Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/33

28 know where is a thing more truly egotistic than the flowers."

"That egotism in the picture," I proceeded, "might be a real result from the great reverence and. intense love of Kenzan for his subjects; we can see that his mind, when he painted them, was never troubled with any other thing or thought. You know that such only occurs to a truly gifted artist. After all, the greatness of Kenzan is his sincerity. And it goes without saying that the pictures on tea-bowls we see here are not things which were made to some one's order. We become at once sincere and silent in their presence; to say that his art was spiritual is another way to express it—by that I mean that we are given all opportunities to imagine what the pictures themselves may not contain. Our imagination grows deeper and clearer through the virtue or magic of his work; and again his work appears thrice simplified and therefore more vital. The art really simple and vital is never to be troubled with any rhetoric or accessories of unessentials; before you make such a picture, you must have, to begin with, your own soul simplified and vital in the true sense. Kenzan had that indeed."

"To call Kenzan's work merely beautiful," my friend-poet said, evidently in the same mind with myself, "whether it be the picture on paper or China-bowls, does no justice; what he truly aimed at was the artistic expression,—and he was