Bingata Panel with Chrysanthemums and Snow Circles 20th century

Curator: This bingata panel, created in the 20th century, showcases the chrysanthemums and snow circles, a common decorative textile pattern for clothing. It’s held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: It strikes me as a very optimistic, almost naive composition, but the repetition, even though it’s patterned, seems so intentionally artless as to feel deliberate. Curator: The seemingly “artless” design contributes to the intrinsic nature of bingata dye application as well as its cultural origins. Its purpose to showcase beauty in clothing transcends realism. Editor: What cultural associations can we infer from chrysanthemums and snow circle imagery depicted? Is it meant for a specific demographic or social class, or designed with specific events in mind? Curator: Chrysanthemums traditionally symbolize longevity and rejuvenation in East Asian art. That combined with the round snow circles speaks to seasonal, continuous life cycles through structured design. I read it more like a Ukiyo-e print because of its bold shapes. Editor: Interesting point. The Ukiyo-e, as "pictures of the floating world" were common for entertainment—geishas and Kabuki actors. But for something worn every day, you'd expect its symbolic register to be just as culturally fluent. The circles surrounding some shapes are almost calling back to crests—is the artist intending the flowers within them to signal certain virtues in that manner? Curator: It’s hard to be precise without knowing the origins of the artist; the crest like effect seems too general. From a formalist point of view, the panel as a design holds to its cultural roots through geometric shapes in both botanical life and in snow circles. The tension arises from their coexistence on the same piece, though, as if competing for attention. Editor: A push and pull of what is found in nature against what is constructed by artisans, that lives on, still resonating today, because of that push and pull of the organic with constructed reality. I feel like that’s what makes it an optimistic piece. Curator: Right. Through exploring both its intrinsic artistic value through colors and pattern as well as iconographic approach, a dialogue between structural forms and imagery can tell a richer story of a vibrant fabric-dye panel.