Part 5

31 What problem regarding colour does the writer explain in the first paragraph?
You are going to read the introduction to a book about the history of colour. For questions 31 – 36,
choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. A Our view of colour is strongly affected by changing fashion.
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. B Analysis is complicated by the bewildering number of natural colours.
C Colours can have different associations in different parts of the world.
D Certain popular books have dismissed colour as insignificant.
Introduction to a book about the history of colour
32 What is the first reason the writer gives for the lack of academic work on the history of colour?
This book examines how the ever-changing role of colour in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained
glass, clothing, painting and popular culture. Colour is a natural phenomenon, of course, but it is also a complex
cultural construct that resists generalization and, indeed, analysis itself. No doubt this is why serious works A There are problems of reliability associated with the artefacts available.
devoted to colour are rare, and rarer still are those that aim to study it in historical context. Many authors search B Historians have seen colour as being outside their field of expertise.
for the universal or archetypal truths they imagine reside in colour, but for the historian, such truths do not exist.
Colour is first and foremost a social phenomenon. There is no transcultural truth to colour perception, despite C Colour has been rather looked down upon as a fit subject for academic study.

Reading and Use of English Sample paper 1

what many books based on poorly grasped neurobiology or – even worse – on pseudoesoteric pop psychology D Very little documentation exists for historians to use.
would have us believe. Such books unfortunately clutter the bibliography on the subject, and even do it harm.
33 The writer suggests that the priority when conducting historical research on colour is to
The silence of historians on the subject of colour, or more particularly their difficulty in conceiving colour as a
subject separate from other historical phenomena, is the result of three different sets of problems. The first
concerns documentation and preservation. We see the colours transmitted to us by the past as time has altered A ignore the interpretations of other modern day historians.
them and not as they were originally. Moreover, we see them under light conditions that often are entirely B focus one’s interest as far back as the prehistoric era.
different from those known by past societies. And finally, over the decades we have developed the habit of
looking at objects from the past in black-and-white photographs and, despite the current diffusion of colour C find some way of organising the mass of available data.
photography, our ways of thinking about and reacting to these objects seem to have remained more or less black D relate pictures to information from other sources.
and white.

The second set of problems concerns methodology. As soon as the historian seeks to study colour, he must 34 In the fourth paragraph, the writer says that the historian writing about colour should be careful
grapple with a host of factors all at once: physics, chemistry, materials, and techniques of production, as well as
iconography, ideology, and the symbolic meanings that colours convey. How to make sense of all of these A not to analyse in an old-fashioned way.
elements? How can one establish an analytical model facilitating the study of images and coloured objects? No
B when making basic distinctions between key ideas.
researcher, no method, has yet been able to resolve these problems, because among the numerous facts
pertaining to colour, a researcher tends to select those facts that support his study and to conveniently forget C not to make unwise predictions.
those that contradict it. This is clearly a poor way to conduct research. And it is made worse by the temptation D when using certain terms and concepts.
to apply to the objects and images of a given historical period information found in texts of that period. The
proper method – at least in the first phase of analysis – is to proceed as do palaeontologists (who must study
cave paintings without the aid of texts): by extrapolating from the images and the objects themselves a logic and 35 In the fifth paragraph, the writer says there needs to be further research done on
a system based on various concrete factors such as the rate of occurrence of particular objects and motifs, their
distribution and disposition. In short, one undertakes the internal structural analysis with which any study of an A the history of colour in relation to objects in the world around us.
image or coloured object should begin.
B the concerns he has raised in an earlier publication.
The third set of problems is philosophical: it is wrong to project our own conceptions and definitions of colour C the many ways in which artists have used colour over the years.
onto the images, objects and monuments of past centuries. Our judgements and values are not those of previous D the relationship between artistic works and the history of colour.
societies (and no doubt they will change again in the future). For the writer-historian looking at the definitions
and taxonomy of colour, the danger of anachronism is very real. For example, the spectrum with its natural
order of colours was unknown before the seventeenth century, while the notion of primary and secondary 36 An idea recurring in the text is that people who have studied colour have
colours did not become common until the nineteenth century. These are not eternal notions but stages in the
ever-changing history of knowledge. A failed to keep up with scientific developments.
I have reflected on such issues at greater length in my previous work, so while the present book does address B not understood its global significance.
certain of them, for the most part it is devoted to other topics. Nor is it concerned only with the history of colour C found it difficult to be fully objective.
in images and artworks – in any case that area still has many gaps to be filled. Rather, the aim of this book is to D been muddled about their basic aims.
examine all kinds of objects in order to consider the different facets of the history of colour and to show how far
beyond the artistic sphere this history reaches. The history of painting is one thing; that of colour is another,
much larger, question. Most studies devoted to the history of colour err in considering only the pictorial, artistic
or scientific realms. But the lessons to be learned from colour and its real interest lie elsewhere.
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