>From the New York Times: September 8, 2006 Art Review Pictorial Delights Beyond Words By HOLLAND COTTER
IF painting and writing can be seen as modes of thinking, and they can, then "Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing," at the Metropolitan Museum, is as much a brainstorming session as an art exhibition, crackling with ideas and arguments every step of the way. It is also a sequence of moods, with impassioned voices calling out from the 80 scrolls and inscribed fans spanning several centuries, including the 21st, that line the galleries. Poor me, sighs an exiled scholar in a sad letter home. Lucky us, sings an exultant empress at the height of her power. Other voices, a whole chorus, chime in: Be joyous. Be calm. Beware.... And once you've seen it, you might even feel that Huang's cursive masterpiece out-Pollocks Pollock. Certainly its 60-foot-long flow of looping, swooping characters they twist and shout; pump up, slim down; leave skid marks behind them blurs distinctions between writing and painting, control and spontaneity, virtuosity and accident. On top of this, it dramatizes, in compelling, nonrepresentational terms, a complicated story of political intrigue and endangered friendship.... By no means everything is wild and crazy. An exquisite eighth-century manuscript called "Spiritual Flight Sutra" is a paradigm of centered probity. Its characters are uniform in weight, geometrically structured, meticulously aligned. Designed for legibility, they also convey the pacific ethos of the Taoist scripture they embody. Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/kp239 To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
