Page 37 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

Figs. 7, 8 Kamisaka sekka (1866 – 1942). “three evenings” (Sanseki ) and “illustrated Suzuki Zuigen (1847 – 1901). After returning from his first
handscroll” (Emakimono), from A Thousand Grasses (Chigusa), Meiji period visit to Europe, in 1888, Sekka channeled his creative ener-
(1868 – 1912), 1901 – 3. from a set of three woodblock-printed books; ink and
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color on paper, 9 /16 ∞ 14 in. (23.6 x 35.5 cm). Collection of Virginia shawan gies into the study of Rinpa painting and design under the
drosten
supervision of Kishi Kōkei (1840 – 1922), a designer and
noted collector of Rinpa-style painting. Sekka’s distinctive
rendering of traditional Rinpa motifs was instrumental in
Rinpa master.) originally a sample book for Kyoto rejuvenating the traditional craft-arts movement in Japan
kimono manufacturers, Kōrin Patterns later attracted a and imbuing it with a modern sensibility.

wider following of readers who were interested in fashion Sekka’s first attempt at creating deluxe albums of illus-
trends (cat. 36). Designs from Rinpa paintings, drawing trations drawn from the Rinpa repertoire of themes yielded
manuals, and these pattern books were reinterpreted in the three-volume A Thousand Grasses (Chigusa), the first

late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese tex- two volumes of which are extravagantly printed with
tiles. Primordial natural motifs such as stylized waves multiple blocks (figs. 7, 8). A Thousand Grasses demon-
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and watery streams became part of this shared vocabulary, strates a remarkable fascination with Japanese material cul-
as did subjects that Kōrin had brought into the Rinpa ture as well as a desire to perpetuate the admiration of
visual canon, such as the Thirty-six Poetic Immortals or such traditional crafts as textiles, papermaking, and wooden

the irises at Yatsuhashi, which were cut and pasted into dolls. Still lifes of accoutrements for a shell-matching game
kimono designs. and an incense contest set are testimony to how Sekka and
Among the artists who helped transmit a traditional his admirers hoped to keep such traditional pastimes

Rinpa aesthetic into the modern consciousness was Kami- alive. Pictorial themes such as Matsushima (Pine Islands)
saka Sekka (1866 – 1942), who excelled in both painting and and windswept pines by the shore are a reminder of how
the print medium. The Kyoto-born Sekka was first tutored the Rinpa repertoire formulated in the seventeenth century
in the Maruyama-Shijō style under the nihonga artist was perpetuated by later artists (cat. 67). other designs by
a history of rinpa

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