"All Chinese painting, which is not a matter of naturalistic but of spiritualistic painting, is to be contemplated as the soul's landscape. It is as subject to subject, and from the perspective of intimate confidence, that man connects with nature there. This nature is no longer an inert, passive entity. If we regard it, it regards us as well; if we speak to it, it speaks to us as well. Evoking Jingting Mountain, the poet Li Bai affirms: 'We regard one another tirelessly,' which echoes the painter Shitao who, with regard to Mount Huang, says 'Our tête-a-tête is endless.' At all times in China, poets and painters are in this relationship of collaboration and mutual revelation with nature. The beauty of the world is an appeal, in the most concrete sense of the word, and humans, those beings of language, respond to it with all their soul. Everything occurs as if the universe, thinking to itself, were awaiting man to speak."
- Francois Cheng (1929 - )
The Way of Beauty: Five Meditations for Spiritual Transformation
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