I will disprove D and prove A on this post. D could definitely be a tempting answer choice under the pressure of the test.
So this is a line reference question and we are asked what kind of painting the phrase "protest painting" refers to.
Whenever I see line reference questions I always start by reading about 3-5 lines before the actual line they are referring to so that I can place the line reference into the context of the broader passage. It's tempting to not do this especially when you see the clock running during a timed test, but it always pays dividends by allowing you to answer the question at a faster pace. Here we go:
(A) This is the correct answer, and here's why. In lines 26-29 the author talks about how Bearden moved beyond the usual "protest painting" to depict scenes of individual human suffering. We can infer from this that the usual "protest painting" did not depict individual human suffering. It might seem like a bit of a logical leap to therefore say that they were scenes of "group suffering", but the other four answer choices are clearly bad and a group is an intentionally ambiguous term that could be used in reference to as few as 2 people to as many as 99,999,999,999 people.
(D) ". . . the experiences of African Americans . . . " Experiences is too broad a terms to define what the author is referring to when he/she mentions "protest painting". We know that he/she talks about the experience of "unemployment" being talked about in Bearden's painting, but we do not know if the experiences depicted in the "protest painting" were specific or more general. Also this answer choice doesn't get at the inference that answer choice A is getting at which is the fact that Bearden's work stood in contrast to "protest paintings" because of it's depiction of "instances of individual human suffering."
