Sat Reasoning June 06 - Post All Discussions HERE!

[tripNip]

<p>DanishBoy:
I got a different answer from yours on the q about michaelangelo working quickly/easily or alone. If you recall from the passage, mikey’s teacher “absented himself momentarily” and came back to see that michaelangelo had created a masterpiece. Since the teacher was only gone briefly, michaelangelo must have created his art quickly. Just throwing that out there, you don’t have to agree.</p>

[Pandora]

<p>Poor DanishBoy, I know and hate the feeling that’s you’re experiencing right now. The CR curve is pretty lenient though. (2 wrong = 800) You’ll do fine.</p>

[tripNip]

<p>oops too slow i guess</p>

[greenbay]

<p>lol any chance of 700+ is slipping :(</p>

[bootup]

<p>tim555: draw the two traingles. the question asked for the perimeter of the thing that looks like a trapazoid. the longer side is 12 the other 3 sides are 6
so 12+6+6+6=30</p>

[anonymous271828]

<p>

The master left for a short period of time, and comes back to find that Michelangelo completed a whole bunch of paintings and sketches. This implies that great artists such as him can do excellent work in a short period of time without much trouble. This also fits in with the public stereotype of art geniuses, that they can work w/o breaking a sweat. I believe “work quickly and with ease” is the answer.

</p>

<p>First, let’s paste the relevant bit of the essay so we can actually talk (ETS slightly adapted it, so the wording is slightly different):</p>

<p>

The question “Why have there been no great women artists?” is simply the top tenth of an iceberg of misinterpretation and misconception; beneath lies a vast dark bulk of shaky idees recues about the nature of art and its situational concomitants, about the nature of human abilities in general and of human excellence in particular, and the role that the social order plays in all of this. While the “woman problem” as such may be a pseudo-issue, the misconceptions involved in the question “Why have there been no great women artists?” points to major areas of intellectual obfuscation beyond the specific political and ideological issues involved in the subjection of women. Basic to the question are many naive, distorted, uncritical assumptions about the making of art in general, as well as the making of great art. These assumptions, conscious or unconscious, link together such unlikely superstars as Michelangelo and van Gogh, Raphael and Jackson Pollock under the rubric of “Great”-an honorific attested to by the number of scholarly monographs devoted to the artist in question-and the Great Artist is, of course, conceived of as one who has “Genius”; Genius, in turn, is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious power somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist.’ Such ideas are related to unquestioned, often unconscious, meta-historical premises that make Hippolyte Taine’s race-milieu-moment formulation of the dimensions of historical thought seem a model of sophistication. But these assumptions are intrinsic to a great deal of art-historical writing. It is no accident that the crucial question of the conditions generally productive of great art has so rarely been investigated, or that attempts to investigate such general problems have, until fairly recently, been dismissed as unscholarly, too broad, or the province of some other discipline, like sociology. To encourage a dispassionate, impersonal, sociological, and institutionally oriented approach would reveal the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing substructure upon which the profession of art history is based, and which has only recently been called into question by a group of younger dissidents. </p>

<p>Underlying the question about woman as artist, then, we find the myth of the Great Artist-subject of a hundred monographs, unique, godlike-bearing within his person since birth a mysterious essence, rather like the golden nugget in Mrs. Grass’s chicken soup, called Genius or Talent, which, like murder, must always out, no matter how unlikely or unpromising the circumstances. </p>

<p>The magical aura surrounding the representational arts and their creators has, of course, given birth to myths since the earliest times. Interestingly enough, the same magical abilities attributed by Pliny to the Greek sculptor Lysippos in antiquity–the mysterious inner call in early youth, the lack of any teacher but Nature herself–is repeated as late as the nineteenth century by Max Buchon in his biography of Courbet. The supernatural powers of the artist as imitator, his control of strong, possibly dangerous powers, have functioned historically to set him off from others as a godlike creator, one who creates Being out of nothing. The fairy tale of the discovery by an older artist or discerning patron of the Boy Wonder, usually in the guise of a lowly shepherd boy, has been a stock-in-trade of artistic mythology ever since Vasari immortalized the young Giotto, discovered by the great Cimabue while the lad was guarding his flocks, drawing sheep on a stone; Cimabue, overcome with admiration for the realism of the drawing, immediately invited the humble youth to be his pupil. Through some mysterious coincidence, later artists including Beccafumi, Andrea Sansovino, Andrea del Castagno, Mantegna, Zurbardn, and Goya were all discovered in similar pastoral circumstances. Even when the young Great Artist was not fortunate enough to come equipped with a flock of sheep, his talent always seems to have manifested itself very early, and independent of any external encouragement: Filippo Lippi and Poussin, Courbet and Monet are all reported to have drawn caricatures in the margins of their schoolbooks instead of studying the required subjects-we never, of course, hear about the youths who neglected their studies and scribbled in the margins of their notebooks without ever becoming anything more elevated than department-store clerks or shoe salesmen. The great Michelangelo himself, according to his biographer and pupil, Vasari, did more drawing than studying as a child. So pronounced was his talent, reports Vasari, that when his master, Ghirlandalo, absented himself momentarily from his work in Santa Maria Novella, and the young art student took the opportunity to draw “the scaffolding, trestles, pots of paint, brushes and the apprentices at their tasks” in this brief absence, he did it so skillfully that upon his return the master exclaimed: “This boy knows more than I do.”

</p>

<p>I don’t see how this bit has to do with ‘with ease’. Quickly, sure. I can see where that analysis comes from, but ‘with ease’ adds something to the passage that was never there. That’s why I opine that that answer choice is an SAT confuser: it seems right, it fits together with our notion of what a great artist does, but it adds too much information that’s not present in the original essay, requiring some extrapolation to arrive at the answer. Remember, ‘with ease’ doesn’t have anything to do with ‘skillful’: the dictionary definition is ‘the state of being comfortable or relaxed’, not ‘the state of being able to do something well.’</p>

<p>Now, the first part I bolded shows that great artists work alone. The construction starts with a colon and gives some examples of great artists that work “independent of external encouragement”. The sentence about Michelangelo is right after this construction, which means it’s stated in support of the opinion that great artists work alone, vis., work independent of external encouragement.</p>

[tim555]

<p>hmm thats wierd, i thought the 3 other sides were 4 each. whatever, stupid mistakes.</p>

[tripNip]

<p>anonymous:
If you create a masterpiece in a brief moment, you are obviously doing it with ease. Most artists spend much more time on paintings (months or even years) and therefore more effort. Also, when you are skilled at something, that something becomes easier for you to do. I think I’ll stick with “quickly and easily” k thx</p>

[Pandora]

<p>Ah, kudos to anonymous271828 for finding the essay. However, the part about “without any external encouragement” refers to the initial discovery of the talent, not its later development. Furthermore, “works best alone” suggests that the artist cannot work well w/people present, which is NOT implied anywhere in the essay.</p>

[tripNip]

<p>“independent of any external encouragement” does not mean “alone,” it just means that he requires no teaching or motivation. Self-motivated people must not always be alone. In other words, Michaelangelo did not need the teacher’s help, but he didn’t always have to (or we aren’t told that he had to) be alone to complete his work.</p>

[anonymous271828]

<p>As a second response:</p>

<p>

Secondly, the fact that great artists work quickly and with ease makes sense, even outside of this passage. General public stereotype leads us to believe that art geniuses do this. Somehow, working alone doesn’t seem to work in this case b/c this does nothing to establish someone as a “great” artist. For instance, I work well on art by myself and I’m average, but if all of the sudden I’m producing prodigious art in 5-min, I’m then considered genius.

</p>

<p>Yes, this may be true, but remember, you’re talking about the “public stereotype outside of this passage”. The point of the essay was to show how these myths had the artists working alone: that these myths show the “inability of human beings with wombs rather than *****es to create anything significant” (this part was cut out by ETS but it’s still in the essay). </p>

<p>The point of the next paragraph is to deconstruct what’s being set up in this paragraph: “these myths about the early manifestations of genius are misleading.” “What if Pablo had been born a girl?” is a statement that shows that contrary to the facts given in that paragraph, societal pressures are still important in how people become “great artists”.</p>

<p>edit: whoa, missed a bunch of responses, hang on</p>

<p>

Furthermore, “works best alone” suggests that the artist cannot work well w/people present, which is NOT implied anywhere in the essay.

</p>

<p>Uh-oh. I still feel the point was to demonstrate that greatness was independent of societal pressure, so thus “alone” means “isolated from society.” That is a great point though :/</p>

<p>eeep, looks like I’m down one critical reading. I sure hope the curve’ll still let me get an 800 :|</p>

[YanksDolphins]

<p>Is there a consensus over whether the curves will be easy or hard because I omitted 5 on CR (thought it was experimental) and I’m not sure how many I got wrong.</p>

[tripNip]

<p>Anonymous or Pandora, what did you get for the “tip of the iceberg” question?</p>

[anonymous271828]

<p>mass of perceived realities about something-or-other</p>

[Pandora]

<p>Ummm… That’s a good question. We’re so caught up w/other questions… Hmm, “tip of the iceberg” - I believe something about there’s more to the “genius” label than the average stereotype leads us to believe.</p>

[Just2Fitz]

<p>For the math question. </p>

<p>It didn’t ask for the full perimeter, only a simpe quas. I used my answer sheet for a ruler since the figure was not drawn to scale</p>

[greenbay]

<p>it was massive misconceptions or something like that</p>

[karch]

<p>tripNip, exactly my thought. Ease is implied when you finish a great masterwork in a blink of an eye. The essay gives the impression that Michaelangelo is an innocent young genius, and it’s really out of character by the way he’s described that he’s mad rushing to make an awesome painting while his master’s gone. Thus, “quickly and with ease” IS the correct answer.</p>

<p>But yeah, like Pandora said, props for finding the original essay, anonymous271828.</p>

[tripNip]

<p>yeah i’m trying to remember the answer choices…
i think one was like “mass of received ideas” or something, but i didn’t choose it
none of the choices seemed to fit to my satisfaction though</p>

[NishtDawg]

<p>hey anonymous271828, can you find the forten passage, please please please??!!! :)</p>