Chinese Painting

The Wall Street Journal has been running some interesting articles under the heading of "The Staying Inside Guide," offering suggestions for artistic or cultural resources to view online during the pandemic. Yesterday I came across an interesting one entitled "Immersive Painted Worlds," on Chinese painting, about which I know virtually nothing. (The article may be behind a subscription firewall.)

The article has an impressive number of links to various things online, and I watched the first couple, a pair of 15-minute videos from a former BBC program called "The Culture Show," which together form an episode on "The Art of Chinese Painting." I thought they were quite interesting. The first episode introduced me to the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, which I had never heard of before. Located in the Gobi Desert, they contain a wealth of wall paintings and statues that are well over 1000 years old and were unknown to the outside world for centuries. They also contained a sealed-off "library" room that was discovered around 1900 and that was filled with millennium-old scrolls and silk paintings, incredibly well-preserved because of the climatic conditions.

The second episode tells of Emperor Huizong of Song (pictured above), who reigned in the early 12th century. An expert painter as well as emperor, he raised painting to a respected art form and changed its style.

Good examples of the remarkable things one knows nothing about! Both episodes together are only half an hour, and they're worth a watch.

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