Câu hỏi
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct
answer to each of the questions from 30 to 37.
The Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States was responsible for sweeping changes in attitudes
toward the decorative arts, then considered the minor or household arts. Its focus on decorative arts helped to
induce United States museums and private collectors to begin collecting furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork,
and textiles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact that artisans, who were looked on as
mechanics or skilled workers in the eighteenth century, are frequently considered artists today is directly
attributable to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the nineteenth century. The importance now placed on attractive
and harmonious home decoration can also be traced to this period, when Victorian interior arrangements were
revised to admit greater light and more freely flowing spaces.
The Arts and Crafts Movement reacts against mechanized processes that threatened handcrafts and
resulted in cheapened, monotonous merchandise. Founded in the late nineteenth century by British social critics
John Ruskin and William Morris, the movement revered craft as a form of art. In a rapidly industrializing
society, most Victorians agreed that art was an essential moral ingredient in the home environment, and in many
middle- and working-class homes craft was the only form of art. Ruskin and his followers criticized not only the
degradation of artisans reduced to machine operators, but also the impending loss of daily contact with
handcrafted objects, fashioned with pride, integrity, and attention to beauty.
In the United States as well as in Great Britain, reformers extolled the virtues of handcrafted objects:
simple, straightforward design; solid materials of good quality; and sound, enduring construction techniques.
These criteria were interpreted in a variety of styles, ranging from rational and geometric to romantic or
naturalistic. Whether abstract, stylized, or realistically treated, the consistent theme in virtually all Arts and Crafts
design is nature.
The Arts and Crafts Movement was much more than a particular style; it was a philosophy of domestic
life. Proponents believed that if simple design, high-quality materials, and honest construction were realized in
the home and its appointments, then the occupants would enjoy moral and therapeutic effects. For both artisan
and consumer, the Arts and Crafts doctrine was seen as a magical force against the undesirable effects of
industrialization.
According to the passage, before the nineteenth century, artisans were thought to be_____
defenders of moral standards
creators of cheap merchandise
skilled workers
talented artists
H. Huong
Giáo viên
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