Page 167 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

The elaborate rikka arrangements of the fifteenth­century master Ikenobō
Senkei and his descendants were highly regarded among Kyoto’s wealthy merchant
class, though they practiced a much less complicated style of floral arrangement

called seika (or shōka), which was later pronounced ikebana (“live flowers”). This
fascination with flowers is manifest in the works of later Rinpa artists, who
made fanciful floral arrangements a frequent subject of their paintings.

At the very root of Rinpa is the painting shop in Kyoto where Tawaraya
Sōtatsu, scion of a wealthy merchant family, sold exquisite poetry cards and other
rarefied offerings to a discerning clientele of prominent tea aficionados, calligra­
phers, and artists. The deluxe decorated papers that Sōtatsu made, which were
inscribed with poems by noted calligraphers, were a tradition from the Heian

period that he revitalized with his dynamic, bold, and extravagant designs.
Sōtatsu’s foremost collaborator was the noted calligrapher Hon’ami Kōetsu, whose
vibrant brush writing can be seen on a section of a scroll luxuriously decorated in

silver with designs of butterflies and grasses (cat. 75). A section of a much longer
scroll with underpainting by Sōtatsu of lotus pads and flowers in different stages
of budding, blossoming, and decay likewise features poems inscribed by Kōetsu
(cat. 76). In each case the content of the poem has no direct connection to the
pictorial theme of the underpainting; nevertheless, the visual counterpoint of

the bold calligraphy against the rhythmically arranged decoration makes an
impressive statement.
In the mid­seventeenth century, following Sōtatsu’s death, paintings of

flowering plants and grasses became the stock­in­trade of the artists in his studio
(cat. 77). In various iterations, the studio’s “I’nen” seal became a sort of trademark
for screens on floral or arboreal themes. Although the next generation of Rinpa
artists expanded the botanical range of such works, they retained Sōtatsu’s empha­
sis on flowers, with their showy blossoms and striking profiles. A luxurious and

lushly painted pair of screens from the early eighteenth century is notable for the
panel devoted to vegetables and flowering grasses (cat. 78), but often the most
dramatic screens and hanging scrolls with floral imagery are those restricted to

a single variety, such as hollyhocks, chrysanthemums, or poppies (cats. 79, 80).
The floral motifs of screens and scrolls were translated into the medium
of ceramics by potters such as Nonomura Ninsei, whose vessels were veritable
canvases of continuous, wraparound landscape designs (see, e.g., fig. 4 in the
flowers

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