(Reading)Feminism and Black artist

English as a Second Language Preparation forum for the GRE® Test
1

I am having problem of the follwing two questions, please help, thanks

Students of United States history, seeking to identify the circumstances that encouraged the emergence of feminist movements, have thoroughly investigated the mid- nineteenth-century American economic and social conditions that affected the status of women. These historians, however, have analyzed less fully the development of specifically feminist ideas and activities during the same period. Furthermore, the ideological origins of feminism in the United States have been obscured because, even when historians did take into account those feminist ideas and activities occurring within the United States, they failed to recognize that feminism was then a truly international movement actually centered in Europe. American feminist activists who have been described as ―solitary‖ and ―individual theorists‖ were in reality connected to a movement—utopian socialism— which was already popularizing feminist ideas in Europe during the two decades that culminated in the first women‘s rights conference held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

  1. According to the passage, which of the following
    is true of the Seneca Falls conference on women‘s
    rights?
    (A) It was primarily a product of nineteenth-
    century Saint-Simonian feminist thought.
    (B) It was the work of American activists who
    were independent of feminists abroad.
    © It was the culminating achievement of the
    utopian socialist movement.
    (D) It was a manifestation of an international
    movement for social change and feminism.
    (E) It was the final manifestation of the women‘s
    rights movement in the United States in the
    nineteenth century.

I want to ask why C is incorrect.

When speaking of Romare Bearden, one is tempted to
say, ―A great Black American artist.‖ The subject matter of
Bearden‘s collages is certainly Black. Portrayals of the folk
of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, whom he
remembers from early childhood, of the jazz musicians and
tenement roofs of his Harlem days, of Pittsburgh
steelworkers, and his reconstruction of classical Greek
myths in the guise of the ancient Black kingdom of Benin,
attest to this. In natural harmony with this choice of subject
matter are the social sensibilities of the artist, who remains
active today with the Cinque Gallery in Manhattan, which
he helped found and which is devoted to showing the work
of minority artists.

Bearden’s social sensibilities and the subject matter of his collages are mentioned by the author in order to explain

(A)why one might be tempted to call Bearden a Black American artist
(B)why Bearden cannot be readily categorized
©why Bearden’s appeal is thought by many to be ultimately universal
(D)how deeply an artist’s artistic creations are influenced by he artist’s social conscience
(E)what makes Bearden unique among contemporary Black American artists

I want to ask why E is incorrect

2

[color=red]The passage never really talks about other contemporary Black American artists or how Bearden would fit in or compare with them, apart from the fact that he founded a gallery to showcase minority artists, which is not really germane to the question. I assume the answer is A?

3

You know looking at this, I hope you didn’t misread “collages” as “colleagues”. That mistake would indeed cause you to support E as the answer.

4

About the first question, what clminated is " feminist ideas " instead of “utopian socialism” ,am I right? I originally thought it was “utopian socialism”, which led me to choose C.

About the second question, yes, sir , you are right, it is A. I did not misunderstood the meaning of collages, I just thought that since the passage described so much about this person, the author might intend to do so in order to show the artist’s distinctiveness.

5

Yes, it was feminist ideas that culminated - I can see how you could make that mistake though - pretty tricky.