White and Red Plum Blossom

White and Red Plum Blossoms. Ogata Korin. c. 1710–1716 C.E. Ink, watercolor, and gold leaf on paper.

• Ogata Kôrin transforms a very simple landscape theme—two flowering trees on either side of a brook—into a dream vision.
• the image seems both abstract and realistic at the same time. 
• Its background, a subtle grid of gold leaf, denies any sense of place or time and imbues everything with an ethereal glow. 
• The stream’s swelling metallic curls and spirals are a make-believe of flowing water, and its sharply tapered serpentine contour lines angle the picture plane in an unnatural upward tilt. 
• the artist's intimate knowledge of how a plum tree grows can be seen in their writhing forms and tangle of shoots and branches.
• The trunks of the trees are nothing more than pools of mottled color without so much as an outline. 
• These forms and spaces appear flat to the eye. 
• function of the folding screen within the traditional Japanese interior. 
• a viewer experiences these exaggerated two-dimensional images in three dimensions. 
• Red and White Plum Blossoms exemplifies a style that for many epitomizes Japanese art. It has profoundly impacted modernism in the West, most famously in the work of Gustav Klimt. 
• Initially inspired by Japanese classical literature, the Rimpa movement’s attention soon extended to themes from nature, including Chinese motifs that may have influenced Kôrin’s choice of plum trees for this painting.
• dramatic, luxurious and radical