2014考研英语（二）试题及答案解析

Directions:

Read the following text and answer the questions by finding information from the left column that corresponds to each of the marked details given in the right column. There are two extra choices in the right column. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEERT 1.(10 points)

Uncommon Ground - Land Art in Britain

The term Land Art brings to mind epic interventions in the land such as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, 6,500 tons of basalt, earth and salt projecting into Utah's Great Salt Lake, or Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Arizona, which James Turrell has been transforming into an immense naked-eye observatory since 1979.

Richard Long's A Line Made By Walking, however, involved nothing more strenuous than a 20-minute train ride from Waterloo. Having got off somewhere in suburbia, the artist walked backwards and forwards over a piece of grass until the squashed turf formed a line - a kind of drawing on the land.

Emerging in the late Sixties and reaching a peak in the Seventies, Land Art was one of a range of new forms, including Body Art, Performance Art, Action Art and Installation Art, which pushed art beyond the traditional confines of the studio and gallery. Rather than portraying landscape, land artists used the physical substance of the land itself as their medium.

The message of this survey of British land art - the most comprehensive to date - is that the British variant, typified by Long's piece, was not only more domestically scaled, but a lot quirkier than its American counterpart. Indeed, while you might assume that an exhibition of Land Art would consist only of records of works rather than the works themselves, Long's photograph of his work is the work. Since his "action" is in the past the photograph is its sole embodiment.

That might seem rather an obscure point, but it sets the tone for an exhibition that contains a lot of black-and-white photographs and relatively few natural objects.

Long is Britain's best-known Land Artist and his Stone Circle, a perfect ring of purplish rocks from Portishead beach laid out on the gallery floor, represents the elegant, rarefied side of the form. The Boyle Family, on the other hand, stand for its dirty, urban aspect. Comprising artists Mark Boyle and Joan Hills and their children, they recreated random sections of the British landscape on gallery walls. Their Olaf Street Study, a square of brick-strewn waste ground, is one of the few works here to embrace the mundanity that characterises most of our experience of the landscape most of the time.

Parks feature, particularly in the earlier works, such as John Hilliard's very funny Across the Park, in which a long-haired stroller is variously smiled at by a pretty girl and unwittingly assaulted in a sequence of images that turn out to be different parts of the same photograph.

Generally however British land artists preferred to get away from towns, gravitating towards landscapes that are traditionally considered beautiful such as the Lake District or the Wiltshire Downs. While it probably wasn't apparent at the time, much of this work is permeated by a spirit of romantic escapism that the likes of Wordsworth would have readily understood. Derek Jarman's yellow-tinted film Towards Avebury, a collection of long, mostly still shots of the Wiltshire landscape, evokes a tradition of English landscape painting stretching from Samuel Palmer to Paul Nash.

In the case of Hamish Fulton, you can't help feeling that the Scottish artist has simply found a way of making his love of walking pay. A typical work, such as Seven Days, consists of a single beautiful black-and-white photograph taken on an epic walk, with the mileage and number of days taken listed beneath. British Land Art as shown in this well selected, but relatively modestly scaled exhibition wasn't about imposing on the landscape, more a kind of landscape-orientated light conceptual art created passing through. It had its origins in the great outdoors, but the results were as gallery-bound as the paintings of Turner and Constable.

[A] originates from a long walk that the artist took

41. Stone Circle [B] illustrates a kind of landscape-orientated light conceptual art

42. Olaf Street Study [C] reminds people of the English landscape painting tradition.

43. Across the Park [D] represents the elegance of the British land art

44. Towards Avebury [E] depicts the ordinary side of the British land art

45. Seven days [F] embodies a romantic escape into the Scottish outdoors

[G] contains images from different parts of the same photograph.

Section III Translation

46. Directions:

Translate the following text from English into Chinese. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)

Most people would define optimism as endlessly happy, with a glass that's perpetually half fall. But that's exactly the kind of false deerfulness that positive psychologists wouldn't recommend. "Healthy optimists means being in touch with reality." says Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard professor, According to Ben- Shalar, realistic optimists are these who make the best of things that happen, but not those who believe everything happens for the best.

Ben-Shalar uses three optimistic exercisers. When he feels down-sag, after giving a bad lecture-he grants himself permission to be human. He reminds himself that mot every lecture can be a Nobel winner; some will be less effective than others. Next is reconstruction, He analyzes the weak lecture, leaning lessons, for the future about what works and what doesn't. Finally, there is perspective, which involves acknowledging that in the ground scheme of life, one lecture really doesn't matter.

Section IV Writing

Part A

47. Directions: Suppose you are going to study abroad and share an apartment with John, a local student. Write him to email to

1)tell him about your living habits, and

2)ask for advice about living there.

You should write about 100 words on answer sheet.

Do not use your own name.

Part B

48. Directions: Write your essay on ANSWER SHEET. (15 points)

You should

1. interpret the chart, and

2. give your comments.

You should write about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET. (15points)

二、答案部分

1. [B] concluded

2. [A ]protective

3. [[C] Likewise

4. [A] indicator

5. [D] concern

6. [A]in terms of

7. [C] equals

8. [C] in turn

9. [D] straightforward

10. [B] while

11. [A]shape

12. [B] qualify

13. [C] normal

14. [D] tendency

15. [B] pictured

16. [D] associated

17. [A]Even

18. [D] grounded

19.[C] policies

20.[B] against