Day 91 - Rinpa scroll painting
September 21, 2018
This small gallery (224) is devoted to Rinpa, a representational style that arose in the 17th century. According to the caption, it emphasized "bold, exaggerated, or purely graphic renderings of natural motifs" and formalized depictions of poets, scholars, and fictional characters. The caption goes on to say that Rinpa art tended toward simplification, sometimes achieved through exaggeration.
I have no idea what "purely graphic renderings of natural motifs" means. But today's object, a scroll painting in ink and color on silk by Suzuki Kitsu (1796-1858) measuring perhaps 26 inches across and 18 inches high, certainly exemplifies simplification. The painting's title, "Crane and Pine Tree with Rising Sun," perfectly describes the painting, which contains only these three elements. The composition is balanced along a diagonal that runs from the lower left to the upper right corner. Below the diagonal are the gnarled branches and tufted needles of the pine; above it, a black and white crane, which has a patch of bright red above its eye, is seen in profile flying below the reddish orb of the sun. It is also balanced in color: Neither the large mass of green pine needles nor the smaller but still sizable red sun fights for dominance. And in fact the complementarity of these elements seems appropriate and presumably intentional, since both the pine and the crane are symbols of longevity.
Speaking of which - despite, or maybe because of, its simplicity, I think that if I owned this scroll, I would enjoy looking at it for a very long time.
I have no idea what "purely graphic renderings of natural motifs" means. But today's object, a scroll painting in ink and color on silk by Suzuki Kitsu (1796-1858) measuring perhaps 26 inches across and 18 inches high, certainly exemplifies simplification. The painting's title, "Crane and Pine Tree with Rising Sun," perfectly describes the painting, which contains only these three elements. The composition is balanced along a diagonal that runs from the lower left to the upper right corner. Below the diagonal are the gnarled branches and tufted needles of the pine; above it, a black and white crane, which has a patch of bright red above its eye, is seen in profile flying below the reddish orb of the sun. It is also balanced in color: Neither the large mass of green pine needles nor the smaller but still sizable red sun fights for dominance. And in fact the complementarity of these elements seems appropriate and presumably intentional, since both the pine and the crane are symbols of longevity.
Speaking of which - despite, or maybe because of, its simplicity, I think that if I owned this scroll, I would enjoy looking at it for a very long time.
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