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or poetic; and the illustrations themselves, designed to teach thé styles of the Old Masters in rendering all the elements of painting, are marvelous and delightful object-lessons in the virtuosity of Chinese brushwork.

The West is impatient of tradition; that has made its art at last inchoate. China is too bound by tradition; that caused its art to deteriorate into skillful plagiarism. Yet Miss Sze remarks that the peaks of Chinese art came when outside influences, war, turbulence or extreme distress forced the spirit to “draw upon resources rooted deep in the tradition.” Who knows? Out of its present extreme distress the Chinese spirit, drawing on those resources, may rise in renewed majesty when our own tradition no longer has the strength to rescue us from chaos.

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Frances Beck

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or poetic; and the illustrations themselves, designed to teach thé styles of the Old Masters in rendering all the elements of painting, are marvelous and delightful object-lessons in the virtuosity of Chinese brushwork.

The West is impatient of tradition; that has made its art at last inchoate. China is too bound by tradition; that caused its art to deteriorate into skillful plagiarism. Yet Miss Sze remarks that the peaks of Chinese art came when outside influences, war, turbulence or extreme distress forced the spirit to “draw upon resources rooted deep in the tradition.” Who knows? Out of its present extreme distress the Chinese spirit, drawing on those resources, may rise in renewed majesty when our own tradition no longer has the strength to rescue us from chaos.