CAT 2020 Slot 2 VARC Question & Solution
Passage
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
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 life worlds 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.
Question 1
“Seeing . . . operates on the foundation of covenants with images that establish the conditions for meaningful visual experience.” In light of the passage, which one of the following statements best conveys the meaning of this sentence?
Solution:
Let's look at the options one by one.
Option B is "Images are meaningful visual experiences when they have a foundation of covenants seeing them." This is a distorted option. The actual statement states that sight becomes a meaning visual experience when images are associated with covenants . There is nowhere any discussion about the meaningfulness of images
Option C is "Sight as a meaningful visual experience is possible when there is a foundational condition established in images of covenants." Again a twisted option. There is nothing said about the possibility of sight as a visual experience. There could be other cases too in which meaningful visual experience could be established
Option D is "The way we experience sight is through images operated on by meaningful covenants." Entirely out of context option. The statement is about meaningful visual experience not about meaningful covenants.
Option A correctly encapsulates all the points. Hence it is the correct answer.
Question 2
All of the following statements may be considered valid inferences from the passage, EXCEPT:
Solution:
Option D states "studying visual culture requires institutional structures without which the structures of perception cannot be analysed".
Look at the penultimate paragraph of the question," 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"
Studying visual culture thus depends on the design of human body and interpretative devices developed by the culture. Nowhere it is mentioned that ,without institutional structures of culture vision can't be analysed as it also depends on the design of human body. Hence this is a wrong inference. Remaining all three options are correct.
Question 3
Which one of the following best describes the word “epiphenomena” in the last sentence of the passage?
Solution:
This is a vocab question. Epiphenomena means "a secondary effect or byproduct". The option "Phenomena supplemental to the evidence", is the closest one. Hence it is the correct answer.
Question 4
“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?
Solution:
Let's look at the options one by one.
Option A states that ,"Socially existing beings cannot be analysed, unlike the art of Michelangelo or Leonardo which can." Twisted option. The excerpt from the passage states that "no amount of social analysis is enough for Michelangelo and Leonardo, because they were such vast artists" However other beings could be socially analysed because not everyone is like Michelangelo or Leonardo.
Option C states that ,"Michelangelo or Leonardo cannot be subjected to social analysis because of their genius." This is an entirely wrong option. These artists can be subjected to social analysis, but nothing will do justice to them.
Option D states that ,"No analyses exist of Michelangelo’s or Leonardo’s social accounts.". This is beyond the scope of the pasaage, as nothing has been mentioned about this.
Option B is the correct answer.
Question 5
Which set of keywords below most closely captures the arguments of the passage?
Solution:
This is a fact based easy question. Read the passage carefully. Imagery can be inferred from the second paragraph. And from the subsequent paragraphs you can also infer Visual Practices, Lifeworlds and Structures of Perception(penultimate paragraph).
Hence Option C is the correct answer.