Masterful brushwork
2007-07-23 | Filed under Life |
Saturday a bunch of us went to the Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran exhibition at the Art Museum. The calligraphy was very beautiful, though it would perhaps be more impressive if I could read it. (Or maybe not. Characters make better art than letters; no matter how elegant or illuminated, letters still primarily convey information.) It’s always neat to see the work of husband and wife pairs.
Taiga’s fingerpainting blew us all away: there was just an amazing degree of control and very fine detail. Larry and I both want to find a print of Taiga’s True View of Mount Asama. I quite liked the negative space in his Bamboo in a Snowstorm, though generally I liked the landscapes better than the bamboo studies. Gyokuran’s fans and orchids were particularly impressive.
When I was a kid, my sister and I had those cheap little folding fans, metal frames and paper with landscapes. It’s very odd to think of similarly cheesy souvenirs in an earlier period, painted by masters for the tourists.
After that exhibit, we wandered around the rest of the museum, primarily the Asian art and the rooms of Pointy Things. Larry and I had fun speculating about bringing our future children to the museum and quizzing them on the base damage of the various weapons and the AC of the plate armor. Because yes, our kids will know rapiers crit on 18.
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