"In this series of lectures on the painters Hsia Kuei (12th to 13th c.), Shen Chou (15th to 16th c.), and Shih-t'ao (17th to 18th c.), Richard Edwards explores the special relationship between the self and landscape in Chinese art. These three painters, each important in his own time and deemed a master by later critics, were all concerned with the subjective in the objective world. In Chinese painting there is no clear desire to separate these two realms; rather, there is a constant, conscious play between the physical reality of the world and the subjective vision of the artist. The artist is continually imitating the world - sometimes more, sometimes less - but he never denies its appearance to the point of total abstraction; nor in the other extreme, does he claim for the physical world an existence independent of his own involvement."--Jacket.

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