Learning Goal: I’m working on a art writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.
How does a painter cope with a format that is continuous? Particularly if he is not punctuating it with texts? As we move from right to left through Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival, are we moving steadily through space? Are we moving steadily through time?
A novelist is a failure if his readers are too bored to turn the page. How does Zhang Zeduan keep his viewers unrolling his picture?
Is the picture self-contained? Does it depend on a text or any external source of information? What is the subject of the picture? Is the scroll complete?
Why was the painting done? Who was the audience for it? What are the painter’s aims likely to have been?