In my room, the world is beyond my
understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists
of three or four hills and a cloud.
THOSE lines by the late Poet Wallace Stevens, Connecticut insuranceman, might have seemed sheer Mandarin to most of his clientsbut not to a Chinese. Chinese painters ignore the iron bonds of perspective (which imply a stationary viewer and make the picture frame a sort of window frame) and strive instead for the stroller's leisurely view.
Of all the Chinese landscapes in the U.S., the Southern Sung scroll on exhibition this...