Chen Shi-Zheng
It's
like an etching, extremely sharp, like metal scratched on a firm base, the
mountain, rock, are as if metallic. It's almost like it has this 3D mentality,
the objects-painted-trees, rocks emerge from the paper. Look at those trees.
Look at those dots. It's almost like embroidery, a textile, not brush strokes-because
its intricacy is so strong and precise that it seems almost impossible to
be a painting. You see the tension in this period, the late Song to Yuan
period-like no fat painter's work, it's boney, strong, vital, composed with
a definite edge. And in its layers of transparency, small in the vastness
and monumentality of nature are six ethereal people.
Hiroshi Senju
The elderly figure
by the falls is depicted as a spirit of landscape herself, seemingly about
to disappear into the landscape. The waterfalls symbolize life itself,
permeating the entire painting with their spray. The cosmos is represented
by the negative space (yohaku) behind the trees. This could be
categorized as a portrait of a god as understood by the Eastern mind.
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Attributed
to Lou Guan (active mid-to late 13th century)