CAT 2020 Slot 2 — VARC Question 9
Direction for Reading Comprehension: The pass ages given here are followed by some questions that have four answer choices; read the passage carefully and pick the option whose answer best aligns with the passage
The claims advanced here may be condensed into two assertions: [first, that visual] culture is what images, acts of seeing, and attendant intellectual, emotional, and perceptual sensibilities do to build, maintain, or transform the worlds in which people live. [And second, that the] study of visual culture is the analysis and interpretation of images and the ways of seeing (or gazes) that configure the agents, practices, conceptualities, and institutions that put images to work. . . .
Accordingly, the study of visual culture should be characterized by several concerns. First, scholars of visual culture need to examine any and all imagery – high and low, art and non art.. . . They must not restrict themselves to objects of a particular beauty or aesthetic value. Indeed, any kind of imagery may be found to offer up evidence of the visual construction of reality. . . .
Second, the study of visual culture must scrutinize visual practice as much as images themselves, asking what images do when they are put to use. If scholars engaged in this enterprise inquire what makes an image beautiful or why this image or that constitutes a masterpiece or a work of genius, they should do so with the purpose of investigating an artist’s or a work’s contribution to the experience of beauty, taste, value, or genius. No amount of social analysis can account fully for the existence of Michelangelo or Leonardo. They were unique creators of images that changed the way their contemporaries thought and felt and have continued to shape the history of art, artists, museums, feeling, and aesthetic value. But study of the critical, artistic, and popular reception of works by such artists as Michelangelo and Leonardo can shed important light on the meaning of these artists and their works for many different people. And the history of meaning-making has a great deal to do with how scholars as well as lay audiences today understand these artists and their achievements.
Third, scholars studying visual culture might properly focus their interpretative work on lifeworlds by examining images, practices, visual technologies, taste, and artistic style as constitutive of social relations. The task is to understand how artifacts contribute to the construction of a world. . . . Important methodological implications follow: ethnography and reception studies become productive forms of gathering information, since these move beyond the image as a closed and fixed meaning-event. . . .
Fourth, scholars may learn a great deal when they scrutinize the constituents of vision, that is, the structures of perception as a physiological process as well as the epistemological frameworks informing a system of visual representation. Vision is a socially and a biologically constructed operation, depending on the design of the human body and how it engages the interpretive devices developed by a culture in order to see intelligibly. . . . Seeing . . . operates on the foundation of covenants with images that establish the conditions for meaningful visual experience.
Finally, the scholar of visual culture seeks to regard images as evidence for explanation, not as epiphenomena.
“No amount of social analysis can account fully for the existence of Michelangelo or Leonardo.” In light of the passage, which one of the following interpretations of this sentence is the most accurate?
Answer & solution
- A
Socially existing beings cannot be analysed, unlike the art of Michelangelo or Leonardo which can.
- B
Michelangelo or Leonardo cannot be subjected to social analysis because of their genius.
- C
No analyses exist of Michelangelo’s or Leonardo’s social accounts.
Social analytical accounts of people like Michelangelo or Leonardo cannot explain their genius.
Easy
The sentence sits in the second concern, where the author has just discussed investigating what makes a work a "masterpiece" or "genius." The line concedes that genius cannot be wholly explained by social/visual-culture analysis. Read each option against that exact claim: social analysis is real but incomplete for explaining such genius.
Incorrect. The author never says socially existing beings cannot be analysed while art can. This reverses and distorts the point; the sentence is about the limits of social analysis on genius, not a contrast between people and art being analysable.
Incorrect. Tempting, but too absolute. The author does not say these artists "cannot be subjected to social analysis." In fact the next lines welcome study of their reception. The claim is only that such analysis cannot fully account for them, not that analysis is impossible.
Incorrect. The passage does not claim that no analyses exist. This misreads "no amount of social analysis can account fully" as "no social accounts exist."
Correct. This is a faithful paraphrase: social-analytical accounts of figures like Michelangelo or Leonardo cannot (fully) explain their genius. It preserves both that analysis exists and that it falls short of explaining their unique creativity.
Option D — "No amount of social analysis can account fully" means such analytical accounts cannot explain these artists' genius. Analysis is possible but not sufficient.