medium · GRE Verbal

Passage: It is often said that photography killed realist painting by rendering mere resemblance obsolete and freeing painters toward abstraction. The chronology resists the claim. Photographic processes were widely available by the 1840s, yet the most fervently detailed realist painting flourished for decades afterward, and abstraction arrived two generations later, prompted by concerns — the flatness of the picture plane, the autonomy of color — that owed nothing to the camera. If photography influenced painting, it did so not by making resemblance unnecessary but by offering painters a rival whose particular way of seeing they could define themselves against. The passage implies that the popular account it describes is unpersuasive chiefly because that account: (A) underestimates the technical difficulty of early photographic processes (B) is inconsistent with the sequence of events it purports to explain (C) denies that photography had any influence on painting whatsoever (D) overstates the artistic ambitions of nineteenth-century photographers (E) confuses realist painting with abstraction

1. Underestimates the technical difficulty of early photographic processes
2. Is inconsistent with the sequence of events it purports to explain
3. Denies that photography had any influence on painting whatsoever
4. Overstates the artistic ambitions of nineteenth-century photographers
5. Confuses realist painting with abstraction

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