Use the clues below to plan and write your composition.

Positive aspects: Clothes show someone’s personality. We feel better and more comfortable if we know we’ve got good clothes on. Then, clothes are fun and young people like shopping, but they don’t like to look like everybody else. They try to have their own style, clothes that fit their personality and mood.

Negative aspects: Some people become crazy if they can’t change clothes every day or they don’t have the things that are in fashion now. Besides, some people spend too much money on clothes. For many of them to look fashionable is the greatest joy in life.

ART: PAINTINGS and PAINTERS

‘Art offers two great gifts of emotion – the emotion of recognition and

the emotion of escape. Both emotions take us out of the boundaries of self…’

Duncan Phillips, American art collector

People say that they need art as a way of understanding the world around them and a way of expressing their feelings and emotions. There are many different forms of art - literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing, music, dance, theatre, cinema, etc. There are many styles and genres of art as well.

Painting is the art of portraying or representing objects with line and colour. There are different genres of painting: the landscape, seascape, still life, portrait, genre painting. Artists express their ideas through composition, colouring, light and shade effect. Many techniques developed through centuries allow artists to transform their feelings into flat images on a canvas or a piece of paper. Paintings send us back to life and to other arts with the ability to see beauty all about us as we go on our accustomed ways.

There is a galaxy of great painters in Russia. Andrey Rublyov and Pheophan Greek are world-known icon painters. Ivan Shishkin can be called the singer of Russian forests, (“Morning in the Pine Forest”), while I.Levetan derived inspiration from the Russian autumn. The Peredvizhniki include artists such as Ilya Repin (“Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan”) and Vassily Surikov (“The Morning of the Streletski Execution”, “Boyarynya Morozova”). Victor Vasnetsov chose the folk Russian style (“Bogatyrs”), Mikhail Vrubel is noted for originality of thought and novelty of form, his “Demon” is the fruit of his fantastic imagination. The work of Ivan Aivazovsky can be regarded as a single epic poem of the sea (“The Ninth Wave”). Russian art is brilliantly represented in The State Russian Museum.

As for British painters, the best known are William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. Some of their masterpieces are exhibited in The Hermitage, in the department of English art.

Modern painters have a lot of opportunities nowadays to demonstrate their works of art in different museums and art-galleries, even on the street, in the so-called “Art zones”.

My favourite artist is Ivan Aivazovsky. Aivazovsky (1817-1900) gained a worldwide fame by his romantic paintings, remarkable for their emotional colours. In his painting «The Ninth wave» he revealed the beauty of the mighty sea on a stormy day and conveyed it masterfully. The rays of the setting sun penetrate through the dark low clouds. In the centre a magnificent wave, curled like a shell, portrays the conflict of wind and water. The colouring is masterful; the treatment of light is wonderful. The angry line of the horizon contrasts the smooth water in the foreground, where a mast of a wrecked ship is floating with several people, clenching to it for life. The situation is desperate. It’s the moment of highest emotional tension. The picture is romantic in its pathetic vigour and realistic in the masterful depiction of the sea. In the degree of finish this painting is unsurpassable. It is a poetic and convincing seascape. «The Ninth wave» is a real Aivazovsky’s masterpiece.

Study the vocabulary:

A landscape- a picture representing a tract of country with the various objects. In the context of art landscape generally denotes a picture and not a view depicted there. When speaking of the view use scenery, countryside.

A seascape- a painting or other artistic representation of the sea.

A still life- a painting of such unanimated subjects as fruit, flowers and other decorative things.

Genre painting –apainting that represents scenes from every day life in a more or less realistic way.

The fine arts – famous and highly recognised forms of art especially paintings or sculptures.

Visual art - art opposed to literature or music which you look at

Performing art – art forms such as dance or drama which involves doing things.

Performance art – a type of art that can combine acting, dance, painting, film to express ideas.

Translate into Russian:

To specialize in, to portray people and emotions, to depict a person /a scene of life/ the mood of…; to reveal the person’s nature, in the foreground /in the background/ on the top/on the bottom, in the right/left-hand corner, to place the figures; to combine form and colour into harmonious unity; brilliant colour scheme [ski:m].

Colours can be: light, dark, vivid, warm, cool, strong, soft, bright, cheerful, gloomy, pure etc.

Impression of apainting can be: moving, lyrical, romantic, poetic, disappointing, unsurpassed masterpiece, impenetrable - extremely difficult to understand, intriguing - interesting because it is strange or mysterious.

A plan for the picture description:

1. The general effect (the title and the name of the artist; the time of the picture creation; genre; the general atmosphere or the theme of the picture)

2. The contents of the picture (place, time and setting)

3. The composition and colouring (background, what colours predominates in the picture; how the objects are located).

4. Interpretation (feelings and ideas the painting evokes in the viewers)

STUDENT CARD

Give a 2-2.5 minute talk onthe topic “Art”.

Remember to say:

§ What types of art you know

§ What painting is and what genres of painting exist

§ What famous Russian and British artists you know

§ What your favourite painting is

Answer the question:

Why do people like going to art museums?