The Art Is in the Detail

[Finer in China]

Art Review | 'Anatomy of a Masterpiece'

The Art Is in the Detail

 

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/13/arts/16asia-600.jpg

Detail of Qian Xuan's “Wang Xizhi Watching Geese.”

 

From his terrace, the world is blue and green — mountains and trees — or almost green. Spring is on the way; the geese are back. One, then two, alight on the river, with more still invisible but close behind. Pavilion living! The only way. With the city somewhere down there, and nature everywhere up here, he watches mist rise. River meets sky.

 

The calm watcher is the fourth-century scholar-artist Wang Xizhi, father of classical calligraphy and model for living an active life in retreat. He is depicted by the painter Qian Xuan, another connoisseur of reclusion, in a 13th-century handscroll at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scroll is in “Anatomy of a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings,” a spare, studious show that offers, along with many stimulations, a retreat from worldly tumult — the religious fervor, the courtly pomp, the expressive self-promotion — that fills much of the museum.

 

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/arts/des...amp;oref=slogin

[rogerluli]

I have Chinese scroll art hanging all over the place...Mine are just copies of the masters but I still love to just lose myself in the scenes...