Beyond the Sea

Among all the gifts US President Barack Obama received during his visit to Beijing, there is a collotype of a famous Chinese painting “Grasshoppers and Butterflies”. The authentic one was painted by Zhao Chang of Song Dynasty.

Zhao Chang (赵昌): Courtesy name Changzhi, native of Guanghan, Sichuan Province; professional painter specializing in drawing flowers from nature. His fame as a painter reached its zenith in the Xiangfu era (1008-1016) of Emperor Zhenzong of the Northern Song period, prompting him to buy back at premium prices works he’d sold in earlier years. This painting “Grasshoppers and Butterflies” (写生蛱蝶图) uses the “double outlining” technique to draw the butterfly, the grasshopper, the flowers and plants. Except for the butterfly, which is brightly colored, light coloring is applied throughout to highlight the lines. This is a particularly significant work in the Northern Song period, when color paintings of flowers became popular. Although the painting was not signed, the Ming painter Dong Qichang (1555-1637) concluded that it was a work by Zhao Chang. This claim is still disputed by some in academic research.

Sketch of Apricot Flowers (写生杏花图)
All the flower paintings by Zhao Chang were products of his persistent sketching from life. He often walked around his flower beds in early morning to observe the colors and mix his pigments accordingly. This assiduous study enabled him to better capture the beauty of flowers. He styled himself the “Sketching Zhao Chang”. This painting shows a flower-studded apricot branch. The petals are more deeply colored around the edge to express the concavity of the petal. The dozens of flowers are ingeniously arranged in a variety of orientations, depths, densities and sizes.

source: The Art Book of Chinese Painting, published by Long River Press

…We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fxxxing people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fxxxing planet?
　　
　　I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I’m tired of fxxxing Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People are trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
　　
　　Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fxxxed. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?
　　
　　The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles…hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages…And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!
　　

The Dazu Rock Carvings (Chinese: 大足石刻) are a series of Chinese religious sculptures and carvings, dating back as far as the 7th century A.D., depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Listed as a World Heritage Site, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs. The sites are located in Chongqing Municipality within the steep hillsides throughout Dazu County (located about 60 kilometers west of the city of Chongqing, China). The highlights of the rock grotto are found on Mount Baoding and Mount Beishan.

The earliest carvings were begun in 650 A.D. During the early Tang Dynasty, but the main period of their creation began in the late 9th century, when Wei Junjing, Prefect of Changzhou, pioneered the carvings on Mount Beishan, and his example was followed after the collapse of the Tang Dynasty by local and gentry, monks and nuns, and ordinary people during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-65). In the 12th century, during the Song Dynasty, a Buddhist monk named Zhao Zhifeng began work on the elaborate sculptures and carvings on Mount Baoding, dedicating 70 years of his life to the project.

Off limits to visitors for many years, the carvings were opened to Chinese travelers in 1961 and foreign visitors in 1980. Until 1975 there was only a muddy path between the town of Dazu and the main cluster of carvings. The isolation helped keep the art unharmed during the massive anti-religious vandalism of the Cultural Revolution.

The carvings were listed as a World Heritage Site in 1999, citing “…their aesthetic quality, their rich diversity of subject matter, both secular and religious, and the light that they shed on everyday life in China during this period. They provide outstanding evidence of the harmonious synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.”
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Dazu Rock Carving

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