Self-study
All art criticism is political because all art has political implications. ████████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████ ███████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ████████████ ██ ███████ ██ █████████ ██████████ ███ █████ ███████ ███ ███████ █ ██████ █████████ ██████████ ██ █ █████ ███ █████████ ██████ ███ ████████ █████████ █████████████ ████████████ ██████ ███████ ██████████████ ███ ██ █████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ███████
The List Of Claims
In MBT questions, we can just treat the stimulus as a big ol’ list of rules – 10 commandments style – any one of which could hold the key to the correct answer. Here’s the list:
- All art criticism is political.
- All art has political implications.
- 1 is true because 2 is true.
- Critics who address politics in art are engaged in political discourse.
- Critics who try to focus narrowly on aesthetics always ignore the work’s political implications.
- Critics who try to focus narrowly on aesthetics always endorse the artist’s politics.
- It’s possible the critics in 6 are endorsing the artist’s politics by accident.
The answer really could come from anywhere. Sometimes you can combine two of the claims to make a valid inference, in which case that inference will likely show up in the right answer, but we can’t do that here.
19.
If the statements above are ███ █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ █████
a
Critics who overtly ███████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ████████████ ██████ ███████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ █████
“Endorsing art” is a concept never discussed in the stimulus. The closest thing we have is “endorsing the politics of the artist,” which is different.
b
Critics who are ███████████ ██████ ██████ ███████ ██████ ██████████ █████████ ██ ████
“Political naïvety” (or its opposite, political knowledge or experience) is a concept never discussed in the stimulus.
c
Art that makes ██ █████ ██████ ██ █████████ █████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ███████ ███ █████████ ██████████
“Overtness,” as it appears in the stimulus, applies to art criticism, not art itself.
The stimulus talks about how some critics overtly address politics. (C) talks about how some art overtly addresses politics.
“Typically” is also a red flag, because the stimulus just mentions two categories of criticism without giving any information about which is more common.
d
A political critique ██ █ ████ ██ ███ ███ ████ █████ ████ ███ █████ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ████ █████
(D) is wrong for value judgment reasons – it tries to draw a normative premise (about what’s valuable / good) from the purely descriptive claims in the stimulus.
For a nice exercise, go back through the stimulus and notice how even though its tone suggests some kind of judgment, all its claims are phrased factually.
e
Art criticism that ██ ████████ ██ ████████ █ ████ ██ ██████ █████████ ███████ █████ ████ ██ █████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ██████ █████ ████ ██ █████ ███████
(E) is drawn directly from claim 6 in the analysis. Here’s the relevant text from the stimulus:
Critics who attempt a purely aesthetic evaluation of a work…necessarily…end up endorsing the politics of the artist.
Note how hard the testwriters worked to use different phrasing to describe the same concepts – like how they rephrased the concept “always ends up endorsing” as “never ends up rejecting.” That’s a classic move if you want to make the correct answer look wrong.