Page 101 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

For an island nation such as Japan, waves are part of everyday
life. The endless cycle of swelling, cresting, and cascading water along the shore is a

visual and auditory reminder not only of the cyclical passing of time, but also of
the boundless and occasionally devastating power of the sea. Images of cresting
waves, in particular, have become emblematic of Japanese culture. Although artists

the world over have struggled with how best to capture the dynamic, formal beauty
of waves — especially the moment when a wave’s arching form begins to dissolve
back into the ocean — nowhere has the tableau of roiling seas, a hallmark of the
Rinpa aethetic, been captured with such gripping poignancy as in the works of
Japanese artists, from the medieval ink paintings of Sesshū and Sesson to the

early modern depictions of Sōtatsu, Kōrin, and Hokusai.
Sōtatsu and his studio made a subspecialty of seascapes, often conjuring up the
poetic associations of the scenic Matsushima (Pine Islands), an archipelago near

Sendai, in northern Japan, famous for its wave-carved rock formations and the
windswept pines that dot its sandy shorelines (see fig. 2 in the introduction). A work
WAVES by a follower of Sōtatsu, Boats upon Waves (cat. 33), relies on a variety of techniques

to render water and, notably, transplants the pines of the craggy islands with red

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