Red Cliffs and Green Valleys

Wang Meng

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wang Meng’s grandfather Zhao Mengfu was one of the first artists to make landscape paintings that referred knowingly to earlier styles. This idea, simple on its face but revolutionary in its impact, required not just a knowledge of art history but the ability to forge something new out of it, and it became the dominant mode for ambitious landscape painters going forward. This intimately scaled hanging scroll shows Wang Meng working in this vein, using ropy texturing brushstrokes and vigorous dotting to refer to elements of his grandfather’s style and to those still-earlier painters who had inspired it.

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