jakuchu：

"Rinpa, Jakuchu and the world of Elegance: Selections from the Hosomi Collection, Kyoto"
(京都 細見美術館 琳派・若冲と雅の世界」展)
, I went.

I'm realy interested in eastern-arts in the motif of animals recently,
even though I like western arts and all most all arts by my nature.

Jakuchu Ito(伊藤若冲) is a Japanese painter at Edo-period.
His pictures are quite minute and graphic but... how can I say, they are all so mysterious or fantastic at the same time.
Many animals that all common for Japanese had been drowned by Jakuchu's magical brush.
Checkens are especially famous[ex.→紫陽花双鶏図] though, from birds to insects, variety animals are there.
In spite of they are drown so graphically as I wrote above,
we are impressed some kind of fantasic elegance{or subtle and profound(幽玄)} from the whole pictures.
I guess this "fantasicity" is, that is to say  mise en scene from the composition of space.
And rhythm.

For example, look at 池辺群虫図(means:Worms Around a Pond)[→link]
and we'll find easily that this picture is composed by the rhythms from repeatation of same motif.
Add to this, he always mix real and unreal.
Jakuchu's animals are sometimes from tracing living body and sometimes from specimens or fish on the fish-shop.
Because of mixture of these things and his original images, his world cannot be stand in real.
His arts is real but it doesn't reflect "real world" and what is to say they are resemble to natural history arts in 19th Europe.

Traditional Japanese-style paintings has beautiful "space".
These kind of space cannot be exist in western-style oil paintings.
Whenever we drow on canvas we do not have to leave unpainted-space at all.
However, Japanese and East Asian peoples have seemed things as what are.
Unpainted-space is realy exists by meanings of the unpainted-space...ah,not exactly...
these spaces are air, tempreture, wind, river, thinking.
Spaces expressing so many things as itself by composition.
Jakuchu, and most of famous old japanese artists are exparts of such technique.


By the way,
I lead to obsession that dinosaurs drown by Jakuchu.
When I saw his picture of chicken I sudden imaged Velociraotor on the wild-jumping male chick.
His two legs were forceful, his long tails were withy.
Todays restrations of ancient animals are almost entirely by oil picture.
Of course I like them,
But also I'd like to see brightful pictures that rock paintings on silk just like as Jakuchu.
Don't you think so?

　　　

<weblog内-関連記事LINKS：>　
　・kiyomizu temple：　清水寺 in Kyoto.
　・chion-in, kennin-ji etc.：　知恩院、建仁寺。天井画がカッコイイ！！
　・the dawn of the dinosaurs：01　地球最古の恐竜展 @六本木ヒルズ 2010年
　・komme aus dinosauria：　恐竜より始まりしわが命運