2012/03/01 by Yukio Lippit · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Japanese History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/00043079.2012.10786029
openalex publication_date 2012/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Splashed Ink Landscape by the Zen monk-painter Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506?) embodies a complex relation between medieval Japanese ink painting and artistic subjectivity. A careful study of the history and semantics of splashed ink and the painting's inscriptions reveals Sesshū's work to be a multifaceted pictorial artifact that reflects how monk-painters during Japan's medieval period imagined artistic transmission in terms of a spiritual bloodline. It also demonstrates how using the splashed ink mode to formalize such transmission allowed the monk-painter to be cast as a cultivated gentleman according to classical literati aesthetic discourse.