A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about

a culture than is possible to learn in generally history classes. Most S1.______

typical history courses concentrate on politics, economics and war.

And art history focuses on much more than this because art reflects S2.______

not only the political values of people, but also religious beliefs,

emotions and psychology. In addition, information about the daily

actions of our ancestors—or of people very different from our own— S3.______

can be provided by art. In short, art expresses the essential qualities

of time and a place, and a study of it clearly offered us a deeperun- S4.______

derstanding than can be found in most history books. S5.______

In historical books, objective information about the political life S6.______

of a country is presented; that is, facts about politics are given, but

opinions are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is quite subjected: S7.______

It reflects emotions and opinions. In his well-known painting, the

Third of May (1808), the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya criticized

the government for its misuse of power about people. Over a S8.______

hundred years later, symbolic images were used in Pablo Picasso’s

Guemica to express the horror of war.

At the same way, art can reflect a culture’s religious beliefs. For S9.______

hundreds of years in Europe, religious art was almost the only type of

art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled

with paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. By

contrast, one of the main character of art in the Middle East was(and S10.______

still is) its absence of human and animal images. This reflects the

Islamic(伊斯兰的) belief that statues are unholy.

【S7】