The Phoenix Composed
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The goal of this exhibition is to establish, through art historical analysis, the Japanese phoenix (Hou-ou, 鳳凰) as a mythical animal composed using the features of real birds. This examination will include phoenixes painted by the Edo Period artists Itō Jakuchū (伊藤 若冲) and Maruyama Ōkyo( 円山 応挙, or 圓山 應舉) and phoenixes painted in the Momoyama period within the Kano School of painting. The phoenix is established and described in literature and myth as a composite creature. The most common fantastic features the phoenix boasts include: a cock's head, a snake's neck, a swallow's chin, a tortoise's back, a fist tail, a pattern of six or more colors, and a height of six feet[1]. Only some of these features are actually reflected in two-dimensional representations of phoenixes. If artists adhered to all these features, the resultant phoenix would be too reminiscent of a Frankenstein's monster to announce any emperor’s prosperous reign[2]. Instead, artists utilized the appearances of other birds to design the mythical creatures.
Edo artist Itō Jakuchū (伊藤 若冲)'s paintings Old Pine Tree and White Phoenix, Pair of Phoenixes and Rising Sun, and White Elephant and Other Beasts are three examples of this. All the phoenixes bear the extended, slim legs visible in his painting of cranes Plum Blossoms and Cranes. In addition, all three phoenix paintings utilize abstractions of peacock tails, specifically long tail feathers capped with iridescent circles. In particular, Old Pine Tree and White Phoenix shows many aesthetic paralels with Old Pine Tree and White Peacock. Jakuchū's older paiting, Pair of Phoenixes and Rising Sun, demonstrates the aesthetic tradition of giving phoenixes pheasant feathers and bodies. This technique can be seen when comparing Jakuchū's Golden Pheasants and Snow to Pair of Phoenixes and Rising Sun. Similar aesthetic techniques are applied by painter Maruyama Ōkyo( 円山 応挙, or 圓山 應舉) in his paiting Phoenixes.The phoenixes' multicolored bodies and peacock-esque tails all pay homage to the birds of the human realm.
This aesthetic technique of creating a composed, hybrid phoenix has it's origin in Momoyama period paintings. The phoenix was a common motif with the Kano School of Painting (狩野派). Unlike their Edo contemporaries, Kano artists did not use cranes or peacocks to draw their phoenixes. Instead, many of the Momoyama phoenxies show clear connection to the elaborate male pheasants. The Kano have similar feather patterns, bodies, and statures to their real-world cousins. In addition, the Momoyama phoenixes utilize one of the more traditionally identified features of phoenixes in literature, a cock's head.
[1]Hachisuka, M. U. “The Identification of the Chinese Phoenix.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 4 (1924): 585 – 89.
[2] Bender, Ross. “Auspicious Omens in the Reign of the Last Empress of Nara Japan, 749 – 770.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 40.1 (2013): 45 – 76.