Page 384 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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attributed to Gakuo Zokyu
active c. 1470-0. 1514 Noami
Shinno, 1397-1471
WHITE-ROBED KANNON
(BYAKU-E KANNON) FLOWERS AND BIRDS (KACHO Zu)
dated to 1469
c. 1500
Japanese Japanese
hanging scroll; ink on paper pair of four-panel screens; ink on paper
2
7
3
3
x
104.5 44 (4* /8 x i7 /sj 132.5 X 236 (52 /8 X 92 /gj seals
and two identical
two inscriptions
references: Boston 1970, 79-81; Matsushita 1974,
69; Kanazawa 1979, 69-72 London Gallery, Ltd., Tokyo
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund
These screens, by admission to the Noami corpus,
The White- Robed Kannon, including the types comprise the oldest known pair of signed, sealed,
known as Water-and-Moon Kannon (Suigetsu and dated Japanese screens. Each bears a seal of
Kannon) and Willow-and-Moon Kannon Noami and a signed inscription: the inscription
(Ryugetsu Kannon), is one of the figural subjects on the extreme right-hand panel includes the
most closely associated with Zen Buddhism. The dedication, with its self-deprecatory reference
earliest dated representation of the subject, now to the artist as an "old man in his seventy-third
in the Musee Guimet, Paris, is from the caves of year" (i.e., one year after his White-Robed
Dunhuang in western China — a painting on Kannon of 1468 [cat. 136]); the inscription on
paper of the Kannon of the Willow Branch (Yoryu the extreme left-hand panel includes the date.
Kannon), dated to 953. A Water-and-Moon Research into the provenance of the screens indi-
Kannon was painted by the illustrious painter cates that they were held by the Mitsui family
Zhou Fang (c. 740-800) in the Shengguang perhaps from the early seventeenth century,
Temple of the Tang dynasty capital, Chang'an entered an American collection after World War
(present-day Xi'an) ; the work was recorded in n, and recently returned to a Japanese collection.
Zhang Yanyuan's Li Dai Ming Hua ]i (Record of Noami's dedicatory inscription suggests that
Painters of Successive Ages) of 847, in chapter 3, the painting was offered in celebration of the
section 4. Water, moon, willow branch, and bam- transfer of temple responsibilities in the spring of
boo are the usual attributes of the deity, who is 1469 at the Kyoto temple Keon-in. Records indi-
most often shown seated. cate that the monk Kyogo did succeed Kokyo at
Kannon (S: Avalokitesvara; C: Guanyin) is the that time. Records trace the screens to the pos-
most popular and efficacious of the bodhisattvas, session of Kyogo's son Renshu at the time of his
deities who have achieved Enlightenment but death in the second quarter of the sixteenth
renounced their entry into Nirvana in order to aid century.
all sentient beings along the same path. In India Beginning in the fifteenth century, records or
this compassionate ideal was popularly embodied catalogues assembled by Japanese collectors and
in Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Mercy. In China connoisseurs referred to paintings done in the
he became Guanyin, the savior and benefactor of became particularly associated with Zen, for Mu style of, or "after," admired Chinese masters such
all but especially of those most needing compas- Qi was a Chan abbot and Daitoku-ji was one of as Ma Yuan, Xia Gui, and Mu Qi. This pair of
sion—the sick, the poor, and women. Among the five preeminent Zen temples (Gozan, "the screens, recently rediscovered, presents the most
painters of Buddhist subjects in late Southern Five Mountains") of Kyoto. Although iconic tradi- impressive substantiation now known of those
Song Hangzhou, Guanyin achieved a somewhat tions are in general intensely conservative, four- tantalizing fifteenth-century records. The screens
androgynous form, soft in flesh and robed in teenth- and fifteenth-century Japanese painters present a series of quotations from several of Mu
white from head to toe. Southern Song images of experimented with variations in the presentation Qi's known works, attesting Noami's intimacy
Guanyin are usually depicted in a nocturnal set- of the Byaku-e Kannon. The deity was shown with Mu Qi's paintings and his highly original
ting that includes several or all of the following — washing its feet, reaching for a bamboo sprig, or, assimilation of the Chinese master.
waterfall, moon, bamboo, miraculous vase, willow as in the present scroll, standing gracefully near Opening the composition at the right is a pine
branch, and cave. The supreme image of this the water. In this scroll the bamboo grove behind tree overhanging a stream, which cascades among
Byaku-e Kannon type is the centerpiece of a trip- Kannon is visible through the translucent halo, cliff and rock formations into a central expanse of
tych painted by Mu Qi (Fa- Chang, early 13 th and its recession in space is suggested by graded water. A gaggle of Chinese mynah birds occupies
century-after 1279) in Hangzhou in the late thir- tones of ink. The moon's reflection, seen in the the boulder overhanging the cascade, with a single
teenth century and soon afterward exported to water at the lowest, nearest point of the fore- wagtail on a smaller rock below them. The com-
Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, where it still remains. Mu ground, substitutes for the waterfall that usually position's central and linking feature is a small
Qi's image is shown seated on rocks before a cave, is the object of the bodhisattva's contemplation island or spit of land emerging from a point in the
bamboo at the left, a vase of willow at the right. (a type called Takimi Kannon, literally, Kannon unseen foreground, on which lotuses in full
The physical type is vaguely feminine, and the Contemplating a Waterfall). bloom are clustered at the water's edge and a trio
white cowl is drawn over the bodhisattva's crown. The only clear evidence of Gakuo's style is to be of egrets stand in varied postures at the center.
This image became the source and standard of found in the somewhat triangular wash planes of Overhead, a single egret, swallows, and grebes
Japanese representations of the deity. It also the rocks and earth in the foreground. S.E.L. occupy the sky in consecutive panels.

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