Arty Allsorts (A Bit Hard) Trivia Quiz

Answer: A perfect circle

So what, I hear you snigger? I could do that with my child's compass. Aha - Giotto didn't use a compass. Or a piece of string. Or anything else except a red pen. According to Vasari, the Renaissance biographer, Giotto fixed his arm firmly to his side to make a compass of it. Now are you impressed?

Answer: Doric, Ionian, Corinthian

If you live in or near any city with significant pre-1900 architecture, you'll find examples of at least one of these orders, if not all three. Have a look at the website:

http://www.cmhpf.org/kids/dictionary/ClassicalOrders.html

and check out the orders of some famous ancient Greek and modern neo-classical examples now showing at a public building near you!

Answer: egg yolk

Oil superseded tempera, which was the medium in which medieval wall frescos like those of Giotto were painted. There still seem to be thriving communities of artists working in tempera. (As far as I'm aware, you can't powder diamond.)

Answer: Surrealism

Andre Breton kicked this literary and artistic movement off in 1924 with the first of his three Surrealist Manifestos.

You could sum up the basic idea as "subconscious association". Literary surrealists such as Jean Cocteau chose words for their implications rather than their dictionary meanings (which makes their works so difficult to read), while Surrealist painters tried either to use "irrational" imagery inspired by dreams (Dali, Max Ernst and Magritte) or to liberate the unconscious by breaking the bounds of traditional form and doing away with overt "meaning" altogether, thus producing a branch of abstractionism (Miro).

The guy usually associated with Surrealism, Dali, was actually "expelled" from the movement by Breton in 1937. (I suspect he didn't care much.)

Answer: They're all unfinished

Why Schubert didn't finish his "Unfinished Symphony" remains something of a mystery; but it's quite clear why St John's Cathedral (http://www.stjohndivine.org/; it will be the largest cathedral in the world, and already has the largest nave) remains incomplete: it ran out of money, and there are no immediate plans for further substantial work. Duchamp simply abandoned his seminal Surrealist work (http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/332.html), while Rembrandt died before he could finish his painting (http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rembrandt/rembrandt127.html).

Michelangelo, on the other hand, carved his statues (http://w1.548.telia.com/~u54808711/inswedish/katrin/Michelangelo/arkitekturen.xhtml) for the tomb of a pope. Michelangelo's slave sculptures aren't finished because the massive tomb for which they were intended (for Michelangelo's patron, Pope Julius II) simply cost too much for his successors, who scaled the project down to the point where the partly-finished slave statues didn't fit. (Thanks to malvasia for this information.) They're those marvellous ones in which Michelangelo's vision was so sure that he seems to have carved soft rock away from the granite forms imprisoned within.

Answer: A rectangle two layers high, six deep and ten wide

That's minimalism for you! With this work (http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/mov_artworld.htm), Andre wanted to show that art is about the objects displayed; anything that is exhibited is "art". I guess you could see this as a direct line of descent from those painters like Constable and Courbet who forced the establishment of their day to recognise non-traditional subjects as equally valid as the mythological or historical subjects favoured by the academies.

Incidentally, why "Equivalent VIII"? Andre originally created eight sculptures, each of 120 bricks in two layers, but each arranged differently. The present work is the eighth in the series. He sold it to the Tate Gallery in 1972, where it was displayed until 1975 without attracting comment. But an article in the Sunday Times in February 1976 featuring the work provoked uproar, and made it an icon of modern art.

Answer: Damien Hirst

British-born Hirst is interested in death. In "Mother and Child Divided" (http://www.af-moma.no/english/kunstnere/hirst_large_1.html), you can walk between the two halves of a cow and her calf preserved in formaldehyde and encased in two transparent containers, with all the gory bits exposed. "Away from the Flock" consists of a sheep in formaldehyde (http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/d/exhibition/sensation/hirst.html), while in "A Thousand Years" (http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/haden-guest/haden-guest10-1-3.asp) you can experience all the delight of a maggot-ridden cow's head.

All four artists belong to a group known as "YBA", or Young British Artists. Davenport and Landy studied at London's Goldsmith College, where they took part in Hirst's 1989 exhibition entitled "Freeze". Emin studied at the Royal College of Art, and created such works as "Everyone I have ever slept with 1963-95", which is a tent with the aforementioned names sewn onto it. I don't know the number of names, but apparently it's enough to cover the tent. Her "My Bed" is simply that - her unmade bed, complete with condoms, contraceptives and underwear.

Answer: 15,000-17,000

The uncertainty comes, according to Lascaux's own website at http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/, because "The research carried out during the past decades has placed the iconography of Lascaux at the beginning of the Magdalenian Age, that is, 17,000 years before today.

However, certain indications, both thematic and graphic, suggest that certain figures could belong to a more recent period. This is borne out by dating with Carbon 14 (around 15,000 years old)."

Answer: He hated him as a young rival

Both Florentines, Leonardo was born in 1452, Michelangelo 23 years later. Part of Leonardo's distaste might have come from the fact that he was notorious for not finishing commissions, whereas Michelangelo wasn't. It could be that Michelangelo, playing on this reputation, picked up a few of the elder artist's commissions while his back was turned.

It could also be that the sculptor Michelangelo took Leonardo's remarks on the superiority of painting personally.

Answer: The sky

No argument about this one - Constable himself, in a letter to a friend, wrote: 'skies must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of Landscape in which the sky is not the "key note" the standard of "Scale" and the chief "Organ of Sentiment"... the sky is the source of light in nature - and governs everything.' He did plenty of studies of clouds and weather, but none that I know of anything purely terrestrial.