Liu kuo sung biography of barack obama

My ongoing look into Japanese and Chinese painting has turned up a few new/old ideas, and blown me away with some new discoveries. It’s becoming quite clear why I felt attracted to it; these are themes I’ve written on before in the context of my own photography (e.g. here and here).

The first idea is about the level of abstraction frequently present. Many of those mountains and rivers seem as much about shapes and textures as about landscape, more evocative than representational. Sometimes there’s an interesting mix of broad abstraction and realistic detail, as in the thousand-year-old Travelers amid Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan, shown at left.

A second realization is that, like similar works at different times, this one by Fan Kuan smacks of the sublime. This is evident in the language used to describe it by historian Patricia Ebrey (Cambridge Illustrated History of China, or Wikipedia):

Jutting boulders, tough scrub trees, a mule train on the road, and a temple in the forest on the cliff are all vividly depicted. There is a suitable break between the foreground and the towering central peak behind, which is treated as if it were a backdrop, suspended and fitted into a slot behind the foreground. There are human figures in this scene, but it is

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Christian leader thanks to Obama for defending freedom of religion

Delhi (AsiaNews) - "We express deep gratitude to President Barack Obama for speaking out in support of religious freedom, as defined by Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, and for reminding us that violence against a particular group because of its faith is unacceptable," said Christian activist Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) as he spoke to AsiaNews about the recent visit by the US President to India.

Before leaving the country for Saudi Arabia for his first official meeting with the new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the US president delivered a strong message against confessional extremism.

Obama called for greater tolerance among people of different faiths, stressing that "India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith".

"[E]every person," Obama said, "has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination."

In his 35-minute address in front of a selected audience of about 1,500 people at Siri Fort Auditorium (the first speech without any Indian leader by his side), the US president made reference to religious toleranc