A hidden agenda
By Chitralekha Basu | China Daily | Updated: 2009-06-05 08:12
|
Claire Huot, Sinologist with the University of Calgary in Canada. Courtesy of Claire Huot |
What's common between the ancient Hebrew rabbinical texts and an iconic Tang Dynasty poem like Wang Wei's Lu Chai (Deer Park)? What makes a series of colophons by Bada Shanren, the late 17th century Chinese ink brush artist, lend themselves to be arranged in the form of a 85-letter constraint on textured gold foil - the sort sometimes used in traditional funerals in South-east Asian cultures - so that they look like a rectangular patch, plotted with letters, equidistant from and apparently unrelated to one another?
|
|
Photo
