PrepTest 156, Section 4, Question 7
A truly visual art form—for example, painting—is one(104 more words not shown)
If the statements above are(15 more words not shown)
- ATruly visual art(6 more words not shown)
- BPoetry is less(7 more words not shown)
- CSpatiality and temporality(7 more words not shown)
- DArt forms that(17 more words not shown)
- EAnything capable of(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
You can look at a painting for ten seconds or spend hours on it. You can start with the face, then look at the background, or reverse that order. A song works differently: its notes arrive in a sequence, over a stretch of time.
That is the distinction the passage draws. It uses 'truly visual' to mean that time plays no essential role. Performance, by contrast, requires a fixed order and roughly fixed duration. Even silently reading a poem counts as performance here because the words have to unfold in an order.
What about a movie? We might call it visual in ordinary conversation, even though it has a sequence and duration. But this question tells us to accept the passage's statements, including its particular definition. We need to work with that definition rather than replace it with our usual use of the word.
What we’re looking for
If essential performance brings essential timing with it, an art form defined by the absence of essential timing cannot require that performance. That's the relationship to look for in the answers.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Performance requires experiencing the work in a fixed order and over a roughly fixed amount of time. Truly visual art has no essential timing requirement. So performance cannot be an essential part of a truly visual art form. The painting remains available to examine at your own pace and in your own order.
- B
On the distinction discussed, poetry is grouped with music, not painting: both poetry and music require performance. B points the other way. We also aren't given an overall comparison across every feature of these art forms, so a broad judgment about which is more alike would go beyond the passage.
- C
'Spatiality' is not the same as the passage's specially defined category of truly visual art. We haven't been told that an artwork cannot have both spatial and time-related features. A movie, for example, could show objects arranged in space while also presenting events in a sequence. Nothing here establishes the sweeping exclusion C states.
- D
Needing a long time to understand something isn't the same as needing a fixed order and roughly fixed duration to experience it. You might study a complicated painting for hours while choosing where to look and how long to spend on each part. D replaces the passage's timing requirement with mere length of attention.
- E
Poetry and music are examples of art forms requiring performance. They aren't presented as the only things that can be performed. There could be other kinds of performance, such as a dramatic scene, without contradicting anything in the passage.
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