Cockatoo and Pomegranate by Ohara Koson
10"x8" ($40) | 14"x11" ($85) | 20"x16" ($275)
Japanese kachō-e, aka “bird-and-flower” pictures like painter and printmaker Ohara Koson’s Cockatoo and Pomegranate (our fourth Vintage Editions release by the artist), were designed to depict an intangible sense of peaceful harmony through balancing the beauty of avian wildlife with something from the natural world. While kachō-e imagery is most often literal, sometimes—as in this color woodcut from 1930—the flower element is represented as a fruit or other depiction of nature.
Ohara Koson (1877-1945) was aligned with the shin-hanga (“new prints”) movement, which was an early 20th century revival of traditional ukiyo-e art. Comprised of woodblock prints and paintings addressing both the everyday and the fantastic, ukiyo-e art (meaning “pictures of the floating world”) was wildly popular between the 17th and 19th centuries. In the shin-hanga movement, the artist, carver, and printer played distinctly separate but unified roles, as opposed to sosaku-hanga (“creative prints”), in which the artist performs all roles and is the sole creator of the work. As with any form of art from a culture as storied and ancient as Japan’s, the lineage of visual languages and approaches in Cockatoo and Pomegranate runs deep.Â
It is a language Ohara Koson was perhaps more well-versed in than any other kacho-e artist: he was famously the most revered, and created around 450 different works in the genre. He was also celebrated for his single-subject work, like Peacock. In both that work and Cockatoo and Pomegranate, Koson’s gentle watercolor washes bring softness and light to his feathered subjects, both of whom are fluffy and ethereal. Indeed, one of the aims of kacho-e artwork was to allude to the seasons themselves, spirituality, and poetry. More directly, flora and fauna featured in the movement’s prints often held overt symbolic meanings. Pomegranates, for instance, have served as symbols of abundance, sensuality and fertility since ancient times. Kishimojin, the Japanese mythological goddess of motherhood and childbirth, is often pictured holding the fruit herself.
While specific symbolic birds abound in Japanese cultural history, the cockatoo is not linked to any particular trait or tale. More likely, one is depicted here solely for its natural beauty, or perhaps because of its snow white feathers, as white symbolizes purity and visually offers the greatest potential for bold compositional contrast. Koson created several cockatoo-based compositions, all of which employ this striking technique in order to set the subject off from the background and create bold depth With its googly eye and playful stance, this timeless, gleeful cockatoo is poised to fly right into viewers’ hearts almost 100 years after its creation.Â
More work by Ohara Koson:
Peacock by Ohara Koson
