“[Xie Zhiliu] painted a Yosemite that simply doesn’t exist, at least to those of us on the Western side of the globe. Actually, his Yosemite doesn’t exist on the Eastern side, either. It exists only in Xie Zhiliu’s head. His Chinese tradition was in a locked battle with a landscape he didn’t recognize. Yosemite doesn’t look like the mountains of China. The stone is different. The mountains came forth because of different geological forces. The foliage is made up of different species of tree and shrub. Reality doesn’t show itself in Yosemite the same way it shows itself in Taishan Mountain. The paintings Xie Zhiliu made in Yosemite don’t reconcile that confusion, they simply record it. One of the deepest ongoing philosophical and aesthetic problems is whether we have access to reality as it really is, or whether we always see our own version of it. In no ways can Xie Zhiliu’s Yosemite paintings be said to solve this problem. They do reflect, however, what a wonderfully, productively, beautiful problem it is and, I suppose, ever shall be.”
— Morgan Meis, “East Meets the American West”
