Continents of Creation

No single lesson can cover Asian art — but a few points help frame the territory:

• Chinese ink painting treats empty space as an active element, not a background
• Xie He's Six Principles (6th century CE) governed Chinese painting for 1,500 years
• Japanese ukiyo-e prints shaped Impressionism and modern graphic design

Western art-history courses still tend to treat Asian art as a sidebar rather than a parallel — and often older — tradition of equal sophistication. That is changing, but slowly.