#6 - Global Reference, Main Point

[pacemaker]

Can you explain how the term survey in choice A would imply "all" political influences?

I crossed off E because of the term "unforeseen" because the passage does not indicate whether there was any knowledge of the revolution leading to movements or not.

I chose A because the author mentions that there were many artistic movements and discusses two of them in some detail. To me, the term survey means looking at some examples only. Like in a market research survey, they survey a subset of the population only. But the explanations I have read for this answer state that A is too broad because the passage is not a survey of all political influences.

[Robert Carroll]

pacemaker,

The main point of the passage is not to talk about the political influences on contemporary Chinese art, but to discuss how those movements grew out of the Cultural Revolution. Since the Cultural Revolution actually had an ideology antithetical to some elements of these subsequent artistic movements, the author says, for instance, that "Ironically, the same set of requirements that constricted artistic expression during the Cultural Revolution has had the opposite effect..." A contrast is made between the aims of the CR and the effect it actually had, of turning people off to the Revolutionary Realism style that the CR was meant to reinforce. Thus, the CR unintentionally created artistic movements counter to its own intent; answer choice (E) is right to refer to the "unforeseen artistic legacy" of the CR.

Robert Carroll

[norakeller]

I understand why (A) works, but I do not understand why (E) does not/ why (A) is a stronger choice. Please advise.

[Adam Tyson]

Hi there, Nora, thanks for the question. First, let me point you to another post in this forum that also deals with Main Point questions:

lsat/viewtopic.php?f=828&t=13296

Here I discussed my approach to Main Point as one that is comprehensive and succinct. You need to capture all the important aspects of the passage in one fell swoop. One sentence to rule them all and, in the LSAT, bind them. Okay, sorry, weird LOTR reference there.

Now, to your question. E IS the correct answer; A is not. Not sure if you got confused about that or if you meant to ask why E is better, but I'll tell you why I think E is better and see if that helps.

Answer E is, in my view, more accurate than A. The scope is limited to the Cultural Revolution and it's impact on art, and answer E reflects that limited scope. A is too broad - this passage wasn't about surveying all political influences, just some of them. It also wasn't concerned with all art, just two types that rebelled against the powers that be (Scar Art and Native Soil). So, A is out because it is overly broad, and E is better because it focuses more narrowly on the Cultural Revolution.

I hope that clears things up!

[mariahenain]

Robert,

Could you clarify why B is incorrect as opposed to E? I understand the reasoning behind A, just not B which is what I chose.

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Maria,

In order for answer choice (B) to be correct, we would need to see some examples of how two artistic movements transformed the Cultural Revolution. This is impossible, since we only had one movement named that existed at the time of the cultural movement. The Native Soil movement began after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 (line 1).

Ignoring this chronology issue, can we identify any way in which the Scar movement transformed the Cultural Revolution? We have plenty of evidence for how the Cultural Revolution affected the Arts, but there is very little that we can glean about how any art movement affected the Cultural Revolution.

[abutz]

In the one about the Cultural Revolution, why would the answer be E to "Which of the following titles most accurately captures the main point of the passage?"
I feel like I prephrased differently and did not think that "The Unforeseen Artistic Legacy of China's Cultural Revolution" stood out as the right answer.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Hi abutz!

Thanks for the question. I have moved your post to the thread discussing this question. Please review the above explanation, and let us know if this helps, or if you still have further questions!

Thanks!

[candace]

Hi! Why is answer choice D incorrect? To my understanding, both the Scar Art and Native Soil movements consisted of forms of realist art, and both movements occurred after 1976 (the end of the Cultural Revolution) meaning post-Mao.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi candace!

I can suggest a couple reasons why answer choice (D) is incorrect.

You write,

To my understanding, both the Scar Art and Native Soil movements consisted of forms of realist art

In looking back to the passage, I did find support for the view that Scar Art is a form of realism. For example, lines 44-45 refer to "the Scar artists’ radical approach to realism." However, I wasn't able to find support for the view that the Native Soil movement was necessarily a form of realism. To the contrary, lines 55-56 state, "Native Soil painters reacted instead by idealizing
traditional peasant life." Idealization seems to pull the Native Soil movement away from counting as realism, and I couldn't otherwise find direct support that explicitly identified it as a realist movement.

Lastly, in general, this is a very common thing to see on main point questions! It's likely that several or even all of the incorrect answer choices will correctly summarize one or another portion of the passage, but will ultimately be incorrect because the answer choice fails to account for all of the passage. Such answer choices might have been correct if the question was solely a must be true question, but when one is asked for the main point, it's essential to confirm that the answer choice indeed covers all of the paragraphs and not only some of them.

Here, answer choice (D) seems to cover the first two paragraphs, which cover realism, but it fails to cover the final paragraph on the Native Soil Movement. By contrast, answer choice (E), "The Unforeseen Artistic Legacy of China’s Cultural Revolution" is much broader in scope (it covers the Cultural Revolution in the first paragraph, and the subsequent developments of the Scar Art and Native Soil movements in the second and third paragraphs, so it covers the entire passage.