PrepTest 140

[lcid:3659] Prep Test 140 LSAT — Reading Comp — S4 Reading comp

Passage

Questions 1-6  .       African American painter Sam Gilliam (b. 1933)  . is internationally recognized as one of the foremost  . Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage SummaryTopic: Humanities

Paragraph 1
  • Paragraph note
    • Intro of artist and background on his style
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Sam Gilliam - 50s and 60s; DC; Color Field style
    • Color Field style - grew from abstract expressionism, from minimally representative abstractions to completely nonrepresentational
Paragraph 2
  • Paragraph note
    • Gilliam's motivation and a comparison to other African American contemporaries
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Other African American artists - representational, political
    • Gilliam - Motivated as a reaction to contemporaries; their art didn't have room for subtlety or growth
    • Example of contemporary - Collage of images from magazines
    • Gilliam - Wanted something more evocative of complexity
Paragraph 3
  • Paragraph note
    • Expectations and Gilliam's development of style
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Broken expectation - African American artists will make "explicitly political art"
    • Progression - Painted and folded canvases; to loose canvas draped in room (sculptural quality) like hanging clothes
    • Thesis - Gilliam advanced view that the African American experience was best represented indirectly through mood
Main Point:
By breaking from his contemporaries and working against expectations for African American artists, Sam Gilliam's Color Field abstractions were able to better capture the nuance of the African American experience through creating a mood.

Key Lines:
Lines 12-16 - Gilliam's motivation is discussed, and his work is compared to his contemporaries
Lines 21-15 - An example of the other style
Lines 28-34 - What Gilliam wanted from his art
Lines 36-39 - Gilliam vs. expectations
Lines 53-59 - The Author's thesis on what Gilliam's work demonstrated

Meta-Structure:
Exploration of importance of an artist. This is a common topic/argument in RC.

Last Thoughts:
The passage goes into a lot of detail on several art styles—the Color Field style (Paragraph 1), the abstract expressionism it grew from, the more representative works of Gilliam's contemporaries, and the two "types" of Gilliam's work. We'll likely get questions about these, so it's important to be generally aware of the styles and also the differences. A good way to do this is to rely on examples as they're described and, for ones that don't have examples, picture something that fits the general description! Luckily, here, most have examples.

Question prompt

In the passage, the Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Humanities

Answer choices

  1. A
    describing the motivation behind Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    Correct. Question Type:
    Main Point

    Strategy Overview:
    Reiterate the main point and focus through a more abstract lens

    Answer Anticipation/Relevant Lines:
    This passage falls into a common category—the exploration of an artist's importance. Here, the focus is on what motivated Gilliam (Lines 12-14), how his work differed from his contemporaries (Lines 13-21), and an in-depth analysis of his work and its growth (Paragraph 3). Let's look for an answer reflecting those parts.

    Answer Explanation:
    (Lines 12-21; Paragraph 3) Paragraph 1 is background; Paragraph 2 talks about motivations for Gilliam and differences with his contemporaries; Paragraph 3 describes his work and its growth in depth. This answer reflects all parts of the passage, so it's the correct answer.

    Key Takeaway:
    One way to check Main Point answers, or answers in questions that are Main Point-adjacent such as this one, is to compare it against the paragraphs. You should be able to say that each paragraph's key elements are contained or referenced in some way in the correct answer. If that's not the case, then the answer is likely too limited to be correct. Those answers can be tricky to eliminate, as they say things that are true based on the passage but don't match the scope of the question.
  2. B
    describing the political themes Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 13-16; Lines 36-39) The passage contrasts Gilliam's work with the explicitly political art of his contemporaries while stating that he refused to conform to the view that African American artists create explicitly political art.
  3. C
    describing the evolution of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    Incorrect. (Paragraphs 1-2; Lines 53-59) The passage does delve into the development of Gilliam's work in Paragraph 3, but this answer misses the context and importance noted by the Author in the first two paragraphs and in the closing line.
  4. D
    demonstrating that a certain Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 12-21) The passage notes that Gilliam's approach was different from his contemporaries. However, his views towards political issues may have aligned with other artists. On top of that, this answer misses Paragraph 3's description of his works.
  5. E
    demonstrating that a certain Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 41-43) While the passage does note that Gilliam introduced the idea of the unsupported canvas, and this arguably transcended the technical limitations of a set canvas and gave his work a sculpture-like quality, that's a small part of the passage. This answer misses the entire passage outside of a chunk of Paragraph 3.

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