Art 368 Japanese Art
Fall 2017
Due Friday, October 13th
The Tale of Genji is Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th century masterpiece, this piece is considered as the world's first novel and first defining illustrative story. The illustrative story of Genji gives us a glimpse of the Heian era of Japanese’ art style, along with the actual ongoings of the empress’s entourage during the time. The book is composed of 54 chapters, the actual Genji Monogatari Emaki, commonly called the Tale of Genji Scroll, was created over a century after the publication of the story. The whole scroll was recreated many times, but only 19 pieces survive to this day. We do not know the identity of the artist, but historians have pointed out that the style of these …show more content…
Motion can be very hard to show in a 2d picture such as this, so the artist relies on the long clothing of the people, and staggering the feet at an odd angle to show movement. SHowing the horse's movement is accomplished easier due to the amount of legs, and by realistic showing how a horse's leg would bend if it were trotting. While we can see a lot of detail in the structure of the carriage and the clothing of the people, the humans themselves are uniform. The characters that were not dominantly part of the story are unrealistic like this because they represent people who would be apart of everyday life. The use of hikime kagibana keep the individualistic integrity of the main characters, so that they can stand out to the …show more content…
An example of this, which is found all throughout the Emaki, is the difference of how structures and people are depicted. Hikime Kagibana does not rely on realistic depictions of faces, most are uniform in nature, but there are small differences, usually to dipict emotion. Even though the artist is limited by the structure of the face, emotion could still be shown. To do this, the placement and size of certain features like the eyes, lips and eyebrows would be arranged differently. In the previous work Channel Buoys this is hard to see, but is more apparent in the Bamboo River. Tamakazura (seen at the top) has his face tilted up with wide eyes and a stoic expression while looking at his daughters. The lieutenant’s face is tilted down with his eyebrows barely visible, showing how he is staying hidden while trying to catch a glimpse of who he loves. A character could also could have their face covered by their hands or facing away to convey the emotion of the