CHINESE ART

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 100, 8 February 1936, Page 8

CHINESE ART

RELATIO NTO SHORT SIGHT. Afay I suggest, as a. specialist who has made a study covering some twenty-five years of more than 120,000 ease histories of Chinese eyesight, that short-sightedness is partially responsible for the peculiarity of Chinese landscape and other paintings, writes O. D. Rasmussen to the “Daily Telegraph.” In my last thesis, published by the Rrißtish Optical Association, I pointed out that more than 75 per cent, of all CliCinese wearing glasses are myopic, which is almost the reverse of conditions in Western Europe, with the exception of Germany. The history of spectacle lenses in China as far back as research permits, proves that both the, predisposition and the condtiion existed for many centuries. Travellers in the ninth century noted the studiious habits of even small children, although correcting lenses do not appear to have been applied, except for magnification or reading purposes, until some time prior to Marco Polo’s visit in the thirteenth century, long after the establishment of art traditions. It has been held of certain of our Impressionist and other painters that “bad eyesight,” obviously short : iglit, was a contributory cause, and it is more than probable that such was the case in China. The theory that Chinese painters, who were nearly always literati, poets, and philosophers, and therefore men. whose eyesight may be considered poor, painted the spirit rather than the material, would not altogether account for the invariable minute foreground detail amis the misty l>ackgrounds of their pictures. Western artists, it can be presumed, saw distant objects clearly, perhaps more deafly, and accordingly obtained their perspective, or relative sizes. Chinese artists, particularly those of the 'Six Dynasties, Tang and- Sung periods, saw near objects in detail and their distance as a more or less complete blurr. In any case, if spiritual impressionism was the Chinese, principle, it still docs not explain why they were able, or wanted to, “memorise” and depict so many of the nearest objects in such material detail. Why should their “spiritualism” be confined almost invariably to background and not to foreground subjects? This historical myopic defect m Chinese sight is not so fully realised in England as it is on the Continent .