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220 Wáng Wéi Did Not Paint a Fire Wáng Wéi, 701 – 761, Tang Dynasty Poet/Painter, Southern School of Painting What is missing is anything that Wáng Wéi painted, so no one else could paint a copy of his painting of a fire. But, he wouldn’t even have painted a fire. Look at the “idea copies” of his hills. There’s nothing in his work like the tufted hides of brush that cover the canyons here. A fire has many colors of black and white that Wáng Wéi never had to think about. In autumn, the sky is full of them, slips of ash and embers flying, the heat signature of trees writing their yearly saga in smoke that drifts low and then out to sea. A wash of grey at the undulating horizon— with a clean brush, maybe Wáng Wéi would have painted that, but he did not paint anything like our fires 221 though he would have understood them, though he might have smelled them grinding his ink stick against water. ...

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