Calligraphy of a Poem.

Looking Carefully

This Japanese hanging scroll, Calligraphy of a Poem by Hon'ami Koetsu (Hon' ah mee Joe' eth sue), combines the three highly regarded arts of poetry, calligraphy and painting. The poem is written on a square sheet of paper outlined in black and mounted onto a shimmering landscape. Silver iridescent clouds fill the sky, and cut squares and strands of gold and silver paper are scattered like pebbles and stalks on the ground. The calligraphy runs down the page, right to left, dipping into the slow eddies of a silver stream below. The characters flow together, wavering between fat and thin brushstrokes. Above the five lines of calligraphy are thick dashes from a wet brush heavy with finely ground gold. While inspired by older styles of painting and calligraphy, Koetsu's inventive Decorative Style is distinctive in its use of gold and silver, the importance of calligraphy to the design of the piece, and its appeal to both the eye and the sentiments.

The term calligraphy is often described as meaning beautiful handwriting, yet the art of calligraphy involves much more. The skillful calligrapher makes the strokes of the brush manifest in the spirit of the words illuminated. Inspired by his love of Japanese poetry and calligraphy from the Heian (He' ahn) period (794-1185), Koetsu creates a marriage between the mood of the poem and his own graceful, free and refined calligraphy style. The classical Japanese poem Koetsu selected is from the Anthology of Chinese and Japanese Poems for Recitation, compiled by Fujiwara Kinto (Foo' gee wah rah Keen' toe) 966-1041. The poem reads:

How melancholy to hear Today too has ended With each ringing Of the evening bell At the mountain temple:

Both the painted landscpe with its heavy silver clouds and Koetsu's flickering calligraphy evoke the transitory tone of the poem and its lonely and melancholy mood. The three arts of poetry, calligraphy and painting are beautifully balanced in this work. The same four basic materials and tools are used to create both calligraphy and painting. The brush, iknksticks, inkstone and paper are traditionally called the Four Treasures. With a single brush, an artist can create a great variety of strokes, ink tones and washes. Insticks were created by molding lampblack, ther residue of soot, with glue until hardened. To produce the ink for either calligraphy or painting, the artist would grind the inkstick with water against the inkstone until the ink became stick and oily.0 Paper came in many sizes and shapes, sometimes square sheets like the page shown on the next two pages, or sometimes in long scrolls. Calligraphy and painting share more than the same materials and tools. The individual strokes, which together form the characters in writing, are also the basis for the art of painting. Notice how the calligraphic brushstrokes used to paint the silver stream are similar to the five lines of calligraphy above them.

Calligraphy of a Poem is mounted as a hanging scroll and may have been placed in the tokonoma (toe' koe no ma), a special alcove in a house set aside for the display of hanging scrolls and other art objects. The rich use of gold and silver would serve the reflect light in a dimly lit interior, and certainly would have appealed to the sumptuous taste of the wealthy merchant class who patronized Koetsu's work. With gold, silver and ink, Koetsu makes visible the intangible spirit of the poem.

Comparing

In Japan, a writing box, suzuri-bako (sue' zue ree - bah' koe), is the place to store the Four Treasures, basic writing or painting tools. This lacquered writing box (this page), containing an inkstone and water dropper, is inspired by Koetsu's innovative Decorative style. On the domed lid, a lone deer stands in front of golden rolling hills, while inlaid autumn leaves shimmer with iridescent colors under the night sky. Underneath the domed lid, a tree resplendent in gold foliage scatters its leaves to the floor of the writing box. While no piece of lacquer has been definitively attributed to Koetsu, this writing box is similar in many ways to Calligraphy of a Poem. Both use precious and highly reflective materials. Notice how the inlaid leaves of mother-of-pearl on the writing box shine like the heavy silver clouds in the painting. Gold is sprinkled on the lacquer of the writing box and cut into squares and strands in the painting. The black rectangle, outlining the sheet of calligraphy, has the same polished look as the shiny black lacquered sky on the writing box. The reflective materials on both serve to create the illustion of depth. The golden hills on the writing box appear to be close to the viewe, and the black night sky seems to recede into space.

Koetsu's image of a painted abstract landscape and the lacquered design of a lonely deer, searching for its mate, were inspired by classical Japanese poetry. The process used in painting the landscape requires a loose and quick hand. Lacquering a wooden box is a time consuming and painstaking process. Lacquer is applied slowly, layer by layer, allowing time for each layer to dry completely. Gold powder is added while the lacquer is still wet. Finally, the mother-of-pearl leaves and the land outline of the deer are inlaid in the lacquer. In spite of these very different processes, both and painted landscape and the lacquered design evoke the same lonely feeling and melancholy mood.

Biography

Hon'ami Koetsu (1588-1637) was a highly inventive and versatile artist. He was born in Kyoto, into an upper-class merchant family. He was trained in the family profession as a sword expert. Koetsu is best known as one of the greatest calligraphers of his time, yet he was also a painter, potter, sword connoisseur and lacquer designer.

In the lage 1500s, three rules succeeded in ending the civil wars, reuniting Japan, and creating the powerful Tokugawa (Toe' koo gah wah) regime which would last for 250 years. This new military government brought a prosperous peace to Japan, where wealth was now used for leisure and pleasure instead of for war. A revived potronage for all arts began as the newly rich merchant class bought Koetsu's and artistts' works to decorate their lavish residence.

In 1615, Koetsu founded a community of artists and craftspeople outside of Kyoto with a land grant from the shogunal, or military, government. He became the spiritual leader of this community and guided the production of paintings, calligraphies, lacqueres and teawares, all influenced by his distinctive Decorative Style. Koetsu's genius is seen in his ability to synthesize classical Japanese style and literature with contemporary taste, creating an innovative, sophisticated and beautiful style all his own.

Key Concepts

* Calligraphy--A major part of a Japanese child's education involves learning the characters of the languages and practicing writing them.

* Only after mastering the basic strokes could an individual create his or her own unique style. Koetsu is known as one of the best calligraphers of his times.

* Four Treasures--The basic materisl and tools used to create both the arts of clligraphy and painting. They are the brush, inkstick, inkstone and paper. In Japan, the Four Treasures are often stored in a writing box.

* Lacquer--The resin from a Japanese tree is carefully applied on wood, layer by layer, and polished to create a highly lustrous surface.

* Koetsu invented a unique style of lacquering by combining lacquer with gold, inlaid mother-of-pearl and base metals, like lead.

* Scroll--A painting on paper that is either displayed on a wall (hanging scroll) or held by the viewer (hand scroll) and can be rolled up when not in use.

Suggested Activities

The following activities may be adapted for both elementary and secondary students.

* Discuss the different qualities of line Koetsu achieves in his calligraphy and painting. Notice how his lines change from fat to thin, straight to curved, and long to short. The value of the line changes from dark black to a soft grey.

Look at how Koetsu combines two different patterns. The four long and one short vertical columns of calligraphy balance over the swirling lines that flow across the bottom of the page.

using ink and soft, round brushes, direct students to explore all the possible lines they can create--strong, soft, crisp, faint, bold, feathery, etc. Play music and instruct students to listen to the sounds and create lines that show how the music feels.

* Explain the different between the two English writing styles--printing and cursive. Does Koetsu's calligraphy look more like printing or cursive style? Try to find a local artist trained in the Chinese or Japanese calligraphy techniques to give a classroom demonstration. Show examples of the Four Treasures, and teach students the basic strokes of calligraphy.

* Students can write their own Haiku, a Japanese poem. Haiku poems follow a strict format. These poems have only three lines with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the middle line and five syllables in the last line. Two of the three lines should relate to each other, and the other line cuts away to describe an overview of the subject. Complete sentences and rhyming are not necessary. Haiku poems are built, word by word, of images, sounds and smells that describe situations from everyday life, and usually contain an expression or image that indicates the season. An example from the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan reads: another hot day: yawning "good-bye" and "take care" we go on our way

In Koetsu's Calligraphy of a Poem, the art of poetry, calligrapy and painting are combined. Have students look at the painting while reading the poem out loud. Discuss how the three arts work together. Notice how the poem and the painting share the same feeling and mood. Have the students use their own Haiku poems as inspiration for an ink painting. Students should work in a vertical format on a long sheet of paper that could be mounted as a hanging scroll. Discuss with students how to choose imagery from their poems, how to organize them in a vertical format, and how to create distance in their paintings by overlapping and lightening the value of the ink.

* Mount the ink painting as a hanging scroll. Cut wrapping paper or wallpaper into long vertical lengths that will allow the ink painting to be centered with wide borders at the top and bottom and narrow borders at the sides. Glue wooden dowels to the short ends of the wrapping paper. Mount the ink painting with glue on the wrapping paper. ATtach a string to the end of the top dowel to finish the hanging scroll.