Art Reboot

110 deeper satisfaction from such an art walk than from its phys- ical equivalent: no tired limbs, no flies, no brigands. And, if art performs its highest function efficiently, momentarily but time- lessly no self. The urban hermit, the scholar-official constrained by service and official postings, returns to his studio to shed his official paraphernalia, drink a cup of wine, and disappear into the microcosmic landscape. All such aesthetes were also artists since becoming a scholar-official demanded a high level of training in brush-and-ink calligraphy, heightening their access to the full powers of art. There is a legend told of a Daoist adept in a market- place who at the close of each day was seen to disappear into his own gourd container hanging at his belt, no doubt therein to find an infinite realm beyond the constraints of the World of Red Dust. As with the experience awaiting in the handscroll, Daoists could, without constraint, enter the wilderness to sit beside waterfalls, gaze upon ancient pines and gather mystical fungi with fingers and knuckles like tendrils and knots in the walking staves that steadied the scree-covered, uneven paths as they climbed. The inner realm of art is unlimited, unconstrained, infinite and timeless. Dogma and all forms of canonical rules are a path, not a destination, so in Chinese painting perspective is flexible, with multiple ways of evoking distance and relationships be- tween elements, allowing also for the flexibility of scale. There is a mistaken idea that the West’s discovery of scientific perspec- tive in the Renaissance was a revealing of truth and a sweeping away of primitive, erroneous methods. Not so. It is one of many methods, and can be both beautiful and useful. But Chinese methods are more sophisticated. They rise above the fixed, the