Landscape

Discussion

FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

This composition was fashioned after works created by Zen clerics of the Muromachi period (1392–1573), who often added their original Chinese-style poems above an ink painting to make a hanging scroll called a shigajiku . The poems here quote from essays on Sima Guang (1019–1086) by the Chinese Song dynasty literatus Su Shi (1037–1101). They interpret the studio surrounded with bamboo as a metaphor for the garden of Sima, the Song dynasty scholar-official who, in imitation of the Tang poet Bai Juyi, enjoyed the garden in isolation during his exile in Luoyang.

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