Art Smarts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso was the Picasso's full name at birth in 1881. Picasso co-founded the Cubist movement, along with developing the collage. During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Nazi-controlled Paris and limited by his art and supplies, turned to writing.

He wrote two plays "Desire Caught by the Tail" and "The Four Little Girls".

Answer: Shading

Hatching is using lines of different size and spacing to create shading or relief in a drawing. There are three kinds of hatching: linear, which uses parallel lines, cross-hatching, which uses perpendicular lines, and contoured, which uses wavy lines. Hatching is uncommon in paintings, but is commonly found in drawing and printmaking.

Answer: Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (shortened to MoMA) opened on November 7, 1929, seven days after the Wall Street crash. Other than art, the museum has a vast library of over 300,000 books on topics such as architecture, drawing, sculpting, film, and electronic media.

Answer: Neoclassicism

In neoclassicism, paintings (such as "The Death of Socrates" by Jacques-Louis David) would often teach a moral or lesson. In the previously mentioned painting, the moral was integrity or willing to die for what you believe in. Historically, Socrates died for criticizing Critias, a tyrant from Athens. Socrates died by drinking poison.
Most paintings from the neoclassicism era appeared to have the people in the paintings doing something; in other words, it was like a snapshot of an action. In "The Death of Socrates", everyone was pointing and viewing Socrates's death.

Answer: Madonna of the Rocks

Both pictures feature the Virgin Mary, Baby Jesus, John the Baptist, and an angel in what appears to be a cave or other rocky setting. There is some discussion about which version was painted first; with the earliest being dated between 1483-86, and the other being estimated around 1508.

Some of the minor differences between the paintings are the colors and lighting used, as well as the flora displayed in the two pictures. The significant difference is the appearance of the angel. In the older version the angel is pointing toward John the Baptist and appears to be looking at the viewer; the angel in the more recent painting appears to be in a state of contemplation with the hand resting on his/her knee.

Answer: Hermitage

Found in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. Catherine the Great founded the museum in 1764, although it was not open to the public until 1852. The museum has over three million artifacts covering both art and Russian culture, although only a fraction are displayed on exhibit at one time.

A Soviet adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was filmed in the Winter Palace, one of the six buildings the museum occupies, between 1966 and 1967. It took home an Oscar for best Foreign Language Film.

At one point or another the museum has been home to Van Gogh's "White House At Night", Matisse's "The Dance" and the "Mal'ta Venus" from the Paleolithic era.

Answer: The Milk Maid

Genre art depicts scenes of ordinary people going about their everyday life. These scenes may include the marketplace, the interior of the home, street scenes, and parties. This style is especially used when referring to the Dutch Golden Age during the seventeenth century, with works by Vermeer and Rembrandt, for example, as well as the Flemish Baroque Period, also during the seventeenth century. Peter Paul Rubens was a prominent genre artist from Antwerp during this time.

The term "genre art" may also be used to describe other art categories from these times, such as still-life, marine painting, and animal painting.

Answer: Hans Holbein the Younger

Holbein was born in Augsburg, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, but traveled to England in 1526 with a recommendation from the priest, Erasmus. He worked under the patronage of Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas Cromwell before becoming the King's Painter.

Not only did he produce fine portraits, but he also designed jewelry and other precious objects. He is, however, best known for his portraits, which give insight into royal life in England during the reign of Henry VIII. In addition to portraits of the king, Holbein painted portraits of wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, as well as the young son of Henry, the future Edward VI, among many others.

Answer: The area around the subject

"Rubin's Vase" is a good example of positive and negative space. In the coloured form, the vase forms the positive space, as it is the focal point of the picture. In two-tone black-and-white, the face silhouettes become the positive space, while they were the negative space in the colored version.

Answer: 18th

Paintings in the Rococo movement typically were painted with pastels. They tended to picture more light-hearted moments. The word rococo comes from the words "rocaille," which is French for shell, and "barocco," the Italian word for Baroque, the preceding art period. French king Louis XIV ordered "more youthful" paintings in 1699 from the Royal Academy of Painting.

It was there that the movement started, a debate between the importance of colour vs the importance of drawing.