Word: painter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Believing with Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, that inspiration comes in a flash and cannot be long sustained, the Ch'an painter worked in monochrome "as if a whirlwind possessed his hand." Greatest of them all was Liang K'ai, who had won the Emperor's highest painting award, the Golden Girdle, before he retired to a Buddhist monastery. He dashed off such inspired sketches as his Ink Brushing of an Immortal, showing a monk tearing off his shirt to prove the indifference of the enlightened man to outward appearances...
This boycott opened the way for a rise to fame of a naturalized Chinese named Kao K'o-kung, whose ancestors came Lorn Central Asia. He joined the Khan's court, and rose to become his Minister of Justice. Endowed with extraordinary ability as a painter, he first patterned his style on the impressionist manner of Mi, later emulated the landscapes of loth century Painter Tung Yuan, finally retired to savor the intellectual climate of Hangchow. His Mist in Wooded Mountains shows that he could combine these earlier influences into a work that became uniquely...
...resounding answer to his critics and a masterpiece of brush technique. ¶ Shen Chou, who inherited the Literary Man's Painting tradition, played the role of rustic philosopher, ignoring the ceremonial elegance of court life. Near the center of the new wen-jen hua movement which he founded, Painter Shen Chou retired to his garden pavilion. He depicted his ideal life in such paintings as Sitting Up at Night, wrote that he had achieved the ideal state with "one flower and one bamboo, one lamp and one small table, books of poems and volumes of classics-with them...
...Court Painter Lu Chi was not only the favorite bird and flower painter of his day, but honorary commander of the Peking secret police as well. Lu Chi's aim was to please the luxurious and conservative official taste of his time, and he succeeded superbly. Grass, Flowers and Wild Birds is a typical example of his work, that for delicacy and refined technique has never been surpassed...
Such masterpieces go far to explain the response made by the great nth century Painter Kuo Hsi, who asked: "Why does a virtuous man take delight in landscape?" His own reply: "Having no access to the landscape, the lover of forest and stream, the friend of mist and haze, enjoys them only in his dreams. How delightful then to have a landscape painted by a skilled hand! Without leaving the room, at once he finds himself among the streams and ravines; the cries of the birds and monkeys are faintly audible to his senses; light on the hills and reflections...