Q22 - Critic: Almost all of the paintings from

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Blue Irises is not part of city-art-movement.
Evidence: Most city-art-movement stuff is both (1) bold brushwork and (2) sharp light/shadow contrast
If not both of those, then abstract (no light/shadow).
Blue Irises has bold brushwork but no sharp light/shadow contrast.

Answer Anticipation:
We know a lot about what parts of the city-art-movement have going on. There's only two ways to qualify - have the right pair of characteristics, or be an abstract painting. If something met neither of those criteria, it would be safe to say it wasn't part of the city-art-movement. Blue Irises, we are told, fails the 'two characteristics' test. For all we know it could be an abstract painting though! In order to make the bold claim that it's definitely not part of the movement, we'll need to close off the 'abstract' avenue for it.

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
(A) This should actually make us nervous that the painting might be abstract, undermining the whole argument.

(B) Zero shadows would be consistent with being abstract - again, potentially undermining the argument!

(C) Bingo. As long as the 'abstract' avenue is still available, we can't possibly conclude this painting is out of the movement. Gotta close that door. (Note the negation: if the painting is abstract, it's not guaranteed to be in the movement, but it could be, which means the conclusion is unsupported/unsupportable.)

(D) Massive overbroadness alert! We don't need all of the paintings ever made (even if limited to nonrepresentational ones in this city) to do anything here to justify a conclusion about this one particular painting.

(E) This would put all the sharp contrast paintings into the movement - which is not relevant for concluding that this painting (which does NOT have sharp contrast) is NOT part of the movement. Don't get stuck making an illegal negation of this conditional to support the conclusion - that's not a valid move (and the resulting conditional is also not necessary to complete the argument).

Takeaway/Pattern:
The correct answer here is also a sufficient assumption for the argument. Remember, a lot of correct answers to assumption questions will actually check off both boxes: necessary and sufficient. While our answer did not need to be sufficient here, it's perfectly fine that it was. The safety net is the negation test, but the negation doesn't always make the conclusion a verifiably false thing to say. It often simply makes the conclusion 'a thing you can't conclude with any certainty'. That still qualifies as 'destroying the argument'!

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