Non-Western Blog, Japanese Sumi-e or suiboku-ga
Sumi-e is a Japanese/Chinese form of ink-wash painting. It comes from the term Sumi, black and -e, picture. It is also referred to as suiboku-ga. The Sumi-e masters in China influenced the suiboku-ga artists in Japan and vice versa. It came from China to Japan around 1300 from an unnamed Zen Buddhist Monk. However, the most well-known of that first generation is a person by the name of Sesshū. For this blog post, I am going to focus on the Japanese context. China and Japan have a long history of not only being linguistically connected but also influencing each other's art. The entire thought process of Sumi-e is reductionistic, it's about getting the most tree per tree, and the most brush stroke per brushstroke. Less is more. It’s about simplicity, and there is a philosophical ideal behind it of finding peace and harmony in the world around us. The idea is to capture the essence of the subject. The first piece is by Hasegawa Tohaku called Pine Trees. It was made when he wa