A Tale of Two Visions

Way back in 1959, when I was in 8th grade, I watched one of the early programs on the new public tv channel.  It was Alan Watts discoursing on Eastern spiritual traditions.  He very emphatically made the point that the Eastern vision, especially the Chinese Taoist vision,  of the human being, of nature, of reality, is so radically different from the Western version of these.  He illustrated it by comparing a painting from ancient China and one from the Renaissance in Europe.  I found the whole thing so mesmerizing; never forgot the experience.  I would like to “re-live” the experience as it were, but with two different paintings that I think are even more interesting in this illustration, and maybe they show things may be more complex and more nuanced than Watts presented.  So….let us begin.

Sometimes no words are needed.   All you need do is LOOK.  What you see, what you think you see, and what you don’t see are all interesting.  Here two different sets of artwork invite comparison and contrast.  So, lets begin by just looking and pondering…..

The first painting is a prime example of German Romanticism, early 19th Century, Caspar David Friedrich.

The second one is from China: by Shih T’ao in the Ming Dynasty, 17th Century.

And just for emphasis I’ve included a third painting, another from China, something surprisingly very similar, by Shen Zhou,  also in the Ming Dynasty, 16th Century.

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