Many prominent artists and critics of the Qing dynasty made a sharp distinction between amateur and professional painters. After reading about and looking at paintings by amateur and professional artists, what are your thoughts on this distinction? Can you easily tell the difference between the two types of painting? Do you think the view that amateur painters were superior because their paintings were more honest or true is correct? What prejudices may have influenced this view?

photography had emerged as an elite art pursued by a few creative individuals for a few wealthy patrons. but now, said bauldelaire, it was succumbing to "the great industrial madness of our times." it was becoming a mass production industry that catered to middle-class tastes, including a taste for gadgetry. the stereoscope, the first 3d imaging system, had turned looking at photographs into parlor entertainment. a "thousand hungry eyes were bending over the peepholes of the stereoscope as though they were the attic-windows of the infinite.