Luminous Gate

Museum patron contemplates the Gate

This post shares my favorite artwork from the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibit, Luminous: The Art of Asia.  The “Gate” by Do Ho Suh, featured a doorway and a repeated montage of photographic images projected on its silk walls.  There is something alluring about doorways and thresholds.  I felt like I was participating in the artist’s vision by walking through the door.  The projections provided a cyclical change of atmosphere — from a relatively blank start, to a bucolic forest scene, and then the arrival of a flock of birds.  As the images proliferated, and the screen became almost black, with sinister overtones, before receding to the calm starting point.  It is a spectacular installation!

Gate: a tree branches

Gate: branching continues, now on both sides

Gate: enter a deer

Gate: deer, startled

Gate: flock of birds

Gate: the flock swoops down

Gate: rushing

Gate: darkened by birds

Deer and Reindeer

Today’s post features another of my favorite pieces from the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibit, Luminous: The Art of Asia.  I suppose I have reindeer on the brain, but I was especially captivated by the vital images of deer on “Poem Scroll with Deer.”  Despite his economy with line and spare strokes, Japanese painter Tawaraya Sotatsu captures the life and beauty of these deer.  I also love the combination of words and art — the calligraphy is an integral part of this piece.  The Seattle Art Museum owns half of the 72-foot scroll.  How fortunate we are to have this great art in Seattle!

Calligraphic line of deer in flight

The repeated images make a lovely patterned design.

Image from Poem Scroll with Deer

Detail of scroll, feeding herd of deer

Luminous and Diaphanous Dragonflies

Japanese dragonfly scroll by Kinoshita Itsuun and Ichikawa Beian

Last week after work I took advantage of the Seattle Art Museum’s “First Thursdays” free admission and treated myself to its current exhibit, Luminous: The Art of Asia.  I found the exhibit to be a serene, but inspiring, oasis during this busiest of holiday shopping seasons.

Quiet gallery on Thursday evening at the Seattle Art Museum

I will be featuring a few of my favorite pieces in the next couple of days.  Today I wanted to showcase this lovely Dragonfly scroll, one of a pair from the Japanese Edo period (the other one featured butterflies).  I can understand why so many Western artists have been inspired by Japanese drawings and paintings.  These dragonflies are exquisite!

The Dragonfly
by Louise Bogan

You are made of almost nothing
But of enough
To be great eyes
And diaphanous double vans;
To be ceaseless movement,
Unending hunger
Grappling love.

Link between water and air,
Earth repels you.
Light touches you only to shift into iridescence
Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,
You split into the heat.
Swift beyond calculation or capture
You dart into the shadow
Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.
But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,
For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall
With the other husks of summer.

(You can listen to Bogan reciting this poem at this link.)