Hikaru Genji 1930

color-on-silk, hanging-scroll, ink

childish illustration

cartoon like

cartoon based

pastel soft colours

color-on-silk

pastel colours

japan

hanging-scroll

ink

bubble style

watercolour illustration

cartoon style

cartoon carciture

cartoon theme

"Hikaru Genji," a 1930 painting by Japanese artist Otake Chikuha (1878-1934), depicts a scene of fantastical figures and swirling lines on a pale gold background. The artist's distinctive style is characterized by elongated figures and flowing, abstract forms, echoing the movements of the figures in the painting. The artwork, now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, captures the essence of Chikuha's artistic vision, which often explored themes of Japanese mythology and literature.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

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In this late painting, Otake Chikuha took a very unusual approach to a subject that has fascinated Japanese artists since the classical Heian period (794–1185)—namely, the Tale of Genji and its titular character, Hikaru Genji. Otake began training as a painter when he was only five years old, studying the brush styles of famous Nanga-school painters. As a teenager he relocated from rural northeast Japan to cosmopolitan Tokyo, where he shifted his attention to the Japanese painting and woodblock print tradition called ukiyo-e and, in the early 1900s, was briefly among the most popular painters active in the city. After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 he refocused again, turning his attention to the Italian modernist movement Futurism.