Page 373 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

The painted panels can be seen as evidence of
his interest in Chinese style monochrome ink
painting (the "New Style" in Muromachi Japan).
The landscape depicted is sparely dominated by
tall pines, accompanied by some unidentifiable
pavilions, with the human presence supplied on
the right by a scholar and servant on a bridge and
on the left by a lone fisherman in a boat. While
the painting style is generally Southern Song
Chinese, it is also related to fourteenth- and fif-
teenth-century Korean painting, as well as to the
Japanese inheritors of both Chinese and Korean
traditions, the Zen monk-painters of Kyoto —
Shubun, Gakuo, and others. Since the sliding-
screen format was not used in China or Korea,
this landscape must be a Japanese creation in the
"New Style." So nothing of the shogun's Chinese
collection is visible here. All the accouterments,
from costume to mirror stand to fusuma, are
Japanese.
His major accomplishment was to afford to all
the arts, in a chaotic and bloody time, patronage
and ceramics; practicing the Tea Ceremony; Yoshimasa, and the whole composition conduces that gave them scope, shape, and direction.
patronizing the No drama and poetry; and build- to an impression of diminished power. Among his achievements, tragic and pathetic in
ing several residences and worship halls in a new Two art works share the picture with the view of the ruin inflicted on his capital during and
and enduring style. shogun: the painted sliding screen behind him, after his shogunate, was the building of the Silver
Here he is shown in court robes and headdress, with its lacquered black frame dividing the picture Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji) and of the adjoining modest
barefooted, holding a closed fan in his right hand in half, and a silvered bronze mirror in the right Zen temple and tea house (called T6gu-do) in
while his left rests on his leg. Compared with foreground, its reflecting face toward the specta- 1483. These embodied his devotion to both Zen
portraits of earlier shoguns, this painting is small, tor, supported on a black-and-gold lacquered stand and Pure Land Buddhism and to the emerging Tea
and within it Yoshimasa seems dwarfed by the with a small drawer in the base. The presence of Ceremony (cha no yu) in a convincing blend of
sliding screens (fusuma) behind him and the the mirror and its relationship to Yoshimasa is simplicity, modesty of materials, and natural-
expanse of green matting (tatami) on which he enigmatic. Does it witness the hyperaesthetic ness—an arresting contrast to the magnificent
sits. Both his posture and his expression seem nature of the man ? Is it a rather pathetic sun- and luxurious edifices of Chinese and European
apprehensive (cf. the portrait at Jingo-ji, Kyoto, in symbol (as mirrors had always been in East Asian rulers. Yoshimasa's character, circumstances, tastes,
which the commanding figure of the shogun Yori- cosmology), recalling the power of the now and interests may not be explicit in the portrait,
tomo occupies almost the whole ground). The retired shogun ? Certainly it does not attest to his but they certainly inform it.
sympathetic rendition of the sensitive but not superb collection of Chinese paintings, lacquers, Between this portrait of the de facto ruler of
forceful visage accords with what we know of and ceramics. Japan and that of the Hongzhi emperor of China

372 CIRCA 1492