Rape blossom and wheat 1854

This is Rape blossom and wheat, made by Yoshinari Katei in nineteenth-century Japan, using ink and color on paper. The artist has used traditional materials, but their application isn't exactly what you might expect. Katei has chosen to emphasize the physical qualities of ink by blurring the botanical rendering of the plants into abstraction. The blossom and wheat are brought to life with sensitive brushwork. As you can see, the materiality has a lot of influence in its appearance, with texture, weight, color, and form. Importantly, this is not just a beautiful image of nature. The handwritten Japanese calligraphy speaks to the value of agriculture and the cycle of seasons. The labor of farming and the beauty of the natural world are given equal status in this artwork. We can appreciate the way in which material, making, and context all contribute to our understanding of its full meaning.