The Cultural Politics of the Brushstroke

In both modern and premodern critical writing, both "East and West," the brushstroke eventually came to be characterized as a vehicle of personal expression in defiance of the stifling rules of naturalistic representation. By the mid-twentieth century, the image of the bohemian master flinging paint would have been familiar to both Chinese and European art lovers. It does not follow, however, that the seductive rhetoric of the brushstroke has been deconstructed or even understood, as demonstrated by the cultural politics of the brushstroke in debates between and among European, American, and Chinese intellectuals over a period of four centuries.