LSAT 103, Section 4, RC Passage 2, James Porter and African Art

RC Passage 2 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. James Porter documented the influence of African art on African-American art.
2. Porter showed that two painters were descended from Africa, by examining the style of their paintings.
   Porter’s books went further than Locke’s.
3. Porter kept working until his death, and made a few other findings.

Analysis

The second paragraph is by far the most complex. When you find a paragraph like that, reread it if necessary. You don’t want to move on without understanding a paragraph. It takes a bit longer, but will save you much time on the questions.

It can be a bit difficult to keep track of all the influences mentioned.

In the first paragraph, we see that Porter studied the influence of African art on art in the Americas.

Porter started by studying how West African art influenced African-American crafts. But lines 1-3 imply that Porter eventually broadened his study to include the influence of all African art on the whole of the Americas.

Locke is a bit of a distraction. We’re told little about him, and whether he had much of a relationship with or influence on Porter.

The author only mentions Locke to show that there was little scholarship on this issue before Porter wrote his book.

Porter kept writing and revising. At the end of his life, he was working on a history of the influence of African art on world art. This would have broadened his original study.