Edited interview transcript 5 If, in tracing the path from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, we saw Chinese painting continually recalibrating its spiritual center in response to different historical moments, then in the modern and contemporary period the question becomes even more complex. On the one hand, Chinese painting continues its own internal lineage; on the other, it must confront the reality of meeting Western art head-on within a globalized context. Followi

Edited Interview Transcript 4 If, in the previous section on the Ming, Professor Luo Yanzi and I discussed how Shen Zhou reassembled the traditions of the Song and Yuan and gave literati painting in the Ming a more rounded, more everyday, and more socially inclusive revival, then the next question arose naturally: by the Qing, why did literati painting once again assert “individuality” so forcefully? How did this shift take place? With that in mind, I invited Professor Luo to

Edited Interview Transcript 3 I then asked Professor Luo Yanzi to focus on how Ming painting changed in relation to the Yuan, and on the pivotal role Shen Zhou played in that transition. As the discussion unfolded, a clear line of development gradually emerged: if Song landscape painting was primarily concerned with constructing the form, structure, and order of nature, and Yuan landscape turned instead toward the inner life of the literati, then Shen Zhou, in a certain sense

Edited Interview Transcript 2 In the previous section of my conversation with Professor Luo Yanzi on Fan Kuan and Song landscape painting, we discussed how the great achievement of Song painting rested on a profound apprehension of the order of nature. Whether in the monumental, stele-like composition of Northern Song landscape or in the spatial ideal of landscapes “fit to be wandered through and inhabited,” Song painting was consistently addressing one central question: how

Edited Interview Transcript 1 This interview does not seek to turn Chinese art history into a dynastic survey unfolding in chronological order, nor is it meant to retreat into an overly sealed academic idiom. My point of departure is closer to a method of “seeing the large through the small”: moving from the Song dynasty to the modern period, selecting one representative painter from each era, and using his works, character, and fate as a way into the larger questions of how

The first birdsong of early spring is often more truthful than the calendar. It alights on the windowsill of a certain morning, slight and delicate, like a tiny seed of sound—not yet fully opened, and yet already bearing tidings of the whole spring. At that time, the trees are still gray-brown, and the wind still carries a lingering trace of winter’s bite. But once that single call reaches you, you suddenly know—warmth is on its way. It is a certainty no weather forecast can

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