Only in the realm of dreams has the artist found full freedom to create. I think the difference is well summed up in the anecdote about Matisse. When a lady visiting his studio said, “But surely, the arm of this woman is much too long,” the artist replied politely, “Madame, you are mistaken. This is not a woman, this is a picture.”
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But no tradition of art had a deeper understanding of what I have called the “screen” than the art of the Far East. Chinese art theory discusses the power of expressing
through absence of brush and ink. “Figures, even though painted without eyes, must seem to look; without ears, must seem to listen . . . ”
