Page 325 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

edge of traditions merged all these into developing "Way of Tea": beauty, wabi (refined improvise on the sharper and more angular
"Higashiyama culture/' austerity), and sabi (cultivated poverty or the brush effects of Ma Yuan, as transmitted by
beauty of worn and rustic things). The "Way of Geiami from Noami. The difficulties of dis-
Tea" was to become a cult by the early seven- covering the Ami style (or styles) are com-
The "Three Ami" teenth century. pounded since they had no real following, hence
Doboshu were cultured companions to the Although the "three Ami" are usually no later lineage whose works might reveal their
retired shogun, but of lowly antecedents. The grouped together in any analysis of Muromachi forerunners. Among the professional monk-
most famous were the "three Ami": Noami ink painting, their extant works are not neatly painters who dominated Japanese art in the fif-
(1397-1471), Geiami (1431-1485), and Soami similar in style. Noami's signed and dated teenth century the Ami seem to have exerted
(d. 1525). Originally named (respectively) White-Robed Kannon of 1468 (cat. 224) offers a little influence; perhaps their occasional
Shinno, Shingei, and Shinso, the three adopted quiet and subtle version of Sesshu's sharp, lin- use of a Chinese amateur manner was found
the ami ending to denote that they were Ami- ear brushwork in the representation of a stan- antipathetic.
dist lay priests of the Ji (Timely) subsect, dedi- dard and oft-repeated Zen icon. Although the Shokoku-ji, which dominated the art scene in
cated to the worship of Amida (Buddha of the handling of the setting is recognizably Japanese, Kyoto for the first three-quarters of the fif-
Western Paradise), to belief in the saving effi- the soft face and expression owe much to the teenth century, declined with the decline of
cacy of the nembutsu ("Homage to Amida Mu Qi image in the triptych at Daitoku-ji, the shogunal power. By the end of the century a
Buddha"), and to the teachings of the Lotus font for all White-Robed Kannon images from newer Zen temple, Daitoku-ji, and its subtemples
Sutra. Due principally to their able services to the Kamakura period on. The screens attributed had become a dominant force. Under Ikkyu's
the warrior class, the doboshu came to be indis- to Noami (cat. 226) are freely washed, sugges- (cat. 238) abbacy Daitoku-ji flourished, a
pensable to their masters, experts in the non- tive rather than explicit, and owe much to the scourge to the slack morals and discipline of the
military arts. Their backgrounds made them late Song Chinese "boneless" manner of "fur old Gozan temples, increasingly supported by
familiar with "lowly" arts, notably popular nar- and feathers" painting. Still more different is the tea masters and especially by the prospering
rative and poetry and satirical drama. In a broad The Pine Beach at Miho in the Egawa Museum, merchants of Sakai, the chief port (near present-
sense they began as entertainers and ended as Hyogo Prefecture. This simple six-fold screen, day Osaka), whose pragmatic ambience was well
arbiters of taste in various aspects of culture. sometimes —rather shakily — attributed to known and understood by Ikkyu. Beginning
Noami, poet, designer, painter, and painting Noami, combines landscape in the "boneless" with the shadowy painter Sotan (1413-1481),
mounter, was commissioned by Yoshimasa to style of the Chinese Song dynasty painter Mi followed by the still unclear figure of Soga
compile a catalogue, the Gyomotsu One Fu (1051-1107) with pine trees and low, rolling Jasoku (or Dasoku, act. c. 1491), a tradition
Mokuroku, listing the Chinese works in the hills done in monochrome ink in the native developed that became the Soga school. Bokusai
collection inherited from Yoshimitsu. Naturally yamato-e manner. Shoto (d. 1492), friend of Ikkyu and presum-
this listing included paintings important in Geiami's masterpiece is Viewing a Waterfall ably the painter of his remarkable portrait-
establishing the direction of the "new manner." (cat. 234), executed in 1480 in the sharp angular study, was nominally of that line. Its later
Soami wrote the Kundaikan Sochdki, a cata- style of Noami's Kannon, but far bolder and accomplishments, in the late sixteenth and early
logue-commentary on things Chinese, includ- more dramatic — recalling the manner of Sesshu seventeenth century, are outside the limits of
ing the environment for and manner of equally with that of the Southern Song painter this exhibition.
displaying treasures from the mainland. The Ma Yuan, who was well represented in the sho-
influence of these and other doboshu on archi- gun's collection. Geiami's work seems thor- Zen Painting in Kamakura
tecture and garden design, on the emerging No oughly professional, reflecting nothing of the
and Kyogen drama, and on the still unstruc- Chinese amateur's "boneless" manner that Still another significant constellation of Zen
tured Tea Ceremony (cha no yu), was enor- Noami sometimes adopted —if indeed The Pine temples, in Kamakura, just southwest of
mous. Yoshimasa's personal gifts and Beach at Miho even dimly reflects any of his present-day Tokyo, was also important within
temperament permitted, in his time of retire- artistic habits. The art of the Amis seems eclec- the Muromachi ink painting tradition. As early
ment (1474-1490), the flourishing of a highly tic, reflecting something of the stylistic variety as the fourteenth century, when the Hojo re-
sophisticated and subtle culture, whose most in the shogunal collection of the Chinese paint- gents exercised the remains of shogunal author-
characteristic manifestations were the Tea Cere- ing curated and catalogued by them. ity at Kamakura, Zen art, including "monk-
mony, No drama, and shoin architecture. The The Ami corpus even includes a touch of the amateur" ink painting, flourished. The most
latter was residential architecture in a new, "amateur" qualities so highly valued by the important of the "Five Mountains" (Gozan)
"Japanized" Chinese manner, characterized by Chinese literati (wen ren) in painting, though it temples in Kamakura, in particular Enkaku-ji,
informality and simplicity, with the tokonoma was not derived from the contemporaneous wen possessed numerous Chinese paintings: thirty-
(alcove for the display of paintings and objects) ren of Ming China. Rather it was apprehended nine portraits of Chinese monks and thirty-six
as the principal innovation. The Silver Pavilion of certain aspects of Song dynasty painting paintings of landscape, flower-and-bird, and
(Ginkaku), the T6gu-do residence hall, and the known to the Japanese from the poetic and liter- figural subjects. A 1320 inventory of the Hojo
garden of Yoshimasa's compound at Higashi- ary texts associated with the circle of Mi Fu in art collection, the Butsunichi-an Komotsu
yama, all within the precincts of what is now eleventh-century China. Soami's paintings in Mokuroku, records these works. Most of them
Jisho-ji in eastern Kyoto, still remain as the particular, with their abundant use of "bone- came from south China, especially the region
finest expression of the early creative accom- less" broad washes and simple, dabbing brush- around Ningbo, a center of professional paint-
plishments in the "new manner" in archi- work of the "Mi" style, display an effective, ing workshops producing Buddhist icons and
tecture, landscape design, and related arts. even poetic, combination of pictorial devices, sets of luohan paintings with landscape back-
Modest in scale, the buildings reflect the ideals including measured and subtle atmospheric grounds. Significantly, the great Chan temple
in process of creation as corollary to the effects and bold, simple designs. He could also Jingde Si, where the visiting monk-painter

324 CIRCA 1492