Perspective is the fundamental historic difference between
Western and Chinese painting. After the 13th Century, Western
painting developed vanishing points in fixed perspective.
Chinese painters, although aware of perspective, rejected the
single-vanishing point method, instead producing landscapes with
"parallel perspectives" in which the viewer travels within the
painting. The new Nanjing Museum of Art and Architecture is
sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International Practical
Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of the
Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the
shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and
water, which characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries
of the composition of Chinese painting. The museum is formed by
a "field" of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in
black rammed earth over which a light "figure" hovers. The
straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the
winding passage of the figure above.