Premises:1. If an artist has both high artistic skill and high creativity and combines them in creating a work, the result is a great work of art.
2. No work can be great unless both elements are combined.
Conclusion: Great works of art are necessarily rare.
We need to look for an
assumption bridging the gap between the evidences and the conclusion:
To get from "great works require both traits" to "great works are rare," the argument must assume that the combination of those two traits in the creation of artworks is itself rare.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?(A) Not every artist has high skill.
Wrong: Even if true, many other artists may still have both traits. So, we cannot conclude that great work of art are rare.
(B) A high degree of creativity and a high level of artistic skill are seldom combined in the creation of a work of art.
Correct: this is exactly what we predicted. I f we test the negative technique here, and assume that both these two traits are often combined in the creation of work of art, the argument would not hold, that is we wouldn’t be able to estabilsh the rarity of work or art.
(C) Artists with both traits necessarily produce great works.
Wrong: This strengthens the link between traits and greatness but says nothing about whether such works are rare.
(D) Few artists have high creativity.
Wrong: Imagine that only 10% of artists are highly creative. However, all of those artists are also highly skilled technically. And each of them produces a large number of works. So, it doesn’t establish rarity. It’s similar to A.
(E) People with both traits produce only a few great works.
Wrong: we can test the Negative technique here: There is at least one person who possesses both qualities and produces many great works of art.
Ex:
Artist a produces 100
Artist b produces 100
This negation does not undermine the argument. Great works of art could still be rare overall, even if there is at least one person with both qualities who produces many great works. Therefore, choice E is not a necessary assumption.
The argument could still hold that great works of art are rare compared with the vast number of works produced by artists who do not possess both qualities.