This book contemplates a large problem: what is a traditional Chinese painting? Wu Hung answers this question through a comprehensive analysis of the screen, a major format and a popular pictorial motif in traditional China. With a broad array of examples ranging from the early centuries C.E. to the 1800s, he explores the screen's position in art - as an important site for artistic imagination, as an illusionary representation on a flat surface, and as an architectural device defining cultural conventions. A screen occupies a space and divides it, supplies an ideal surface for painting,...