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Pampas Grasses, about 1525
Muromachi period (1392-1573)
Pair of six-fold screens; ink, color, and gold on paper
John L. Severance Fund 1984.43.2
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Birds, Flowers, and Grasses
In Japanese culture the relationship between words and visual imagery occupies a prominent role in describing how people look at and understand art. For more than a millennium, classical Japanese literature has provided the principal subject matter for artists and craftspeople working in a variety of media. Sophisticated patrons and the general public alike normally recognize texts from the past and the interpretations added to them by subsequent generations of writers and artists.
Over the centuries, specific styles of painting and composition have evolved to become intimately linked with classical literary themes. Artisans, calligraphers, painters, and designers have always understood the interdependence of word and image in their work and have sought to express it in fresh ways. Among the most favored visual motifs used to communicate the union of the verbal and the visual were plants, flowers, and the seasons. In some paintings the literary reference is readily apparent; in others it can be discerned only through study or explanation. In all, the goal is to describe the emotional landscape of humanity-an enduring subject of Japanese art.
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Pampas Grasses, about 1525
Muromachi period (1392-1573)
Pair of six-fold screens; ink, color, and gold on paper
John L. Severance Fund 1984.43.1
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Byõbu benefit from close, measured scrutiny as much as they do from distant viewing. After all, they were originally designed as a type of interior furnishing for secular as well as religious spaces where people would notice them, but also would adjust their placement according to the circumstances of the day. Contemporary Western viewers look at screens in much the same manner as they view more familiar modern Western painting and sculpture, which often require large-scale viewing areas. These screens reward such contemplation. They represent the earliest byõbu of pampas grasses known and are among the most lyrical yamato-e paintings outside Japan.
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Close examination of the screens' paper surfaces, however, reveals another, quite significant dimension of their history. Square and vertically-oriented rectangular "patches" scattered across the upper half of each screen record the earlier presence of poem papers that were pasted over parts of the painted composition. This practice harks back to at least the 9th century and the imperial court in Kyoto. Painted screens provided both the source of inspiration for poetry contests and the means for displaying the written texts resulting from such competitions. Word and image have rarely been so intriguingly attached to one another in East Asian art.
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Birds and Flowers; Animals and Beasts
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