Cloudy Mountains

Mi Youren

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The son of Mi Fu (1052–1107), Mi Youren was an accomplished scholar-artist and the leading connoisseur of his time, often acting as the authenticator of ancient paintings for the emperor. He rose to the position of vice president of the Board of War. The simplified, blurry mountain forms, which Mi Youren inherited from his father (there is no longer any reliable example of the older Mi's painted work), represent a significant break from the detailed Northern Sung landscape styles. Created with wet ink dots (called "Mi-family dots"), this style of landscape painting is the immediated predecessor of the evocative ink-wash landscape style of the later Southern Song period. Referred to by scholar-artists as "ink play," the style suggests the importance of the painter's psychological expression, thereby raising the status of painting to that of poetry and calligraphy.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art