#4 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (A).

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[kcho10]

Hi,

Im having a hard time eliminating E. If the author thinks that perfume is going down in quality because of corporations, doesnt that mean that he thinks the original perfumes are superior i.e Joy Parfum? And since he thinks that perfume is art, wouldnt that make this answer correct?

[Eric Ockert]

Hi there!

Be careful with answer choice (E). It does not say that some works of art are superior to others, rather, it says that some forms of art are superior to others. So this wouldn't be referencing the superiority of one perfume to another. Instead, it would be referencing one type of art, perfume for example, as being superior to another type of art, such as painting.

The author never gave any comparative judgment on one category of art to another. Thus, answer choice (E) is unsupported.

Hope that helps!

[acp25]

Hi, Everyone,

Please explain why D is incorrect and why A is correct.

I chose D originally and then switched it over to C (which is also wrong). My reasoning behind C was that a work of art eventually fades if it is used for the sake of commercial success. It was a mistake of me to relate "fade" with "fail" as they are different from each other.

While for D, I thought that the best works of art improve with age due to paragraph 2 where it states, "They begin to dry, and a picture is born. Its appearance changes over time, because the tendency of oil paint is to become gradually more transparent" I generalized and assumed that "...a picture is born" and "...appearance changes over time" meant that the work of art improves with age.

Please refer me to areas in the passage where the "memories" are mentioned as it relates to answer choice A.

Thank you in advance,
A.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi acp25,

The passage's support for answer choice A is the sentence in lines 37-43: "A brilliant perfumer may thus devise an imaginary world no less powerful, or intimate, than that of a great composer or painter, and in calling on our capacity to discover there some memory of childhood or of a long-forgotten experience, perfumers are in the same business as the artist who creates the illusion of life on canvas." Thus, the sentence shows how some works of art have the capacity to invoke memory to contribute to an aesthetic experience.

For answer choice C, the language is too extreme. We do not have support in the passage for the extreme notion that everything created for commercial success will inevitably fail. I may have missed something, but I don't see the term "fade" used anywhere in the passage, so that is not part of the reason to eliminate answer choice C.

Regarding answer choice D, the problem is twofold, the use of the superlative "best," and the use of the term "improves." The portion of the passage from paragraph 2 that you cited in support of answer choice D does not state that those works are the "best" works of art. Further, although there is a change in those works' appearance over time, we do not know that the change inevitably "improves" them. We simply know that it makes the works look different.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[abby1285]

Hi, I got this question correct but was tempted to choose answer choice B. I want to make sure I was correct in my reasoning. I was thinking B because of the pretty in depth description in the 2nd paragraph about the oil paintings sort of being layered followed by the sentence in the beginning of the 3rd paragraph that talked about perfume producing "symphonic combination many small sensations." I figured this was the trap of B that this language was talking about the perfume and not the author's thoughts on art? Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Abby,

Answer choice (B) is way too broad. It doesn't just say that art can contain these small sensations, it says that all art contains many small sensations. We don't have enough in the stimulus to say that it applies to every single work of art. That's expensive. That sort of statement needs strong support in the stimulus to make sure it applies to every work of art. We don't have that language to support that in the stimulus. We have language to support "some." But that's as far as we can go.

Hope that helps!