Bamboo Shoots
widely advertised cultural propaganda magazines and by popular prints, is neither unfamiliar nor inaccessible. Surprising, then, that Mr. Sullivan's admirable historical anthology can claim to be the first of its kind in any language. It is doubly welcome. First, as Sir Herbert Read points out in his brief introduction: 'Western art. in its most advanced phases. has conie to a point where it meets the ancient Chinese tradition'; and some action-painting, at least, suggests Ch'an affinities. Zen inspiration. Secondly, Mr. Sullivan's surve■. though it is based largely on data gathered during a six-year stay in China, is commendably objec- tive. There the modern movement of the last half-century has been essentially a politico- literary one. To illustrate the variety of con- current modes, Mr. Sullivan draws on Chinese painting as far afield as Singapore, Honolulu and, inevitably, Paris. Adapting rather than adopting new strains, China has been less ready than Japan to discard her cultural past. If native senti- mentality can out-candy anything in the Far West, Chinese social-realist woodcuts tend to improve on their Russian models. But see the four quarto, colour-plates for four stylistic extremes : a craggy traditional landscape, a straight docu- mentary, a passable pseudo-Klee, a distinctly Sinn-Ernst. Other plates are fascinating for dif- ferent reasons. 'Tibetan Girl with Dog' shows a
young mastiff straining at a chain held by what is clearly a Chinese girl in Tibetan dress. ktucti GORDON PORTEUS
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