Now, we look at the same thing and I check if you see what I see — maybe we reach something like conscious childhood at some point, if we are very good

Regarding the seals: I like this. So, the painting becomes a vehicle for telling about a journey, and also about the relations of (important) people to each other, no? Question: once a person of royal rank has put a seal on the painting, would it still be appropriate for someone of less importance (in rank?) to put a seal also? And then, possibly the painting could also tell something about how “what is considered important” has changed over time (if it has changed)?

I look at the painting (am also trying to ignore the seals) and see something which appears like a very condensed narrative. Somehow, the elements do not seem to be fixed – they seem to be open for a change in their relationships.
The Beuys painting set in relation to the ancient Chinese looks a lttle bit as if it wanted to say: and all we can do to approach a kind of condensed narrative is through the emergency bridge of giving it a title that suggests a narrative: “wandering box”. Beuys did something similar by shifting the artist/art work relationship with the help of his (most likely invented biographical) story, that he once was saved by the Nomads and healed with the help of fat and felt etc…
Unsure, but we might have an interesting approach to the “what is meta” discussion here? — possibly a Western necessity? (– thinking)
The Chines painting and its journey do not appear in a similar relationship.

the praying hands are a sketch, yes, and the empty space is just that, not yet drawn upon. similar with the little house, this is a representational painting in the spirit of the impressionists, to catch an atmosphere a lot of space is given to the sky and water. but the basic focus of both of these is to define and present.

with cage and de maria, we’re approaching the time when eastern ideas are more or less explicitly seeping into western art. cage’s ’silence’ in particular is a very good example of the understanding embodied in the terms i tried to explain earlier. he speaks of silence and words in a relationship of ‘mutual arising’ (相生 xiāngshēng), a well-known term in chinese to express this polar and generative kind of relationship.

interesting that we’re talking in images and feelings here: you have asked me not to define my ideas, but to say ‘what they are like’ and ‘what they are not like’. interesting

Putting western and chinese views next to each other surely implies some sort of comparison?

Anyhow, I’m aroused and want a bit more!

Here is an image that may help to explain the way of thinking in mutually dependent polarities I’m trying to explain: it shows how in a traditional Chinese painting, a considerable amount of space is left white. However in the Chinese reading this is not ‘nothing’ as maybe Western viewers would see it, but as much ’something’ as the painted areas in the image. In terms of 虛實 (xushi) one could say that the white space serves to give rise to the painted spaces, but also vice versa. I would describe (this is simplified of course) the white space as giving more opportunity for the void or abstract, 虛(xu), and the painted space contributing the 實 (shi), i.e. the solid and the concrete. It is the interplay of both that creates resonance in the viewer. I understand this way of composing as dialogue: the painting invites the viewer to imagine and construct as much as it makes statements, and in this way enables freedom for thoughts to roam. This feeling of roaming within the thought/feeling space of an evocative painting is the traditional way of appreciating Chinese landscape painting.