Sōtatsu: Making Waves
Poem Cards with Designs of Flowering Plants of the Four Seasons
This renowned set of poetry cards marks Sōtatsu’s transition from a decorator of sophisticated background papers to an accomplished painter. In his designs of grasses and flowers, he incorporated a more explicit realism, with thick and thin brushstrokes and lavish applications of silver and gold pigment. The silver has darkened, diminishing what must have been a remarkably iridescent, reflective surface. Kōetsu’s quotations from the circa 1205–10 Shinkokin wakashū (New Anthology of Poems Past and Present) overlay each image. The poems cover the seasons but in a curious ratio. Kōetsu chose thirteen spring, five summer, twelve autumn, and six winter poems. Of all the Kōetsu-Sōtatsu collaborations in this format, this set comes closest to linking poems to seasonally appropriate images. In addition, the roughly 2:1 ratio of spring-to-summer and autumn-to-winter images corresponds to the arrangement in the Shinkokin wakashū, yet another example of the care the two men gave to this creative process.
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