This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.4: “The unironic representation …”

This is the first of our multi-column Text Completions (TC), and the rules are a little different. In contrast to the single-column format, two- and three-column TC tends to rely more on context clues — especially those which point to a relationship between the blanks. Because the answer for one blank can influence our choices for the remaining blanks, the “cover and pre-fill” technique we used in single-column TC is not as useful here.

One recurring form of context clue is parallelism, in which the passage repeats or paraphrases itself, either for emphasis or by way of example. In question 3.4, the second half of the sentence (after the colon) is basically a paraphrase of the first half. Note the similarities:

“unironic representation” means the same thing as “straightforward depiction”
“serious … art” is the kind of work that “‘high’ artists” do
and so forth…

We can use this parallel structure to find both answers. Blank (ii) asks, in essence, “What kinds of things were ‘straightforwardly depicted’?” It must be the same things that were “unironic[ally] represent[ed]” in the first clause — namely, “everyday” objects. Of the three answer choices, only commonplace (E) means the same thing as “everyday.”

Similarly, blank (i) asks, “What is the status of these everyday objects in ‘serious American art’?” Well, we know that the “high” artists ceded (i.e., gave away) the chance to depict them, so it’s reasonable to conclude that they’d be missing from (A) serious art.