The source of modern art of Japan

A large closed up moon appears in the center of the first scene. The moon emits silver light. There are some flowers and leaves of bush clover left under the moon. The scene scrolls to right, then some bunch of bush clover are showed one after another making lines like waves and reflect the silver moonlight. The bunch of bush clover changes vain as the scene is scrolling, and leaves of vain are closed up, took far and close up again like beating out a rhythm.

In another creation, you are in a bamboo forest and you look at some golden bamboos as closely as you can see their joints. The scene scrolls to right, then you look a plum tree and blossoms. Two long branches have grown leftward like guiding you. You walk left over turf and find some bunch of azalea on the ground. Azalea’s flowers look like bowing you. You go ahead and find the golden vine leaves hang down from above the scene. You go the leaves closely, and the leaves occupy the full of scene.

There could be these kinds of expression in modern artistic movies. Actually, these are my explanation of the Japanese old picture scrolls. They were created by Tawaraya Sotatsu and Hon-ami Koetsu in the 16 century in Japan. Koetsu wrote some quotations of Japanese old poems with his calligraphy and Sotatsu painted what I explained above under these poems on the scrolls. They made the same kind of artwork as a series. Japanese deers or cranes are used as motif in other artworks. These motifs were painted more abstractly than realistically, and it effects the expression of poetic space in the scrolls.

I was impressed that the creations created in the 16th century have had the exactly modernized feeling, so I considered that they could create them by a kind of their predictive or future-minded ability. However, I changed my opinion recently. I think that the modern feeling that we are calling has already begun in this period. We can find one of sources of our modern art creation feeling in their artwork.