#6 - Strengthen

[avengingangel]

Can someone please just walk me through the answer choices for this question ?? I am completely lost. I was between B & D. I also don't really see how A could be the right answer—even if the major painters painted other non-political stuff, that doesn't in any way support "Mexican mural painting as reflecting important innovations in the art world." If Diego Rivera happened to paint a cat on a piece of napkin one morning, that doesn't really say much about the Mexican Revolution and whether or not it reflected only "the result of the changes in political and social awareness" or whether or not it also "reflected important innovations in the art world." You see what I'm saying??

[Adam Tyson]

To start with, angel, let's make sure we know what the author is claiming about the relationship between muralism and the Mexican Revolution. The referenced lines help, but they are not the sole source of information. Yes, those lines tell us that mural painting reflected important innovations in the art world, but what were those innovations? We learn more about those later in the passage, starting around line 34, where we start to learn about the distinct styles the artists were developing.

Answer A isn't saying just that these artists also painted other stuff that wasn't political - it's saying they did so "in that style". What style? Whatever style they were using in the murals. If they were using that same style for non-political work, that would strengthen the claim that the murals were more than just formulaic, official, political art, but that they did reflect what was happening in the broader art world. If Rivera, for example, did some non-political works that "incorporated elements from pre-Columbian sculpture and the Italian Renaissance fresco into his murals and used a strange combination of mechanical shapes to depict the faces and bodies of people", then that would strengthen the claim that the murals reflected something larger from the art world than just a political message, right?

See if that makes better sense now, with more context from the passage taken into account and with a fuller reading of that answer choice to include "in that style" as a crucial element of the answer. Keep up the good work!