Bulletin Number Five 1984

in the last twenty years. It is very much a re flection o f work done in the Republic on the subject o f Tang ceramics and the excavation o f archaeological sites during the period. Q. You have published more than ten books. Which ones are your favourites ？ A. I f you ask an author that, I think he always likes the latest one best. There are two others which I like most: one is a little book called Style in the Arts o f China ， which is really an essay written in about a month and I regard it my best book; the other is Ancient Chinese Bronzes, which o f course is out o f date because so many more discoveries have been made. I think I still like it because it was written in such a way that it looked forward to change. Q. Would you tell us something about your best book then? A. The Style in the Arts o f China is not a history o f the development o f art period by period but is an attempt to talk about the general principles o f Chinese design. What I mean by style is that special imprint on any form o f art which makes it Chinese. Q. Have you done any comparative studies o f East and West in your works? A. I have not done any straight comparative work except in Style in the Arts o f China. There I talked about certain principles o f art as ap pearing in the West and in China, either making comparison o f resemblances or contrasts. Q. Does one have to be very familiar with Buddhist art fo r the study o f Tang art? A. I always recognize the importance o f Buddhist art and think that any account o f Chinese art which omitted Buddhist sculpture and painting would not be complete. It is also my belief that although the sources o f Buddhist art in China come from India, when it reaches China, it is Chinese art —it becomes very much a national art which is quite distinctive. As for the sources o f Buddhist art, I did make acquaintance w ith it rather fu lly in India. I visited many Buddhist sites or Buddhist temples in northwest India and studied their art first-hand. These studies stood me in good stead when it came to looking at the art o fDunhuang, Gongxian, Yun Gang and Longmen in China itself. Q. You are also a specialist on Japanese art, aren't you? A. Well, let us get it clear. When I was offered a travelling fellowship to go to the East for one year in the fifties, I could not go to the People's Republic o f China, so I went to Japan, to study China in Japan. When I was there I did spend the time looking at Japanese and Buddhist sculpture. One has to see it in this light. The history o f Buddhist art isn't complete in China w ithout taking certain phases of this art in Japan into account. Hundreds, if not thousands, o f Chinese sculptors, architects and craftsmen went to Japan in the beginning o f the eighth century when the capital o f Nam was being rebuilt and they founded in Japan the tradition o f Chinese art. Japan is fu ll o f Chinese art in application and there are certain parts of Buddhist sculpture which have survived in Japan but have not survived in China. Q. Have you encountered any difficulties in your study o f Chinese art? A. In the early days o f the People's Republic, there were few opportunities for us foreigners to travel in China, and when we got to China, there were fewer opportunities to go to the museums and sites. My first visit was in 1955 and I think I was one o f the very first western scholars on the humanities side to go there. These visits by foreigners were interrupted, just as publication was interrupted, by the Cultural Revolution. So, that was a difficu lty. The only difficulties now w ill be the practical ones. We need to find money to go to China to collect material and a senior man like myself gets more satisfaction from sending a student o f mine to do the work than from visiting myself. Q. Are there any exchange schemes between China and Britain ？ A. Yes, there are two levels o f it: the government scheme through the British Council and the scheme between the Academy o f Social Sciences in China and the British Academy. The govern ment scheme takes charge o f doctoral students and undergraduates and the other post-doctoral exchanges. Q. Recent developments in the Chinese archae ological scene and the streaming o f published material from China must have facilitated your research. A. Yes, recently the amount o f publication from China is astounding and the use o f carbon 14 INTERVIEWS 25