Hooray for art!
Yesterday, LiaoFang and I went to the 798 Art District and wandered around for about three hours. I love that place. There're always a few more tourists than one might wish, but there was a really cool exhibition by a man named JiZi whose work took the traditional Chinese 山水 (lit: "mountain-water") scenery paintings of the Daoist/Zen style and morphed them into a distinctly modern form. I think it's kind of a cool examination of how the Chinese understanding and approach to nature has shifted since the Tang and Song dynasties.
I couldn't take any good pictures, so all I can offer are these, but imagine that these paintings are a good nine feet high or, in the case of the traditional example, even larger.
Here's an example of traditional 山水 painting:
Fan Kuan (fl. 990-1020), because he's kind of the textbook example of mountain-water scenery.
and here's his modern artistic descendent:
I couldn't take any good pictures, so all I can offer are these, but imagine that these paintings are a good nine feet high or, in the case of the traditional example, even larger.
Here's an example of traditional 山水 painting:
Fan Kuan (fl. 990-1020), because he's kind of the textbook example of mountain-water scenery.
and here's his modern artistic descendent: