn’t made 1. We had not made 2. You had not made 2. You had not made 3. He/ she/ it/ had not made 3. They had not made

KAKO SE PAST PERFECT KORISTI:

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Past Perfect izražava radnju koja se dogodila pre neke druge radnje u prošlosti. Često se koristi u korelaciji sa glagolskim vremenom Past Simple. I had lived in London before I met my husband. HAD LIVED – Past Perfect MET – Past Simple Dakle PRVO sam ja živela u Londonu (starija prošlost izražena past perfektom), pa sam POSLE TOGA upoznala svog muža („mladja“ prošlost izražena vremenom Past simple). EXERCISES: Napiši pet rečenica o sebi koristeći Past Perfect. FUTURE SIMPLE TENSE: KAKO SE FUTURE SIMPLE GRADI: SHALL ili WILL + INFINITIV GLAGOLA Uzmimo na primer glagol TRAVEL: Potvrdan oblik:

1. I shall travel ILI I will travel 1. We shall travel ILI We will travel 2. You will travel 2. You will travel 3. He/ she/ it/ will travel 3. They will travel

Upitan oblik:

1. Shall I travel ILI Will I travel? 1. Shall we travel ILI Will we travel? 2. Will you travel? 2. Will you travel? 3. Will he/ she/ it/ travel? 3. Will they travel?

Odričan oblik:

1. I shall not (shan’t) travel ILI I will not (won’t) travel 2. You will not travel 3. He/ she/ it/ will not travel

1. We shall not (shan’t) travel ILI

We will not (won’t) travel 2. You will not travel 3. They will not travel

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KAKO SE FUTURE SIMPLE KORISTI: Future Simple izražava radnju koja će se dogoditi u budućnosti. I shall travel to England in three months.

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LISTA OSNOVNIH NEPRAVILNIH GLAGOLA (IRREGULAR VERBS): Infinitive Past Simple Past Participle be was/were been beat beat beaten become became become begin began begun bet bet bet bite bit bitten blow blew blown break broke broken bring brought brought build built built burn burnt/ burned burnt/ burned burst burst burst buy bought bought can could (been able) catch cought cought choose chose chosen come came come cost cost cost cut cut cut deal dealt dealt do did done draw drew drawn dream dreamt/ dreamed dreamt/ dreamed drink drank drunk drive drove driven eat ate eaten fall fell fallen feed fed fed feel felt felt fight fought fought find found found fly flew flown forget forgot forgotten forgive forgave forgiven freeze froze frozen get got got give gave given go went gone have had had hear heard heard hide hid hidden hit hit hit

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hold held held hurt hurt hurt keep kept kept know knew known lay laid laid lead led led learn learnt/ learned learnt/ learned leave left left lend lent lent let let let lie lay lain light lit/ lighted lit/ lighted lose lost lost make made made mean meant meant meet met met pay paid paid put put put read read read ride rode ridden ring rang rung rise rose risen run ran run say said said see saw seen sell sold sold send sent sent set set set shake shook shaken shine shone shone shoot shot shot show showed shown shrink shrank shrunk shut shut shut sing sang sung sink sank sunk sit sat sat sleep slept slept slide slid slid smell smelt/ smelled smelt/ smelled speak spoke spoken spell spelt/ spelled spelt/ spelled spend spent spent spill spilt/ spilled spilt/ spilled split split split

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spoil spoilt/ spoiled spoilt/ spoiled spread spread spread stand stood stood steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck swear swore sworn swim swam swum take took taken teach taught taught tear tore torn tell told told think thought thought throw threw thrown understand understood understood wake woke woken wear wore worn win won won write wrote written

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PASIV (PASSIVE VOICE) Vrlo je važno poznavati pasiv u engleskom jeziku zbog toga što se obilato koristi, daleko više nego pasiv u srpskom jeziku. Krenućemo od srpskog jezika i napravićemo razliku izmedju jedne aktivne i jedne pasivne rečenice. Aktivna rečenica: Lopov je opljačkao stan. Lopov je ovde subjekat (koji vrši radnju), a stan je objekat (na kome je izvršena radnja). Pasivna rečenica: Stan je opljačkan (od strane lopova). Objekat stan dolazi sada na prvo mesto, a lopov nije aktivni već „pasivni izvršilac“ radnje. U srpskom jeziku pasiv često zvuči neprirodno tamo gde u engleskom jeziku zvuči sasvim prirodno, pa čak i prirodnije od aktiva. A sada da predjemo na engleski. KAKO SE GRADI PASIV: Glagol TO BE (u odgovarajućem vremenu) + Past Participle Podsećamo : Past Participle je već objašnjen pod jedinicama Present Perfect i Past Simple. Sva vremena koja su obradjena u gornjem tekstu jesu vremena data u aktivu. A sada ćemo ista ta vremena obraditi u pasivu. Da vidimo kako jednu aktivnu rečenicu pretvaramo u pasivnu: Aktivna rečenica bi bila: She translates English texts. She je u aktivnoj rečenici subjekat (koji vrši radnju), a English texts objekat (na kome se vrši radnja). Pasivna rečenica: English texts are translated by her. Da objasnimo šta smo sada uradili: Vidimo da je objekat (English texts) došao na početak rečenice, a a subjekat aktivne rečenice se sada nalazi na kraju pasivne (u engleskom se sada to naziva AGENT), u odgovarajućem obliku i uz dodato BY (by her). Ovo dosad se odnosi na rečeničnu konstrukciju. Što se glagolskog vremena tiče, prvo moramo da utvrdimo u kom je vremenu aktivna rečenica. (Vidimo da je u pitanju Present Simple). Sada to isto vreme

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stavljamo u pasiv (glagol TO BE + Past Participle). Naravno da glagol TO BE moramo složiti sa English texts, i u ovom slučaju nam je potrebno ARE (treće lice množine). I na kraju nam je potrebno da glavni glagol (u ovom slučaju je to TRANSLATE) stavimo u Past Participle. Pošto je u pitanju pravilan glagol, u ovom slučaju je to TRANSLATED. Znači: English texts ARE TRANSLATED by her. Da vidimo kako bi izgledao pasiv istog glagola u vremenima koja smo obradjivali. GLAGOLSKA VREMENA U PASIVU are translated (Present Simple) are being translated (Present Continuous) were translated (Past Simple) English texts were being translated (Past Continuous) by her. have been translated (Present Perfect) had been translated (Past Perfect) will be translated (Future Simple) NAPOMENA: Ponekad AGENT nije važan i može se izostaviti. Na primer: Her car has been stolen. Njena kola su ukradena. U gornjem primeru neki nepoznati čovek je ukrao kola, a logički se nameće da je taj čovek lopov. Pošto je nepoznat, suvišno je da kažemo Her car has been stolen by a thief*. EXERCISES: Sledeće aktivne rečenice pretvorite u pasivne:

1. Mark Champman killed John Lennon.

2. The thief is robbing the shop.

3. All her friends love her.

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4. John will visit London.

5. Mary had never seen that film.

6. The director has scheduled the meeting.

7. Workers were building the house.

SLAGANJE VREMENA (SEQUENCE OF TENSES) Ova lekcija se može nazvati i INDIREKTNI GOVOR (REPORTED SPEECH). Slaganje vremena ne postoji u srpskom jeziku i zato nas često zbunjuje. Medjutim, u engleskom jeziku slaganje vremena zauzima izuzetno važno mesto. Zapitajmo se koliko često u govoru ili u pisanju opisujemo šta nam je neko rekao u prošlosti, šta smo čuli, pročitali, videli... Nepoznavanje slaganja vremena dovodi do toga da naš engleski zvuči zaista loše. Na primer, u srpskom jeziku možemo reći: Svidja mi se Alisina haljina. (glagol je u prezentu) Zatim možemo to prepričati nekome: Rekao mi je da mu se svidja Alisina haljina. (glagol je i dalje u prezentu) U engleskom jeziku stvari stoje potpuno drugačije. I like Alice’s dress. (glagol je u vremenu Present Simple) Ali kada to prepričavamo nekome, stvari se menjaju: He told me that he LIKED Alice’s dress. (glagol nije ostao u vremenu Present Simple, već se vremenski „pomerio unazad“ i izražen je u vremenu Past Simple). Kod indirektnog govora, odnosno slaganja vremena, uvek imamo neki REPORTING VERB (glagol kojim se prepričavanje započinje). Vremena slažemo samo ako je reporting verb dat u prošlom vremenu, a to je najčešće Past Simple. Na primer: I love Mary. (Ovo je direktan govor; glagol je u vremenu Present Simple). John SAYS that he loves Mary. (Ovo je indirektan govor, ali glagol ostaje u vremenu Present Simple, zato što je reporting verb SAY u sadašnjem vremenu).

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Kada bi, medjutim, reporting verb SAY bio u prošlom vremenu, moramo složiti vremena. I love Mary. John SAID that he loved Mary. (Reporting verb SAY je u prošlom vremenu, zbog čega moramo slagati vremena, tako da LOVE prelazi u LOVED). Sada da vidimo kako se slažu vremena: Present Simple postaje Past Simple: I like chocolate. Mary told me she liked chocolate. Present Continuous postaje Past Continuous: I am painting the house. Michael said that he was painting the house. Present Perfect postaje Past Perfect: I have worked all morning. She said that she had worked all morning. Past Simple postaje Past Perfect: She saw Clare. John said she had seen Clare. Past Continuous postaje Past Perfect Continuous: I was reading a book all afternoon. Jim said that he had been reading a book all afternoon. Past Perfect ostaje Past Perfect: Peter had never been to Italy. Maria said that Peter had never been to Italy. Shall prelazi u Should: I shall travel to London. Joan said that she should travel to London. Should ostaje Should: You should go to see him. Mother told me that I should go to see him. Will prelazi u Would: I will not do it again. He said that he would not do it again.

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Would ostaje Would: I would not do it again. He said that he would not do it again. May prelazi u Might: You may not smoke. They told me that I might not smoke. Might ostaje Might: She might marry Mike. Jimmy told me that she might marry Mike. Can prelazi u Could: I can swim. Angela said that she could swim. Could ostaje Could: She could not finish that. He said that she could not finish that. Must ostaje Must: I must pass my exam. Richard told me that he must pass his exam. Ovde imamo i drugu opciju: Richard told me that he had to pass his exam. Glagol u imperativu postaje TO – infinitiv: Go and buy some bread. Mother told me to go and to buy some bread. U odričnom obliku to bi bilo: Don’t shout at me! Father told me not to shout at him! This prelazi u That: This is my house. He said that that was his house. These prelazi u Those: These are my friends. She told me that those were her friends. Now prelazi u Then: I am reading the book now. She said that she was reading the book then.

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Today prelazi u That day: I am going shopping today. Jane told me that she was going shopping that day. Tonight prelazi u That night: We are going to the cinema tonight. My sister said that we were going to the cinema that night. Yesterday prelazi u The day before: I saw him yesterday. My aunt said that she had seen him that day. Last night prelazi u The night before: We ran into him last night. He said that we had run into him the night before. Here prelazi u There: We are sitting here. He said that they were sitting there. Ago prelazi u before: I studied French two years ago. He said that he had studied French two years before. Next prelazi u The following: I am travelling next week. She said that she was travelling the following week.

Ako smo ovo savladali možemo ići dalje i objasniti kako izgleda rečenična konstrukcija kada prepričavamo izjave (statements), pitanja koja počinju nekim pomoćnim glagolom i pitanja koja počinju nekom upitnom rečcom. I KAKO STAVLJAMO IZJAVE U INDIREKTAN GOVOR: We are going to the cinema. He said THAT we were going to the cinema. Primećujemo da kod izjava reč THAT vezuje uvodni deo rečenice u kome se nalazi reporting verb (u ovom slučaju say) i nastavak rečenice (ono što zapravo stavljamo u indirektan govor i gde se slažu vremena). Reč THAT u ovakvim slučajevima može biti i izostavljena: He said we were going to the cinema.

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II KAKO STAVLJAMO U INDIREKTAN GOVOR PITANJA KOJA POČINJU POMOĆNIM ILI MODALNIM GLAGOLOM: U ove glagole spadaju: AM/ ARE/ IS; HAVE/ HAS; HAD; DO/DOES; DID; WILL; WOULD; SHALL; SHOULD; CAN; COULD; MUST; MAY; MIGHT... Have you seen him recently? She asked me IF I had seen him recently. Primećujemo da kod ovakvih pitanja reč IF vezuje deo rečenice sa uvodnim glagolom (reporting verb) i ostatak rečenice (deo koji se zapravo stavlja u indirektan govor i u kome se slažu vremena). Osim IF to može biti i WHETHER. She asked me whether I had seen him recently. Obratimo pažnju i na sledeće: Did you see him? My brother asked me if I had seen him. Ovde bi bilo pogrešno reći: My brother asked me had I seen* him ili My mother asked me if had I seen* him. Mora postojati IF kao vezivna reč, a iza IF sledi potvrdan, a ne upitan red reči. III KAKO STAVLJAMO U INDIREKTAN GOVOR PITANJA KOJA POČINJU NEKOM UPITNOM REČCOM, TAKOZVANA WH-QUESTIONS Ove rečce su: WHEN, WHERE, WHY, WHAT, WHO, HOW. When are you going to split up with your boyfriend? My mother wondered WHEN I was going to split up with my boyfriend. Primećujemo da upitna rečca (u gornjem primeru WHEN) vezuje deo rečenice sa uvodnim glagolom (reporting verb) i ostatak rečenice (deo koji se zapravo stavlja u indirektan govor i u kome se slažu vremena). Takodje primećujemo da iza WHEN sledi POTVRDAN RED REČI, iako je to upitna rečca. Znači ne kažemo: My mother wondered WHEN was I going* to split up with my boyfriend. Kada navedemo vezivnu reč (u ovom slučaju WHEN, mora da sledi potvrdan red reči). EXERCISES: Sledeće rečenice i pitanja iz direktnog govora prebaci u indirektan govor:

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Why are you telling me this? She asked me... Laura has never told a lie in her entire life. He told me... Does she work at the same factory as you? Mother asked me... Did you call her last night? Jane wondered... I don’t see him too often. Richard said... I was reading a book when she came. My sister told me... Where will you spend your summer holiday? He asked me.... What were you trying to achieve? She asked me... Did you go to the cinema last night? My friend asked me... Don’t talk to me like that! He told me... Do you always behave like this? She asked him... You must be joking! He said ... You have to come and see this. She told me...

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Should I pick up our son from school? My husband asked... Will you travel to London next week? She asked me...

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DRUGI DEO: ODABRANI TEKSTOVI

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WHY ENGLISH (Taken from “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language” by David Crystal) If English is not your mother-tongue, why should you want to learn it, or give it special status in your country? There are several kinds of answer given to this question. External economic reasons The USA’s dominant economic position acts as a magnet for international business and trade, and organisations wishing to develop international markets are thus under considerable pressure to work with English. The tourist and advertising industries are particularly English-dependent, but any multi-national business will wish to establish offices in the major English-speaking countries. Practical reasons English is the language of international air traffic control, and is currently developing its role in international maritime, policing and emergency services. It is the chief language of international business and academic conferences, and the leading language of international tourism. Intellectual reasons Most of scientific, technological, and academic information in the world is expressed in English, and over 80% of all the information stored in electronic retrieval systems is in English. Closely related to this is the concern to have access to the philosophical, cultural, religious, and literary history of Western Europe, either directly or through the medium of an English translation. In most parts of the world, the only way most people have access to such authors as Goethe or Dante is through English. Latin performed a similar role in Western Europe for over a thousand years. Entertainment reasons English is the main language of popular music, and permeates popular culture and its associated advertising. It is also the main language of satellite broadcasting, home computers, and video games, as well as of such international illegal activities as pornography and drugs. Some wrong reasons It is sometimes thought that English has achieved its worldwide status because of its intrinsic linguistic features. People have claimed that it is inherently a more logical or more beautiful language than others, easier to pronounce, simpler in grammatical structure, or larger in vocabulary. This kind of reasoning is the consequence of unthinking chauvinism or naive linguistic thinking: there are no objective standards of

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logic or beauty to compare different languages, and questions of phonetic, grammatical, or lexical complexity are never capable of simple answers. For example, English may not have many inflectional endings (which is what most people are thinking of when they talk about English as grammatically “simple”, but it has a highly complex syntax; and the number of endings has no bearing on whether a language becomes used worldwide) as can be seen from the former success of Latin). Languages rise and fall in world esteem for many kinds of reasons- political, economic, social, religious, literary- but linguistic reasons do not rank highly among them.

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COPING WITH ENGLAND, by Jean Hannah, abridged ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS AND ATTITUDES It is impossible (and unfair) to categorise a nation of individuals, for there are far too many exceptions to any generalisation. The English are, however, associated with certain characteristics and attitudes with some justification. Restraint: The English have a reputation for being unflappable- cool, calm, and collected – in the face of both failure and success, anger and joy. They tend to talk softly, and do not often show emotion or affection openly. They are certainly not rude in public- it is important to keep up the appearance of civility at all times. Politeness and quiet dignity are supposed to be the norm. Exceptions can always be found- especially late on Saturday nights! The sense of restraint means containing one’s enthusiasm to a large degree. It is not seemly for adults to be too “keen” about anything, It is also very bad form to boast about oneself or one’s family or to be too ambitious, especially about money. Even in situations like job interviews, people who try to sell themselves too hard are suspected of being arrogant and pushy; modesty is a highly valued trait. The English also don’t compliment other people readily, nor do they know how to react to a compliment. To get around showing much enthusiasm, the English have perfected the art of understatement. If they really like something, they will say it is “very good, indeed”, and leave it at that. If they have done well, they are “quite pleased” with their efforts. Someone who has just performed an act of amazing skill or bravery gets a “well done” or “jolly good show”. People who go in for overstatement are thought to be insincere or patronising. Privacy: The English value privacy quite strongly. The phrase “he keeps himself to himself” is a mark of approval. Just as they enclose their gardens to keep out prying eyes, they hide away their private lives and feelings. They don’t readily reveal personal details to friends, let alone to strangers, nor do they ask for them from others. In fact, you can have a long conversation with an English person and not know his or her name at the end of it. It can also be difficult at times to draw out someone’s personal beliefs and opinions. Perhaps because of their restraint and respect for privacy, the English are very tolerant of people who are a little eccentric, as long as they are harmless and quiet. Humour: The English have a dry sense of humour. Indeed, irony, understatement, sarcasm, and puns are the mainstays of their jokes and witty remarks. It can be very difficult for outsiders to tell whether or not an English person is being funny or serious, so don’t take quick offence at some remark aimed at you- it could easily be meant in jest. Attitude to foreigners: In many communities, ethnic groups and natives live alongside one another peacefully, but some of the English still refuse to accept that other cultures

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have valuable or interesting things to contribute, and racism is a well-recognised problem. Immigrants and their children from many of the “new colonies”- especially the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies- suffer racial abuse and attacks from a small, but vocal section of society. The English do not usually think of themselves as Europeans. About the only time they are happy to be classed with the Europeans is when trying to distance themselves from American policies! The English have respect for the accomplishments of America, France, Germany and Japan, but they also consider Americans to be naïve, loud, pushy, and insincere, the French arrogant and dogmatic, the Germans humourless and punctilious, and the Japanese too deferential and too eager to work hard. They find Australians a bit brash and unsophisticated, the Mediterranean peoples emotional and disorganised, and Arabs ostentatious and backward. Understanding the natives (and being understood) Many first-time visitors to England who arrive secure in the knowledge that they know the English language, discover after a few minutes that they can’t understand very much of what the natives are saying. The problem is that neither many years of learning English as a foreign language nor a lifetime of speaking American or Australian English can prepare you for the surprising number of ways in which English is actually spoken by the people in the country where it originated. Tourists who claim that they “just love the British accent” don’t realise just how many different accents there really are. For such a small country, England has, over the centuries, developed a very wide range of both regional and social accents and dialects. The natives seem to cope quite well with this diversity. However, most foreigners have been exposed to only one form of British English. This variety, often referred to as “Oxford English” or “the Queen’s English”, is the form usually taught to Europeans and most often heard on radio and TV.

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ON ART AND ARTISTS I, (Taken from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich, Phaidon Press Ltd, London, first published in 1950, last reprinted in 1970) There is really no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took coloured earth and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today they buy their paints, and design posters for the Underground; they did many things in between. There is no harm in calling all these activities art as long as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in different times and places, and as long as we realise that Art with a capital A has no existence. For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish. You may crush an artist by telling him that what he has just done may be quite good in its own way, only it is not “Art”. And you may confound anyone enjoying a picture by declaring that what he liked in it was not the Art but something different. Actually I do not think that there are any wrong reasons for liking a statue or a picture. Someone may like a landscape painting because it reminds him of home, or a portrait because it reminds him of a friend. There is nothing wrong with that. All of us, when we see a painting, are bound to be reminded of a hundred-and-one things which influence our likes and dislikes. As long as these memories help us to enjoy what we see, we need not worry. It is only when some irrelevant memory makes us prejudiced, when we instinctively turn away from a magnificent picture on an alpine scene because we dislike climbing, that we should search our mind for the reason of the aversion which spoils a pleasure we might otherwise have had. There are wrong reasons for disliking a work of art. Most people like to see in pictures what they would also like to see in reality. This is quite a natural preference. We all like beauty in nature, and are grateful to the artists who have preserved it in their works. Nor would these artists themselves have rebuffed us for our taste. When the great Flemish painter Rubens made a drawing of his little boy, he was proud of his good looks. He wanted us, too, to admire the child. But this bias for the pretty and engaging subject is apt to become a stumbling-block if it leads us to reject works which represent a less appealing subject. The great German painter Albrecht Durer certainly drew his mother with as much devotion and love as Rubens felt for his chubby child. His truthful study of careworn old age may give us a shock which makes us turn away from it- and yet, if we fight against our first repugnance we may be richly rewarded, fur Durer’s drawing in its tremendous sincerity is a great work. In fact, we shall soon discover that the beauty of a picture does not really lie in the beauty of its subject-matter.

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ON ART AND ARTISTS II, (Taken from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover. Great works of art seem to look different each time one stands before them. They seem to be inexhaustible and unpredictable as real human beings. It is an exciting world of its own with its own strange laws and its own adventures. Nobody should think he knows all about it, for nobody does. Nothing, perhaps, is more important than just this: that to enjoy these works we must have a fresh mind, one which is ready to catch every hint and to respond to every hidden harmony: a mind, most of all, not cluttered up with long high-sounding words and ready-made phrases. It is infinitely better not to know anything about art than to have the kind of half-knowledge which makes for snobbishness. The danger is very real. There are people, for instance, who have picked up the simple points I have tried to make in this chapter, and who understand that there are great works of art which have none of the obvious qualities of beauty of expression or correct draughtsmanship, but who become so proud of their knowledge that they pretend to like only those works which are neither beautiful nor correctly drawn. They are always haunted by the fear that they might be considered uneducated if they confessed to liking a work which seems too obviously pleasant or moving. They end by being snobs who lose their true enjoyment of art and who call everything “very interesting” which they really find somewhat repulsive.

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STRANGE BEGINNINGS Prehistoric and Primitive Peoples (Abridged from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) We cannot hope to understand these strange beginnings of art unless we try to enter into the mind of the primitive peoples and find out what kind of experience it is which makes them think of pictures, not as something nice to look at, but as something powerful to use. I do not think it is really so difficult to recapture this feeling. All that is needed is the will to be absolutely honest with ourselves and see whether we, too, do not retain something of the “primitive” in us. Instead of beginning with the Ice Age, let us begin with ourselves. Suppose we take a picture of our favourite cricketer or film star from today’s paper- would we enjoy taking a needle and poking out the eyes? Would we feel as indifferent about it as if we poked a hole anywhere else in the paper? I do not think so. However well I know with my waking thoughts that what I do to his picture makes no difference to my friend or hero, I still feel a vague reluctance to harm it. Somewhere there remains the absurd feeling that what one does to the picture is done to the person it represents. Now, if I am right there, if this queer and unreasonable idea really survives, even among us, into the age of atomic power, it is perhaps less surprising that such ideas existed almost everywhere among the so-called primitive peoples. In all parts of the world medicine men or witches have tried to work magic in some such way- they have made little images of an enemy and have then pierced the heart of the wretched doll, or burnt it, and hoped that their enemy would suffer. All these strange ideas are important because they may help us to understand the oldest paintings which have come down to us. These paintings are as old as any trace of human skill. They date from the Ice Age or thereabouts, when our ancestors, sheltered in caves, knew only the rudest of stone implements. And yet, on the walls and ceilings of such caves, particularly in Spain and southern France, paintings have been discovered, mainly of the game they hunted, reindeer, bison and wild horses. Most of these paintings are astonishingly vivid and lifelike, much more so than we might have expected. But it is very unlikely that they were made for the purpose of decorating the walls of these dark caves. In the first place, they are often found deep inside the mountain, far away from the places where man lived. Secondly, they are often put there higgledy-piggledy, one on top of the other, without any apparent order or design.

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ART FOR ETERNITY- EGYPT (Abridged from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) It is one of the greatest things in Egyptian art that all the statues, paintings and architectural forms seem to fall into place as if they obeyed one law. We call such a law, which all creations of a people seem to obey, a “style”. It is very difficult to explain in words what makes a style, but it is far less difficult to see. The rules which govern all Egyptian art give every individual work the effect of poise and austere harmony. The Egyptian style comprised a set of very strict laws which every artist had to learn from his earliest youth. Seated statues had to have their hands on their knees; men had to be painted with darker skin than women; the appearance of every Egyptian god was strictly laid down: Horus, the sun-god, had to be shown as a falcon or with falcon’s head, Anubis, the god of death, as a jackal or with a jackal’s head. Every artist also had to learn the art of beautiful script. He had to cut the images and symbols of the hieroglyphs clearly and accurately in stone. But once he had mastered all these rules he had finished his apprenticeship. No one wanted anything different, no one asked him to be “original”. On the contrary, he was probably considered the best artist who could make his statues most like the admired monuments of the past. So it happened that in the course of three thousand years or more Egyptian art changed very little. Everything that was considered good and beautiful in the times of the pyramids was held to be just as excellent a thousand years later. True, new fashions appeared, and new subjects were demanded of the artists, but their mode of representing man and nature remained essentially the same.

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THE REALM OF BEAUTY Greece and the Greek World, Fourth Century B.C. to First Century A.D. (Abridged from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) The greatest artist of that century Praxiteles, was above all famed for the charm of his work and for the sweet and insinuating character of his creations. One work which was found in Olympia in the nineteenth century was thought to be an original by his hands. But we cannot be sure. It may only be an accurate marble copy after a bronze statue. It represents the god Hermes holding young Dionysus on his arm and playing with him. We can see what an enormous distance Greek art had travelled in two hundred years. In the work of Praxiteles all traces of rigidity have gone. The god stands before us in a relaxed pose which does not impair his dignity. But if we think about the way in which Praxiteles has achieved this effect, we begin to realise that even then the lesson of ancient art had not been forgotten. Praxiteles, too, takes care to show us the hinges of the body, to make us understand its working as clearly as possible. But he can now do all that without keeping his statue stiff and lifeless. He can show the muscles and bones swelling and moving under the soft skin, and can give the impression of a living body in all its grace and beauty. Nevertheless, it is necessary to understand that Praxiteles and the other Greek artists achieved this beauty through knowledge. There is no living body quite as symmetrical, well-built and beautiful as those of the Greek statues. People often think that what the artists did was to look at many models and to leave out any feature they did not like: that they started by carefully copying the appearance of a real man, and then beautified it by omitting any irregularities or traits which did not conform to their idea of a perfect body. They say that Greek artists “idealised” nature, and they think of it in terms of a photographer who touches up a portrait by deleting small blemishes. But a touched-up photograph and an idealised statue usually lack character and vigour. So much has been left out and deleted, that little remains but a pale and insipid ghost of the model. The Greek approach was really exactly the opposite. Through all these centuries, the artists we have been discussing were concerned with infusing more and more life into the ancient husks. In the time of Praxiteles their method bore its ripest fruits. The old types had begun to move and breathe under the hands of the skilful sculptor, and they stand before us like real human beings, and yet as beings from a different, better world. ………………………………….. It is strange fact, which we have not yet discussed, that Greek artists in the works we have seen have avoided giving the faces a particular expression. This is really more astonishing than it seems at first sight because we can hardly scribble any simple face on our blotting-paper without giving it some marked (usually a funny) expression. Greek statues, of course, are not expressionless in the sense of looking dull and blank, but their faces never seem to betray any definite feeling. To do that, the Greek masters would have had to show the play of the features, which would have distorted and destroyed the simple regularity of the head.

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HARMONY ATTAINED, MICHAELANGELO (Taken from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) If anyone had thought that after the tremendous exertion in the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo’s imagination had run dry, he was soon proved wrong. For when he returned to his beloved material, his powers seemed greater than ever. While in the “Adam” Michelangelo had depicted the moment when life entered the beautiful body of a vigorous youth, he now, in the “Dying Slave”, shows the moment when life was just fading, and the body was giving way to the laws of dead matter. There is unspeakable beauty in this last moment of final relaxation and release from the struggle of life- this gesture of lassitude and resignation. It is difficult to think of this work as being a statue of cold and lifeless stone, as we stand before it in the Louvre in Paris. It seems to move before our eyes, and yet to remain at rest. This is probably the effect Michelangelo aimed at. It is one of the secrets of his art that has been admired ever since, that, however much he lets the bodies of his figures twist and turn in violent movement, their outline always remains firm, simple and restful. The reason for this is that, from the very beginning, Michelangelo always tried to conceive his figures as lying hidden in the block of marble on which he was working; the task he set himself as a sculptor was merely to remove the stone which covered them. Thus the simple shape of a block was always reflected in the outline of the statues, and held it together in one lucid design, however much movement there was in the body.

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LEONARDO DA VINCI (Taken from Wikipedia, online encyclopedia) Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, (April 15, 1452- May 2, 1519) was a Tuscan (Italian) polymath: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, poet and writer. Born at Vinci in the region of Florence, the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivaled by that of his contemporary Michelangelo. LEONARDO’S MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS Paintings of 1490s Leonardo’s most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death. It shows specifically the moment when Jesus has said “one of you will betray me”. Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus. When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterization. But the painting deteriorated rapidly so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as “completely ruined”. Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface which was subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos. Paintings of the 1500s Among the works created by Leonardo in 1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or “La Gioconda”, the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called “sfumato” or Leonardo’s smoke. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that “the smile was so pleasing

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that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original”. Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even “the most confident master…despair and lose heart”. The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a panel painting of this date. DRAWINGS Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works. Among his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing in black chalk on coloured paper of the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as “caricatures” because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them.

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HARMONY ATTAINED, LEONARDO I (Taken from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) By a singular misfortune, the few works which Leonardo did complete in his mature years have come down to us in a very bad state of preservation. Thus when we look at what remains of Leonardo’s famous wall-painting “Last Supper”, we must try to imagine how it may have appeared to the monks for whom it was painted. The painting covers one wall of an oblong hall that was used as a dining-room by the monks of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. One must visualise what it was like when the painting was uncovered, and when, side by side with the long tables of the monks, there appeared the table of Christ and His apostles. Never before had the sacred episode appeared so close and so lifelike. It was as if another hall had been added to theirs, in which the Last Supper had assumed tangible form. How clear the light fell on to the table, and how it added roundness and solidity to the figures. Perhaps the monks were first struck by the truth to nature with which all details were portrayed, the dishes on the table-cloth, and the folds of the draperies. Then, as now, works of art were often judged by laymen according to their degree of lifelikeness. But that can only have been the first reaction. Once they had sufficiently admired this extraordinary illusion of reality, the monks would turn to the way in which Leonardo had presented the biblical story. There was nothing in this work that resembled older representations of the same theme. In these traditional versions, the apostles were seen sitting quietly at the table in a row – only Judas being segregated from the rest – while Christ was calmly dispensing the Sacrament. The new picture was very different from any of these paintings. There was drama in it, and excitement. Leonardo, like Giotto before him, had gone back to the text of the Scriptures, and had striven to visualise what it must have been like when Christ said, “Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me”, and they were exceeding sorrowful and began every one of them to say unto him “Lord, is it I?”

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HARMONY ATTAINED, LEONARDO II (Taken from “The Story of Art” by E.H. Gombrich) There is another work of Leonardo’s which is perhaps even more famous than “The Last Supper”. It is the portrait of a Florentine lady whose name was Lisa, “Mona Lisa”. A fame as great as that of Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” is not an unmixed blessing for a work of art. We become so used to seeing it on picture postcards, and even advertisements, that we find it difficult to see it with fresh eyes as the painting of a real man portraying a real person of flesh and blood. But it is worth while to forget what we know, or believe we know, about the picture, and to look at it as if we were the first people ever to set eyes on it. What strikes us first is the amazing degree to which Lisa looks alive. She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own. Like a living being, she seems to change before our eyes and to look a little different every time we come back to her. Even in photographs of the picture we experience this strange effect, but in front of the original in the Paris Louvre it is almost uncanny. Sometimes she seems to mock at us, and then again we seem to catch something like sadness in her smile. All this sounds rather mysterious, and so it is; that is the effect of every great work of art. Nevertheless, Leonardo certainly knew how he achieved this effect, and by what means. That great observer of nature knew more about the way we use our eyes than anybody who had ever lived before him. He had clearly seen a problem which the conquest of nature had posed to the artists- a problem no less intricate than the one of combining correct drawing with a harmonious composition.

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A QUESTION (Taken from “Mona Lisa, the Picture and the Myth” by Roy McMullen) The Mona Lisa is without doubt the most famous work in the entire forty-thousand-year history of visual arts. It provokes instant shocks of recognition on every continent from Asia to America, reduces the Venus of Milo and the Sistine Chapel to the level of merely local marvels, sells as many post-cards as a tropical resort, and stimulates as many amateur detectives as an unsolved international murder mystery. Moreover, it has been famous for a remarkably long, almost uninterrupted period. When it was still in Leonardo’s studio in Florence, and very probably not yet finished, it was already inspiring imitations. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was being pronounced divine rather than human in its perfection; by the middle of the nineteenth it was a goal for pilgrimages and the object of a cult that mixed romantic religiosity with eroticism and rhetoric. It is decidedly not just a painting like other paintings; it might be better described as a cross between a universal fetish and a Hollywood-era film star. All this raises a question. How should a modern viewer, someone who is not given to irrational or extravagant reverence, respond to such a peculiarly celebrated masterpiece? Several sorts of answer, none of them recommendable, can be mentioned as evidence that the question is genuinely bothersome, even alarming, to many people. One sort was manifested at the Louvre on December 30, 1956, by a bearded young Bolivian named Ugo Ungaza Villegas: he stared morosely at it, damaging a speck of pigment near the subject’s left elbow. Another sort was proposed in 1963 by Theodore Rousseau, curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the midst of the critical uproar and traffic jams that greeted the arrival of the picture in New York. “To enjoy the Mona Lisa, he wrote, “a man of the twentieth century must be capable of putting out of his mind everything that he has ever read about it”. Somewhere between countercultural violence and antiliterary feigned ignorance can be situated the answers of careful scholars who try to see the work as simply a Renaissance portrait, stripped of its accumulation of anachronistic interpretation, and those of cautious sophisticates, anxious to avoid admiring the overly admired, who usually say, “It is not really his best picture, you know”. (Perhaps it isn’t, but it is certainly his most effective).

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CONTRACTS (between artists and patrons in Renaissance Italy) (Taken from “Oxford History of Art”, “Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500” by Evelyn Welch) Most contracts contain conventional legal language about the rights and responsibilities of each party. This document, drawn between a member of the noble Lazzara family and the Paduan painter Pietro Calzetta, concerns the decoration of an entire chapel in the basilica of St Anthony of Padua which was destroyed in the sixteenth century. The contract, however, is of great interest, both because of the specificity of its conditions and the drawing that the notary, himself a renowned humanist, Bartolomeo da San Vito, attached to ensure that the painter understood what was required of him. It was written on 17 October 1466 in the city’s town hall: Let it be manifest to anyone who will read this paper that Mr Bernardo de Lazzaro had contracted with Master Pietro Calzetta, the painter, to paint a chapel in the church of St Anthony which is known as the chapel of the Eucharist. In this chapel he is to fresco the ceiling with four prophets or Evangelists against a blue background with stars in fine gold. All the leaves of marble which are in that chapel (presumably on the architectural elements) should also be painted with fine gold and blue as should the figures of marble and their columns which are carved there. On the facade of the chapel the heraldry with its crest should be placed in gold and blue... In the said chapel, Master Pietro should make an altarpiece which should rise up the entire wall of the altar up to the vault... In the said altarpiece, Master Pietro is to paint a history similar to that in the design which is on this sheet. Master Pietro must do all these things written above at his own expense, both of gold and of colours, woodwork and scaffolding, and any other expense which occurs. He must also make a curtain of blue cloth that is of good quality along with the iron needed to cover the said altarpiece. It should be painted with a dead Christ which should be fine. Master Pietro promises to finish all the work written above by next Easter and promises that all the work will be well made and polished and promises to ensure that the said work will be good, solid, and sufficient for at least twenty-five years and in case of any defect in his work he will be obliged to pay both the damage and the interest on the work and that Mr Bernardo can oblige Mr Galeazzo Musatto who is the guarantor of Master Pietro. Mr Bernardo de Lazzaro promises to pay 40 ducats to Master Pietro for the said chapel, and for the altarpiece and for the other things needed to adorn the chapel with the condition that the said Mr Bernardo must give him 10 ducats now and when he has finished the altarpiece, he must give him another 10 and when he has finished all the rest of the work he must give him the remainder of the money.

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VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890) (Taken from “The Life and Works of Vincent van Gogh” by Janice Anderson, Paragon Book Service Limited, Great Britain, 1994) VINCENT VAN GOGH does not fit into any painting school, though his superb colour sense can be traced back to Impressionist theories. It was after he joined his brother Theo in Paris and met the artists who were by that time known as “Impressionists” that van Gogh began to abandon the dark tones in which he had hitherto painted in favour of the pure primary and secondary colours, and to adopt the broken brushwork which gave a feeling of light and air to Impressionist pictures. He also began to paint out of doors, a habit that stayed with him until the end of his life. The technique he created for himself of decisive impasto brushstrokes, applied without hesitation or second thoughts, enabled him to paint quickly and to produce a vast volume of work in the last two and a half years of his life. Vincent William van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, a small town in Brabant, on 30 March 1853. His father was a Protestant pastor and van Gogh inherited from him the strong religious feeling about life and nature which characterized his work. He and his younger brother Theo were close friends, and Theo not only encouraged his brother’s desire to be a painter but actually supported him financially for the last few years of his life. Vincent’s earliest employment was in the Paris, Brussels and London branches of Goupil et Cie, an art dealer business founded by his uncle. He later tried his hand at teaching in London and then worked as a preacher in the mines and poor agricultural districts of Brabant. It was here that van Gogh began to express his feelings about the people around him in his drawings. He lived as poorly as they did, with a prostitute whom he had taken into his care, but his dedicated Christianity was misunderstood and he was censured by his local church. Later, an unrequited love affair drove him to attempt suicide. By 1880, van Gogh had turned to the study of art in Brussels and the Hague. Eventually, he joined his brother Theo, now working for Goupil et Cie, in Paris. Here, van Gogh met Degas, Pissarro, Signac, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet and Renoir and discovered his true vocation. After two years in Paris, during which time he painted over 200 pictures with his brother’s financial help, van Gogh went to Arles in the south of France. He took a studio in a building christened the Yellow House and there waited for his friend Gauguin to join him. Gauguin was reluctant, but as Theo was his art dealer, he felt obliged to agree to spend some time with Vincent. The two men settled down in Arles but there was a lot of tension between them, much of it due to van Gogh’s intense nature, and Gauguin announced that he was returning to Paris. One evening, he found himself being followed through the public gardens in Arles by van Gogh who was making threatening gestures with a razor blade or knife. Gauguin slept that night at a hotel and next day returned to the Yellow House to find that van Gogh had been taken to hospital. He had cut off part of his ear and given it to one of the prostitutes at the bar he and Gauguin frequented.

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After this, van Gogh voluntarily retired to an asylum for the insane at St-Remy-de-Provence where he hoped to restore his self-confidence and his mental stability. While there, he painted incessantly and wrote to his brother and Gauguin to reassure them that he had recovered. A year later he had a second attack of madness. Others would follow: van Gogh realised that he was the victim of an incurable illness. In 1890 he left St-Remy and the warm south and, on the advice of Pissarro, went to Auvers-sur-Oise where a Dr. Gachet could look after him. Here, he continued painting but after a visit to Paris where he learned about his brother’s financial difficulties and the worrying illness of his baby son, van Gogh’s madness recurred. One day while out painting in Auvers he shot himself in the chest. The wound did not seem too bad. Dr. Gachet dressed it and called Theo from Paris. Two days later, on 29 July, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died. He was buried in the cemetery in Auvers.

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VINCENT VAN GOGH (Taken from Wikipedia, online encyclopedia) Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853- 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world’s best known, most popular and most expensive pieces. Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognisable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,000 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh’s life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art.

In 1880, Vincent followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up art in earnest. In autumn 1880, he went to Brussels, intending to follow Theo’s recommendation to study with the prominent Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded Van Gogh (despite his aversion to formal schools of art) to attend the Royal Academy of Art. There he not only studied anatomy, but the standard rules of modelling and perspective, all of which, he said, “you have to know just to be able to draw the least thing”. Vincent wished to become an artist while in God’s service, as he stated, “to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture”.

Neunen (1883-1885) In Neunen, he devoted himself to drawing, paying boys to bring him birds’ nests and rapidly sketching the weavers in their cottages. In autumn 1884, a neighbour’s daughter, Margot Begemann, ten years older than Vincent, accompanied him constantly on his painting forays and fell in love, which he reciprocated (though less enthusiastically). They agreed to marry, but were opposed by both families.

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On 26 March 1885, Van Gogh’s father died of a stroke. Van Gogh grieved deeply. For the first time there was interest from Paris in some of his work. In spring he painted what is now considered his first major work, The Potato Eaters. In August his work was exhibited for the first time, in the windows of a paint dealer in the Hague. In September he was accused of making one of his young peasant sitters pregnant, and the Catholic village priest forbade villagers from modelling for him. During his time in Neunen Van Gogh’s palette was of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and he showed no sign of developing the vivid colouration that distinguished his later, best known work. (When Vincent complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, Theo replied that they were too dark and not in line with the current style of bright Impressionist paintings). During his two-year stay in Neunen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings.

WORK Van Gogh drew and painted water-colours while he went to school, though very few of these works survive, and his authorship is challenged for many claimed to be from this period. When he committed himself to art as an adult (1880), he started at the elementary level by copying the “Cours de dessin”, edited by Charles Bargue and published by Goupil&Cie. Within his first two years he began to seek commissions, and in spring 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus (owner of a renowned gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam) asked him to provide drawings of the Hague; Van Gogh’s work did not prove up to his uncle’s expectations. Despite this, Uncle Cor offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but he was once again disappointed with the result. Nevertheless, Van Gogh persevered with his work. He improved the lighting of his atelier (studio) by installing variable shutters, and experimented with a variety of drawing materials. For more than a year he worked hard on single figures- highly elaborated studies in “black and white”, which at the time gained him only criticism. Nowadays they are appreciated as his first masterpieces. In spring 1883, he embarked on multi-figure compositions based on the drawings. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother commented that they lacked liveliness and freshness, Vincent destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Already in autumn 1882, Theo had enabled him to do his first paintings, but the amount Theo could supply was soon spent. Then, in spring 1883, Vincent turned to renowned Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and received technical support from them. When he moved to Neunen, he started various large size paintings, but he destroyed most of them himself. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces, The Old Tower on the Neunen cemetery and The Cottage, are the only ones that have survived. Vincent was aware that many faults of his paintings were due to a lack of technical experience. So he went to Antwerp, and later to Paris to improve his technical skill.

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More or less acquainted with impressionist and neo-impressionist techniques and theories, Van Gogh went to Arles to develop these new possibilities. But within a short time, older ideas on art and work reappeared: ideas like doing series on related or contrasting subject matter, which would reflect the purpose of art. Already in 1884 in Neunen he had worked on a series that was to decorate the dining room of a friend in Eindhoven. Similarly in Arles, in spring 1888 he arranged his Flowering Orchards into triptychs, began a series of figures which found its end in The Roulin Family, and finally, when Gauguin had consented to work and live in Arles side by side with Vincent, he started to work on the The Decoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. Most of his later work is elaborating or revising its fundamental settings. The paintings from the Saint-Remy period are often characterised by swirls and spirals. At various times in his life Van Gogh painted the view from his window; this culminated in the great series of paintings of the wheat field he could see from his adjoining cells in the asylum at Saint-Remy.

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THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788)- (an English portrait and landscape painter) Abridged from “English Painting” by William Gaunt, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1964, reprinted 1985 The art of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is in striking contrast with that of either Hogarth or Reynolds. These two were essentially townsmen; by affection as well as birth Gainsborough was a countryman. His art was aristocratic, that is to say it tended towards an ideal, in which respect it clearly differed from the realistic outlook of Hogarth the “man of the people”. Technically, Gainsborough was most original both in portraits and landscape. Those “odd scratches and marks...this chaos which by a kind of magic at a certain distance assumes form”, on which Reynolds commented with a mixture of disapproval and admiration, was a brilliant way of animating a surface. He seems very “modern” in his drawings and the combination of different media which makes many of them a species of free painting. Opaque and transparent colour are sometimes found together: sometimes he lays a transparent wash over a chalk ground, working further over the surface with touches of chalk or body colour or using chalk, pen, and brush over an opaque foundation, frequently varnishing the drawing to add something of the richness of oil, dabbing in broad touches (his “moppings”) with a sponge tied to the end of a stick and as a result producing extraordinary impressions of light and substance. ......................................... Keneth Clark has written about Gainsborough and his canvas Mr and Mrs Andrews (1727-1788) in “Landscape into Art” At the very beginning of his career his pleasure in what he saw inspired him to put into his pictures backgrounds as sensitively observed as the corn-field in which are seated Mr and Mrs Andrews. This enchanting work is painted with such love and mastery that we should have expected Gainsborough to go further in the same direction; but he gave up direct painting, and evolved the melodious style of picture-making by which he is best known. His recent biographers have thought that the business of portrait painting left him no time to make studies from nature, and they have quoted his famous letter about being “sick of portraits and wishing to walk off to some sweet village where he can paint landscapes”, to support the view that he would have been a naturalistic landscape painter if he had had the opportunity.

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INTERLUDES IN ENGLAND AND HOLLAND (1870/71) (Abridged from CLAUDE MONET, 1840-1926, A FEAST FOR THE EYES, by Karin Sagner, Taschen) As Monet recalled: “In 1870 we fled to London. We- Pissarro, Boudin and I- frequently went to a café where the French all used to meet. Daubigny would sometimes drop by. He realised we were all spiritual brothers and wanted to see our painting. He then got very excited, very enthusiastic, and assured Pissarro and myself of his support. – I’ll send a dealer round to see you-, he said…And indeed, it wasn’t long before Durand appeared, having moved his gallery to London because of the War… Without Durand we would have starved like all Impressionists. We owe him everything. He was obstinate and dogged, and he risked everything more than once to support us”. This introduction to Durand was highly significant for not only Monet. Durand was a committed and idealistic dealer who had previously specialised in the Barbizon painters in particular. He now took up the cause of the group around Monet, whom he held to be the leader of a new movement. Monet initially settled at Piccadilly Circus in the centre of town, but he moved to Kensington at the start of the following year. Here (his wife) Camille, seated pensively on a sofa, was the model for an interior… Although London offered him a vast quantity of new motifs, the months in London were relatively unproductive, leaving just a few pictures of the Thames, Green Park and Hyde Park. Monet was not to appreciate London’s unique charms until later visits. Since Monet’s subjects differ from those of Pissarro from the same period, it can be assumed that the two did not work together. Of great significance were their joint visits to London museums and their encounter with the English landscape painting of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in which a new sensitivity towards nature and the influence of 17th-century Dutch painting had combined to inaugurate a modern style of landscape art. William Turner and John Constable were among the most important pioneers of this new view of nature. Constable’s paintings of clouds (Victoria and Albert Museum) in particular revealed his interest in the fleeting moods of light. He was one of the first to give up the dark and earthy colouring and artificial composition which had long characterised conventional Salon painting of this theme. Equally profound was the impact of Turner’s work in the National Gallery. Turner’s fog landscapes in particular demonstrate a dematerialisation of the object, a dissolution of form through coloured light, which recalls Monet’s later series of Rouen Cathedrals. For Turner, too, changes in a landscape at different times of day and under different weather conditions were of decisive interest. His intensive observations of nature make him a vital link in the development of Impressionist painting. Indeed, he may be called one of the first Impressionist painters since the impression made by nature was his fundamental starting-point. Although Monet always protested against comparison with Turner, his pictures contradict him.

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SECRETS OF THE PRESELI BLUESTONES, by Dr. Colin R. Shearing, http://www. Britannia.com/history/Preseli_blue.html, ADAPTED I first visited Stonehenge as a small child and became fascinated by what to me seemed a place of magic and fairytales. During the 1980s I lived in the Preseli Hills in West Wales, near to the actual source of the inner Bluestone Circle and began to realise that there was much more to Stonehenge than I had ever imagined. For centuries, Stonehenge has fascinated the peoples of the world and even today, with all our modern wonders, it receives almost a million visitors per year who travel to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, just to spend some time basking in its magic. “Who? Why? How?” are the questions that have captured the public’s imagination. Most tourists when they think of Stonehenge immediately bring forth to mind the huge trilithons made of Sarsen stone, a stone local to the Marlborough Hills in Wiltshire, but for me the real magic is to be found in the inner horseshoe made of the Preseli Bluestones. The development of Stonehenge can be divided into several phases. The earliest archaeological evidence dates the beginning of Stonehenge to around 8000 BC when the site was cleared in the centre of a forest there, with an avenue leading to the nearby river at Amesbury. Postholes that possibly held “totem” poles have been found. Around 2100 BC the Preseli Bluestones were brought from West Wales and erected in a circle also aligned to the summer solstice, and a widened approach was constructed. Around 100 years later, this first Bluestone circle was dismantled and work began on the final stage of the site. The Bluestones were rearranged in the horseshoe and circle that we can still see today. The next phase of Stonehenge saw the arrival of the Sarsen stones which were arranged in an outer circle. Although we now believe that we know how the stones were erected, the reason why the Bluestones were brought from over 250 miles away from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, has remained a mystery. There has been much speculation and research as to how the feat was achieved.

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STYLES OF ART, http://library.thinkquest.org/J00159/artstyle.htm ABSTRACT Abstract artists felt that paintings did not have to show only things that were recognisable. In their paintings they did not try to show people, animals, or places exactly as they appeared in the real world. They mainly used colour and shape in their paintings to show emotions. Some Abstract Art is also called Non-objective Art. In Non-objective Art, you do not see specific objects. It is not painted to look like something specific. CUBISM Cubism is modern art made up mostly of paintings. The paintings are not supposed to look real. The artist uses geometric shapes to show what he is trying to paint. Early Cubists used mainly greys, browns, greens and yellows. After 1914, Cubists started to use brighter colours. Cubism was the beginning of the Abstract and Non-objective Art styles. EXPRESSIONISM In Expressionist Art, the artist tries to express certain feelings about some thing. The artists that painted in this style were more concerned with having their paintings express a feeling than in making the painting look exactly like what they were painting. FAUVISM Fauvism was an art style that lasted only four years, beginning in 1905. The leader of this movement was Henri Matisse. The word Fauvism is French for “wild beasts” It got this name because the paintings had bright and unusual colours. The subjects in the paintings were shown in a simple way, and the colours and patterns were bright and wild. IMPRESSIONISM Impressionism was developed in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These pieces of art were painted as if someone just took a quick look at the subject of the painting. The paintings were usually in bold colours and did not have a lot of detail. The paintings in this style were usually outdoor scenes like landscapes. The pictures were painted to look like they were shimmering. POINTILISM In Pointillism, the artist uses small dots or strokes of paint to make up the pictures. From far away, these dots blend together to form the picture and give the impression of different colours. POP ART

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Pop Art can be any everyday item that is drawn in a brash and colourful way. Pop Art is short for Popular Art. It is inspired by comic strips, advertising and popular entertainment. POSTIMPRESSIONISM Postimpressionism began in the 19th century. It was mainly still lifes and landscapes. The Postimpressionists liked to use lots of colours and shadows. PRIMITIVISM Primitive Art looks like art that is done by a child. Usually the picture is painted very simply, and the subjects are “flat” or two-dimensional. REALISM Realism is a type of art that shows things exactly as they appear in life. It began in the 18th century, but the greatest Realist era was in the mid 19th century. Most Realists were from France, but there were some famous American painters who were Realists as well. SURREALISM Surrealist paintings were generally based on dreams. Their paintings were filled with familiar objects which were painted to look strange or mysterious. They hoped their odd paintings would make people look at things in a different way and change the way they felt about things. They thought that their paintings might stir up feelings in the back of people’s minds.

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GRAPHIC DESIGN (Taken from Wikipedia, online encyclopedia) The term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated. Common uses of graphic design include magazines, advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organised text and pure design elements such as shapes and colour which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements. Visual arts Before any graphic elements may be applied to a design, the graphic elements must be originated by means of visual art skills. These graphics are often (but not always) developed by a graphic designer. Visual arts include works which are primarily visual in nature using anything from traditional media, to photography or computer generated art. Graphic design principles may be applied to each graphic art element individually as well as to the final composition. Typography Typography is the art, craft and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing. Interface design Graphic designers are often involved in interface design, such as web design and software design when end user interactivity is a design consideration of the layout or interface. Combining visual communication skills with the interactive communication skills of user interaction and online branding, graphic designers often work with software developers and web developers to create both the look and feel of a web site or software application and enhance the interactive experience of the user or web site visitor. An important aspect of interface design is icon design.

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Printmaking Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing on paper and other materials or surfaces. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each piece is not a copy but an original since it is not a reproduction of another work of art and is technically known as an impression. Painting or drawing, on the other hand, create a unique original piece of artwork. Prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. Common types of matrices include: plates of metal, usually copper or zink for engraving or etching; stone, used for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts, linoleum for linocuts and fabric plates for screen-printing. But there are many other kinds, discussed below. Works printed from a single plate create an edition, in modern times usually each signed and numbered to form a limited edition. Prints may also be published in book form, as artist’s books. A single print could be the product of one or multiple techniques.

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Abridged from WAYS OF SEEING, based on the BBC television series with John Berger The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class. If we were simply saying that European art between 1500 and 1900 served the interests of the successive ruling classes, all of whom depended in different ways on the new power of capital, we should not be saying anything very new. What is being proposed is a little more precise; that a way of seeing the world, which was ultimately determined by new attitudes to property and exchange, found its visual expression in the oil painting, and could not have found it in any other visual art form. Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity. All reality was mechanically measured by its materiality. Pictures immediately spring to mind to contradict this assertion. Works by Rembrandt, El Greco, Giorgione, Vermeer, Turner, etc. Yet if one studies these works in relation to the tradition as a whole, one discovers that they were exceptions of a very special kind. The tradition consisted of many hundreds of thousands of canvases and easel pictures distributed throughout Europe. A great number have not survived. Of those which have survived only a small fraction are seriously treated today as works of fine art, and of this fraction another small fraction comprises the actual pictures repeatedly reproduced and presented as the work of “the masters”. Visitors of art museums are often overwhelmed by the number of works on display, and by what they take to be their own culpable inability to concentrate on more than a few of these works. In fact such a reaction is altogether reasonable. Art history has totally failed to come to terms with the problem of the relationship between the outstanding work and the average work of the European tradition. The notion of Genius is not in itself an adequate answer. Consequently the confusion remains on the walls of the galleries. Third-rate works surround an outstanding work without any recognition – let alone explanation – of what fundamentally differentiates them. The art of any culture will show a wide differential of talent. But in no other culture is the difference between “masterpiece” and average work so large as in the tradition of the oil painting. In this tradition the difference is not just a question of skill or imagination, but also of morale. The average work – and increasingly after the seventeenth century- was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product. Hack work is not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of the market making more insistent demands than the art. The period of the oil painting corresponds with the rise of the open art market. And it is in this contradiction between art and market that the explanations must be sought for what amounts to the contrast, the antagonism existing between the exceptional work and the average.

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Abridged from WAYS OF SEEING, based on the BBC television series with John Berger What distinguishes oil painting from any other form of painting is its special ability to render the tangibility, the texture, the lustre, the solidity of what it depicts. It defines the real as that which you can put your hands on. Although its painted images are two-dimensional, its potential of illusionism is far greater than that of sculpture, for it can suggest objects possessing colour, texture and temperature, filling a space and, by implication, filling the entire world. Holbein’s painting of The Ambassadors (1533) stands at the beginning of the tradition and, as often happens with a work at the opening of a new period, its character is undisguised. The way it is painted shows what it is about. How is it painted? It is painted with great skill to create the illusion in the spectator that he is looking at real objects and materials. Every square inch of the surface of this painting, whilst remaining purely visual, appeals to the sense of touch. The eye moves from fur to silk to metal to wood to velvet to marble to paper to felt, and each time what the eye perceives is already translated, within the painting itself, into the language of tactile sensation. The two men have a certain presence and there are many objects which symbolize ideas, but it is the materials, the stuff, by which the men are surrounded and clothed which dominate the painting. Except for the faces and hands, there is not a surface in this picture which does not make one aware of how it has been elaborately worked over – by weavers, embroiderers, carpet-makers, goldsmiths, leather workers, mosaic-makers, furriers, tailors, jewellers – and of how this working-over and the resulting richness of each surface has been finally worked-over and reproduced by Holbein the painter.