A new chapter in the study of Chinese sculpture in the Sung Dynasty opened with the discovery of the Mai-chi-shan caves already referred to and the publication of a little-known sculptured cliff at Ta-tsu in Szechwan, dating chiefly from the Sung. The lively realism of the Ta-tsu high relief figures, some of which resemble the clay figures at Mai-chi-shan, others reminiscent of mediaeval European sculpture, is further proof that beside the courtly and scholarly arts for which the Sung is famous there flourished a vigorous school of popular Buddhist art of a very different character.]

As Jean Lurcat said, The art had died, killed by consumption, insipidness, lymphatism, and inversion.

1984, Audrey Wood, Presto Change-O, Child's Play, →ISBN.

The constellation […] about that time ascendant.