Read the following passage:
"For thirty years, Arthur had curated the gallery as if it were a high-walled sanctuary, protecting the clean, quiet canvases from the vulgar noise of the street. To him, art was a preservation of silence, an escape from the messy, transactional compromises of the dockworkers and merchants outside his window. When his niece, Helena, brought her crude, charcoal sketches of coal miners and laundry women, Arthur had dismissed them as mere journalism, lacking the sublime detachment of true aesthetic form. Yet, standing before her latest canvas on a rainy Tuesday—a stark, unvarnished portrait of an aging seamstress whose bent spine seemed to bear the weight of the entire city—Arthur felt the sanctuary walls crumble. The seamstress’s hands, rough and black with ink and soot, did not represent an intrusion of the mundane, but rather exposed the sterile futility of his own silent retreat. As Helena entered the room, Arthur did not look away; instead, he reached out and touched the coarse frame, acknowledging that the beauty he had spent a lifetime guarding was merely a form of cowardice."
Which of the following best analyzes the shift in Arthur’s values as revealed by his reaction to Helena’s painting?
- A transition from viewing art as a sterile refuge from reality to recognizing that meaningful aesthetic value resides in the unvarnished struggles of human existenceAnswer
- BA realization that Helena’s focus on the working class is technically superior to the classical works he had previously collected
- CAn endorsement of Helena’s political activism, indicating the author’s belief that all art must serve a didactic, social purpose
- DA rejection of his gallery’s commercial success in favor of joining Helena’s crusade against the elite art establishment