.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A torrential river flows from the upper left of the left screen, pushing against and bending the long, green reeds along the riverbank to the right. A large waterwheel decants water through a bamboo trough. Along the edges of the river, three openwork “baskets” of woven bamboo in domed shape, each woven with a different, artful pattern and filled with rocks, are held in place by lichen-covered wooden stakes to shore up the embankment, protecting the shoreline from soil erosion. These jakago (literally, “snake basket”) signify the Uji River in Kyoto. From the late sixteenth century, scenes of the Uji River were produced in large numbers, but almost always with the Uji Bridge, framed by willow trees, stretching across both screens, as known from examples in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Burke Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig.1); and the Art Institute of Chicago. An earlier version, famously the much-published example in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, has the bridge on the right screen only, flooded rice paddies, boats laden with brushwood on the river, and all four seasons indicated—there is a wealth of specific detail.
Here, there is no bridge, no willow, no rice paddy, no suggestion of the four seasons. The artist, who painted one other pair of screens of the same subject, creates a shockingly modernist abstraction with just a few defining features. In this luxury commission, the stylized waves are silver (now tarnished) and the shoreline, merging seamlessly with the sky, is gold leaf. The golden baskets are built up in three dimensions, using powdered shell as a filler.
Plovers arrive—a sign of winter, and a favorite topic in Japanese poetry. Birds were poeticized in classical Japanese poetry; certain birds and plants came to represent the seasons—the bush warbler for spring; the small cuckoo for summer; the wild goose for autumn. The birds of winter, however, are mainly waterbirds—the mandarin duck, the wild duck and the plover (chidori). Chidori, literally “a thousand birds,” are sandy, grayish brown birds with white underparts, long legs and relatively short bills found throughout most of the world. In Japanese poetry, the focus is on their songs, or voices—in this case, soft, high-pitched vocalizations. In art, the plover might appear on a woman’s garment or a lacquer inro against a background of fishing nets or paired with jakago.
Uji was a site of Pure Land Buddhist temples and religious retreat. It featured prominently in the last ten chapters (the “Uji chapters”) of The Tale of Genji, a site of both romance and deep sorrow. The effect of shimmering gold leaf, together with the now tarnished silver of the waves, is at once awesome and calming. Surely the painting must have illuminated a darkened castle interior with a spiritual glow, an effect some may feel even today.
For another example by the same artist, see Takeda Tsuneo, et al., Shiki keibutsu (Scenery of the four seasons), vol. 9 of Nihon byobu-e shusei (Compendium of Japanese screen painting) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977), plates 56-57.
Here, there is no bridge, no willow, no rice paddy, no suggestion of the four seasons. The artist, who painted one other pair of screens of the same subject, creates a shockingly modernist abstraction with just a few defining features. In this luxury commission, the stylized waves are silver (now tarnished) and the shoreline, merging seamlessly with the sky, is gold leaf. The golden baskets are built up in three dimensions, using powdered shell as a filler.
Plovers arrive—a sign of winter, and a favorite topic in Japanese poetry. Birds were poeticized in classical Japanese poetry; certain birds and plants came to represent the seasons—the bush warbler for spring; the small cuckoo for summer; the wild goose for autumn. The birds of winter, however, are mainly waterbirds—the mandarin duck, the wild duck and the plover (chidori). Chidori, literally “a thousand birds,” are sandy, grayish brown birds with white underparts, long legs and relatively short bills found throughout most of the world. In Japanese poetry, the focus is on their songs, or voices—in this case, soft, high-pitched vocalizations. In art, the plover might appear on a woman’s garment or a lacquer inro against a background of fishing nets or paired with jakago.
Uji was a site of Pure Land Buddhist temples and religious retreat. It featured prominently in the last ten chapters (the “Uji chapters”) of The Tale of Genji, a site of both romance and deep sorrow. The effect of shimmering gold leaf, together with the now tarnished silver of the waves, is at once awesome and calming. Surely the painting must have illuminated a darkened castle interior with a spiritual glow, an effect some may feel even today.
For another example by the same artist, see Takeda Tsuneo, et al., Shiki keibutsu (Scenery of the four seasons), vol. 9 of Nihon byobu-e shusei (Compendium of Japanese screen painting) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977), plates 56-57.