"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] msncom> schreef in bericht 
news:48c17746$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Yes, but need you show the room full of 'dirty linen' every time just to 
> prove the worth of the result?  That worth should be manifest in the 
> result alone, should it not?  I think the painter was, at a minimum, very 
> patient with his patron.  Perhaps my impoliteness would be a poor thing, 
> but in the painters place, I surely would have let the patron walk across 
> the street and buy another artist's painting, if all he apparently wanted 
> was a low price for a single stroke of the brush.

I think there are a couple of things playing here. First of all the attitude 
towards painters and/or the painters craft, in imperial China. A bit similar 
to the painters in Rembrandt's time who were considered artisans, not 
artists: it was often the effort, the toiling, that was considered valuable 
over the ultimate piece produced. The estethics of the final piece were 
certainly appreciated, but more so through the awareness of shedded sweat, 
so to speak. It is the way, not the goal, that counts.

Even today, such attitudes still exist. In the town I lived in recently, the 
municipality had provided for several monumental sculptures in and around 
town. A laudable effort. However, at the disclosure of one of them (A giant 
child's top in stone) the municipality official in his speech told the 
audience that the sculpture was indeed beautiful, but that in his opinion, 
it would have been even more beautiful if it had been twice its present 
size!

I think the story - in the sense of Confucius - is supposed to drive home 
that you have to do your best to achieve something.... (?)

Thomas

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