MFA Art History and Theory

Question 1

Which early 20th-century movement rejected traditional artistic forms and embraced irrationality, chance, and anti-bourgeois provocation?

Accepted Answer

Dada

Answer

Dada emerged during World War I as an anti-war, anti-bourgeois art movement that used absurdism, chance operations, and provocative gestures to challenge traditional art.

Question 2

What is the central claim of Clement Greenberg's formalist criticism regarding modernist painting?

Accepted Answer

Each art form should focus on its own medium's unique properties — for painting, the flat surface and color

Answer

Greenberg argued that modernist painting achieves its highest expression by acknowledging and exploiting the flatness and two-dimensionality unique to the painted surface.

Question 3

Which feminist art historian coined the phrase 'Why have there been no great women artists?' as a critical intervention?

Accepted Answer

Linda Nochlin

Answer

Linda Nochlin's 1971 essay 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' challenged the institutional and social structures that excluded women from art education and recognition.

Question 4

What is 'the male gaze' as theorized by Laura Mulvey in film and visual culture?

Accepted Answer

The way visual media is structured to present the world from a heterosexual male perspective, objectifying women for the pleasure of an assumed male viewer

Answer

Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay described how mainstream cinema structures visual pleasure around the heterosexual male viewer, presenting women as passive objects of the gaze.

Question 5

Which art movement, emerging in New York in the 1940s–50s, emphasized spontaneous, gestural, large-scale painting as a direct expression of the artist's psyche?

Accepted Answer

Abstract Expressionism

Answer

Abstract Expressionism, exemplified by Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko, prioritized spontaneous gesture, scale, and emotional directness over representation.

MFA - Master of Fine Arts Practice Test

MFA - Master of Fine Arts Practice Test

MFA Art History and Theory