Distant View at Cape Muroto 1935

Fujishima Takeji laid down this scene with what looks like pretty direct painting, blue on blue, rock on blue, horizon on blue. I can feel him feeling his way into it. The brushstrokes are visible, alive with energy and immediacy, especially where the white paint of the wave cuts around a rust colored rock, like a comma in a sentence. It makes me wonder if he was standing right there on the shore, squinting into the distance, trying to capture something fleeting? I know that feeling! He’s playing with the tension between representation and abstraction, and the whole scene shimmers, moving like a memory half-recalled. It makes me think of some of the other seascape painters, like Winslow Homer, or even Whistler. You know, artists that were just trying to get at something true about seeing. The beautiful thing about painting is that it’s always evolving, building on what’s come before, a continuous dialogue between artists across time and place.