#8 - Must Be True

[avengingangel]

Can someone please explain why C is superior to A? Thanks. I thought they both were included in the passage. Also, what I think might be helpful in me understanding this question, is, how do we know which "innovative painting techniques" the question is talking about here ?

[Adam Tyson]

Sending this one back to you, angel - if you believe that both of those answers were supported by the passage, where is the support for each? Lift quotes from the passage and explain why you believe that the selected quote supports one of the answer choices. Ultimately, which one has more support, and is therefore the better answer? Typically, when two answers look good it's because you are making some unwarranted assumptions, making some connections on your own that the author didn't actually make.

If you aren't sure about which "innovative painting techniques" are being referred to, go back to the passage and see if you can find them. What did the author describe as innovative (or some synonym for innovative - revolutionary, unique, etc.) in what Bearden did? The text is your guide in RC, always, so explore it and use it.

Rather than handing you my opinion of why one answer is better than the other, I want you to make your case. Why do you think your chosen answer is best? What evidence did you use, and what evidence in support of another answer choice did you compare it to? This is what the LSAT is all about, and why it is such a good test (in my opinion) for what you should expect in law school. You have to make your argument, and defend it with evidence, rather than have someone make the case for you.

Once you have done that, and shared your thoughts here in detail, we can respond and, if you are off base in some way, help show where you may have gone astray.

One more thing, and that is to remind you to always, always, always prephrase your answers to the best of your ability. That can be a real challenge sometimes on RC, but it's still possible most of the time. What did you expect the answer to say or do? What evidence in the text did you base that prephrase on? Which answer is the best match for your prephrase? If you go into the answer choices without a solid idea of what the correct answer should be, or do, or include, then you are guaranteed to fall for attractive (and sometimes not so attractive) wrong answers.

Okay, with that said, I'm sending you back into the trenches. Go try again, and come back with a solid argument in favor of one answer being better than all the others. Not just good or acceptable or possible - better than all the others. Once you have done that, we can talk more about your process.

Go get 'em!

[temiolof]

Hi,

I'm looking to clarify why A is wrong and why C is better supported by textual evidence. I understand that answer choice C is a rephrasing of lines 12-14. However, it seems answer choice A is also well supported.

Lines 27-29 specifically discuss Bearden moving "beyond the usual" (read: innovative) to call attention to "individual human suffering". It then goes on to describe how he captured this theme.. essentially, by describing his technique. It doesn't seem too far a reach to understand that lines 26-34 are a description of Bearden's technique. Some specific examples:
- "Through his depiction of the unemployed.."
- "His human figures, placed in abstract yet familiar [...] managed to express.."

Additionally, for answer choice C, when I reread what lines 12-14 actually say and what the question is asking about (what "Bearden's innovative painting techniques" illustrate), it seems C is not as well supported. Lines 12-14 do not suggest that the technique he used was innovative. Instead, it says he could transform ordinary subject matters "when filtered through the techniques available to the resourceful artists." It does say a few lines before this that he used a "unique layered and fragmented style" (where style could be read as "technique").

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Temi,

You have part of the picture right. The author does think that Bearden's color compositions are important and that the subject matter he chose went beyond the usual protest and called attention to instances of individual human suffering. Is this an innovative painting technique that the question was referring to? That's a tough question since the author doesn't directly describe it as innovative, but for the sake of argument, let's agree that it is.

Now take a look at the next paragraph. During the same period, he painted scenes of happiness, music, religion, family, etc... The author explicitly states that during this time, Bearden concentrated on releasing the poetry of life, including affirmation and celebration. The passage closes with a reminder that his work was not one-dimensional: his art reflects the multiple rhythms of life. If you focus on lines 20-40, you are picking and choosing to suit answer choice (A), since the final paragraph directly contradicts the idea that his art was committed to expressing human suffering.


So are the last two paragraphs describing innovative techniques? You have two choices here: focus on lines 8-19, where the author describes the techniques as "unique," or choose an answer that encapsulates the author's descriptions of all of the techniques mentioned. If it is the former, then you have to select choice (C), since there is no mention of suffering whatsoever in paragraph 2.

If you interpret the question as asking you to identify what all of this techniques illsutrate, you'll get to answer choice (C) again. Look at lines 26-27 (...he moved beyond...), lines 32-33 (...express ... reality lying beyond the borders...), and lines 45-48 (...reveal ... a world long hidden by the cliches...). In both paragraphs the author illustrates what she wrote earlier: ordinary subjects change with techniques used by a resourceful artist.

[temiolof]

Hi Francis,

Thank you for explaining. I can better understand now why I should confidently be able to eliminate A:

- Answer A states that the author is "committed' to calling attention to human suffering. This conclusion is overreaching. His incorporation of this theme does not constitute a "commitment" to it.

- Paragraph three (where human suffering is discussed) actually signifies in the very beginning that the author has shifted from talking about technique to talking about how well he represented African American life. When the author discusses Bearden's work containing the subject of individual human suffering, this is a discussion of the way Bearden represented African American life (a subject), not a discussion about his technique.

- Similarly, the mention of Bearding going "beyond the usual protest painting" (even when going "beyond the usual" can be understood to mean Bearden was being "innovative") is not the same as saying his technique was innovative. The former is about an unusual subject matter (individual human suffering), while the question asks about unusual technique.

I'm not sure I can agree with your final point that, on the basis that Bearden also incorporated happy experiences into his work, he couldn't have been committed to calling attention to human suffering. Perhaps part of his goal in portraying the richness of African American life meant he was able to afford emotional complexity to African American.. essentially by being dually committing to portraying their experiences as sad (3rd paragraph) and happy(4th paragraph). But altogether, it seems there's no reason to conclude he was "committed" to either.

[Robert Carroll]

temiolof,

I think you have everything right at least until your final paragraph, so there seems no further confusion there (if there is, let me know). Francis's explanation demonstrated the difference between technique and subject matter.

As for your final paragraph, your last sentence is correct - there is no way to infer what commitments Bearden had, so there's no way answer choice (A) can be supported by Must Be True standards. It's not that Bearden could not have had multiple commitments, but that the entire discussion is not supported by the passage.

Robert Carroll

[Khodi7531]

Between A and C on this, I wrongfully chose A. I found support for it in the only part of the passage that states, "innovative painting technique" in the first paragraph, line 4. However, I shouldn't have used that because it was only describing what his work represented, and not what came out of his work, right?

However I didn't see it like that while I was reading and missed that. For some reason I was fixated on finding an answer, as it is usually given like this, where it directly says "innovative painting technique..." and because I had found it I was locked in.

Because it was a MBT, I figured it had to be that without reading full context. Any thoughts?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Khodi,

You got it! Awesome job pinpointing where things went wrong. It is always a delicate balance between being thorough and being efficient, and it looks like here, you erred a little too far on the side of efficiency. For questions like this in the future, make sure your answer choice matches up with the whole question stem, and make sure you've read through all the answers before settling on one. You're on the right track!