Message #30092

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Inn Bok,
     
       I understand, but it has always been the Chinese way to revere and emulate, and, yes, COPY, the behavior of ancestors, whether actual or philosophical. And I see  (and Chinese Culture historically saw) later
artists as the spiritual/philosophical 'children' of their predecessors, whether those earlier artists were  years or centuries earlier.  And if you look at the Four Wangs of the 17th C., they specifically copied earlier artists.
    The fact that they couldn't help being influenced by later culture, and their work is immediately identifiable as 17th C. and not Ming or Song, is not an argument against their basic philosophy, which I call, following the
Hebrew Bible's book of Ecclesiastes, "There Is Nothing New Under The Sun".
Best,
   Joey