Learn about Different Kinds of Arts and Culture

Peanuts: Are You a Blockhead – Arts and Culture GK Part 1

1. In what year did the first Peanuts comic strip run?
Answer: 1950.
The first Peanuts comic strip ran on October 2, 1950.

2. Which character always carries a blanket?
Answer: Linus.
Linus van Pelt always has his security blanket with him.

3. What was the nickname of the Peanuts comic strip’s creator, Charles Schulz?
Answer: Sparky.
When he was a child, Charles Schulz was given the nickname “Sparky” by his uncle.

4. What kind of dog is Snoopy?
Answer: Beagle.
Snoopy is a beagle.

5. What’s the name of the character who wears the shirt with a zigzag on it?
Answer: Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown started wearing the black and yellow zigzag shirt two months after the comic strip first appeared.

6. Which character plays the piano?
Answer: Schroeder.
Schroeder is the Beethoven-loving musical genius who plays a toy piano.

7. When did Woodstock first appear in the comic strip?
Answer: 1967.
Woodstock first appeared in 1967 but did not get the name until 1970. His name was taken from the Woodstock music festival of 1969.

8. Which character is obsessed with the Great Pumpkin?
Answer: Linus.
Linus believes in the mythical Great Pumpkin and waits each year for it in the pumpkin patch while the rest of the Peanuts gang goes out trick-or-treating.

9. What is Charlie Brown’s sister’s name?
Answer: Sally.
The little blond girl, Sally Brown, is Charlie Brown’s sister.

Who Made That? (Part 2) Quiz – Arts and Culture GK Part 2

10. Who made the painting The Starry Night?
Answer: Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh painted this swirling Post-Impressionist work of the night sky in 1889.

11. Who made the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring?
Answer: Johannes Vermeer.
Johannes Vermeer painted the portrait of a young Dutch woman with a headscarf and pearl earring in 1665. It inspired both a book and a movie in the 21st century.

12. Who made the painting The Mona Lisa?
Answer: Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo da Vinci painted this iconic work between about 1503 and 1506.

13. Who made the painting The School of Athens?
Answer: Raphael.
Raphael painted this famous High Renaissance fresco between about 1509 and 1511. It is located in the papal apartments in the Vatican Palace.

14. Who made the Surrealist painting The Persistence of Memory?
Answer: Salvador Dalí.
Salvador Dalí created this wacky painting of melting clocks in 1931.

15. Who made the painting Nighthawks?
Answer: Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper painted the late-night diner scene in 1942.

16. Who made the photograph that came to be known as Migrant Mother?
Answer: Dorothea Lange.
Dorothea Lange took this now-famous photograph of a mother and her children in rural California in 1936.

17. Who made the contemporary sculpture Cloud Gate located in Chicago’s Millennium Park?
Answer: Anish Kapoor.
Anish Kapoor is the sculptor of this popular tourist attraction known colloquially as “The Bean.”

Which Came First Quiz – Arts and Culture GK Part 3

18. Which came first: Fauvism or Cubism?
Answer: Fauvism.
Fauvism preceded and briefly overlapped Cubism, which began to develop in 1907.

19. Which came first: the Armory Show or the Degenerate Art exhibition?
Answer: Armory Show.
The Armory Show, a landmark of Modern art, was held in New York City in 1913. The Degenerate Art exhibition was organized in Germany in 1937 and consisted of works of art deemed subversive and confiscated by the Nazi Party from leading avant-garde artists.

20. Which came first: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a urinal signed “R. Mutt”?
Answer: Fountain.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain was made in 1917, during the Dada period. Andy Warhol made his Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings in 1962.

21. Which came first: Michelangelo’s David or Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper?
Answer: The Last Supper.
Leonardo painted The Last Supper between 1495 and 1498. Michelangelo’s David was completed in 1504.

22. Which came first: fresco painting or oil painting on canvas?
Answer: Fresco painting.
Fresco, a method of painting on walls, was practiced earlier, beginning in ancient times. Oil painting on canvas came into practice about the 16th century.

23. Which came first: German Expressionism or Abstract Expressionism?
Answer: German Expressionism.
German Expressionism was practiced in the late 19th century. Abstract Expressionism was an American movement that emerged in New York City after World War II.

24. Which came first: Realism or Romanticism?
Answer: Romanticism.
Romanticism came first, in the early part of the 19th century. Realism took hold about 1850.

25. Which came first: J.M.W. Turner’s turbulent seascapes or Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night?
Answer: Turner’s seascapes.
Turner painted his seascapes in the early to mid-19th century and is considered a Romantic painter. Post-Impressionist van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889, a year before he died.

Benedict Cumberbatch – Movies and Artist Quiz –

Arts and Culture GK Part 4

26. While filming in which country was Cumberbatch carjacked and abducted along with two of his costars?
Answer: South Africa.
During the filming of the 2005 British miniseries To the Ends of the Earth, he and his companions were kidnapped at gunpoint while driving in KwaZulu-Natal province. They were released several hours later.

27. What did Cumberbatch’s mother say to him upon hearing the news that he was to play the iconic Sherlock Holmes?
Answer: “But you haven’t got the right nose!”
Thinking, no doubt, of Holmes’s aquiline profile as illustrated by Sidney Paget in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories and as portrayed by actors Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, she may have been dubious that her son’s retroussé (”turned-up”) nose would fill the, uh, bill.

28. What are Cumberbatch’s two middle names?
Answer: Timothy Carlton.
Cumberbatch’s middle names are also the stage name of his father and fellow actor, Timothy Carlton. Carlton is a family name, and Cumberbatch is his father’s real surname.

29. Cumberbatch and fellow British actor Eddie Redmayne have both played which real-life figure?
Answer: Physicist Stephen Hawking.
Cumberbatch played the young Stephen Hawking in an eponymous 2004 TV movie, and Redmayne played him 10 years later in the feature film The Theory of Everything (and beat Cumberbatch to the 2015 Oscar for best actor for his performance).

30. In which work did Mark Gatiss, who went on to costar on Sherlock as Mycroft Holmes, previously share the screen with Cumberbatch?
Answer: Starter for 10.
In the comedy Starter for 10, Gatiss played real-life University Challenge TV host Bamber Gascoigne to Cumberbatch’s inept pompous contestant, Patrick Watts.

31. For what contributions to the country was Cumberbatch cited when he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015?
Answer: Services to the performing arts and to charity.
In addition to being honored for his acting, Cumberbatch was cited for his work on behalf of such causes as the Prince’s Trust, motor neuron disease, and Syrian refugees.

32. How many films was Cumberbatch promoting when he attended the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)?
Answer: Three.
Cumberbatch was in three major movies released that year that were screened at TIFF: The Fifth Estate (in which he starred as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange), 12 Years a Slave, and August: Osage County. He played supporting roles in the latter two films.

33. Who did Cumberbatch’s parents—actors Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton—play in the third season of Sherlock?
Answer: Sherlock’s parents.
Through a stroke of inspired casting or nepotism, Ventham and Carlton were cast as Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, the surprisingly ordinary musical-theatre-loving parents of genius brothers Sherlock and Mycroft.

Frank Sinatra Quiz – Arts and Culture GK Part 5

34. Who was Sinatra’s From Here to Eternity bar-fight opponent?
Answer: Ernest Borgnine.
In From Here to Eternity (1953) Burt Lancaster’s sergeant keeps Sinatra’s Maggio and Borgnine’s Fatso from fighting, but Fatso warns “Tough Monkey” Maggio that his day will come.

35. Young Frank’s rabid teenage female fans were called what?
Answer: Bobby-soxers.
The teenage “bobby-sox girls,” or “bobby-soxers,” who fawned over Sinatra in droves, got their nickname from the white half-hose worn by so many of them.

36. What was Sinatra’s chart-topping duet with his daughter Nancy?
Answer: “Somethin’ Stupid.”
“Somethin’ Stupid” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. Some 25 years later, in 1991, “Unforgettable,” a father-daughter virtual duet by Natalie Cole and Nat King Cole, climbed to number 14.

37. What was Sinatra’s boyhood hometown?
Answer: Hoboken, New Jersey.
Sinatra grew up across the Hudson River from New York City, in Hoboken. It was once the site of a huge fragrant Maxwell House coffee factory, the setting for the movie On the Waterfront (1954), and the home base for indie rockers Yo La Tengo.

38. In which film does Sinatra’s character lead a World War II POW escape?
Answer: Von Ryan’s Express.
Sinatra starred in Von Ryan’s Express (1965) as a U.S. Army colonel who concocts an audacious scheme to hijack a German train and carry Allied prisoners of war to safety in Switzerland.

Italian Renaissance Art Quiz – Arts and Culture GK Part 6

39. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was painted by:
Answer: Michelangelo.
Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512.

40. Who wrote contemporary biographical accounts of Renaissance artists?
Answer: Giorgio Vasari.
Giorgio Vasari was a Renaissance painter and architect but is best known as the author of the large tome of Renaissance artist biographies of which he published two editions, the first in 1550 and the second, revised and expanded, in 1568.

41. Which school of thought coincided with the Renaissance?
Answer: Humanism.
During the Renaissance there was a deep interest in humanism and the writings of Classical antiquity, which espoused the virtue of the engaged and well-educated citizen.

42. Which artist or architect is credited with mastering the design and construction of the dome?
Answer: Filippo Brunelleschi.
Brunelleschi was the architect and engineer who invented machines and a vaulting system to construct the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in Florence (1420–36).

43. Titian was the great painter of which city in Italy?
Answer: Venice.
Titian (1488/90–1576) is considered the greatest Renaissance painter of Venice.

44. Which biblical figure is the subject of famous sculptures by both Michelangelo and Donatello?
Answer: David.
Michelangelo and Donatello created sculptures of David. Though they both depict the biblical figure poised for battle with Goliath, the portrayals could not have been more different.

45. Which family became the greatest patrons of the arts during the Renaissance?
Answer: Medici family.
The Medici were great patrons of the arts, primarily in Florence, and were a political dynasty for most of the period from 1434 to 1737.

46. Renaissance artists looked to which ancient civilization for inspiration?
Answer: Greece.
Italian artists of the Renaissance looked back to the artists and philosophers of ancient Greece and strove to revive the spirit and aesthetics of Classical antiquity.

Leonardo DiCaprio – Quiz about Actor – Arts and Culture GK Part 7

47. DiCaprio made his acting debut on what TV series?
Answer: Romper Room.
He first appeared on the children’s show when he was five years old.

48. What was the occupation of DiCaprio’s character in Inception?
Answer: Corporate spy.
His character, Cobb, is paid to infiltrate the dreams of business leaders and steal their company’s secrets.

49. What was the first film he made with director Martin Scorsese?
Answer: Gangs of New York.
The 2002 drama was a period piece about gangsters in New York City in the mid-1800s.

50. Where was DiCaprio born?
Answer: Los Angeles.
He was born in Los Angeles in 1974.

51. For what film did DiCaprio first receive an Oscar nomination for best actor?
Answer: Aviator.
He received a best supporting actor nomination for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, but his first nod for best actor was for his portrayal of Howard Hughes.

52. What was DiCaprio’s first film?
Answer: Critters 3.
The 1991 horror film centered on furry aliens.

53. In Titanic he played Jack Dawson, an artist who grew up where?
Answer: Wisconsin.
Jack states that he grew up near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

54. DiCaprio reteamed with his Titanic costar, Kate Winslet, on what film?
Answer: Revolutionary Road.
The adaptation of a Richard Yates novel was directed by Winslet’s then husband, Sam Mendes.

55. In The Revenant DiCaprio played what 19th-century frontiersman?
Answer: Hugh Glass.
Glass became a folk hero after surviving a violent bear attack and then traveling hundreds of miles to safety before seeking revenge on those who abandoned him.

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