Day 90 - Kannon scroll


September 20, 2018

Gallery 224 holds Buddhist scrolls and sculptures dating  from the late 12th or 13th century forward. 

Today's object is a hanging scroll, pehaps 30 inches long, painted in ink, color, and gold by Sakai Hotsu in 1823. It depicts the bodhissatva Kannon in an outdoor setting. What is striking to me is the mix of calm and turbulence in the image. 

Kannon is sitting cross-legged in the lotus position. His hands are folded in his lap; his eyes are open but lowered. He appears to be in a meditative state.  He is dressed in white robes that stand out against the greige  silk background. His skin appears to be nearly the same color as that background, although his lips are pink and his cheeks also have a pinkish tinge.  He wears a headdress embellished with gold decorations, along with a gold necklace.  The limited palette of colors in which the figure is painted contributes to the sense of tranquillity. 

On the other hand, he is framed against a shallow ground of roughly semicircular forms made by a gnarled pine branch and the uneven outlines of what may be clouds or mountains.  Streaks down the left side of the scroll suggest the movement of a waterfall. Below the vegetation-covered rock on which he is sitting, waters seem to swirl and eddy. The uneven, twisting lines of these natural phenomena suggest constant movement and change.  

But isn't this just what the painter is trying to convey? The enlightened man achieves calm in the midst of a roiling universe. 

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