Page 18 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

artistic title of Hokkyō (Bridge of the law) after he carried animated energy of the scene. The clashing currents in
out an important commission for a set of twenty sliding- Sōtatsu’s archipelago operate according to their own system
door paintings ( fusuma-e) for the palace of an imperial of perspective. We see the waters in profile from a slightly

prince. What we can deduce from Sōtatsu’s surviving elevated vantage point, but the whirlpools are shown from a
10
works, both diminutive and grand, is that he assimilated bird’s-eye view. This collage of competing rills creates an
the prevailing aesthetic tendencies of Momoyama-period initial visual confusion, yet it draws us into the composition

painting and decoration, which embraced bravura expres- at every level, from the golden clouds of mist to the simi-
sion, but reinterpreted them in innovative, unexpected, lar, amorphous shapes that may constitute a sandbar. Such
and sometimes even playful ways. Sōtatsu inherited the perspectival play, which became a standard trope of the
fascination for gold backgrounds typ ical of the Momoyama Rinpa aesthetic system, lends flat, graphic presentations of
period, for instance, but he deployed gold quite differently natural forms a palpable sense of depth and recession.

from the artists of the Kano atelier, who catered mostly to Waves at Matsushima became an icon of the Rinpa
the tastes of warrior patrons and thus used gold to convey canon after it was copied by Kōrin, whose version is lost
an aura of overbearing authority. but was recorded for posterity in woodblock-print format

Although Sōtatsu no doubt was inspired by the spatial by Sakai Hōitsu in the sequel edition (1826) of One Hun-
expansiveness, fantastical effects, and drama that gold back- dred Paintings by Kōrin (Kōrin hyakuzu). Followers of both
grounds can offer, his use of gold creates a totally different Sōtatsu and Kōrin created variations on the theme of the
impression. Aimed at the courtier class and a wealthy Pine Islands. Although the Metropolitan Museum’s ver-
merchant clientele, Sōtatsu’s works were intended neither to sion, Boats upon Waves (cat. 33), varies from the Freer work

pander to the tastes of the nouveau riche nor to achieve in that the artist replaced the pines with crimson-leafed
merely decorative effects. Yamane Yūzō, the pioneering maples and included two empty boats bobbing on the
scholar of Rinpa studies in the postwar period, has persua- water, it nonetheless adheres to the stylistic trademarks of

sively argued that gold, for Sōtatsu, instead connoted a the Sōtatsu workshop as it operated in the late seventeenth
wholesome brightness: an all-encompassing sense of well- and early eighteenth centuries.
being and abundance.
11
Among Sōtatsu’s masterworks relying on the transfor- the physical nature of ink
mative power of gold is Waves at Matsushima (Pine Islands), When one thinks of Rinpa painting, the first attributes that

in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., which come to mind, rightfully, are bold coloration and pattern-
depicts pine-studded islands amid roiling seas (fig. 2). The ing. Yet, among the surviving corpus of the Sōtatsu studio
painting is a seminal compendium of waves depicted according are a good number of ink paintings on paper, and how these

to a Rinpa aesthetic. note how they curve, lurch, and crash, very different works fit into the continuum of the artist’s
with the coursing water indicated by parallel striations — output helps establish a foundation for the Rinpa attitude designing nature
no doubt created with a special multitipped brush — so toward the power and prowess of brushwork. Two techniques,
that we experience at once the flow of the brush and the in particular, need to be mentioned: mokkotsu (“boneless”

17