Lesson 26 The best art critics
最佳艺术评论家

First listen and then answer the question.
听录音，然后回答以下问题。
Who is the student’s best critic?

    I am an art student and I paint a lot of pictures. Many people pretend that they understand modern art. They always tell you what a picture is ’about’. Of course, many pictures are not ’about’ anything. They are just pretty patterns. We like them in the same way that we like pretty curtain material. I think that young children often appreciate modern pictures better than anyone else. They notice more. My sister is only seven, but she always tells me whether my pictures are good or not. She came into my room yesterday.
    ’What are you doing?’ she asked.
    ’I’m hanging this picture on the wall,’ I answered. ’It’s a new one. Do you like it?’
    She looked at it critically for a moment. ’It’s all right,’ she said, ’but isn’t it upside down?’
    I looked at it again. She was right! It was!

New words and expressions 生词和短语

art  n. 艺术
critic  n. 评论家
paint  v. 画
pretend  v. 假装
pattern  n. 图案
curtain  n. 窗帘，幕布
material  n. 材料
appreciate  v. 鉴赏
notice  v. 注意到
whether  conj. 是否
hang  v. 悬挂，吊
critically  adv. 批评地
upside down 上下颠倒地

参考译文

     我是个学艺术的学生，画了很多画。有很多人装成很懂现代艺术的样子，总是告诉你一幅画的“意思”是什么。当然，有很多画是什么“意思”也没有的。它们就是些好看的图案，我们喜爱它们就像我们喜欢漂亮的窗帘布一样。我觉得小孩子们往往比任何人都更能欣赏现代绘画，他们观察到的东西更多。我的妹妹只有7岁，但她总能说出我的画是好还是坏。昨天她到我房里来了。