Critical Reasoning

Hey Team, could really use help understanding why the answer is the correct answer? I'm missing a link.

Art historian: Successful forgeries tend to be those most recently painted. While such a phenomenon may sound counterintuitive, a forger is able to exploit current modes of aesthetics to create paintings that appeal to the eye of his or her contemporaries. This very quality, however, is what makes those paintings seem amateurish to subsequent generations. As a result, a majority of forgeries is identified as such roughly twenty-five years after their creation.

Which of the following is an assumption upon which the argument rests?

a) A generation consists of exactly twenty-five years.
b)Computer analysis, which does not rely on current aesthetic trends, can often determine with a high degree of accuracy the legitimacy of a painting.
c)What is deemed aesthetically pleasing does not change in the course of twenty-five years.
d)A piece of art determined to be a forgery does not, after a period of twenty-five years, become valued for its own intrinsic merits.
e)Those who expose the majority of paintings as forgeries are guided by aesthetic considerations.

Answer E

Hi.

Maybe nobody has answered this one before now because nobody else sees "the link" either.

I was able to get it "right", but maybe the link is not perfectly constructed.

Most of the answers can be eliminated easily.

A) No, that's not what underlies this argument. In fact the use of "generations" is mostly just a way of expressing that as time goes on the forgeries look less plausible.

B) This may be true, but it is not relevant here.

C) Actually the argument works fine if what is deemed aesthetically pleasing changes during those 25 years.

D) This is not what the argument is about.

E) So we are left with this, and I guess here's the link.

The art historian said, "As a result, blah blah blah..." So the conclusion could be said to be something along the lines of, "That's why a majority of forgeries are identified as such roughly twenty-five years after their creation."

Of course, if those who expose forgeries are guided by something other than aesthetic considerations, then the fact that modes of aesthetics change so that the aesthetics of a forgery no longer match what appeals to the eye is not why forgeries are usually identified as such roughly twenty-five years after their creation.

The only thing is that "As a result" is not exactly the same as "That's why". So maybe the link is not as strong as it might be.

Still, one can get the OA, and in GMAT land that's most of what matters.