Page 393 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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attributed to Sesshu Toyo scape from the innovating ink painters—were markedly like the motifs in the flower-and-bird
1420-1506 extensions of the traditional vocabulary used for screens attributed to Sesshu. The attributions to
hanging scrolls, handscrolls, and panels. Sesshu Sesshu's hand are plausible, and at the very least it
FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF THE FOUR seems to have popularized a new category — is certain that these screens came out of his
SEASONS (Smxi KACHO Zu) daring compositions with dramatic, large-scale studio-workshop. They are not only great decora-
kacho motifs. These were based not on the tive productions in their own right, they com-
Japanese Japanese courtly artistic tradition (Tosa and pletely anticipate the remarkable achievement of
pair of six-fold screens; ink and color on paper yamato-e] but on a Chinese repertory dating Kano Motonobu in the sixteenth century as well
each 151.6 x 366 (59% x 144) from the Song dynasty (960-1279) as well as as much of the work of the great Momoyama
references: Covell 1941, 1974, 111-114; Tanaka
1972, 170-172; Tanaka and Nakamura 1973, from contemporary fifteenth-century Ming period (1573-1615) decorators Kano Eitoku and
7:20-23; 7:61-62, 7:63 China. The Song paintings — small works by Kano Sanraku.
such artists as Li Anzhong and Ma Lin —could be The screens exhibited here display free and
Shinagawa Yoichiro seen in Japanese temple and daimyo collections; vigorous brushwork and deliberate roughness in
Sesshu had seen large-scale Ming works by the the rendering of rocks and trees; they seem to
The paper-ground folding screen appears to be likes of Lii Ji, Yin Hong, and Lin Liang on their this author more characteristic of Sesshu's later
a Japanese invention, and was the base for one native ground, and they were also to be found in efforts than the more careful and overtly decora-
of their most important contributions to art — Japan in some of the larger Zen establishments. tive effects of the other claimants to Sesshu's
a Japanese decorative style as distinctive as the An early pair of small paintings on silk of birds hand (the so-called Maeda and Masuda, or
European rococo. The Imperial gift placed in the and flowers (now in the Perry collection, Cleve- Ohashi, screens). Summer begins at the right of
Shoso-in repository of T6dai-ji, the Great Eastern land, Ohio) reveals Sesshu experimenting with screen one with full-blown tree peonies, followed
Temple of Nara, in the year 756, included folding a richer and more strongly outlined approach to to the left by the reeds and lotus leaves of early
screens of court ladies and decorative screens with kacho subject matter. (The copy made by Kano fall. Those dry reeds on the first screen herald the
calligraphies. Narrative handscrolls of the Fuji- Tanyu in 1666 attests that this work was even passage of fall into winter on the second screen,
wara period (897-1185) depict single-panel and then considered to be by Sesshu.) Expanding this with the dormant plum tree and the camelia as
folding screens with flower-and-bird motifs to the large scale of the folding screen was an easy harbingers of spring at the far left. Pine, bamboo,
(kacho) f and the portrait of Retired Emperor Go- and logical development. Some five or six such rock, and two cranes dominate screen one, prunus,
Shirakawa (1127-1192) shows a screen with kacho pairs of screens attributed to Sesshu are known. geese, and bamboo the second screen; small birds
in a vaguely Song Chinese style. By the fifteenth None of them have reliable inscriptions or seals, serve as grace notes throughout. The startling
century the pair of six-fold screens (later to and most have no inscriptions at all. But they juxtapositions of near, middle, and far distance
become the canonical format) was relatively share a style congruent with the pair of small resemble similarly sudden shifts in the master's
common, painted both by Tosa traditional artists paintings, and their brushwork is very close to most famous work, the Long Scroll of 1486. Our
and by "new wave" masters such as Shubun, Sesshu's. For example (as indicated by Shimizu in eyes are led along an abruptly zigzagging path
Soami and Sesshu. Washington 1988, cat. 88), The Deified Michizane from the close-up pine trunk and rock to the dis-
The subjects of these screens — clouds-water- as Tenjin of 1501 by Sesshu, now in the Okayama tant first crane and bamboo, then partway back to
flowers-birds from the Tosa traditionalists, land- Prefectural Museum, has pine and plum elements the second crane in middle distance and out again

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