Chinese Portrait Painter 18th century

Editor: Here we have "Chinese Portrait Painter," dating back to the 18th century. It's currently housed here at The Met. It appears to be a painting executed in gouache and watercolours. There's an undeniable sense of intimacy conveyed through its composition, don't you think? What are your thoughts on this particular work? Curator: Note the bi-fold screen format, its compositional structure being dictated by that division. Consider the painter on the right: seated, rigidly posed. Observe how his gaze is fixed intensely on the figure held up in front of him in a frame. What effect is created by that juxtaposition between artist, image, and portrayed woman? Editor: I see. It feels very staged, and a little flat… Curator: Precisely. And consider the composition's flatness. How do the restricted range of tonal values, along with the textured gold background, contribute to that flattened perspective? There is an ambiguous spatiality at work. Editor: It definitely highlights the picture plane itself, doesn't it? Like it is asserting its two-dimensionality? What does the screen format mean here? Curator: Good point. As a folding screen it would act more like sculpture than painting, right? It might then activate three-dimensional space, not create an illusion of space. The very idea of perspective collapses here…and a dialectic develops. We are neither looking at the painting, nor "through" the painting, so the gaze and pose become artificial and mannered…a deliberate flatness becomes pronounced. Editor: That’s a very astute point. Thank you. Now, I notice how the artist is presented in the very artwork itself. We see painting as something inherently self-referential. This perspective has really given me a different lens to see this work, rather than looking for narrative. Curator: And perhaps, from here, a better grasp of the dialectical relation of image-making to materiality, too.