Liao Yunjin flower and bird screen

This screen is a flowers-and-birds painting, the Chinese picture made to be unrolled or unpinned a section at a time rather than seen all at once. the Imperial painter’s hand that made it assumed a viewer in motion.

The cloud subject is the excuse. What the Imperial dynasty painter sold was a way of looking, disciplined and unhurried.

Chinese painting treated the picture as a record of seeing, not a window onto the world.

A screen like this was made to be handed on, not framed forever. The flowers-and-birds painting still asks you to slow down, which is the whole point.

Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.