A talk by Martin Powers, Sally Michelson Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures, University of Michigan. In both modern and pre-modern critical writing, both "East and West," the brushstroke eventually came to be characterized as a vehicle of personal expression in defiance of the "stifling" rules of naturalistic representation. This talk surveys the cultural politics of the brushstroke in debates between and among European, American, and Chinese intellectuals, over a period of four centuries.