Art: MOVING PICTURE

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 clients—but 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...

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