For the rough draft of your final paper for the quarter, you will summarize and reflect upon an excerpt from Max Loehrs The Great Painters of China (Oxford: Phaidon, 1980), pp. 9-12, 24-26. The file can be found in the Week 7 files on Canvas. Loehr discusses the development of Chinese painting, which you have all been studying this week. This excerpt focuses more closely on visual analysis and less so on engaging with other scholarship, as you have experienced with Robert Bagleys work. Instead, I will ask you to engage with Loehr. For this assignment, please provide a brief summary of Loehrs text and answer the following questions:
How does he envision the origin of landscape painting?
How did early artists cope with the problem of representing shapeless things like clouds, water, or fire?
Is it a straightforward thing to draw a picture?
The final question is a little open-ended. This is a place for you to apply your knowledge from this weeks lectures, as well as the course at large and come to your own conclusions about the development of Chinese painting.
Remember that every time you quote, paraphrase or summarize others work, facts, ideas, etc. you must cite your source. For this assignment, use parenthetical citations at the end of each sentence where you use Loehr’s text. For example: (Loehr 11). Footnotes and endnotes are also acceptable if used with a correct and consistent format. Since you will only use one reading for this assignment, you are not required to have a list of works cited at the end of the paper, nor should you require any outside research.
