Chinese painting - Topics

Why is so little Chinese art signed the way European painting is? Why do Chinese poems end on an image instead of an explanation? If you could only study one dynasty of Chinese art which would you pick? Why did blue-and-green landscapes come back into fashion in the twentieth century? Does modern ink painting still count as Chinese painting? Is ink painting really having a revival among young Chinese artists? Why do Chinese paintings carry seals from everyone who ever owned them? How do you read a handscroll that is fifteen metres long? What separates gongbi from xieyi when you look at the same subject? Why has Chinese art history treated painting as the highest form and ceramics as mere craft? What does a Chinese scroll ask of a viewer that a Western oil painting does not? Why do the same mountains keep appearing in so many Chinese paintings? Why does a seal imprint look better on old paper? Why is empty space such a large part of a Chinese landscape painting? Who were the Four Masters of the Yuan and why does the label still matter? Why were Chinese paintings kept rolled up instead of hung on a wall? Why are copies and forgeries such a big part of Chinese art history? Why did figure painting lose ground to landscape in China? What do the inscriptions down the side of a Chinese painting actually say? Why did the Yuan dynasty produce such distinctive drama and painting? Why are Chinese bird-and-flower paintings so often about one broken branch? What do you look at first when judging a Chinese ink painting? Why did landscape painting become the highest art form in China? How did Song literati culture differ from Tang aristocratic culture? How did Chinese painters learn to paint without drawing from life?