Page 395 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

As painters, the Ami appear to have adopted a 2
softer and less calligraphic linear mode of brush- 35
work combined with ink wash, producing works Kenko Shokei
quite different from their contemporaries active c. 1478-1506
Shubun, Sesshu, and Kei Shoki. One of Noami's
few surviving works is a pair of screens with EIGHT VIEWS OF
flower-and-bird subjects (cat. 226). It not only XIAO AND XIANG RIVERS
displays the softer Ami touch but shows a
virtuosity unexpected in a convert. The effect is Japanese
suggestive, evanescent, with an ink method well album leaves; ink and slight color on paper
2
3
termed "boneless" (mo gu) by the Chinese. The 36.7 x 23.7 (i4 /2 x 9 /s)
derivation of the style can be easily demonstrated, seal of the artist on each leaf
Matsushita 1974, 117-120; Princeton
references:
especially if one consults the inventory of Soami's 1976,186-19}
Kundaikan Sochoki. This includes paintings of the
Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang by the great Chan Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe Prefecture
abbot Mu Qi (Fa-Chang) of Hangzhou. Many of
these are extant, and they are rendered in Mu Qi's Shokei's period of study with Geiami (cat. 234),
characteristic broadly and swiftly brushed bone- from 1478 to 1480, gave him both a basic style
less ink washes —the ultimate in intuitive, almost and a broad knowledge of Chinese paintings in
abstract landscapes. Three paintings by Yu-Jian the shogunal collection curated by his mentor. A
(act. i3th century), however, embody the most painting of the Eight Views listed in the shogunal
extreme and specialized forms of this suggestive catalogue (Gyomotsu Orie Mokuroku), was
boneless style; these are three landscapes from attributed to the Chinese Southern Song artist
the Eight Views, Mountain Village, Harvest Xia Gui (c. n8o-c. 1220). Although that work
Moon, and Returning Sails. may well have been Shokei's direct inspiration,
The Kambaku Zu represents a theme of partic- the brush language of this famous album is
ular appeal to Chinese and Japanese Zen literati. derived as much from Geiami as from Xia Gui,
Representations of a single figure, frequently with and reveals Shokei's personal accent —sharp and
an attendant, approaching or contemplating a abbreviated depiction, a strongly staccato pattern
waterfall, were assumed to depict the renowned of dark dots representing moss or lichen, and a
Tang poet Li Bo, and thereby to recall the poetry clear division between complex foreground and
he composed on viewing the monumental water- simple, overlapped mountain background. The
fall at Mt. Lu in Jiangxi Province. Li Bo's poetry artist's most characteristic trait is his twisting
(along with that of his equal and contemporary calligraphic rendering of the rock contours.
Du Fu) exerted pervasive influence on the devel- As early as the third century B.C. a Chinese
opment of Japanese verse. A poetic spirit engaged poet had celebrated the beauty of the Xiao and
by natural splendor and the purifying power of Xiang rivers where they empty into Lake Dong-
rushing water was an image of understandable ting in Hunan Province. During the Northern
appeal to Zen literati. Song dynasty (960-1127) the scenery of Xiao and
Geiami's waterfall emerges from a mist- Xiang emerged as a pictorial theme, attributed in
shrouded upland lake, forms a series of arching the writings of the famous scholar-official Shen
cascades, and then plunges straight down to a Gua (1029-1093) to the contemporary painter
foaming pool at the center of a grotto-like forma- Song Di. In the Sinophile culture of Muromachi
tion. Sheltered by overhanging rock is an empty Japan the Eight Views became a favored theme,
viewing pavilion, which the two figures are the Japanese renditions partly imagined, partly
approaching. The artist's sophisticated use of based on imported Chinese prototypes.
intersecting diagonal and circular constructions The Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang comprise
emphasizes the swirling pool at the base of the the following individual scenes: Night Rain on
waterfall and allows the water —in all its protean the Xiao and Xiang, Harvest Moon Over Dong-
manifestations —to be the "light-bearing" feature ting Lake, Evening Bell from a Temple in the
of the painting. Geiami's stylistic and composi- Mist, Twilight over the Fishing Village, Returning
tional references are to the Chinese professional Sails off a Distant Shore, Wild Geese Alighting
painters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui of Southern Song on the Strand, Mountain Village in Clearing
(1127-1279), but the characteristic Ma-Xia use of Mist, and Evening Snow on a Distant Mountain
unarticulated but highly suggestive open space is Horizon. (During the Edo period [1615-1868]
here modified by the softly contoured clouds that various scenic places of Japan, particularly Lake
were to become a trademark of the Ami painters. Biwa in Omi Province, were substituted for the
For a work created as an encomium of Shokei's unknown Lake Dongting, but the subjects of the
artistic ability and a "certificate" of aesthetic Eight Views remained the same: Night Rain,
transmission —as the occasion of its execution Harvest Moon, etc.)
suggests —a mannered landscape in Ma-Xia style Shokei was certainly the most important of
would have been the orthodox choice. j.u. the monochrome ink painters in the Kamakura
S.E.L. region. If his style was formed in his first of two

394 CIRCA 1492