Page 39 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

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Fig. 11 Kayama Matazo¯ (1927 – 2004). Star Festival (Tanabata), 1968. six-panel fold- stylized renditions of waves typical of the Rinpa canon.
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ing screen; ink, color, gold, and silver on silk, 66 /16 in. ∞ 12 ft. 3 /4 in. (168.8 x Kayama often acknowledged his indebtedness to past
374 cm). saint Louis art Museum; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Kayama Matazō, the
Japan america society of st. Louis, and dr. J. peggy adeboi (150:1987) Rinpa masters:

rendition (cat. 42). In other images in the volume, includ- Tawaraya Sōtatsu, a seventeenth-century master of
ing an endearing scene of two puppies mesmerized by a ink painting, created works using gold and silver

snail (fig. 9), Sekka drew on the vibrant palette pioneered motifs in which he tried to go beyond mere decorative
by Kiitsu and ohō, as in his celebrated image of a woman art. When I think about this, I feel that the technical
among rice fields (fig. 10); the version reproduced here is a possibilities of modern nihonga should not be
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single sheet issued separately but made from the same forgotten.
blocks used to print the Momoyogusa.
Kayama’s folding screen on the theme of the Star Festival,

Contemporary art and d esign or Tanabata, reveals his fascination with the Rinpa agenda
In contemporary times, the nihonga artist Kayama of distilling the primary elements of nature into distinc-
Matazō (1927 – 2004) refreshed Rinpa motifs from both tive, abstract forms (fig. 11). In the compass of a single six-

ancient yamato-e and the works of Sōtatsu and Kōrin to panel folding screen, sky, land, and sea — all depicted in
hypnotically powerful effect. His famous Thousand Cranes an abstract Rinpa idiom — are complexly interwoven.
(Senzuru) makes homage to the underpainting of cranes Cut silver foil sprinkled across an expanse of midnight
that Sōtatsu created for Kōetsu’s poetry as well as the blue represents the Milky Way and its stars, which is the
a history of rinpa

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