| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In this research, the past discourses on Sesshu are closely examined through the analysis of the historical documents contemporary to Sesshu, as well as the texts on the history and theory of painting in Edo period. Also investigated are his works reproduced in Tan'yu-Shukuzu and various compilations of renowned paintings (gafu) in Edo period.
The end of this research is to show how the image of Sesshu had historically transformed.
In the Muromachi period, Zen monks regarded Sesshu as the sansui master who was able to represent the landscape of China--the ideal world for the monks--based on his experience in the land, whereas he considered himself a painter who can extract the essence of Nature by depicting sansui.
In Edo period, Sesshu was regarded as a master of Buddhist and Taoist figures painting, not as the virtuoso of sansui painting. In case of occasional appreciation of his sansui images, the new recipients of the age, namely people in the warrior-status, evaluated his dim and subtle haboku-sansui style, and no longer evaluated the style the medieval monks praised.
It was in this period that he was universally recognized as the most outstanding master in Japanese ink-monochrome painting. Consequently, the warriors competed with each other to acquire his works and were proud of the ownership of his work.
It was in the late Edo period when he reevaluated as a sansui painter. Literati painters of the age sanctified him because they regarded his life as the role model of an artist. They esteemed Sesshu as a sophisticated (ga) painter, whereas they labeled Kano school artists as vulgar (zoku) painters.
The image of Sesshu thus transformed with the passage of time as the standard of evaluation by the recipients of his oeuvre varied.
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