POETIC IMMORTALS

On a recent excursion thru the Metropolitan Museum, I came upon these ink drawings, shown below, of famous Japanese poets. The drawings were done by Sakai Hoitsu (1761-1828) and are titled The 36 Poetic Immortals. Traditionally, the drawing of each poet, which amazingly included 5 women, included one of their poems.

So as usual, I snapped photos of a couple of the drawings as well as the text describing the work (see page MUSEUM PROCEDURE) and went on. And I have now become preoccupied with both these and as it turns out, other Japanese and Chinese drawings of poets.

In my drawings, I have been trying to capture the three dimensional aspects of the clothing of the poets. I do this by imagining how the folds and draping that we see in two dimensions might resolve themselves in three dimensions.

There is such an incredible organicism to the clothing and robes of the poets. If we imagine their clothing as architecture, then the long flowing and folding lines must integrate the poets with the landscape.  The poets, via their clothing, are integrated with the landscape and the culture.  Sounds like perfection to me.

We will not be the first to draw an analogy with clothing and architecture. After all, clothing is portable architecture. But what inspiration! What great sources these drawings are for the generation of flowing, organic, and interrelated forms.  I want all of my buildings to have exactly this organic integration.

So the two watercolor drawings on this page are only a few that I have done. And the more that I look into this drawing genre, the more I realize that there have been other series of drawings of Japanese and Chinese poets that can serve as inspiration.

You might enter the following search terms into Google Images and get inspired yourself!
-Hoitsu The Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals
-30 Rokkasen Drawings
-Chinese Poet Henjo Drawings
And just so everyone knows, in Google Images, there are options for “Related Images” and “View More”. When you see an image that you like, click on these buttons to allow the Google Images algorithm to find more images similar to the one you like.

This has opened another world for me.  Hopefully my story will inspire others.