GRE finding main ideas Practice.

     PASSAGE 1

     A mysterious phenomenon is the ability of over-water migrants to travel on course. Birds, bees, and other species can keep track of time without any sensory cues from the outside world, and such “biological clocks” clearly contribute to their “compass sense.” For example, they can use the position  of the Sun or stars, along with the time of day, to find north. But compass sense alone cannot explain how birds navigate the ocean: after a flock traveling east is blown far south by a storm, it will assume the proper northeasterly course to compensate. Perhaps, some scientists thought, migrants determine their geographic position on Earth by celestial  navigation, almost as human navigators use stars and planets, but this would demand of the animals a fantastic map sense. Researchers now know that some species have a magnetic sense, which might allow migrants to determine their geographic location by detecting variations in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The main idea of the passage is that
(A) migration over land requires a simpler explanation than migration over water does
(B) the means by which animals migrate over water are complex and only partly understood
(C) the ability of migrant animals to keep track of time is related to their magnetic sense
(D) knowledge of geographic location is essential to migrants with little or no compass sense
(E) explanations of how animals migrate tend to replace, rather than build on, one another

PASSAGE 2

     The history of responses to the work of the artist Sandra Botticelli (1444-1510) suggests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli’s work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his (Vasari’s) evolutionary scheme of the history of  art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians denigrated Botticelli in favour of his fellow Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation espoused by their predecessors, Botticelli’s work remained outside of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his  best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes.) 

     The primary reason for Botticelli’s unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the mid-nineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy because his work, for the most part, did not seem to these observers to exhibit the  traditional characteristics of the fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example, Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for Botticelli’s unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art,  he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art. 

     In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli’s work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his reputation  began to grow. Analyses and assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, as well as by the writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli’s personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli’s work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not  generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Horne in 1908. Horne rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines - features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Horne argued that Botticelli did not treat these qualities  as ends in themselves - rather, that he emphasized clear depiction of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Horne’s emphasis on the way a talented artist reflects a tradition but yet moves beyond that tradition, an emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciate Botticelli’s achievements. 

 Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the passage?
(A) Botticelli’s Contribution to Florentine Art
(B) Botticelli and the Traditions of Classical Art
(C) Sandro Botticelli: From Denigration to Appreciation
(D) Botticelli and Michelangelo : A Study in Contrasts.
(E) Standards of Taste: Botticelli’s critical Reputation up to the Nineteenth Century

ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS