1 Between about 1910 and 1930, new artistic movements in European art were making themsel

ves felt in the United States. American artists became acquainted with the new art on their trips to Paris and at the exhibitions in the famous New York gallery "291" (named after its address on Fifth Avenue) of the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. But most important in the spread of the modern movements in the United States was the sensational Armory Show of 1913 held in New York, in which the works of many of the leading European artists were seen along with the works of a number of progressive American painters.

2 Several of the American modernists who were influenced by the Armory Show found the urban landscape, especially New York, an appealing subject. Compared with the works of the realist painters, the works of American modernists were much further removed from the actual appearance of the city, they were more interested in the "feel" of the city, more concerned with the meaning behind appearance. However, both the painters of the "Ash Can School" and the later realists were still tied to nineteenth-century or earlier styles, while the early modernists shared in the international breakthroughs of the art of the twentieth century.

3 The greatest of these breakthroughs was Cubism, developed most fully in France between 1907 and 1914, which brought about a major revolution in Western painting. It overturned the rational tradition that had been built upon since the Renaissance. In Cubism, natural forms were broken down analytically into geometric shapes. No longer was a clear differentiation made between the figure and the background of a painting: the objects represented and the surface on which they were painted became one. The Cubists abandoned the conventional single vantage point of the viewer, and objects depicted from multiple viewpoints were shown at the same time.

The passage primarily concerned with __________ .

A．the development of Cubism

B．modern art movements in the United States

C．contemporary artists in the United States

D．the influence of photography on landscape painters