Art Review: Ito Jakuchu's Buddhist Art at the National Gallery in DC

ARTNET
By Donald Kuspit

"The Bodhisattva Samantabhadra" by Ito Jakuchu

Ito Jakuchu’s "Colorful Realm of Living Beings," 30 scroll paintings created over a ten year period (ca. 1757-66), were donated, a year before they were finished, to the Shokokuji Zen monastery in Kyoto, along with his Sakyamuni Triptych, painted during the same period. Gautama Sakyamuni was the historically first “Buddha,” an epithet meaning “Awakened One.” Like the saints standing with Christ in Christian altarpieces, they are not simply his followers, but identify with him -- the imitatio Buddha shown in Jakuchu’s scrolls has its parallel in the imitatio Christi in Christian altarpieces.  They don’t need any halo to announce their sublimity; the least detail of nature is auratic, as the melting white snow and white feathers on the wild goose in Jakuchu’s Wild Goose and Reeds make clear. [link]

“Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800),” Mar. 30-Apr. 29, 2012, at the National Gallery of Art, 4th and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20565