Poetry excells by its transparent luminosity. It is like echo in the air, color in form, the moon reflected in water or an image in a mirror; words have limits, but the meaning is inexhaustible.
On the pink-beige paper of a four-meter long handscroll unbounded ink washes alternately darken and pale to invisibility, in a style known as "apparition painting" - in Chinese, wangliang hua, in Japanese, moryo-ga. From foreground to hirizon the painting reveals an extraordinarily comprehensive landscape, mostly mountainous, simultaneously divided and knit together by water in all forms, from rivers and lakes to mists and clouds. A few sharply defined details - a bridge, a path, a viewing pavilion, a boat - guide the viewer's gaze along the bird's-eye view over mountains and streams.
The artistic expression by or addressed to Song scholars represents for the first time man's inner states; the mind-at-work becomes the object of philosophical investigation and of artistic representation.
And see these pictures, his thoughts would be a vast expanse of water.
Tranquil, you can perform all kinds of movements
Empty, you can internalize the myriad realms.
Experiencing the world, you walk among men;
Contemplating the self, you lie on cloudy mountains.
Heaven's wind suddenly sends the sound of the pagoda's bell,
Wakes me from pure reverie roaming Xiao Xiang!
Complex pictorial space draws the viewer's attention from the immediate to the intinite, and the ink-wash technique, which suggests forms rather than delineating them, invests the real landscape with the attributes of a dreamland.
