Directions: Each SAT Writing passage is followed by 11 questions. Read the passage and select the answer to each question that is most effective in improving the quality of the writing or in making the passage conform to the standard conventions of English.
Questions 1–11 are based on the following passage.
Basquiat: A Springboard to Deeper Truths
Jean-Michel Basquiat 1 begins as a graffiti artist in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City in the late 1970s. His father, Gerard Basquiat, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and his mother, Matilde 2 Basquiat of Afro-Puerto Rican descent was born in Brooklyn, New York. Matilde instilled a love for art in her young son 3 and did take him to art museums in Manhattan and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Basquiat was a precocious 4 child who learned how to read and write by age four and was a gifted artist. His teachers noticed his artistic abilities, and his mother encouraged her son’s artistic talent.
In September 1968, when he was about 8, 5 a car hit Basquiat while playing in the street. His arm was broken and he suffered several internal injuries, and he eventually underwent a splenectomy. 6 Although he was recuperating from his injuries, his mother brought him the Gray’s Anatomy book to keep him occupied. This book would prove to be influential in his future artistic outlook. When he was 11, his mother was committed to a mental institution. At 15, Basquiat ran away from home. He slept on park benches in Washington Square Park.
Beginning his career as a graffiti artist, Basquiat often incorporated words into his paintings. He produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and became known for the political–poetical graffiti under the name of SAMO. Basquiat sold his first painting in 7 1981; by 1982, spurred by the Neo-Expressionist art boom, his work was in great demand. By the mid-1980s, his work was exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, and 8 were labelled Neo-expressionist and Primitivist paintings.
Basquiat’s art focused on “suggestive dichotomies,” such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and 9 inner experiences as opposed to outer ones. Basquiat appropriated poetry, drawing and painting, and married text and image, abstraction and figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a “springboard to deeper truths about the individual”, 10 as well as attacking on power structures and systems of racism.
On February 10, 1985, he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a feature entitled “New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist”. He was a success, but his growing heroin addiction began to 11 intersperse with his personal relationships. Basquiat died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 in 1988. In 1992 the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of Basquiat’s art.
Adapted from “Jean-Michel Basquiat.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
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Question 1 |
NO CHANGE | |
had begun | |
did begin | |
began |
Question 2 |
NO CHANGE | |
Basquiat, of Afro-Puerto Rican descent, was born | |
Basquiat was born of Afro-Puerto Rican descent | |
Basquiat of Afro-Puerto Rican descent had been born |
Question 3 |
NO CHANGE | |
and was taking him | |
by taking him | |
for she took him |
Question 4 |
NO CHANGE | |
child, who learned how to read and write by age four, | |
child who, by the age of four, had learned how to read and write | |
child and learned how to read and write by age four |
Question 5 |
NO CHANGE | |
Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street; and his arm was broken | |
a car hit Basquiat while it was playing in the street; his arm was broken | |
Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street. His arm was broken |
Question 6 |
Although | |
While | |
Since | |
Despite the fact that |
Question 7 |
NO CHANGE | |
1981; yet by 1982, spurred by the Neo-Expressionist art boom | |
1981. By 1982, it was spurred by the Neo-Expressionist art boom | |
1981, and 1982; spurred by Neo-Expressionist art boom |
Question 8 |
NO CHANGE | |
would | |
was | |
is |
Question 9 |
NO CHANGE | |
experience that is inner with outer
| |
inner experience versus outer experience | |
inner versus outer experience |
Question 10 |
NO CHANGE | |
as well as attacks | |
and additionally attacking | |
but also attacks |
Question 11 |
NO CHANGE | |
augment | |
interfere | |
befuddle |
List |
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